Utopian Ruins: A Memorial Museum of the Mao Era 1478010185, 9781478010180

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UTOPIAN RUINS

SINOTHEORY A series edited by Carlos Rojas and Eileen Cheng-­yin Chow

UTOPIAN RUINS A Memorial Museum of the Mao Era

Jie Li

Duke University Press  Durham and London 2020

© 2020 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of Amer­i­ca on acid-­free paper ∞ Designed by Drew Sisk Typeset in Portrait Text, Helvetica Neue, Adobe Ming, and SimSun by Westchester Publishing Services Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data Names: Li, Jie, [date] author. Title: Utopian ruins : a memorial museum of the Mao era / Jie Li. Other titles: Sinotheory. Description: Durham : Duke University Press, 2020. | Series: ­Sinotheory | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: lccn 2020008117 (print) lccn 2020008118 (ebook) isbn 9781478010180 (hardcover) isbn 9781478011231 (paperback) isbn 9781478012764 (ebook) Subjects: lcsh: Mao, Zedong, 1893–1976. | China—History— 1949–1976. | China—Civilization—1949–1976. | China—Politics and government—1949–1976. Classification: lcc ds777.56 .l554 2020 (print) lcc ds777.56 (ebook) | ddc 951.05—dc23 lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020008117 lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020008118 Cover art: Wang Tong, Mao on the Wall 039—04.039—04, Mengjin County, Henan Province, 1995. Courtesy of the artist.

To my ­mother and father, and to Renate

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CONTENTS

Series Editor’s Preface  ix Acknowl­edgments 

xiii

Introduction  Mediating Memories of the Mao Era  1 1 Blood Testaments  25 2 Surveillance Files  68 3

Utopian Photo­graphs 

100

4 Foreign Lenses  150 5 Factory Rubble  192 6 Museums and Memorials  227 Epilogue  Notes for ­Future Curators  261 Notes 277 Bibliography 321 Index 351

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SERIES EDITOR'S PREFACE

In the late 1990s, Turkish author Orhan Pamuk began planning a novel set in Istanbul between 1975 and 1984. The work would feature a secret romance between a wealthy Turkish businessman and a poorer, distant relative—­and ­after the protagonist finds himself unable to be with his beloved, he begins obsessively collecting every­thing that she has touched. Likewise, over the years that Pamuk spent writing the work, he himself began collecting a wide range of artifacts from the period in question—­artifacts that he not only described in exquisite detail in the novel but would also put on display in an a­ ctual “Museum of Innocence” museum that he planned to coincide with the release of the novel. The novel was eventually published in August 2008, making it the author’s first major publication ­after winning the Nobel Prize in 2006, and although Pamuk had intended to have the museum debut two months l­ ater in Frankfurt to coincide with that year’s Frankfurt Book Fair, the debut was delayed ­until 2012, when it fi­nally opened in a ­house that Pamuk had purchased in Istanbul for that purpose. This rather unusual literary-­museological proj­ect juxtaposes two rather dif­fer­ent repre­sen­ta­tional modes—­with the novel representing objects through narrative and the museum re-­presenting the same objects by putting them on public display. In addition to straddling ­these two dif­fer­ent repre­sen­ta­tional practices of literary description and exhibitional display, the proj­ect also strategically blurs the bound­aries between attachment and loss, public and private, and between real­ity and repre­sen­ta­tion. At the same time, the museum also functions as a miniature history of Istanbul itself, offering a glimpse into the materiality of daily life four de­cades ago.

In August 2018, almost precisely ten years ­after the publication of Pamuk’s novel, a similar proj­ect opened to the public in Shenzhen, China. Just as Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence spans roughly four de­cades of modern Turkish history (from the 1975 beginning of the novel to the 2012 opening date of the ­actual museum) and is structured around a public display of an assortment of quotidian and previously private artifacts, the opening of the Shekou Museum of China’s Reform and Opening Up similarly commemorated the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of Deng Xiaoping’s Reform and Opening Up campaign. Deng’s campaign marked the beginning of a decades-­long period of rapid privatization, industrialization, and economic growth: it is hardly surprising, therefore, that the museum adopts a triumphant tone, celebrating the remarkable achievements that Shenzhen—­not to mention China as a whole—­had made over the past four de­cades. The Shenzhen museum is or­ ga­nized chronologically and includes not only historical photo­graphs, charts, and full-­size re-creations of rooms and even entire alleys but also numerous artifacts from the periods in question. T ­ hese artifacts include ordinary objects like tools, appliances, and clothing, as well as highly personal items like letters, ID cards, and examination booklets. Some of the objects w ­ ill still be familiar to many viewers, while ­others, like rotary phones and cassette tapes, ­will be less so. Consequently, this Shenzhen museum also carries a distinctly nostalgic tone ­because it straddles many of the same bound­aries between attachment and loss, public and private, real­ity and repre­sen­ta­tion, as does Pamuk’s museum in Istanbul. Located just outside the frame of the Shenzhen museum’s celebratory and nostalgic gaze, meanwhile, is a much more complicated historical period, and it is prob­ably no coincidence that China’s only Reform and Opening Up museum is in the special economic zone of Shenzhen, which literally ­didn’t even exist before the beginning of the 1978 campaign. The Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) had officially ended only two years e­ arlier and itself had been preceded by the highly volatile, and deeply traumatic, “Seventeen Years” period that extended from the founding of the ­People’s Republic of China in 1949 to the beginning of the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Jie Li’s Utopian Ruins, meanwhile, focuses precisely on this historical period immediately preceding the beginning of the Reform Era, though it attends to a set of repre­sen­ta­tional and exhibitional practices that resemble the ones featured in the Shenzhen museum. More specifically, Li’s study takes inspiration from Ba Jin’s call in the early 1980s for a museum memorializing the Cultural Revolution. This proposal was compelling yet profoundly challenging since the question of how to memorialize this tumultuous and traumatic period ­remains x

S eries E ditor ’ s P reface

deeply contentious. In her study, Li takes Ba Jin’s proposal a step further and considers vari­ous attempts to memorialize not only the Cultural Revolution but also other particularly traumatic periods from the Maoist era, ranging from the Anti-­Rightist Movement (1957) to the ­Great Famine (1959–1961). In six eloquent and moving chapters, Li uses a variety of dif­fer­ent case studies—­ straddling an array of dif­fer­ent media—to illustrate how the Chinese state used a dialectic of propaganda and censorship to shape not only beliefs but also lived realities, while at the same time attending to the private voices and memories that ­were often embedded in the fissures within this larger regime. Just as the historical turmoil of the Maoist period lies just outside the Shenzhen museum’s celebratory gaze, a similar shadow of turmoil and suppression also haunts the nominal innocence of Pamuk’s Museum of Innocence. Specifically, on July 15, 2016, just four years a­ fter Pamuk’s museum opened in 2012, ­there was an attempted coup d’état against the Turkish government by a group advocating for demo­cratic rule and h ­ uman rights. A ­ fter the coup failed, President Erdoğan retaliated by orchestrating a massive wave of arrests and purges targeting journalists, authors, and academics, among ­others. In fact, as early as 2005 (even before the attempted coup and subsequent purge), Pamuk himself had been arrested and charged with “public denigration of Turkish identity” a­ fter he tried to draw attention to Turkey’s complicity in the Kurdish and Armenian genocides. Although the charges ­were subsequently dropped, he nevertheless cited this incident three years ­later in his opening address at the 2008 Frankfurt Book Fair—at which Turkey was the country of honor, and where Pamuk had originally planned to stage the debut of his Museum of Innocence exhibit. Speaking along with Turkey’s then-president Abdullah Gül, Pamuk made an impassioned plea in defense of intellectual and artistic freedom, noting that “­there are at this moment hundreds of writers and journalists being prosecuted and found guilty ­under [the same article for which Pamuk had been arrested in 2005].”1 Pamuk’s Frankfurt lecture, and the even more severe crackdown on ­human rights and intellectual freedom that unfolded in Turkey a de­cade ­later, serves as a sober reminder that the sorts of repressive practices that Li examines in Utopian Ruins—­and the corresponding memorial practices that they invite—­are hardly confined to the past. —­Carlos Rojas

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ACKNOWL­E DGMENTS

This book has been a long time in the making and owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to many individuals and institutions who have ­shaped my intellectual journey. ­Family whispers and divergent narratives about the Maoist past piqued my interest in this tumultuous era before my birth. Undergraduate coursework with Leo Ou-­Fan Lee, Eileen Cheng-­yin Chow, Arthur Kleinman, and Xiaofei Tian trained me to excavate and analyze stories, media, and artifacts from modern China with multi-­disciplinary methods. U ­ nder the guidance of Carma Hinton, a formative internship at the Long Bow Group for the film and website Morning Sun taught me to take both critical and curatorial approaches to documentary sources, oral histories, and audiovisual archives about the Cultural Revolution. My amorphous research interests took shape u ­ nder the inspiring, incisive, and steadfast mentoring of David Der-­wei Wang, who has seen this proj­ect evolve into a thrice-­revised book manuscript. Eileen Chow, Wai-­yee Li, and Eric Rentschler gave constructive and detailed comments on vari­ous chapter versions. For their feedback and insightful comments at the early stages, which further ­shaped the trajectory of this proj­ect, I thank Peter Bol, Yomi Braester, Letty Chen, Xiaomei Chen, Harriet Evans, Merle Goldman, Kirk Denton, Angie Lai, Perry Link, Andy Rodekohr, Brian Skerratt, Eugene Wang, Wang Yao, Rubie Watson, Yiching Wu, Guobin Yang, Cathy Yeh, Judith Zeitlin, Enhua Zhang, and Xueping Zhong, as well as the late Roderick MacFarquhar and Rudolf Wagner. Research for this book benefited from the gracious help of many individuals and institutions. For more than a de­cade filmmaker Hu Jie, whose illuminating

documentaries are central exhibits of the introduction and chapter 1, shared precious source materials, introduced me to crucial contacts, and took many hours to answer my inquiries. I am also indebted to other interviewees: Fan ­Jianchuan and his staff at the Jianchuan Museum; Li Chengwai at the ­Xianning’s May Seventh Cadre School memorial site; photographer Li Feng; Liu Xiaofei, grand­son of Liu Wencai; Peng Qi’an, founder of the Shantou Cultural Revolution Museum; the late Tan Chanxue, former contributor to the samizdat Sparks; and documentary filmmakers Wang Bing, Wu Wenguang, and Zou Xueping. For locating numerous other primary sources, I thank the staff at the Eu­ro­pean Foundation Joris Ivens, the Hoover Institution Archives, the Shanghai Library, and most importantly, the Harvard-­Yenching Library and the Fairbank Collection at the Fung Library. The research, writing, and publication of this book was supported by a series of generous fellowships and grants: Paul and Daisy Soros Fellowship for New Americans, Mellon/ACLS Dissertation Completion Fellowship, summer grants from the Harvard Asia Center and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, an ACLS/NEH American Research in the Humanities in China Fellowship, the FAS Tenure-Track Faculty Publication Fund, and the Anne and Jim Rothenberg Fund for Humanities Research. An idyllic year at the Prince­ton Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts helped me rethink the book’s relevance to an audience beyond China studies—­thanks especially to conversations with Mary Harper, Susan Stewart, Jerome Silbergeld, and the late Jim Clark. From germinal ideas to book manuscript, this proj­ect underwent transformative rounds of new research, reor­ga­ni­za­tion, and rewriting. Andrea Bachner, Geremie Barmé, Margaret Hillenbrand, Haiyan Lee, Barbara Mittler, Elizabeth Perry, Paul Pickowicz, Ying Qian, Hue-­tam Tai, Xiaobing Tang, Karen Thornber, Xiaofei Tian, Ban Wang, Winnie Wong, and Alexander Zahlten read chapters of the revised manuscript and gave invaluable feedback. Denise Ho, Carlos Rojas, and David Wang read several versions of the entire manuscript and gave trenchant suggestions for structural improvements. E ­ arlier treatments of some of the material in this study have appeared in the journals Jump Cut (no. 5 [2008]), Public Culture (21, no. 3 [2009]), Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution, The Oxford Handbook of Modern Chinese Lit­er­ a­ture, and A New Literary History of Modern China. I am grateful to the editors of ­these publications for their insightful and detailed comments. The arguments in the book have matured through formal talks and informal conversations with faculty and students at Berkeley, Brandeis, Harvard, Heidelberg, King’s College London, National Taiwan University, Oxford, Penn State, Prince­ton, and other institutions. I thank Jen Altehenger, Steven Chung, Matthew Frax i v

A c k no w l­ed g ments

leigh, Emily Graf, Margaret Hillenbrand, Denise Ho, Erin Huang, Andrew Jones, Mei Chia-­ling, Peng Hsiao-­yen, and Franz Prichard for giving me the opportunity to pre­sent at the workshops, conferences, and lecture series they or­ga­nized. This book has also benefited tremendously from the scholarly community and professional support of mentors, colleagues, and staff at Harvard’s Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations. From manuscript to publication, my heartfelt thanks go to the Duke University Press editorial director Ken Wissoker and series editor Carlos Rojas for their unwavering faith and judicious advice, as well as to the two anonymous readers whose critical scrutiny greatly solidified the book’s arguments and enhanced its scholarly engagements. I am also grateful to Nina Foster, Joshua Tranen, Susan Albury, and Lisa Lawley at Duke University Press for being ever so responsive and professional in the review and production pro­cess. Nancy Hearst not only conducted an initial copyediting of the w ­ hole manuscript, but also source-­checked ­every quotation and compiled the bibliography. I extend special thanks to Menglan Chen and Dingru Huang for their invaluable research assistance in the last stretches of this marathon. As a memorial museum seeks to preserve and pass on historical testimonies, the generations of my f­amily epitomize the bequest and inheritance of memories. My grandparents—­Li Baoren, Wang Zhengwen, Yao Zhanghua, and Zhu Yuehua—­shared many stories and lessons from their lives before the fading of their memories. Besides checking my scholarly inquiry against their generational experiences, my parents, Li Bin and Wang Yaqing, gave their ­wholehearted intellectual, moral, and logistical support from the inception to the conclusion of this proj­ect. My parents-­in-­law, Anne-­Dore and Klaus Koss, created an enviably serene environment for writing over several summers in Speyer, Germany. Fi­nally, this book was completed u ­ nder the benediction of Daniel, Anton, and Renate, who imbue my ­every day with happiness, meaning, and won­der.

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INTRODUCTION

MEDIATING MEMORIES OF THE MAO ERA

On August 5, 1966, Bian Zhongyun 卞仲耘, vice principal of a girls’ ­middle school in Beijing, was beaten to death by Red Guards. The next day, her husband, Wang Jingyao 王晶垚, bought a camera (figure I.1) and took pictures of her bruised and distended body. He photographed their ­children as they washed and dressed their ­mother. He photographed the vilifying big-­character posters that covered the inside and outside walls of their apartment. He also photographed the smoke rising from the chimney of the crematorium ­after her body was burned. For four de­cades, he hid the photos and her bloodstained clothes, waiting all the while to transfer them to the Cultural Revolution Museum, if such a museum ­were ever built.1 The idea for a Cultural Revolution museum comes from the renowned writer Ba Jin 巴金 (1904–2005). In several essays published in 1986, Ba Jin called for a memorial museum “exhibiting concrete and real objects, and reconstructing striking scenes which ­will testify to what took place on this Chinese soil twenty years ago! . . . ​It is only by engraving in our memory the events of the ‘Cultural Revolution,’ ” he proclaimed, “that we ­will prevent history from

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Figure I.1. Wang Jingyao holding his camera (photo by Hu Jie).

repeating itself.”2 Ba Jin’s proposal for a memorial museum found widespread resonance, but t­ here has been growing dissonance about its appropriate form and content, message, and audience.3 To this day, Chinese history textbooks and official museums gloss over the traumatic upheavals of the Mao era—­not only the Red Guard and factional vio­lence from 1966 to 1968 but also the Anti-­Rightist Movement (1957) and the G ­ reat Leap famine (1959–1962)—­while nostalgic memories for the Maoist de­cades have found expression in popu­lar media and memorabilia markets. The largest collection of Mao-­era memorabilia since 2005 can be found at the Jianchuan Museum Cluster (建川博物館聚落) in the small town of Anren in Sichuan. With five museums devoted to the “red age,” this private complex displays a myriad of Mao badges, propaganda posters, newspapers and magazines, LP rec­ords, films, photo ­albums, diaries, dossiers, and everyday artifacts such as mirrors and clocks. Outside the exhibition halls, the museum complex has the atmosphere of a theme park: loudspeakers blast hosannas to Chairman Mao; visitors can pose as “Red Guards” for souvenir photos (see figure I.2), eat at the “­People’s Commune Restaurant,” and purchase Little Red Books, “Serve the ­People” khaki bags, or model revolutionary opera porcelain in gift shops. Since the 1990s, the playful and nostalgic consumption of red memorabilia has been the most prevalent form of commemorating China’s socialist past.4 2 I ntroduction

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Figure I.2. Photo stand-in at Jianchuan Museum (photo by Denise Y. Ho).

Yet ­these commodified spaces are a far cry from what Ba Jin had originally envisioned—­a museum where young p ­ eople could learn about the c­ auses and ramifications of mass vio­lence, about the ideals, pain, and complicity of their parents and grandparents. This book takes up Ba Jin’s proposal for a memorial museum but extends the original emphasis on the Cultural Revolution de­cade (1966–1976) to accommodate a plurality of memories spanning the entire Mao era from 1949 to 1976. The term “Cultural Revolution,” as Michael Schoenhals contends, loses its explanatory value when described as manic, bizarre, or other­wise abnormal and exceptional vis-­à-­vis the prior seventeen years.5 Even histories focusing on the Cultural Revolution trace its origins to ­earlier campaigns.6 Instead of conflating the Mao years into an undifferentiated monolith, this broader periodization takes into account the vicissitudes, interconnectedness, and sedimentation of events in historical memory. Privileging continuity over rupture, this book’s engagement with palimpsest memory formation also considers the legacies of the Republican era and post-­Mao commemorations of the Mao era. How might we then curate a “memorial museum” of the Mao era? What can and should be included in its collections and exhibits? Although con­temporary M ediatin g M emories of the   M ao E ra 3

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politics prevents the realization of Ba Jin’s dream, a memorial museum remains a salient conceptual framework to examine the mediation of memories u ­ nder and across the de­cades of state-­sponsored amnesia. In recent years, museums throughout the world have been undergoing a paradigm shift from ­houses of collection to spaces of recollection, and new curatorial strategies do less to impose authoritative master-­narratives than to accommodate formerly marginalized memory communities.7 Rather than mausoleums of ossified and irrelevant antiques,8 the goal of memorial museums is to enliven memories of crucial historical events “deemed essential for interpreting the pre­sent and envisaging the ­future.” 9 Even in Mao’s China, museums served as classrooms to pass on historical memory to younger generations as well as stages for commemorative rituals.10 As sites of memory, museums are akin to shamanistic mediums that facilitate conversations between the living and the dead, between pre­sent audiences and past spirits.11 While envisioning potential exhibits of a f­uture museum, this book explores vital questions about the politics and poetics, mechanics and ethics of memory-­making. Given state control of recording and communication technologies, what kind of written, audiovisual, and material testimonies can a memorial museum draw on? As embodied memories of firsthand experiences give way to mediated cultural repre­sen­ta­tions, how can historical knowledge and empathy be passed on to ­future generations? With vehement disagreements over the Mao years, how might a memorial museum reconcile contradictory memories into a shared understanding? I argue that a f­ uture memorial museum should mediate memories in three ways: by cultivating conversations between accounts of utopia versus catastrophe; transmitting testimonies across generations; and curating exhibits of primary documents and traces that illuminate broader memory-­making pro­cesses. ­These three senses of memory’s mediation map onto three meanings of “utopian ruins,” as a dialectic between nostalgia and trauma, anticipation and retrospection, propaganda and testimony.

Mediating between Utopia and Ruin

During the Mao era, hundreds of millions of Chinese devoted themselves to the building of a better world yet suffered from hunger and strife at unpre­ce­ dented scales. The revolutionary visions of bounty, equality, and community and the tragic realities of famine, vio­lence, and destruction left b­ ehind two major paradigms for remembering ­those decades—as a series of never-­to-­be-­ repeated totalitarian crimes, or as experiments of alternative modernity whose inspiring ideals should be rescued from their failures.12 ­These two positions 4 I ntroduction

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have bifurcated into two opposing camps among Chinese intellectuals and have also permeated popu­lar discourse.13 The liberals, or New Enlightenment intellectuals, generally hold the “catastrophe thesis” to condemn revolutionary vio­lence and its resultant suffering as well as the breakdown of social trust ­after de­cades of “class strug­g le.” For them, such h ­ uman casualties not only indict Mao’s dictatorship but also spell the bankruptcy of Communist ideals, thus arguing that it would be better to bid “farewell to revolution.”14 At the opposite end of the spectrum, many “New Left” intellectuals mourn the “end of the revolution” and seek to salvage utopia from its ruins. Critiquing in­equality, corruption, and the apparent triumph of global capitalism in postsocialist China, they seek to reclaim the egalitarian ideals of the socialist past to find an “alternative modernity.”15 For Chinese leftists, the Chinese Revolution also responded to historical prob­lems and holds meaning as a “national in­de­pen­dence movement against imperialist encroachments.”16 Debates between the liberals and the leftists have been passionate and polemical, yet both sides share the injunction, “Never Forget!”—be it the revolution’s yet-­to-­be-­mourned ghosts or its unrealized dreams. This book mediates between t­ hese two polarized positions within the critical framework and curatorial strategy of “utopian ruins,” which highlight, on the one hand, the hopes and aspirations that moved so many to participate in the Chinese Revolution, and, on the other hand, the mass suffering and cultural wreckage that occurred in its wake. I argue that a memorial museum of the Mao era must commemorate both the revolutionaries and the revolutionized, motivating ideals and h ­ uman costs, victimhood and complicity, without disaggregating theory from practice or dreams from realities. To ask how utopia came to ruins is to trace where and how ­things went wrong as well as to examine the complicity of the utopian visions in catastrophes. To ask what utopian impulses can be sal­vaged from the ruins is to reexamine the longings of the Chinese Revolution and to consider their renewed relevance in con­ temporary China.17 While sharing the missions of global memorial museums in their “commemoration of mass suffering,”18 the “exhibits” in this book also highlight the thwarted ideals, complicit participation, and envisaged f­ utures. They demonstrate how the massive ­human costs of the Revolution ­were inextricable from its propagated ideals that helped to mobilize the populace. Such utopian visions w ­ ere not merely a dictator’s delusions or deceptions but also mass mediated and collectively pursued, inspiring much voluntary sacrifice and making it difficult to delineate the perpetrators from the victims. Although the traumas of the Maoist past have yet to be worked through, the era’s utopian impulses have taken on a critical potential due to the growing M ediatin g M emories of the   M ao E ra 5

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grievances against neoliberal developments. Hence a f­ uture memorial museum should mediate between traumatic and nostalgic memories and suggest ways to reckon with the man-­made catastrophes that originated with utopian longings. Juxtaposing utopia and ruin, trauma, and nostalgia raises questions about the relationship between elite and grassroots memories and their repre­sen­ta­ tion. Anthropologist Mobo Gao’s provocative book The ­Battle for China’s Past argues against the hegemonic memory production of intellectuals whose families suffered during the Cultural Revolution and instead argues for recognition of “the vast majority of ­people in China” who remember the Mao era as “the good old days.”19 While pinpointing unequal access to media technologies and platforms, Gao fails to take into account the role of media propaganda and censorship in cultivating such nostalgia, or the fact that Maoist cultural legacies are the most ostensibly legitimate yet scathingly symbolic resources of the disenfranchised in postsocialist China.20 The appropriation of revolutionary symbols to protest the status quo does not readily translate into positive lived experiences ­under socialism.21 Without polarizing Mao-­era memories between “elite trauma” and “grassroots nostalgia,” the exhibits in this book pay tribute to the plurality of the memoryscape—­collecting memories of dictatorship, everyday life, and alternative modernity. Instead of directly collecting oral histories from rural villa­gers and urban workers,22 however, this ­imagined memorial-­museum-­in-­book-­form curates from existing textual, photographic, and cinematic rec­ords about the subaltern. Without such rec­ords, first-­generation embodied memories would perish rather than being passed on and shared, which brings us to the second meaning of “utopian ruins.”

