How Should We Really Understand Liu Qing?

Liu Jiming · January 15, 2026

History has returned to the starting point of the opening of The Builders, but it has not moved forward along the path Liu Qing designed for his protagonists. Instead, it has retreated, heading in the opposite direction. Standing in the victor's position is not Liang Shengbao, the "new socialist man" he labored to create, but Guo Zhenshan, the one singlemindedly focused on getting rich. And Liu Qing himself has inadvertently become a spokesperson for the Guo Zhenshans.

I

After my essay "Liu Jiming | Who is Liu Qing? Whose Liu Qing?" was published, it sparked considerable discussion on the internet. Many readers raised criticisms and questions about the film Liu Qing, the biography Liu Qing, and Liu Qing himself:

"At different stages of history, people also appear in different guises. Not just Liu Qing—haven't many writers already performed their split personalities? Those who can hold fast to their beliefs, remain loyal to the people, and struggle for them are ultimately few. I don't demand that Liu Qing be consistent throughout, transformation is normal, but I will salute those who cry out for the elimination of exploitation and fight for communist ideals!" "Is Liu Qing lying, or is Liu Kefeng lying?" "If Liu Qing truly split himself in two, what profound sorrow that is!" "Liu Qing died at the beginning of reform and opening up, and under the social currents of thought at that time, he might have experienced self-division and negation. But if he had lived until now and seen the situation over the past forty-plus years, I think he should have achieved a 'negation of negation' sublimation." "Now the mainstream uses the discourse of 'going deep into life' to promote Liu Qing, but society, under the 'political correctness of reform and opening up,' has actually negated the thematic ideas of The Builders, which necessarily creates powerlessness, chaos, falseness, and absurdity. Revolutionary writers who held fast to their original aspirations, like Ding Ling and Hao Ran, are truly not many." "There are many two-faced people, far more than we imagine." "In the past forty years, there have been too many 'red second generation' [note: children of Communist Party officials] who, driven by practical interests, puff themselves up as their 'fathers'' confidants, each one reeking of money as they powder and rouge their way to reconstructing 'authentic' elders. Simple common sense tells us that fathers rarely communicate 'inner thoughts' related to work with their children. Because there's a huge gulf here, the disparity in life experience is too great. Those who best understand the previous generation, setting aside private affection, are never the children..." "What is Liu Qing's daughter trying to do?" "She's cut from the same cloth as Tao Siliang—harming her father and herself!" "This film is high-level sabotage!" And so on.

Summarizing readers' opinions, they fall roughly into three categories: First, there's widespread affirmation of the agricultural cooperativization movement of the 1950s, with The Builders recognized as an epic work passionately celebrating six hundred million Chinese peasants following the socialist path under Party leadership. Second, most people closely link Liu Qing with The Builders, treating them as an indivisible whole, harboring simple "class feelings" toward Liu Qing. Third, most hold critical attitudes toward Liu Qing and the film Liu Qing, especially feeling very disappointed and unable to accept certain viewpoints in Liu Qing's conversations with his daughter.

At the core of all this is: What attitude did Liu Qing actually hold toward "agricultural cooperativization" and related issues? This relates to how we understand Liu Qing and The Builders. I touched on this in my essay "Who is Liu Qing? Whose Liu Qing?" but it was far from sufficient. A more detailed, complete, and thorough analysis is needed so we can have an objective, rational understanding of Liu Qing.

II

"Chairman Mao has instructed that places without cooperatives, regardless of whether they are large, medium, or small counties, should, after thorough preparation during the winter of 1953 and spring of 1954, establish one or two cooperatives. As long as they meet the conditions and conform to the regulations and resolutions, are entered into voluntarily by the masses, and have fair and capable leadership cadres, then the more established the better... Look! Socialist forces will occupy village positions throughout the nation in the winter of 1953. The scattered Chinese rural society of thousands of years will begin to shake from its foundations in the winter of 1953..."

This is a passage from the end of Part One of The Builders. From it, we can feel an irrepressible passion surging in Liu Qing's chest. Liu Qing once said: "When I wrote The Builders, I was promoting people's complete break with private ownership and the concept of private ownership, using communist thought to build the great socialist cause. I wrote it this way, and I should demand the same of myself!" "The Builders is also my own experience. I wrote into it both part of what I experienced and part of what I went through. Shengbao's character, as well as his attitude toward the Party, toward surrounding matters, and toward various kinds of people, contains a reflection of myself."

This generally accords with Liu Qing's thoughts and feelings when he created The Builders, and this is how people have understood Liu Qing ever since. But few know that starting from the mid-to-late 1950s, Liu Qing's understanding of the agricultural cooperativization movement began to undergo significant change. When Part One of The Builders was published in 1960, there was a "Publisher's Note": "The Builders is a novel depicting China's rural socialist revolution, with emphasis on representing the social, ideological, and psychological processes of change in this revolution. The entire work is divided into four parts: Part One covers the mutual aid group stage, Part Two covers the consolidation and development of agricultural production cooperatives, Part Three covers the high tide of the cooperativization movement, and Part Four covers the Rectification Campaign and the Great Leap Forward, up to the establishment of rural people's communes." But why was it never completed before Liu Qing's death? According to Liu Kefeng's Liu Qing, aside from Liu Qing being criticized during the Cultural Revolution and illness, the main reason was that he had developed an understanding of the agricultural cooperativization movement, as well as the Great Leap Forward and people's communes, that differed from the mainstream of that time.

