The Wire

“Socialism is Great” – that’s the name of a song workers in China had to sing every year on the first of July. It’s also the name of a new book by Chinese Journalist Lijia Zhang. Lijia’s fascinating memoir of working in a factory and growing up in China in the lead-up to the Tiananmen Square massacre in 1989 has just been published in Australia. Catherine Zengerer caught up with Lijia, who was here for the Melbourne Writer’s Festival. She told Catherine she was was encouraged to write her memoir by friends who had assumed she came from less humble beginnings… Socialism is Great! is published by the Univeristy of Western Australia Press