IN SEARCH MY HOMELAND
Gao was only 19-years-old when he wrote “On Beauty,” a critical essay about the subjectivity of aesthetics, which was published in a journal in 1957 and hotly contested. Several years later, this “inopportune treatise” leads to Gao, a teacher in a small rural school in the town of Lanzhou, being labeled a “Rightist” and shipped off to a labor camp in the Gobi Desert. There he faces unimaginable hardships as he is forced to dig ditches, till fields, and endure brutal sandstorms while being given barely enough food to survive. Ever the daring intellectual, Gao continues to write, despite the fact that he risks serious repercussions if his work is discovered. He also finds solace in the impressive ancient art in the Mogao Caves. Though what Dorsett and Pollard have gracefully translated is only the second part of Gao’s three-part memoir, it is broad in scope and gives readers a vivid account of Gao’s suffering and endurance. Powerful reading for those curious about what “reeducation through labor” really entailed. --Kristine Huntley