Mediating across Generations

In addition to mediating between dreamworld and catastrophe, the c­ uratorial princi­ple of utopian ruins seeks to combine prospective and retrospective perspectives to evoke the layered accumulation of memories. Marianne Hirsch has coined the term “postmemory” to describe the “relationship that the ‘generation ­after’ bears to the personal, collective, and cultural traumas of t­ hose who came before.”23 Whereas Hirsch focuses on the “postmemorial” work performed long a­ fter the passing of the remembered events, I argue that transgenerational memories are made both in the past and in the pre­sent, coproduced by the generation(s) that bequeath testimonies and by the generation(s) that inherit memories. Transgenerational memories are mediated through interpersonal communications between sentient bodies—­voices and gestures, stories and acts—­and more lastingly, through inscriptions onto insentient 6 I ntroduction

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artifacts—­texts and images, objects and places.24 “Memory-­making” thus refers to a palimpsestic pro­cess whereby multiple agents and technologies, both past and pre­sent, contribute to the documentation and transmission, erasure, and excavation of memories in externalized form. Instead of equating memories with retrospective narratives, to study memory as palimpsest formations departs from existing scholarship that locates memory production of the Mao era entirely in the post-­Mao era. Whereas previous studies examine first-­generation accounts in the forms of oral histories and memoirs25 or alternatively fictional reconstructions in lit­er­a­ture and film,26 a memorial museum must exhibit primary documents, indexical traces, and material remains, which “attest to the past by emerging from it.”27 ­Those past traces can also remind the audiences of the forward-­looking, anticipatory outlooks of e­ arlier generations without the benefit of hindsight. As well as memory-­formation pro­cesses, “utopian ruins” refer to memorial media that bear layers of inscription from the remembered past and the remembering pre­sent. If a memorial museum seeks to bridge memory gaps between past, pre­sent, and ­future generations, then such a task is particularly challenging in con­ temporary China. Astrophysicist and dissident Fang Lizhi 方勵之 describes the Communist Party’s “techniques of amnesia”—­those policies that purge past facts that are not in the party’s interest from “any speech, book, document, or other medium,” thereby creating “generational breaks” of historical memory.28 Memoirist Zhang Yihe 章詒和 similarly laments: “­People who are fifty know nothing of the Anti-­Rightist Campaign; ­people who are forty know nothing of the ­great famine; ­people who are thirty know nothing of the Cultural Revolution; ­people who are twenty know nothing of 1989.”29 As in­de­pen­ dent filmmaker Hu Jie 胡傑 asks: “­Will history enter our memory? How ­will it enter our memory?”30 W ­ ill propaganda and censorship whitewash the blood and tears of the past, turning bodies into dissipating smoke? Or can a memorial museum and its exhibits bear witness to history and pass on its memory to ­future generations?

Mediating Technologies and Ecologies

Besides mediating between trauma and nostalgia and between generations, “utopian ruins” suggests a tension between imagination and real­ity, propaganda and testimony. Challenging conventional wisdom that equates memories with lived experiences,31 I argue that memories are inseparable from their mediating technologies, especially when the state filters the documentation M ediatin g M emories of the   M ao E ra 7

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and transmission of knowledge and experience through the sieves of propaganda and censorship. Rather than exercising total control over memories, however, state surveillance can also generate impor­tant resources for unofficial, even subversive, memories in the changing media ecol­ogy of the post-­Mao era. Recent synergy between memory studies and media studies has highlighted not only cultural artifacts and social practices but also technological media.32 Marita Sturken uses “technologies of memory” to refer to “memorials, souvenirs, bodies and other objects” as well as “visual technologies of mass and mediated forms—­photo­graphs, films, tele­vi­sion shows, and digital images.”33 Besides devices that help us remember, memory technology also suggests “memory as technology,” as a tool of power or re­sis­tance, with corollaries in “techniques of forgetting” and “regimes of memory,” to be elaborated in a ­later section. Technologies of memory can be parsed further into technologies of storage (recording, collection, archiving, and preservation) and technologies of transmission (inclusive of communication, circulation, reproduction, and dissemination). Media theorist Friedrich Kittler argues that media technologies determine “recording thresholds,” that is, the changing ratio between perception and inscription,34 thereby affecting what and how the past might be documented. This book ­will explore ­those recording thresholds enabled or inhibited by memory storage technologies, as well as ­human uses of ­those technologies—­ including writing technologies (ink and letter), archiving apparatuses (police files), audiovisual recordings (photography and cinema), physical spaces and material collections (factories, museums, cemeteries). Whereas technologies of storage refashion embodied memories into inscribed memories and preserve ­those traces against the ravages of time, technologies of transmission catapult certain past persons, texts, images, and relics into pre­sent consciousness. That is, they transform “storage memory” into “functional memory,” a distinction cultural theorist Aleida Assmann likens to a museum’s collections in a depository versus its exhibitions on display.35 Studying memory transmission through mass communication helps us understand how selected past traces have come to meet with broader audiences and taken on public afterlives. To illustrate how dif­fer­ent media technologies contribute to the recording, transmission, and remediation of memories,36 let us revisit the case at the beginning of this chapter: In 1966, when photographic technology belonged to state institutions or commercial photo studios, Wang Jingyao acquired a camera to rec­ord the last glimpses of his wife and to embalm visual evidence of the vio­lence that caused her death. He preserved ­those photos alongside other 8 I ntroduction

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textual, material, and bodily relics in his home, ­until in­de­pen­dent filmmaker Hu Jie remediated this private collection, together with Wang’s oral testimony, into a 2006 documentary film shot on digital video and distributed on the internet. Recollected into this “virtual museum,” one f­ amily’s private photos met a much wider con­temporary audience and served as metonymic visual testimony to the vio­lence of the Red Guard movement.37 This case demonstrates how technological development and access, repre­sen­ta­tional conventions, and (re)mediating platforms can reshape historical memory. Tracing the remediation of body into photography, into digital video, and into the internet heightens our awareness not only of changing media technologies but also of the evolving ecologies of memory. U ­ nder the phrase “new memory ecologies,” media theorist Andrew Hoskins argues that memory nowadays finds itself in “a media ecol­ogy wherein abundance, pervasiveness and accessibility of communication networks, nodes, and digital media content, scale pasts anew.”38 Finding a media ecological approach just as useful for studying memory-­making pro­cesses in the predigital age, I define “memory ecol­ogy” as a holistic study of the environment in which remembering and forgetting take place, where a dynamic constellation of po­liti­cal, economic, cultural, and technological forces affects the survival and perishing, reproduction, and dissemination of memories.39 For example, although photography and cinema ­were hardly new technologies in Mao’s China, chapters 3 and 4 demonstrate that uneven access to cameras and film, as well as visual conventions and taboos, impacted what and how images and sounds ­were recorded. Conversely, examining the selective preservation and transmission of the past brings into sharp relief po­liti­cal, socioeconomic, technological, and informational inequities. As James Young reminds us, “memory is never ­shaped in a vacuum, and the motives of memory are never pure.”40 This book thus studies memorial artifacts to understand the broader ecologies that condition memory formation.

Testimonial Exhibits and Museum Witnessing

Collecting memories of the past for a pre­sent audience, a memorial museum underscores the “exhibit” as display and as evidence. In the sense of display, con­temporary memorial-­museum exhibits feature a combination of archival documents, audiovisual media, and material artifacts. More than master-­ narratives and canons, memorial museums highlight life stories and personal recollections, providing a platform “for victims of atrocities and for minorities who find it difficult to make themselves heard.”41 Compelling exhibits generate M ediatin g M emories of the   M ao E ra 9

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empathy and help visitors take on what Alison Landsberg calls “prosthetic memory.”42 In the sense of evidence, a memorial museum’s exhibits make truth claims and have documentary, indexical, and testimonial qualities. Unlike fiction that represents the past, a memorial museum re-­presents the past in Jacques Derrida’s sense of “rendering pre­sent, of a summoning as a power-­of-­bringing-­ back-­to-­presence.”43 Its exhibits rely on indexical traces—­including archival documents, camera images, and material relics—­that might “bear witness” to the past by virtue of “having been t­ here.”44 Yet as Paul Williams points out, ­there is a “basic difficulty with the object base of memorial museums,” ­because “the injured, dispossessed, and expelled are left object-­poor,” not to mention the “clandestine nature of much po­liti­cal vio­lence” in which the perpetrators “purposefully destroy evidence of their destruction.”45 Since indexical traces are partial by definition, a memorial museum must juxtapose dif­fer­ent perspectives, make metonymic inferences from fractured rec­ords, while also acknowledging the gaps and limits of our knowledge. As much as memory, witnessing and testimony are keywords for what memorial museums exhibit and for what they do. The intricate term “witness,” as John Durham Peters points out, can refer to “(1) the agent who bears witness, (2) the utterance or text itself, (3) the audience who witnesses.”46 The historical roots of witnessing can be traced back to ­legal, religious, and philosophical traditions, yet massive catastrophes and mass media in the twentieth ­century have also transformed its meaning.47 The impossible and yet ethical imperative to bear witness to atrocity emerged in parallel with the rise of what communication scholars call “media witnessing”—­“the witnessing performed in, by, and through the media,” whereby photography, cinema, and broadcasting enable “systematic and ongoing reporting of the experiences and realities of distant ­others to mass audiences.”48 Inspired by the notion of media witnessing, this book focuses on what I call “museum witnessing,” or witnessing in, by, and through the memorial museum, with emphasis on both subjective h ­ uman experiences and “objective” recording technologies. Witnessing in the museum refers to evidentiary exhibits of texts, images, and objects, as well as retrospective testimonies. Witnessing by the museum refers to the museum as “witness stand” for persons, recordings, and objects, contextualizing as well as cross-­examining their testimonies.49 Fi­nally, witnessing through the museum turns audiences into “secondary witnesses” who constitute a “moral community”50 to judge the past and empathize with historical actors. Museum witnessing can become entangled with thorny politics, for “all existing memorial museums . . . ​[are] the result of par­tic­u­lar power strug­g les.”51 1 0 I ntroduction

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But even leaving aside po­liti­cal censorship, museum exhibits raise intriguing ethical questions about provenance, repre­sen­ta­tion, and impact. For the justness of the provenance, we ask about the roots and routes of the exhibits: Who made ­those textual, visual, and material artifacts, and ­under what circumstances? In addition to the “rec­ords themselves,” what is the “story of their composition and their tenuous survival?”52 For the justness of repre­sen­ta­tion, we ask about the se­lection, display, and narration of the exhibits: How should a memorial museum balance between contested memories? How do we work with a dearth of documents, images, or objects that can attest to vio­lence and tyranny? How do we resolve the “strain between authenticity and evidence and the desire to create emotive, dramatic visitor experience?”53 This brings us to the justness of impact: How should the exhibits differ when addressing natives and foreigners, el­der and younger generations, students and ­consumers? Taking a cue from Tony Bennett’s idea of the “exhibitionary complex,” whereby museums help discipline society through exemplary spectacles,54 do memorial museums make their visitors better citizens or more docile subjects? As with memories of vio­lence in other national contexts, a primary ethical concern ­here is the self-­positioning of a postgeneration. How are we implicated “in the aftermath of crimes we did not ourselves witness”?55 Who are the legitimate heirs when it comes to the “inheritance of loss?”56 The most obvious ethical position of sympathy for victims can turn into unearned self-­ righteousness, even the appropriation of victimhood as symbolic capital.57 Further complicating ethical judgment is the Chinese “revolutionary cycle”58 that turned victims into accomplices of vio­lence and vice versa, as well as the revolution’s idealistic origins and traumatic aftermath. When the revolution devours not only its c­ hildren but its ideals, are t­ hose ideals to be abandoned and negated? Born ­after the Cultural Revolution, I wish to reiterate h ­ ere that we are at the historical juncture of memory’s generational transfer, a paradigm shift from lived to mediated, from possession to inheritance. As memory recedes and modernization speeds, ­there is a growing desire to salvage past stories and remnants from death and de­mo­li­tion and to give more enduring form to ephemeral memories. Yet the postgeneration is not only cursed with amnesia. ­After all, as writer Han Shaogong 韓少功 argues, now that the Mao years have “receded to an adequate distance that allows careful observation,” we should not allow a polarized narrative of demonization and deification to cloud our understanding.59 In this spirit, this book curates exhibits that highlight the gaps and fissures of more mainstream red legacies and offers suggestions for ­future mediators of memory. M ediatin g M emories of the   M ao E ra  1 1

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The Maoist Regime of Memories

“A backward gaze,” as Stephen Owen points out, “can be found in the earliest works of Chinese lit­er­a­ture,” where the past “became an absence and an object of desire that had to be earnestly sought, its remains recovered, its losses lamented.”60 “I transmit, I do not make,” said Confucius, “whose act of remembrance is more vivid than the object of his memory,”61 thereby creating a chain of remembrances that continued to manifest itself over centuries of Chinese cultural tradition in vari­ous commemorative practices, from the compilation of histories and genealogies to the recitation of classical texts. The onset of modernity, starting with the May Fourth Movement in 1919, began to assail the long-standing cultural canon and to break this chain of remembrances. Land reform and collectivization from the 1940s to the 1950s further dispossessed old lineages, desecrated commemorative spaces, and shattered filial rites.62 The radical attack on every­thing old as feudal culminated in the Cultural Revolution, which not only traumatized millions but also destroyed the cultural heritage on an unpre­ce­dented scale. Instead of adding links to a chain of remembrances, revolutionary vio­lence left ­behind a palimpsest of ruins, which prompted a renewed grasp for premodern memorial resources.63 While abolishing time-­honored memory practices, the Communist Revolution brought about a regime change of memories—­a propagandization of memories that mobilized memories for propaganda and turned propaganda into memories—­and a surveillance over memories that entailed both a crisis of documentation and the archiving of other­wise ephemeral memories. I argue that the Communist Revolution was also a participatory mass media revolution, whereby the party reached the masses with media and turned the masses into media. Mass media and the masses as media magnified and prolonged the influence of Maoist utopianism, whereas the state mono­poly over media technologies hindered documentation of its atrocities. The Communist Party began turning memories into propaganda during the land reform of the 1940s and 1950s, using “speaking bitterness” (訴苦) to mobilize and politicize the rural folk and the urban proletariat.64 In the 1960s and 1970s, “speaking bitterness” was reprised as “recalling bitterness” (憶苦) in order to transmit class consciousness to the younger generation.65 In successive po­liti­cal campaigns, the party summoned, collected, recorded, selected, visualized, staged, ritualized, broadcast, synthesized, fictionalized, manipulated, and propagated memories of the prerevolutionary suffering from peasants, workers, and soldiers.66 1 2 I ntroduction

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Whereas the formerly oppressed remembered bitterness through public speaking, the formerly privileged—­that is, much of the literate populace—­had to indict and reform themselves through graphomania: writing and rewriting their life stories for their dossiers (檔案). As a technology of surveillance, the dossier aligned individual lives with official master-­narratives and made the writers ventriloquists of state ideology. The dossier also had the potential to confiscate private memory inscriptions—­letters, diaries, photos—­while committing other­wise ephemeral memories to more permanent storage, turning official archives into a privileged site of testimony in the post-­Mao era. Chapters 1 and 2 w ­ ill focus on the dossier, which thus far has attracted ­little scholarly attention, as a site of cultural and memory production. While autobiographical memories w ­ ere transformed into public per­for­ mances and entered closed archives, lit­er­a­ture, art, m ­ usic, cinema, and exhibitions disseminated visions of a Communist paradise as an alternative to the “hell” of the “old society.” Relying on mass media to spread its utopian visions, the party took over existing printing presses, radio stations, and films67 and vastly expanded the media infrastructure to the countryside through literacy campaigns, propaganda posters, wired broadcasts, and mobile film projections.68 State-­sponsored propaganda, which receive insightful analy­sis in recent scholarship, have had an enormous impact on perceptions and memories of the Mao era.69 Whereas most prior cultural histories privilege the creative production of socialist “fictions,” this book focuses on the Maoist production of “facts” and “truths,” and its modes of witnessing and documenting real­ity, including journalism (chapters 1 and 3), police files (chapters 1 and 2), photography and documentary film (chapters 3, 4, and 5), and the collection and exhibition of material objects (chapter 6). In an age when revolution was a “holy word” with an inviolable sacred aura,70 I argue that the mission of Maoist mass media was to testify—as a profession of faith—to revolutionary teleology and socialist f­ utures at the expense of documenting atrocities, failures, or everyday life ­under actually existing socialism. Such “testimonies of revolutionary faith” privileged “real­ity as it should be” over “real­ity as it is.” Thus, utopian expressions not only eclipsed documentation of but w ­ ere often complicit in producing many disasters of mass mobilization. Rather than seeing propaganda as a dictator’s sinister lies that “brainwashed” a mindless populace, understanding propaganda as inspiring ideals can help us fathom the massive support for the Communist Revolution—including support from its later victims—as well as the massive scale of its failures. Rather than be passive victims of indoctrination, many Chinese p ­ eople actively turned their bodies and voices into revolutionary media. M ediatin g M emories of the   M ao E ra  1 3

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In addition to considering how the party deployed media to reach the masses, I extend the notion of mass media from modern communication technologies to include the masses as media—­people as the vehicles of the revolution as a total work of art. Mao Zedong himself spelled out such an idea in a 1958 speech: Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding t­hing about China’s 600 million ­people is that they are “poor and blank.” This may seem a bad ­thing, but in real­ity, it is a good ­thing. Poverty gives rise to the desire for changes, the desire for action, and the desire for revolution. On a blank sheet of paper f­ ree from any mark, the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the freshest and most beautiful pictures can be painted.71 The ­people, following William Schaefer’s interpretation of Mao’s statement, ­were not merely the subjects or objects of repre­sen­ta­tion; they w ­ ere the 72 very medium of revolutionary politics and aesthetics. When ­human beings served as the medium to realize revolutionary dreams and schemes, utopian visions ceased to be a ­matter of illusion, deception, or theory disconnected from real­ity. Instead, they exacted all-­too-­real ­human sacrifices, both voluntary and involuntary. My central contention is that propaganda produced not only fictions but also realities—­albeit not the realities envisioned in the original blueprints, thus leaving b­ ehind “utopian ruins.” Chapter 1 ­will show how, for several generations, revolutionary mobilization relied on the hot blood of youth in the boiler of activism, who understood martyrdom as the most noble end of a h ­ uman life. Chapter 2 argues that the party’s surveillance over its citizens relied not so much on panoptic cameras or wiretapping devices but rather on the eyes and ears of the masses. Chapter 3 demonstrates how photography during the ­Great Leap Forward projected ­grand agricultural and industrial visions that mobilized laboring bodies and produced famished bodies. Chapter 4 explores how chosen members of the Chinese populace produced an image of a new, revolutionary China for foreign film crews. Chapter 5 considers the imbrication of workers’ bodies and lives into the ecosystem of the socialist factory, and chapter 6 studies the memorialization and museumification of the ­human and material remains of the Mao era. Instead of assigning agency to only a small coterie of po­liti­cal elites, this book shows how the Chinese p ­ eople actively invested in a revolutionary proj­ect that exacted staggering h ­ uman costs. Apart from arguing that propaganda produced realities as well as fictions, this book also contends that censorship—­the flip side of propaganda—­ 1 4 I ntroduction

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played a decisive role in shaping perceptions, documentations, and memories of the Mao era. Indeed, state surveillance over memory-­making technologies and practices distinguish the Chinese “crisis of witnessing” from the original concept in trauma studies. Shoshana Felman and Dori Laub use the term “crisis of witnessing” to describe the unspeakable and unimaginable trauma of the Holocaust, as “the unpre­ce­dented inconceivable historical occurrence of . . . ​‘an event eliminating its own witness.’ ” 73 The impossibility and the imperative to give and receive testimony became the core paradox of trauma studies, also influential for modern Chinese literary and cultural studies.74 Whereas trauma studies focus on the psychic effects of vio­lence, this book provides a media-­centered explanation for the Chinese crisis of witnessing. As propaganda—or the aforementioned “testimonies of revolutionary faith”—­ saturated mass media and surveillance obstructed testimonies of suffering, I contend that the traumatic events of the Mao era are “repressed memories” not only in a psychoanalytical sense but also in the sense of state mono­poly over media technologies. Rather than witnesses too traumatized to speak, censors denied witnesses the means—in some cases literally the pen and paper (as discussed in chapter 1)—to inscribe, circulate, and transmit their testimonies. What renders past real­ity “inaccessible” to pre­sent consciousness is not only the im­menseness of the trauma but also the inaccessibility of historical archives (discussed in chapters 1 and 2), the scarcity of audiovisual rec­ords (discussed in chapters 3 and 4), and the erasure of physical spaces and material traces (discussed in chapters 5 and 6). The Chinese crisis of witnessing can be illustrated by Cicero’s story about the poet Simonides, the “inventor of memory,” who was invited to a banquet at a nobleman’s palace. When he stepped outside, the palace ceiling suddenly collapsed and crushed the bodies of the victims beyond recognition. However, Simonides, who survived, remembered where each one had been sitting at the ­table, so that their relatives ­were able to identify and bury their dead. As in ancient Greece, memory in China has long been associated with mourning,75 yet even that right was often denied the families of the ­millions designated as po­liti­cal pariahs. When Wang Jingchao 王景超—​ erstwhile ­revolutionary journalist condemned as a “Rightist” for his criticisms of the party—­died from starvation in a ­labor reform camp in 1961, his wife, He ­Fengming 和鳳鳴, our female Chinese Simonides, could not even visit his grave. Thirty years l­ ater, a friend helped her locate the camp’s burial ground, where each grave was marked by a stone picked from the nearby Gobi Desert. With the victim’s name written with paint, each stone was placed M ediatin g M emories of the   M ao E ra  1 5

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facing down to protect against erosion. Yet a­ fter de­cades of ravaging weather, most names had faded and could not be deciphered, so He Fengming turned over hundreds of stones but still could not find her husband’s grave. She ­later learned that the stones had actually been placed ­there in 1979, two de­cades ­after the famine, so the names very likely did not correspond to the buried ­human remains.76 As metonymy and meta­phor, He Fengming’s story resonates with t­hose millions of Mao-­era victims never properly identified or mourned. The faded names on belated “gravestones” randomly assigned to a mass grave poignantly illustrate that memorials in stone depend on po­liti­cal legitimation and commemorative vigilance. The revolutionary storm wreaked havoc time and again, and millions of bodies ­under the crushing weight of man-­made disasters and totalizing ideologies w ­ ere deprived of proper identification, mourning, and burial, so that a Chinese Simonides could not exercise her art of memory. She had to give in to silence and amnesia u ­ ntil a ­later opportunity opened for memorialization. As I w ­ ill demonstrate throughout this book, the state’s technologies of surveillance and propaganda can sometimes be reclaimed by ­later generations and remediated to testify against the official historiography.

