China had always had poets, writers, and revolutionaries—whom the authors Geremie Barmé and Linda Jaivin have called the “unbound feet” of Chinese history—but Chairman Mao was determined to enshrine the idea that “the individual is subordinate to the organization.” The Party, he declared, must “eradicate all tendencies towards disunity.” It organized people into work units and collective farms. Without a letter from your danwei (“work unit”), you couldn’t get married or divorced, you couldn’t buy a plane ticket or stay in a hotel, or, for that matter, visit another danwei. Most days, you
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