From resistance to collective action in a Shanghai socialist "model community": from the late 1940s to early 1970s.

Drawing on intensive ethnographic fieldwork and archival research on a Chinese community, this essay attempts to explore the trajectory through which a group of self-interested inhabitants became enthusiastic participants in a series of state-led collective campaigns in the larger cause of building socialism. (1)

The past decade or so has witnessed a burgeoning literature on "resistance studies"--a paradigm so influential and ubiquitous in social sciences that prompted Brown to call it, quite heavy-handedly, a "theoretical hegemony." (2) Pointing to the inertia of subordinate people in initiating collective, open defiance against exploitative patronage, and their failure to do so, Scott explicitly focused on the "everyday forms of resistance" of Malayan peasants who engage in a vast and relatively unexplored "middle-ground" politics "between passivity and open collective defiance." (3) These forms of resistance are individually based; require little or no coordination or planning; and are not intended "to overthrow and transform a system of domination but rather to survive--today, this week, this season, within it." (4) Scott's formulation, however, has been increasingly criticized on grounds of important empirical findings that people do occasionally possess high internal cohesion and feel the need to act collectively for a wider social cause. For instance, Escobar criticized Scott for not pushing "the question of resistance towards one of its possible logical conclusions, namely, that point at which resistance gives way to more organized forms of collective action or social movement." (5) Also, McAdam, Tarrow and Tilly criticized Scott's paradigm as having "provided little purchase on the question of when these low-level resentments would lead to mobilization and collective action and when they would remain at the level of individual resentment." (6) While various critics have offered their own explanations for the rise of collective action using different theoretical and empirical grounds, (7) this essay aims to explore the dynamics between individual resistance and collective action with respect to the unique historical trajectory of a micro-context in Shanghai--a residential community called Cucumber Lane. But, it should be noted that the nature of the collective actions to be examined differs from many previous discussions on social movements on at least two grounds. First, at issue are not collective struggles with explicit, specific, and immediate "enemies" to fight. Second, they are not "contentious" in nature as they are not collective efforts towards a structural political re-configuration that would, at least potentially, lead to more democracy. Rather, this essay focuses on the emergence of the collective momentum in a peasant migrant community in which the collectivist spirit had once been so fervent that it was able to sustain a series of mass campaigns for more than a decade with a high level of internal cohesion among the resident participants.

Before 1949, Cucumber Lane was one of the largest urban slum areas in Shanghai consisting of poor peasant migrants from vast and varied areas. According to oral histories, the internal cohesion among the inhabitants was weak, and collective, open defiance against the exploitative claims of local hoodlums seldom arose. The defiance mainly took individual, modest, and highly hidden forms. In the mid-1960s, under Mao's leadership (1949-76), Cucumber Lane was purposefully developed into a "thought education base." The huts were removed and replaced by five-story residential blocks equipped with electricity, flush toilets, and tap water. The community became widely acclaimed as the most "advanced" public residential housing of the time. Nowadays, although the flats are already considered substandard in quality, the residents, old and young, still agree unanimously that the changes brought about by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to improve their living standards during that period were "sky-crumbling and earth-shattering." In the propaganda brochure, this change was recorded as follows:

  After Liberation [in 1949], the residents of Cucumber Lane were
  reborn. The huts were removed and replaced by cottages. In 1965, (8)
  the People's Government spent five million yuan renovating the shanty
  area of Cucumber Lane, and built the first housing estate with five-
  story residential blocks. Inside the housing estate, trees were
  planted everywhere. Social welfare facilities such as primary schools,
  kindergartens, and day nurseries were [subsequently] built. (9)

Amid this transformation, about one-fourth (502) of the original households (1,964) were allowed to move into the "heaven-like flats." (10) The remainder were filled by what were known as the "revolutionary masses," such as "advanced workers" from different work units middle and high-ranking cadres who performed well in office; and old veteran soldiers of the People's Liberation Army. Understandably, the residents of Cucumber Lane truly believed that they had exemplified the fate of "proletarian vanguards" and had been turned "masters of society." (11) They were made by the state to conduct yiku sitian--a type of socialist "thought education"--both for the locals and for foreign visitors. Literally, yiku sitian means "recalling past bitterness in order to savor the sweetness of the present." The aim of yiku sitian was to contrast the real-life experiences of poor people who had lived in the pre-communist period with their "new lives" under the party rule. Through "speaking bitterness" in a public setting, the speaker, who then spoke of his/her past sufferings in the name of the revolutionary "proletariat class," could "educate" his/her audience by giving them a real-life lesson in socialism and showing them the superiority of socialism. (12) Cucumber Lane was metamorphosed into a widely recognized socialist "model community" in Shanghai. (13)

Living in a social ambience of "politics is in command," the residents--who were mostly dispossessed peasant in the previous regime--were content with the cradle-to-grave welfare protection provided by the state-owned enterprises and possessed a strong faith in the national transition towards a communist utopia. They also came to participate actively and enthusiastically in a series of state-led mass campaigns organized by local cadres/leaders. The invigoration of community-based collectivism became so strong and the cohesion among the residents so intimate that many today still vividly describe fellow residents in that period as being "like members of one family." A brief introduction of Cucumber Lane suffices to show that the inhabitants, who were formerly deprived peasant migrants with diverse interests, had achieved a kind of strong internal cohesion in the Maoist mass campaigns that seemingly transcended individual differences in the community. But then, how could vastly different individual inhabitants, who had been engaging in self-interested resistance against domination, come to act collectively in the Maoist period in response to political summons?

Ideology, Resources and Moral Politics

The ideological elements involved in community politics played an essential role in mass mobilization. The propagation of communist ideologies, such as the claims of "a classless society," or "equal wealth for all" surely appealed to a deprived people in the "old society." The resources at stake during this period also provided an initial incentive for the residents to participate in state-led collective actions. Such resources included the provision of food, clean water, life-long employment, inexpensive health care and, later, in the mid-1960s--a unique feature of Cucumber Lane--the newly built "heaven-like" flats for the "proletarian class." But, the breeding of collectivist concerted action inevitably intensified the conflict between collective hopes and personal desires, and masses of people cannot be effectively organized without some degree of self-motivated commitment. (14) In the context of Cucumber Lane, this commitment must be strong enough to address the difficult and sometimes painful moral decisions the residents had to make vis-a-vis the imposition of a series of political summons in the period concerned. For instance, "Should one sacrifice individual family time to join collective activities for the common good?" Or "Should one commit to policies whose values are problematic, but are promulgated by a 'benevolent' government?" This kind of moral questioning, whether carried out in the introspective monologues of the actors, or in explicit dialogues such as in open discussions and debates among different actors, marks the importance of traditional morality in the form of the "moral politics" inherent in the actors' perceptions of and attempts to cope with the radical transitions experienced in Chinese communities. (15)

Previous studies have laid down important lines of inquiry concerning the role Chinese traditional forms of morality played in community politics beginning with the Maoist period. Madsen, for instance, began his ethnographic inquiry into the "long series of excruciating moral decisions" made by the inhabitants of a Guangdong village in the 1950s and 60s. (16) Central to his analysis was the role of villagers who used "moral discourse" in making their decisions. (17) He observed that in the Maoist period, there was a collision between the socialist ideology and the villagers' traditional (Confucian) paradigm of morality, which led to a debate among the villagers concerning the appropriate style of the local leaders. (18) The traditional moral paradigm emphasizing "particularistic" human relationships was found to be incompatible with the stringent socialist ideologies emphasizing impartiality and individual sacrifice. Madsen coined the notion of "particularistic morality" in the Chinese community, which was distinguished from our common understanding of western morality. "Particularistic morality" referred to "[o]ne's moral obligations to others [being] defined [not by certain universal principles but] by their positions within one's network of personal affiliations." (19) With this perspective as a vantage point, he argued that with the emergence of the further moral chaos that ushered in the Cultural Revolution (1966-76), the previous incompatibility among the villagers between the traditional and socialist moral paradigm collapsed into "moral anarchy." Former moral paradigms were eventually replaced by pragmatism and the widespread use of "particularistic favoritism" in the later 1970s.

In another study of a Guangdong village, Ku discovered that two key indigenous moral concepts, guanxi (literally, "relationship") and zeren (literally, "responsibility"), were commonly used by the villagers to make sense of, or simply to justify, their resistance against external demands by the state in reformist China. Guanxi referred to the reciprocal relationship that constrained and determined forms of social interaction among Chinese; and zeren implied that the person must act according to the guanxi, being bound in terms of morality, friendship, or emotion. (20) He pointed out that the villagers enacted a spectrum of "moral politics" in their everyday life--through moral discourse as proverbs and idioms as well as through non-discursive facial expressions or gestures. They did so in order to assert their ethical standards to define their relationship and mutual responsibilities with the state; to convey their constructed meanings of fairness and justice; and to express their understanding of what constitutes "good' and "bad" government, and "good" and "bad" officials. It was on this moral ground that villagers came to "challenge governmental policies and deny the authority of officials and the government, thereby legitimizing their acts of self-defense [that is, resistance]." (21) The villagers deemed that they might "accept extraordinary sacrifices only if the government has fulfilled their zeren or provided additional benefits in exchange." (22)

How these studies shed light on my investigation of Cucumber Lane? Mad-sen has rightly highlighted the "particularistic" nature of traditional morality, which governed the way Chinese people perceived the local leadership and acted collectively under socialist politics in the networks of personal affiliation in a lineage village. However, Cucumber Lane is not a single-surname lineage rural community. Before the infiltration of socialist politics, the community was a migrant community inhabited by poor peasant refugees from vast and varied areas of the country. Thus, the moral politics that mediated the dynamics between individual resistance and collective action, I observe, was not fostered by the pre-existing agnatic-based network of personal affiliations with its implied "natural" leadership. (23) Rather, it was determined by a group of state-groomed charismatic women local cadres/leaders called "old mothers" (lao mama). They later became the "leading figures" (daitou renwu, or qiantou renwu) in collective actions in which their fellow residents were motivated to participate both by heart-felt moral obligation and political pressure.

Situated in the context of a lineage village, Ku singled out one aspect of the particular morality--that is, the traditional morality of reciprocity--that constituted people's perceptions of their relationship (guanxi) with the state (cadres). He attempted to illustrate that the perceived failure of the state in the reform period to reciprocate the people's sacrifices led to resistance from the villagers. But, my investigation suggests that moral politics can be a sword that cuts both ways. It means that on one hand, people see the morality of reciprocity as a handy way to legitimatize their resistance against the state; on the other hand, as in certain historical moments, the residents considered it a sustained moral source that ostensibly transcended individual interests, and united them to act collectively to address wider concerns.

