A collection of the most intimate and illuminating accounts

of China's neglected decade

The Seventies (Qishi niandai 七十年代) is a remarkable compendium

of essays recollecting those years originally edited by the poet Bei Dao

北島and the writer/editor Li Tuo 李陀, first published in Hong

Kong in late 2008. Among the collection’s most notable features is its

powerful ability to reach back and illuminate that strange decade, now

mostly thought of as an interregnum between a just preceding Maoist

frenzy with its intense socialism and the ascent of Deng Xiaoping and

his new era at the very end of the period. It was also, however, the

formative time in the growth of the group of intellectuals, writers and

artists—almost all born after 1949—who came to dominate Chinese

cultural life by the turn of the century. As “educated urban youth” (zhishi

qingnian 知識青年), many of the writers represented here were at

once the most active participants and most evident victims of the Great

Proletarian Cultural Revolution that spanned the years between 1966

and 1976. The works selected and translated here provide a series of

vivid impressions of what has turned out to be a key period in modern

Chinese social, intellectual and artistic life.

Theodore Huters is Professor Emeritus at the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures, the University of California, Los Angeles. He is currently the Chief Editor of Renditions, a leading international journal of Chinese literature in English translation, published by the Research Centre for Translation of the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Bei Dao is a world-renowned poet, co-founder of the famous literary magazine Today. He is now Professor of Humanities at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Li Tuo is a writer and influential critic in China. He has written fiction and film scripts and authored numerous essays on Chinese literature, cinema and art. He has edited several major Chinese literary anthologies and, in particular, Chinese experimental fiction. He is currently the senior editor of Today magazine.