Chia-mu-ssu

There is a collective farm on the southern bank of the Sungain River in Manchuria, some 40 li to the east of Chia-mu-ssu (Kiamusze). It is the No. 9 farm of the Huachuan Water Conservancy and Farming Corporation in Sungkiang Province. The other eight farms of the same corporation are not yet completely collectivized and therefore cannot be called collective farms.

1980, T'ien Liu, edited by Harold C. Hinton, The Development of a Collective Farm, 1952 (The People's Republic of China 1949-1979), volume 1, Wilmington, Delaware: Scholarly Resources Inc., →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 95

Chia Kuei-hsiang was a young worker at the Horticultural Model Farm in Chia-mu-ssu. On July 27, 1956, having long suffered the abuse of subjectivists and bureaucrats, she took her own life. Comrade Wang Ko, a reporter for the Heilunkiang Daily News, published a report of the circumstances surrounding her death on October 11 of that year. Depressed after reading such a story, I wrote this poem in the hope that there will never be another Chia Kuei-hsiang.

1981, Shao Yen-hsiang, “Chia Kuei-hsiang”, in Hualing Nieh, editor, Literature of the Hundred Flowers, volume II, New York: Columbia University Press, →ISBN, →LCCN, →OCLC, page 156