06: Ian Matchett on ‘Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village’ by William H. Hinton
The whole people became politicized, became conscious, became active, and finally did indeed become capable of transforming their world, and, in that process, of still further transforming themselves.
When times are difficult we often look to the past for inspiration. Too often, however, these accounts share only the big moments and do little to inform us about the day-to-day action and work of changing the world. We learn that impossible feats were attempted, and at times even accomplished, but we rarely get a sense of what it looks like when people take history into their hands.
Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village is a history that explores one of those massive feats: Land Reform in 1940’s China. William Hinton was teaching English at a local school when communist forces defeated the nationalists who had upheld the centuries old landlord system. He sought to document the communist led process of land reform by joining in the lives and labor of the local town of Longbow. However, instead of giving us an appraisal of party policy, or the debate around Mao’s leadership, Hinton shares the specific process that this single 1,000-person village undertook in order to first break the landlord system, and then slowly redistribute land and labor. It is a narrative of struggle, but at the profoundly human level. The party cadre are flawed people, just like the villagers they are working alongside. The reader sees the process of trying to host public meetings, holding community accountable, motivating, reprimanding, weighing solutions and problems—in short, the work of transforming an ideal into a lived reality.
It was not Mao who made land reform in this small town, it was the relationship between cadre and the people: through debate, argument, revenge, failure, collaboration and struggle. They succeeded not because they were perfect people, but because they committed to a way of relating to each other and a common goal. Through this process they changed both themselves and their world. Here change becomes not a personal journey to enlightenment, but a radical, collective, dialectical process.
In 2025, confronted as we are with contradiction and uncertainty, narratives like this offer us a window into our own potential. We are reminded of the ways that working people have already changed the world so many times and stood up to so many challenges. Is it so hard to imagine we can do so again?
Every revolution creates new words. The Chinese Revolution created a whole new vocabulary. A most important word in this vocabulary was fanshen. Literally, it means “to turn the body,” or “to turn over.” To China's hundreds of millions of landless and land-poor peasants it meant to stand up, to throw off the landlord yoke, to gain land, stock, implements, and houses. But it meant much more than this. …It meant to enter a new world. That is why this book is called Fanshen. It is the story of how the peasants of Long Bow Village built a new world.
– Ian, October 2025
Ian Matchett is a queer socialist midwestern painter based in Detroit, Michigan since 2014. He attended University of Michigan and received degrees in Political Science and Studio Art. His work is primarily focused on the humanity and drives of political organizers and working people. It explores what motivates someone to join a cause, and see themselves in collective history; and how understandings of leadership, memory, and perception can shape that engagement. His work draws inspiration from the social realist tradition and his experiences as a community organizer. He is currently the Director of Swords into Plowshares Gallery, and an Adjunct Professor at the College for Creative Studies.