The Post-­Mao Memory Ecol­ogy

Whereas the Maoist regime of memories propagated utopian visions and censored testimonies to their ruination, the post-­Mao memory ecol­ogy allowed for the blooming and contending of official and unofficial, elite and grassroots, traumatic and nostalgic memories. With Mao’s death in 1976, the country shared an overwhelming awareness that a momentous historical era had, for better or worse, come to an end, leading to prolific commemorations. The official reversal of many leftist policies dating back to the 1950s77 occasioned the release, rehabilitation, and return of millions of incarcerated or displaced ­people, thereby unleashing a flood of previously unsanctioned memories.78 With the liberalization of publishing and other media industries, an influential body of scar lit­er­a­ture recollected ­bitter memories of Maoist campaigns.79 Although initially bolstering the Deng regime, this eruption of grievances threatened the legitimacy of the Communist Party. Moreover, b­ ecause former victims and perpetrators as well as members of polarized factions often continued to work and live together, silence about the recent past seemed to be the best way to patch over the torn social fabric. In 1981, the party imposed official closure of the Mao era by passing the Resolution on Party History that negated the “­mistakes” of the Cultural Revolution and urged the nation to look 1 6 I ntroduction

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into the ­future.80 With tightening censorship, individuals channeled traumatic memories of criticism sessions, beatings, incarceration, and exile into narratives of illness, and peer groups spoke about common experiences at closed social gatherings.81 Within the limits of the 1981 resolution, intellectuals searched for the roots of the Cultural Revolution in e­ arlier campaigns and called on one another to “repent.” 82 By the 1990s, official repression of Mao-­era memories exiled scar narratives overseas, where victim status became symbolic capital. Several English-­ language memoirs became bestsellers for their vivid and sensational depictions of Cultural Revolution horrors, which the protagonists could fi­nally leave ­behind ­after they departed for Eu­rope and Amer­i­ca.83 The transplantation of such scar memories has flourished in exile and fed a Western master-­narrative about the Maoist “dark ages.” 84 The same ideological atmosphere fostered a mainstream Western fascination with con­temporary Chinese cultural products whereby “banned in China” could be worn as a badge of honor.85 Although scar lit­er­a­ture and film became a new master trope of the Mao era overseas, nostalgia for the “red age” grew within China. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the re-­release of films, songs, and books from the “seventeen years” prior to the Cultural Revolution evoked the 1950s and 1960s as “a halcyon age of simplicity and purity.” 86 By the early 1990s, discontent with the market reforms gave rise to a posthumous cult of Mao, whose portrait hung from taxi rearview win­dows and presided over villa­ger homes.87 The Red Guard generation nostalgic for their youth became avid producers and consumers of a “flourishing memory industry.” 88 By the late 1990s, workers who had been laid off from state-­owned enterprises missed their “iron rice bowls” and held up Mao portraits in their protests.89 In the realm of thought, Geremie Barmé critiques a “totalitarian nostalgia” for “a language of denunciation that offered ­simple solutions to complex prob­lems.”90 As I suggest in chapter 5, the de­mo­li­tion of the socialist-­built environment in the form of work units and neighborhoods has also contributed to nostalgic sentiments. As t­hose with firsthand memories of the Mao years have begun to pass away, it is worth asking what memory resources young ­people can now use to access the experiences of their elders. Whereas popu­lar fiction, films, and TV dramas “play a profound role in shaping the public imagination and (mis) conceptions of history,” 91 a memorial museum must still be grounded in primary documentary evidence. Just as my analy­sis of the anticipatory memory production of the Mao era focuses on the documentation of realities, my study of the post-­Mao period is concerned with accessing historical real­ity from a retrospective distance. My methodology not only checks “memory texts”92 M ediatin g M emories of the   M ao E ra  1 7

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against the historical facts but also examines “memory-­making” as a dynamic and diachronic pro­cess. Although state censorship continued in the post-­Mao years, new technologies and ecologies of memory have allowed for the remediation of vari­ous textual, visual, and material traces from the Mao era into commemorative media that circulate through print, cinema, museums, and the internet. ­Distinct from retrospective repre­sen­ta­tions and fictional reconstructions, remediations that re-­present indexical traces remain anchored to the a­ ctual past while drawing attention to their distance from the pre­sent.93 Defined as the pro­cess whereby a new medium reproduces and refashions older media, remediation bears what Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin call a “double logic”: “­every medium promises to reform its pre­de­ces­sors by offering more immediate or au­then­tic experience,” which in turn c­ auses an awareness of the new medium’s “hypermediacy.”94 In post-­Mao China, remediation has often meant a broader dissemination of previously inaccessible archival materials with both speed and ease, thereby creating a sense of the past’s “immediacy” while also raising self-­reflexive debates about its epistemology. Studying remediated rec­ords and traces means paying attention not only to their content but also to the broader conditions that allowed them to meet with a pre­sent audience and to our memory gaps of undocumented realities. In China as elsewhere, digital remediation has introduced new modes of sharing memories.95 As Hoskins argues, memories nowadays are not only “collective” but “connective,” since digital networks enable the instant retrieval of past traces and the spontaneous formation of new memory communities.96 In the Chinese context, sociologist Guobin Yang shows how digital technologies help to “rec­ord, reproduce, transmit, and transact” alternative, unofficial memories.97 Lightweight and affordable digital video cameras also facilitate the articulation and sharing of unsanctioned memories with niche audiences. Digital media and the internet have played a crucial role to remediate the exhibits in this book, so that submerged historical figures, documents, and images can resurface in cyberspace and contribute to public memory. Whereas remediation generally tends to solidify and update cultural memory,98 digital remediation of Mao-­era traces has also resurrected muted voices, reproduced previously inaccessible archives, and reenlivened public discussions of forgotten history. A part of each chapter in this volume is devoted to the digital afterlives of the Mao-­era traces: chapter 1 shows how a digital video documentary remediated a suppressed dissident’s prison writings in blood and generated a digital cult around a martyr of ­free speech. Chapter 2 discusses 1 8 I ntroduction

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how published excerpts from a police file stirred up an online controversy over the complicity of Chinese intellectuals in the Maoist denunciations. Chapter 3 engages with the con­temporary reinterpretation of photography from the ­Great Leap Forward and famine, and chapter 4 examines the retrospective reception of Eu­ro­pean documentaries about the Cultural Revolution that became available in digital formats. Chapter 5 submits that digital cinema can memorialize socialist factories condemned to de­mo­li­tion, just as chapter 6 explores how the materiality of red memorabilia collections and the physicality of trauma sites interact with real and virtual commemorative communities. If the verb “curate” is derived from the verb “care,” remediation of past traces can also be “remedial” and serve, to borrow the words of Marianne Hirsch, “as a form of counter-­history” to engage “in acts of repair and redress.”99

Overview of the Exhibits

The memory environment in the P ­ eople’s Republic may be likened to an enormous garden tended by a g­ iant—­the Chinese Communist Party—­that both carefully cultivates and brutishly chops off memory plants to serve its own needs, just as Maoist politics labeled cultural expressions “fragrant flowers” or “poisonous weeds.”100 Yet the ­giant loosened its control over the garden in the post-­Mao era, allowing much wild flora to grow in the cracks and ivy to extend beyond its walls. This book cultivates its own botanic garden of memories by curating archetypal and rare memory flora, tracing their histories of emergence, preservation, transmission, proliferation, imminent extinction, and potential revitalization. Which memories thrive or wither and in what climate and soil? Why do some memories become viral, o­ thers die out, and still ­others mutate? How might remediation expand and extend the life and reach of memories, or perhaps resurrect and reanimate certain past figures and events consigned to oblivion? How do dif­fer­ent memories—­official and popu­lar, traumatic and nostalgic, elite and grassroots—­coexist, compete, and interact? How are memories implicated in the larger ecosystem of cultural, po­ liti­cal, socioeconomic, and technological forces? Thus, the memorial museum of the Mao era consists not only of lifeless and inert objects but also of ­faces and voices, stories and lives that illuminate an evolving memory ecol­ogy and disseminate, or plant the seeds of, memory as a legacy for ­future generations. In this botanic garden of memories, each chapter curates a memorial exhibit centering on a dif­fer­ent species of document or trace that has prompted public commemoration in the post-­Mao era and that can attest to the utopian ruins of the Mao era. Moving from the corporeal and the written to the (audio) M ediatin g M emories of the   M ao E ra  1 9

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visual and the material, the six chapters are devoted to “blood testaments,” “surveillance files,” “utopian photo­graphs,” “foreign lenses,” “factory rubble,” and “museums and memorials.” Chapters 1 and 2 examine embodied and written testimonies in the police files of intellectuals, revolutionaries accused of counterrevolutionary crimes, in order to flesh out the interconnections between idealism and vio­lence, victimhood and complicity. Chapters 3 and 4 analyze photography from the G ­ reat Leap Forward and documentary films from the Cultural Revolution as eyewitness testimonies to communist miracles—­ from agricultural bounty to proletarian power—­that exclude darker realities from the audiovisual rec­ord. Chapters 5 and 6 study physical spaces and material relics as tangible testimonies, from the ruins of socialist factories and their cinematic remediations to a survey of existing museums and memorials that bifurcate between red memorabilia collections and Maoist trauma sites. As much as cultural artifacts are valued for their rich content and sophisticated form, the exhibits in this volume draw on primary and nonfictional written, audiovisual, or material traces that have survived from the Mao era to the post-­Mao era. Since the remediated afterlives of ­these fragments stimulated public discussions, ­every exhibit features palimpsest metatexts with layers of additions and erasures, revealing the strug­g les and pro­cesses of memory and forgetting. More than close readings, all the chapters trace the production, censorship, circulation, and reception of testimonial media to extrapolate broader media and memory ecologies. The most intuitive way to or­ga­nize a Mao-­era museum is to pre­sent an overview of its major po­liti­cal events, yet such dry chronologies cannot convey their accumulated ­human impact. Privileging instead life stories that bridge over historical ruptures, the first two chapters in this volume—­“Blood Testaments” and “Surveillance Files”—­are devoted to the extraordinary dossiers of Lin Zhao 林昭 and Nie Gannu 聶紺弩, which connect the utopian ideals of the Chinese Revolution to its human costs and comment on the crisis of media witnessing ­under state censorship. Both intellectuals followed Communism in their youths but ­were condemned as “Rightists” and incarcerated as “counterrevolutionaries” for their writing. Anticipating a ­future audience, Lin Zhao’s prison writings in blood—­corporeal relics that also mediate her voice and thought—­powerfully testify to the passion and pain of the Maoist past, suggesting that this was an era saturated by the hot blood of idealistic youths and the cold blood of state-­sponsored vio­lence. Also posthumously remediated, Nie Gannu’s police file triggered memories of and debates over widespread complicity with authoritarian power as well as a network of eyes, ears, and writing hands that contributed to surveillance and vio­lence in the Mao era. 2 0 I ntroduction

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The vivid details within both files animate historical moments with nuanced sentiments, choices, and actions, so that memories of Maoist campaigns might resonate with con­temporary dilemmas. Curating exhibits from t­ hese archives highlights the dossier as a technology of surveillance and a medium of memory. Every­one in the ­People’s Republic ever affiliated with a school, work unit, or the CCP has had one or more surveillance files that have been inaccessible but have held g­ reat sway over individual pasts, pre­sents, and f­ utures. Dossiers tell us not only about the individuals about whom they are compiled but also held surveillance over all acts of memory-­making, record-­keeping, and even interpersonal communication. The basis of prison and death sentences as well as the remnants of lives, ­these files reveal the possibilities and limits for the production and transmission of memories. Ironically, when it became too risky to keep nonconforming thoughts in a drawer, the dossier became the last haven for the safekeeping of personal rec­ords and mementos. ­After the Cultural Revolution, dossiers compiled during the Mao era became an impor­tant repository of historical memory. Unlike fiction, films, or memoirs, dossiers are not smooth retrospective narratives but rather shards and ruins of history, buried inside or excavated from the messy strata of the past. Although most dossiers remain inaccessible, Lin Zhao’s and Nie Gannu’s files became partially available to the public through serendipitous circumstances. With excerpts circulating via print journalism, digital video, and the internet, the remediation and reception of ­these files marked the gradual liberalization of the postsocialist mediascape as well as the remnant taboos and legacies of the Maoist past. Turning from the textual to the visual, from the closed archive to public culture, chapters 3 and 4 discuss camera images of the Mao era, focusing on photography of the G ­ reat Leap Forward and two Eu­ro­pean documentary films about the Cultural Revolution. I argue that the creation of visual testimonies of the Mao era—or lack thereof—depends not only on technological hardware like photo cameras, the printing press, and cinematic apparatuses but also on the period’s visual culture and visual economy. With utopian imagination on the one hand and ever more rigid conventions on the other, photography and cinema ­were tasked to visualize the revolution’s aspirations, even miracles, rather than to bear witness to its atrocities, shortcomings, or quotidian experiences. In the postsocialist era, (audio)visual memories of the Mao era have been ­either dismissed as propaganda detached from “real socialism” or celebrated as evidence of an “alternative modernity.” In examining the afterlives of ­these photo­graphs and films—­their remediation and reception in the post-­ M ediatin g M emories of the   M ao E ra  2 1

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Mao era—­I argue for an accounting of the way images document the fantasies and anx­i­eties of an era, thereby turning propaganda into testimony and wresting justice from “just images.” Examining the making of photographic memories during and of the ­Great Leap Forward, chapter 3, “Utopian Photo­graphs,” explores aesthetic, economic, ideological, and technological explanations for the production of what we now may regard as “fake” or “staged” photo­graphs as well as for the absence of famine photography. Using previously untapped primary sources, this chapter finds that journalistic, social, and amateur photography all flourished during the ­Great Leap. Thousands of professional photog­raphers went to the countryside to take pictures of the “laboring ­people” and to “bear witness” to revolutionary miracles. Meanwhile, affordable domestic-­brand cameras became available for the first time to amateur photog­raphers. Yet when all texts and images ­were considered expressions of their makers’ ideological stance, any image suggesting poverty or hunger would have been considered a sacrilege against idealistic pursuits. Moreover, many patriotic photog­raphers sought to create proud and dignified images of the Chinese to shatter the “backward” or “savage” iconography of China through the “imperialist” lens. This chapter chronicles nuanced theoretical debates about photographic truth and tracks changing practices of photojournalists as well as social and amateur photog­raphers, showing how the expansion of photographic technology at the grass roots coincided with a narrowing of visual conventions. Photography also served to mobilize ­labor and promote production, whereas the doctrine of revolutionary romanticism promoted the staging and manipulation of photo­ graphs, especially as photomontages. Fi­nally, this chapter scrutinizes a handful of alternative images of China during the ­Great Leap to consider the possibilities and limits of photography to memorialize the ensuing famine. Chapter 4, “Foreign Lenses,” focuses on the production and reception of two early 1970s Eu­ro­pean documentary films about China—­Chung Kuo: Cina by Michelangelo Antonioni and How Yukong Moved the Mountains by Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan. Antonioni’s film invoked the ire of Chinese officials, and millions of Chinese w ­ ere mobilized to take part in a mass criticism campaign against a movie few had actually seen. Following a genealogical overview of foreign filmmaking about China from the early twentieth ­century to the 1960s, this chapter examines the “justness” of ­these films as historical documents and as visual legacies of the Cultural Revolution. I argue that t­ hese films re-­present officially sanctioned, iconic, and coded images that ­were nevertheless torn and frayed at the edges, due to the directors’ creative defiance or unawareness of repre­sen­ta­tional formulas. Coproductions between the cameras 2 2 I ntroduction

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of Westerners and a Maoist mise-­en-­scène, ­these films provide metacinematic testimonies to some utopian aspirations as well as quotidian realities of the Mao era with affective intimacy and critical distance. The controversies they invoked further provide us with a critical lens with which to examine other cinematic legacies from the Mao era. This chapter w ­ ill flesh out three components of this audiovisual memory ecol­ogy: the Maoist audiovisual regime, the global audiovisual economy, and postsocialist audiovisual memories. Whereas chapters 1 and 2 focus on writing and archives and chapters 3 and 4 focus on photography and cinema, chapters 5 and 6 highlight the roles of material ruins and memorials in mediating memories of the Mao era. For ordinary ­people not in the habit of keeping diaries or taking many photos, the physical places where they have lived and worked, and the everyday objects they have used, become significant sites of memory.101 As the post-­Mao market reforms accelerated in the 1990s and laid to ruins socialist institutions and built environments, artists and filmmakers, collectors and curators sal­vaged memories from de­mo­li­tion and transformed them into art, films, memorials, and museums. Following Ann Laura Stoler’s approach to “ruins not necessarily as monuments but as ecologies of remains [which] opens . . . to wider social topographies,” chapters 5 and 6 both analyze how the Mao era’s spatial and material ruins persist in their postsocialist local contexts as well as examine the pro­cesses of ruination and memorialization.102 Focusing on the ruins of socialist factories that used to be the life-­world for millions of workers, chapter 5, “Factory Rubble,” analyzes how three filmmakers remediated memories from vanis­hing industrial neighborhoods into “cinematic memorials” of Mao’s working class. Following the bankruptcy of many state-­owned enterprises in the 1990s, the dilapidated yet still monumental spaces of former factories and associated residential districts attracted the attention of many con­temporary artists, photog­raphers, and filmmakers. Cinema in par­tic­u­lar excavated, scavenged, and remediated memories that used to be held together by communal spaces for the broader public and for younger generations. Apart from collecting workers’ testimonies to their socialist experiences—­mixing pride and pain, idealism and endurance—­cinema has also witnessed and documented the slow ruination of socialist factories. Reading three seminal films—­Wang Bing’s 王兵 West of the Tracks (鐵西區, 2003), Jia Zhangke’s 賈樟柯 24 City (二十四城記, 2008), and Zhang Meng’s 張猛 The Piano in a Factory (鋼的琴, 2011)—in terms of “rust,” “memory,” and “legacy,” this chapter asks ­whether the Mao era was truly utopian for Chinese workers. What can we salvage from its ruins? And fi­nally, how might cinema serve as memorials in an age of de­mo­li­tion? M ediatin g M emories of the   M ao E ra  2 3

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Returning to Ba Jin’s original idea for a Cultural Revolution museum, chapter 6 studies con­temporary Chinese museums and memorials that commemorate the Mao era by collecting, preserving, or exhibiting its material remains. This survey shows that materializations of Ba Jin’s museum concept have bifurcated between red memorabilia collections and trauma sites. ­After tracing the intellectual genealogy of a Cultural Revolution museum and contextualizing it in a global memory culture, the bulk of the chapter provides a guided tour of specific museums and memorial sites within China’s borders—­ most of them local and private initiatives—­where visitors may encounter the Maoist heritage in tangible form. In surveying museums devoted to the “civilization” of Mao-­era cultural artifacts as well as memorials devoted to its “cataclysms,” or man-­made catastrophes, I examine the agents ­behind the creation, maintenance, and neglect of sites over time; the form and media in which the past persists into the pre­sent; and the meanings that ­these sites might convey to real or virtual visitors. ­After tracing the mediation of memories from the Maoist to the post-­Mao era through six studies, the epilogue pre­sents “notes for ­future curators.” Reflecting on China’s vanis­hing memories in comparative perspectives, I distill the curatorial method of “utopian ruins” into five active verbs—­excavate, account, exhibit, converse, and imagine—­and outline several concrete curatorial proposals. Instead of any monumental museum to provide an authoritative master-­narrative, I argue for grassroots memorial sites that bring together dif­fer­ent generations of survivors, scholars, artists, and audiences in active and collaborative searches for the past. Such sites should feature the ruins of the cataclysmic events and memorabilia of everyday life, textual and visual documents, material objects, and recorded remembrances, and they might even reinvent Maoist cultural practices to commemorate the Mao era. This way, we might hope to transmit testimonies and memories of the Chinese Revolution for ­future generations that ­will do justice to its unrealized dreams and unmourned ghosts.

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1 BLOOD TESTAMENTS

In China ­today, the Mao years are also known as the “red era,” but what is it that colors ­those de­cades “red”? The first exhibit in this memorial museum features “blood” as the primary medium through which the revolution was enacted as well as the primary color through which the revolution is remembered. It focuses on the life and writings of the journalist Lin Zhao 林昭 (1932–1968), who came from a ­family of revolutionary martyrs, joined the under­ground ccp, and took part in land reform in her early years. With the hot blood of idealistic youth, Lin Zhao’s writings as a student testify to the revolutionary faith of her generation, who had to come to terms with the cold blood of revolutionary vio­lence. ­After being condemned as a Rightist in 1957 for criticizing the status quo,1 Lin Zhao joined her friends to create a samizdat in 1959 to bear witness to the ­Great Leap famine. From her arrest in 1960 to her execution in 1968, Lin Zhao, deprived of pen and paper in prison, wrote with her own blood voluminous poems, essays, and letters to the outside world and for posterity. Since the 1980s, remediated fragments of Lin Zhao’s blood testaments have circulated in memorial articles by f­amily and friends, but the most power­ful resurrection of her memory came with a 2004 documentary film disseminated by “pirated,” or rather “proselytizing,” video CDs (vcds) and on the internet. Viewers wrote about Lin Zhao on their blogs and created fan sites as well as poetic, fictional, and musical tributes, while pilgrims visiting her grave have

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alarmed the local police. With a growing digital cult, Lin Zhao has become an icon of courage, a martyr of truth, and a personification of the accumulated trauma of Maoist campaigns. Celebrated as the “most impor­tant po­liti­cal dissident in Mao’s China,”2 Lin Zhao, I argue, was also one of the period’s most impor­tant witnesses. Following her own deconstruction of her name Zhao 昭 as “the Day 日the Sword 刀 is Over the Mouth 口” (刀在口上之日), the key question in her story is: What does it mean to testify ­under the threat of vio­lence? If “to bear witness is to put one’s body on the line,” as John Durham Peters argues, Lin Zhao dedicated her life to testimony in the journalistic, ­legal, religious, and moral domains.3 In her youth, Lin Zhao chose journalism as her vocation to bear witness to the revolution. When journalistic testimony failed to reach a public audience and instead led to her arrest, her prison testimonies—­mediated by her own blood and transmitted through what she called “the arteries of the police state”—­were addressed si­mul­ta­neously to the court of law, the Christian God, as well as to ­future humanity. When sentenced to death for her “blood letters,”4 Lin Zhao was to become a martyr—­which in its etymological origins also carries the meaning of witness5—­whereas secondary witnesses to her martyrdom would l­ater promote her “resurrection” and apotheosis in new media. This chapter curates a memorial exhibit from Lin Zhao’s blood testaments to the idealism and vio­lence of the Chinese Revolution. As well as trenchant commentaries on media witnessing ­under surveillance in the Mao era, her prison writings, I argue, w ­ ere also a form of “anticipatory memory,” rec­ords made with the hope of bequest to ­future generations. Even when deprived of pen and paper, Lin Zhao transformed her body, that “most primordial medium,”6 into a technology of memory inscription, used the prison archives as her technology of memory storage, and even believed in the possibility of memory transmission through epistolary practices. Yet the resurrection of her memory also depended on ­later actors who helped circulate, remediate, and disseminate her legend and writing beyond the prison archives. Tracing the production, circulation, and reception of Lin Zhao’s corpus, therefore, also illuminates the mediating technologies and ecologies of memory in the ­People’s Republic. The first part focuses on Lin Zhao’s ­family and biographical background prior to her 1960 arrest, especially her journalistic c­ areer from early testimonies of revolutionary faith to her involvement in a samizdat that sought to witness the catastrophe of the G ­ reat Leap. The second part examines Lin Zhao’s blood writings in prison in terms of their cultural and historical resonances, 26

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as indictment and sacrament, and as “anticipatory memory.” The third part explores the remediation, circulation, and reception of her blood testaments in the post-­Mao era through print, cinema, and new media, especially the resurrection and apotheosis of Lin Zhao through a hagiographic documentary.

