Beijing Review: "Lane No. 53 in Shanghai," October 20, 1959 This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
This is an archive of the former website of the Maoist Internationalist Movement, which was run by the now defunct Maoist Internationalist Party - Amerika. The MIM now consists of many independent cells, many of which have their own indendendent organs both online and off. MIM(Prisons) serves these documents as a service to and reference for the anti-imperialist movement worldwide.
Maoist Internationalist Movement

Source: "Lane No. 53 in Shanghai," Beijing Review 2, no. 42, 20 October 1959, 16-17.

Transcribed by an HC, May 2, 2005


BEIJING REVIEW

October 20, 1959


The Story of a Former Slum

Lane No. 53 in Shanghai

[Transcriber's introduction (May 2, 2005): By choosing this article I'm not saying the below historical experience reflects exactly what will happen in the oppressed-nation proletarian neighborhoods in the united $tates. But the proletarian neighborhoods in the united $tates stand to benefit from socialism in a lot of the same ways.

The below articles highlights housewives' getting jobs. MIM says that there is a gender strand of oppression and struggle in addition to the nation and class strands. Ending the gender oppression of wimmin doesn't just mean wimmin having jobs, and revolutionaries in China struggled against wimmin's oppression in many different ways .

Another interesting thing about this article is the focus on people going from being rickshaw and pedicab drivers to being skilled workers. The productive sector in the united $tates is small in the united $tates even among the internal semi-colonies. Revolutionizing the economy in North Amerika after the seizure of power will involve getting rid of the whole decadent parasitic economy and replacing it with an economy where former Amerikans contribute to making the things they consume instead of taking from the world. It will also mean no unemployment.]

by KAO CHIEH

Lane No. 53 on Tapu Road, at the southern tip of the city limits, is just a mediocre housing estate in Shanghai. Its zigzagged cobblestone path is lined with brick houses in which some 1,200 families live.

Ten years ago Lane No. 53 was just another one of old Shanghai's famous slums, known by the local residents as a "living hell." Bordering on the rim of the old French Concession, it was separated from the "French Town" by a stinking ditch and barbed wire [,] at the other side of which were European-style houses with their own individual gardens. But on this side of the wire, people live in an entirely different world: mat hovels, doorless and windowless, pitched along the ditches, burying-ground and dumping-grounds, were their only shelter. Beggars, coolies, guttersnipes, unemployed workers and runaway peasants who came here in their flight from the famine of the countryside, were the chief settlers here, trying to keep body and soul together.

Here, the public utilities common in a big city were beyond their reach: no running water, no electric light, no paved roads and no sewers. Summer rain often flooded the place which was littered with garbage and nightsoil; mosquitoes and flies swarmed and epidemic diseases like cholera, smallpox and dysentery prevailed.

Today the entire area is tidy and pleasant with trees, shrubs and vines all around, and there are no mosquitoes and flies. In 1958, the tidal wave of the big leap forward swept over the place and created a stir among the housewives there, who organized themselves and set up workshops processing goods for the factories, established community dining halls, expanded and improved their nurseries, founded their own cultural centre, a health centre and a primary school run by themselves. . . . Not a single resident there is unemployed and every school-age child is at school.

And the story of Lane No. 53 is a typical story of what has been happening to the former slums of Shanghai.

End of the "Thin Knife Gang"

In the bad old days, Lane No. 53 was plagued by gangsters and special agents. At house No. 36, to be specific, lived a family named Ti. The eldest son of the family was beaten to death by a gang of ruffians known as the "Thin Knife Gang," headed by a local bully named Liu Tai-shan, because he protested when Liu and his men tried to molest his two young nieces. The father wanted to avenge the wrong done to his son but the police and the court turned a deaf ear to his appeals. Old Man Ti had sold and pawned nearly all of his belongings to bring a lawsuit against these murderers, but one year after the death of his son the killers were still at large and had not been brought to justice.

After liberation, a mass movement to suppress the counter-revolutionaries was launched which swept away the thugs, special agents and gangsters including the "Thin Knife Gang" and other local bullies of Lane No. 53. Liu Tai-shan, who had fled, was also caught by the People's Government in 1953 and brought to justice. On learning of the execution of Liu, Old Man Ti said: "The day I have been longing for has come. Now that the Communist Party has avenged my son's wrongs, I can die in peace."

Rickshawman Becomes Cadre

As soon as the local bullies were brought to justice and the reactionary pao chia (tithing) system was destroyed, the residents of Lane No. 53 founded their own local residents' committee to run their own affairs. It co-operated with the municipal government by registering the names of the unemployed, giving relief to the needy families, improving the living conditions there in an effort to wipe out the slums in the district. In the second year of liberation, when Shanghai was still in the period of economic rehabilitation, the municipal government extended the water works to Lane No. 53 and later installed electric lights and built roads and sewers for the local residents. In response to the call of the government, they also levelled the cesspools, cleared away tons of garbage and wiped out the mosquitoes and flies that once plagued the place. In two months, the "living hell" was turned into the cleanest spot in the district.

With the development of the nation's economic construction, the residents here all found jobs. Even those who had worked in the local residents' committee found jobs at other places and the committee had to be re-elected from time to time. At the fifth election, because all the male residents had been transferred to other work, six of the seven committee members elected were housewives and the seventh a man who happened to stay at home because he was an invalid.