These studies also point to the "constructedness" of the contents and con-notations of "traditional forms of morality" which takes traditional morality as non-fixed (like the moral discourse, and the notions of zeren and guanxi), and being constructed and re-constructed by specific actors in a particular time and place. (24) More specifically, Calhoun's concept of "traditionality" is relevant here: "tradition" is not a repository of old ideas, but "a mode of organizing social action," implying that traditional ideas can attain different meanings when employed in different contexts. (25)

The rest of this essay will illustrate in the context of Cucumber Lane how the rise of community-based collectivism was mediated by the moral politics perceived and constructed by the residents under specific ideological landscapes and systems for the distribution of resources during the Maoist epoch. To begin with, the socio-political landscape the community before the communist takeover is introduced.

A Peasant Migrant Community Created by War

The development of Cucumber Lane before 1949 was closely related to developments in the Sino-Japanese war (1937-45) and the civil war (1946-49). Lu even surmised that Cucumber Lane "might be considered typical of the slums that were created as a result of wars." (26) The Japanese air raid launched in Shanghai in 1937 leveled thousands of buildings in Zhabei, (27) and caused severe damage to a fledging slum area, a locality later called "Cucumber Lane." Despite its location in a war-ravaged area, Lu has argued that Cucumber Lane still attracted large numbers of peasant migrants, who fled their hometowns due to natural and military calamities, (28) for two geographical reasons: first, its location near the railway station made it desirable for the residents, who eked out their existence as porters, rickshaw pullers, and coolies (Plate 1); and second, its location in an area that was just outside the boundary of the International Settlement and was only loosely controlled by the local Chinese authorities made it relatively easy for poor migrants to squat on the land without the need to ask for permission or pay rent, especially after most of the landmarks in Zhabei had been virtually destroyed in the 1937 attack. (29) The oral reminiscence of my informants confirm that these geographic factors were being taken into consideration when they decided to move into the area. Other factors involved will be discussed later.

The oral evidence suggests that Cucumber Lane was desolate and uninhabited in the late 1940s; but had attracted tens of thousands of peasant migrants seeking inexpensive housing. The Zhabei District Historical Gazette described the eventual development of Cucumber Lane as follows:

  In 1940, only five refugee households set up their huts here, but the
  number increased gradually after that ... Both natural and human
  cataclysms caused large numbers of peasants to leave their homes and
  villages, and live here. By 1947, about twenty thousand resided in
  Cucumber Lane. Among them, 81.83 percent were from the northern
  regions of Jiangsu province [Subei]; 8.62 percent the southern regions
  of Jiangsu province [Sunan]; and 9.55 percent from other cities and
  provinces. (30)

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

These statistical figures alone, however, do not reveal the actual complexity of the social landscape of the community. In fact, Honig has already argued that, geographically, the term "Subei" refers to "a vast and varied area," and its connotation of the "geographic, cultural, linguistic, and economic homogeneity of a particular area" was simply one that was widely assumed in public representations. (31) Therefore, the statistical figures might only mean that residents of Cucumber Lane were made up of impoverished peasant migrants who shared the similar cultural and linguistic background of Subei. It would be inaccurate, however, to hypothesize that the residents, who ostensibly originated from the same geographical region with a similar agricultural setting, would identify themselves with a single, mutually shared residency based on the ethnicity of Subei. Rather, my fieldwork found that most residents considered themselves, quite consciously, as originating from different native places with unique dialects and internal cohesion. For instance, while it might be true that most of native-place dialects were comprehensible to the Subei natives, in some cases, the dialects could be so different that at times even everyday communication was difficult. (32)

Regarding the internal cohesion among the residents, the job referral patterns illustrated indirectly the existence of clear differentiation among the residents based on native place. In pre-communist Shanghai, job-referral was so determined by native-place that the "right" jobs seemed open only to those coming from the "right" native-place. (33) A relationship based on one's native-place tie was very often a prerequisite for gaining access to a job. For example, the male informants I interviewed who came from Funing and Yancheng (in Subei) were mostly handcart pullers or rickshaw pullers; those from Yangzhou (also in Subei) were mostly night-soil collectors; and those originating from Shandong (northeastern China) mostly worked in the railway station. Ms. H, a 91-year-old resident, once explained to me why her family (originating from Shandong) could do nothing but beg on the street during the first few years in Shanghai before her husband found a job at the railway station. She said, "How could you do these kinds of jobs [for example, night soil collector, rickshaw puller, or cart puller] without knowing someone [who was one's village or provincial fellow]?!" My elderly informants (aged 60 or above) nearly unanimously agreed that they would not have dared to reside in Cucumber Lane if they had not known "someone" who already lived here. Hence, "knowing someone" constituted another factor for many peasant migrants who came to live in Cucumber Lane, apart from the geographical reasons discussed earlier.

It is hence more accurate to consider the residents of Cucumber Lane as being made up of peasant migrants from vast and varied areas. Although the statistics indicate that most of inhabitants originated from Subei, they belonged to heterogeneous native groups. One might assume that these specific native-place ties (tongxiang, literally, "people coming from the same native-place"), which strongly determined their type of work and place of residence, would create cohesive grouping among the residents, and rally them to protect themselves against local oppression. However, again, according to the oral evidence, this seemed not to have been the case.

Resisting Local Oppression

My elderly informants always reminded me that, in the early 1940s when Cucumber Lane was recovering from the Japanese bombing, simply to survive was difficult. Those old enough to live through the years of Japanese occupation (1937-45) generally considered the second half of this period, known by historians as the "post-gudao period," (34) to be the "most difficult" time in their entire lives. And, "knowing someone" in the community did not really help make the lives of the peasant migrants easier. From the oral reminiscences, the social relationship of one household usually extended to only a few nearby households that shared a common native-place origin. Besides, the moral obligations involved were mainly concerned with small favors, such as looking after another's hut when all members of the household were out, or lending belongings (for example, clothing or construction materials) for a short period. It was rare to hear of residents being able to lend each other money, or forming an alliance to resist the harassment of local hoodlums.

My elderly informants attribute the inability of the inhabitants of Cucumber Lane to form effective alliances to the extremely exploitative living conditions of the time. Here, the life story of Ms. H before Liberation illustrates this point. Ms. H, now 91 years old, came to Shanghai with her husband at the age of 17. She was from a poor village in Shandong province and the couple begged the entire way to Shanghai in the mid-1930s. During the day, the couple worked as peddlers selling eggs. At the time of interview, she seemed to still feel the pain of losing her second son during the period Japanese occupation. (35) Apart from the war, she explained that, back home, the residents faced daily harassment from local hoodlums as well as from Nationalist (Guomindang) soldiers. For instance, she said:

  After the Sino-Japanese war ended, we moved to Cucumber Lane in the
  winter of 1945. My husband managed to find a job in the railway
  station ... His younger brother [and his family] also came to Shanghai
  from Nanjing at that time; and all of us, about a dozen, lived in one
  small hut. My husband's earnings were too small to support the whole
  family. Through the assistance of his [her husband's] colleagues, we
  gathered 20 yuan and opened a small booth selling cigarettes in front
  of our hut. It was just a small business. Yet the hoodlums, also those
  [Nationalist] soldiers, kept harassing and extorting money from us.
  They just came and took a packet of cigarettes without paying. When
  you asked them to pay, they would turn back, give you several slaps,
  and pull down your booth.[...]
  The hoodlums [also] found every way to exploit you. Their families
  frequently organized "happy events" [xishi] [for example, birthdays].
  In fact, there was no birthday. But, they would gave you an
  "invitation notice" [tieji], and you must return gifts to them. But,
  in case, your own family really had a "happy event," you needed to
  inform them or even to invite them to have a good fest, or to give
  them money beforehand; otherwise, very bad things would come to your
  family.

When I asked her whether inhabitants from the same native place would help each other resist local oppression, Ms. H said:

  At times, people who were formerly tongxiang might help each other;
  but after all, the situation was too difficult. One family did not
  even have enough food to eat, how could it help others!?... [Very
  often,] [p]eople just looked at others being bullied by the hoodlums
  in broad daylight ... They could do nothing ... They might think of it
  [to resist], but what could they do!? They could do nothing. Everyone
  could only take care of his/her own family.

Probing into the harassments from local hoodlums, I realized that the elderly informants usually mentioned the wicked deeds done by Tang Guoru--the leader of the hoodlums, the "Big Hoodlum"--and his clique. Tang was the chief of the bao (baozhang)--an official position in the system of local governance of the time. (36) Tang was a "local emperor" who ruled tyrannically and grossly abused his power over the people under his jurisdiction. The residents regarded the chief of the bao as both a venal cadre and a vicious chieftain. The Zhabei District Historical Gazette has the following to say about him:

  Tang Guoru was the chief of the bao during the period of the puppet
  government (1941-45). He extorted money from the dwellers as "rent"
  and operated a casino in disguise of a "tiger stove" [laohu zao]. (37)
  He was also the only one in the area who could enjoy water and
  electricity supplies. He made the residents pay ten dou (38) of rice
  per month for having clean water, thereby raising the toll for water
  supply to six to seven times the norm. In order to buy electricity
  [from Tang], users were required to pay ten dou of rice per month.
  Tang used the profits reaped from the poor to build his own three-
  story house. Outside his house, he hung out the plaque of the Fourth
  Battalion of the Nationalist Party Army in order to frighten the
  masses. He threatened the masses by violence, molested women, and
  bullied the residents. (39)

Oral histories solicited from the residents generally confirm what was stated above. Also evident in the oral reminiscences was the residents' helplessness in watching others suffer from Tang's exploitation. For instance, 89-year-old Ms. C (Subei) once recalled an incident that occurred several households from hers:

  I remember that it was the Spring Festival ... The hoodlums just came
  as they did every year at that time to knock on everyone's door to
  "jump the God of Wealth" [tiao caishen] (40) ... When he saw the
  villains come, he shut the door. When they came back again a while
  later, the boy simply locked the door firmly from inside. The villains
  were very angry, as they knew someone was inside the hut. They then
  summoned several of their men and broke down the door. They grabbed
  the boy, threw him roughly on the ground, and beat him seriously. His
  parents soon arrived and begged the villains to release their son.
  They kneeled and said, "Our son was ignorant. Please forgive him!" It
  was not until the parents promised to pay a certain amount of money
  that their son was released. How could a boy bear that kind of
  bullying!? He was bedridden for the next few days ... What could we
  do!? We could do nothing but watch them ... Who dared to step up to
  resist [fankang] [the chief of the bao]!? We had no money ourselves,
  how could we help them!?