In Li Shiwen's article "On The Builders and Ultra-Left Thought," published in the second issue of Yanhe in 1981, it states: "Liu Qing once mentioned that even if he completed the fourth part, he wouldn't publish it; he would wait until after his death to publish it, because in this book he wanted to make his own evaluation of the cooperativization movement." Later, Liu Qing personally disclosed to his daughter Liu Kefeng his plans for Part Four of The Builders: "The main content is to criticize how the cooperativization movement went down the wrong path." He specifically pointed out the "errors" of the cooperativization movement:

"After liberation, carrying out socialist transformation was a change in ownership, a major transformation in social structure, bringing countless complex and intricate problems. Without going through tempering, how could cadres mature? Without going through practice, how could experience be gained? How can this be called being a 'little-footed woman'? With such complex, difficult, and arduous tasks, such profound and tremendous changes, could a 'big-footed woman' do it? Should it take three Five-Year Plans, fifteen years, or even longer to complete cooperativization, one step at a time, solidly proceeding, or is it better to rush through it in two or three years? At that time, was it consistent with reality to view everyone's active and urgent requests to join cooperatives as socialist enthusiasm? Were people like Yang Jiaxi and Guo Tieren's purposes in actively requesting to join cooperatives the same as the broad masses of poor and lower-middle peasants? They just wanted to ride the wave—if they didn't join they couldn't, and once in, they could actually occupy an advantageous position and compete for leadership... The blind action and recklessness of those two years, and the practice of the following dozen or so years fully proved its evil consequences, causing profound and lasting negative impacts on subsequent development..."

—Liu Kefeng, Liu Qing

Liu Qing believed the errors of the cooperativization movement lay in "blind action," "recklessness," and "rushing through," failing to proceed step by step or respect objective laws. It should have been like a "little-footed woman" taking one step at a time, rather than like a "big-footed woman."

These views of Liu Qing's were not momentary impulses but "the result of long-term research and reflection." Expressions like "little-footed woman" and "recklessness" clearly had specific targets.

In 1953, Mao Zedong spoke several times on the question of agricultural cooperativization. In his November 4 talk, he said: "Developing agricultural cooperatives is both necessary and possible now, with great potential. If we don't tap into it, that's stability without progress. Feet are meant for walking; it's wrong to just stand still. Cooperatives that had the conditions to be established were forced to disband—that's wrong, no matter what year it happened. 'Correcting rash advance' was always just a gust of wind, blowing down and toppling some agricultural production cooperatives that shouldn't have been toppled. Those wrongly toppled should be identified and clarified, acknowledged as errors; otherwise, the township cadres and activists there will be holding in their anger..." He clearly pointed out, "The General Line is to gradually transform production relations. Stalin said the foundation of production relations is ownership—comrades must understand this point clearly. Now, both private ownership and socialist public ownership are legal, but private ownership must gradually become illegal. 'Guaranteeing private ownership' on three acres of land, engaging in 'four great freedoms' [note: freedom to lend money, hire labor, trade land, and engage in private enterprise], will result in developing a few wealthy peasants and taking the capitalist road." He also put forward quantitative requirements for developing agricultural production cooperatives: "This winter and next spring, before the autumn harvest next year, develop over 32,000; by 1957 we can develop to 700,000. But we must estimate that sometimes there might suddenly be rapid development, possibly reaching one million, maybe more than one million. In any case, we must both establish many and establish them well, with active leadership and steady development." (Two Talks on Agricultural Mutual Aid and Cooperation, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol. 5, pp. 119, 123, 124)

In his commentary in the book Socialist Upsurge in China's Countryside, Mao Zedong pointed out with even more enthusiasm: "In Zunhua County's cooperativization movement, there was a Wang Guofan cooperative—twenty-three poor peasant households with only three donkey legs total, called the 'Poor Sticks Cooperative.' Through their own efforts over three years, they 'brought down from the mountains' large quantities of means of production, moving some visitors to tears. I see this as the image of our country. Can't six hundred million poor sticks, through their own efforts over several decades, become a socialist country that is both prosperous and strong?" (Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol. 5, p. 227)

Liu Qing disagreed with this, even privately refuting it: "If our revolution is only about seizing power and wielding power, then this revolution is just a repetition of past eras; if a revolution cannot liberate productive forces and greatly develop production, then what is the significance of this revolution?" Clearly, his understanding of socialism was only about raising and developing productive forces, whereas Mao Zedong saw the agricultural cooperativization movement as "transforming production relations," a crucial step from private ownership toward socialist public ownership. It's evident that Liu Qing's understanding and attitude toward cooperativization differed greatly from Mao Zedong's series of discussions on agricultural cooperativization—they were even fundamentally opposed.

Liu Qing did not oppose "agricultural cooperativization" from the beginning but underwent a transformation from particular to general, from partial to whole. The inducement for this "change," aside from the influence of different viewpoints within the Party's upper echelons, also came from certain practical experiences he participated in and experienced during the cooperativization movement at the rural grassroots level. According to Liu Qing, after the higher-level cooperatives were established, he interrupted his writing of The Builders to create a novella called Hate Through Iron. The protagonist was based on someone Liu Qing knew well from life. "This work contained his important views on our country's agricultural cooperativization. Due to time, length, and writing plan considerations, many issues couldn't be fully developed... He told people he trusted around him: 'This novel is my indictment of the rushed establishment of higher-level cooperatives.' He also said, 'The great harvests of 1955 and 1956, aside from favorable weather, most importantly came from the organizational form of lower-level cooperatives—their superiority hadn't yet been fully displayed.'" (Liu Kefeng, Liu Qing, p. 207)

