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Book
Collected Papers of Wu Yisan (1)
Writer Wu Yisan is the founder of Hong Kong's May 7 Society, an organization dedicated to the collection, research and publishing of everything related to the anti-rightist campaign in 1957，to restore and present the truth about a period of history characterized by severe persecution of remedial intellectuals. Over the years, Mr. Wu has devoted himself to compiling The Dictionary of Names of 1957 Victims. As the Chief Editor of The Hong Kong May 7 Society Publishing House, he also published The Biography of the Rightists of the May 7.
This book is a collection of his political papers, comprising more than 50 published and unpublished essays primarily written between 2004 and 2009, criticizing CCP from various perspectives, including history, current affairs, and culture.
Book
Collected Papers of Wu Yisan (2)
Writer Wu Yisan is the founder of Hong Kong Five-Seven Society, an organization established in 2007 and dedicated to the collection, research and publishing of everything related to the Anti-Rightist campaign in 1957, to restore and present the truth about a period of history characterized by severe persecution of intellectuals. Over the years, Mr. Wu has devoted himself to compiling *[The Dictionary of Names of 1957 Victims](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/1957%E5%B9%B4%E5%8F%97%E9%9A%BE%E8%80%85%E5%A7%93%E5%90%8D%E5%A4%A7%E8%BE%9E%E5%85%B8)*. As the Chief Editor of The Hong Kong Five-Seven Society Publishing House, he also published *The Biographies of the 1957 Rightists* and *[New Biographies of the 1957 Rightists](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E2%80%9C%E4%BA%94%E4%B8%83%E2%80%9D%E5%8F%B3%E6%B4%BE%E5%88%97%E4%BC%A0%EF%BC%88%E4%B8%8A%EF%BC%89)*.
This book is a collection of Wu’s political essays, including nearly one hundred of his published and unpublished essays and speeches between 1999 and 2017, including historical and current affairs analyses, with an emphasis on commentaries of persecuted intellectuals and political dissidents. These people are often called "traitors of China (han jian)" by CCP, but Wu Yisan argues that the CCP is the real traitor that betrays the country and its people.
Our archive also hosts another anthology of his, *[Is Chen Yi a Good Comrade](https://minjian-danganguan.org/collection/%E6%AD%A6%E5%AE%9C%E4%B8%89%E6%94%BF%E8%AE%BA%E6%96%87%E9%9B%86%EF%BC%881%EF%BC%89)*?
Book
Dictionary of Names of 1957 Victims
An estimated 460,000 to 1.4 million people were persecuted in the Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957-1959). The event was one of the most important political campaigns in the history of the People's Republic because it effectively silenced independent intellectual thought in the Mao era, paving the way for disasters, such as the Great Famine and the Cultural Revolution.
Wu Yisan spent more than ten years researching the lives of this campaign's victims. At 33,000 entries, the list is far from complete but it gives the human perspective on the tragedy in a scope never before attempted. Among the devastating details is the story of Qian Zhongshu, one of 20th century China's best-known writers. Qian's father, Qi Jibo, had been declared a Rightist but died before he could be publicly humiliated. So Qian Zhongshu and his brother-in-law Shi Shenghuai, were forced to attend a mass rally and be criticized in his place. They did so while holding the dead man's "spirit tablet," a piece of wood used in a family shrine with the deceased name, and birth and death dates.
The dictionary was originally published as a CD-Rom. Mr. Wu has made the text version available to the China Unofficial Archive and we are now working to make it a searchable PDF for those who cannot access the CD-Rom version. The Dictionary of Names of 1957 Victims was published by the Humanities Publishing Center and funded by the Laogai Research Foundation.
Periodicals
Spark, Issue 1
<i>Spark</i> was an underground magazine that appeared in the Tianshui area of Gansu Province in northwestern China during the 1959-1961 Great Famine. The magazine was lost for decades but in the late 1990s began to be republished electronically, becoming the basis of documentary films, essays, and books.
In 1959, the Great Famine was spreading across China. It was witnessed by a group of Lanzhou University students who had been branded as Rightists and sent down to labor in the rural area of Tianshui. They saw countless peasants dying of hunger, and witnessed cannibalism.
Led by Zhang Chunyuan, a history student at Lanzhou University, they founded <i>Spark</i> in the hope of alerting people to the unfolding disaster and analyzing its root causes. The students pooled their money to buy a mimeograph machine, carved their own wax plates, and printed the first issue. The thirty-page publication featured Lin Zhao's long poem, "A Day in Prometheus's Passion." The first issue also featured articles, such as "The Current Situation and Duty," which dissected the tragic situation of society at that time and hoped that the revolution would be initiated by the Communist Party from within.
The students planned to send the magazine to the leaders of the provinces and cities with a view to correcting their mistakes. But before the first issue of Spark was mailed and while the second issue was still being edited, on September 30, 1960, these students in Wushan and Tianshui were arrested, along with dozens of local peasants who knew and supported them. Among them: Zhang Chunyuan was sentenced to life imprisonment and later executed; Du Yinghua, deputy secretary of the Wushan County Committee of the Chinese Communist Party, was sentenced to five years' imprisonment for having interacted with the students, and later executed. Lin Zhao was detained and also executed. Other key members, such as Gu Yan, Tan Chanxue, and Xiang Chengjian, were all sentenced to long years in labor camps.
In the 1990s, Tan Chanxue devoted herself to researching historical information and figures to bring this history to life. She found in her personnel file (<i>dan'an</i>）photographs of the magazine, as well as self-confessions and other evidence used in the students' trial. Eventually, the photos were collated into PDFs, which began to circulate around China.
Editors' note: This site the original handwritten version and a PDF of all the articles from the first issue of <i>Spark</i>. We will also make available transcripts of the essays in Chinese and are searching for volunteers to translate the texts into English. Please contact us if you're interested in helping!