Shangshan xiaxiang, or the rustication of urban youth, shaped the lives of seventeen million Chinese citizens in the Mao era and has remained a controversial topic today. The author is both a participant in and a persistent observer of this historical drama. Rejecting the statist view which extols the program as part of the Chinese nation’s pursuit of a “rich country with a strong military,” he relates the rise and fall of xiaxiang to the radical, and often counterproductive, social reform and convulsive economic experimentation under Chairman Mao. He shows that, like all major social and economic experiments in the Mao era, the costs of xiaxiang far outweighs its benefit.