You might box [Fanshen] up as a documentary [of the Chinese agrarian reform movement], or as a didactic piece on the lines of Brecht's The Measures Taken: but, in this case, formal classification is no more helpful than using a learned medical term to explain away a virus…. Literally fanshen means "to turn the body": in the revolutionary vocabulary this means putting an end to feudalism—not only by expropriation of property, but by education, judicial reform, sexual equality, the whole process which Chekhov described as "casting out the slave in oneself".

There are two stock varieties of revolutionary drama: those that salute the glorious overthrow of the oppressors, and those that show the new regime going on to exceed the iniquities of the old. The point about Fanshen is that it bypasses this futile cycle, and shows a community that does not collapse into cynicism and corruption...