Liu Qing believed the step from lower-level to higher-level cooperatives was too fast, constituting "rash advance" and "rushing." On precisely this point, Mao Zedong's attitude was diametrically opposite and exceptionally clear. When making a report at a meeting the CCP Central Committee convened for provincial, municipal, and autonomous region Party secretaries, he said: "Currently, the high tide of socialist transformation in rural cooperativization has already arrived in some places and will soon arrive throughout the country. This is a large-scale socialist revolutionary movement among over five hundred million rural people, with extremely great world significance. We should actively, enthusiastically, and systematically lead this movement, not use various methods to hold it back... Some comrades have also found basis in Soviet Communist Party history to criticize the so-called rash advance in our country's current agricultural cooperativization work... I believe we should pay attention to this Soviet experience; we must oppose any unprepared, rash advance thinking that disregards the level of peasant masses' consciousness. But we should not allow some of our comrades to use this Soviet experience as cover for their crawling mentality." (On the Question of Agricultural Cooperativization, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol. 5, pp. 168, 183)

Liu Qing's dissenting views on agricultural cooperativization were not isolated but were influenced by the so-called "New Democratic faction" represented by Liu Shaoqi, Deng Zihui, and others. In the early 1950s, Mao Zedong had criticized the viewpoint of "establishing a New Democratic order" more than once: "Our current revolutionary struggle is even more profound than past armed revolutionary struggles. This is a revolution to completely bury the capitalist system and all exploitative systems. The idea of 'establishing a New Democratic social order' doesn't accord with the actual situation of struggle and obstructs the development of the socialist cause." (Criticism of Right-Leaning Views on the General Line, Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Vol. 5, p. 82)

It's clear that some of Liu Qing's thoughts on agricultural cooperativization reflected the then-Party internal struggle between two lines: "establishing a New Democratic social order" versus "taking the socialist road." Standing in these two different positions to view agricultural cooperativization would naturally lead to different conclusions. In the 1960s and 1970s, Eastern European countries successively experienced waves of reform, causing widespread attention and controversy in the socialist camp. Liu Qing stopped writing Part Two of The Builders to "study the experience of the international communist movement." "After much research, he believed Yugoslavia's experience was relatively good... Yugoslavia truly achieved voluntary entry into and freedom to exit from cooperatives. Only one-quarter of the countryside was cooperativized, accounting for a small proportion of national farm households, but a large proportion of the national economy. They used forms like agricultural-industrial-commercial joint enterprises and collectives to cooperate with, guide, and assist individual peasants. Their development of collective economy was slow and gradual, not like a violent storm." (Liu Kefeng, Liu Qing, p. 429)

Liu Qing's understanding came not only from his personal experience but more from classical Marxist theory. Marx believed that productive forces determine production relations, and economic base determines superstructure. Although under specific conditions the latter might react upon the former, it's still the former that plays the decisive role. But in the Soviet Union, this Marxist thought was surpassed or "revised." First, Lenin's October Revolution broke through Marx's assertion that proletarian revolution couldn't first succeed in one country; then, after Lenin's death, Stalin, through "violent storm" methods, achieved in the Soviet Union a socialist revolution aimed at public ownership and planned economy. Both revolutions were "revisions" of classical Marxism. The Chinese Revolution was similar—from Mao Zedong's "encircling cities from the countryside, seizing power through armed force" to the socialist transformation of industry and commerce after the founding of New China, all were results of surpassing and revising the Soviet model. Of course, in the process of land reform and agricultural cooperativization advancing toward people's communes, China drew more from Soviet experience, but the specific path still had Chinese characteristics. For example, in terms of ownership, the Soviet collective farms differed greatly from China's agricultural cooperatives and later people's communes. Liu Qing seemed quite dismissive of this. On one hand, he greatly praised the Yugoslav reforms that the CCP viewed as revisionist and held a fundamentally negative attitude toward Soviet-style socialism; on the other hand, he highly esteemed Lenin's briefly implemented "New Economic Policy" after the October Revolution but felt quite averse to Stalin's "forceful implementation" of socialism in the Soviet Union. This attitude even influenced his evaluation of Stalin himself: "Stalin's thirty years of rule led the communist movement toward a slave system, with everything obeying one person... Without Stalin, there wouldn't have been many phenomena in the communist movement, including China's Cultural Revolution." (Liu Kefeng, Liu Qing, p. 460)

Liu Qing's criticism should be said to have some merit. Stalin's socialism did indeed create in the Soviet Union a privileged bureaucratic stratum elevated above the people. When people's democratic rights lack protection, it inevitably leads to bureaucratism and privileged corruption. Precisely in view of the similar bureaucratism and privileged corruption existing in Chinese society at the time, to prevent capitalist restoration and explore socialist democracy as well as people's participation in and management of the state, Mao Zedong launched the "unprecedented" Cultural Revolution.

But Liu Qing ignored this fact, equating Mao Zedong with Stalin: "...He (referring to Mao Zedong) later incorrectly estimated his personal prestige, the superficial phenomena of mass movements made his head hot, he stopped acting according to economic laws, calling Deng Zihui a 'little-footed woman.' Later, he also became aware of bringing many problems and contradictions... In the late Cultural Revolution, Father wrote this passage: 'The error began from exaggerating one's own role and neglecting the role of the economic base. Because of unwillingness to re-recognize oneself, one conceals one's errors from the public, thereby exposing to those around one's ordinary human weaknesses. After eliminating people from opposing factions, what follows is not some upright people with genuine insight.' Father had walked all the way along Mao Zedong's revolutionary path, and for a considerable historical period, like the Chinese people, he greatly revered Mao Zedong. Although he had many negative views from the mid-1950s onward, listeners could sense he believed Mao Zedong's starting point was mostly for the people's benefit, hoping he would awaken, recognize, and change. But later, he said with some disappointment: 'In the past, at the end of each campaign, we would reflect on our errors and improprieties. This time, I'm afraid he won't acknowledge them.'" (Liu Kefeng, Liu Qing, pp. 461, 463)

Liu Kefeng also used delicate brushstrokes to describe Liu Qing's reaction to hearing of Mao Zedong's death:

On the afternoon of September 9, 1976, at four o'clock, the city's loudspeakers, long silent, began to sound with the hum of alternating current. My heart tightened. Then, China Central Radio broadcast the news of Chairman Mao Zedong's death in an extraordinarily sorrowful tone.

