Take the Dazhai Road

Artist: Qian Daxin

Year: 1965

Publisher: Shanghai People's Fine Art Publishing House

Size (mm): 530x770

Condition: very good, folded as issued

Dazhai was a production brigade located in the mountains of Shanxi, and hailed by Mao as a nationwide model of the principle ziligengsheng (self-reliance), under the slogan 'In agriculture, learn from Dazhai'. With reported huge increases in yields, intensive collective working methods were used to create new irrigation methods and for terracing fields on the steep mountainsides (see background to image). The first leader of Dazhai was the peasant Chen Yonggui (also the subject of many of the Dazhai posters including this one), who rose dramatically to the appointment of vice-premier in 1975, before losing his post in 1980 at the time of the official discrediting of the Dazhai model.