Execution of Mayor Yin

The Execution of Mayor Yin (Chinese: 尹縣長; pinyin: Yǐn xiànzhǎng) is a 1978 collection of short stories by Chen Ruoxi, based on her experiences in Mainland China during the 1960s and 1970s before she came to Taiwan.

The collection was published in English under the title The Execution of Mayor Yin and Other Stories from the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1978. Tr. by Nancy Ing and Howard Goldblatt. The English language translation attained wide recognition, as its publication occurred at a time when U.S. President Richard Nixon's historic visit to China, the death of Mao Tse-tung, and the thaw in diplomatic relations between the U.S. and China all generated widespread interest in China in the United States. A revised edition of the book with a new introduction by Perry Link was re-issued by Indiana University Press in 2004.

The Execution of Mayor Yin contains stories set during the period of the Cultural Revolution in China, approximately 1965-1975.

Major themes of the stories in the collection include freedom vs. conformity, disillusion, bewilderment, disgust, and being "out of place."

Major motifs include the steady stream of political campaigns and the Cult of Mao, as well as many quintessential features of life in China and of Chinese culture.

A leitmotif running through the stories is the United States. Chen Ruoxi lived in the United States for a period, and many of the characters in her stories remark on contrasts between their experiences in the United States and in China, as well as between their expectations of life in the "new" China and what they observe of the "real" China.

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