Several prominent American historians have argued that rather than demonstrating class consciousness or revolutionary commitment, subordinate people in the urban settings of pre-communist China were still deeply divided based primarily on native-place origin (41) But in the case of pre-communist Cucumber Lane, a fledging migrant community in which peasant paupers from vast and varied areas resided, cohesive force based on native-place origin among residents seemed to manifest itself only in its weakest form. Under these extremely harsh living conditions, it was observed that the network of personal relationships among the residents was restricted to one's family, and the moral obligation based on native-place origin was limited. (42)

Understandably, the residents "hated" Tang and his clique "to the bone" (hen zhi ru gu), but they thought that they had no hope at all of getting rid of the exploitative chief of the bao. Most of them only resorted to venting their bitterness, rage, and anger by slandering Tang and his clique behind their backs as "big hoodlums" (da liumang), "inhuman" (mei renxing), "beasts" (yeshou), or "blood suckers" (xi xue). Obviously, such forms of resistance were modest and surreptitious, and could by no means transform the conditions of domination. But the residents needed to hide their resistance from the chief of the bao because they believed that their self-interest would be enhanced somehow by the existing political configuration, however oppressive it might be. One reason was that they needed to ensure their household registration with the chief of the bao in order to be entitled to purchase the "household rice" (hukoumi) during the Japanese occupation. "Household rice" was a quota system under which people could buy a certain amount of rice (two-three liters) over certain intervals (approximately ten days) at an estimated below-market price. (43) Many elderly informants said they had to ingratiate themselves with the chief of the bao for the household rice, although they were aware that they did not receive, as one of the old residents angrily recalled, "a single grain of the rice" they deserved "for the first three months because all of the household rice automatically went to the pocket of Tang Guoru!"

So, the residents thus needed, at least outwardly, to be amiable to the "Big Hoodlum" to acquire the resources necessary for survival and self-protection. And, in so doing, they also reinforced the unequal relationship of dependency. Such a relationship was indeed firmly anchored to the past communal experience of the peasant migrants in interacting with the rural gentry in their native places, especially in the villages in the Yangzi delta from which most of the inhabitants of Cucumber Lane originated (for example, over 90 percent of them were from Subei and Sunan). (44) Fei--a first-generation Chinese anthropologist--has astutely suggested that, despite the exploitative claims imposed on them, the peasants were highly dependent on the rural gentry (essentially the landlords) (45) for work opportunities and leverage to survive a financial crisis. (46) Thaxton further remarked in the context of Chinese rural communities:

  Although rural class relations were rooted in a system of human
  bondage and sharp social inequalities, Chinese peasants supposedly
  obtained an array of subsistence benefits from their mutual
  obligations and reciprocal exchanges with agrarian elites ... Chinese
  peasants considered these [exploitative] relations as legitimate as
  long as local elites guaranteed their daily subsistence needs. (47)

Seen in this light, the way that the residents enacted modest and highly hidden forms of resistance towards the exploitation of the chief of the bao was very much consistent with what they had experienced in the past as peasants.

Individual acts of resistance, however, were converted into collective actions on a couple of occasions. Some elderly residents still vividly remember the military conscription imposed by the Nationalist Party in the mid-1940s, a notorious practice called "zhua zhuangding," literally, "catching strong men," through which able-bodied male adults were deliberately caught and forced to fight in the dangerous front lines. Around 1946, Nationalist soldiers (some said they collaborated with the chief of the bao) came to Cucumber Lane a couple of times. A 66-year-old resident Mr. V, an Anhui migrant, recalled the following scene:

  When [the Nationalist soldiers] ... came in the front, everyone [the
  men] escaped at the back ... Those people [men] shifted through
  different huts to flee the Nationalist Party [soldiers] ... People
  willfully opened their doors and let people go. So, it was through
  inside [the huts that people fled].

On these few occasions, the residents, despite internal differences, formed an open and largely unplanned collective alliance against domination. It was found that such "resistance-collective action" dynamics expressed by the residents were strikingly similar with what they had experienced in their background as peasants. Thaxton remarked that despite their dependency on the patronage of the gentry, Chinese peasants particularly resisted military conscription, which was likely to arouse collective revolts. (48)

Given their powerless political position and dependency orientation towards domination, it was difficult for early socialist radicalism to act as catalyst in triggering a concerted collective spirit. (49) I asked an early Subei migrant, Mr. S, now 71 years old, who had been a handcart puller in pre-communist Shanghai, about the participation in a series of communist-led workers' strikes in the mid-1940s:

  Who could do much about the strikes? Everyone was struggling merely to
  live!... Who knew what the CCP was at that time!? We did not even have
  enough to eat!

Indeed, such self-centeredness and political apathy expressed by the residents echoes the famous statement "a heap of loose sand" (yi pan san sha) in the 1920s. The statement was coined by Mr. Sun Yat-sen, the first President (Provisional) of the first Chinese Republic, who was deeply frustrated by the lack of cohesion and determination of the Chinese to resist domination and exploitation. This statement would seem to apply to everything that has been said so far about Cucumber Lane. The diverse native-place origins of the residents, their harsh living conditions, and their obligation to protect their (often threatened) personal interests, all contributed to the perpetuation of the existing relation of domination. In the Maoist era to come, all this changed.

Community Politics and Resources at Stake

When the communists took over Shanghai in May 1949, the situation was chaotic. The new municipal government faced a welter of social ills, including food shortages, unemployment, inflation, and the breakdown of law and order as well as social services. (50) There was also a lack of mutual understanding between the rural-based communists and the Shanghai urbanites. For instance, the oral reminiscences portrayed the prevalence of rumors that reflected a widespread skepticism about the style and ability of the new regime to rule the country. (51) With the abolishment of the baojia system (being putatively a remnant of corrupt feudalism), organizing a mass support network to fill the vacuum in governance became a central concern of the new regime in post-Liberation Shanghai. To the communists, mass mobilization from the bottom up in the rural communities had been a well-rehearsed strategy, (52) but whether these rural strategies could work in a large urban slum ghetto with tens of thousands of peasants migrants from vast and varied areas remained unclear at that time.

According to the oral histories of the elderly residents, Tang Guoru, the diabolic chief of the bao, fled Shanghai as a fugitive well before the communists took control in May 1949. But, in Cucumber Lane, from the breakdown of the baojia system in 1949 until the formal establishment of the Residents' Committee in 1954, (53) the residents did not experience great chaos due to the lack of a formal system of governance. Rather they witnessed the sparkle of the revolutionary spirit that foretold the power of fervent community-based collectivism that would dominate in the next decade.

Oral histories indicate that after seizing control of Shanghai, the state soon dispatched a handful of cadres to Cucumber Lane. They handpicked six residents to form a "work team." Expecting these residents to disseminate the political ideology of the CCP, the cadres chose those who possessed some degree of literacy so that they would be able to grasp the abstract ideals of Marxism swiftly and accurately. Thanks to the "insider" information provided by the work team, the former local hoodlums were arrested by the police. These alleged "counterrevolutionaries" were taken to an open area so that the residents could express their rage and anger against their "class enemies." By participating in a series of public denunciation meetings, the residents came to identify with official political discourse, including the concepts of the "proletariat" and the "people who labor." (54)

This emergent discourse rooted in Marxism tended to attenuate, roughly but effectively, the residents' internal divisions based on vastly different native-place origins, as a replicated self-description of the elderly residents in the initial years of the Liberation implies; that is, "after the Liberation, all [read: poor people] became the same!" The infiltration of socialist ideologies extended beyond allocating symbolic labels to people and encouraged qualification for access to resources. For instance, regardless of one's native-place origin, "relief rice" (jiuji mi), an inexpensive water supply, and job opportunities in state-owned enterprises were only given to those whose "proletarian" background could be demonstrated through the registration conducted by the work team in 1950. Those found to be related to "counterrevolutionaries" had all of their rights to welfare confiscated and were sent back to their native place, or even sentenced to imprisonment or death.

With the change in ideology and the concomitant change in resource distribution, the residents came to perceive their relationship with the state in moral terms. For instance, my elderly informants almost unanimously stated that, after the public denunciation meetings organized in the early 1950s, it became clear "who were 'good people' and who were 'bad people'." The situation was akin to what Ms. Q recalled about the residents' perceived relationship with the state in the first half of the 1950s. Ms. Q, now 84 years old, migrated from Subei in 1930s. She later became one of the "most revolutionary" local cadres/leaders of Cucumber Lane. She revealed that the public denunciation meetings resembled the "first lessons in class education," together with the tangible benefits subsequently channeled into the community. The residents were able to evaluate in moral terms who were the "good" people they should befriend, and who were the "enemies" they should collectively struggle against in the new ideological framework. She said:

  We [as a collective--mine] really came together for the first time.
  The "people who labor" for the first time knew who our "enemies" were.
  We were really excited!... After that, we knew what the communists did
  and that Chairman Mao and the CCP were "good people" who "cared about"
  [guanxin] the People.

Understandably, the residents were deeply impressed by the socialist ideology, for this marked a stark contrast with the actions of the former regime. However, we must not draw the hasty conclusion that the drive to eliminate "class enemies," the new distributive system, and the moral credits attached to the state were enough to quickly create a revolutionary momentum sufficient to give rise to a community-based collectivist spirit for concerted collective action. Indeed, from the painful lessons learned during the Jiangxi period (1927-1934), (55) the state considered such efforts insufficient unless an organization loyal to the state could be created that could at the same time penetrate deeply into the social fabric of the community. (56) Now 75-year-old Ms. U, a Subei migrant, who later became an active participant in the mass campaigns, remembers that in the initial years of communist rule, "like many other people [residents], I attended the meetings, helped them [the 'work team'] do something when they told me to; but if they did not ask, I never took the initiative to do things. I just stayed at home." These ideological and resource elements apart, a moral politics was also created with the newly established system of community governance, which played an important part in the subsequent surge of collectivist spirit among the residents.

The Moral Politics of Mass Mobilization

Throughout the life courses of the elderly residents, the "resident representative" (jumin daibiao) (later the "Residents' Committee member") (juwei) was virtually the third kind of "buffer" between the state and its people, succeeding the gentry (landlords) of their rural home village and the chief of the bao. A key difference in their experience in the socialist epoch was that they were able to elect the person who would take charge of the job of buffering. In 1953, Cucumber Lane was still administratively divided into six geographical sections. Each section consisted of 400-450 households, among which six to seven "resident representatives" were elected. (57) In 1954, the municipal government relocated hundreds of huts and cottages that had been illegally or irregularly built along the community boundaries. As a result, the community boundary was reset, and the six sections were combined into one. The total number of households was reduced to about 1,800-1,900. A unified Residents' Committee was subsequently set up, and its members were re-elected in 1954. (58) Like other urban communities of the time, the fifteen elected Residents' Committee members (59) possessed a strong female representation, with most of them being housewives and retired women. (60) Since that time, the spontaneous epithet, "old mother," has been used by the residents to refer to these members.

