Chinese bourgeoisie. We lost much of our land during agrarian reform in the Civil War. In many ways, the point of the Communist Revolution was to encourage the landless to confiscate property from the landlords - violently and otherwise. The idea of an ideological purge was cemented during the Cultural Revolution. Everywhere in the Chinese countryside, graffitied Maoist slogans remain unwashed. Blood on the walls.

Chinese farmers now enjoy some of the best social security nets and tax benefits of any other agrarian population in the world. Even as urban migration obviously continues to soar, a lot of young people seem to be returning to village life, bringing the things they learned in the city with them. A conversation about the past feels inevitable, yet it’s something us Chinese avoid so well.