“Socialism is Great!” A Worker’s Memoir of the New China
Lijia Zhang
Brittany Hall

The 1980s is a decade where economic and political changes bewilder China. China received self-inflicted sufferings from the Culture Revolution, which continues to linger there today, even though China is now the most powerful economic engine in the world. These economic changes that China is facing are stretching the model of a Communist command economy towards a new model of a market economy and thrusting for individual freedom.
In 1980, Lijia Zhang was just 16 years old when her mother dragged her out of school and brought her to work at Liming Machinery Factory that produced missiles designed to reach the United States of America. Around that time unemployment was rather very high, there was that temperate policy which aloud children to inherit their parents job if they retired. So her 43 year old mother took advantage of that policy, seeing as their family was very poor obviously. Her mother thought that if she didn’t take advantage of the policy now, that the policy would disappear. Because of that policy Lijia’s plans to ever attend college was vanished and belittled her dreams of writing and being a journalist. Her mother blamed her husband, who was mostly absent since he had gotten into political trouble in the 1950s, for his reckless fondness for books and ideas. This book is a journey about sexual and political awakening. Lijia transforms from a normal well behaved Chinese girl into an unruly unique member of China's society. “Socialism is Great!” is more about the inner struggles of an independent-minded young girl who is restricted in a nation of conformity and traditionalism.
Zhang tries to take advantage of a few breaks to get her away from the worker’s lifestyle. One of these opportunities would be her trying to get away from her family and government lifestyle through one’s sex life. She engages in some affairs, some of which that could have put her in jail or at least demolished her career. Lijia's heart is delicate; she was first broken by an attractive young, intelligent man, and then hurt once more by an older married government official who leaves her pregnant and unmarried which is unacceptable in the Chinese culture because of their strict traditions. In disappointment and discouragement, she springs down to a series of heartless affairs and one night stands. She finds herself as a natural radical who can’t help getting into more trouble day by day.
Times were changing in China, where only a very small amount of "high school" students ever see or make it to university. A new invention had occurred, which was a perfect fit to the massive amounts of desperate students who were willing for advancement in learning: TV University. These pursuits reflect in a slow change of personal growth and freedoms, which began to take superiority. Lijia had gotten accepted into one class, engineering, and this opens new opportunities for her. Miserable and bored, after ten years of setbacks and more setbacks, Lijia decided to teach herself English by listening to the music of “The Carpenters” and devouring and spending countless hours reading classic English novels like “Jane Eyre”, not just the ABC’s but the whole package of western culture, by escaping the constraint of being a factory worker and become a journalist. English seemed to her escape from the factory, and she studied it like it was her new job. Struggling to uphold her integrity and yearning for spreading to the world her creative mind at all costs, Lijia's story is a testimony of one girl who challenged herself to go for a dream of self-expression and personal ambition and not be denied from it, even in a country that pressures one to have shared thinking only.
“Socialism is Great!” A Worker’s Memoir of the New China’s plot unravels alongside a framework that brightly depicts the start of days of modern China, the era when the storm of the Cultural Revolution has wasted, yet its dust has not quite settled. China’s transformation from the Communist system shifts toward a market economy. Individuals become entrepreneurs; while government controlled factories discover imaginative ways of competing in a free market, this can be compared to the novel when Lijia's missile factory produces a massive statue of Buddha. There has been serious political discourse expressing how China should really familiarize with Western standards for a better opportunity for the upcoming youth in the country, without completely getting rid of the Communist basis. However, some of the people shed their old dresses to have the Western style; where in the book as does Lijia when she wears bright colorful Westernized clothing to express her individuality and was met with severe displeasure. This can be a very tough issue for China to come by, seeing as they grew up very anti-capitalist, which would entail them to have more of an individual and worldwide freedom.
The thrust for freedom and democratization increased to the Tiananmen Square protests. This protest greatly impacted China, and it reverberated worldwide. Lijia writes with elegance and willpower and closes the story endangering her future by encountering trouble with the police and standing up to the authorities. Just days before the government heartlessly suppressed the protest; Lijia takes control over the factory workers in, and march toward a larger crowd supporting the Tiananmen Square Protest in 1989. Lijia gives an emotional speech there about encouraging democracy. Life inside of working in a factory may have changed for many people living in China as the economy and private enterprise booms, but as Lijia describes it in her book, “Socialism is Great” it still remains in the background of modern Chinese society today.