WHINES AND MISDEMEANORS...

...or the "victims" of socialism in their own words

"...I discovered some unpleasant truth about volunteering: in China it always turned out this way. When you first volunteered, the leaders would be agreeably surprised and would praise you. Pretty soon, however, it became an obligation. They expected you to do it. But that was not the worst. The leaders would also use your example to put pressure on others and make everybody 'volunteer.'" Rae Yang, Spider Eaters, p. 4.


Those commie bastards! When will they learn that some people enjoy the praise that comes with volunteering but don't actually want to do the work that comes with volunteering.

Let's back up. This book is a memoir--actually it's listed on the back as "Literature/Asian Studies/Gender Studies"...and doesn't literature mean fiction?--of the author who grew up in socialist China. The experince she's referring to above is in 1968. Yang, who grew up in Beijing, volunteered to go to the countryside during the Cultural Revolution. She ended up in a small village of Manchuria called Cold Spring. Before three months was up she volunteered again and went to work at the village's pig farm.

Lemme see if I understand this...When people would volunteer for certain tasks those volunteers would be upheld and promoted as models to encourage other people to do the same? And if the posts of certain tasks hadn't been fufilled there would be some pressure put on people step up to fill those roles. Oh the humanity...

-Out-