Page 206 - updated on July

Yu Jihui: “A Stinking Old Ninth – A Tale of the Coal Capital” (updated on July 2020)

Big Bachelor! Only those women whom couldn’t be

married off for certain reasons could marry a Big

Bachelor!

The last reason, but not the least, was that I was

a Stinking Old Ninth. A Stinking Old Ninth referred

to intellectuals. In Mao’s China, there were Nine

Black Categories. They were: Landlords, rich

farmers, anti-revolutionaries, bad influences, right-

wingers, traitors, spies, capitalist roaders and

(ninth) intellectuals. University graduates were, no

doubt, intellectuals. They came as the ninth in the

Nine Black Categories. So they were called Stinking

Old Ninth. The first eight Categories were class

enemies, while the ninth was next to class enemy.

Because they were only one step away from class

enemy, they were considered to stink. Under Mao’s

leadership, Chinese people were paying special

attention to the class struggle. The first eight

203