The Sinica Ultimate China Bookshelf #55: Jack Chen’s A Year in Upper Felicity

Jack Chen’s (or Lao Chen as he was known to the Chinese villagers he lived amongst) A Year in Upper Felicity: Life in a Chinese Commune During the Cultural Revolution is about a year Chen and his wife spent in the Henan village of Upper Felicity from winter 1969-1970. The book is essentially his diary of that year on the Upper Felicity Collective Farm at this tumultuous time. It is perhaps especially interesting as Chen was the son of the Chinese Trinidadian lawyer and Republican-era Chinese foreign minister Eugene Chen. The book is organized around the four seasons describing the day-to-day life of Chinese peasants and how urban intellectuals were “sent down” to the countryside. Click here to read….