I immediately set off and hurried home to find Father sitting stock-still. He continued sitting this way for a long time, without speaking, without expression. After a long while, he spoke one sentence as if with a sense of relief:

"An era has finally ended."

Liu Qing also made a "final verdict" evaluation of Mao Zedong: "He is an immortal figure in New Democracy from beginning to end." (Liu Kefeng, Liu Qing, p. 463)

Connecting this to Liu Qing's statement upon hearing of Mao Zedong's death—"An era has finally ended"—and reading this evaluation, Liu Qing's attitude toward Mao Zedong is perfectly clear. In his mind, the "immortal" Mao Zedong only extended through the New Democratic period, whereas for the socialist construction period after the founding of New China, that is, "from the mid-1950s onward," he had "many negative evaluations" of Mao Zedong. This may still be a rather polite way of putting it. Since the "Third Plenum," China's evaluation of Mao Zedong has also used the CCP's "Eighth National Congress" as a watershed, viewing reform and opening up as restoring the correct policies formulated but not well implemented at the "Eighth Congress." This "correct policy" is usually considered to be represented by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping. It was also after the "Third Plenum" that Liu and Deng were both rehabilitated, while Mao Zedong was considered to have made "leftist" or "ultra-leftist" errors after the "Eighth Congress."

In evaluating Mao Zedong, Liu Qing coincided with the mainstream CCP historical narrative of the "latter thirty years." No wonder Liu Qing shaped him into a Gu Zhun-style "prophet."

Later, Liu Qing told his daughter that he didn't agree with the so-called 70-30 evaluation of Mao Zedong. Of course, he wasn't defending Mao Zedong but perhaps quite the opposite: "Plekhanov had merit in propagating Marxism in Russia, and Lenin fully affirmed this point. But this person later became a traitor to the proletarian revolutionary cause, and Lenin struggled mercilessly against him. The same with Stalin—we must analyze in stages." (Liu Kefeng, Liu Qing, p. 464)

I don't thereby conclude that Liu Qing equated Mao Zedong with Plekhanov, "a traitor to the proletarian revolutionary cause," but these words at least reveal his true attitude toward Mao Zedong.

III

When Liu Qing's daughter Liu Kefeng discussed the origin of writing Liu Qing, she said: "What he (referring to Liu Qing) published during his lifetime and his actual thoughts differed too greatly. But he died before he could complete the entire work. If I don't write it, later generations will continue to misunderstand him." This is indeed fact. Liu Qing has always been recognized as the most representative and accomplished writer of the first thirty years of New China, particularly of "seventeen-year literature," and has also been viewed as an enthusiastic supporter and celebrator of the agricultural cooperativization movement. Not until Liu Qing and the film Liu Qing revealed a contrary truth did some readers still believe that "Liu Qing devoted his life's talent to humanity's greatest exploration—realizing communism. He sang passionate praises, wrote with his brush; that kind of deep feeling and fervor could never be comprehended by those who fly-camp and dog-grub. Today's people must look up to this master—how can they look down? The film's failure lies in using a seemingly objective portrayal of predecessors while actually peddling its own private goods. That's all." They attributed responsibility for their idol's damaged image to Liu Qing and the film Liu Qing. Little did they know, those who truly "misunderstood" Liu Qing were not Liu Qing and the film Liu Qing, but the readers themselves. All these years, what we've seen is only the Liu Qing in literary history, not Liu Qing himself. The real Liu Qing has always been hidden behind The Builders, his face obscure, unspeakable. This is probably the greatest myth in Chinese and foreign literary history. After the "Cultural Revolution" ended, Liu Qing was once criticized as an "ultra-leftist," which was indeed wronging him.

Liu Qing carefully maintained this myth to prevent it from being punctured, concealing himself behind The Builders. Aside from his daughter and a few confidants, he feared his true thoughts becoming known to the world. Perhaps he didn't fear these thoughts being made public; he just felt the time hadn't yet come.

His daughter seized this moment.

On the surface, through conversations with his daughter, Liu Qing negated The Builders, into which he had poured enormous effort. In reality, he merely separated himself from The Builders, like a once inseparable couple or old friends going their separate ways. The Builders became a work without an "author." After Liu Qing "lost" his work, not only did he suffer no loss, but he actually received abundant rewards. Because the Chinese society after his death quickly abolished the "new thing" celebrated in The Builders. The model for rural socialism was no longer Dazhai but became Xiaogang Village, the first to divide land among households. History returned to the starting point of the opening of The Builders, but it didn't move forward along the path Liu Qing designed for his protagonists. Instead, it retreated, heading in the opposite direction. Standing in the victor's position is not Liang Shengbao, the "new socialist man" he labored to create, but Guo Zhenshan, the one singlemindedly focused on getting rich. And Liu Qing himself has inadvertently become a spokesperson for the Guo Zhenshans.

This is probably something Liu Qing himself never dreamed of.

We should acknowledge that whether in his tireless, meticulous creative work, his nearly ascetic pursuit, his familiar understanding of rural life, or his deep feelings for peasants, Liu Qing reached heights many writers of his generation couldn't match. The artistic achievements of The Builders are proof of this. On this point, Liu Qing is worthy of the title "people's writer." The film Liu Qing shaping him as China's Tolstoy is actually quite fitting. I don't even doubt Liu Qing's belief in socialism deep in his heart. But history's dramatic upheaval gave Liu Qing the opportunity to separate himself from that outdated role already rejected by the new era. Many years after his death, through the hands of his daughter Liu Kefeng, a new work was created. The protagonist of this new work is none other than himself.

