John Zheng

The First Day of Re-education in the Cultural Revolution

After a whole day of sweating and jolting in the back of a truck, twelve of us eighteen-year-olds were unloaded like burlap bags at Luoyi, a mini town in the middle of nowhere. We were told the truck couldn’t go further so we had to walk for two hours to our destination. When the rutted path pulled us there at sundown, villagers stood silently in front of their shacks, their eyes full of questions. 

a cicada nymph
crawls to the fence
to shed its shell
life is a cycle
full of changes

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About the Author

John Zheng has authored Enforced Rustication in the Chinese Cultural Revolution and published haibun and tanka prose in cho, Haibun Today, Southern Quarterly, and Spillway. His latest book is A Way of Looking, a collection of haibun and tanka prose.