Fragmented Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

Fragmented Memories of the Chinese Cultural Revolution

To continue the discussions about the Cultural Revolution generation I started here last week, I’d like to mention today that memories of the Cultural Revolution are fragmented by genres and social groups. Here is an incomplete list:

a)     Official narratives (e.g. Jin Chunming’s Short History of the Cultural Revolution and officially endorsed memoirs).

b)     Narratives by victims of the Cultural Revolution, mostly high-level officials and intellectuals. These appeared mostly in the 1980s in the years immediately after the Cultural Revolution.

c)     “Memoirs of exile”: These are English-language book-length memoirs published outside of China including such titles as Wild Swans.

d)     Literature of “the wounded” in the late 1970s and early 1980s. These include both prose, fiction, poetry, film, and drama.

e)     “zhiqing” (educated youth) literature of the 1980s. Overlaps with “root-seeking literature” of the type written by Ah Cheng (my favorite is Chess King).

f)      Nostalgic reminiscences of zhiqing in the 1990s. These are collections of short personal stories in Chinese. Numerous volumes were published in the late 1990s, when many members of the Cultural Revolution were laid off in the process of the privatization of state-owned enterprises.

g)     Memoirs by former rebel leaders. After the Cultural Revolution, many were indicted and served time in prison. Those who wrote memoirs (e.g. Nie Yuanzi and Kuai Dafu) defended their behavior in the CR.

h)     Documentary films about victims of the Cultural Revolution, such as Hu Jie’s Though I Am Gone (我虽死去) and Searching for Lin Zhao’s Soul (寻找林昭的灵魂).

i)       Web sites (blogs, online forums, etc) about the Cultural Revolution.   

j)   Virtual museums of the Cultural Revolution (e.g. here).

If you think of others, please let me know.

Sociologists often talk about collective memory, but it’s hard to talk about collective memories of the Cultural Revolution. There are really only fragmented memories. They differ by genre, social group, and even time. For example, memories of Cultural Revolution in the 1980s were different from the 1990s, partly reflecting what was politically permissible and partly because people’s memories of the past are shaped by their present experiences and concerns.