The author of this book, Kong Lingping, who lives in Chongqing, was labeled as a rightist in his youth. He has lived through all the political movements of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). This book is based on the author's own experience, from birth to 2009.
In 1984, CCP’s reformist leader Hu Yaobang sent more than 1,300 officials to Dao County in Hunan Province to investigate mass killings that occurred in 1967 during the Cultural Revolution. Tan joined the team for part of its stay in Dao County. As a writer for a state publication, Tan gained a number of documents unearthed during the investigation and conducted interviews, based on which he wrote an article of 100,000 characters. His editors, however, said it could not be published because the political climate was changing with the start of the "bourgeois liberalization" campaign, which eventually led to Hu's fall. Tan decided to continue his investigation and traveled to Dao County many times to do follow-up interviews. Tan collected millions of words of information, including nearly 400 case studies, and interviewed almost all the key figures who agreed to be interviewed.
In 2010, Tan published Blood Myths: the 1967 Mass Killings in Dao County, Hunan Province during the Cultural Revolution through Hong Kong-based Tianxingjian Publishing House. This nine-volume work consists of 83 chapters and more than 500,000 characters. According to Tan's investigation, in the 66 days from August 13 to October 17, 1967, more than 9,000 villagers, including women and children, were killed or forced to commit suicide because they were wrongly accused of engaging in counter-revolutionary activities. More than 14,000 people were directly implicated in the killings, including 426 state cadres, 2,767 village officials, and 3,880 Communist Party members. Unlike works on the history of the Cultural Revolution previously published in China that focused on the persecution of intellectuals, this book presents the systematic violence suffered by villagers. The book contains not only the words and stories of a large number of those killed, but also those of the killers and others involved, enabling readers to develop an all-encompassing, multi-faceted understanding of this tragic event. According to Yang Jisheng (see separate entry), most of the information about the mass killings currently circulating at home and abroad originated from Tan's investigations and interviews.
The book was reprinted in 2011 and a revised edition was published in 2016, expanding the book to 700,000 words. In 2017, Oxford University Press published <i><a href="https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-killing-wind-9780190622527?cc=us&lang=en&">The Killing Wind: A Chinese County's Descent into Madness during the Cultural Revolution</a></i>, an edited and condensed (with Tan's permission) version of the book by Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian.
This film records the story of Liu Xianhong, a woman from rural Xingtai, Hebei, who contracted AIDS through a blood transfusion in the hospital and decided to publicly disclose her identity and sue the hospital. After fighting in the courts, she finally received compensation. This documentary demonstrates the surging awareness of civil rights in rural China at the grassroot level through depicting the experiences of several families and the concerted efforts of patients to form “care” groups to collectively defend their civil rights. Due to public awareness, media intervention, and legal aid, the government also introduced new policies to improve the situations of patients and their families.
This film is in Chinese with both English and Chinese subtitles.
On May 12, 2008, when the Great Sichuan Earthquake struck, writer Liao Yiwu began to write "Chronicle of the Great Earthquake", which was serialized in <i>Democratic China</i> and reprinted on several Chinese websites. It had a wide impact. Liao went to Dujiangyan, Juyuan Township, Yingxiu and other earthquake-hit areas to conduct on-the-spot interviews. His travels and writings during the earthquake were reported and translated by many mainstream media.
In April 2009, Taiwan's Asian Culture Publishing published and distributed the traditional Chinese edition of <i>Earthquake Insane Asylum</i>, a pictorial and textual factual record that preserves the living conditions of the people during of the Sichuan earthquake.
In 1957, two hundred teachers, students, and cadres from Kunming, Yunnan were among the hundreds of thousands of Chinese people labeled as “Rightists” for criticizing the Chinese Communist Party. They were sent to the East Wind State Farm, located in Mi-le County in Yunnan, for 21 years of “thought reform” in the countryside. These inmates witnessed the policies of the Great Leap Forward first-hand: they took part in deforestation, agricultural, and industrial projects in the countryside, which precipitated the Great Famine. Later, during the Cultural Revolution, their camp was visited by large groups of youths “sent down” from the cities, who worked on the farm with the “Rightists.” In 1978, these “Rightists” were finally rehabilitated and allowed to leave.
This documentary examines the policies and campaigns of the Maoist era through the eyes of those who were persecuted and exiled. Director Hu Jie pieces together this long and complex story through collecting dozens of extensive interviews with inmates as well as staff who served through decades of the camp’s existence. These people’s vivid memories and personal accounts shed light on the harrowing lifestyle of not only the two hundred “Rightists” of East Wind State Farm, but also the scores of dissidents and youths who experienced the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.
