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This book is the memoir of Chinese economist's Yang Xiaokai. It tells the stories of more than two dozen characters he met while imprisoned in Changsha during the Cultural Revolution. Published in 1994, it was reprinted in 1997 and 2016. The English version is titled *Captive Spirits: Prisoners of the Cultural Revolution*, published by Stanford University Press in 1997.

The author of this book, Yang Jisheng, is a veteran journalist with 35 years of experience in journalism at Xinhua News Agency, China's official news organization. He knows a great deal about the ups and downs of Chinese politics after the end of the Cultural Revolution as well as the intricate power struggles at the top and has a lot of first-hand information. He personally interviewed Zhao Ziyang, Zhu Houze, Li Rui, Ren Zhongyi, An Zhiwen, Tian Jiyun, and other important people. “Political Struggles in China's Reform Era”, first published in Hong Kong in November 2004, was the subject of a series of crackdowns by the authorities against Yang Jisheng. It was republished in 2010 by Hong Kong's Cosmo Books.

The Great Famine in China in the 1960s was a rare famine in human history. From 1958 to 1962, according to incomplete statistics, 36 million people died of starvation in China; due to starvation the birthrate is estimated to have dropped to around 40 million. The number of people who died of starvation and the lowered birthrate due to starvation totaled more than 70 million, which is not only the largest number of deaths among all the disasters that occurred in China's history, but also the most painful and unprecedented tragedy in the history of mankind today. Was this a natural disaster or a man-made disaster? Officials deliberately covered it up and tried to minimize it, forbid any public discussion or expression about it. Yang Jisheng, a senior reporter of Xinhua News Agency, personally experienced the death of his father in the famine. Since then, he has devoted his heart and soul to this story. He has spent several years on it, running through a dozen or so provinces where the disaster was the most serious, and personally checking countless archives and records, both public and secret. He has interviewed the people involved and checked the evidence over and over again. Thus, he felt confident that he could, with the heart of the historical pen and the conscience of the news reporter, make a number of drafts, and truly recapture this tragic history of the human race and analyze the causes of this tragedy with a large amount of facts and data. With a wealth of facts and figures, he identifies the main cause of the famine as the totalitarian system. This is a book carries the collective memory of many ordinary Chinese people, and is a tombstone for the 36 million victims. This book is published by Tiandi Books in Hong Kong. The English version of <i>Tombstone: The Great Chinese Famine, 1958-1962 </i> was translated by American author Stacy Mosher and can be purchased <a href= "https://www.amazon.com/Tombstone-Great-Chinese-Famine-1958-1962/dp/0374533997">here</a>.