Original version

BBC World Service South Asia

Witness History

Podcasts

Factual: Life Stories

Factual: History

History as told by the people who were there

History as told by the people who were there.

BBC World Service Australasia

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa Schedule

BBC World Service East and Southern Africa

BBC World Service Online

BBC World Service schedule for American satellite radio and the Caribbean

BBC World Service Americas and the Caribbean

BBC World Service

BBC World Service News Internet

BBC World Service Europe and the Middle East

BBC World Service West and Central Africa Schedule

BBC World Service West and Central Africa

BBC World Service East Asia

Witness History: Leaving China to study after the Cultural Revolution

Documentaries

Leaving China to study after the Cultural Revolution

01/09/2023 GMT

BBC World Service - Witness History, Leaving China to study after the Cultural Revolution

We hear from one of the first students to study overseas after the Cultural Revolution

In the early 1980s, the first Chinese students ventured overseas to study after the Cultural Revolution. Writer Zha Jianying tells us her experience.

Launched in 1966 by Communist leader Mao Zedong, the Cultural Revolution plunged China into a decade of chaos. The education of millions of young people was disrupted and China was cut off from the rest of the world.  

When students first started venturing out, it was still a country feeling the after effects of the Cultural Revolution. 

Farhana Haider spoke to writer Zha Jianying in 2021. She was one of the first batch of Chinese students to arrive in the USA in the early 1980s.

(Photo: Zha Jianying. Credit: Simon Song/South China Morning Post via Getty Images)

Accessibility links

Programme Index

Witness History

Leaving China to study after the Cultural Revolution

Genres

Formats

Brand

BBC World Service South Asia

About BBC World Service