Return of the Soul from Purgatory: Memoirs of a Survivor of the "Sparks" Case from the Great Famine Era

In 1960, a group of faculty and students from Lanzhou University, who had been labeled Rightists and sent down to rural areas in Tianshui, Gansu, personally experienced the Great Famine. They self-published Spark magazine to expose and criticize the totalitarian rule that led to this catastrophe.Spark only published one issue before its participants were arrested and labeled as a counterrevolutionary group. Many were sentenced to long prison terms, and some were even executed. The first issue of Spark and more information about the "Spark Case" can be read here.

Return from Purgatory: A Survivor’s Memoir of the ‘Spark Case’ in the Great Famine Years (1957–1981) is the autobiography of Xiang Chengjian, a key participant in Spark magazine. At the time, he and another student were responsible for printing the first issue, and he contributed six articles to Spark. Due to his involvement, he was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in the Spark case and was not rehabilitated until the early 1980s.

This memoir is divided into three sections, with a total of thirteen chapters spanning over 350,000 characters. It documents Xiang’s journey from being labeled a Rightist and sent to perform forced labor, to his arrest and 19-year imprisonment for his involvement in Spark, and finally to his struggle for rehabilitation and efforts to rebuild his life after release. In the book’s preface, scholar Ai Xiaoming offers the following assessment:

"Xiang Chengjian’s memoir holds significant value for the study of the intellectual history of contemporary China. First, it serves as another important testimony of the “Spark Case”, following Tan Chanxue’s memoir Sparks: A Chronicle of the Rightist Counter-Revolutionary Group at Lanzhou University, making it a crucial historical document on this act of resistance. The author reconstructs the social context before and after the case and describes how the young intellectuals behind Spark bravely challenged totalitarian rule. Second, the book provides a detailed account of labor camps in western China, with the author documenting his 18 years of forced labor in Gansu and Qinghai, unveiling a western chapter of China’s Gulag system. Third, it is a deeply personal intellectual history of a resister, showing the immense suffering, trials of life and death, and personal resilience under the crushing force of state violence."

The book’s appendix includes Xiang Chengjian’s six articles for Spark, an in-depth investigative report on him by journalist Jiang Xue, and a chronological record of the Spark Case compiled by Ai Xiaoming.

Return from Purgatory is published by Borden Press in New York and is the first book in the “People’s Archives Series”, published by the China Unofficial Archives. The author, Xiang Chengjian, has generously authorized the archive to share the book’s digital edition. Readers are encouraged to purchase the book to support the author and publisher.