This is yet another way Liu Qing surpassed many writers of his generation.

In 1978, before his death, Liu Qing told his daughter: "In the next era, you will go right, perhaps so far right you can't go any further. When you can't continue, you'll turn back to seek the correct path. This phenomenon has occurred too many times in history." (Liu Qing, p. 470)

From the thoughts Liu Qing disclosed in Liu Qing, many readers feel he was already quite rightist, but from this passage, he himself apparently didn't think so.

I'm very curious: If our era truly is, as Liu Qing worried, "so far right it can't go any further," where would he suggest we "turn back" to, and from whom would we seek the "correct answer"?

Appendix：

Who is Liu Qing? Whose Liu Qing?

Liu Jiming · June 4, 2021

Perhaps what I saw was not Liu Qing, but merely someone who resembled him?I

Liu Qing has always been a writer I deeply admire. In the summer of 2016, I made a pilgrimage to Liu Qing's tomb in the suburbs of Xi'an and visited the Liu Qing Memorial Hall, which had been completed not long before. Liu Qing occupies an extremely important and distinctive position in the history of contemporary Chinese literature. His novel The Builders has been hailed as a "magnificent epic" depicting the agricultural cooperativization movement and praised as the highest achievement of "seventeen-year literature" [note: literature from 1949-1966], making it a classic work of "socialist literature" and "people's literature." Among the so-called "Three Reds and One Creation," the "Three Reds" refer to Red Crag, Red Sun, and Red Flag Chronicles, while "One Creation" refers to The Builders. But in actual evaluation, The Builders holds a far higher status than the "Three Reds." For a long time, many contemporary literature scholars, university Chinese department students, and graduate students have treated Liu Qing and The Builders as popular research topics and subjects, giving rise to an enduring "Builders fever" and "Liu Qing fever." In the mainstream academic world, which generally downplays or even negates the literature of the "first thirty years" [note: 1949-1979], the special honor Liu Qing has received is undoubtedly rare. Compared to the fate of The Golden Road and its author Hao Ran, which similarly depicted the cooperativization movement but were almost entirely rejected, this is nothing short of miraculous. At the 2016 Forum on Literature and Art, when the top leadership mentioned a long list of classic Chinese and foreign writers, Liu Qing stood out as the only writer from the "first thirty years," which undoubtedly added weight to his status as a classic author. Particularly in recent years, Liu Qing has been widely promoted as an exemplar of "going deep into life and taking root among the people," causing his influence to extend beyond the literary world and trend toward becoming a symbol, even an icon.

Yet this very icon-level writer's biographical film Liu Qing earned a mere 170,000 yuan at the box office on its opening day and has yet to break one million. Meanwhile, the American blockbuster F9 released during the same period earned 316 million yuan on opening day. Even biographical films about writers like Rolling Red Dust (about Eileen Chang) and The Golden Era (about Xiao Hong) attracted countless fans and achieved respectable box office numbers in their time. This is truly bewildering, so much so that someone sighed: "This is truly an embarrassment that leaves one with nowhere to hide."

In my view, the disastrous box office performance of the film Liu Qing reflects, on one hand, the awkward predicament faced by mainstream works in a cinema market controlled by capital, and on the other hand, it exposes the fissures within Liu Qing as a cultural symbol. These "fissures" exist not only in the film Liu Qing but were jointly "created" together with the biography Liu Qing published a few years ago by Liu Qing's daughter, Liu Kefeng.

II

Since I haven't seen the film Liu Qing, I have no right to comment on the film itself. Mr. Guo Songmin is a senior film critic, and I trust that his following review is accurate and fair:

The creative team's understanding of the cooperativization movement has not surpassed the level of 1980s "scar literature" [note: literature depicting suffering during the Cultural Revolution]; rather, it largely repeats the conclusions of scar literature. For example, Liu Qing's portrayal of the Great Leap Forward is almost identical to Zhang Yimou's 1994 film To Live.

Liu Qing's interpretation of the cooperativization movement has only one rationale: "living a good life"—a purely small-peasant understanding of "thirty acres of land, one ox, a wife, children, and a warm bed." But the goals of the cooperativization movement went far beyond this.

Essentially, the cooperativization movement was an attempt to build a new society, to completely end the history of man exploiting man and man oppressing man. Cooperativization signified a new type of human relationship. For peasants, cooperatives and people's communes were not only economic communities but also cultural and political communities. Peasants would receive collective security for the first time. For the first time, peasants would no longer passively accept and adapt to their environment but would rely on organized strength to undertake large-scale water conservation projects, establish education, and even begin to establish their own "commune and brigade enterprises"...

But none of this is shown in Liu Qing. Moreover, after experiencing the initial "honeymoon" of the cooperativization movement, director Tian Bo uses a highly symbolic sequence of shots to hint at his evaluation of the cooperativization movement—on a stormy night, carts transporting grain are deeply mired in mud, and no matter how the draft animals struggle or how hard the peasants push, the carts remain stuck fast.

The history of the first thirty years of New China, especially the history of the cooperativization movement, has long been expressed in flat, conceptualized terms and therefore particularly needs works like Liu Qing. But Liu Qing has also fallen into the rut of being flat and conceptualized—this truly is a heartbreaking paradox.

