China Witness: Voices from a Silent Generation [Hardcover]

 

 

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To make this book Xinran sought out those who lived through China's Cultural Revolution and persuaded them to tell her their stories. This period is a black hole in Chinese memory, and she thought it important to record what happened to ordinary people before their memories were lost forever.

The book is a mix of stories; some poignant, some happy, some sad, some heart-wrenching, but all worth reading -- all stories of ordinary people caught up in extraordinary events.

CHINA WITNESS, Xinram, London, pp.435

This is one amazing book which should be read by anyone seriously interested in "true" accounts of former and current China history - but a history of its people! I have read many scholarly type books, most recently: China, Jonathan Fenby; Mao, The Unknown Story, Jung Chang; Mao's Last Revolution, Roderick MacFarquhar & Michael Schoenhals; The Long March, Sun Shuyun; and The Dragon, Harry Gelber. All added something to the understanding of the political history and to the history -makers but there was a noticeable absence of contributions by the grass root peasants. It is these amazing people who were the recipients of GMD (KMT) policies; Japanese atrocities and fascism; and Mao's despicably cruel dictatorial experimental revolution.
Xinran fills that gap by interviewing a Chinese cross-section of twenty elderly peasants. Their stories, their sincerity and candidness, their suffering and their poverty - all lived through the chaos from 1911 to the present, is truly a timely research written before these true heroes (they represent) pass on. The author's fear, and verified, is that their struggles through these turbulent times will never be told. The experiences are embedded on the old people's minds, but in most cases, have never been told. Each interviewee was asked why this was? They unanimously replied; their children would not be interested, they would be unbelieved, the stories were too painful to tell and distrust of anyone probing into their lives. Xinran's first task was always to gain their confidence, which she did. Once established, there was no fear of official repercussions, and they opened up like a floodgate waiting to be burst.
What Xinran has accomplished for China is a remarkable undertaking completed in twenty years. China Witness is a treasure trove! You won't find these facts in official reports or in most scholarly works. And are they to be believed? Their backgrounds were all thoroughly checked, their facts cross- referenced with known dates, and more than anything, their stories, collectively themselves, verified what it was like before Liberation (Communist takeover) and after, to the present.
Some of these common struggles deeply affecting their lives: absolute poverty causing the deaths of parents; Cultural Revolution; inability to find work; lack of education; a fixation on making certain their children received a better and higher education; the rapid expansion and growth of China; expropriation of their farms or property; sentencing to labour farms just because they happened to have a relative who may have been a land owner; and an erroneous prosecution-but who cared? They were only peasants!
Though the parents or grandparents suffered enormously after Liberation, they wanted a better life for their children and grandchildren. They all bemoan the fact their children seem unaware of the hardships they struggled through, yet, they did nothing to enlighten the children themselves. Some even resented the pompous arrogant life the young people were living separating them further from the past truths. Xinran's purpose in interviewing these elderly was to record their horrendous experiences, get their feelings about those years, and to document how they survived when millions didn't.
"But his grandfather feels wretched and angry that his grandson has such an affluent lifestyle but understands nothing of the trials and suffering of the older generation, he doesn't even know or respect what happened in the past. I don't think this is just a problem for our family..." (p. 75)
A huge problem is deciphering which official version of history is true, and then there is the grandparent version! Surprisingly, Xinran noticed a growing and keen interest by the volunteer Chinese university students after interviewing the elderly. They questioned , why the blind loyality to a Party which cared nothing about them and why their parents never told them about their past. In most cases, even their parents knew nothing of the grandparent's past.
It is also refreshing to hear these elderly talk openly but cautiously about the Party and even criticise Mao. The hope is that the present-day young will read these stories and come to appreciate what supreme sacrifices their grandparents and some parents made so that their life could be better. The disparity between the two generations is extremely wide. Will the young, whose lives are so drastically different, really come to appreciate what seems to be impossible?

Xinran is a gentle, non-pushy reporter, but her politeness gets the old folks to open up more than they would for their families. She is trying to record what the revolutionary generation really thinks, and what they are proud of. Mostly they are poor people, who've faced enormous hardships and abuses, while making more or less heroic sacrifices for others. My favorite is the shoe repair woman who put both her daughter and son through top ranked universities, after being barred from university herself by inherited guilt due to bogus records concerning her class background.

These people are China's version of the wartime "greatest generation." Mostly they are, as Xinran says, "silent." They feel their sacrifices and involvements in mistakes of the past have rendered them irrelevant to their grandchildren. But they are the foundation of modern China, and Xinran wants to thank them.

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