The notion of "old mother" (lao mama) was not derived from the official parlance. The term "lao" denoted seniority in both the generation and age of the subject, which in a traditional Chinese community was a de facto symbol of lineage group leadership. (61) The term "mama" registered the gender and imagined kinship status by which the residents attempted to engage the subject in discursive terms. (62) Such a spontaneous use of language, according to Madsen, invoked the "moral imagination" that the subjects "would be treated like close relatives" in a Chinese lineage community. (63) However, Cucumber Lane, being formerly a migrant community, did not have a strong kinship network, with the inhabitants possessing a single surname and a common descent. What can be inferred from such a spontaneous bestowal of the address "old mothers" to the Residents' Committee members is that the residents were inclined to perceive their relationships with these volunteer residents with mixed feelings, incorporating the ideas of leadership authority, kinship morality, and personal acquaintance.

In the field, I managed to talk to two former Residents' Committee members from the first election. Ms. Q, an 84-year-old, was elected the first Chief of the Residents' Committee of Cucumber Lane in 1954. (64) After her application for Party membership was accepted in 1959, she formally became a "cadre" (ganbu) the following year, as the "Party branch secretary" of the Residents' Committee.

Ms. Q was born into a poor peasant family in Funing, Subei. Since her family found it increasingly difficult to feed six members on the tiny plot of land of two to three mu, they moved to Shanghai in 1935. Begging all the way to Shanghai, her family slept on the street around Datong Road near the Shanghai Railway Station--part of what was later called "Cucumber Lane" (Plate 1). After some time, they erected a hut there when her husband managed to eke out living as a sanitary worker and she as a needlewoman on the street. Like Ms. H, her family survived the 1937 air raid by seeking out safety in the concession zones. They later returned to Cucumber Lane and began to live in a shabby shack there until Liberation.

The 91-year-old Ms. H, whose background has been introduced earlier, was an elected member of the Residents' Committee, responsible for the work of "security" (zhibao) in the community. In 1960, she further assumed the position of Chief of the Residents' Committee, in order to fill the place left by Ms. Q, who became the Party branch secretary.

According to their oral histories, the main tasks of the Resident Committee members at that time included maintaining public security (particularly, spotting "counterrevolutionaries" in the community), promoting communist ideas and government policies (particularly, organizing meetings for the residents), and implementing other specific tasks decreed by the higher authorities. Of their tasks, both of them admitted that to "mobilize the masses" (dongyuan qunzhong) in their prefecture for specific state-led collective campaigns was one of the most difficult and time-consuming activities. Gathering together different pieces of oral evidence solicited in the field, the major community-based collective activities organized by the Residents' Committee members from 1953 until the initial years of the Cultural Revolution (1966-76) were summarized in Table 1. (65)

Despite the enthusiasm for collective participation, initial "mass mobilization" was said to be difficult. According to Ms. Q and Ms. H, there were at least four reasons for this. First, the lack of mutual acquaintance between the residents in general and the Residents' Committee members constituted a hurdle to effective mobilization. This was partly due to the heterogeneity of the residents, who had migrated from different native places. Second, the residents had relatively strong self-interests. The two former "old mothers" said that it was common to hear the women residents complain about the "extra work" that the Residents' Committee demanded of them after a whole day of already-exhausting domestic chores. Both of them attributed this resistance to their "low educational level" (wenhua chengdu di), such that they had not learned the socialist ideals of "serving the people." Third, some collective activities did not provide "immediate benefits" to the residents. For instance, the now 66-year-old Mr. V (66) told me:

  [According to Ms. Q,] most residents had the background of the
  peasantry. They were very narrow-minded ... [For instance,] [s]ome
  thought that "I am not the one who lives beside the cesspool. I live
  far away from the stinking gutter. Why am I bothered to join the Big
  Cleaning Campaign that only benefits the others?" People having this
  kind of thought were at that time very common.

Finally, the conventional view that women should not be involved in political activities further limited the motivation of women residents to participate in mass campaigns. (67)

Given these factors, how were the residents mobilized for sustained collective action? When it came to the critical points where self-interested residents eventually became more self-motivated to participate in the mass campaigns, all of my informants, regardless of their age, mentioned the effectiveness of the "thought work" conducted by the "old mothers."

In the official lexicon, the term "thought work" refers to the instillation of politically correct ideas into people through education, using various means. Although the contents of "thought education" always involved stipulated political ideologies, the way by which the ideas were conveyed, and the ways in which they were received could vary from situation to situation in specific time and places. The "thought education" used for mass mobilization during the mid-1950s was imbued with a particular moral politics and a traditional moral yardstick of "reciprocity" was used to strengthen the motivating power inherent in the political ideologies. For instance, upon my request, Ms. Q re-enacted the manner she used to mobilize the masses to participate in the Big Cleaning Campaign. She said:

  At the beginning, the work was tough. They usually said, "I am busy
  taking care of my household chores." Some declined our request by
  saying, "My husband does not allow me to go outside" ... I later told
  them the Party was now calling on everyone to participate in the Big
  Cleaning Campaign. We should all go. We have already seen the goodness
  of the Party, of Chairman Mao. They have served the people. They did
  good things for the masses. So, let's clean up the place!... [For
  those who declined,] I talked to them repeatedly. If you do not go,
  think about what you were in the old society!? Think about what you
  have got now, how could you "face [without shame] the Party" [dui de
  qi Dang] and "face [without shame] Chairman Mao" [dui de qi Mao
  Zhuxi]!?... At the beginning, they still hesitated, but later, many of
  them thought that what I said was reasonable.

The way "thought education" was delivered reflected traditional forms of morality based on the perceived reciprocity between the ruler and the ruled. (68) The narrative re-defined and re-constructed the relationship between the residents and the state. Since the latter had already fulfilled its own obligations to endow "goodness" to the residents, it was the turn of the former to take up their moral obligation to reciprocate the latter's contributions. (69) Thus, those who did not agree to join the collective action would be considered in breach of their conditional relationship with those in the upper hierarchy. Hence, they would be subject to the moral condemnation of not able to "face [without shame]" the benevolent political leaders.

Quite to my surprise, many elderly residents who were old enough to participate in the first Big Cleaning Campaign can still remember, or have a clear impression of Ms. Q's moral admonitions. They considered Ms. Q's thought work appealing to them, as it made them feel obligated "to repay the debt of gratitude" (baoda) to the contributions of the state. For instance, Ms. C once said, "Ms. Q was 'very revolutionary' ... What she said carried weight. Many [residents] found it particularly convincing."

The moral politics mediated in mass mobilization was not only fostered in the face-to-face persuasions of thought work, but was also enhanced by the moral virtues of the "old mothers," who led the collective actions in a revolutionary manner. Aware of their role as the "leading figures" in collective actions, the "old mothers" exemplified the virtuous spirit of self-sacrifice by "always putting themselves in the frontline" (ba ziji fang zai zui qian). For instance, Ms. H told me of the difficulty they faced in mobilizing the masses in the "Steel-making Campaign" in 1958. She remarked that the campaign was unattractive to the residents for two obvious reasons: first, it was physically demanding; and, second, unlike the Big Cleaning Campaign, it did not provide, at least on the surface, immediate benefits to the residents. "It was [utterly] a 'matter of the masses'." she said. This meant that the event was to serve the community in fulfilling its duties to the state, but it was, at best, only remotely related to individuals, as far as the immediate benefit to individual residents was concerned. She further added that, "not even a cent" was given to those who participated in the Campaign. But the residents were eventually impressed by the devotion of the "old mothers," including herself, who "took the lead" (daitou) in the campaign without calculating individual gain and loss. She said: "People thought that I was too old to make steel." She added:

  the Residents' Committee] [at the beginning] did not count me in the
  team. I was angry ... Yes, I was already 50 years old ... But I
  insisted that I was fit enough for job. [W]e [then] worked day and
  night and [sometimes] I did not sleep!... [Later] [m]ore and more
  residents began to say, "Even an old woman can do it, we do it
  too!" ... Of course, we produced steel in the end ... [and,] [t]he
  quality was very good!

After watching the "old mothers" as well as others working day and night in a "non-calculating" manner, other residents who had been apathetic to the event were eventually moved; or in Ms. H's words, they were finally "enlightened" (xiangtong le). A direct consequence was that the number of participants began to grow from "not many" (about fifteen to twenty) to about fifty in the course of the event. Oral histories indicated that it was after the Steel-making Campaign that the residents became very self-motivated to participate in the mass campaigns organized in the community. (70)

In addition, the elderly residents began to be impressed by the immense devotion of the "old mothers," who "cared about" (guanxin) the collective good of the community. Such a morally virtuous element helped to convince the residents that the mass campaign should be supported. In the oral reminiscences, one figure widely recognized in Cucumber Lane as embodying the virtue of selflessness is Ms. Q.

Despite being in her mid-eighties today, Ms. Q is still famous among the residents, old and young. I already heard her name many times from many residents during my pre-fieldwork visits. When speaking of the surge of community-based collectivism, the elderly residents as well as other "old mothers" repeatedly referred to Ms. Q. Her popularity once went beyond the boundaries of Cucumber Lane to the wider public. The oral evidence suggested that when Cucumber Lane became a thought education base in the mid-1960s, many visiting groups even made a special request to listen to the personal testimony of Ms. Q in the ritual of yiku sitian.

A photo taken in 1960 in an unpublished photo album prepared by the Street Office in 1961 and stored in the Zhabei District Archives captured her digging the ground with a hoe during the second Big Cleaning Campaign. (71) (Plate 2) Obviously, the remarkable physical strength of Ms. Q played an important part in actualizing her robust commitment to the interests of the public. (72) Even speaking of her nowadays, the residents almost unanimously agreed that Ms. Q played an essential role in "leading" the mass campaigns that transformed Cucumber Lane from the notorious "stinking gutter" to a socialist "model community." (73)

Ms. Q expressed her selfless attitude--once again--of "not being calculating," and letting one of her grandchildren join the campaign in mobilizing hundreds of youths to the poor countryside in 1968. Looking back, Ms. Q said she did not regret the decision; she said, "I, of course, wished my grandson to be by my side, but Chairman Mao once said, 'Good children have an aspiration which extends well beyond any border' [hao ernu zhi zai sifang]. I was finally enlightened!"

