Sexual impulses in the 1970s: Handwritten copies circulated among the people

To this day, the author remains a mystery.

The story of being arrested for kissing in the street is something few would believe now, but it truly happened thirty years ago. In the 1970s, love was a serious "contraband," and sex was even more so. Yet, in such an era, a "pornographic" handwritten book called *The Heart of a Young Girl* circulated widely. It was a widely available and accessible sex education text.

Young people would bear a heavy moral burden, even facing imprisonment, just to read it. Even today, more than thirty years later, films like *Lust, Caution*, with explicit sex scenes, are shown in theaters, and women in breast augmentation advertisements can pose provocatively for television viewers at any time. This is no longer an era where sex is taboo; the mystique surrounding *The Heart of a Young Girl* has gradually faded. People have discovered that its descriptions, in fact, did not exceed the physiological and hygiene knowledge introduced in *The Barefoot Doctor's Manual*.

Copying *The Heart of a Young Girl* until his hands were swollen:

*The Heart of a Young Girl*, also known as *Manna's Memoirs*, tells the story of a love triangle between the protagonist Manna, her cousin Shaohua, and her classmate Lin Tao. Manna has uncontrollable sexual impulses and a deep longing for men, both sexually and emotionally. *The Heart of a Young Girl* began circulating among the public in the 1970s.

Shanghai scholar Zhu Da has read more than a dozen versions of *The Heart of a Young Girl*, his first encounter being in 1974. “I was still in middle school at the time, and I don’t quite remember who delivered it to me. After receiving the book, I immediately put on the cover of Mao’s Selected Works, which would be safer.”

“We read very quickly back then. Usually, around eight o’clock in the evening, one person would deliver the book, and another person would pick it up at eight o’clock the next morning. I often only had twelve hours to read. Under the light of a 15-watt bulb, I could always manage to skim through the whole book before midnight, and then use the remaining time to read some important chapters carefully. When I handed over the book of over a million words at dawn, it felt like handing over an empty purse. I was exhausted, but I felt very happy.” The book Zhu Dake read, *The Heart of a Young Girl*, was not long, less than ten thousand words. His usual reading speed allowed him to finish the whole book in a short time.

"I didn't intend to copy 'The Heart of a Young Girl' at the time. Some classmates secretly copied it, even to the point of their hands swelling. However, not many people copied 'The Heart of a Young Girl,' and most just read it and that was it. A large portion copied 'Three Hundred Tang Poems' and Wang Li's 'Poetic Rules,' even though these books were contraband, belonging to 'feudal, capitalist, and revisionist' works."

Among the handwritten copies at the time, "The Heart of a Young Girl" was the only one that directly described sexual acts and genitals, and was even called "the first obscene book of the Cultural Revolution," which made Zhu Dake feel like he had tasted forbidden fruit. "In those days, a couple dating on the street would be arrested. Kissing and hugging were considered hooliganism in public and were serious violations of the law. Reading 'The Heart of a Young Girl' was an even more risky act. If caught, one would be severely punished. Despite this, everyone dared to take the risk; the desires of adolescence could not be suppressed."

In Zhu Dake's middle school, he believed that most people had read "The Heart of a Young Girl," as it was widely circulated, because everyone understood the meaning of "Manna." However, *The Heart of a Young Girl* did not become widely known. Zhang Baorui, the author of the Cultural Revolution handwritten copies of *Plum Blossom Shoes* and *A Pair of Embroidered Shoes*, was working as a furnace operator at the Beijing Ferroalloy Plant at the time and had not read *The Heart of a Young Girl*. However, he recounted a detail: "When I was on night shift at the factory, I noticed some people liked to chat in secluded spots in the break room. Later, I found out they were talking about *The Heart of a Young Girl*. I was quite traditional at the time, and as the production foreman, I even stepped in to stop them."

These attempts to stop them did not prevent the handwritten copies from being passed down and distributed to a wider audience. "The handwritten copy was taken to the grasslands by my brother who was working in the countryside in Inner Mongolia, to Xinjiang by my cousin who was serving in the army in Northwest China, to the Northeast Military Reclamation Area, and to the Loess Plateau by my classmates who were working in the countryside in Shanxi and Shaanxi..." *The Heart of a Young Girl* caused a sensation at the time. In early 1975, Yao Wenyuan even issued an order to "encircle and suppress 'Cultural Revolution' handwritten copies"

due to the widespread circulation of this "obscene" handwritten copy.

However, the suppression did not hinder the spread of *The Heart of a Young Girl*; in fact, it made more people aware of the book. Many people were eager to read it and needed it.

"No era has established such a profound connection between books and life as ours." Zhu Dake's several group fights during middle school were not for anything else, but simply because one person wouldn't return another's book. They even formed a gang over this. The most intense fight involved knives, and the other person fled. The next day, the book was returned by a middleman.

"It was a time of book scarcity. Bookstores were open, but they only sold Mao Zedong's Selected Works. Publicly published works included *The Bright Sunny Day*, *The Golden Road*, and *The Battle of the Xisha Islands*, as well as Lu Xun's novels like *Kong Yiji* and *The True Story of Ah Q*, and eight model operas," Zhang Baorui believes. He

argues that the lack of books available was one reason for the popularity of handwritten copies. However, for the author Moro, *The Heart of a Young Girl* brought more joy than anything else—the joy of knowledge dissemination. Moro spent his two years of high school (high school was a two-year program at the time) in a remote town. In that town, he had little access to outside information, and the books he could read were extremely limited. He only encountered two kinds of handwritten copies: *Selected Poems of Chen Yi* and *The Heart of a Young Girl*. Moro still considers it strange that *The Heart of a Young Girl* even reached his small town.

