When I Was in Xia Village

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"When I Was in Xia Village" was a short story written in 1940 by Ding Ling, a Chinese writer. The story was originally published in June 1941 in China's Culture , a Yan'an journal, which tells the story of a young woman named Zhen Zhen, who was abducted and forced into sexual servitude by the invading Japanese. She later worked as a spy for the Chinese Communist Party as a Japanese army prostitute to collect wartime information. Zhen Zhen was treated differently with honor, pity, and disdain by her fellow villagers, as well as by Party members upon her return to Xia village.

Written during the Second Sino-Japanese War, the story is generally read as both a national defense narrative and a revelation of the dark side of communist revolutionary experience. Ding Ling subtly criticized the societal pressures placed on women in a 1940s revolutionary context. Furthermore, the story speaks to the inconsistencies between the Party's official rhetoric of women's liberation and its exploitation of women's sexuality in the name of revolution.

During the anti-rightist campaign in the late 1950s, the story was attacked for discrediting the Party and "glorifying" prostitution. It was further criticized as a blatant example of Ding Ling's own ideological problems and sexual immorality, and she was finally expelled from the Party before being "rehabilitated" in 1978.