Mr Xu at market

Hutcheon:  In a busy market in central Beijing, a man who's experienced the extremes of Communist China.

Xu:  How much are these grapes?

Vendor:  $1 for 1.5 kilos.

Xu:  Are they sweet?

Vendor:  Of course they are.

Hutcheon:   Once he had a promising career working for the Fathers of the Revolution.  Then he fell from favour.

Through fifty years of Communism  Harold  Xu has been a survivor, galvanised by experience.

Xu:  It depends on my own personality.

Xu

Well I have been optimistic all through the years, and maybe that's one the basic reasons that  I have survived.

Photo of a young Harold

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Hutcheon:  At just 22 Harold worked as an interpreter for the Chinese Foreign Service, translating for Premier Zhou Enlai and the Great Helmsman himself Mao Zedong.

Xu:  I remember very clearly, I first saw Mao at a very close distance when I was 17 years old.  I was taken there to watch the ceremony

Xu

when a foreign ambassador presented his credentials and my boss Mr Han Xu, he later became Chinese ambassador to Washington, said "Look here, you're just 17 years old and you can see Chairman Mao at such a close distance.  It's a great honour."  I really thought it was great, it was my great honour.

Photo of Harold and Mao

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Hutcheon:  But working in the shadow of the Chairman, was no protection from Mao's sweeping authoritarianism.

Harold spent ten years in jail for a trifling offence, he succumbed to his  weakness for foreign clothes, borrowing government funds to buy them. He would soon come to re-appraise his view of Mao.

Xu:  One day I came upon one booklet which had a speech by Mao. In that speech Mao said

Xu

the First Emperor of China buried 460 Chinese scholars alive  but we have executed 460 thousand counter-revolutionaries.  It was so alarming to me, I said how could so many people be executed and how could he compare himself to the First Emperor of China, Qin Shihuang

Archival footage, agricultural scenes

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Hutcheon:  Harold Xu's recollections of 50 years of Communism differ sharply from the images fashioned for the official celebrations this week. So too the experiences of millions more who suffered during one of Mao's most destructive campaigns -- the mass dispatch of young people to China's rural heartland -- the tragedy of the so-called educated youth.

Map China/Jiang walking

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Hutcheon:  Far from his birthplace Beijing, Jiang Zuotao is a man with an absurd profession.  In this desperately arid corner of central China, Jiang patrols the Victory Reservoir as a flood control officer.

It's a pointless job, in the middle of nowhere.

As one of Mao's so-called educated youth,

Jiang sits by reservoir

Jiang never thought he'd be trapped in so much misery.

Jiang:  I was young and ignorant at the time. I was around 17 or 18 years old... I didn't have any social experience.

Jiang

Large numbers of educated youth went back to the cities in 1978... 1979... 1980... Most of them were looked after by their families - but at home no one was concerned about me.

Jiang carrying water

Hutcheon:  To this day he suffers the legacy of one of Mao's ill-conceived campaigns.

Most had returned to the cities by the time Mao died, but Jiang missed his chance to leave.  Now he, his wife and  children are learning to live on next to nothing.

Chang:   We can't even afford buying a bag of flour...  I don't get any living expenses at all.  Our only living is growing some corn but if we plough, we don't have money for the seed and fertiliser.  Since we're not paid salaries or living expenses, I can't even afford to travel from here to the nearest city.

Inside home

Hutcheon:   In this harsh environment, their cave home provides them with shelter, but their daily sustenance consists of noodles rolled from cheap flour.

Their living expenses are donated by relatives.  The local government owes them 10 years of back pay.

Jiang in bedroom opening trunk

Hutcheon:  All the family's possessions are held in this trunk, the only reminder of Mr Jiang's sorry past.

He rummages for photographs that document his family's sad life; here there won't be celebrations for China's 50^th Anniversary. But it's hard to comprehend how, after a life wasted in the countryside, he refuses to blame  Chairman Mao.

Jiang

Jiang:  I don't blame anyone - it's no longer a socialist country. I don't want to blame anyone.  I only blame my incompetence. I am useless.  I really admire the Chairman.  He is the greatest helmsman - and the most brilliant leader.

Archival footage -- Mao

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Hutcheon:  It was a campaign known as the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Mao started it to destroy his enemies, calling on revolutionary firebrands to destroy anything traditional.

Hutcheon:  The entire education system stood still while battalions of Red Guards plundered and desecrated; humiliating, beating and often murdering those deemed by Mao to be bad elements.

Xu

Xu:  We have a saying...  There are five things, landlord, rich peasant, counter-revolutionary, bad elements, rightists...  So these families were considered as bad families.

Hutcheon:  Professor Harold Xu's bourgeois tastes, which he retains to this day, put him in the firing line of his former Communist masters.  Now a visiting Professor at an American University, he recalls how his bad family background added to his list of crimes.

Xu:  My father was a capitalist before

Xu

1949, he invested in stocks and he made a fortune.  He bought a house,  four storey house, and he owned a Studebaker before 1949.