—Guo Songmin, "The Film Liu Qing: How It Fell"

Liu Qing once said, "I am writing history. What I want to write about is the lived experience of Chinese peasants at the very moment they entered socialism." In the 1970s, during the final stage of his life, Liu Qing was still carefully revising the second part of The Builders from his sickbed. "It is no exaggeration to say that Liu Qing's faith was firm; he never doubted that Chinese peasants would achieve the goal of socialism by following the path of cooperativization." Therefore, for many researchers and readers of The Builders, the portrayal in the film Liu Qing would surely be difficult to accept. But this was not something the director invented on a whim; rather, it had ample "historical material" as its basis.

This "basis" is the biography Liu Qing written by Liu Qing's daughter, Liu Kefeng.

III

Liu Qing was published in 2016 by the People's Literature Publishing House, known in literary circles as the "national publisher." Out of respect for Liu Qing, I bought a copy from Dangdang as soon as the book was published. After reading it, I was astonished to discover that the Liu Qing presented in this book seemed so strange, bizarre, and unconventional compared to the canonized "people's writer" in literary history—hardly the same person at all, or even like an "opponent" of the constructed Liu Qing.

I was seized by a complex mixture of doubt, disappointment, and bewilderment. But out of respect for Liu Kefeng as "Liu Qing's daughter," as if forcing myself to swallow a bitter fruit, I had to accept the "fact" that "this is the real Liu Qing."

Liu Qing meticulously records Liu Qing's journey from being a son of a declining landlord family to becoming a progressive youth who embarked on the revolutionary path, eventually becoming a "revolutionary writer." It completely reproduces the entire process through which, after the founding of New China, as the agricultural cooperativization movement and socialist construction surged forward, Liu Qing resigned from his position as editor of China Youth Daily, settled down in rural Shaanxi, and ultimately wrote his masterpiece The Builders. Liu Qing's experience was similar to that batch of "liberated area writers" from roughly the same era, such as Ding Ling, Zhou Libo, Zhao Shuli, and Wei Wei. They had all been tempered by the War of Resistance Against Japan and the War of Liberation, and their literary careers were inseparable from revolutionary work. Most of them created their important works after Mao Zedong's "Talks at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art" was published—such as Ding Ling's The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River, Zhou Libo's Hurricane, and Zhao Shuli's Sanliwan. Liu Qing's Sowing and Copper Wall, Iron Bastion were also written during this period.

Liu Qing writes: "When the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art was held, although Father was in northern Shaanxi, he did not attend the speech because in 1941 he had gone down to the countryside to organize village elections in Mizhi County and was working with peasants on 'rent reduction and land security' activities. Father said: 'Later I read this speech. I support the basic spirit of the speech, because before this, I had already made up my mind that if I wanted to pursue writing, I should first go among the grassroots masses'" (Liu Qing, p. 453). In the early 1950s, Ding Ling wrote an essay on creating The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River titled "Going to the Masses." Going to the masses and becoming one with the workers, peasants, and soldiers in life and feeling was the call Mao Zedong issued to revolutionary literary and art workers. Liu Qing was clearly also a writer who consciously practiced the "spirit of the Talks." In the early 1950s, Liu Qing's initiative to "settle down" in the countryside was also for the purpose of "writing," and was a continuation of the spirit of the "Talks": "The new era presents writers with higher demands than any previous era—to reflect unprecedentedly rich social life, increasingly intense life conflicts, and rapidly changing objective circumstances. To live up to these difficult demands that our era makes of writers is truly no easy matter. If we think about the problem this way, we can better understand the only way out that Chairman Mao pointed out—we must go to the masses for an extended period, unconditionally, and wholeheartedly, to the fierce struggles, to the only abundant source of life. Extended period means not temporarily, nor intermittently; unconditionally means regardless of success or failure, and avoiding no hardship; wholeheartedly means not half-believing, much less being of two minds. This understanding is not mere wordplay" (Liu Qing, p. 453). Through these words of Liu Qing, we can see that his practice of the spirit of the "Talks" was sincere, conscious, and enthusiastically committed, without any reservation, and showing not the slightest reluctance or sense of being "forced."

More importantly, through The Builders, Liu Qing conveyed to readers his full passion and confidence in socialism. In "The Ending of Part One" of The Builders, he transcribed important resolutions and directives from the CCP Central Committee and Chairman Mao Zedong on agricultural cooperativization and national industrialization, commenting: "To comprehensively discuss the economic, political, and ideological impacts of grain unified purchase and marketing on national industrialization and agricultural cooperativization is the work of historians. The author of this life story only wants to excerpt these brilliant conclusions from the Party Central Committee's October 1953 resolution for readers before the end of the first part of the story. You should know that many historical events are forced into being: for example, without the Five-Year Plan, there might not have been grain market tensions; if grain merchants had not disrupted us, unified purchase and marketing might not have been implemented in 1953; without unified purchase and marketing, mutual aid and cooperation might not have so quickly ended the stage of rowing against the current and spurred ahead at full speed. The footsteps of the historical giant are not chaotic. There is no God! It is Comrade Dialectics who decides: old forces are arrogant and frenzied before their demise, letting them stimulate us and force us to quickly launch the struggle to eliminate old forces, with no turning back!" (The Builders, p. 492, China Youth Publishing House, 1960 edition).

These comments by Liu Qing harmonize with the story and characters told in The Builders. You feel that he created The Builders not only through his pen but with his entire body and soul. For the era he experienced, he was not an observer or recorder but threw himself into it with full passion and self-forgetting devotion. He not only directly participated in solving problems and difficulties encountered in the cooperativization process in Huangfu Village and was viewed as a thorn in the side by "bad people" who opposed cooperativization, secretly "tailed," and nearly harmed, but after the first part of The Builders was published, he donated all the manuscript fees to the local countryside. In 1964, Liu Qing wrote in a letter to his editor: "One should live a simple life. The feelings cultivated by such a life are consistent with the feelings of a writer's creative labor and the feelings a writer wants to evoke in readers. A luxurious life will inevitably ruin a writer, destroy a writer's feelings and emotions, and make the writer into someone whose words and deeds do not match..." (Liu Qing, p. 473).