Mr. X, a 46-year-old resident who witnessed the event, recalls that quite a few parents at that time had doubts about the value of the campaign because traditional Chinese values placed a high importance on the unity of the family. He attributed the final success of the mobilization to the thought work of the Residents' Committee:

  Their [that is, the members of the Residents' Committee] thought work
  was really effective ... Many "old mothers" took the initiative to
  send their own children to the countryside in order to set an example
  for others ... In retrospect, many who participated in the campaign
  did struggle psychologically ... [But,] [a]t the end, when they saw
  the "old mothers" send their own children away, and saw them come over
  and over again to explain the cause of the Campaign, they were finally
  enlightened!

Here, the role of political coercion and the fear of retribution as a force motivating residents to participate in mobilization should not be played down. The residents had been witnessing how the CCP conducted public execution of the "enemies" since 1951 in the nationwide campaign of the Suppression of the Counterrevolutionaries. The "Big Arrest" launched had detained over 9,000 political criminals in one week. (74) After the "Big Arrest" were over 3,000 public persecution meetings taken place in spacious school or factory halls all over the city. (75) Many residents did join such meetings and witnessed how people labeled "counterrevolutionaries" were turned targets of public struggle meetings, repatriated back to their place of origin, or even sentenced to death. (76)

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

By the mid-1960s, the moral demands on the residents to "reciprocate" with the state grew even stronger as the state pumped tremendous resources into making Cucumber Lane the most advanced public estate of the time. Mr. X says that, at that time, the residents deeply "appreciated" (ganji) what the state had bestowed upon them. They were overwhelmed by a strong sentiment of "reciprocity" (baoda). They felt, in Mr. X's own words, "the responsibility to act in a more revolutionary manner." Such a heartfelt obligation to reciprocate the contributions of the state, together with the thought work and selfless moral virtues of the "old mothers" and the fear of retribution, made the residents feel "enlightened." They came to believe that to support the state-led mass campaign was correct, politically and morally, even though doing so might involve individual sacrifices.

United "Like a Big Family"

Speaking of the community atmosphere during the decade between the mid-1950s and mid-60s, the residents, old and young, almost spontaneously described Cucumber Lane as "like a big family," and the relationship among the residents as "like that of one family." With the frequent organization of community-based collective activities, it was understandable that the residents would be drawn closely together. Moreover, there were the meetings organized by the Residents' Committee to update the residents with the latest policies and news of the state. The residents would have shared topics in everyday discussions; and according to the oral evidence, whenever there was a discussion of current issues in an open area, other residents would join in. The network of one's personal affiliations in the community could quickly expand, even among residents who were unacquainted with each other. (77) The communal bonding among the residents in the form of mutual care was effectively enhanced. For instance, 70-year-old Ms. G (Subei) told me that in the 1960s, when a resident felt sick at night many young residents would wake up and take him/her to the hospital. She said, "the Residents' Committee would then mobilize other residents to follow up on his/her health, or to pay home visits."

Mr. X remarked that Ms. Q was just "like a relative" as she would not spare in visiting those who were sick and injured. "She would negotiate face-to-face (like moral admonition in thought work) with their work units to give them extra care and benefits." Echoing many other residents, Mr. E, 52 years old, said that Ms. Q would stay vigilant at night, and that when Ms. Q was around, the residents would feel at ease about the security of the community. "When she [Ms. Q] heard anything strange at night, she would return to bed only after she could figure out what had made the very sound." The "old mothers" thus seemed to be able to evoke emotion, with a strong moral underpinning, that created a community of feeling.

Having experienced a tremendous boost in their material living as mentioned before, the residents genuinely believed themselves to embody the glorious destiny of the "proletariat," and hence possessed a strong shared identity living in Cucumber Lane. For instance, according to Mr. X, the residents at that time did "care about" (guanxin) each other; "neighbors liked more to initiate 'casual chats' with others (chuan men). Everyone treated other people as if they were really of one family!" He clearly remembered what his father had said soon after they moved into the new flat around 1965. "My father told me that Sun Yatsen was wrong. He [Sun] said that Chinese people were 'just a heap of loose sand.' 'You see!?' My father said, 'How 'united' [tuanjie] we are now!?'"

Like the notion of "old mother," the notion of "big family" was not derived from Maoist political discourse. Madsen even suggested that the deliberate use of the notion of "family" might get one into trouble, due to its roots in corrupt feudalism. (78) Here, I suggest that the spontaneous use of the notion, once again--like the notion of "old mother"--invoked a morally imagined network of affiliations in the community, so that the residents would treat each other like relatives. (79) Clearly "big family" did not really refer to a group of people related to each other by blood, but was a notion constructed by specific actors who shared with one another a sentiment of mutual harmony and internal intimacy living in a subjectively defined area they called "home" in a certain time and place. But one should also note that this notion and its concomitant sentiment bred within a group of non-consanguineously related people does not resemble the term as it is commonly understood nowadays. For example, people who live closely together with a high level of emotional intimacy would say, "We live like a family." Rather, it is observed that the notion of "big family" as understood by the residents in the 1960s was re-defined and re-constructed to imply that a member of this community of feeling had a strong obligation to fulfill his/her responsibilities (zeren) in the particularistic network of affiliation. This meant that, on the one hand, the residents felt a right to enjoy a high level of mutual care and emotional intimacy in the relationship; on the other hand, they felt more obliged to conform to demands with the putative aim of maintaining the status quo of the "big family," particularly when the demands were being exercised by someone who possessed prestige in the relationship. Relating this characteristic to the leadership style of the local cadres/leaders was that the fact that the residents would credit the "old mothers" as the "senior kin" who consolidated the community by selflessly improving the well-being of the residents and facilitating their mutual help. But, on some occasions, those "old mothers" were considered stern and authoritarian matriarchs whose orders were to be obeyed with a heightened sense of respect and fear. (80)

The leadership style of the most prestigious "old mother" of Cucumber Lane, Ms. Q, could well illustrate the characteristic cohesive sentiment in a "big family." Apart from her widely respected virtue of "selfless sacrifice" and her use of thought work with moral underpinnings, it is interesting to review from the oral evidence the personal traits of Ms. Q as she exercised her charismatic leadership. When speaking of her ability to mobilize the masses, the residents, old and young, were able to paint a rather consistent picture of her style: when faced dissent from the community, Ms. Q would not fly into a shouting or cursing rage, seemingly due to her lack of verbal skills. Rather, her face would turn dark and her strong voice would become agitated. Such personal traits not only inspired fear in others, but also conferred a sense of indisputability and solemnity in her words. A 40-year-old resident, Mr. I remembered that Ms. Q "had a big temper and that she could hardly say a word when in a rage. I heard others say that when Ms. Q came to [their door to] mobilize them, many simply felt uneasy about refusing her." One consequence was that, as Mr. V added, "Some residents might not have liked Ms. Q. Some residents might have thought that Ms. Q was 'too strong' [tai qiang; also read: too pushy]. They might have thought why do you need to be so stern? Of course, these people only represented the minority. No one would voice it [their discontent] publicly because they knew that what she did really served the masses, not herself."

Thus, by living in a "big family," the residents clearly felt the harmony and mutual concern of the community, but, they also knew their own responsibilities fairly well and the price they would pay if they did not fulfill those responsibilities. Most residents were aware that if they did not perform in a revolutionary manner, the "old mothers" would knock on their door and conduct thought work until they were eventually "enlightened."

Informants' Grumbles

Among different mass campaigns, the internal struggles caused by the "Up to the Mountain, Down to the Countryside" Campaign around 1968 was one of the most unsettling. Parents were inevitably tormented by the prolonged separation with their children--the pain somehow similar to that caused by the military conscription. Several elderly residents whom I talked to during fieldwork (including Ms. C and Ms. U) admitted that they had known the kind of life their children would lead in the countryside as they had been peasants themselves decades before. Thus, one should not expect that the grumbles of the residents were settled, or that they were "enlightened," as easily through what has been discussed above in the emergence of community-based collectivist spirit. Apart from the moral politics that prompted the residents to feel the moral obligation to reciprocate the contributions of the state, the elderly residents were clearly aware that if they refused to join the masses, they ran the risk of being given "bad political hats" (kou maozi), which would lead to personal troubles. These troubles either involved the "old mothers" visiting them to conduct thought work; or, in serious cases, could lead to the confiscation of their benefits, or even to political charges laid against them. For instance, Mr. X said in hindsight that the residents knew that they had to follow what the "old mothers" did in sending their children to the countryside because "they feared that, otherwise, they would be labeled 'counterrevolutionary'!"

Today, those who acted revolutionary and let their children learn from the poor peasants show neither bitter regret to what they had done, nor explicit dissatisfactions towards the state or the "old mothers." Rather, expressed are the euphemisms like, "We were just following the changing circumstances [gen xingshi zou]."; or "Our thinking was very simple. We just did what the state told us to do." That residents tend to minimize the grumbles about their participation in socialist mass campaigns is due to, at least, two reasons. First, the elderly residents who witnessed their status moving up from dispossessed peasants to glorious proletarians still feel they have been blessed by the state, and that they should not express dissatisfaction with the state, at least, to an outsider--me. Second, they accept that their revolutionary mission in thought education has come to an end, but they hold that the blessings from Mao persist in the reform era. For instance, while general dissatisfaction has been aroused among the younger residents about the cutbacks on welfare, the elderly residents are still enjoying their pensions and inexpensive medical services--legacies of socialist welfare that remain relatively intact amidst the waves of post-socialist reforms. According to my fieldwork findings, the elderly residents now receive a monthly pension ranging from 550 to 900 yuan, which is very similar to the incomes that many middle-aged residents are able earn in the market after being sacked by their state-owned enterprises. This partly explains why the elderly residents usually use oral terms when giving credit to the state contributions. For instance, it is common to hear them say, "The state still 'cares about' [guanxin] the elderly"; or "The government still remembers the revolutionary masses."

But to many now middle-aged residents who devoted their youth to the cause of mass mobilization, their feeling towards the socialist past is more complicated, contingent upon their heterogeneous circumstances and the differential resources they enjoy in the reform era. For those who are suffering from unemployment, the past means that Maoist promises turned out to be empty; but for others who had managed to adapt better to the post-socialist changes, what they have experienced does not mean a rupture with the Maoist past, but a desirable transition despite its twists and turns. (81) Thus, implicit grumbles of the elderly residents

as well as the heterogeneous remembrances of the socialist past among the middle-aged residents were clearly identified. But, the overall trajectory concerning the rise of community-based collectivism during the Maoist era as depicted from the oral testimonies of two activists (Ms. Q and Ms. H), over 50 elderly participants (F:M = ~7:3; only Ms. C, Ms. U, Ms. G and Mr. S were quoted), and 20-odd second and third generation residents (F:M = ~5:5; only Mr. E, Mr. X and Mr. I were quoted) is still quite coherent. It means that in response to the state order for collective action, the collectivist spirit bred among the residents was mediated by a moral politics that prompted them to feel the moral obligation to reciprocate the contributions of the state. They would also feel pressure either from moral admonitions (the thought work of the "old mothers") or from political sanctions to conform to the higher order, however subtle the pressure might be under the harmonious ambience of living in a "big family."