The author Wang Ming was an early member of the Communist Party of China (CCP) and the first of the "28 and a half Bolsheviks," who lost power after the Yan'an Rectification and were gradually marginalized by Mao. After the Yan'an Rectification, the Internationalists, led by him, lost power in the party. He was gradually ostracized by Mao Zedong, who expatriated him to the Soviet Union in 1956. In his book, Wang Ming recounts his decades-long feud with Mao. It provides a fascinating insight into the early history of the CCP.
The year 2003 was known as the birth of the Weiquan—the rights defense–movement, which was marked by the Sun Zhigang incident in Guangzhou. At the same time, a campaign began to get justice for Huang Jing, a teacher from Hunan who was sexually assaulted and killed by her boyfriend. The campaign involved the victim’s family, netizens, feminist scholars and activists, and lasted for several years. This documentary records the process of Huang Jing’s case from filing to post-judgement, and analyzes the broader issue of sexual violence against women in China.
The films in this series are in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
“In Search of My Homeland” is a collection of essays in three volumes written by Gao Ertai during his exile abroad. In this book, Gao looks back on his life. From his hometown of Gaochun, a small town in Jiangsu Province, to Suzhou, then to Lanzhou, Jiuquan, Dunhuang, Beijing, Chengdu, and the United States, Gao has undergone tremendous suffering, lost his home and family, and finally had to go into exile in a foreign country. Even though the work is widely regarded as having great literary merit, Gao uses real names and places, which makes the work a valuable historical document, especially for describing the Great Famine, and the brutal suppression of intellectual life during the Cultural Revolution at the Dunhuang research academy, which is one of China's most prestigious cultural institutions.
In an [interview](https://web.archive.org/web/20240130211408/https://www.aisixiang.com/data/80804.html), Gao explained why he wrote the book: "Searching for my homeland is nothing but searching for meaning.... Life is short and small, and its meaning can only be rooted in the external world and in the long history. My sense of drift and meaninglessness, that is, a feeling that the world has no order, history has no logic, and the individual has no home, seems to be a kind of destiny. My writing is nothing but a resistance to this destiny."
In 2004, a censored version of the first two volumes of this book was published by Huacheng Publishing House in Guangzhou; in 2011, an updated version was published by Beijing October Arts and Literature Publishing House, but still censored. The version uploaded to our archive is the traditional Chinese version of the complete three volumes published by Taiwan INK Publishing House in 2009.
This book is a complete record of the entire process of the forceful clearing of Tiananmen Square in 1989, which began at noon on June 3, 1989, and ended at 10:00 a.m. on June 4th. The author, Wu Renhua, who experienced the June Fourth Incident, describes some of the important events and characters in the book. For example, how Liu Xiaobo, Hou Dejian and other "Four Gentlemen" contacted and negotiated with the PLA martial law forces; how the tanks of the six departments chased and crushed the evacuating students; and how the medical staff put their own lives at risk to save the wounded in the rain of bullets and bullets. The first draft of this book was completed in May 1990, according to Wu Renhua's own account. He fled the mainland in 1992. In May 2007, he published *Inside the Bloody Clearance of Tiananmen Square* in Los Angeles. This was his first monograph on June Fourth. The book has since been updated and reprinted several times.
The Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989 and the subsequent mass arrests and purges created tens of thousands of June Fourth victims. Among them were June Fourth victims who fell into a pool of blood, the June Fourth disabled who were shot, the families of the June Fourth victims and the severely disabled, the June Fourth prisoners of conscience who were sentenced to imprisonment or re-education-through-labor, and the June Fourth victims who were subjected to other political persecution. On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of June Fourth, as part of Chinese civil society's efforts to recover the historical truth and rebuild historical memory, this report gives a basic description of the suffering of the June Fourth victims and their arduous journey over the past 20 years. It also analyzes the systemic factors that have contributed to the victims' suffering and proposes corresponding recommendations on how to change their living conditions.
This diary took eighteen years to finalize. Based on a first draft from 1990-1991, it is a complete account of the author's experiences at that time: from his initial participation in the formation of the Preparatory Committee of Beijing University (Beida) to his election as the President of Beida’s Union and as the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Forum. It continues up to the time of the evacuation vote by presidency of Forum in the early morning of June 4 and includes other tragic and poignant scenes of history.
Purchase link:https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010436793
Wang Lihong is a Beijing netizen, civilian journalist, and public service volunteer. Wang was accused of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble” for supporting three netizens in Fujian. On August 12, 2011, the case was heard for the first time in the Wenyuhe Court of the People's Court of Chaoyang District, Beijing. This film includes interviews with Wang Lihong's relatives, friends, defense lawyers and netizens, and records the historical scene of onlookers in the courts.
