The Sent-down Movement: Navigating Collective Memories of Trauma in Contemporary China

The sent-down movement in the 1960s and 1970s China influences a generation of urban youths. Despite the lively discussion of the movement in the two decades since its end, the collective memory of the movement has almost disappeared from public view in contemporary China in the twenty-first century. Through interviews and digital ethnography, this paper explores what specific factors most interrupted the inheritance and spread of collective memory of the sent-down movement from a transgenerational perspective. From the sent-down youth to their children and grandchildren, collective memory does not simply develop undistorted. Instead, the personal experience of each generation, the relationships within and between their respective communities, and the bigger pictures painted of social change all play a crucial role. The complexity of the memory inheritance process calls into question our assumptions about memory, agency, and oblivion.