The sent-down, rusticated, or educated youth (Chinese: 下乡青年), also known as the zhiqing, were the young people who—beginning in the 1950s until the end of the Cultural Revolution, willingly or under coercion—left the urban districts of the People's Republic of China to live and work in rural areas as part of the "Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement".
The vast majority of young people who went to the rural communities had received primary to secondary school education, and only a small minority had matriculated to the post-secondary or university level.