On the Revolutionary Altar

April 12—­a date buried in dust Who remembers the blood from 37 years ago? The posterity of the deceased performs sacrificial rites, Brimful with blood and tears My ­uncle—­your niece in the red prison weeps for you! I know you—in the melody of The Internationale, I learned it from my ­mother, who learned it from you. If only you knew, the millions of compatriots for whom you gave your life Are to this day but fettered prisoners and hungry slaves. On April 12, 1927, Lin Zhao’s maternal ­uncle Xu Jinyuan 許金元, party secretary of the Communist Youth League in Suzhou, was killed by kmt (Guomin­dang) agents during the Shanghai massacre. On the anniversary of his martyrdom in 1964, Lin Zhao, then imprisoned as a “counterrevolutionary” in Shanghai, wrote the above commemorative poem in blood.7 Titled “­Family Sacrifice” (家祭), the poem speaks to the intergenerational transfer of memories and melds personal testimony with national history, telling the tale of an elder generation of idealistic revolutionaries who gave their lives to support a revolution that would ­later devour its ­children. At once medium and message, the blood ­here refers to historical vio­lence, Communist Revolution, and f­amily kinship. Born four years a­ fter her u ­ ncle’s martyrdom, Lin Zhao (initially given the name Peng Lingzhao 彭令昭) inherited his revolutionary dreams through her ­mother, Xu Xianmin 許憲民 (1911–1975), who also joined communist agitation propaganda activities, such as painting slogans, distributing leaflets, agitating at worker strikes, and keeping watch at secret meetings. A ­ fter her b­ rother’s death during the Shanghai massacre, Xu Xianmin ostensibly served the kmt government but retained her Communist sympathies.8 In 1930, she married Lin Zhao’s ­father, Peng Guoyan 彭國彥 (1901–1960), who was briefly appointed county magistrate of Suzhou through the kmt civil ser­vice exam but was dismissed from office ­after leaking a secret order to arrest young leftists to Xu Xianmin so she could help them escape.9 Although Peng Guoyan worked for B lood T estaments

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the kmt, his b­ rother was a ccp activist at Tsing­hua University who had been martyred in the 1930s.10 Like so many intellectual families during the Republican era, Lin Zhao had both leftist and rightist, ccp and kmt affiliations, a fact often forgotten in the ­later irreconcilable antagonisms between the two po­liti­cal regimes. Lin Zhao came of age during the turbulent war de­cades of the 1930s and 1940s (see figure 1.1). Her ­mother founded a Suzhou ­women’s association in 1934 to propagate anti-­Japanese re­sis­tance and to train ­women to be army nurses. With the outbreak of the Second Sino-­Japanese War, the entire ­family fled to the Southwest in 1938. Lin Zhao’s ­father found employment in the kmt Ministry of Finance, while her m ­ other returned to Suzhou and Shanghai to engage in under­ground re­sis­tance, leaving Lin Zhao and her younger ­sister in the care of their doting grand­mother.11 A delicate and precocious child, Lin Zhao knew that her ­mother worked for the anti-­Japanese guerrillas and often only returned home at night, hurriedly and clandestinely, like a fugitive on the run. Once held as a hostage and another time joining her ­mother in prison, Lin Zhao was enamored with the romance of re­sis­tance and the rhe­toric of revolution,12 which would inform her l­ater writing and dissemination of “counterrevolutionary thought.” In 1947, Lin Zhao and several middle-­school classmates cofounded a library and club with its own publication for progressive youth. In one of her contributions to this student publication, the teenage Lin Zhao accused the elder generations of being “rotten wood” that did nothing but “fish for money and scrape up real estate”; they “used the most despicable methods” to “install all kinds of stumbling blocks” to stop youth from ­going forward.13 Lin Zhao’s ­mother became alarmed at her d ­ aughter’s radical leanings and transferred her to a girls’ high school run by a Christian mission, which was to become an impor­tant spiritual resource for her ­later re­sis­tance.14 Yet the adolescent Lin Zhao was more interested in revolutionary theology: she joined the under­ ground ccp in 1948 and got her name placed on the kmt blacklist.15 Upon graduation from high school in 1949, Lin Zhao defied her parents’ wishes to send her to university in Amer­i­ca. Instead, she ran away from home to attend the ccp Sunan Journalism School (figures 1.2 and 1.3). Renouncing her parents as “reactionary bureaucrats,” she dropped her ­father’s surname and began using the name Lin Zhao. A ­ fter several months at school, she joined a land reform work team and vowed to write the next ­great Chinese novel. As a start, Lin Zhao and a classmate coauthored a ballad entitled “The Anxious Wait for This Age” (望穿眼睛到今朝), in the form of a peasant’s “speaking bitterness” testimony: on how he toiled for three de­cades yet remained destitute 28

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Figure 1.1. Lin Zhao (middle right) as a child, with her ­mother and grand­mother (image courtesy of Hu Jie).

and how his eldest son died as a coolie for a landlord to pay back a growing debt. The ballad ends by praising the ccp as “greater than ­father and ­mother” and Chairman Mao’s grace as “higher than the sky.”16 Following other literary production about land reform,17 Lin Zhao’s writing at this time refashioned peasant memories of preliberation suffering into testimonies of revolutionary faith. During land reform, Lin Zhao felt guilty about her privileged upbringing and embraced the hardships of life in the countryside.18 She also overcame her initial “petit bourgeois” pity for the landlords and her distaste for vio­lence: becoming merciless before “class enemies,” confiscating their hidden grain, and allegedly forcing a landlord to spend a winter night inside a ­water vat.19 Lin Zhao proudly told a friend about her investigations leading to the execution of a landlord: “From the collection of evidence, the organ­ization of accusations, to the prosecution at the public tribunal, I contributed to ending his life. Some ­people dared not look at the corpses ­after execution, but I dared. I looked at ­every single one of ­those enemies, especially that local tyrant. Seeing B lood T estaments

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Figure 1.2. Lin Zhao as a journalism student (image courtesy of Hu Jie).

their deaths made me feel as proud and elated as the ­people they had once oppressed.”20 At age twenty, Lin Zhao believed that revolutionary bloodshed was a necessary precondition for realizing the communist dream of a more egalitarian society. Her revolutionary activism is reminiscent of a trenchant comment from writer Lao She 老舍 (1899–1966) that “the blood of many youths can be very hot, yet at the same time very cold.”21 Lin Zhao expressed unreserved admiration for Mao Zedong in letters to a friend: “­There is only one red star in my heart. I know that I am ­here, while he is in Beijing or Moscow, but he never fails to guide me with his light. The thought of him moves me and gives me strength. Ever since the Five-­Anti Movement I have been murmuring in my heart the name of our ­great leader—­dear ­father—­and writing down my vows.”22 As a student at Peking University, Lin Zhao’s poetry continued to express her admiration of Mao: “In Chairman Mao’s speech is the ringing of our voice. Following its melody, our hearts seethe with exhilaration.”23 30

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Figure 1.3. Lin Zhao in a land reform work team (image courtesy of Hu Jie).

In hindsight, ­these lines might sound naïve, and one cannot help but ask how Lin Zhao changed so quickly from a reverent follower to an intrepid opponent of the ccp. Yet, in the 1950s, many Chinese still retained memories of communism as a critical voice, a resistant force, and an under­ground organ­ization for several de­cades prior to its seizing power. In April 1957, Lin Zhao cited ccp founder Li Dazhao 李大釗 in a commemorative essay: “It is impossible to prohibit thought, b­ ecause thought has the capacity to transcend every­thing. Prison, punishment, pain, poverty, and even death cannot muzzle, B lood T estaments

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arrest, or prohibit thought . . . ​the power of thought grows with censorship. However you prohibit, control, extinguish, or ravage it, it still lives, develops, transmits, and flourishes.”24 Communist legacies would remain a source of inspiration for Lin Zhao even ­after she turned into an opponent of the ccp.

The Media Ecol­ogy on Campus in 1957

Together with hundreds of thousands of intellectuals of her generation, a crucial turning point in Lin Zhao’s life occurred in 1957 with the Anti-­Rightist Campaign. Whereas most studies of this campaign have focused on high politics and the plight of its victims,25 ­little noted is the movement’s historical significance in the media ecol­ogy of the PRC as it shut down legitimate channels to express and transmit critical opinions and heterodox ideas. In t­hese two senses—­the transformation of former “leftists” into “rightists” and the tectonic shifts in how ­people expressed themselves—­I pre­sent the following account. ­After enrolling in Peking University in 1954, Lin Zhao had actively participated in campus journalism, coediting a special issue of the literary magazine The Red Mansion (紅樓) in 1957 to commemorate the May Fourth Movement. That same spring, copies of Khrushchev’s secret speech “On the Cult of Personality and its Consequences” circulated on campus, while Mao called on all citizens, especially intellectuals, to criticize the ccp. The Hundred Flowers Movement reached its climax at Peking University on May 19, 1957, when students put up big-­character posters to demand freedom of speech and demo­ cratic repre­sen­ta­tion. Public speeches and debates drew large crowds. Some students launched a “demo­cratic relay baton” (民主接力棒) that distributed mimeographed articles through letters to ­family and friends.26 First an avid member of the audience, Lin Zhao also spoke at rallies and composed poetry in support of her more radical classmates. By early June, several of her more radical classmates edited the first issue of a journal called The Square (廣場).27 The foreword to the publication declared: The blood of our May Fourth forefathers runs through our blood vessels. . . . ​Peking University’s Democracy Square is the torchbearer of the May Fourth generation. ­Here our forefathers lit fires, made vows, and sang. Our square s­ hall be truly broad and inclusive, a forum for all socialist discourse.28 This manifesto includes major tropes echoed in Lin Zhao’s l­ater prison writings: Blood refers to the passion of youth and a transgenerational intellec32

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Figure 1.4. Lin Zhao with her Peking University classmates at Tian­anmen Square (image courtesy of Hu Jie).

tual genealogy. Fire is a source of illumination, a medium for transmission, and a tool for agitation. The square is both an ­actual place with a glorious heritage and a utopian forum for rational discourse, a garden for blooming and contending voices. As a publication, the journal remediates the more ephemeral exchanges of ideas that took place through speech, debate, and wall posters. When The Square was ready for print, however, Mao launched the Anti-­ Rightist Campaign that accused party critics of attempting to “overthrow the ccp.” Workers at Beijing Printing Factory refused to print this “counterrevolutionary pamphlet,” so the organizers mobilized all their resources to mimeograph 500 copies for distribution on campus, but most issues w ­ ere confiscated and burned by Anti-­Rightist activists, leaving ­behind only a few copies.29 The Anti-­Rightist Campaign thus crushed the vibrant campus journalism and intellectual activism that had blossomed during the Hundred Flower Movement, exiling the articulation of thought into more private forms of communication and record-­keeping, such as diaries, letters, and conversations. During the following months, nearly fifteen hundred of Peking University’s eight thousand students and faculty would be labeled “Rightists.” Speeches and debates turned into denunciations. Prominent Rightists ­were forced to make humiliating public self-­criticisms. Many w ­ ere sent to l­abor reform camps.30 B lood T estaments

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Stunned by this turn of events, Lin Zhao wrote in her diary: “Party, as our ­mother, you should know the sentiments of your ­children. Instead of celebratory words, the m ­ other should hear about her disease. The deeper our love for her, the less we can tolerate the bacteria in her body.”31 This appeal by a wronged child turned into rage, despair, and a suicide attempt when Lin Zhao herself was labeled a Rightist. “Let my shadow forever follow t­ hose who tortured or trampled on me,” her suicide note read. “Let them forever be stained with my blood.” ­After being resuscitated, she vowed never to bend her head and admit guilt.32 Lin Zhao was sentenced to three years of ­labor reform, but a professor concerned about her health intervened to have her work in a campus orchard instead. She calmed down and began reflecting not only on her personal tragedy but also on the national calamity that had befallen so many intellectuals. Witnessing the incarceration and exile of friends, she said to a fellow Rightist: “Prison can destroy a person, but it can also build character.”33 In June 1958, Lin Zhao was transferred to the newspaper room of the Renmin University library. Her only coworker, Gan Cui 甘粹, had also joined the revolution as a teenager, participated in land reform, studied journalism, and was labeled a Rightist.34 Meanwhile, Lin Zhao rediscovered solace in Chris­tian­ity—­a de­cade ­after revolutionary ideals had replaced the church, priest, and Bible in the missionary school with the party and its doctrines—­and she took Gan Cui to church on Sundays. When rumors circulated about them as a c­ ouple, the two “Rightists” held hands in public and applied for a marriage license. The authorities rejected their application, and in the fall of 1959, Gan Cui was dispatched to a ­labor reform camp in Xinjiang. Lin Zhao fell ill and withdrew to her ­mother’s home in Shanghai.35 Beyond ruining the utopian dreams and promising ­futures of hundreds of thousands of intellectuals, the impact of the Anti-­Rightist Campaign exceeded its number of victims to muzzle the rest of the country.36 Rightists became embodied cautionary tales against criticizing the Party, e­ ither its policies or its representatives.37 The loss of all legitimate media outlets to express dissent or to witness suffering cleared the way for implementation in the years to come of the disastrous ­Great Leap Forward. For Lin Zhao and ­others who refused to be silenced, however, the samizdat and the prison archives would be the only media to preserve and transmit their testimonies.

From Samizdat to Prison

In Shanghai, Lin Zhao kept up her network of correspondences with former classmates who had introduced her to other “Rightists” from Lanzhou Univer34

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sity, who witnessed the farcical implementation and catastrophic aftermath of the G ­ reat Leap Forward during their exile to rural areas. Seeing starved corpses strewn about the countryside, one such Rightist sent a witnessing report to the official Red Flag and was promptly arrested in September 1959. However, the arrest only spurred o­ thers to create an under­ground publication to exchange their ideas and to expand their influence. Lin Zhao initially considered the impact of the publication to be unworthy of the risks to its writers and readers, yet out of solidarity, she contributed two long poems—­“A Day in Prometheus’ Martyrdom” (普羅米修士受難的一日) and “The Song of the Seagull” (海鷗之歌).38 In January 1960, several Lanzhou University Rightists used the mimeograph machine at a local fertilizer factory to print thirty-­plus copies of the first issue of their journal. By June, they had purchased their own mimeograph machine and printed several other articles to be sent anonymously directly to ccp high officials, hoping to provoke insurgency from within the party. During the next several months, the police arrested more than forty involved individuals and confiscated all copies of the samizdat, the mimeograph machine, and vari­ ous farm tools as “evidence” of a “violent counterrevolutionary plot.”39 The publication founded by Lin Zhao and her comrades may well be the earliest known Chinese samizdat—­almost con­temporary with its counterpart in the post-­Stalinist Soviet Union—­mediating explicit dissident content in full cognizance and defiance of police surveillance.40 The way the authors targeted an audience of both like-­minded intellectuals and party officials is also reminiscent of the “White Rose,” the Munich intellectual re­sis­tance group that conducted an anonymous leaflet campaign calling for opposition to the Nazi regime in 1942.41 Yet the direct inspiration for this samizdat most likely came from the Chinese Communist Revolution when it was still an under­ground movement. The name of their samizdat, Xinghuo 星火, or Spark (see figure 1.5), references Mao’s famous 1930 essay, “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire” (星星之火，可以燎原). Their opposition to the ccp thus grew out of a revolutionary tradition. Like communist guerrillas during the pre-1949 period, Spark members also opposed the power­ful ruling regime, and they saw the potential for conflagration and agitation in the prairie, the grassroots, and among the peasants.42 Most contributions to Spark consisted of po­liti­cal treatises and famine reportage.43 The authors still subscribed to Marxist revolutionary ideals, but they saw the ­Great Leap as a retraction of communist promises b­ ecause the ­people’s communes had deprived villa­gers of their recently acquired land. Most audaciously, they likened the rule of the ccp to a fascist dictatorship with its B lood T estaments

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Figure 1.5. The cover for the first issue of the samizdat Spark (image courtesy of Hu Jie).

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“totalitarian concentration of power” (國家集權), its new privileged class of bureaucrats who exploit and enslave the p ­ eople po­liti­cally, eco­nom­ically, and spiritually.44 Other pieces in Spark quote what the authors had learned from villa­gers, such as the following ­bitter parody of the song “Socialism is Good”: Socialism is terrible; Socialism is terrible! ­People in this Socialist country are starving to death! Eating leaves, eating grass, The ­people’s government plundered all the food! The ­people’s government murders the ­people. Six hundred million cannot live; cannot live!45 In giving voice to the peasants, Spark is also intensively self-­reflexive about the roles of intellectuals and the written and printed word to mediate between the ­people and the po­liti­cal authorities. Instead of elite intellectuals condescending to enlighten the p ­ eople, as Peking University professor Qian Liqun 錢理群 contends, the po­liti­cal status of t­ hese exiled Rightists was even lower than that of the peasants. Witnessing and sharing the villa­gers’ suffering, their critical consciousness crystallized between 1958 and 1960. Rather than ventriloquizing Maoist ideology through the masses, they wanted to “expose their misery” and to “dig into the roots of the catastrophe.”46 That is, they wanted to be the media through which peasant voices could reach a broader public and the higher authorities, for they attributed the catastrophe of the ­Great Leap to the failure of the state-­sponsored media to report the truth, a topic I ­will revisit in chapter 3. The urgency to witness and document the widespread suffering ­under sham portrayals of prosperity is thematized in Lin Zhao’s contribution to the samizdat. Her long poem, entitled “A Day in Prometheus’s Martyrdom,” uses the Greek myth as an allegory for the suppression of truth and the proliferation of lies. It is a manifesto for intellectuals committed to spreading the “fire” of knowledge and rebellion among the p ­ eople.47 The gods clearly refer to the ruling regime, with Zeus or Mao at its head, whereas the titans, represented by Prometheus, refer to the intellectuals suppressed during the Anti-­Rightist Campaign and promised rehabilitation if they would recant their criticism and denounce other potential dissidents. Fire as truth and forbidden knowledge is preserved in the embers of blood-­scripted testimonies, foreshadowing Lin Zhao’s own prison writings. Another formal innovation is the polemical mode of direct interrogation, self-­defense, and counterinterrogation that constitute the dramatic dialogues between Prometheus and Zeus, who descends twice upon Mt. Caucasus to question with threats and cajole the one chained to B lood T estaments

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the rock. Prometheus often inverts the indictment against his interrogators, further auguring Lin Zhao’s ­later prison speeches and writings. From writing about Prometheus, Lin Zhao declared her readiness to become Prometheus— to withstand torture as a prisoner and death as a martyr. In 1960, Lin Zhao reconnected with her ­father Peng Guoyan, by then the ­family’s pariah. Her parents had already begun to grow apart in the 1940s. Losing his kmt job ­after the ccp victory, Peng said he would rather starve to death, like the legendary Boyi 伯夷 and Shuqi 叔齊 who refused to eat the grain of the Zhou dynasty that was illegitimately founded on vio­lence. His wife retorted that Boyi and Shuqi ­were single, whereas they ­were a ­family. Lin Zhao’s radical leftism further exacerbated her parents’ already tense relationship, and the two w ­ ere divorced by 1952.48 As an unemployed “historical counterrevolutionary,” Peng Guoyan eked out a living by making matchboxes, helping out at Buddhist funerals, and begging for alms.49 ­After Lin Zhao and her ­father reconciled, he would become a source of inspiration for her l­ ater prison writings, to be analyzed in a ­later section. On October 24, 1960, the Shanghai police arrested Lin Zhao in Suzhou. One month ­later, her ­father committed suicide, a fact Lin Zhao only learned ­after a year of isolated captivity. She then asked her ­mother and ­sister to bring her white bed sheets, which she would use for writing in blood. When released on medical parole in March 1962, Lin Zhao showed her f­ amily the cuts on her arm and offered to perform “acrobatics” of eating, washing, and g­ oing to the toilet while handcuffed for 180 days.50 Meanwhile, she refused to “mend her ways” but instead petitioned the president of Peking University to save the Rightist students and coauthored a manifesto calling for federalism, democracy, and property rights.51 Lin Zhao was rearrested in December 1962.52 ­After receiving a prison sentence of twenty years in May 1965, Lin Zhao wrote a declaration in blood on the back of the verdict, calling it “dirty and shameless” but also taking pride in it as “excellent witness of her fighting ­career.”53 Indeed, her verdict serves to authenticate Lin Zhao’s l­ater hagiography and provides a preliminary “­table of contents” for her yet-­to-­be-­declassified prison writings.54 In December 1966, the ­Labor Reform Bureau (勞改局) recommended an augmentation of her sentence: “Hundreds of times during imprisonment, [Lin Zhao] punctured her skin and flesh with hair pins, bamboo sticks, and other tools, using her bloodstains to write hundreds of thousands of very reactionary and wicked letters, notes, and diaries, frantically attacking, hurling abuses at, and tarnishing the name of our party and Leader.” Other incidents of her re­sis­tance and blasphemy in the report included smearing blood on Mao’s image in the newspaper and even “beheading” one of his portraits 38

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Figure 1.6. A page from Lin Zhao’s prison dossier: indictment as counterrevolutionary by the Shanghai ­People’s Court (image courtesy of Hu Jie).

to hang on her cell door.55 Based on this report, Lin Zhao was sentenced to death on April 19, 1968, and was executed ten days ­later. Though sacrificed on the revolutionary altar, Lin Zhao left ­behind a voluminous body of writings in her prison file, some of which w ­ ere smuggled out and remediated to a broader public in the post-­Mao era. The next sections ­will flesh out the multivalent meanings of her blood writing and the transformation of her prison cell into battleground, stage, and memory archive.

Blood Writing in Prison

To the Editorial Board of ­People’s Daily: On this famous date, whose sublime and ardent humanist passion continues to strike a chord in the heart of ­every freedom lover, I—­your strange reader—am beginning to write you yet another letter. If the memory of this tortured, weak, and ailing body has not entirely lost B lood T estaments

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its accuracy, then this must be the anniversary of the beginning of the French Revolution. ­Today, on July 14, Pa­ri­sian citizens, who could no longer contain their rage ­under the despotic oppression, stormed the Bastille, the dark fortress and violent center of the feudal dynasty. The death knell of the Eu­ro­pean ­Middle Ages and the paean of a ­human rights ­century, their world-­famous stirring slogan—­liberté, égalité, fraternité—­was calligraphed in the glowing blood of the fighters into the annals of the ­human race. What magnificent, splendid history! What sanguinary, putrid actuality! Facing the pre­sent, the past seems even more brilliant; recalling the past, the pre­sent appears all the more wretched. Of course, I am not writing to you Sirs to discuss history, for not only is ­there no need but also ­there is no occasion for such refinement. Where I am is not a study, not to speak of the fact that for all its vastness China can no longer accommodate a quiet desk, nor tolerate a righ­teous intellectual! . . . ​This strange reader— in my first letter to you I had already made manifest my identity: I am a re­sis­tance fighter u ­ nder your regime and currently in prison. I already wrote two letters to you last December and this February while incarcerated at the Shanghai First Detention House. I wrote my letters in blood ­because I had been illegally deprived of pen and paper.56 Thus begins Lin Zhao’s “Letter to the ­People’s Daily Editorial Board,” written between July and December 1965, an extensive reflection on the revolution’s ­human sacrifices and its crisis of witnessing. The historical memory of the storming of the Bastille situates her testimony in a long genealogy of ­revolutionary prison writing. It then draws our attention to the special time, location, medium, and psychological condition of the letter and its author. This is not a scholarly or literary per­for­mance in the ordinary sense, composed of floating signifiers and in a cozy environment. Rather, each word is bound up in the physical, social, and po­liti­cal real­ity giving rise to its production and inhibiting its transmission. In some ways, the circumstances of its writing can be seen as a literalization of writer Lu Xun’s 魯迅 (1881–1936) parable of the iron ­house, in which the intellectual attempts in vain to wake the slumbering masses.57 For Lin Zhao, however, pain could be a form of agency, and the shock of blood may well tilt the power imbalance between a frail prisoner and a mighty government. She considered the ­People’s Daily a journalistic sham, the mouthpiece of the party, and the most public mediator of (mis)information and propaganda. In contrast, she was a prisoner without ­legal rights and incarcerated in the dark cell of a panoptic labyrinth. Whereas the ­People’s Daily had at its 40

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disposal an unlimited supply of print and paper as well as a nationwide distribution network, Lin Zhao was often denied basic writing tools and an audience of even ­family members and wardens. This was a letter, ­after all, but could it break ­free of its own monologue? On the one hand, Lin Zhao believed in Lu Xun’s dictum that “truth written in blood” cannot be concealed by “lies written in ink,”58 a statement that took on special resonance a­ fter the Anti-­Rightist Campaign and ­Great Leap Forward in the late 1950s had bankrupted journalism’s witnessing of real­ity. However, Lin Zhao also believed, more cynically, that her body of writing would be automatically transmitted through the “arteries of the police state” right into the “heart” of the regime.59 Such a guerrilla tactic informed her and her comrades in re­sis­tance before 1960 when they debated ­whether or not to put together and distribute their samizdat: “As long as we can get the word out, the ccp ­will automatically broaden its influence: even if it does not publicize the materials, internal study, transmission, investigation, and reprinting are probable.”60 Lin Zhao even believed that Mao Zedong had read her 1961 prison diary and had responded to it between the lines of the ­People’s Daily. In a media ecol­ogy without public channels for dissent, and when f­ amily and friends had to destroy her writings to protect themselves (see figure 1.7),61 Lin Zhao regarded the surveillance apparatus as a medium to transmit her testimony. In fact, when released on bail for medical treatment in 1962, Lin Zhao insisted on safekeeping a copy of all her writings during incarceration in the prison archives, the “black box” or “red frame” that would keep her writing integral and intact. She also considered e­ very interrogation as an opportunity to coauthor her dossier, which she hoped would be passed on to posterity as a testament to her suffering and re­sis­tance, metonymic for the broader vio­lence of the Maoist regime. Instead of the retrospective production of memories, Lin Zhao’s writing in prison was a prospective, anticipatory memory-­making practice with a view to ­future horizons. Written over five months, Lin Zhao’s letter goes on for approximately 150,000 characters. The extant manuscript was written in ink, yet it speaks of copying over or reproducing from memory what she had e­ arlier written in blood. She also “stamped” all over the manuscript her own signature in blood, indexical markers of authenticity that ironically compounded the illegibility of the l­ater black-­and-­white copies. Mixing genres, this work of graphomania is at once a letter to the editor, a critical remonstrance, a po­liti­cal treatise, a memoir, a diary, a confession, a testament, and a compendium of poetry. Lin Zhao’s feverish style is meandering yet mesmerizing; lucid kernels of impassioned thought are entangled in implausible accounts and incoherent rants B lood T estaments

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Figure 1.7. Stills from Hu Jie’s In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul, 2004: Lin Zhao’s poem for a friend on the back of their snapshot, crossed out by the friend in precaution.

that may invite cold, clinical readings as symptoms of delusion or paranoia. Bearing witness in ­legal, religious, and moral terms, her text addresses the party newspaper and its readers, Mao Zedong and the ccp, prison wardens and court judges, f­ amily and friends, God and Heaven, the dead and t­ hose yet to be born.