Conclusions: Reciprocity in Mass Mobilization

This essay suggests that rise of community-based collectivist spirit in Cucumber Lane is empirically relevant to the discussion of the (missing) "link" between individual resistance and collective action. The emergence of a community-based collectivist spirit and high internal cohesion among the residents during the 1950s and 60s was found to hinge upon ideological influences, the resources at stake, and the mediation of moral politics. However, the mediation of moral politics assumed a decisive role in making the collectivist spirit "self-motivated" and sustainable for the intensive mass campaigns launched throughout the Maoist era. The Residents' Committee members--the "old mothers" who became "leading figures" in the state-led campaigns--played a leading role in mass mobilization. In particular, the morality of reciprocity in the thought work and the selflessness of the "old mothers" helped to evoke an imagined community of feeling that fostered a fervent collectivist spirit among the self-interested residents. Further, the emergence of the sentiment of a "big family" in the community led to immense internal cohesion among the residents. Internal moral obligation and external political coercion further motivated them to join the mass campaigns.

It is true, as Scott argues, that poor peasants though not totally passive do not fight against exploitative patronage, for collective action among the Cucumber Lane inhabitants could hardly be triggered before the infiltration of socialist politics. But Scott's paradigm seemed to be inadequate to account for the rise of collectivism after the communist takeover. Taking this as the vantage point, I further argued that the ideological and resource elements did not exhaust historical reality in Cucumber Lane during the 1950s and 60s. (82) Rather, the reciprocity mediated by a moral politics bred in the community was successful in piecing together different threads of the social fabric in the community and introducing important "self-motivated" elements to the subsequent surge of collective mass campaigns. Under examination is not the peasant per se but the peasant-turned-proletarian, and Scott's subscription to rational choice theory does not offer a satisfactory explanation of the complexity of motives behind this type of struggle, where, as Bayat remarks in another context, "moral elements are mixed with rational calculation." (83) Such reciprocity bred in the community effectively endowed the collective goals with moral forces propelling subjects from within, rather than what Scott writes, that the goals are far away "from the texture of local experience." (84)

It should be noted that the discussion so far does not mean that the concept of reciprocity is uniquely Chinese and categorically different from "Western" or other modes of understandings and motivations. Indeed, the role of human reciprocity in terms of gift exchange and social contract as a vehicle for affirming existing organizational principles, cultivating social solidarity, and promoting peace have been well established in anthropological investigations of different contexts. (85) The story of Cucumber Lane only suggests how the residents themselves understand their own motivations, that a moral politics had evoked an imagined moral community with strong internal cohesion, and made sustained collective momentum possible. Central to the discussion of reciprocity, I suggest, was the emergence of a group of morally virtuous "old mothers" who persistently motivated the residents to uphold their moral responsibilities (zeren) and to avoid political confrontations by committing themselves to collective action at the expense of individual sacrifice. Here, my findings support Calhoun's suggestion that it is not the indoctrination of class ideologies, but "some structure of selective inducements" among individuals that is necessary to fuel concerted collective action (86). Otherwise, individuals would, as Mancur argued in his classic The Logic of Collective Action, (87) only reap the benefits by acting as "free-riders" even if the collective action is intended to benefit all. Calhoun suggested that the informal bonds of community relationship, as in a form of pre-existing organization, provide powerful selective incentives to engender a variety of collective actions. In the case of Cucumber Lane, the Residents' Committee and its committed "old mothers" had conjured up the morally cherished sentiment of the "big family" that united residents with diverse self-interests in collective pursuits.

8/F, R Core, School of Professional Education and Executive Development

Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

ENDNOTES

1. This essay draws on data gathered through eleven months of during 2000-2001, which were to explore how the residents of Cucumber Lane, Shanghai are making sense of and coping with the changes they have encountered in the past over half century.

2. Michael F. Brown, "On Resisting Resistance," American Anthropologist, 98:4 (1996), 729-735, esp. 729. See also Robert Fletcher, "What are We Fighting For? Rethinking Resistance in a Pewenche Community in Chile." The Journal of Peasant Studies, 28:3 (2001, April), 37-66.

3. James C. Scott, "Introduction." In Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance in South-east Asia, edited by James C. Scott and Benjamin J. Tria Kerkvliet (London, 1986), 1.

4. James C. Scott, Weapons of the Weak (New Haven, 1987), 424.

5. Arturo Escobar, "Culture, Practice and Politics: Anthropology and the Study of Social Movement," Critique of Anthropology, 12:4 (1992):395-432. See also his "Culture, Economics, and Politics in Latin American Social Movements: Theory and Research," in The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategies, and Democracy, edited by Arturo Escobar and Sonia E. Alvarez (Boulder, CO, 1992), 62-88; and Orin Starn, "I Dreamed of Foxes and Hawks: Reflections on Peasants on Peasant Protext, New Social Movements, and the Rondas Campesinas of Northern Peru," in The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategies, and Democracy, edited by Arturo Escobar and Sonia E. Alvarez (Boulder, CO, 1992), 89-111.

6. Doug McAdam, Sidney Tarrow, and Charles Tilly, "Toward an Integrated Perspective on Social Movements and Revolution," in Comparative Politics: Rationality, Culture, and Structure, edited by Mark Irving Lichbach and Alan S. Zuckerman (Cambridge, New York and Melbourne), 142-171; see also, Peter Vandergeest, "Constructing Thailand: Regulation, Everyday Resistance, and Citizenship," Comparative Studies in Society and History, 35:1 (January, 1993), 133-158.

7. For instance, seeking to understand contemporary Third World social movements, Escobar has suggested that in engaging in collective action, people do not mimic dominant ideological models (e.g., the Marxist cannons), but "appropriate them and remodel them into their own distinctive system" (Escobar, "Culture, Practice and Politics," 413). He suggested that collective "identities are constructed through processes of articulation that start out of a submerged network of meanings, proceed through cultural innovation in the domain of everyday life, and may result in visible and sizable forms collective action for the control of historicity" (Ibid., 420).

To McAdam et al, it is the emergence of "contentious politics" that makes claims for collective social movements. Social movements are "contentious" in nature and oriented towards structural change in a political configuration with more democracy (McAdam et al, "Toward an Integrated Perspective"). See also Arturo Escobar and Sonia E. Alvarez, (eds.) The Making of Social Movements in Latin America: Identity, Strategies, and Democracy (Boulder, CO, 1992); and Sidney G. Tarrow, Movements and Contentious Politics (Cambridge, 1998).

8. My archival research showed that according to the Xinwen Evening News (Xinwen wanbo) the first batch of residents moved into the new flats on 15th July 1964.

9. Anonymous, Cucumber Lane (fangua nong), (Shanghai, Shanghai Municipal Zhabei District Tian Mu Xi Lu Street Office, 1997), 3.

10. An unpublished official document at the Zhabei District Archives.

11. Wing Chung Ho, "Negotiating Subalternity in a Former Socialist 'Model Community' in Shanghai: From 'Model Proletarians' to 'Society People,' The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 6:2 (2005), 159-180.

12. See Ann Anagnost, National Past-time: Narrative, Representation, and Power in Modern China. (Durham & London, 1997), 1-44; Richard H.Solomon, Mao's Revolution and the Chinese Political Culture (Berkeley, 1971), 195-199; and Martin King Whyte, Small Groups and Political Rituals in China (Berkeley, 1974), 31.

13. Wing Chung Ho, "The (Un-)Making of the Shanghai Socialist 'Model Community': From the Monolithic to Heterogeneous Appropriation(s) of the Past," Journal of Asian and African Studies, 39:5(2004), 379-405.

14. Wakeman, "Rebellion and Revolution: The Study of Popular Movements in Chinese History," The Journal of Asian Studies, 36:2 (Feb, 1977), 201-237, esp. 225.

15. For example, Richard Madsen, Morality and Power in a Chinese Village (Berkeley, 1984), and Ku Hok-bun, Moral Politics in a South Chinese Village: Responsibility, Reciprocity, and Resistance (Lanham, 2003); see also Liu Xin, In One's Own Shadow: An Ethnographic Account of the Condition of Post-reform Rural China (Berkeley, 2000), 157-179.

16. Morality and Power, 3.

17. "Moral discourse" refers to a tangle of notions "handed down from the past ... but were constantly woven by (inevitably self-interested) villagers to fit new situations in the present." (Ibid., 8)

18. The two competing leaders, Longyang and Qingfa, held two moral visions that represent, respectively, the vision of "the village as a big family," and "the village as a federation of families linked together by the flavor of human feeling." (Ibid., 99)

19. Ibid., 54. Madsen concluded that "in such a particularistic configuration, the nature of one's moral obligations to another depended on the precise nature of one's relationship to the other," while Western morality held a "universal" orientation, meaning that "[o]ne's moral obligations toward another are defined by general norms equally applicable to all persons of a particular category." (Ibid., 54-57)

20. Ku, Moral Politics, 16.

21. Ibid., xix.

22. Ibid., 17.

23. Baker observed that the natural leaders of the traditional Chinese village were the men of that lineage most senior in generation and age. Huge D. R. Baker, Chinese Family and Kinship (New York, 1979), 49.

24. For example, Madsen, Morality and Power, 11-12; and Ku, Moral Politics, 17 & 50fn23.

25. Craig Calhoun, "The Radicalism of Tradition: Community Strength or Venerable Disguise and Borrowed Language," American Journal of Sociology, 88:5 (1983):886-914, esp. 895.

26. Lu Han Chao, "Creating Urban Outcasts: Shantytowns in Shanghai, 1920-1950," Journal of Urban History, 21:5 (July, 1995):563-597, esp. 575.

27. Yeh Wen-hsin, "Prologue: Shanghai Besieged, 1937-45." In Wartime Shanghai, edited by Yeh Wen-hsin (London and New York, 1998), 1-17.

