I know many people repeatedly talked about the hard life between 1949 and 1976. But after the death of Mao, life has been getting better and better.
You can deny “十年黃金歲月”. But my home province was improved a lot between 1911 and 1949, and the college that I went was built around 1930. The best time of my college was around 1945 since many famous professors were faculty there.