Chinese Traditions of Blood Writing

Lin Zhao knew well that the true pathos of her prison writings derived less from their content than from their medium: blood. So, what does it mean to write in blood, and why is this par­tic­u­lar medium so power­ful? Pre­ce­dents for blood writing in China can be traced back to the earliest oaths and covenants 42

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(盟誓之文), authenticated with the blood of sacrificial animals.62 Buddhist devotees also copied out sutras with blood mixed with ink as an ascetic act of self-­sacrifice and in the hope of accumulating merit.63 ­There have been imperial edicts written in blood, as well as many suicide poems and notes, with feelings ranging from earnest petitions to furious condemnations.64 The inscription of blood figures famously in two classical dramas with female heroines. In Guan Hanqing’s 關漢卿 Injustice to Dou E (竇娥冤), the blood of the unjustly beheaded protagonist spurts up to stain a strip of white gauze hanging overhead, fulfilling her own prophecy at her sentencing. ­Here, the blood inscription becomes a divine sign, rendering injustice manifest to the audience witnessing Dou E’s martyrdom. With explicit reference to Dou E, Lin Zhao wrote the word yuan 冤 (injustice, grievance, and rancor) in blood on a white handkerchief and wore it on her head during the last two years of her imprisonment.65 In blood writing, however, the spectacle of martyrdom is at once evoked and deferred, as Lin Zhao writes: Heaven knows how generous I am with my own blood! Just as [the wardens] said of my act of blood writing when I first came ­here [Shanghai City Jail] in the winter of 1962. . . . ​“A person has thousands of cc. of blood! This ­little bit of spilling ­wouldn’t kill her.” Dear God, have you perhaps given us ­humans too much blood? . . . Excellent, enough for me to spill so slowly. As I d ­ on’t have the good fortune of the likes of [ccp martyr] Ruan Wenzhui 阮文追, who could unflinchingly spill hot blood ­under the broad daylight and before the public eye.66 Having witnesses is a crucial dimension of martyrologies everywhere,67 but in her prison cell, Lin Zhao was denied an audience, so writing in blood became a substitute and a form of anticipatory memory waiting to be recovered by ­later generations. Lin Zhao further noted the cold-­blooded discourse of science and rationality, but believed that deep down, her “atheist” wardens should know that “­there are gods and monsters, souls and ghosts, earth and heaven—­that ­there is a lord (天主), a king in heaven (天帝) and therefore also a Mandate of Heaven (天命), a heavenly design (天機), a predestination (天数), ­etc.”68 She employed ­these premodern Chinese concepts of the divine to ­counter a modern scientific rationale seemingly indifferent to ­human suffering. Lin Zhao’s rhetorical tropes are also reminiscent of literary classics such as Kong Shangren’s 孔尚任 1699 play Peach Blossom Fan (桃花扇), in which the heroine Li Xiangjun spatters her blood onto a fan while attempting suicide as a demonstration of her chastity and loyalty to the falling Ming dynasty.69 Appropriating such loyalist discourse, Lin Zhao denounces her B lood T estaments

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o­ ppressors as treacherous and emphasizes her own “willingness to die rather than to lose one’s chastity/integrity” (堅毅不屈貞烈無二的意志). Although her cause is clearly based on Enlightenment notions of freedom, democracy, and ­human rights, her bodily and textual per­for­mance derive their affective power from traditional tropes of martyrdom.

Blood Writing and Revolutionary Martyrdom

Beyond premodern tropes of blood inscription, Lin Zhao’s blood writing also invokes twentieth-­century martyrologies. In Republican China, men and ­women who ­were killed for the revolutionary cause came to be canonized by the kmt government as “revolutionary martyrs” (革命烈士). More than soldiers who died following o­ rders, as Henrietta Harrison claims, the memories of “radical individualists,” such as Qiu Jin 秋瑾, had a much greater impact and ­were more enduring.70 In 1907, captured by Manchu troops, Qiu Jin was given a brush to sign a forced confession before her execution. According to legend, she wrote her surname Qiu, which means autumn, and then turned the signature into a lyrical rebellion: “Autumn rain and autumn wind, life-­smothering sorrow!” (秋雨秋風愁煞人!).71 Taking Qiu Jin as a role model, Lin Zhao built on this poetic fragment in her own classical-­style ode “Autumn Ballad” (秋聲辭, 1963), excerpted below: 秋雨秋風愁煞人， 憑對遙天吊荊榛。 狐鼠縱橫山岳老， 脂膏滴瀝稻糧貧。. . . 劫裡芳華不成春， 秋雨秋風愁煞人。. . . 青衫淚絕朱顏悴， 碧血花催白髮新。 決死精衛戰浩蕩， 傷心子規哭沉淪。. . . 此身定化干城劍， 貫日橫空泣鬼神。

Autumn wind, autumn rain, life-­smothering sorrow To the distant sky, let me mourn the wild overgrowth Foxes and rats overrun the land, even lofty mountains age. Oils and lards abound for the rulers, grains scarce for the ­people. . . . Youth in calamity cannot bloom into spring, 44

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Autumn wind, autumn rain, life-­smothering sorrow. . . . A scholar’s tears depleted, and a withered young face, Blossoms of emerald blood hasten new white strands of hair Ready for death, the Jing­wei bird challenges the mighty Heartbroken, the Cuckoo laments the sinking. . . . This body ­will transform into a sword that defends the nation, Piercing the sun as gods and ghosts lament.72 Embedding Qiu Jin’s testament-­signature at crucial moments, Lin Zhao’s poem invokes mythological icons of reincarnated spirits, such as the Jing­wei bird that tried to fill the ocean with pebbles to avenge her drowning, and the Cuckoo who wept blood to lament an unspeakable tragedy. Also echoing the recurring trope of the sword in Qiu Jin’s poetry, Lin Zhao anticipated that the pathos of her memory would inspire f­ uture uprisings against tyranny. Revolutionary martyrology continued with the anti-­imperialist student movements in the 1920s, which produced young martyrs whose deaths inspired the nation. To keep memories of the martyrs’ blood fresh, students smeared blood on flags, wore clothes splashed with red ink, and displayed physical artifacts and memorabilia associated with martyrdom.73 ­After 1949, the ccp revised and expanded the pantheon to include its own members killed by the Japa­nese and the kmt, a new martyrology prominently featured in public monuments and the mass media.74 ­After the Monument to the ­People’s Heroes was erected on Tian­anmen Square in 1958, Lin Zhao sometimes walked around it and caressed its bas-­relief sculpture of past revolutionary movements. She spoke with awe and pity of the bloodshed of the last c­ entury and questioned ­whether the sacrifice of so many lives had r­ eally brought Chinese ­people “liberation.” 75 The figure of the revolutionary martyr thus embodies the extremities of self-­sacrifice and megalomania, surrender and agency. As models of self-­assertion through self-­denial, martyrs generate at once docile obedience of rules, ascetic curbing of instincts, and heroic fantasies of rebellion. As generations of Chinese ­children learned that the Chinese flag and their Young Pioneer red scarves ­were “colored red by the blood of the martyrs,” revolutionary martyrology became front and center of the nation’s cultural memory.

Blood Writing as Indictment and Sacrament

Although inspired by revolutionary martyrs, Lin Zhao was deeply critical of their wasted lives. Her blood writing thus indicts the Maoist regime for its B lood T estaments

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exploitation and betrayal of revolutionary youth, including already dead martyrs and her own generation of “Rightists”: Is this not blood? Insidiously exploiting our innocence, childishness, righ­ teousness; exploiting our good and s­ imple hearts, inflaming and harnessing our impassioned spirit. When we became more mature, felt alarmed at the absurdity and cruelty of real­ity, and began demanding our demo­cratic rights, we came to suffer unpre­ce­dented persecution, abuse, and repression. ­Isn’t this blood? Our youth, love, friendship, studies, c­ areers, ambitions, ideals, happiness, freedom . . . ​all that we live for, all that a ­human being has, w ­ ere almost completely destroyed and buried by the foul, evil, and hypocritical rule of this totalitarian system. Is this not blood? This evil regime, which has stained the history of this nation as well as of ­human civilization, was established, strengthened, and sustained by blood.76 Repeated throughout her long letter, the rhetorical question “Is this not blood?” anticipates the skepticism of posterity. Blood writing was an indictment, not only of literal bloodshed but also of the po­liti­cal exploitation of youths, of their passion and idealism. Therefore, Lin Zhao believed that the ccp owed a “blood debt” to both its supporters and its opponents. Speaking for her generation, Lin Zhao’s blood writing may also be juxtaposed against Mao’s famous saying that the Chinese ­people are “poor and blank,” like a sheet of paper, so that “the freshest and most beautiful characters can be written; the most beautiful pictures can be painted.” 77 Writing in blood, Lin Zhao retorts: yes, indeed, you paint your utopian vision with flesh and blood, using not only mass media but also the masses as media, aestheticizing politics and anesthetized to its h ­ uman costs. H ­ ere I borrow the parallel between “aesthetics and anesthetics” from an insightful essay by Susan Buck-­Morss, which highlights the original meaning of aesthetics as mediation through ­human sense perception as well as a growing numbness to the overstimulations of modernity, manifested in the “phantasmagoria” of mass entertainment. We must therefore wake up from such a “dreamworld,” she writes, lest “the crisis in cognitive experience caused by the alienation of the senses . . . ​makes it pos­ si­ble for humanity to view its own destruction with enjoyment.” 78 Discussing communism rather than fascism and indebted to Lu Xun rather than to Walter Benjamin, Lin Zhao used blood writing to call on her compatriots to awake from “an illusory world without pain” and to recognize how the uses of the masses as media to realize revolutionary dreams can be disastrous. When Mao’s utopian vision turned into dystopia during the ­Great Leap famine, Lin Zhao’s poetry in blood envisioned a violent uprising by “hungry slaves”: 46

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When the tide of blood rises on a vengeful earth On which branches ­will the flocks of ravens perch? . . . . ​I shiver whenever I think of this question: Heavens! Who knows how you ­will die one day.79 Such a revolution may well be modeled a­ fter the one that Lin Zhao had supported ­earlier. Yet is revolution the best way to achieve freedom and equality? In her “Letter to the ­People’s Daily Editorial Board,” she poses the question as follows: We know very well what we oppose, but what is it that we want to establish? It is no ­simple ­matter to turn the concept of freedom into a blueprint and build a life accordingly, especially in such a vast, dispersed country with chronic, obdurate, and profound maladies. True, we do not stint sacrifice and do not even flinch from bloodshed, but can such a life be established from a pool of blood with a bloodbath? All along the Chinese have shed not too ­little but too much blood. In the stormy state of the world in the 1960s, even on the profound medieval ruins of China, is t­ here a possibility for po­liti­cal strug­g le to take on a more civilized form and not to resort to bloodshed?80 While writing in blood, Lin Zhao did not valorize blood sacrifice per se. She knew that martyrdom—­though a power­ful catalyst for revolutions—­could hardly guarantee freedom in the long run. She might have agreed with a saying attributed to the Prophet Mohammed: “The ink of the scholar is more sacred than the blood of martyrs,” 81 and she might have liked her blood writings to serve less as a script for ­future martyrs than as a sacrament. While sacrificial blood is clearly valued in the Christian tradition through the Eucharist, as Joyce Salisbury argues, the blood of Christ was supposed to be the sacrifice to put an end to all other sacrifices.82 Lin Zhao might also have agreed with the interpretation of writer Fang Fang 方方, who called upon all Chinese to reflect on “­whether or not our hands are stained with traces of Lin Zhao’s blood.” 83 That is to say, the blood of this martyr should function as a prick of conscience over one’s complicities with power. Lin Zhao’s blood writing derives its poignancy from a resonance of cultural traditions, historical memories, po­liti­cal protest, and religious sacrament. Having now fleshed out the vari­ous meanings of blood as a medium, the following pages ­will pay attention to the messages of Lin Zhao’s blood writing by focusing on the prison notebooks from the last two years of her life. B lood T estaments

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“The Prison Is My Front”

A soldier guards his front, a young soldier in the united front of the world’s ­free ­people against Communist tyranny. ­People, you righ­teous and conscientious p ­ eople, do you remember my letter of appeal? . . . ​A few years ago, I already declared with my own blood: prison is my front of re­sis­tance! Living ­under this evil totalitarian system, true re­sis­tance fighters have only this one front! . . . ​Of course, the front of the prison is still external. The true inner front is the re­sis­tance fighter’s soul. Only with such a front can the fighter have enough stamina and willpower to face the ­enemy!84 Thus begins Lin Zhao’s 1967 prison notebook ­Battle Hymn of the Soul (心靈的 戰歌), echoing John Durham Peters’s argument that “the prison (or prison camp) is the ­house of witness, a maker of moral authority . . . ​[for] witnessing is a mode of communication intimately tied to the mortality of both the one who bears witness and the one who in turn witnesses that act.” 85 Lin Zhao further argues that u ­ nder dictatorship, a freedom fighter is inevitably incarcerated. In prison, her h ­ uman dignity was constantly u ­ nder siege, and she had to strug­g le daily to defend her mind, heart, and soul from vio­ lence, humiliation, and co-optation. The prison was also her front ­because Lin Zhao waged a daily ­battle of memory against forgetting, documented in two additional prison notebooks: ­Family Letters in Blood (血書家信) and Battlefield Diary: Rec­ords for the Public and Posterity (戰場日記：留給公眾和後人的紀 錄). ­These rec­ord abuses, such as being deprived of ­family visits for half a year and ­water to wash for a month.86 They also document her re­sis­tance: refusing meals, smashing ­things, writing slogans on walls, and scuffling with fellow inmates. According to a diary entry on Chinese New Year of 1967, the warden came to ask if she wanted rice or gruel for dinner, and when she failed to reply, a fellow inmate shouted: “No change? Then just go with the same old.” Taking this as a provocation, Lin Zhao “jumped up and shouted: ‘Yes, I want the same old! Long Live the Republic of China! Long Live the Three Princi­ples of the ­People! Long Live Mr. Sun Yat-­sen! Down with the Communist Bandits!’ ” Another inmate came over and opened all three win­ dows in the cell and said to her: “Counterrevolutionary ele­ment, go ahead and shout!” Lin Zhao then climbed onto the iron railings and shouted to the pedestrians outside: “Long Live ­Human Rights! Long Live Freedom! Long Live Amer­i­ca! Long Live the United Nations! . . . ​Down with Totalitarianism! Down with Dictatorship!” She was confident that her voice could reach the passersby out on the streets—­after all, in her youth as a revolutionary activist, she had given speeches on the streets and in the fields.87 Even if ­people 48

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on the streets could not hear her, her fellow prisoners could: as biographer Lian Xi’s investigations into the prison architecture show, “the five tiers inside a Tilanqiao block shared a large open space, so that activities on all tiers could be monitored si­mul­ta­neously. This allowed Lin Zhao to ‘publicize’ her protest.” 88 ­Here, again, Lin Zhao subverts a technology of surveillance into a technology of protest. What would passersby and other prisoners of Tilanqiao Prison have thought on that snowy day when they heard Lin Zhao’s slogans? A lunatic, prob­ably, but with myriad high-­pitched loudspeakers shouting “Long Live Chairman Mao,” Lin Zhao pointed to the greater insanity of her time. In a letter to her ­mother, Lin Zhao wrote of mending her clothes and finding them shabby enough “to serve as material testimony for ­future indictment and memory,” even though, among fellow prisoners, she was still considered “well-­dressed.” ­Here, Lin Zhao prob­ ably had in mind the frequent use of worn clothing as a prop and as evidence for “speaking bitterness” or “recalling bitterness” per­for­mances, from public tribunals of landlords during land reform to museum exhibitions during the Socialist Education Campaign.89 When she looked out of the win­dows at passersby, “no one was decently dressed! If t­ hings are like this in Shanghai, one can only imagine what the rest of the country looks like.”90 On another day, she sang “Home Sweet Home” and reflected on the many ruined families in China: “Even when all ­family members are alive, they are torn asunder and must wait years to take a ­family photo. It is not at all uncommon for ailing parents to die without being able to see their ­children.” The situation was even more dire in prison, as she often saw inmates mourning for a f­ amily member and overheard the muffled cries of ­those who stifled grief for their loved ones.91 From her cell, Lin Zhao considered prison a microcosm for all of China and considered all who lived u ­ nder Mao’s rule to be prisoners, including many party members. Perhaps t­hose in the upper echelons of power could not be considered prisoners, but “whoever enslaves o­ thers also cannot be f­ ree.” Since “slaves could not communicate feelings with each other or with their oppressors,” she issued her appeal to the “­free world”: It is only when I pour my feelings out to you that my heart, numb from pain, senses a bit of h ­ uman warmth! It is true that, for the time being, you have not read anything yet, but that ­doesn’t ­matter. My ­free soul exists, pulsates, and lives on this planet. . . . ​On the ­future day of justice when you can fi­nally read ­these soul-­revealing pages, I believe that all of you who are righ­teous and kind w ­ ill fully understand and sympathize with my 92 sorrows. B lood T estaments

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Lin Zhao claimed to have submitted a letter of appeal five years ­earlier to an expatriate by the name of Arnold Newman. “To whom?” he asked. “To the world!” was her reply. “I do not know how many residents of this planet have been alarmed by my voice, but I know my appeal has been transmitted.” 93 Indeed, Lin Zhao’s ardent wish to communicate with the outside world reflects her profound isolation. As she could not r­ eally be heard in her own time, Lin Zhao envisioned a ­future audience of “humanity at large, which—to the extent that it registers and memorializes the event—­constitutes itself as a moral community.”94 While recording her daily strug­g les, Lin Zhao searched her own memories and reflected on totalitarianism in a remarkable essay entitled “­Father’s Blood” (父親的血), composed in blood on November 23, 1967, on the seventh anniversary of her f­ ather’s suicide. As a kmt official, she wrote, he should have left Mainland China in 1949 but he stayed for his f­amily’s sake, not realizing that his former po­liti­cal affiliation constituted a “crime.” A ­ fter being labeled a “historical counterrevolutionary,” Lin Zhao’s f­ ather refused to “admit guilt” (認罪), claiming that first, not all kmt members ­were bad ­people; second, not every­thing the kmt did was bad; third, since the ccp only took power in 1949, it was impossible for every­one to work for them. Yet “­these Communist totalitarians could not grasp such ­simple logic—­all they understood was that an in­de­pen­dent and sober individual refused to submit to their enslavement.” By persecuting such individuals, “the totalitarians derived Ah Q–­like ‘spiritual triumph’: this person refused to submit to us, but ­we’ve trampled on him.” 95 ­Here Lin Zhao spells out the po­liti­cal utility of coerced repentance for the regime: its sanctity and legitimacy, superiority and triumph, depend to a large extent on the designation and degradation of its “counterrevolutionaries” and “class enemies.” To deny the regime such legitimacy, Lin Zhao proudly considered herself and her ­father among the few “stubborn unrepentant ele­ments” who had withstood all abuses to “maintain a strand of righ­teousness amid the descendants of the Yellow Emperor.”96 The essay goes on to develop Lin Zhao’s own concept of yimin 異民—­which might be translated as “excepted individuals” or “untamed p­ eople”—to refer to the broad category of individuals “po­liti­cally negated by Communist tyranny”: “­These include ‘historical counterrevolutionaries’ like my f­ ather, landlords, rich peasants, targets of successive campaigns, as well as Rightists and ‘current counterrevolutionaries’ like myself. Even our families and friends fall into the ranks of po­liti­cally unreliable individuals.” 97 The Maoist persecution of yimin, she claimed, was crueler than the feudal killings of entire clans and India’s caste system; worse even than Nazi concentration camps and Soviet gulags. Recalling “with scorching outrage” how her f­ather’s photo­graph had 50

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been posted with humiliating captions in his neighborhood, Lin Zhao suggested that the mass participation in the public persecution of stigmatized individuals distinguishes it from the execution of top-­down ­orders: “Anybody can wantonly humiliate us to demonstrate his or her loyalty to Maoist tyranny. We yimin have no ­human rights or ­legal rights . . . ​but are virtually thrown out to the street to be trampled upon by the masses.”98 Writing in 1967, Lin Zhao’s coinage of yimin bears uncanny resemblance to phi­los­o­pher Giorgio Agamben’s concepts of bare life and the state of exception in his seminal 1998 book Homo Sacer. Agamben notes that, according to archaic Roman law, sovereign power may deprive a citizen of his ­legal rights and reduce him to Homo sacer, or “bare life,” whom “anyone could kill with impunity.”99 Without protection by the polity, Agamben argues, Homo sacer is ­human life “included in the juridical order solely in the form of its exclusion”; such a “state of exception,” however, constituted “the hidden foundation on which the entire po­liti­cal system rested.”100 Like Homo sacer, yimin in Maoist China ­were also negated, excluded, and excepted from the ­legal order; yet it was precisely their outlaw status that gave legitimacy, even sanctity, to the party. As Lin Zhao put it laconically, “Only by reducing ­others to sinners could they shamelessly call themselves saints.”101 In Maoist China, according to Lin Zhao, yimin ­were not only outlaws (vogelfrei) in the classic sense of being left to the mercy or cruelty of the mob. Rather, the po­liti­cal system coerced the masses to become its accomplices: “Its dirty and unrigh­teous powers penetrate everywhere and pressure every­one to participate in our persecution. ‘Draw a clear line of delineation!’ So that the regime seems omnipotent, leaving us isolated and helpless. Aiya, every­one is on the side of the Communists! We po­liti­cally negated yimin have no path to heaven and no door to hell.”102 (As an aside, Lin Zhao noted that Buddhist monks ­were forced to sign a “patriotic pact,” pledging their refusal to perform funeral rituals for counterrevolutionaries, so that their souls could never find peace.) Lin Zhao also condemned Mao’s canonical 1927 “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan” for praising “such savage means of degrading ­humans as parading them on the streets with dunce caps.” She distinguished between vio­lence by an angry mob and vio­lence by state prescription: “It is one t­ hing for peasants to take vengeance on their former oppressors, but once such methods are used as a part of Mao Zedong Thought on all ­those who refuse to submit to them. . . . ​Blood! Blood! Blood! I can only summarize my suffocating grief and indignation with this one word.”103 Blood h ­ ere refers metonymically to the vio­lence across de­cades of Maoist campaigns against so-­ called “enemies of the ­people.” B lood T estaments

