Chen Yonggui

Chen Yonggui (陈永贵, 1913-1986) can probably be best characterized as "Mr. Dazhai". Active in revolutionary work since 1942, he was the driving force behind the developments that turned Dazhai , Xiyang County, Shanxi Province, into a national model in 1964 with Mao Zedong’s call "In agriculture, learn from Dazhai". Active in revolutionary work since 1942, he headed the cooperativization movement in 1952. As chairman of the cooperative (later commune) and Party branch secretary, he was nominated as a model worker on the provincial (1957) and national levels (1964). Under his leadership, Dazhai was turned into a showcase of self-reliance, attracting scores of Party and State leaders, foreign visitors, workers, peasants, (young) revolutionaries, journalists and artists. Veteran designer Qian Daxin was one of the artists who immortalized Chen. When Deng Xiaoping eased Hua Guofeng out of office in the late 1970s (the poster below that shows the three of them together most certainly is apocryphal), the model status of Dazhai and Chen Yonggui increasingly came under a cloud. In 1983, Chen was rumoured to have been appointed advisor to one of Peking’s suburban state farms. Guo Jian, Yongyi Song & Yuan Zhou, Historical Dictionary of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (Lanham, etc.: The Scarecrow Press, Inc., 2006)