A Map for the Missing(107)

In Iowa City and Charlottesville, I expected small-town dreariness and instead found community and friendship. In Iowa City, thanks to Matthew B. Kelley, Santiago Sanchez, Jeffery Boyd, Abigail Carney, Jing Jian, Kirsten Johnson, and David McDevitt. My gratitude to Sasha Khlemnik for keeping the workshop alive and helping me with all my many, many logistical struggles, to Deb West and Jan Zenisek for all the kindness, and to Jane Van Voorhis for her championing of emerging writers. I’d also like to thank the Truman Capote Foundation for financial support while I worked on this book. Thanks to all my friends in Charlottesville: Khaddafina Mbabazi, Suzie Eckl, Miriam Grossman, Jessica Walker, Juan E. Suarez, Helena Chung, Barbara Moriarty, Jeb Livingood, and Lisa Russ Sparr. And a special shout-out to Diana C. Brawley, whose therapy changed my entire life.

I’m so grateful to the work of many scholars whose research and writing helped me tremendously in writing this book: Yunxiang Yan, Chen Huiqin, Chen Shehong, Anita Chan, Wang He Sheng, Zuo Jiafu for research on customs, life, and the environment of rural China; Anne McLaren, Thomas B. Gold, Jonathan Unger, Thomas P. Bernstein, and Liyan Qin for their work on the sent-down youth; Jie Li for insight on the Shanghai longtang ecosystem; Gao Yue for the same in the Beijing hutongs; Emily Honig, Lisa Rofel, and Li Yu-ning for work on Chinese women in the 1960s through 1980s, and sexual mores; and Joseph Esherick, Andrew Walder, Yang Su, Jiangsui He, Kang Zhengguo, for their writing on life during the Cultural Revolution. The collection Some of Us, edited by Xueping Zhong, Wang Zheng, and Bai Di, was particularly helpful in writing about sent-down girls and Chinese women’s lives in the 1970s and 1980s, especially the essays by Naihua Zhang, Zhang Zhen, and Jiang Jin. I also relied on blogs from Wang Li, Ding Ning, Wang Xiaoni, Luo Yaqi, Cheng Yan, Li Ting, Li Yunshen, Qian Chang, Chen Xianqing, and countless other anonymous memoir bloggers for personal accounts of being sent down and taking the 1977 gaokao. Finally, thanks to He Xiaoxi and Ning Ayi for generously speaking with me in person about your experiences during this time. The gaokao exam and study questions came from 1977 archives from various provinces, but the Lu Xun quote did not appear on any test that year. Any and all remaining historical errors in this book are solely my own.

Thank you to all my friends who have provided support, both in writing and in life, in the years while I worked on this book: Daniel Agness, Paul Toribio, Amanuel Abebe, King Adjei-Frimpong, Sudarshana Chanda, Christopher Murphy, Alexandria S. Williams, Liu Ruoxi, Zhou Tianyao, Jing Hao Liong, Caitlin Spring, Alexandra Gray, Tianlang Shan, James Honsa, Allison Otis, Robert Burns, Austin Deyan, Brandon Liu, Ian Chan, Jodie Ha, Matthew Colford, and A. J. Sugarman. Special thanks to Will Toaspern, the first person who I confessed a writing aspiration to on a drunken and frigid Boston evening and who didn’t let me forget it on the hungover morning. Meredith Wheeler, there is no one I would rather travel the world with more. Lexie Frosh, I’m so glad you talked to me across the bathroom stalls that evening when we were eighteen.

My biggest resource in writing this book was my own family. I spent two magical years in China, made so by the hospitality of everyone there. Thank you for making me feel more at home than I ever thought possible, and for answering countless questions about the world of this book. Thanks to 念念姐姐, 宇阳哥哥, 涵涵弟弟, 辰辰姐姐, 晓军舅舅, 郭敏舅母, 小姥, 小姑爷, 大佬, 大姑爷, 三姨奶奶, 涂平, 美方舅母, and 俊明舅舅. And my 阿奶.

This book is for my grandma, who loved me very much and who I wish had lived to see it.

Thanks, last and first, goes to my family: my brother, Isaac, for the sweetness and advice beyond your years. And to my parents, for everything. I wrote this book thinking about all we couldn’t say.





About the Author


Belinda Huijuan Tang is a 2021 graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote Fellow and recipient of the Michener-Copernicus Fellowship. She holds a BA from Stanford University and was a 2019 work-study fellow at the Middlebury Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. She lived in China from 2016 to 2018 and, while there, received an MA from Peking University in Beijing. She currently lives in Los Angeles.