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The only way to escape such systematic and omnipresent persecution, Lin Zhao concludes, is suicide, the reason why “many compatriots like my f­ ather resolutely ended their lives. ­Needless to say, many who took such a path ­were intellectuals with integrity and self-­respect.”104 Citing from The Book of Rites (禮記) that “the scholar may be killed, but he cannot be disgraced,”105 Lin Zhao emphasizes the inviolability not so much of h ­ uman life as of h ­ uman dignity, which may also explain why she mostly gives examples of psychological and spiritual persecution rather than physical torture. She claims that suicide, rather than passive surrender, is a meaningful act “to defend the dignity and beauty, freedom and purity of life.”106

Blood Letters Home

Despite her reasoned defense of suicide in “­Father’s Blood,” Lin Zhao’s sensuous thirst for life is marked in her last correspondences with her m ­ other. This subsection features relatively l­ittle exegesis and interpretation of words as signs. Instead, I quote at length to exhibit the embodied and visceral quality of the writing, which conveys pain, hunger, longing, rage, and despair. The words ­here mediate not so much discourse as the “flesh and blood” kinship across the iron bars of prison. They convey a warm body, a pulsating existence, and a ­family torn asunder. Lin Zhao’s blood writings conclude with the blood of kinship. Since she did not frequently receive letters from her ­family, Lin Zhao often wondered if her ­mother was still alive and ­whether she would kill herself if her m ­ other had died: “No, never, dear Mama! If you died, I would clench my teeth to keep living so as to avenge you!” She quoted from the revolutionary opera film The White-­Haired Girl (白毛女): “I w ­ ill live even if the sea dries up; 107 I’ll live even if stones rot.” (Lin Zhao often invoked the figure of the White-­ Haired Girl in her prison writings, identifying with the loss of her ­father and her spirit of vengeance.) ­After many months of silence, Lin Zhao fi­nally heard from her ­mother: Lin Zhao: I received all your letters but did not have the courage to write back. I could not muster up the courage to visit you, b­ ecause your words and acts are too agitated, absurd, and preposterous. B ­ ecause you have no trust in me whatsoever, no sentiment and no understanding, so I had to bear the intense pain of our f­ amily tragedy and let go. This throbbing pain, unbearable for a ­mother, corrodes my heart, soul, and body e­ very second. A troublemaker d ­ aughter like you can never understand or feel such pain. 52

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­ very time I read your letters, I would be unsettled day and night. E E ­ very time I go visit you, I bring back endless disappointment and misery. I’d be distraught for days and was often bedridden. Once I even fainted on the way home and was sent home by a passerby. Your ­brother and ­sister do not understand why I cannot cut off relations with you. Friends often plead with me to f­ree my thoughts of you. Other­wise I ­will die of melancholy ­because of my beloved ­little foe.108 Lin Zhao’s reply on January 14, 1968, expressed her comfort at seeing her ­mother’s handwriting and went on to convey her daughterly sentiments: My fracas with them was filled with jeers and curses, but when night came, I tossed about with desolation in my bones. That day, when I put on the gray sweater you gave me, a strange sensation took hold of me and hot tears rolled down my cheeks. . . . ​Dear Mama, do you remember Zoya? Late in the war of re­sis­tance, the story of this Soviet Joan of Arc encouraged ­people’s patriotism for some time! ­After 1949, a memoir by Zoya’s ­mother entitled The Story of Zoya and Shura was translated into Chinese, and she herself came to visit China. Around 1955 or 1956 I saw her at Peking University, where she gave a short speech. . . . ​We kissed her, gave her flowers and souvenirs, got her autograph, shook her hand. When the car was about to leave, she smiled, nodded, and waved to us. . . . ​Her smile had motherly love but was so deeply lonely, revealing the desolation in the depth of her heart! Remembering that last look, I often thought: “A ­mother would much rather have their ­children live ordinary lives than die heroic deaths. The enthusiasm of t­ hese foreign youths may be sincere, but could our flowers, letters, and hugs give any compensation for the emptiness in her heart?”109 Apologizing to her m ­ other for all the worries she had caused, Lin Zhao reflected on her own participation and complicity in revolutionary vio­lence: “Fortunately, Mama, I ­don’t have blood on my hands! During land reform nobody shed blood ­because of my work. This test I can pass, but even if I d ­ idn’t have blood on my hands, I was still splattered with blood.”110 Before sending off the letter, Lin Zhao added a wish list: money, toothpaste, ­children’s towels ­because she ­couldn’t get much ­water for washing, knit socks, a shirt, a basin, a cup, old clothes, a straw mat, a ball-­point pen, notebooks, stationery, toilet paper, and above all, food: One way or another give me some oblations! I want to eat, Mama! Stew a pot of beef, simmer a casserole of lamb, cook a pig’s head, and boil down B lood T estaments

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a b­ ottle of lard or two, cook a pair of pork trotters, roast a chicken or a duck—if you have no money go borrow some. . . . ­Don’t leave out fish. Steam plenty of salted cutlass fish, fresh butterfish, mandarin fish should be ­whole ones, crucian carp should be strung in a soup, black carp steamed—­with ­water, no frying. Get me some dried fish to go with rice [she lists over fifty dif­fer­ent kinds of food]. . . . ​If you ­don’t have enough ration coupons, go out and beg for alms! . . . Not rice paddy eels; I want river eels and soft-­shelled turtles. They should all be water-­steamed or boiled in a clear soup. Bring them ­here with the pot. I’ll give you back the pot ­later.—­Etc., put them on a car and drive it over ­here. Give me some oblations! The most impor­tant being the pig’s head and three sacrifices (pig, sheep, and ox). You know Mama, d ­ on’t you? Pig tail—­ pig head! Pig tail?—­Pig head! Pig tail?—­Pig head! Pig head! Pig head! . . . . Hei, looking over at what I just wrote I have to smile— In this dusty world, how often can we laugh? Adorning my hair with wild blossoms I return ­There’s more: The ­whole world grows old in a busy bustle Who is willing to cease before death? With daughterly affections! To Mama!111 Apart from a corporeal craving for nourishment at a time of deprivation, this letter reveals Lin Zhao’s sophisticated and epicurean tastes, a mixture of her Suzhou and Shanghai “petit-­bourgeois” upbringing. Her palate—­ pristine and de­cadent, fastidious and indiscriminate—­matches her tone, at once beseeching and pampered, childlike and world-­weary. The word zhai 齋 can mean to fast, to abstain from certain foods, to give alms, or to offer sacrifices to a deity. Its usage ­here implies a dialectic of body and spirit, desire and abstinence. As the list of delicacies gives way to the sober form of a classical quatrain, we are also reminded of Cao Xueqin’s 曹雪芹 Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢), with its indulgence in sensual delights and awakening to self-­deprecating pathos. As far as Lin Zhao’s extant oeuvre is concerned, ­these ­were her last words. She was killed three months l­ater, on April 29, 1968, but her corporeal traces in the form of blood testaments would bring about her resurrection and apotheosis several de­cades ­later. To recapitulate, Lin Zhao began her blood writing in prison for a s­ imple and pragmatic reason—­she was denied stationery—­but the medium of blood 54

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was irreducible to ink and heightened the stakes of and lent authenticity to her testimony. Beyond believing that “truth written in blood” cannot be concealed by “lies written in ink,” Lin Zhao hoped, perhaps rightly so, that blood would circulate better through the “arteries of the police state” so as to enhance the likelihood for her writing to be transmitted beyond her prison cell. More than a symbolic gesture, her sustained practice of blood writing produced significant metatexts that creatively tap into and critically reflect on the myriad cultural resonances and po­liti­cal meanings of blood. While drawing on premodern and revolutionary martyrologies, her blood writing also indicts Mao’s revolution for painting utopian visions with the blood of the masses—­ both by exploiting the hot blood of youth and resorting to violent bloodshed. Through the example of her blood kin, Lin Zhao reflected on the nature of po­ liti­cal vio­lence as dependent on the designation of guilty individuals and the mass participation in their persecution. Above all, her blood writing sought to mediate testimonies beyond her prison cell and mortal body in anticipation of ­future remembrance by posterity.

Remediation and Apotheosis

In the ­People’s Daily on January 27, 1981, a long reportage article celebrating the trial of the Gang of Four, entitled “The Verdict of History,” devotes an entire paragraph to Lin Zhao’s case, bringing her name for the first and only time to the official media: Among our friends . . . ​was a brave and innocent w ­ oman of the South named Lin Zhao. ­Because she was unwilling to submit to the once popu­lar modern superstition, she had been imprisoned in Shanghai. However, she continued with diary and blood writing to express her belief in truth. . . . ​ We do not know the details of her martyrdom—­only that on May 1, 1968, a few representatives from “concerned departments” visited her el­derly ­mother, told her that Lin Zhao had been executed on April 29, and that ­because “the counterrevolutionary” had consumed a bullet, her ­family had to pay five cents.112 Could this article be considered a belated reply to Lin Zhao’s vehement letters to the ­People’s Daily sixteen years e­ arlier? Had “the day the sword is over the mouth” (刀在口上之日) fi­nally turned into a “public rehabilitation,” or zhaoxue 昭雪? Indeed, Lin Zhao’s case seemed to epitomize a myriad other “unjust and erroneous cases” (冤假錯案) from the Maoist campaigns, all being redressed in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. Yet like the officially B lood T estaments

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recognized w ­ oman martyr and dissident Zhang Zhixin 張志新, the public commemoration of Lin Zhao was suppressed as soon as the new order had established itself. Beyond the party newspaper, alternative forms of commemoration took place in more ­limited public forums. In December 1980, Lin Zhao’s former teachers and classmates held a memorial ser­vice for her at Peking University. The stated cause of her death was the officially sanctioned one—­“our classmate Lin Zhao was killed by the counterrevolutionary organ­ization of Lin Biao and Jiang Qing.” Yet of the many elegiac couplets displayed, the most eloquent was the one without words, with a “?” on the left and an “!” on the right.113 In 1980 and 1981, respectively, the Shanghai People’s Court reissued two verdicts that pronounced Lin Zhao “not guilty” of counterrevolutionary crimes, first attributing her be­hav­ior to m ­ ental illness and then rescinding that alle114 gation. When her case was reopened for investigation, the journalist Chen Weisi 陳偉斯, writing an article for the magazine Democracy and Rule of Law (民主與法制), visited the Jing’an Court and saw a w ­ hole room full of Lin Zhao’s files. Yet he had only half a day to look through them and so only copied a few poems, among them “­Family Sacrifice” about her ­uncle, the ccp martyr. By then, much of the blood writing was already blurry and illegible.115 In March 1982, the court summoned Lin Zhao’s ­sister Peng Lingfan 彭令範 to meet with an anonymous “comrade.” He turned over to her a few notebooks of Lin Zhao’s prison writings, which she took with her to the United States in 1985.116

Remediation of the Corporeal in Digital Video

In the 1980s and 1990s, Lin Zhao’s surviving friends and f­ amily published memorial articles about her that ­were reproduced in an edited volume in 1998 entitled Lin Zhao: No Longer in Oblivion (林昭：不再被遺忘). Her legend and fragments of her writing came to be known among many university students and intellectuals, but the most power­ful resurrection of her memory came with a 2004 documentary film entitled In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul (尋找林昭的 靈魂), which has remediated her testimony to a broad audience and served as a virtual memorial museum to commemorate the history she embodied. Filmmaker Hu Jie was working as a cameraman for Xin­hua News Agency when he first heard about Lin Zhao through a friend in 1999. Delving deeper into her story at the cost of his job, he began tracking down Lin Zhao’s former friends and relatives, some of whom overcame their fear and distrust to talk about her on camera. Some shared with him photo­graphs, documents, and artifacts, such as a tiny boat Lin Zhao had made in prison from a cellophane 56

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candy wrapper. Hu Jie even tracked down the box containing her ashes and found a lock of her hair wrapped inside crumpled newspapers from the Cultural Revolution, on which one might still read “Long live Chairman Mao!” Most importantly, he located a black-­and-­white photocopy of Lin Zhao’s 1965 letter to the ­People’s Daily—­which her ­sister had left with a cousin in Beijing before departing for the United States—so that Lin Zhao could tell her own story. Digitally collecting and exhibiting ­these textual, corporeal, and material traces along with oral testimonies by her former acquaintances, the resulting documentary pre­sents witnesses, performs witnessing, and addresses secondary witnesses like a memorial museum. The film’s opening sequence succinctly introduces several figures, acts, and texts of witnessing. It begins with a literally self-­reflexive image of Hu Jie and his digital video camera in the mirror, drawing attention to the filmmaker as a medium and his camera as a mediating technology—­a ­human witness and a mechanical witness. Looking at himself, at the camera, and at us the audience, Hu Jie’s opening remarks explain how he had first heard about Lin Zhao, a Peking University student imprisoned in Shanghai, who wrote many courageous words in her own blood, and who was executed four de­cades ­earlier. As he speaks, the film cuts to a black-­and-­white portrait photo­graph of Lin Zhao from the 1950s—an iconic image of the witness/martyr, so young and beautiful and yet bearing what Roland Barthes calls the punctum of “death in the ­future.”117 This is followed by a third shot of a manuscript page, taken with a handheld camera that centers on Lin Zhao’s signature (see figure 1.8). While the filmmaker’s voice-­over reenlivens her manuscript and guides the audience to read along, the handwriting as an indexical trace of its author’s bodily presence authenticates the image regardless of its generations of reproductions. To corroborate the claim that the writing used the medium of blood, Hu Jie employed a special digital effect to give the text a reddish-­black color against a yellowish background. Such an artificial maneuver in the ser­vice of authenti­ city prob­ably has the opposite effect on the sophisticated viewer, yet it is also an impossible desire to close the gap between the real and its representation—­a desire implicit in Lin Zhao’s own act of writing in blood. In t­ hese three opening shots, Hu Jie introduces not only Lin Zhao as a witness and martyr and her blood testaments as a witnessing text but also himself as a belated witness to her martyrdom as well as a (shamanistic) medium to “search for Lin Zhao’s soul.”118 To do this, he would find other witnesses who knew Lin Zhao to testify to her life and death, and the resulting film would transmit their embodied testimonies as well as Lin Zhao’s written testimony. B lood T estaments

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Figure 1.8. Opening shots of Hu Jie’s In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul.

The mode of testimony in Hu Jie’s documentary is reminiscent of Claude Lanzmann’s Shoah (1985), even though Hu Jie had not viewed Shoah before finishing the Lin Zhao film. Like Lanzmann, Hu Jie revisited and accompanied his interviewees to revisit the significant sites for the deceased. Traveling between the living and the dead and moving between the dif­fer­ent places and voices in the films, both filmmakers asked for more descriptions and concrete details, such as the weather, the colors of clothing, last words, and gestures, than for explanations.119 Hu Jie’s interviews ­were almost always conducted in the interviewees’ homes, with the curtains drawn, their ­faces dimly lit by what­ever light remained. Such haphazard ele­ments of the mise-­en-­scène became markers of the film’s authenticity and under­ground status. In one testimony, an old classmate reads a letter from Lin Zhao while sitting in front of a bookshelf, where books are stacked horizontally with their pages rather than their spines facing outward. Such an untidy habit must have been formed over the years, caused by the need to conceal, and not to display, one’s readings, a necessary camouflage of paper to preserve Lin Zhao’s letter to this day (see figure 1.9). Like Lanzmann, Hu Jie takes his audience on a quest of knowledge and meaning, though he is much more reverent than critical. Pilgrimage and mourn58

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Figure 1.9. Some writings, photos, artifacts, and testimonies collected in Hu Jie’s In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul.

ing characterize his stance better than investigation and cross-­examination. The discursive space of his film is thus closer to a shrine than a courtroom, ­unless we think of the multiple Christian references to be appealing to a higher form of judgment. Moreover, whereas Lanzmann’s nine-­hour epic systematically refused to use archival footage, Hu Jie readily inserted what­ever archival footage he could find, sometimes as generic historical illustration, and other times overlaid with a dif­fer­ent soundtrack to highlight what Jaimie Baron calls the “intentional disparity” between the original footage and its appropriation in a ­later film, often creating an ironic effect.120 In a notable instance of such intentional disparity, Hu Jie shows a montage of documentary newsreels from the ­Great Leap Forward in 1958—­showing steel-­making, celebratory parades, and ­people’s commune canteens—­yet overlaid with Christian Passion choral ­music. Apart from ironically questioning the truth of t­hese propaganda newsreels, the new soundtrack also gives a haunted quality to the moving B lood T estaments

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Figure 1.10. Hu Jie’s reinvention of a composite drawing as the iconic portrait of a saint (image courtesy of Hu Jie).

images and reminds us of the sacrifice of the millions of lives in the subsequent famine.121 However intimately Hu Jie’s camera approached his historical subject, the film is ever mindful and constantly reminds us of gaps and continuities between past and pre­sent—of his and our own historicity. A ­ fter reading out loud and showing Lin Zhao’s appeal to God not to let her lose her mind a­ fter a brutal beating by the prison guards—­allegedly written with her blood on the prison wall and ­later transcribed to paper—­the film shows a group of old ­women, who would have been about Lin Zhao’s age if she had lived, d ­ oing their morning exercises in the park, singing a tune in chorus: “[I want] a nose job, double-­ eyelids, and red lips; a washing machine with double tubs; a refrigerator with three doors; a color TV with remote control.” As their voices fade out, Hu Jie’s voice-­over resurfaces: “No one working for the prison agreed to be interviewed.” ­Today’s China has moved on from communist to consumerist ideals, but silence about the Mao era persists, perpetuated not only by the unwillingness of ­those in power to come to terms with the past but also by ­those in fear of power. ­After completing a first cut of his film in 2004, Hu Jie found a former inmate of Tilanqiao Prison who in 1968 had sometimes delivered meals to Lin Zhao. The interviewee was unwilling to appear on camera but allowed the inclusion of an audio recording of his voice, a photo­graph from his youth, and a few still-­life shots of his ­humble living quarters, such as a ­little mound of medicine he took daily. He testifies that the prison loudspeakers often referred to Lin Zhao as the most egregious “ele­ment who refused to be re60

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formed” (反改造分子). Though transferred to the empty fifth floor of the prison, her muffled shouting could still be heard, so she had to wear a mask that left only her eyes exposed. As we listen to the interview, we see Hu Jie’s hand drawing a charcoal sketch like a forensic artist (see figure 1.10 left), yet this composite drawing serves not to identify but to signify and deify. In Hu Jie’s home and studio, I saw a much larger oil painting of the same image (figure 1.10, right), which has reinvented the composite drawing as the iconic portrait of a saint.

The Digital Cult of a ­Woman Martyr

Rather than distribute the finished film through state media or foreign film festivals, Hu Jie took it to vari­ous university campuses and intellectual circles to listen to audience opinions, making revisions and additions.122 The film’s narration was published in Freezing Point (冰點), a popu­lar and provocative weekly supplement of China Youth Daily, and won the year’s “Best Special Report Prize.” Like a missionary, Hu Jie gave out vcds of the documentary and allowed, even encouraged, his friends to duplicate them and pass them on. In fact, my parents received their vcd copy of the film in an anonymous 2006 letter and then made copies to send out to their friends. Piracy became a means of distribution, while the epistolary dissemination of the vcds is reminiscent of “relay batons” during the Hundred Flowers Movement. Indeed, the vcds can be considered digital versions of the samizdat publication Spark that led to Lin Zhao’s arrest. The documentary spread even more rapidly via the internet, as numerous viewers uploaded and downloaded it faster than the censors could take it down. Netizens posted stories about Lin Zhao in thousands of blogs and created fan sites as well as poetic, fictional, and musical tributes. A punk rock band wrote several songs in honor of “Saint Lin Zhao,” with lyr­ics such as “Before you, all Chinese are animals. . . . ​We are all cowards,” or “Goddess Lin Zhao, how are you in Heaven? What would you like to eat? . . . ​Let us offer you some oblations.”123 A prize for freedom of speech was named ­after her. The first winner was Lu Xuesong 盧雪松 at Jilin College of the Arts, suspended from her teaching post ­after students informed the school administration of her screening of In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul in class. Hundreds of outraged responses circulated on the internet. Essayist Yu Jie 余傑 compared her “ordinary heroism” to that of Rosa Parks, while historian Xu Youyu 徐友漁 found in this incident frightening echoes of the Cultural Revolution, when students readily betrayed their teachers.124 As Edith Wyschogrod argues, a saint’s life is always “lived forward” into B lood T estaments

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the lives of ­others, who are exhorted “to ‘make the movements’ of the saint’s existence ­after her.”125 In the case of Hu Jie and Lu Xuesong, then, the very recounting and “proselytizing” of Lin Zhao’s legend became emulations of the martyr’s spirit. Many netizens refer to Lin Zhao as China’s soul, hope, light, Prometheus, Goddess of Freedom, and other superlative epithets. Many resort to a rhe­toric of national salvation and redemption through blood sacrifice. The following excerpts from memorial articles on Lin Zhao are characteristic: Lin Zhao’s blood was shed in our nation’s most cowardly era, but thirty years ­later she has encouraged us to find hope for our nation. She used her innocent blood to raise our nation’s spiritual level.126 Give heroes back to our race: publish Lin Zhao’s works and biographies, film epics of Lin Zhao’s martyrdom, compose songs, symphonies, musicals, cast statues, set up foundations and prizes. . . . ​Let ­every Chinese ­family learn about Lin Zhao; let the Lin Zhao spirit become the pride of our nation.127 ­There is an overwhelming emphasis on Lin Zhao as a national hero, as China’s martyr, as if only a patriotic discourse could give sufficient meaning to her suffering and death. The apotheosis of Lin Zhao as a new emblem of self-­ sacrifice, purity, and authenticity does not always consider what she lived and died for and occasionally indulges in what Geremie Barmé calls “totalitarian nostalgia,” which valorizes sacrificial death as a condition for revolutionary change.128 In this sense, perhaps more attention has been paid to Lin Zhao the martyr than to Lin Zhao the thinker. Even though her response to oppression returns to revolutionary sources, her testament in blood also warns of the easy slips between mass democracy and mob vio­lence, between iconoclasm and the establishment of new myths, between h ­ uman rights and dictatorship in the name of the ­people. Con­temporary discussions of Lin Zhao often highlight her gender, calling her a “frail girl” (弱女子), a “female student” (女學生), a “talented ­woman” (才女), a “­woman saint” (聖女), and a “­woman martyr” (烈女). Like her pre­de­ ces­sor Qiu Jin, Lin Zhao has had greater symbolic currency than male martyrs of comparable achievements, such as Yu Luoke 遇羅克. Perhaps vulnerable female bodies, coupled with unflinching w ­ ill, come to be perceived as the very antithesis of state and judicial vio­lence. In late imperial China, ­women martyrs have also “put men to shame” through their death-­defying actions, often in defense of the most conservative values like female chastity.129 In modern China, might they continue to serve as the projection site of indignant sentiments coupled with a nationalism of wounded pride? 62

