This book is a collection of nineteen feature articles by well-known contemporary scholars, researchers, and writers. They recapitulate their own experiences during the Cultural Revolution in a literary style.
When the Cultural Revolution broke out, they were all young people in their twenties. These reminiscence articles are the result of a rare collective reflection after the end of the Cultural Revolution. The authors described their own experiences during the Cultural Revolution in the articles, providing a personal perspective on history.
The chief editor of this book is the philosopher and activist Xu Youyu, a former researcher at the Institute of Philosophy, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. Xu signed and made suggestions on Charter 08, and also is a co-founder of the New Citizens Movement. Since 2015 he has resided in New York City, where he has been a visiting scholar at the New School for Social Research.
This book was published by China Federation of Literary and Art Circles Publishing Corporation in 1998.
In August 2008, after the 100-day anniversary of the Sichuan earthquake, rescue teams began to withdraw and the media stopped reporting on the casualties of school employees, teachers, and students. Chengdu environmental worker Tan Zuoren and local volunteers, however, were still searching for the cause of the collapse of school buildings within the ruins. As winter arrived, Tan Zuoren and his colleague Xie Yihui trekked through more than 80 towns and villages in 10 counties and cities, covering a total of 3,000 kilometers. Finally, before the May 12 anniversary, they issued a report of their investigation, which was the first independent inquiry report on the Sichuan earthquake’s impact on schools. At the same time, Beijing artist Ai Weiwei furthered civilian investigation and new volunteers arrived in Sichuan to search for the names of students who died. This documentary is an incomplete record of a civilian investigation and a piece of testimony submitted to the court charging Tan Zuoren with “suspected subversion of the state.”
This film is in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
At the turn of the spring and summer of 1989, democratic protests broke out in Beijing and other cities in China. In the early hours of June 4, the Chinese government dispatched troops to suppress the movement. In 2009, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the June 4th Incident in 2009, some participants in the movement jointly released the "Unofficial White Paper on the June 4th Incident". The book has 48 pages and a large number of illustrations.
This white paper attempts to provide a complete political background and legal analysis of the events based on reports from Chinese newspapers, radio and television stations at the time, as well as memoirs and interviews that have been published over the past 20 years. Participants in this book believe that the Chinese government has not conducted a comprehensive investigation and objective evaluation of the June 4th Incident, and has long blocked relevant information and prohibited private investigation and discussion of the matter. The report is called a "white paper" to emphasize its rigor and normative nature.
Participants in this book include Hu Ping, Yan Jiaqi, Wang Juntao, Wang Dan, Yang Jianli and others. The book was written by Li Jinjin, a doctor of law.
In 1930, a mutiny erupted in the Red Army in the town of Futian. In the ensuring purge, more than 700 officers were executed. After this, the campaign to root out Anti-Bolshevik (AB) groups spread to various parts of China, with 70,000 executed. Occurring just nine years after the founding of the CCP, it is one of the earliest and most significant purges in the party's early history.
The first person to pay attention to the Futian Incident was Professor Dai Xiangqing of the Jiangxi Provincial Party School. Starting in late 1979, he and other colleagues went to southern Jiangxi to collect materials, conduct interviews and investigate, and found that this was an unjust and wrong case, and began to publish articles on the matter.
In the early 1980s, Dai Xiangqing sent his article to a senior general in the PLA, Xiao Ke. After that, the research on the Futian Incident attracted the attention of senior central officials. The CCP's party history research agency sent people to Hunan and Jiangxi to investigate and collect materials. The Organization Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China sent a review team for the Futian Incident and reported the vindication documents to the central government, but even today there is currently no official conclusion on the matter.
This book is an important study of the early history of the Communist Party of China, often mentioned by prominent independent historians, such as Yang Kuisong. As an officially recognized research project, this book does not make ideological breakthroughs, but its detailed historical materials, and its data index make it particularly valuable for understanding this historical event.
This book was published by Henan People's Publishing House in 1994.
This book is the brainchild of Prof. Lian Xi of Duke University, U.S.A. In March 2018, it was published in English by Basic Books in the U.S.A. In 2021, it was published in Chinese by Taiwan Business Press. Based on a large amount of historical materials as well as first-hand interviews, this book reconstructs Lin Zhao's life. It depicts the political development before and after the birth of New China, and presents the resilient will and beliefs of intellectuals in this era.
To purchase this book, please visit [the publisher](https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/lian-xi/blood-letters/9781541644229/?lens=basic-books), or a bookseller.
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.
The author of this book, Lu Jianhua (pen name Wen Lu), was a former member of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who published this book in 1993. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2005 for "allegedly leaking state secrets" in connection with the "espionage case" involving journalist Cheng Xiang.
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.
On February 9, 2010, Tan Zuoren was tried in the Chengdu Intermediate People’s Court for the crime of inciting subversion against the state. Ai Xiaoming and her team recorded the three days before and after the verdict, the mindsets of Tan Zuoren’s friends and relatives, and how the lawyers carried out their work.
This film is in Chinese with Chinese subtitles.
This movie captures the lives of miners in small coal mines in the Qilian Mountain area of Qinghai Province. At 3600 meters above sea level, the air here is thin. Miners in the small coal kilns labor hard in a working environment without any protection, and usually get silicosis after 5-10 years of work, thus losing their ability to work. If they die in an accident, their families receive only meager compensation. This is a true record of the survival of China's grassroots laborers in the early 1990s.
