From Boxer to the Cat

   ------George Orwell’s Animal Farm and the Changing China

Pretty easy to consider China as an animal farm similar the one George Orwell wrote about. The same society and ideology give the Chinese people the same roles that the animals have in the novel. For me, I have lived in China for sixteen years, long enough to find my role in the county. The same does my grandfather and my mother. They all have their own roles. From the changing of the roles, we can see the changes of the modern China.

My grandfather’s role is undoubtedly the Boxer in the Animal Farm, which means hardworking, never complain and forever loyal to the leaders. He was born in “He Bei” province in 1922. During that era, people still lived in a half-war half-disordered country. After the collapse of Qing dynasty, no one could be definitely thought as the governor. Even some parts of China were still controlled by the foreigners. That was a tragedy in Chinese history. People, especially the farmers had to bear the exploitations from both the landlords and warlords, thus the living standard was impossibly low. Like Robert C. Cosbey wrote in his book:

        To realize the awfulness of those days, think first of some of the things happening in the world today. Think of the thousands who are starving, and the millions of children severely malnourished. Think of the warlords of Somalia, and the slaying in Rwanda and Algeria, and the genocide in Bosnia, and the incredible inflation in many countries. Put them all together, he said, and you’ll have some idea of what China was like before socialism. When the Communists offered a new kind of world, some people agreed, he says, simply because they thought nothing could be worse that what they already had. (Cosbey, page13)

Fortunately grandfather was born in a rich farming family, which could provide him to finish the elementary education and fed him the essential food. However that was not too bad.

Among the chaos, communism appeared as a new hope for Chinese People. Mao, the subsequent chairman of New China, led revolutions which pretty was like the rebellion in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. The revolution also greatly changed grandfather’s life when he was 16. In that year he joined the Mao’ army troop: “Eighth Troop” and one year later, he gloriously became a member of the China Communist Party. Instead of laboring in the farm, he participated in the war and fight against Japanese. This experience has become our traditional topic on the dinner table. Grandfather can keep on talking about his army-life for a whole afternoon without stop.

George Orwell’s Boxer always works at the hardest and most difficult situation. The same did my grandfather and other elder comrades. After October 1^st 1949, Chairman Mao declared the establishment of People’s Republic of China as the ending of revolution. China, the new animal farm, needed to be rebuilt. Therefore grandfather and thousands of other young Boxers left their hometowns went to construct new cities in the deserted West China even without saying any complains. Fortunately the first five years plan of the contribution was successfully finished. George also predicted this in the novel as the animal farm’s first plentiful harvest. Under the organizational communist society, China’s economy began to increase on a right way. Everybody appreciated the progresses that they made by themselves. The China Farm, after the long chaos for the last 100 years, was finally cleaned up.

Suddenly the progresses unpredictably stopped as the pigs proclaimed the building of the windmill, which meant the Mao’s Culture Revolution, the craziest period of China modern history (Said by Lao She, an old, famous Chinese author who died in that revolution). Many people suicide, even more were killed by the regime. Grandfather was also attacked only because he was the leader of a steel-making factory, which made the people regarded him as a “Capitalist”. So he was sent to the prison, and stayed there for 2 tough years.

On the other hand, the chairman Mao and other pigs’ power tremendously increased as the population of the sheep growing up. Sheep, the stupid and most left-wing animal in the animal farm, could be symbolized the “Red Guard” during the revolution, which were mostly made up by the innocent students and teenagers. They did not have any respect to the old Boxer like my grandfather. Under the leading of the left-wing pigs, sheep became the most powerful group of the China Farm. There is a vivid description of the “Red Guard” as below:

Millions of Red Guards flocked to Beijing to take part in huge adoring rallies. They denounced their teachers for promoting elitist education: some were driven to suicide. ‘Red Rebels’ appeared in factories, shops, business and government offices and ministries. Encouraged by Mao’s ultra-left supporters led by Jiang Qing and Minister of Defense Lin Biao, the rebels then targeted senior leaders with Head of State Liu Shaoqi and Party Secretary- General Deng Xiaoping at the top of the list. (Gittings, page 58)

After the “Napoleon”: Mao died in 1976, the return of the Chairman Deng Xiao Ping could be considered as the return of the hidden Snowball. He terminated the useless revolution and removed the fences of the China Farm by his “Open Policy”. Chare Taylor also mentioned this in his book.

China was now nominally ruled by Mao’s handpicked successor as Party Chairman, the little-known Hua Guofeng. But real power seemed to rest with the wily survivor Deng Xiaoping and his network of allies in the party. (Taylor, page 10)

On the other hand, grandfather and other Boxers, after the destruction of the windmill that name “Culture Revolution”, were finally retired at the expected ages with the not bad rations. The Sheep also had grown up and recognized the stupid faults they made. At the same moment, some hens were trying to pull down the monocracy of the pigs, although the pigs were led by the fair “Snowball” Deng Xiao Ping. The hens called themselves as the student’s democracy fighters in the Tiananmen Square, but finally they failed under the whips and dogs of the leader pigs. Then China quietly paced into the 1990s. Under the opening that made since the late 1970s, more and more people knew the outer worlds from TV and books; the monocracy of pigs somehow had become fair and square; people’s living standard rapidly increased as the economy boomed up. In the book China Modernization in the 1980s, Cheng mentioned:

China has the highest economic growth rates among Third World countries. China’s GDP grew at an average of over 10% per annum in the past decade, and it is probably the only Third World country that can maintain such growth rates in the coming decade. (Cheng, page 1)

Under the flourishing economy and the policy of “Family Planning”, our cats were finally born. The reason why I describe myself and the current teenagers as the cats is because we have all the same characteristics that the cat does, lazy, smart, and selfish. The “Family Planning” positively reduced China’s population, but on the other hand made our cats lived in an extremely doting environment, thus made children selfish and lazy. In addition, the fashions from the western world have strongly influenced our cats’ lives. Teenagers’ thought is coming more and more “Western”. Almost no cat will still believe and be faithful to the communism.

On the other hand, when China’s urban economy is tremendously booming up, do not forget that the 71.15% of Chinese population are rural. (The information got from National Bureau of Statistics of China) When the population of cats greatly increased in cities, even more little Boxers are born in the rural China. Although their lives have been slightly improved after the Liberation, but the gap between the cities and the countries are still huge. Ross Terrill wrote this in his book:

Rural China is a place where the overriding imperative is to survive, and that explains the naturalistic world view of the farmer. Nature’s power makes for fatalism. (Terrill, page 332)

In conclusion, China is changing everyday. My grandfather’s life typically shows how it changed from chaos to liberation, from Culture Revolution to the final “Open Policy”. Moreover, for our cats, I think it is still too early to evaluate our future, even George Orwell did not predict the flourish of the current China Farm. Maybe, after fifty or eighty years, when my grandchildren have become the new Boxers or the new cats of China, wish they can answer this question for us.

The End.

Bibliography

Books Recourses

l       Terrill, Ross, China in Our Time. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992

l       Cosbey, Robert C, Watching China Change. Canada: Between the Lines, 2001

l       Taylor, Chare, China Hands. Canada: The Canadian Publishers,  1959-1984

l       Cheng, Joseph Y.S, China Modernization In The 1980s. Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1989

l       Gittings, John, China Through The Sliding Door. Great Britain: Touchstone, 1999

Internet Recourses

l       National Bureau of Statistics of China, “The Fifth National Census”. http://www.stats.gov.cn/English/index.htm, 2000