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Grave and Relic

Since the release of the documentary in 2004, many visitors have gone to commemorate Lin Zhao at her Suzhou grave, especially around the anniversary of her death on April 29. I first visited with friends in the summer of 2007, and a handful of local elderlies insisted on guiding us to Lin Zhao’s grave, even though the path was clearly marked with large signs along the way. Bunches of wilted flowers at the grave suggested that ­others had visited a few days ­earlier. An old ­woman told us that “many more ­people come in the Qingming season.” An old man demanded a tip for each of the grave sweepers, while another old ­woman tried to sell us incense and candles, saying that it would bring us luck. When asked what she knew about Lin Zhao, she whispered, “She said one word wrong and they shot her—­she was wronged.” Another added mysteriously that ­there was no body, only a lock of hair in the grave. Vari­ous blogs from 2006 to 2009 feature similar accounts of t­ hese “guardians of the tomb.” Some refer to Lu Xun’s emblematic story “Medicine” (藥), where poor, ignorant parents, following the advice of a quack doctor, feed their sick son a roll soaked in the warm blood of a martyr.130 Prayed to and preyed upon, (force-)fed by ­those who feed on her, Lin Zhao, whose corpse and corpus remain shrouded in myth and mystery, is at the center of a strange ecol­ogy of sacrifice in which I as a scholar also find myself implicated. Memoirist Zhang Yihe once said in an interview: “The blood and tears of the past can become the capital of the pre­sent. Writing about other p ­ eople’s blood and tears can become one’s own capital.”131 Is the intellectual currency of modern scholarship so much nobler than the ancient economy of ancestral worship, or are we all merchants dealing with the meanings of the past for the pre­sent and pathfinders in the labyrinth of memory and forgetting? As grave sweepers increased over the years—­among them students, intellectuals, and human-­rights activists—­the Suzhou police took incremental mea­sures beginning in 2010 to block visitors from commemorating Lin Zhao at her grave. They whitewashed the signs pointing the way to the cemetery, blocked the roads, erected barbed wires, installed security cameras, and sent plainclothes as well as uniformed police to bully, block, beat, arrest, round up, and oust the grave sweepers. The harassed grave sweepers documented and publicized t­hese repressive mea­sures on digital cameras and through social media, further turning Lin Zhao’s grave from a memorial site into an activist site where the most radical netizen-­dissidents showcased their courage and defiance of the authoritarian state. Their stories would then be reported by Radio ­Free Asia, Voice of Amer­i­ca, Hong Kong’s Apple B lood T estaments

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Daily, and other overseas Chinese media to highlight the censorship over memory, the state of surveillance, and police brutality in ­today’s China.132 In this sense, they have inherited and updated Lin Zhao’s legacy as a witness against unjust power through what Kari Andén-­Papadopoulos calls “citizen camera-­witnessing” or “embodied po­liti­cal dissent in the age of ‘mediated mass self-­communication.’  ”133 Albeit in fragmented quotations, the digital remediation of Lin Zhao’s prison writings at once enhanced and diminished the aura of the originals. ­After refusing Hu Jie’s many interview requests, Lin Zhao’s ­sister condemned the film as illegal and in violation of her copyright. As Lin Zhao’s only surviving ­family, Peng Lingfan refused to publish the manuscripts in her possession and held the cult of Lin Zhao in contempt, an attitude that perplexed and frustrated many of Lin Zhao’s followers. ­After all, Lin Zhao herself often addressed “the world,” “posterity,” and even “­future researchers of Lin Zhao.” In a 1966 letter to the United Nations, Lin Zhao explic­itly asked that “her dossier and all her writings be made available to the public.”134 Nevertheless, I must attend to the anx­i­eties and responsibilities of textual transmission that Peng Lingfan implicitly raises, in turn to be read against an age of digital proliferation and media sensationalism as well as against an age of police files and authoritarian surveillance. ­After all, Lin Zhao’s writings had been read before, by the police, by judges, and by doctors trying to find evidence of her guilt or insanity, but if t­ hese first readers criminalized and pathologized ­these texts, do they not deserve second, more sympathetic, yet critical readings? In 2009, Peng Lingfan donated four notebooks of Lin Zhao’s prison writings in her possession to Stanford University’s Hoover Institution Archives. They are now accessible only in digital format on-site, and t­ hose who wish to read the manuscripts are only permitted to hand-­copy quotations.135 ­These stipulations create a sacred, forbidding aura surrounding her oeuvre, a synecdoche for myriad dossiers compiled in a period of unpre­ce­dented graphomania among intellectuals and ordinary p ­ eople pressed or exhorted to write confessions and denunciations. As the next chapter further demonstrates, words in the Mao era had graphic power to judge, sentence, and kill. It was not only “the day the sword was over the mouth” but also the day the pen was a sword. Might this have been a reason for Lin Zhao’s s­ ister to dictate that faithful readers make pilgrimage to the dossier and bodily reenact the act of writing? A ­ fter all, words written in blood are not merely signs but relics, and the dossiers are not only compilations of documents but the traces and remnants of lives. 64

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Conclusion: Corporeal Testimonies

The core mission of most memorial museums around the world is to commemorate mass suffering and historical victimhood, thus their exhibits often foreground the body in pain.136 By curating an “exhibit” about Lin Zhao in the first chapter, I follow global memorial museums in a mode of historical memory that puts victims before the victors, the weak before the strong, ­those in the shadows of the past before t­ hose who occupy the spotlight. To foreground lost lives and voices, we must turn to testimonies obscured from the public culture of the Mao era. Lin Zhao’s blood writings from prison—­corporeal relics that also mediate her voice and thought—­are a unique and power­ful form of embodied testimony to the pain of history and to the Maoist past as an open wound. Yet ­these blood testaments do not reduce that complex historical era only to victimhood and suffering; they also draw attention to the period’s idealist passions. So, what is “red” about the “red era”? In both medium and content, Lin Zhao’s blood testaments compellingly argue that this was an era saturated by blood, including the hot blood of idealistic youths and the cold blood of state-­ sponsored vio­lence, the sacred sacrifice of martyrs and the obscene waste of ­human lives. In this blood-­mediated revolution, millions of revolutionaries came to be revolutionized, and participants of ­earlier campaigns became victims of l­ater campaigns. Insofar as the masses w ­ ere the instruments, vehicles, and sites through which Maoism was enacted, the Communist Revolution left indelible scars on bodies and minds, individuals and families. In this sense, Lin Zhao’s case is at once unpre­ce­dented and paradigmatic. Affiliated with both the ccp and the kmt, participants and victims of successive revolutionary movements, Lin Zhao’s ­family gives flesh and blood as well as continuity to historical forces and events often abstracted from their ­human impact. Like millions of youths who joined the revolution in the 1940s and 1950s, Lin Zhao shared the ccp’s ideals of giving voice, visibility, and power to the wretched of the earth, and she participated in its strug­g le against oppression, in­equality, and corruption. Yet by the late 1950s, she also saw that the revolution had created new inequities and injustices. As a member of the intellectual elite trying to speak on behalf of the subaltern, Lin Zhao found herself and her friends condemned to silence, incarceration, and exile. Turning from a fervent supporter to a scorching opponent of communism, Lin Zhao embodied the hopes and disillusionment of her compatriots on an idealistic quest of equality and freedom, only to confront the real­ity of hunger and vio­lence. From the isolation and impotence of prison, she raised profound questions about the B lood T estaments

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promises and dangers of revolution. As indictment and sacrament, I argue, her blood writings in prison are utopian ruins that caution posterity against the vio­ lence of revolution while reminding us of its original longings. Lin Zhao’s blood writings and their subsequent remediations also provide trenchant commentary on media witnessing from the Maoist to the post-­Mao eras. Trained as a journalist, Lin Zhao’s “revolutionary” and “counterrevolutionary” activities prior to her arrest in 1960 w ­ ere all associated with writing and its circulation. From Land Reform to the ­Great Leap famine, Lin Zhao and fellow intellectuals used the written and printed word to bear witness to subaltern suffering and to reflect on the national plight. The successive campaigns of the 1950s, however, saw the shrinking of public forums of critical expression as well as encroaching surveillance over even private modes of communication and record-­keeping, raising the stakes of speaking truth to power. From campus journalism to the under­ground samizdat to the prison archives, tracing how Lin Zhao’s writing was mediated from the 1950s to the 1960s also reveals a growing crisis of journalistic testimony that I w ­ ill revisit with re­spect to documentary photography and newsreels in chapters 3 and 4. Instead of listening to criticism, the party-­state listened in on its critics only to imprison them and to archive their voices in its police files. During her incarceration, Lin Zhao employed blood writing not only to render vis­i­ble and visceral the revolution’s passion and vio­lence but also as a foil—­“truth written in blood”—to the “lies in ink” printed by the official press. As the culmination of her speech crimes, blood writing was the reason for Lin Zhao’s death sentence, but it was also her technology of protest, testimony, and memory (re)mediation. Moreover, she believed she could transmit her blood letters through the “arteries of the police state” as well as preserve memories of her re­sis­tance for posterity through her dossier. Lin Zhao’s writings with her own blood in the prison archives gave that visceral yet perishable memory medium of the h ­ uman body a much more lasting form. Borrowing the terms of memory theorist Paul Connerton, her blood writing combined a “bodily” (or “incorporated”) memory practice with “inscribed” transmission of memories.137 Prescient or simply lucky, Lin Zhao rightly anticipated the survival of her memory beyond her mortal body, but her “afterlife” depended as much on the blood-­mediated rec­ords she herself left ­behind as on the active excavation, remediation, and commemoration by ­later secondary witnesses. The combined layers of Lin Zhao’s anticipatory memory and ­later efforts to receive her testament illuminate the palimpsestic pro­cess of memory-­making demonstrated throughout this book. Although most of her dossier remains imprisoned in the Shanghai police archives, the extensive fragments of her blood writing that “escaped prison” have already 66

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awakened much historical memory from official oblivion. They also point to a myriad of other wronged lives imprisoned inside practically inaccessible state security archives. The next chapter ­will examine another dossier that tells not a story of martyrdom but rather a story of complicity and survival, which further illuminates the production, form, and legacies of Maoist police archives.

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2 SURVEILLANCE FILES

In February 2009, a retired judge ­under the pseudonym Yu Zhen (寓真, literally “lodging the truth”) published extensive excerpts from the police file of the renowned essayist and poet Nie Gannu 聶紺弩 (1903–1986) in a literary magazine. A month ­later, memoirist Zhang Yihe published a provocative newspaper article accusing Nie’s close friend and renowned artist Huang Miaozi 黃苗子 (1913–2012) of being a secret agent whose informer reports on Nie’s “thought crimes” sent him to jail for nearly a de­cade during the Cultural Revolution.1 The article stirred up sensational blogosphere debates over the widespread betrayals of colleagues, friends, and ­family members during the Mao era: Should public or secret denunciations be condemned or forgiven, remembered or forgotten? Does “exposing” a revered cultural celebrity as a former spy amount to another form of denunciation?2 Since the court archives remained closed to the public, the dubious and fragmentary evidence added to the controversy, raising broader questions about dossiers as a technology of surveillance and as a mediator of historical memory. Memorial museums throughout the world are devoted to the commemoration of mass suffering, and repre­sen­ta­tions of the traumatic upheavals of the Mao era have concentrated on its scars, victims, and martyrs. Yet if Ba Jin’s vision for a Cultural Revolution museum was to help e­ very visitor “search his or her conscience,”3 then an exhibit curated from Nie Gannu’s police file might

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foster critical reflection over complicity in Maoist vio­lence. Since many individuals targeted in one po­liti­cal campaign had been activists in a prior campaign, I argue that a memorial museum of the Mao era must reckon with this imbrication between victimhood and perpetration, revolutionaries and the revolutionized, motivating ideals and ­human costs. The most prevalent way to contribute to revolutionary vio­lence was the denunciation—­the Maoist terminology is usually a combination of “exposure” (揭發) and “criticism” (批判)—not only of prominent “enemies of the p ­ eople” but also of friends, f­ amily, and even of oneself in confessions (交代) and self-­ criticisms (檢討), integral to performative testimonies of revolutionary faith. Public denunciations w ­ ere major spectacles of ­ every Maoist campaign,4 whereas covert denunciations served as “evidence” for millions of po­liti­cal per­ eople” devastated secutions.5 The utopian quest to purify the ranks of “the P many families and communities, leading to incarceration and exile, humiliation and betrayal. Thus, the nationwide graphomania6 of denunciations and confessions accrued into labyrinthine archives that became the remnants and ruins of many lives. The relationship between archive, memory, and power has received much theorization over the years. Although Jacques Derrida claims that the archive could never be memory “as spontaneous, alive, and internal experience,” 7 Pierre Nora considers “modern memory” to be “above all, archival,” with the “responsibility of remembering” delegated to the archive.8 For Aleida Assmann, the archive is a form of “storage memory” and a passive repository from which an active, functional memory draws.9 Adding power to the equation, Achille Mbembe considers state archives “the result of the exercise of a specific power and authority” not only to “recall” but also “to anaesthetize the past” by keeping its traces out of sight.10 George Orwell pre­sents a starker depiction of the archive’s function in a totalitarian state: “Who controls the past, controls the ­future; who controls the pre­sent, controls the past. . . . ​The past is what­ ever the rec­ords and the memories agree upon.”11 Yet what happens when archives of dictatorship are reclaimed as historical memory? Likening archives to both prisons and ­temples, media scholar Eric Ketelaar points out how panoptic record-­keeping can imprison an entire society through womb-­to-­tomb surveillance. Yet the same instruments of power can turn into “sanctuaries” for the execution of transitional justice—as demonstrated by the repurposing of the secret police archives kept by the Nazis, the Stasi, and the KGB.12 Historian Kirsten Weld writes of “two archival logics” in the context of Guatemala: “one of surveillance, social control, and ideological management” and a “second logic . . . ​of demo­cratic opening, historical memory, S ur v eillance F iles

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and the pursuit of justice for war crimes.”13 Although Mao-­era archives have never been opened like their counter­parts in Latin Amer­i­ca or Eastern Eu­ rope, the end of the Cultural Revolution saw the rehabilitation of hundreds of thousands of “wronged cases” using the dossiers that had formerly incriminated the victims.14 More recently, historians of the PRC have worked with fragmented archival materials deemed benign by the archivist-­censors or with serendipitous findings at flea markets—­mostly documents discarded by work units since the 1990s.15 Taking what anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler calls an “archival turn” that shifts our attention from “archive-­as-­source” to “archive-­as-­subject,” chapters 1 and 2 aim not so much to mine the archival content as to analyze archival forms, genres, and pro­cesses. Departing from existing studies that use Mao-­era archives as “sites of knowledge retrieval,” my interest is in archives as “agents of ‘fact’ production” and as mediating technologies of memory. I argue that t­ here had been an “archival regime of memory” in the Mao era whereby archival production, as well as the potential of being archived, ­shaped the recording of memories. With Nie Gannu’s police file as a case study, this chapter argues that the dossier as a surveillance technology inhibited and censored personal record-­ keeping practices, but also involuntarily produced testimony and memory for ­later generations. Insofar as the dossiers preserved testimonies that brushed against the grain of the official historiography, they constitute an impor­tant yet contested site of countermemory beyond what individuals might have hidden away in their private collections. The first part of this chapter shifts our attention from the well-­known notion of “drawer lit­er­a­ture” (抽屜文學) to develop what I call “dossier lit­er­a­ture” (檔案文學), bringing into literary history writings produced for or confiscated by the official archives. Using Nie Gannu’s file as a case study, the bulk of this chapter reconstructs the reading and practices, the multiple authors and readers, and the “literary” forms and genres of Maoist surveillance files. Unlike Lin Zhao’s blood testaments, Nie Gannu’s file reveals a more ambivalent picture of intellectual life and shows how Maoist policies gave rise to new modes of literary creativity and community. The final part of this chapter analyzes the 2009 controversy in the Chinese blogosphere over the complicity of former informers and the problematic legacy of police files, with comparisons to their Soviet and East Eu­ro­pean counter­parts.

From the Drawer to the Dossier: An Archival Regime of Memory

“Are our drawers empty?” Fudan-­based scholar Chen Sihe asked in 1999 about literary legacies from the Mao era. By “drawer lit­er­a­ture” or “invisible writing” 70

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(潛在寫作), Chen refers to literary works that could not be published in their time and instead w ­ ere kept in a drawer or ­were circulated among small groups. “Invisible writing” in a “deaf-­mute era,” he maintained, was also an “organic component of the spiritual life of that historical period.” Indeed, the writing of literary history is an impor­tant way to constitute the cultural memories associated with any historical period. Chen Sihe’s critical intervention to examine subterranean, marginal, and nonofficial writings may help resurrect the lit­er­ a­ture of the Mao era from easy dismissals of poverty and propaganda and help us to see “the variety and richness of its zeitgeist.”16 Inspired by Chen Sihe’s call to examine “invisible writing” from the Mao era, as opposed to its highly vis­i­ble and often propagandistic “red classics,” I draw attention to surveillance files as another site of cultural memory production. Hitherto neglected in cultural histories of the Mao era ­because of its inaccessibility, the dossier produced both “fiction” and “fact.” Its collection of rec­ords represented real­ity but also had a tangible impact on real­ity. ­Going beyond “invisible writing” that expressed in­de­pen­dent thought, dossiers evidenced intellectual complicity with state power. Studying dossiers expands Chen Sihe’s category of “invisible writing” to reckon with the enormous legacy of graphomania from this period that was not hidden from but rather was produced for or ­under the eyes of the authorities. In an era when “for all its vastness China [could] no longer accommodate a quiet desk,” a drawer to store away nonconforming thoughts was a risky and unlikely luxury, as chapter 1 amply demonstrates.17 ­Because raids on homes ­were common during the Cultural Revolution, any “invisible writing” could turn into criminal evidence against its author, subject to confiscation and scrutiny as part of his or her dossier. The dossiers of many writers and intellectuals, who ­were ­under the duress of existential threats or persuaded by utopian ideologies, contained not only testaments of courage and in­de­pen­dent thinking but also documents of unconditional surrender to authoritarian policing. While agreeing with Chen Sihe’s attempt to excavate alternative literary voices, I hesitate to exclude more ambivalent, even retrospectively shameful, confessions and denunciations to the party authorities, works that are difficult to reclaim in terms of “re­sis­tance” or “the sacred fire of lit­er­a­ture.”18 Such a redemptive agenda might leave us with an overly romantic view of muffled dissident voices beneath a strident official culture. Rather than looking only into “drawers”—­the nooks and crannies of freedom overlooked by state power—­this chapter proposes the category of dossier lit­er­a­ture, which mines the official archives as a museum of arrested thought.19 I use dossier lit­er­a­ture to refer to the enormous body of writings collected in S ur v eillance F iles

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personal files, including “invisible writing” confiscated from the writer as well as reports by informers, interrogation notes, and confessions.20 A dossier can have multiple authors and readers who may or may not be aware of one another’s existence, some seeking out state power and o­ thers unsuccessfully hiding from it. Dossier lit­er­a­ture is thus defined not by form, genre, or literary merit, but rather by its brush with po­liti­cal power, whose representatives are the only ones with a complete overview of a file’s heterogeneous contents. Beyond any pos­si­ble voy­eur­is­tic plea­sure or connoisseurial appreciation, the first readers of dossier lit­er­a­ture ­were policing authorities who scrutinized the texts with a “hermeneutics of suspicion”21 in order to detect heterodoxy and subversion. Such hermeneutics had implications not only for censorship and self-­ censorship of literary productions but also for personal record-­keeping and memory practices by the literate populace at large. During the Mao era, even students who ­were not ­under any police surveillance ­were generally aware that their diaries and letters had l­ ittle entitlement to privacy protection if they fell into prying hands.22 In short, the dossier influenced what one put and kept in the drawer. Therefore, the dossier was not only a collection of rec­ords about a person or about the institutions that preserved such rec­ords but also a power­ful surveillance technology over the thoughts and feelings of citizens as well as over the very acts of personal record-­making and record-­keeping. The potential of being archived, the awareness of this potential, and the implications of this awareness on memory-­making practices all constitute what I call an “archival regime of memory,” which has a repressive, censoring side and a generative, productive side. Memoirist Zhang Yihe captures the censoring aspect when writing: “Many ­people, harmed or frightened, destroyed private rec­ords, thus wiping out au­then­tic memories of the past.”23 At a time when “the sword is over the mouth,” as Lin Zhao put it, self-­censorship can occur before anything is written or uttered, so the Mao-­era dossier provides a concrete illustration of Michel Foucault’s theoretical definition of the archive as “the law of what can be said” and “the general system of the formation and transformation of statements.”24 On the “generative” side, dossiers not only confiscated and censored but also produced and preserved rec­ords and memories in the form of denunciations and confessions. Relocating writing from the drawer to the dossier and remediating conversations into denunciations can alter the meanings of the same words, thereby transforming personal technologies of memory into memory as a surveillance technology. In terms of a Mao-­era memorial museum, are the contents of a dossier “lit­ er­a­ture” worthy of selective preservation in our cultural memory, given that 72

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museumification also implies canonization? Chen Sihe excludes confessions produced by writers for the authorities from his category of “invisible writing,” but beyond applying time-­honored intellectual and aesthetic criteria to the task of literary canonization, the inextricable entanglement of aesthetics and politics demands critical examination of the very definition of lit­er­a­ture.25 Shifting the focus from re­sis­tance to complicity, the category of dossier lit­er­a­ ture calls attention to the ways in which the state subjugated the practices of reading and writing to the policing and revolutionizing of hearts and minds. Put differently, dossier lit­er­a­ture was literary insofar as literary composition and criticism ­were not only obstructed by power but ­were also in the ser­vice of power. Nie Gannu’s dossier from the 1950s to the 1970s demonstrates how a poetic circle could turn into an informer circle, a literary interpretation could turn into a criminal investigation, the author could become his own censor, and the censor could become his muse or the reader who “knows the tone” (知音). A careful analy­sis of dossiers unveils the mechanisms of censorship and self-­censorship that s­haped the documentation of Mao-­era memories. Ultimately, the same dormant archives could be reanimated to bear witness against official historiography.