Fiber City—the collective name Fujian Textile and Chemical Fiber Factory—was founded in 1971. China's first production in the 1970s, one of the nine Vinylon factories located in Yongan City, Fujian Province, deep in the mountains, 3 kilometers outside the outskirts of the industrial town. Once glorious, it has been gradually lowering its curtains. The old factory buildings are mottled, its young workers are now gray-haired, and many have left. The documentary shows the fate of this big factory during the planned economy.
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.
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", and authoritarianism and tyranny. He 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 book, Liu Wenzhong describes in detail his brother Liu Wenhui's ideology as well as how he was killed by the tyrannical government.
Zhang Zhan, born in 1983, is a Chinese lawyer and a dissident of the Communist Party system. In early February 2020, she rushed from Shanghai to Wuhan, which was under lockdown due to the COVID-19 epidemic, to conduct on-the-spot interviews and released a series of video reports on Wuhan's lockdown. More than three months later, she was arrested by Chinese police for "picking quarrels and provoking trouble" and taken to Shanghai for detention.
In December 2020, she was sentenced to four years in prison for picking quarrels and provoking trouble. Zhang Zhan went on hunger strike in the detention center and prison, and there were reports that he was critically ill several times. Her courage and resistance attracted the attention of the international community.
The book *Free Zhang Zhan* was edited and created by Wang Jianhong, the head of the "Zhang Zhan Concern Group" on the Internet. It brings together Zhang Zhan's articles and self-media posts published on the Internet, as well as interviews of Zhang Zhan before she lost her freedom, and interviews, as well as poems and articles from outsiders supporting Zhang Zhan. The book reviews the course of Zhang Zhan's case, Zhang Zhan's struggle in prison and the repercussions it aroused at home and abroad. It was published on May 13, 2024 when Zhang Zhan was released from prison after serving her sentence.
This book preserves and records the history of Wuhan's lockdown in China due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Nowadays, Zhang Zhan's articles and words of support for her have been censored and blocked in China, which makes the book even more precious.
This book was originally published in the series *Micro Traces of the Past* - Documentary Volume - No. 6, edited by Huang Heqing, founded in 2007. Gan Cui, a student at Renmin University of China, was classified as a rightist in 1957. He became lovers with Lin Zhao, a rightist student who came from Peking University to work in the data room. Gan Cui was later sent to Xinjiang. When he returned, he learned that Lin Zhao had been killed. This book (in 140,000 words) is a manuscript of Gan Cui's memories of Lin Zhao in the context of the 1989 pro-democracy movement.
More than 70 years ago, a massive wave of revolutionary terror swept through the CCP-led Jiangxi Soviet Union. Thousands of Red Army officers and soldiers, as well as members of the Party and the general public in the base area, were brutally murdered in a purge called the "Purging of the AB Troupe." Gao Hua's article examines why Mao Zedong initiated the "purge of the AB Group" in the Red Army and the base areas. What was Mao's rationale for the Great Purge? What is the relationship between the Great Terror and the establishment of a new society? Why did Mao stop using the "Fighting the AB Groups" as a means of resolving internal conflicts in the Party after he assumed real power in the CCP?
This book is a biography of Lin Zhao written by mainland writer Zhao Rui and published by Taiwan's Xiuwei Information Publishing House in 2008. The book describes Lin Zhao's life and family background in detail. The "Appendix" contains the recollections of several people involved.Purchase link: https://www.books.com.tw/products/0010431680.
Originally published in Hong Kong in Chinese in 2000, Gao Hua’s epic description of an early Communist Party campaign against dissent describes a pattern of thought reform and control that would hold true for decades to come. Written despite official harassment and Gao’s failing health, How the Red Sun Rose is a touchstone for China’s unofficial history movement. It was translated into English in 2019 and published by Columbia University Press. Purchase here: https://cup.columbia.edu/book/how-the-red-sun-rose/9789629968229.
Hu Jie narrates the life of Lin Zhao, a Christian dissident who was condemned as a Rightist in the late 1950s and executed during the Cultural Revolution. Prior to becoming a mentcritic of the government, Lin Zhao was an ardent believer of communism. She demonstrated talent in writing and speaking as a star student in Peking University. However, after criticizing the government in 1957 during the Hundred Flowers Campaign, she was cast as anti-revolutionary. Despite the government’s attempts to silence her, Lin Zhao continued to speak and write publicly, including contributing two epic poems to Spark, an underground student-run journal. In 1960, she was arrested, and despite being released briefly in 1962, spent the rest of her life behind bars, under extremely poor living conditions. Nevertheless, she continued to write in prison, sometimes with her blood. In 1968, at the age of 36, she was executed by a firing squad.
In this documentary, Hu Jie showcases many of Lin Zhao’s surviving writings and poetry. These pieces often contain criticisms of the communist regime, as well as commentary on policy issues pertaining to labor and land reform. In making this film, Hu Jie traveled around China to interview friends and associates of Lin Zhao, who knew her as a student, activist, or prisoner. This documentary includes excerpts from interviews with them, which inform us about Lin Zhao’s personality and motivations.
This documentary has contributed to a widespread revival of interest in Lin Zhao, who had almost become a forgotten figure until the film’s appearance.
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.