28. Honig has specified that floods, droughts, or other natural disasters were the most important reasons why people were forced to leave Subei in the first half of the twentieth century. Emily Honig, Sisters and Strangers: Women in the Shanghai Cotton Mills, 1919-1949 (Stanford, CA, 1986), 67. For instance, the flood of 1931 forced nearly 80,000 Subei refugees to flock into Shanghai. (Emily Honig, Creating Chinese Ethnicity: Subei People in Shanghai, 1850-1980 [New Haven, 1992]), 41.

29. Lu, "Creating Urban Outcasts, 576. Statistical figures show that Zhabei was very popular area for migrants to reside in before 1949. In 1947, for instance, 97.19 percent of the population in Zhabei was non-native, while non-natives made up 83.96 percent of the general population of Shanghai. Among other districts, Zhabei held the highest proportion of non-natives in 1947. Luo Su Wen and Song Jian You, Shanghai History (Shanghai tongshi), volume 9 (Shanghai, 1999), 306-307.

30. OSHG [Office of Shanghai History Gazette] (ed.) Zhabei District History Gazette (Zhabei qu zhi) (Shanghai, 1998), 1289-1290.

31. Honig, Creating Chinese Ethnicity, 20.

32. For instance, I was once told by an elderly informant from Yangzhou that she sometimes had difficulty communicating with some elderly residents from Jiangdu. This is the case in spite of the fact that both native places are in Subei, and Jiangdu is geographically close to and in the present shares the same local authority with Yangzhou. But, the two native-place-specific dialects might not be mutually comprehensible if one possessed too strong a "native-place accent" (xiangyin) in everyday conversation.

33. Honig, Sisters, 82.

34. When the Sino-Japanese war broke out in Shanghai in August 1937, Japanese troops controlled all parts of the metropolis except the International Settlement and the French Concession. The period between this date and December 1941, when the Japanese army invaded the International Settlement, was known as the "lone island" (gudao) period. During this period, apart from the military attacks in the Chinese-controlled areas, the concession zones had experienced an anomalous economic boom due to its relative safety and the influx of refugees (rich and poor), which augmented both market demand and labor supply. But as the Japanese captured the concession zones after December 1941, life became increasingly difficult. One can understand the gravity of the problem by examining the change of the living cost index (in brackets) from 1936 to 1945: Year 1936 (100); 1937 (119); 1938 (151); 1939 (198); 1940 (428); 1941 (827); 1942 (1,994); 1943 (7,226); 1944 (47,750); 1945 (6,058,103). See Federic F. Wakeman, "Urban Controls in Wartime Shanghai," in Wartime Shanghai, edited by Yeh Wen-hsin (London and New York, 1998), 133-156, esp. 134.

35. Ms. H told me, "When the Japanese bombed this place [the Zhabei District], my whole family moved to the 'south of Suzhou River' [binnan; literally, 'south of the creek']. We were still sleeping on the street. The weather was just freezing [in winter 1937] and my second son died of starvation and exposure ... In a word, it was just inhuman to live as a 'slave of a country that has perished!' [wangguonu!]"

36. The baojia system made the "chief of the bao" (baozhang) responsible for enforcing public order and for the payment of taxes by the community, roughly consisting a thousand households. In Cucumber Lane, the chief of the bao was called Tang Guoru, whose appointment began and ended with the period of Japanese occupation (1941-45).

37. A "tiger stove" was a place for selling hot water for drinking and bathing. Subei natives also treated "tiger stoves" as teahouses. See Elizabeth Perry, Shanghai on Strike: The Politics of Chinese Labor (Stanford, CA, 1993), 24.

38. 1 dou = 10 liters.

39. OSHG, Zhabei, 1292.

40. In traditional Chinese culture, the God of Wealth (caishen) was believed to have the ability to bestow wealth on his devotees throughout the year if he was venerated in the Spring Festival (the beginning of the year). This belief caused people to dress up like the God of Wealth, or simply to give a note of good words to others in order to ask for money in return. Those who refused to give money would be considered disrespectful to the God of Wealth and could not have his blessing. This practice was a welcomed tradition for children who asked for the "red pocket" containing money, but in the case of Cucumber Lane, it became a way for hoodlums to extort money from the poor residents.

41. Perry, Shanghai on Strike; Honig, Sisters; and Gail Hershatter, Dangerous Pleasures: Prostitution and Modernity in Twentieth Century Shanghaii (Berkeley, CA, 1997).

42. Based on his observations of a village in the lower Yangzi delta, Fei remarked that the network of personal relations that defined the sphere of one's closest loyalties was highly "elastic." Fei Xiao Tong, Chinese Village Close-up (Beijing, 1983), 211. Drawing from Fei's argument, Madsen suggested that such "elasticity" of personal relations could be highly related to one's living conditions. Madsen wrote, "A wealthy, powerful person may include in his family anyone who is related in any way. But with a reversal of fortune, one's family could shrink to a very small group." Madsen, Morality and Power, 55.

43. "Household rice" was a quota system for distributing rice in Shanghai after the Japanese had completely taken over the city in 1941. The system formed part of the Japanese-backed Chinese puppet government's efforts to control the supply of rice in society. Pan Jun Xiang and Wang Yang Qing (eds), Shanghai History (Shanghai tongshi), volume 8 (Shanghai), 413-416.

44. It should be noted that the residents were familiar with the baojia system, which also operated in the rural areas, before they migrated to Shanghai. In the 1930s, baojia seemed to function mainly as a village military organization, or village-based police in the rural areas, whereas the functions of civil welfare and administration in a village were still strongly linked with the local gentry. Franz Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China, Second edition, enlarged (Berkeley, 1970), 404-431, 559; and Philip C. C. Huang, The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988 (Stanford), 38.

45. The rural gentries constituted a privileged and politically powerful group, whose power over the peasants rested in land ownership. According to Fei's observations, the gentries--a minority who lived on rent collected from the peasants--lived in big houses in which a large number of kin co-resided. Fei, Chinese Village, 124-126.

46. Fei wrote, "The peasants, when pressed by rent or tax or other crises, have to sell their rice to the stores in town [owned by the rural gentry] at a low price. At the time when their reserves are eaten up, they come to the stores to buy at a high price. The rice stores are therefore similar in nature to the pawnshops." Ibid., 135-136.

47. Ralph Thaxton, "The World Turned Downside Up: Three Orders of Meaning in the Peasants' Traditional Political World," Modern China, 3:3 (April, 1977): 185-228, esp. 190.

48. Ibid., 198.

49. In his classic study The Peasant Family and Rural Development in the Yangzi Delta, 1350-1988, Huang attributed the communists' relatively unsuccessful experience of mobilizing peasants for long-term concerted action in the Yangtze delta to the "weak community organization but highly stable common-descent groupings" in the village organizations there (315). I deem that Huang's comment could also help to explain the low propensity of the residents of Cucumber Lane to engage in community-based collective actions, as most of them were from villages in the Yangtze delta.

50. All of these problems were directly or indirectly related to the aftermath of the civil war and to an economy destroyed by the abortive currency reform of August 1948. Richard Gaulton, "Political Mobilization in Shanghai: 1949-1951," in Shanghai: Revolution and Development in a Asian Metropolis, edited by Christopher Barry Howe (Cambridge, 1981), 38.

51. For instance, I was told that there was a rumor saying that when the CCP came, they would "make people share the properties of others and [also] make people share the wives of others" [gongchan gongqi]. It meant that two men would be matched with one woman. Another rumor held that young girls would be made to marry old men. One said that every "lane/alley" [lilong] would be surrounded by a wooden fence, and that people would not be allowed to either enter or leave. See Ho, "Negotiating Subalternity."

52. For a critical discussion of the painful trajectory that the CCP took in mass mobilization in rural areas from the Jiangxi period (1927-34) to the Yanan period (1935-45), see Schurmann, Ideology, 415-417. Schurmann concluded that only until the Yanan period could the communists penetrate deeply into the social fabric of the natural village rather than tearing up pre-existing social relationships and replacing them with a new organization imposed from outside. It then became a model strategy for mass mobilization in subsequent years. Ibid., 416.

53. In 1954, the Residents' Committee Organization Law was enacted to legalize and standardize neighborhood-based organizations in the form of Residents' Committees. James R. Townsend, Political Participation in Communist China (Berkeley, 1967).

54. Ho, "Negotiating Subalternity."

55. See endnote 52.

56. Schurmann, Ideology, 416.

57. As memory fades with age, no residents seemed to clearly remember the details of the election, including the voting rates, the format of the election (e.g., I am not sure whether a resident only indicated his/her agreement or disagreement with a whole list of "resident representatives," just chose his/her favorite candidates from the list, or whether another method of election was used), or the criteria that determined who won the election (e.g., whether a "resident representative" won a seat by having a simple majority of the total votes cast, or by other criteria). However, I could ascertain at least three points. First, the election was an emotionally charged event in the community, as the elderly residents were pleased with the voting rights they possessed. Very often, they considered this as evidence of "having a new life in the political realm" (zai zhengzhi shangfanshen). Second, the oral histories solicited from my elderly informants indicated that the candidates had already been selected by the higher authorities, so that the residents could not appoint their own favorite residents as candidates. Third, the election was publicized among the populace through the press, as it was reported in an article entitled "A Cherished Moment in History," published in Wenhui Daily (Wenhubao) on 23rd August 1953.

58. No informant, including Ms. Q who had been elected the first Chief of the Residents' Committee, was able to tell with certainty the exact year when the first election of the Residents' Committee took place. Some informants said, "1954," some, "1955," and a couple said, "1956." Ms. Q told me without much uncertainty that, "It should be 1954."

59. The number of Residents' Committee members mentioned here was an estimate provided by the now 84-year-old Ms. Q, the first elected Chief of the Residents' Committee.

60. In fact, Schurmann has pinpointed that the initial unpopularity of the Residents' Committee in urban China as a whole under Mao's rule was probably due to the "strong female representation among the cadres of the resident committee." He suggested that such a make-up made the Residents' Committee "difficult to operate in a society in which to make equality of men and women had only recently been proclaimed." Schurmann, Ideology, 377.

61. Cf. Baker, Chinese Family, 49.

62. Madsen has pointed out that throughout rural China, the villagers customarily addressed each other as if they were kinfolk, even when the subjects were at best only very distantly related. Madsen, Morality and Power, 58.

63. Ibid.

64. See endnote 58.

65. The activities listed are not meant to be exhaustive. Indeed, the figures concerning the number of participants involved in different campaigns may vary greatly from informant to informant, according to his/her own memory and sources of information. These informants may themselves have been either participants, or witnesses, or had merely received their information from others who had been direct participants or witnesses. Incomplete and inaccurate as the information might be, it serves to indicate the variety of purposes involved in each mass campaign, the scale of the campaigns, and the frequency with which they were launched across the period concerned.