The only one who had worked in the committee longer than the others was Old Man Li, in charge of relief work. But even he was employed in a state enterprise in 1957. "At 59, I got a real job; at 60 I became a member of the trade union . . ." are the words Old Man Li likes to tell anyone he comes across.

In a tidy grey cloth suit with a pair of black-rimmed spectacles, Old Man Li looks more like a school teacher than the rickshawman he had been for thirty years before liberation. Rickshaw pulling was then considered the most decent job among the inhabitants of Lane No. 53. But [p. 17] what a life this man with a "decent job" led! Every morning, nearly all the rickshawmen went out to pull their rickshaws on an empty stomach. Because Li had a large family to feed, he had to save his earnings for the family and himself ate very little all day long. Even so only two of his even children were alive at the time of liberation.

Because Li always pulled his rickshaw on an empty stomach, he felt weak and dizzy all the time. So he decided that he would have to strain as hard as he could to give his son some schooling, so that his son would succeed him as breadwinner for the family with better opportunities. But when he had managed to scrape up enough money to buy some stationery for his son and had sent him to the only private tutor in the locality, he found that the tuition fee was so high that he could not afford to pay it. His son, however, managed to learn to read as an eavesdropper outside the classroom of the tutor.

Old Man Li's wife, too, had to do odd jobs in order to help her husband keep the wolf from the door. When their son was ten years of age, Old Man Li and his wife decided to buy some coarse grain and make a "decent" meal to celebrate their son's birthday. But by the time they managed to bring some food home, the boy told his parents that he had already had his meal: kitchen garbage which was usually the hog food.

After liberation, Old Man Li's daughter found a job and later joined the Communist Party. She is now the secretary of the Party branch in a hosiery factory and a people's deputy to the district people's congress. His son has already completed his secondary school education and is now studying at the Shanghai Teachers' College, the first inhabitant of Lane No. 53 to become a college student.

Old Man Li is no longer a rickshawman and pedicab driver. Since his retirement he has been in charge of the public relief in that district.

At 58, he joined the Communist Party and became the first Party member in Lane No. 53. Soon afterwards, when the small library of the local residents which he was in charge of was taken over by the Chunghua Press, he became a staff member of this great publishing house.

After the Big Leap

The suffering of the wives of unemployed or semi-employed workers were beyond description. This was the common lot of the housewives of Lane No. 53 before liberation. But today they live very differently. Their husbands are all earning enough to support their families while all their children can go to school now. From mat hovels they have moved into fairly comfortable brick houses. In Shanghai as a whole more than 700,000 people have moved into new houses since liberation. And the housewives have got jobs too.

Out of the shops set up by the housewives was an establishment to weld zinc tubes for a battery works. At first, no one knew how to weld. So several of them were sent to the battery works to learn the technique. They wanted to learn it in a week so that they could then teach the others. When the worker in charge of welding in the factory saw that his new apprentices were all housewives, he felt a bit puzzled: "Didn't you women say that you want to master the skill in a week while it usually takes us three years to learn?" They replied: "Don't be silly. Under the leadership of Chairman Mao, there's nothing we housewives cannot do!"

And they learnt really hard, and managed to acquire the skill in a week as they had pledged. In six months, the number of workers at this workshop grew to more than fifty and its daily output went up from one or two thousand at the beginning to cover 80,000 pieces of guaranteed quality. This women's workshop of Lane No. 53 has become famous in this party of the city.

Since most of the housewives have gone to work, they also set up nurseries, laundries, community dining-rooms and public baths to serve local needs. Today more than 300 children of the lane are under the care of the nursery run by the local residents' committee.

An Interview

One evening last August, I had an interview with former members of the Lane No. 53 local residents' committee. Their own stories give you the best idea of the changes that have taken place in this part of Shanghai in the past ten years.

Who could imagine that all those present were the very persons who only ten years ago had lived on the verge of starvation, a life of humiliation and utter misery? Here is Chu Hen-chi, the chairman of the first residents' committee, who used to be a seaman, often without a job, and is now a cadre in the branch office of the district people's council. Here is Chin Kuo-fan, the chairman of the third residents' committee, who had worked as coppersmith, pedlar and pedicab driver before liberation and is now a lathe-operator. Here is Wang Chen-wu, a former pedicab drier, who became a steel worker during the leap forward.

Life for the other residents of Lane No. 53 is also changing rapidly. In 1953, 256 men were still unemployed and 99 households had to live entirely on government relief. Today all of them have found jobs while 575 housewives have also become either regular or seasonal workers. Only five of the 1,000-odd households now still receive government relief: three are aged widowers and the remaining two are disabled.

In 1949, the average monthly income for every person of the 135 households in one particular block there was only 8.99 yuan, just enough for a bare living. This year, however, it has gone up to 15.58 yuan. About half of these households now have bank deposits, 77 now have clocks, 48 have brought wrist-watches and 62 wear woollen clothes. Before liberation, these 135 households had 34 children studying in primary schools and 3 in secondary schools; today, they have 102 children in primary schools, 24 in secondary schools and two in colleges.

The story of Lane No. 53 is not an isolated one. It is characteristic of all the former slum areas of Shanghai and other cities as well, a typical picture of how the building of socialism buries the slums and misery of the past.

[End]