Under the Hawthorn Tree

A bestseller in China with more than 1 million copies sold.

Yichang municipality, Hubei province, China, early 1970s. High-school student Jingqiu is one of many educated urban youth sent to the countryside to be re-educated under a dictate from Chairman Mao. Jing's father is a political prisoner somewhere in China, and her mother, a former teacher branded as a capitalist, is now reduced to menial work to support Jing and her two younger siblings. When Jing arrives with a group at Xiping vill...