66. During the course of my fieldwork, the Institute of Sociology of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences was undertaking a study concerning the historical development of the Residents' Committee in Cucumber Lane. Mr. V, being a retired secondary school teacher and a friend of Ms. Q, was asked by the Institute to conduct interviews with Ms. Q on their behalf concerning the work of Residents' Committee during the Maoist period. Since I could not conduct long chats with Ms. Q due to her poor health, my interviews with Mr. V, one of my key elderly informants, supplemented my understanding of Ms. Q's work during the period when she was the Chief of Residents' Committee and Party branch secretary.

67. Regarding the prevalence of this view, Ms. H told me a story of a former active "old mother" called Ms. Feng Meiying who passed away years ago. Ms. Fang's mother-in-law had once expressed strong discontent with Ms. Fang's active involvement in community activities. As Ms. H recalled, the mother-in-law once put it cogently to her neighbors, "How awkward it looks to see a woman running here and there outside whole day long!? [yige nuren zhengtian zai waibian daochu pao xiang shenma?!]"

68. Wang Gung Wu, "Power, Rights and Duties in Chinese History," The Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs, 3 (Jan, 1980), 1-26, esp. 7.

69. Cf. Ku, Moral Politics.

70. The oral evidence shows that many residents visited the "old mothers" regularly in groups to ask them to arrange jobs for them. Apart from their collective spirit engendered by their past experiences, I also identify two additional reasons from the oral histories that augmented the collective momentum. First, the setting up of mess halls in the community in 1958 effectively freed many women from the substantial burden of doing domestic chores. Under this situation, participating in collective activities became a fruitful pastime for them. Second, unlike the Steel-making Campaign, most jobs arranged in the name of the "Release of Women Labor Force Campaign" offered monetary rewards to the participants, although the amount of reward was meager. For instance, one day's work in the "paper box making factory" (See Table 1) earned a person one to two cents, which amounted to two to four yuan per month; while working in the state-owned factories earned a person about thirty to forty yuan per month (comprehensive benefits not included).

71. Apart from Ms. Q, I also find from the same album the photo of another "old mother," the deceased Ms. Feng Mei-ying, who held the hoe and dug the ground in similar manner.

72. Today, at the age of eighty-four, she is about five feet eight inches in height. Back in the 1950s, still in her thirties, Ms. Q was a very tall and strong woman by the standards of eastern China.

73. Since 1954, Cucumber Lane was frequently awarded the Sanitary Advanced Unit at the both district and municipal levels. OSHG, Zhabei, 1292.

74. According to Luo and Song, within a week after its commencement, the Big Arrest had detained 8,359 alleged counterrevolutionaries; and in the following week, the number of political criminals that had been caught reached 9,010. (Shanghai History 9, 46)

75. Ibid., 4.

76. Ho, "Negotiating Subalternity."

77. For instance, the oral histories indicate that residents who did not know each other would chat as if they had been acquainted for a long time, simply by exchanging with each other basic information about which flat (with block number and floor level) one was living in.

78. Madsen, Morality and Power, 62-63.

79. Cf. ibid., 58.

80. Such leadership style--being popular but stern, like an authoritarian patriarch--was in many ways similar to a dominant style of charismatic leadership in the traditional Chinese community. For example, see the village leader, Longyang, in Madsen, Morality and Power, esp. 63, and the community leader of a lineage village in Fujian province, Dunglin, as portrayed in Lin Yueh Hwa, Golden Wing (London, 1998, original 1948), esp. 51.

81. Ho, "The (Un-)Making."

82. On this problematic, Elizabeth Perry pursued in another direction by arguing the critical role of emotional engagement played in fueling political campaigns in communist China. See her "Moving the Masses: Emotion Work in the Chinese Revolution," Mobilization: An International Journal, 7:2(2002), 111-128.

83. Asef Bayat, "Un-civil Society: The Politics of the 'Informal People," Third World Quarterly, 18:1 (1997), 53-72, esp. 57.

84. Scott, Weapons, 348.

85. See Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (New York, 1961); Marcel Mauss, The Gift, translated by Ian Cunnison (New York, 1967); and Marshall Sahlins, Stone Age Economics (New York, 1972). For the anthropological discussion of Chinese reciprocity, see Yang Mayfair Mei Hui, Gifts, Favors, and Banquets: The Art of Social Relationships in China (Ithaca, N. Y., 1994); and Yan Yunxiang, The Flow of Gift: Reciprocity and Social Networks in a Chinese Village (Stanford, CA, 1996).

86. Calhoun, "The Radicalism," 890.

87. Mancur Olson, The Logic of Collective Action (New York, 1968)

By Wing Chung Ho

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University 

Table 1 Summary of Major Collective Activities Organized in Cucumber
Lane, 1953-1967

Name of the
Collective Action        Number of
(Year)                   participants    Remarks

Big Cleaning Campaign    Over 100        The purpose of the action was
(dasaochu) (1953)        residents       to improve the poor sanitary
                                         conditions of the community.
                                         Another Big Cleaning Campaign
                                         was organized around July and
                                         August of 1960. Apart from
                                         further improving the quality
                                         of the environment, the
                                         campaign constituted part of
                                         the preparations for receiving
                                         a delegation from the Tianjin
                                         Municipality in October of that
                                         year. About 100 volunteers were
                                         mobilized among the residents.
"Brush-away-illiteracy   Over 100 women  The Residents' Committee
class" (sao mang ben)    residents*      organized the classes for the
(1957)                                   residents in response to a
                                         broader nationwide campaign to
                                         raise the cultural level of the
                                         people.
"Steel Making Campaign"  About 50 women  In response to the summons of
(da liangang) (around    residents       the state in the Great Leap
1958)                                    Forward (1958-60), the
                                         Residents' Committee set up a
                                         furnace at the junction of what
                                         are now Xinmin Road and
                                         Huasheng Road (Plate 1) in
                                         order to make steel. The
                                         participants joined this "Steel
                                         Making Campaign" (da liangang).
                                         They were divided into two
                                         shifts--day and night--to make
                                         steel around the clock. The
                                         whole community participated in
                                         the campaign by donating their
                                         utensils as well as other metal
                                         tools and furniture to make
                                         steel. The amount of "raw
                                         materials" collected was said
                                         to be enough to cram several
                                         vacant offices of the
                                         Residents' Committee. The whole
                                         campaign lasted for about-one-
                                         and-a-half months.
"Liberate the Women's                    In answer to the national call
Labor Force" (around                     to the campaign, the Residents'
1958-60)                                 Committee organized a series of
                                         production activities
                                         including:
                                         a. Setting up a "paper box
                                         making factory" (zhihechang);
                                         about 30 women were mobilized;
                                         b. Forming a "art carving
                                         group" (kehua zu); about 30
                                         women were mobilized;
                                         c. Setting up several "mess
                                         halls" (shitang), about 20-30
                                         women were mobxilized;
                                         d. Organizing a "vegetable-
                                         planting group" (zhongcai zu);
                                         about 15-30 women were
                                         mobilized;
                                         e. Leading a "sewing-and-
                                         tailoring team" (fengrenzu);
                                         4-5 women were mobilized with
                                         their own sewing machines; and
                                         f. About 15-30 women were on
                                         the list of the Residents'
                                         Committee. They were ready to
                                         do various kinds of odd jobs
                                         upon the request of the higher
                                         authorities; for example,
                                         during the Spring Festival,
                                         about 15 women would be called
                                         to help in handling goods at
                                         the railway station; another
                                         10-15 women would lend a hand
                                         with packaging products in a
                                         food factory.
Leisure activities                       From 1958 to 1960, the
groups (1958-1960)                       Residents' Committee organized
                                         several leisure activities
                                         groups with the wide
                                         participation of the residents:
                                         a. In 1958, a "culture and art
                                         club" (wenyihui) was set up; 50
                                         residents were mobilized,
                                         including children and elderly
                                         women. They performed different
                                         types of traditional
                                         performances, including Huai
                                         Opera (huaiju); Shanghainese
                                         Opera (huju); Yue Opera
                                         (yueju), "cross-talk"
                                         (xiangsheng), as well as
                                         Chinese musical instruments.
                                         b. In 1960, a "sports
                                         federation of Cucumber Lane"
                                         (Fanguanong tixie) was formed.
                                         It organized sport activities
                                         for the residents, including
                                         table tennis and tai chi. The
                                         number of voluntary instructors
                                         together with the participants
                                         involved were said to amount to
                                         over 200.
Receiving Guests (1964                   Echoing the nationwide
onwards--till the early                  Socialist Education Campaign
1980s)                                   (1962-66), in the second half
                                         of 1964 the Residents'
                                         Committee began to organize
                                         tours of locals and foreigners
                                         to visit the newly built five-
                                         story residential blocks in
                                         Cucumber Lane. The purpose of
                                         the tours was to let the
                                         visitors witness the radical
                                         changes in the lives of the
                                         residents before and after
                                         Liberation by showing exhibits
                                         (including exhibition boards,
                                         and real objects symbolizing
                                         the backwardness of the "old
                                         society," for example, wooden
                                         buckets used to fetch water
                                         from the river.), visiting the
                                         new flats, and listening to the
                                         bitter life-testimonies of the
                                         old residents. The work of
                                         preparation involved about 20-
                                         30 volunteers among the
                                         residents. In addition, for the
                                         visits, 20-30 elderly residents
                                         were required to perform the
                                         ritual of yiku sitian, and the
                                         Residents' Committee needed to
                                         arrange 15-20 households
                                         willing to let the visitors
                                         visit their flats.
"Up to the Mountain,     200-300 youth   Echoing the summons of Mao to
Down to the Country-                     let the youth learn from the
side Campaign"                           peasants in the "Up to the
(1966-67)                                Mountain, Down to the
                                         Countryside Campaign" during
                                         the Cultural Revolution (1966-
                                         76), the Residents' Committee
                                         mobilized the youth residents
                                         to send to the countryside in
                                         1968.**

*The elderly residents told me that illiterate residents were only
required to pay a nominal fee and would be qualified as "primary school
graduates" after about one year of part-time studies. But, almost all
who participated in the campaign said that they forgot everything
learned a couple of years after they had completed the course, or, in
their words, they have "returned everything back to the teacher!" During
my fieldwork, I also found that most of the old residents still could
not read simple words from the newspaper. This was why they often
sarcastically called themselves "graduated as an illiterate" (wenmang
biye).
**On December 22, 1968, The People's Daily published the following
instruction from Mao: "It is necessary for educated urban youth to go to
the countryside and receive re-education from the poor and lower-middle
peasants."