Case Files as a Source of Alternative Memories from the Maoist Past

This chapter focuses on traces of alternative discourses articulated by ordinary people and recorded in judicial documents, which present a specific type of archival memory not to be found anywhere else. These documents include confession materials, supporting evidence, overheard conversations volunteered by informants or official court verdicts. The chapter highlights memories about life on the fringes of society during the Mao Zedong era in order to show how ordinary people perceived their situation or domestic and international developments. The sources and the embedded snippets of alternative discourses provide us with rare insights into the situation of everyday life in the late Maoist era.

Annals of the Yellow Emperor

For several decades, Yanhuang Chunqiu (Annals of the Yellow Emperor) enjoyed a unique status among Chinese publications as a monthly magazine that was both the publication of a state-owned unit and the journal of a private association managed by a team of independent editors. It made a strong contribution to furthering public discussion of early PRC history through special columns like “Controversies” and “Confessions.” This chapter analyzes the journal’s strategy in negotiating a space of relative autonomy with the institutions of state censorship, before it was ultimately reorganized by the state in 2016.

Writing about the Past, an Act of Resistance

Since taking power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party has consistently tried to enforce a monopoly on the writing and interpretation of history. However, since 1998 individual initiatives have increased in the field of memory. Confronting official amnesia, victims of Maoist movements have decided to write their versions of history before it is too late. This chapter presents a typology of these endeavours. Annals of the Yellow Emperor (Yanhuang chunqiu), an official publication, enjoyed some freedom to publish dissenting historical accounts but was suppressed in 2016. With the rise of the internet, unofficial journals appeared that were often dedicated to a specific period: Tie Liu’s Small traces of the Past (Wangshi weihen) published accounts of victims of the Anti-Rightist movement for almost a decade before the editor was arrested; Wu Di’s Remembrance (Jiyi) founded by former Red Guards and rusticated youth circulates on line. The third type is the samizdat: targets of repression during Mao’s reign recount their experience in books that are published at their own expense and circulated privately. Most of these “entrepreneurs of memory” are convinced that restoring historical truth is a pre-requisite to China’s democratization. Since Xi Jinping came to power, they have suffered repression.

Popular Memories and Popular History, Indispensable Tools for Understanding Contemporary Chinese History

This chapter examines an example of how minjian memories and minjian historiography transform our knowledge of the history of the Cultural Revolution. In the case of the end of the Rustication movement, many unofficial sources contradict the official version, represented by the press of the time or by the recent TV series Deng Xiaoping. In February 1979, while the People’s Daily published a speech criticizing the Yunnan educated youth who had come to Beijing to demand the right to return to their native cities, on the ground in Yunnan, the educated youths were in fact packing up and going back home by the thousands, after a victorious petitioning movement. This movement of historical importance was never officially acknowledged. In the TV series, the sudden end of the rustication movement is attributed to the wisdom of Deng Xiaoping and the petitioning movement (including strikes, hunger strikes and the sending of delegations) is replaced by the individual petition of a female educated youth wanting to go back home to take care of her gravely ill father who succeeds in touching the heart of a good cadre. The contribution of unofficial sources is thus particularly obvious in this case.

Introduction

This introductory essay provides a theoretical and historical overview of how the notions of memory and history have been conceptualized in relation to China. In Pierre Nora’s view state-led memory sacralizes the past, whereas history, as produced by civil society, tends to rationalize it; in authoritarian settings, an additional distinction is often drawn between “official history” and “popular memory,” construed as more “authentic.” This essay further historicizes the notion of popular memories of the Mao era by arguing that they have followed a three-tiered evolution: the first stage in the 1980s gave rise to the expression of mainly traumatic but closely controlled narratives, the second stage in the 1990s was dominated by nostalgia and social protest against marketization of the economy, while the third stage investigated in the present volume evinces a turn toward public debate and critical memory.

The Second Society

This chapter uses a variety of primary sources, from party archives to published memoirs, to undermine the picture of mass obedience that is sometimes thought to have characterised the Mao era. The Cultural Revolution aimed to transform every aspect of an individual's life, including their innermost thoughts and personal feelings, but in many cases it only managed to create the appearance of conformity. People fought deception with deception, lies with lies and empty rhetoric with empty slogans. Many were great actors, pretending to go along, knowing precisely what to say when required. They often managed to keep a diversity of cultural traditions alive, reading forbidden books, listening to clandestine radio or opening house churches, sometimes even performing traditional opera with the connivance of local cadres. But paradoxically, the very existence of this 'second society' also allowed the regime to indefinitely postpone meaningful political reforms.

Can Private Museums Offer Space for Alternative History?

This chapter examines the Red Era series at the Jianchuan Museum Cluster, a privately-owned complex of museums not far from Chengdu. Denton analyzes the curatorial techniques used in the exhibits and the ways they negotiate commercial interests, a sense of intellectual integrity to be true to the past, and state imposed limits on how the Cultural Revolution can be remembered in China.

Literary and Documentary Accounts of the Great Famine

Literary publications have long been a useful channel for intellectuals to voice critiques of the Mao era. This chapter examines three works of investigation, reportage and fiction published in the 2000s, to argue that counter-hegemonic narratives are gaining wider public circulation in China, and have contributed to questioning the official account, according to which elites and intellectuals were the main victims of Mao’s state. Yang Xianhui’s Chronicles of Jiabiangou documents the persecution of ordinary “rightists” in the provinces, Yang Jisheng’s Tombstone links the famine to the nature of the PRC regime, and Yan Lianke’s Four Books pinpoints the complicity of intellectuals with state policies. They have to some extent opened a space for further public debate on early PRC history.

Visual Memory, Personal Experience, and Public History

This article introduces an exemplary case of underground culture during the Cultural Revolution – the Wuming (No Name) painting group. The story of this case provides a counter-narrative against mainstream master narratives of the Cultural Revolution, contributing to an alternative history, a history of the creative actors and actions that were constitutive of grassroots change. The article further illustrates the challenges that memory and subjectivity pose for the writing of that history, and some innovative techniques the author has developed in response to them.

Filmed Testimonies, Archives, and Memoirs of the Mao Era

Over the past 25 years, various Chinese independent documentary filmmakers have attempted to shed light on times and topics that are vaguely, inaccurately or insufficiently narrated in official history, such as the Cultural Revolution, or more recently the Great Leap famine. Typically, independent documentaries focus on ordinary people’s memories, and often feature witnesses who survived various political movements. Investigating sensitive historical topics as an independent filmmaker requires a distinctive documentary framework in order to present the author’s filmic and historical endeavor in a favorable light and convince the audience. In the Chinese context, the filmmakers’ unofficial status has various consequences on their stance, their work method, but also on the films’ aesthetics and reception. The present essay gives an overview of this body of films and analyses how unofficial memory is framed and expressed by focusing on three main aspects: the filming of oral testimonies, the use of archival documents, and the role of written memoirs. This study of several works reveals the diversity of responses found by independent filmmakers to articulate their findings and discourse on unofficial history.