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.
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.
Land reform is one of the important events that affected the course of Chinese history in the twentieth century. Liao Yiwu spent two years on and off from the end of 2005 to complete <i>The Last Landlord</i>. The book comprises interviews with land reform survivors. As the author says, "Based on the degree of physical and mental weakening of the interviewees, I estimate that in another five or six years, the history of the land reform as orally told by those who witnessed it will be completely untraceable."
How many people were "killed," "imprisoned," and "controlled" in the whole "anti-revolution" campaign? Mao Zedong later said that 700,000 people were killed, 1.2 million were imprisoned, and 1.2 million were put under control. Mao's statement was naturally based on a report made in January 1954 by Xu Zirong, deputy minister of public security. Xu reported at the time that since the anti-revolution campaign, the country had arrested more than 262,000, of which "more than 712,000 counter-revolutionaries were killed, more than 12,900,000 were imprisoned, and 1,200,000 were put under control, and more than 380,000 were released through education because their crimes were not considered serious after their arrest." (3) Taking the figure of 712,000 executed, it already amounts to one and two-fourths thousandths of one percent of the country's 500 million people at that time. This figure is obviously much higher than the one-thousandth of a percent level originally envisioned by Mao Zedong.
The occupation of the Northeast was key to the CCP's success in seizing power in 1949. The author of this book, Yang Kuisong, is a professor and doctoral director of the Department of History at East China Normal University, and a researcher at the Institute of Modern History at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. This book describes the CCP's taking of the Northeast as well as the competition between the U.S. and the Soviet Union at that time. After reading it, you will understand: how the Soviet Union played a key role in the CCP's occupation of the Northeast.