Page 208 - updated on July

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

was about thirty years old for example. He could

make much more money than a lecturer of a

university or an engineer in a factory who were forty

years old. In 1968, when the great proletarian

cultural revolution was on the rise, Mao ordered the

PLA men to take over all the realms of the

superstructure, including schools. The young

unmarried PLA officers became girls’ first target to

run after. They took it as a great honor to have a PLA

officer as their husband.

Their second choice was industrial workers, who

enjoyed special high social position too. In 1968,

they went into all state-owned enterprises with great

strength and vigour to be leaders. Mao openly said

that the working class must lead everything. If a girl

couldn’t find a PLA officer as her fiancé, she would

try to run after a worker. As a Stinking Old Ninth, I

was at the bottom of the social ladder. I was looked

205