From this we can see that whether as a writer or as a person, Liu Qing reached a rare height. Coincidentally, after Ding Ling received the Stalin Literature Prize for The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River, she also donated all the prize money to the Song Qingling Children's Foundation. Their behavior of "putting the public before the private" was not merely a matter of individual moral character but was the result inspired and nurtured by that era that venerated collectivist spirit and communist ideals.

From another perspective, if Liu Qing did not genuinely identify with and support the era in which he lived, he could not have exhibited such noble behavior, nor could he have written a work like The Builders. That is to say, The Builders was not "created" by the writer in isolation but was the fruit jointly nurtured by the writer and the era. This does not erase the writer's individual labor but rather illustrates that there exists a hidden yet profound "intertextual" relationship between writer, work, and the era.

IV

On the cover of Liu Qing, next to the title, there is a line of text: "Conversations between Liu Qing and His Daughter." This is not an incidental treatment but indicates the importance of this content in the entire book. In fact, what truly draws attention and catches the eye in Liu Qing is not the account of Liu Qing's life and the creation and publication of The Builders, but rather the "Conversations between Liu Qing and His Daughter," which comprises less than a quarter of the book. It is precisely in this section that the author presents us with a strange, unconventional Liu Qing image that is markedly different or even opposite to the author of The Builders in literary history.

The conversations with Liu Qing's daughter involve history, politics, literature, as well as specific policies and evaluations of leading figures in communist movement history—the content is extremely rich. In the section "Conception of the Unfinished Builders," Liu Qing says: "The policy of 'steady progress' proposed by Deng Zihui was correct; it was proposed after learning from the Soviet Union's lessons in cooperativization." Deng Zi once served as director of the Central Rural Work Department. "Little-footed woman" was Mao Zedong's criticism of Deng Zihui's "rightist" conservative policy of "steady adjustment." Liu Qing also said when discussing his plans for the fourth part: "The main content is to criticize the cooperativization movement for going down the wrong path. Whether I write the fourth part will depend on the political environment at the time. If it's still like now, I'll say it more subtly; if it's more open than now, I'll say it more obviously." This statement gives somewhat of an "opportunistic" impression, indicating that Liu Qing's view of the cooperativization movement had undergone a fundamental change from when he wrote The Builders, and he had developed some doubts about the agricultural cooperativization movement. Later, Liu Qing said bluntly: "China's agricultural cooperativization produced a pot of half-cooked rice." In the section "Long-term Research and Reflection on Cooperativization," Liu Qing once again clearly pointed out: "The path of cooperativization did not achieve final success. 'Leftist' errors appeared at the very beginning of our work, and afterward, not only were they not corrected, but they became increasingly severe. If the methods had been correct and such serious deviations had not occurred, one can imagine that our country would not be in its current state..." (Liu Qing, p. 495).

This is not merely questioning and criticizing certain specific policies in the cooperativization movement but a complete negation of it.

In the section "On Socialist Democracy," Liu Qing put forward several "shocking" views: "If the fragmented situation of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods had lasted another five hundred or one thousand years, China's situation in the world would be completely different. It would be a developed region. Before Zheng He's voyages, Chinese people would already have been reproducing and living on many islands and lands." He also said: "A social policy that encourages people to pursue new ideas and a social policy that always restricts people from pursuing new ideas will create two opposite historical appearances, not only limited to the realm of thought. Thus, in the same historical period, even under the same social system, due to different governance, some are opposite eras... Nineteenth-century America was mainly a century of national expansion and individual wealth accumulation. In the nineteenth century, most people pursuing free thought went to France, so British and Russian classical masters made friends in France." "In contemporary times, people sometimes see themselves as remarkable, as absolute authorities whom no one may doubt or dissent from... Only democracy can end this phenomenon. Under democratic conditions, any naive or vicious person cannot act recklessly by virtue of power..."

If one omitted the source of these remarks by Liu Qing, many people would probably think they came from some liberal intellectual.

For those who have read The Builders thoroughly, whether emotionally or rationally, it is obviously difficult to accept such a "Liu Qing." People might even ask: If Liu Qing was really as he appears in the "Conversations between Liu Qing and His Daughter," wouldn't that be equivalent to him negating The Builders? Or are the things depicted in The Builders still trustworthy?

Or rather, did Liu Qing ultimately negate The Builders, or did The Builders negate Liu Qing?

Liu Kefeng once expressed such "confusion": "What Father expressed in writing is so distorted and one-sided compared to the full picture of his complete thoughts and life experience. Historical and social reasons caused him to fail to leave behind complete artistic works and systematic ideological insights" (Liu Qing, p. 476). The so-called "complete thoughts" are concentrated in the "Conversations between Liu Qing and His Daughter." Liu Kefeng had long been troubled that Liu Qing was viewed as "ultra-leftist" because of The Builders. Therefore, what she did in Liu Qing was to separate Liu Qing from The Builders and restore a "real Liu Qing." As Liu Qing's daughter, this effort may be beyond reproach, but the actual effect it created was that although she used firsthand materials from personal experience to liberate Liu Qing from the enormous "shadow" of The Builders, she simultaneously deconstructed the intertextual relationship between Liu Qing and The Builders, subverted the Liu Qing image solidified by literary history, and thereby also subverted The Builders along with the era it reflects.

