Emily Graf (Free University of Berlin), Sisi Dong (Minnan Normal University)

As a site of reading and of its various representations, rural China has its own contexts and aspects. Nevertheless, the rural was of great significance for various reading-related campaigns and political movements of the Maoist state. In the fifth session of the ReadChina lecture series "Practices of Reading in PRC", Emily Graf focuses on “barefoot doctors” in the countryside in relation to reading. By investigating their double roles as both the subject of reading acts and the depicted objects in the representations of reading, Graf shows how barefoot doctors engaged in world-making practices, and asserted their place in a newly mapped world of revolutionary health. Sisi Dong will then discuss the Campaign to Study Mao Zedong's Works in southwestern China's rural societies. Focusing on a small village in Fujian province, Dong analyses the concrete reading situations, related difficulties and corresponding methods to deal with them, as well as the historical impact of the campaign.