Hutcheon:  A Studebaker?

Xu:  Yeah, a Studebaker. It's now a collection item. So for instance, such a family would be classified as undesirable.

Archival footage - 1960s demonstrations

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Hutcheon:  By 1969 the country was in a state of mayhem and Mao needed to reign in the destruction he'd unleashed.

To solve the problem and strike against those with bad backgrounds, he sent 17 million teenagers, aged between 15 and 17, to the depths of the countryside for a hard education, a lesson in life from the poorest of the poor.

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Hutcheon, Terri and friends in car

Hutcheon: Years on from their ordeal as Educated Youth from Shanghai, Terri Sun and her friends are marking China's anniversary with a journey of their own.

For Terri, it's a just a year since she called back on the village of her peasant education, for her old friends Lao Ma and Li Wei, it's the first time back in 27 years. Their experiences have made them uneasy about the trip.

Terri:  It was uncertain.  At the time we left for countryside, there was no guarantee we would be able to come back to Shanghai.

Terri

We were told we would spend our whole life in countryside.

Hutcheon:  Thirty years ago, they worked the soil for an agricultural commune producing corn and sorghum for the State.

Then their host villagers barely had enough to feed themselves.

Now the peasants own land and have built comfortable houses.  The greetings are warm and friendly in marked contrast to the confusion of the first arrival.

Terri:  Where is the dormitory? Why can't I find it now?

Man:  It was near my house.

Terri:  Let's go there.

Hutcheon:  People appear from everywhere greeting the former students like long lost members of the family.

Terri:  Have I changed? You are the accountant, I remember.

Man:  this is the Party Secretary of the village.

Terri:  Was he in this village?  Do you remember me?

Secretary:  I was very young.

Terri:  Thirty years have passed and we still remember.

Food being prepared

Hutcheon:  A feast is prepared for us; fresh vegetables, meat, even fish is on the menu. There's new prosperity here.

They toast the reunion and the progress since capitalism came to the Commune.

Super:

WU ZHONGLIANG

Village Head

Wu:   At that time, if you could fill your belly that was all that mattered.  Rice was very rare - even party officials could only have a few kilos a month.  Nowadays it's very common to see peasants eating rice.

Hutcheon:  Are you satisfied with your lives?

Wu:  Happy and content! Life has improved!  That's not just fro one or two --  approximately 90% of villagers are satisfied.

Hutcheon:  While the villagers have prospered, this educated youth doesn't live as well as the peasants.  Lao Ma's only graduation was from the fields, to a dull job in a tractor factory he's held down for 30 years.

Lao:  Well, my life has changed as well. How do I compare it? Look at these dishes - at home we can't normally afford so much.

Village scene

Hutcheon:  Terri Sun spent 4 years labouring in the fields, a reluctant conscript to Mao Zedong's program, which robbed so many of an education and the best years of their lives.

Terri:  As a person, as a person, I could never ever forgive what he did to the country and to the whole generation.

Terri

Basically, he sacrificed the whole generation for his personal political ambition.  I mean, I am one of the -- that time that was a young generation.  I am one of those people and I strongly believe we were sacrificed.

Lao

Lao:  The most regrettable and disappointing thing is that our generation has less knowledge.  At that time we should have acquired knowledge but we weren't able to study so we didn't further our learning. I really regret this.  That's why I place my hopes on the next generation --  that they'll be able to further their studies.

Terri shakes hands

Hutcheon:  Unlike Lao Ma and many of China's educated youth, Terri Sun has overcome her experience and excelled.

After returning from the countryside, she was assigned a lowly factory job, assembling toys for a few cents a day.

Automotive factory

Now the financial controller for a multi-national automotive company, earns a 6 figure salary.

To reach these heights, she first fled the country. She found education and opportunity in Australia, built a career and learned to assess China from an objective distance.

Terri:  I think China's biggest problem is corruption.  But if they can have a good system

Terri

to overcome the corruption, I do believe China has got a future. It does have a lot of problems because too many people, corruption, but we need to have a very strong government to overcome all these difficulties.

Hutcheon:  Terri now sees her future introducing Western-style management to China, and by doing so, helping the country shake off Mao's legacy.

The less fortunate, like Jiang Zuotao are trapped in a wasteland, unable to leave and seek a second chance.

Jiang carries water into house

When the Cultural Revolution ended and Jiang married, he unwittingly forfeited his right to return home in Beijing.

Mao Zedong's system of residence registration, which still applies in China today, prevents peasants from moving into the cities.

Jiang beside Victory Reservoir

On the shores of the Victory Reservoir, Mr Jiang waits for the day officials review his case, at least  permitting his children to go to Beijing, the city where he was born and where he hopes to die, yet another silent victim of China's Modern Emperor.

Xu:  Chinese need an emperor and in Chinese tradition, there has been a lack of

Xu

tolerated dissent or open debate.  So if the emperor proves to be a monster then the course of his followers, the only course of his followers was to obey and endure because in a way, he was their creation.