Writing The Peasant History:on The Modern Chinese Peasants’ Autobiographies

Literature on Chinese ancient history and biography is traditionally abundant, whereas few of them ever focus on Chinese peasants. When modern history took hold in China, it raised hash criticisms on this tendency. Meanwhile, intellectuals outside the historical academia have begun to reconsider the historical position of peasants.In1934, The Literature Department of the North China Christian Rural Service Union had published "The Christian Farmer (Tianjia Banyuebao)", which enjoyed a wide readership in the rural area. In1940, the Tianjia invited the rural readers to compose their own autobiographies, which were later published as "Autobiographies of Tianjia’s Readers". The book contained more than a hundred autobiographies, all of which were written by plain and anonymous peasants. The book was heavily influenced by the biography favor of1930s, which is also part of the genealogy of folk writing. Those peasant writers, who were intellectuals in the rural area, had exhibited a distinct writing strategy.