The version Moro read was very short, less than 5,000 words. "Someone deleted all the extraneous details, only copying the most direct sexual descriptions. When I came across this content, I was a little uneasy and very careful, trying my best not to let the teacher know. It was 1978 then, and I no longer felt any fear." *The Heart of a Young Girl* was the first introductory book about sex that Moro encountered. "Back then, because of the strict regulations, sexual knowledge couldn't be disseminated normally, so that work essentially served as an introduction to sexual knowledge. The version I read was copied from a student's notebook. After reading it, I never thought of copying it down; I still felt the literary quality was too poor."

*The Heart of a Young Girl* was circulated as pornography, but Moro believes it wasn't exactly pornography. In *The Heart of a Young Girl*, it also depicts the unnecessary panic caused by young people's lack of understanding of sex, which was the reality at the time.

In *The Heart of a Young Girl*, after Shaohua and Manna embrace, they both feel that it's all over—Manna is going to get pregnant. In a lecture, Moro recounted a passage from the novel *The Heart of a Young Girl* that he had read: "They hugged once while fully clothed and thought she was going to get pregnant, which terrified them. Later, they thought about it carefully. Shaohua said that while they were clothed, they probably wouldn't get pregnant, but if they were naked and hugging like that, 'breathing in close contact,' they might get pregnant. He interpreted 'breathing in close contact' as the navels, both of their navels, being able to 'breathe.' After that, every time they went on a date, Manna would find two pain-relieving plasters, apply one to herself first, and then apply one to Shaohua at the meeting place. Then they would hug each other, enjoying this intimate pleasure. Later, they had sex. Perhaps they thought that now that their navels were sealed shut, there was no 'breathing' space, so they wouldn't get pregnant, and there wouldn't be any unbearable consequences."

In reality, sex education at that time was essentially stagnant. In 1973, Premier Zhou Enlai inquired with relevant department heads about the implementation of sex education. He also requested that middle school textbooks not only include this chapter but also that large, colorful illustrations of male and female genitalia be used during lectures for vivid explanation. Although the second-year middle school textbook included a chapter on "Reproductive Organs" with illustrations, it was not taught in most middle schools.

The author's identity remains unclear .

Because of repeated copying and circulation among the public, changes to the plot were inevitable, and even the versions read by each person differed significantly. Comparing more than a dozen versions, there are obvious marks of the times. Shirts popular in the 1980s appear in the description of the protagonist Manna's clothing. The titles are also varied, including "The Heart of a Young Girl," "Manna's Memoirs," "Meiru's Memoirs," and "Me and My Cousin." However, some versions do not have titles or simply have a book cover.

In 2004, Bai Shihong, who was rumored to be publishing "The Heart of a Young Girl," obtained a version from Danish journalist Ye Fengying. Regarding the origin of this "The Heart of a Young Girl," the book explains that it was material confessed by the author "Xiao Si" while in prison, which was later copied and eventually named "The Heart of a Young Girl." It later became a "poisonous weed" during the Cultural Revolution.

However, Zhu Dake believes that *The Heart of a Young Girl* cannot be a "confession." "From my decades of experience in literary research, its text doesn't resemble a confession; *The Heart of a Young Girl* still possesses a certain literary quality." "As for the book itself, it is a low-grade erotic literature, directly describing sexual life; however, during the Cultural Revolution, it had a rebellious progressive aspect. It was a dismantling and rebellion against ideology, a rebellion against the entire social ideology, and a challenge to a repressive society."

Moro once wrote a preface for Bai Shihong's edited version. "At that time, Moro and Yu Jie were very popular, and Bai Shihong found Moro through a friend, hoping he could write a preface. At that time, Moro's preface could directly boost sales." Zhou Qing told reporters that in the preface, Moro highly praised *The Heart of a Young Girl*, believing that its purpose was not to glorify so-called pornography, but to express the absurdity caused by sexual taboos and the spiritual harm and human distortion they brought to the public. Moro further speculated that the author likely possessed rich humanistic cultural resources, much like Zhang Zhongxiao, Huang Xiang, Zhao Yifan, and Bei Dao, and was among the most cultured and thoughtful individuals of the time. "This preface caused considerable controversy at the time, with many believing it overly praised a work of pornography and was unreliable. Opinions on *The Heart of a Young Girl* were polarized."

However, the author's identity and motives remain a mystery of considerable curiosity for both sides. "If we had found the author back then, it might have been a good thing, or it might not have been," Zhou Qing said, having read both versions of *The Second Handshake*. "The handwritten version of *The Second Handshake* was only eight to ten thousand words, but Zhang Yang later expanded it to hundreds of thousands of words. If the author of *The Heart of a Young Girl* were still alive, I don't know how she would have expanded it, but I'm certain the audience's interest would have been greatly diminished. The ambiguity of sex has gradually disappeared; we even see advertisements featuring exposed bodies and unintentionally suggestive sexual content on television every day."

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