Ai Xiaoming’s film “Postcard,” also released in 2011, elaborates Wang Lihong’s activism in broader strokes, while “Let the Sunshine Reach the Earth” focuses on the process of her trial.
This film is in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
"Li Peng's June 4 Diary" was published by Bao Park, the son of Bao Tong, the political secretary of former CCP General Secretary Zhao Ziyang. Based on a manuscript of a diary allegedly kept by Li Peng during the June 4 Tiananmen Square incident, the book was originally scheduled to be published in Hong Kong by New Century Press on June 22, 2010. At the time of the June 4, 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, Li Peng was a member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China Central Committee (CCP Central Committee) and the Premier of the State Council. The diary covers the period from April 15, 1989 to June 24, 1989, when Li Peng was a member of the Politburo Standing Committee and Premier of the State Council. Bao Park said that, apart from converting the diary from the original simplified Chinese characters to traditional Chinese characters, "nothing will be added, nothing will be subtracted, and nothing will be changed" in the book. The book was later published in the United States.
"Life and Death In Shanghai" (also known as "Shen Jiang Meng Hui") is an autobiography by female writer Zheng Nian. First published in English in 1986, it was subsequently translated into various languages and published in various countries. In the book, Zheng Nian recounts her personal experiences from the beginning of the Cultural Revolution to her departure from China in the early 1980s. After her release from prison in 1973, she learned that, shortly after her imprisonment, her only daughter, Zheng Meiping, had been persecuted and had died. She then tried to find out the cause of her daughter's death. The book traces how the ideals of intellectuals were crushed by politics.
On August 8, 1966, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China adopted the "Sixteen Articles" of the Cultural Revolution. Soon after, Liu Wenhui, a young mechanic in Shanghai who had been labeled as a Rightist in 1957, wrote pamphlets and leaflets clearly opposing the Cultural Revolution, the "Sixteen Articles," authoritarianism, and tyranny. Liu was arrested on November 26 of that year. Four months later, he was executed for "counter-revolutionary crimes." Liu Wenhui became the first person known to have been publicly shot for opposing the Cultural Revolution. The author of this book, Liu Wenzhong, was Liu Wenhui's co-defendant and survived thirteen years in prison. In this autobiography, Liu Wenzhong describes in detail not only Liu Wenhui's ideology but also how he was killed by the tyrannical government.
This book contains a number of articles in memory of Lin Zhao. It concerns the death of Lin Zhao as well as Lin Zhao's love, pursuits, and disillusionment. This book was published by Changjiang Literature and Art Publishing House in 2000.
The author of this book was a reporter for "Sing Tao Daily" and was stationed in Beijing at the end of April 1989 to cover the democracy movement. The book is divided into six main parts: Square Facts records the course of the 1989 democracy movement, from the author's visit to Beijing in April to the early morning of June 4, when she and the masses were evacuated from Tiananmen Square. The second part concerns post-hijacking memories, which are some of the author's interviews from 1989. The third part concerns the interviews. The author had interviewed 7 student leaders and intellectuals that year. The leaders told her the reasons why they devoted themselves to the student movement. The fourth part is about the rest of the author's life, from June 4 to December 1990. The author has recorded some fragments of her speeches to the secondary school students in Hong Kong. Some of them are sentimental, some of them are confessional, and all of them are sincere and heartfelt. The fifth part is "Twenty Years of Wounds," which is a reminiscence written by the author on the 20th anniversary of June Fourth. The sixth part is about the grassroots of June 4. These grassroots actors have been pretty much forgotten. The author wanted to write a biography of the grassroots of June 4 in order to fill in gaps in history.
The author of this book, Mu Xin, was an early member of the CPC and served as chief editor of "Guangming Daily" in the 1950s. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, he was a member of the Central Committee's Cultural Revolutionary Group. In 1967, he was defeated and imprisoned in the Imperial Prison (Qincheng Prison). This book was published in Hong Kong in 1997. Because of the author's status, this book is helpful for understanding high-level circumstances during the pre-Cultural Revolution and early Cultural Revolution period.
The author was a key member of the 1989 pro-democracy movement when he was teaching at the Chinese University of Political Science and Law. After the June 4 massacre, he went into exile. Currently, he has settled in Taiwan, where he teaches a course on the truth of the June Fourth Incident at Soochow University and National Chung Cheng University. Wu Renhua has published several books related to the June Fourth Incident. With a master's degree in Classical Literature from Peking University, he has written a book on June 4 that emphasizes the reliability of the sources of information. This book records the major events that happened every day during the June 4 period (April 15th to June 9th).