The strikers at the Tianwang textile factory had also expressed their indignation in terms of betrayed idealism as they chanted the slogans of the Revolution and sang ‘The Internationale’. Their solidarity with each other, for as long as they could maintain it, was the last expression of a shared belief that Revolutionary China had, indeed, belonged to the workers and peasants. Now they didn’t know when they had been betrayed. Had it never been real, their ownership? Or had it once been real and now was real no longer? These things could be debated. An incontestable truth, on the other hand, was that someone had stolen the factory they thought of as theirs, banishing them to the outer edge of a society that showed no sign of making room for them.