Liu Qing once said: "When I wrote The Builders, I was promoting people's complete break with private ownership and the concept of private ownership, using communist thought to build the great socialist cause. I wrote it this way, and I should demand the same of myself!" "The Builders is also my own experience. I wrote into it both part of what I experienced and part of what I went through. Shengbao's character, as well as his attitude toward the Party, toward surrounding matters, and toward various kinds of people, contains a reflection of myself."

But now, can we still believe that Liu Qing was telling the truth?

On the centenary of Liu Qing's birth, a certain "right-wing figure" wrote an article titled "Liu Qing's Centenary: A Life of Not Daring to Speak the Truth." If this is really the case, how can we believe that Liu Qing's The Builders wrote "true history"?

Liu Qing and The Builders are an indivisible whole, like conjoined life. Dissecting either side separately will bring catastrophic disaster to the other.

In other words, without The Builders, there would be no Liu Qing. Separated from The Builders, is "Liu Qing" still Liu Qing?

V

Let us return once more to the film Liu Qing.

Guo Songmin says the film Liu Qing shaped the writer Liu Qing into "China's Tolstoy": "On 'Liu Qing's' desk, two photographs were always displayed—one was a bust of Tolstoy, and the other was of 'Liu Qing' standing silently before Tolstoy's tomb during a visit to the Soviet Union with a Chinese writers' delegation. Close-ups of these two photographs appeared multiple times. Whenever 'Liu Qing' encountered difficulties, he would gaze at these two photographs to gain comfort and strength."

In my view, Liu Kefeng's Liu Qing shaped Liu Qing into another "Gu Zhun."

Like Liu Qing, Gu Zhun also followed the Communist Party without hesitation during the democratic revolution, was baptized by revolutionary war, and became a senior Party cadre. Gu Zhun was the earliest theorist within the CCP to oppose public ownership and planned economy and advocate for implementing a market economy in China. He was labeled a "rightist" for this and ultimately "died with grievances." In the new era, Gu Zhun was rehabilitated, some of his ideas were rediscovered and provided initial theoretical reference for establishing the socialist market economy system in China. Gu Zhun was therefore regarded as a pioneer by liberals and won a large number of loyal followers in intellectual circles.

Before the film Liu Qing was released, the famous economist Zhang Weiying was invited to "endorse" it. Zhang has always been a promoter of neoliberalism and, along with Li Yining, Wu Jinglian, and other mainstream economists, is regarded as an inheritor of Gu Zhun's thought. Understanding this, it's not difficult to comprehend what Guo Songmin said: the film Liu Qing's "creative team's understanding of the cooperativization movement has not surpassed the level of 1980s scar literature; rather, it largely repeats the conclusions of scar literature. For example, Liu Qing's portrayal of the Great Leap Forward is almost identical to Zhang Yimou's 1994 film To Live."

But the problem is not that the film Liu Qing "also fell into the rut of being flat and conceptualized" when portraying "agricultural cooperativization," but rather its use of the "latter thirty years" [note: 1979-present] to negate the legitimacy of the "first thirty years" of history. For quite a long period, even today after the top leadership proposed that the two thirty-year periods should not "mutually negate" each other, this understanding is still regarded as "politically correct," to the point that Liu Kefeng did not hesitate to separate Liu Qing from The Builders to cater to this "political correctness"—this is what should cause us to reflect.

In this sense, the film Liu Qing raises not merely a theoretical proposition but also a practical one; not just a literary question, and certainly not just a question of how to evaluate Liu Qing and The Builders, but rather the major proposition of how to understand socialism and the "first thirty years," as well as "how to pursue socialism."

I once saw an article on the "Midnight's Cry" public account that said: "The narrative theme of the film Liu Qing ultimately follows Liu Qing, thus facing this awkwardness: standing at the threshold of 1978, on one hand wanting to erect a monument and write a biography for the representative figure of seventeen-year literature, while on the other hand completely negating the people's communes and the latter ten years of the Mao era, to the point that neither the left nor the right in today's public discourse sphere accepts it. Because the right wants to completely negate not just the latter ten years but the entire seventy years; while the left, though critical of the seventeen years, mostly inherits them critically—they are the faithful readers of Liu Qing who wrote The Builders. Regrettably, the film Liu Qing's vacillating narrative method destines it to be torn in values and class standpoint, making it difficult to find a truly loyal audience among an already divided viewership."

This is indeed embarrassing.

What's embarrassing is of course not only the creative team of Liu Qing, nor even just the author of Liu Qing, Ms. Liu Kefeng, but our era itself.

I remember it was Gramsci who said that grasping history means grasping the present, and grasping the present means grasping the future. Toynbee said that history is written by the victors. But the Marxist view holds that standing in different class positions, one's understanding and judgment of things will necessarily differ. Bourgeois theorists have never acknowledged this point; they always believe they possess the sole right to interpret the world and the sole right to judge history (including cultural leadership). This was true in the past and remains true today. This is perhaps what Marx called the secret of the eternal "thousand-year kingdom of the bourgeoisie"...

In the summer of 2016, after visiting Liu Qing's tomb, I came to a nearby hillside and gazed into the distance at the famous village at the foot of the mountain—Huangfu Village. Before my eyes stretched a vast expanse. Characters from The Builders—Liang Shengbao, Old Man Liang, Guo Zhenshan, Gaixia—flashed through my mind one by one. I seemed to enter Toad Beach from over half a century ago, vaguely seeing a person dressed like a peasant, wearing a black cotton jacket and a white sheepskin headband, hands clasped behind his back, walking slowly along the village path...

"Who is this person?"

"He is Liu Qing!"

"Who is Liu Qing?"

"..."

"Whose Liu Qing?"

"..."

I cannot answer.

Perhaps what I saw was not Liu Qing but merely someone who resembled him?

June 3, 2021