Explore the collection

Jiabiangou was a labor reform farm in Jiuquan County, Gansu Province, where "rightist" prisoners were held. October 1957, nearly 3,000 educated people were detained there. In October 1961, when the higher-ups corrected the "left-leaning" mistakes of the Gansu Provincial Party Committee and began repatriating the rightist prisoners, less than half had survived. Writer Yang Xianhui spent five years interviewing more than a hundred people and brought to light the truth that had been sealed for more than forty years. Originally published by Tianjin Ancient Books Publishing House in 2002, this book also includes other short and medium-sized stories by Yang Xianhui.

After the disaster in Dingxi Prefecture, which was the hardest-hit area of Gansu Province during the 1958-1960 famine, a children's welfare institution was urgently set up in Dingxi Prefecture to take in hundreds of orphans. During the same period, children's welfare centers or "kindergartens" were set up in all counties and towns in Dingxi Prefecture, as well as in the people's communes in the hardest-hit counties. These children's welfare centers, large and small, housed about 5,000 orphans. On the basis of faithful historical facts and statements by the parties concerned, this book brings tragic scenes of starvation and death before people's eyes using straightforward description, documentary language, and a down-to-earth tone of voice.

This book recounts Hu Yaobang's efforts to overturn people falsely accused of being "Rightists" during the Anti-Rightist Campaign of the 1950s. It is written by Dai Huang (1928-2016， formerly known as Dai Shulin), a Communist propagandist and later senior editor at the Xinhua News Agency, who was also persecuted in the Mao era and rehabilitated thanks to Hu's efforts.  This means that the book is not entirely objective–Dai does not analyze too closely Hu's history of slavishy following Mao's policies. Instead, he aims to capture the excitement felt by the hundreds of thousands who suffered in the Mao era and who were rehabilitated in the 1970s and '80s thanks to Hu. At 300,000 Chinese characters, or more than 200,000 English words, it is a weighty compendium that includes  previously unreported details of famous public intellectuals and party members persecuted by the party and how Hu rehabilitated them. For example, Dai recounts the case of Ge Peiqi, who was a Communist Party spy who was toppled for his opposition to the party's corruption and privilege. Dai explains the case in depth and how Ge was eventually cleared. Dai represented a liberal wing of the party that believed in the need for the party to address its mistakes. At his funeral people such as Du Daozheng (the editor of China Through the Ages 炎黄春秋) and Tie Liu (publisher of the alternative history journal 往事微痕) attended. The book also contains a preface by Li Rui, who participated in China Through the Ages and was also a mainstay of the party's liberal wing.

The first edition of this book was published two years before the landmark event on July 5 in Urumqi from which the ethnic problems in Xinjiang erupted. The "July 5 Incident" was an ethnic vendetta in Urumqi that resulted in thousands of deaths and injuries. It has been regarded as a turning point in the all-out hostility between Uyghurs and Han Chinese and in the shift of Xinjiang's governance from economic development to political high-handedness. The book is thus considered prescient and ahead of its time. Before writing the book, Wang Lixiong had been imprisoned for more than 40 days on the charge of "stealing secret state documents." But this imprisonment brought him a great reward: he was to meet Muhtar, an ethnic Uyghur who was also a political prisoner. "It was because of Muhtar that the book took on a new perspective," says Wang Lixiong. Xinjiang is no longer a symbol in documents, books and materials, but has real flesh and blood, emotions, and even body heat.

In this book, author Wang Lixiong presents his arguments with a great deal of personal experience and field work. The book covers the history of the Tibetan issue, the current situation, and various aspects. The book was first published by Mirror Books in Hong Kong in 1998, and an updated edition was released in 2009.