The Dossier as a Technology of Surveillance

The first item of any Chinese dossier is often basic personal data and a brief (auto-)biographical sketch. Nie Gannu’s curriculum vitae includes his studies at Huangpu Military Acad­emy and Moscow Sun Yat-­sen University and his work experience as a journalist and kmt official in the 1920s. ­After the Manchurian Incident in 1931, he moved to Shanghai and joined the League of Leftwing Writers in 1932 and the Communist Party in 1934. Working as an editor and writing essays for newspapers, Nie was a close friend of Lu Xun and Hu Feng 胡風 (1902–1985). A ­ fter the establishment of the P ­ eople’s Republic, he served as the vice editor-­in-­chief of ­People’s Lit­er­a­ture Press. In 1955, together with his wife Zhou Ying 周穎 (1909–1991), he was implicated in the Anti–­Hu Feng Campaign, and in 1957 he was labeled a Rightist and sent to a farm in Northeast China to undergo “thought reform through l­abor” ­until 1962. In 1967, he was arrested and imprisoned as a “counterrevolutionary,” not to be released ­until 1976.26 ­Every line of this brief biography unravels into dozens, even hundreds of pages in Nie’s dossier. Every­one in the P ­ eople’s Republic affiliated with a school, work unit, or the CCP has had one or more dossiers that have held g­ reat sway over his or her past, pre­sent, and ­future. Personal files in China existed as early S ur v eillance F iles

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as the Eastern Zhou (770–221 bc) to ensure the genealogical appropriateness of court officials. A system of criminal rec­ords was established during the Han Dynasty (206 bc–­ad 220). U ­ nder the Communists, a personnel dossier system was instituted for party members in Yan’an in the early 1940s, and by the 1950s, it was extended to include workers and students. Maintained by work units and party branches, dossiers w ­ ere consulted for promotions, welfare allocations, and the se­lection of targets in po­liti­cal campaigns.27 Most worker and student dossiers w ­ ere quite ­simple, consisting of basic personal data, academic transcripts, orga­nizational affiliations, and rec­ords of rewards and punishments.28 By contrast, the dossiers of cadres, party members, and individuals considered po­liti­cally suspect, such as ­those who participated in the old regime, also contained extensive autobiographies, confessions and self-­criticisms, evaluations by leaders, and informer reports on their po­liti­cal attitudes, lifestyle ethics, and day-­to-­day be­hav­ior. The dossier was a means of control and a means of reform; its compilation involved digging up “dirt” from the past in order to purify the ranks of the party and the P ­ eople as well as individual souls. Apart from work unit personnel files (人事檔案), the Public Security organs also created and kept vast numbers of surveillance files on “suspect ele­ments” as well as case files (刑事檔案) for arrested individuals, such as Lin Zhao and Nie Gannu.29 As a writer, Nie’s file included his publications plus letters, diaries, and other unpublished writings confiscated from his home. Interrogation notes, confessions, and “thought summaries,” investigations into his ­family history and social network, court verdicts, and prison warden reports all thickened his dossier, such that Nie quipped that his file “knows more about me than I know about myself.”30 Perhaps this comment rings true for all modern encounters with the archive, “a haunting presence for all autobiography, as it incarnates a potential knowledge that exceeds our own.”31 Yet when the archiving of thought becomes the basis of prison sentences, its omniscience becomes much more ominous, and Nie’s quip illuminates the power hierarchy of knowledge and informational in­equality in the Maoist media ecol­ogy. Accumulated this way, Nie Gannu’s dossier came to consist of a number of “literary” genres—­classical-­style poems and their exegesis, dramatic dialogues (deposition transcripts), interior monologues (confessions), and narrative prose (informer reports)—­composed by multiple authors including Nie himself, the authorities, and the informers. Its intended readership, however, was ­limited to policing and judicial personnel, who might arrest, interrogate, try, and sentence individuals on the basis of the “evidence” they gleaned from the files through a hermeneutics of suspicion. In this way, the Maoist dossier provided testimonies against its subject in a revolutionary court. 74

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What is extraordinary about Nie’s dossier is that it was “discovered” by a former member of the judicial authority who gave it a second reading through a hermeneutics of faith—­not to establish facts or crimes but to affirm the spirit of a poet. In 2009, retired judge Li Yuzhen 李玉臻, writing u ­ nder the pseudonym Yu Zhen, published extensive excerpts from Nie’s file a­ fter careful se­lection, editing, annotation, and commentary. According to Yu Zhen’s preface, his long-standing perusal of l­ egal cases rendered him both nimble and numb, so that even though he had leafed through Nie Gannu’s court file “for several years,” it was only ­after his retirement that he reread it with a dif­fer­ent frame of mind: In the past the file appeared to be nothing more than a dense pile of words, but now, in the spring sunshine, a vivacious figure emerged from the pages. It was as if Mr. Nie Gannu ­were sitting across from me. I could listen to the Master’s eloquent speech, his laughter, or outrage; I could sense his penetrating gaze and animated gestures. Some years ago, I had read Nie Gannu’s poetry and reminiscences and commentaries by his friends, so it seemed as if I had learned quite a bit about him, but such an understanding was general. It was not ­until I had tossed and turned in his case files for years and had listened to his frank, earnest, incisive words that I felt that I had ­really come to know the man, his poetry, and what made him extraordinary.32 Yu Zhen acknowledges his own split identity, first as a judicial authority who saw only prosaic ­legal cases and ­later as a poetry lover whose discerning ear made him the poet’s true “knower of the tone.” Whereas published works by and on Nie Gannu are “without flesh and bones, without character,” his police file tells us a more profound truth about the man.33 The insights provided by the dossier are largely thanks to the extensive reports of Nie’s conversations with friends. Spoken or written, ­those words could hardly have survived the Cultural Revolution outside of the archive, and since Nie himself was unaware of his friends’ breach of trust, the dossier’s omniscience went beyond even the poet’s own self-­knowledge. Unlike the classical Chinese tragedy of the loyal minister who could not find a ruler who knows or listens to him, modern Chinese intellectuals suffered from persecution ­because they ­were listened in on and spied upon, often by their best friends. If the police could become one’s zhiyin, one’s zhiyin could become the police. Yet the most impor­tant revelation in Nie’s file for the reading public in 2009 was not so much the “true portrait of the poet” but rather the moral decrepitude of his luminous friends who had denounced him to the authorities. S ur v eillance F iles

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The poet’s surveillance file contained extensive reports of his private conversations, such as the one dated September 12, 1962: Yesterday I went to see Nie and had a long “­free chat.” In the after­noon I took a ­bottle of wine to Sigeng’s place. When he saw the good wine, he came with me to Nie’s h ­ ouse. I planned to take Nie out, and if he had not been willing to go out, then we would have gone to drink at his h ­ ouse. When we arrived, Nie was at home alone, writing poetry. I extended the invitation and Nie accepted. We arrived at Xiyuan restaurant in the eve­ning and, according to Nie’s wishes, we w ­ ere seated outside. By 8 pm we ordered some food: baked wheat cakes, fried shrimp, pork liver, egg rolls, and bean curd to go with the wine. I did not actively prompt him. ­After half a b­ ottle of wine, Nie was already a bit drunk and started a reactionary conversation. At our side, Xiang Sigeng sang the same tune. They ­were both in a very good mood. ­After ordering two more cold appetizers, Nie said he wanted some hot dishes, so we ordered more, ­until the market began to offer midnight snacks. ­After our midnight snacks, we walked over to the zoo. Nie called a pedicab to take us to his ­house. ­There we talked some more. ­After one eve­ning I got quite a bit [of information]; also I spent quite some money, adding up to over 20 yuan. Let me now write down his words as truthfully as I can remember them.34 With astute economic calculations, the informer could procure his report only through a substantial investment. If good food and wine ­were impor­tant material preconditions for Nie’s “­free speech,” then the transcript of his speech could also be traded by the informer for po­liti­cal capital. The final ten-­page report was a work of involuntary coauthorship by the informer and the one being informed on. When the inebriated man tossed words into the air, the sober man caught them, first in his mind and then on paper, complete with “stage directions” of hand gestures, tone, emphasis, and emotions. According to the report, Nie spoke thus of the persecution of intellectuals during the Anti-­Rightist Campaign: If you want to kill, then kill, but then what? Zhang Bojun 章伯鈞 [China’s No. 1 Rightist] told me from the start: “If it’s good for the country and for the big picture, if you want to borrow my head, I am also willing.” Me too, if they want to borrow my [pointing to his own] head, I’m willing too, but I’m still ­going to talk. [With emphasis, and with a tone of outrage] what have they done now? They have to be responsible. The ­whole nation has to 76

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be responsible. Only we are not responsible [knocking his fin­gers against the ­table].35 Without this friend-­informer as a coauthor of his dossier, Nie Gannu might never have uttered such words, not to mention having his spontaneous verbal outbursts and gestures recorded and transmitted. Similarly, copies of many poems Nie had shared with his friends found their way into his file even though he had burned the original manuscripts. Just as the most complete collection of Lin Zhao’s writings remains in classified court archives, Nie’s police files contain the earliest extant copies of his poems written between 1959 and 1966. Their rediscovery is similar to Vitaly Shentalinsky’s excavation of literary gems by Soviet authors that only survive in the kgb archives.36 In both the Chinese and Soviet contexts, the police file that censored and confiscated heterodox thought ironically became a last repository to safeguard countermemories other­wise subject to destruction. Whereas Yu Zhen speaks of the fortuitous preservation of Nie’s poems, their very presence in his police file bears obscene testimony to the internecine betrayals among Chinese intellectuals. ­After reading “Nie Gannu’s Case File” in 2009, Zhang Yihe wrote: “I know most ­people mentioned in the text—­some even very well—­but Nie’s file made their ­faces hazy and blurry, even strange. . . . ​ Nie Gannu was not sent to jail by Red Guards or through the mischief of rebel factions. It was his friends who had ‘written’ him into jail one stroke at a time.”37 Zhang Yihe was also a victim and perpetrator of the pen’s vio­lence ­under the Maoist archival regime. In her 2004 memoir The Past is Not Like Smoke (往事並不 如煙), Zhang confesses that while imprisoned during the Cultural Revolution, she was given temporary reprieve from the excruciating physical l­abor of picking tea leaves to follow a mentally ill fellow prisoner with a pen and a notebook, writing down ­every word she uttered. The transcript Zhang Yihe produced became evidence of her fellow prisoner’s counterrevolutionary crimes. Zhang recognized her own complicity only when she heard the gunshot of execution.38 To recapitulate an argument in chapter 1, when the written word could become the basis of prison sentences and executions, it was not only “the day the sword was over the mouth” but also the day the pen was the sword. U ­ nder an archival regime of memory, the Maoist crisis of testimony consisted of a perversion of testimony, where the very production of eyewitnesses and earwitness accounts assisted state vio­lence that punished dissent. The Chinese state’s instrumentalization of the written word provides the crudest illustration of Jacques Derrida’s insight that “access to the written sign assures the sacred power of keeping existence operative within the trace and S ur v eillance F iles

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of knowing the general structure of the universe. . . . ​All clergies, exercising po­liti­cal power or not, ­were constituted at the same time as writing and by the disposition of graphic power.”39 “Graphic power” accumulates in the archive, a kind of mnemotechnological invention that, according to Foucault, brings “everyday life into discourse” and deposits “the denunciation, the indictment, the inquiry, the report, the use of informers, the interrogation” in an “enormous documentary mass,” building up “through time as the endlessly growing memory of all the wrongs of the world.”40 ­These files are “real” not in the sense of historical objectivity or trustworthiness—­since they contain fabricated crimes and outrageous accusations—­but rather ­because they “played a part in the dramaturgy of the real” by legitimating vio­lence, incarceration, or exile.41 Much as we might celebrate the serendipitous finding of literary trea­sures and historical insights in the archives, we must never forget the roles they played in ruining real lives. As a surveillance technology, the Maoist dossier system that generated and collected so much data about its citizens had largely relied on the eyes and ears and the writing hands of informers rather than on sound or image recording devices or computerized networks. While making use of what­ever mass media technologies it had at its disposal, the party also relied on the masses as media to enhance its knowledge and control. The ­human constitution of this information network created a network of complicity, casting shadows of deception and betrayal into interpersonal relationships. In this system, even victims of state surveillance such as Nie Gannu w ­ ere not innocent of betraying their friends to the authorities through confessions that turned out to be de facto denunciations. At the same time, a dossier can pre­sent a most intimate portrait of its subject through multiple perspectives and a variety of genres that blend into a strangely hybrid magnum opus. In treating the dossier as lit­er­a­ture, I share the New Historicist approach of discovering the “unanticipated aesthetic dimension in objects without pretensions to the aesthetic.”42 This does not mean to endorse the vio­lence of this surveillance system, but rather to use literary interpretative strategies to probe the ideas and power relations, fantasies, and anx­i­eties of an era through the vast textual archive it has bequeathed. Moreover, literary composition, interpretation, and community could serve as both treacherous tools of and trea­surable sanctuaries from totalitarian power.

The Censor as Muse

We tend to think of po­liti­cal tyranny as the nemesis of literary expression and production, but censorship has a much more complex impact on literary form, 78

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genre, and practice than simply banning, burning, or bowdlerizing books. The archival regime of memories, I argue, can be as generative as it is prohibitive. In chapter 1, we already saw how Lin Zhao’s incarceration failed to silence and instead inspired her to write, with her blood if necessary. Nie Gannu’s literary ­career pre­sents yet another intriguing case for how the censor could serve as a muse. As a May Fourth intellectual, Nie had “promoted the vernacular and opposed classical Chinese.”43 Instead of poetry, he was known for his zawen (雜文), the miscellaneous essay genre that Lu Xun forged into a biting weapon of social and po­liti­cal criticism. During the 1955 Anti–­Hu Feng Campaign, however, Nie had to join the mass graphomania of “thought summaries” and confessions detailing past and pre­sent po­liti­cal views and associations. As Hu Feng’s old friend, Nie was compelled to write detailed reports recalling their interactions, recapitulating their conversations, and ruminating over the subversive valences of their jokes.44 Although Nie Gannu denounced Hu Feng ­under pressure, he also implicitly stood by his old friend in statements such as: “I am more of a Hu Feng ele­ment than any Hu Feng ele­ment.”45 In the relatively liberal po­liti­cal climate of the Hundred Flowers Movement,46 Nie’s wife Zhou Ying made several speeches that, with Nie’s revisions, criticized the practices of a previous campaign, but ­these speeches would soon incriminate the c­ ouple as “Rightists.” Their experiences in the 1950s w ­ ere paradigmatic of the Maoist media ecol­ogy, when ­every “blooming and contending” produced expressions that would ­later be condemned as “poisonous weeds.” In this way, the eloquence produced by an e­ arlier campaign could become the target of the next inquisition or find its way into surveillance files. Mass campaigns generating public expression and archival collection ­shaped not only the Mao-­era media ecol­ogy but also the period’s “memory ecol­ogy,” as memories of both the distant and the recent past ­were dredged up, openly scrutinized, and secretly archived. Among Nie’s punishments as a Rightist was exile to the “­Great Northern Wilderness” (北大荒) in Manchuria to undergo “thought reform through ­labor.”47 A year ­later, in 1958, Mao launched the ­Great Leap Forward to accelerate the nation’s industrial, agricultural, and even cultural production, calling upon every­one to write poetry.48 As Nie Gannu recalls: When the cadre told us to write poems, my intuitive response was to write classical verse. Perhaps ­because the more removed I was from the literary scene, the more I felt as if only old poetry was poetry, with tradition, habit, national form, new wine in old ­bottles and the sort. I was already close to sixty, yet the scene of physical l­abor was new to me, and I was e­ ager to S ur v eillance F iles

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write this down. . . . ​That night, I wrote about ­labor for the first time, a heptasyllabic “ancient-­style” long verse.49 The following day, the cadre ordered Nie to write another thirty-­two poems, thus launching what Nie l­ater calls “lit­er­a­ture produced by following commands” (遵命文學). This humorous label may also describe Mao-­era graphomania at large. With the party as muse, Chinese intellectuals, and increasingly the literate populace at large, ­were to produce propaganda as well as confessions and denunciations for e­ very po­liti­cal movement. Just as applicable to the Chinese context is an insight from Romanian writer Stelian Tănase: “Censorship does not limit itself to interdicting, to cutting some passages, ­etc. It asks for the creation of myths, themes, ­etc., which it proj­ects (like a film on a screen) onto real­ity.”50 Hence Nie began writing poetry in 1958 at the party’s call, with the intention to “celebrate l­ abor” (歌頌勞動) and to demonstrate his thought reform, yet the authorities would ­later see even such eulogistic poetry as “venting” (發洩) his discontent with exile.51 Take, for example, the poem “Weeding” (鋤草): 培苗每恨草偏長， 鋤草時將苗並傷。 六月百花初嫵媚， 漫天小咬太猖狂。 為人自比東方朔， 與雁偕征北大荒。 昨夜深寒地全白， 不知是月是春霜。

When cultivating seedlings one resents the growing weed When hoeing the weed one often hurts the seedlings In June hundreds of flowers just begin to bloom Covering the skies, a myriad midges bite with ferocity I compare myself to the witty courtier Dongfang Shuo Together with the wild geese I travel to Manchuria Last night was ­bitter cold, the earth was all white I do not know if it was the moon or the spring frost.52 The poem found its way into Nie’s dossier via a friend-­informer, who also provided an interpretation of its “subversive” meaning: Nie was banished ­because the “midges” of the Anti-­Rightist Campaign began attacking in June 1957, when the Hundred Flowers Movement had just gotten underway. The poet compares himself to Han-­Dynasty courtier Dongfang Shuo, known 80

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for his satirical witticisms, but is now exiled to the G ­ reat Northern Wilderness with the wild geese. If the party was a muse in the positive sense of ordering ­people to write, it was also a muse in the negative sense of provoking “lyrical fury,” as seen in chapter 1. As first formulated by Sima Qian 司馬遷, “one takes to writing to express one’s anger” (發憤著書), or as Song-­Dynasty poet Ouyang Xiu 歐陽修­ later claimed, “­great lit­er­a­ture is the result of ­great suffering” (窮而後工),53 a phrase often applied by critics of Nie Gannu’s poetry a­ fter the Cultural Revolution. Nie himself, however, was more modest in characterizing such a pro­ cess of negative inspiration. As he said during an interrogation in 1972: “In the past I did not know how to write poems. Bad mood made me learn, and when I felt my freedom was restricted, I expressed my frustration through poetry.”54 From celebrating ­labor to expressing grievances, Nie’s poetic composition was first intended as propaganda for the G ­ reat Leap Forward but then became a medium of personal testimony. Historical circumstances thus gave rise to a new form of poetry, a rare flora or “weed” in the Maoist memory ecol­ogy. Writer Shi Zecun 施蟄存 praises Nie’s classical-­style poems for their humorous c­ uriosity (諧趣), often accompanied by a gloomy and reflective pathos (沈鬱), and hence distinguished from the banter of doggerel (打油詩).55 Poet Wang Xijian 王希堅 links the humor in Nie’s poetry to his ­earlier miscellaneous essays, since both incorporate classical and modern, vernacular and elite language, and humor derives in part from their incongruous juxtaposition.56 As literary scholar Xiaofei Tian observes, “the poet deftly negotiates between the discourse of a traditional cultural elite and life in the ‘brave new world’ of socialism.”57 One frequent strategy is to relate his literal circumstances to classical literary tropes. For instance: 一丘田有幾遺穗， 五合米需千折腰。 

How many ears of grain are left over in a rice paddy? To gather five cups of rice, one must bow a thousand times.58 Whereas the celebrated poet Tao Yuanming 陶淵明 (365–427) refused to “bow like a servant in return for five bushels of grain” (不為五斗米折腰), Nie Gannu’s modification suggests that, first, ­every grain of rice comes from hard toil; second, a real farmer may not be able to afford the proud posturing of a scholar; and third, and most importantly, one could bow a thousand times without losing one’s dignity. S ur v eillance F iles

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Certainly, premodern poets like Tao Yuanming, Wang Wei 王維 (701–761), and Bai Juyi 白居易 (772–846) also wrote “farmstead poetry” (田園詩) that dealt with the rustic world of agrarian ­labor.59 Yet unlike traditional literati who ­either chose idyllic reclusion or observed farming as officials, Nie Gannu’s poems from Manchuria focus on minute details privy only to toilers of the fields. Although imbued with the subjectivity of an elite intellectual, the down-­to-­earth quality of Nie’s poetry also conveys a sense of what physical ­labor actually felt like. And although writing to follow the party’s commands, Nie’s poetry was no formulaic propaganda and departs from the panoramic sceneries of collective l­abor that became a major trope of Mao’s “revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism,” to be discussed in chapter 3. Long ­after the end of the poetry-­writing movement, Nie continued to write classical-­style poetry, even though his muse was no longer his intended reader. Whereas “thought reform through l­abor” helped Nie Gannu develop a new poetic style, the po­liti­cal suppression of intellectuals also generated a new kind of literary community. Ironically, the successive Maoist mass movements inspired former leftist intellectuals such as Lin Zhao and Nie Gannu to seek refuge amidst Chinese cultural traditions that they had condemned as “decadent” and “feudal.” A ­ fter returning from the G ­ reat Northern Wilderness in 1962, Nie Gannu continued to write classical-­style poetry ­until his 1967 arrest, mostly to pre­sent as gifts to friends on vari­ous occasions.60 As Xiaofei Tian points out, classical verse not only was “a way of dealing with and making sense of the radical changes China was undergoing,” but also lent itself to “everyday social occasions,” from festivals and birthdays to partings and funerals and thus enabled “active participation in a socio-­literary community.”61 In the 1960s, such a literary community was possibly a freer and more open forum for discourse than the officially sanctioned media platforms. Many of Nie Gannu’s friends, once May Fourth leftists and even former revolutionaries, ­were labeled Rightists in 1957. Although publicly silenced, their marginal status ironically allowed them to speak more frankly amongst themselves. As Nie saw it: “­Those holding high offices suffer more than us targets of proletarian dictatorship ­because they have ­things to say but dare not. They have to act against their ­will for fear of losing their positions.”62 In contrast, Rightists had ­little to lose and could create discursive spaces apart from the sphere of public authority, in this sense resembling the contemporaneous development of countermemory in the USSR and Eastern and Central Eu­rope. Whereas Soviet intellectuals “challenged the official bureaucratic and po­liti­cal discourse” through “half words, jokes, and doublespeak,”63 Nie and his Rightist friends forged their alternative community around Chinese classical 82

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poetry, with its rich and obscure allusions, as well as around calligraphy and painting, whose appreciation required leisurely cultivation.64 This alternative public sphere, however, was neither explic­itly dissident nor protected from the authorities, who frequently recruited informers from their midst to rec­ord subversive speech and writing for the dossiers. By the early 1960s, the authorities who “eavesdropped” on their conversations ­were, in a sense, covert members of this public sphere. Writing of lit­er­a­ture and the Stasi, Stephen Brockmann argues that many intellectuals joined the Stasi ­because it functioned as a “medium of communication” in “a society which increasingly has no language to deal with a considerable part of its own real­ity. . . . ​ If newspapers like the Communist Party organ Neues Deutschland presented an unrelentingly optimistic picture of new production rec­ords and economic strengths, the Stasi concerned itself with failures and prob­lems.” The Stasi was a kind of “social unconscious,” or even a “secret public sphere” where the most candid dialogues and debates took place through spying and interrogations.65 In a similar vein, since the media platform for f­ ree speech devolved from newspapers and party meetings to living rooms and restaurant gatherings among three or four friends, intellectuals entered into a strange, uni-­directional dialogue with the authorities via the mediation of the informers who recorded the intellectuals’ speech for the police archives. When enough had been said and written, the writer would be brought face to face with the police, a “reader” the writer did not know he had.

Literary Inquisition

Besides the Soviet and Eastern Eu­ro­pean secret police, an alternative reference point for reading Mao-­era surveillance files is the Chinese “literary inquisition” (文字獄), dating back to the Song Dynasty, when poetic interpretation—or literary criticism—­assisted in the arrest and incarceration of writers. The most famous case of literary inquisition was the 1079 Crow Terrace Poetry Trial (烏台 詩案), when the prominent poet and literati-­official Su Shi 蘇軾 (1037–1101) was charged with treason due to his poetry. The resulting dossier contains the original indictments, copies of his allegedly slanderous writings, and depositions in which the poet explicates the meanings of his poems. T ­ here is, as literary scholar Charles Hartman points out, an “obvious affinity of the deposition to traditional Chinese commentary,” since both identify allusions and quotations as well as relate ­these references to con­temporary po­liti­cal events.66 In Nie Gannu’s case, it was his friend-­informers who provided the authorities with his poems and the poetic interpretations that incriminated him. For S ur v eillance F iles

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example, Dai Hao 戴浩, a fellow Rightist and frequent guest of Nie’s hospitality, surrendered a poem Nie had presented to him as a gift, and he accused Nie of “borrowing my circumstances to vent his own indignant reactionary feelings.”67 Similarly, Nie’s friend Xiang Sigeng 向思庚 reproduced Nie’s poems on The Dream of the Red Chamber (紅樓夢) for the police and explicated their obscure personal meanings: “Take the poem about Qingwen, the line ‘ripping off the red bodice’ refers to [Nie’s] expulsion from the party. ‘Mending the peacock-­feathered cape’ refers to his many contributions to the party. It would be unfair to call such poetry ‘reactionary.’ Still, ordinary p ­ eople cannot see the prob­lem with it, but we are his old friends and understand the references.”68 Xiang Sigeng could understand Nie’s poetry only b­ ecause he shared Nie’s plight as an early member of the Communist Party who had ­later been purged from its ranks. Brought before the authorities, however, such empathetic knowledge served to frame his friend as an “­enemy of the p ­ eople.” Xiang died in 1994, shortly ­after receiving a copy of Nie’s complete poems. This led Yu Zhen to speculate w ­ hether he had been “struck by a pang of contrition.”69 Dai Hao’s and Xiang Sigeng’s hermeneutics of Nie Gannu’s poetry show that the context of interpretation m ­ atters more than the substance. Before Nie’s arrest, discerning discontent was a demonstration of empathy, but when encountering the police, the same interpretation turned into betrayal, and appreciation turned into denunciation. The Chinese hermeneutic tradition has long sustained a tension between unraveling a poem’s endless meanings and seeking out the author’s original intention, between Dong Zhongshu’s 董仲舒 (176–104 bc) dictum that “[The Book of] Poetry has no direct interpretation” (詩無達詁) and Mencius’s 孟子 (372–289 bc) belief that a poem’s meaning is governed by the poet’s intention and recoverable by a good reader.70 The censor, however, relentlessly pursues and utterly disrespects authorial intention and therefore proj­ects onto the author the censor’s own paranoia. As if learning from premodern literary inquisitions, the Maoist censor engaged in allegorical reading by politicizing the aesthetic, by detecting parallels between the past and the pre­sent, or by “supplying a definite signified for e­ very poetic image.” 71 Take, for example, the poem “Lulu Form, No. 2” (轆轤體之二) and its interpretation in Nie’s dossier: 疏林映日復棲霞， 紫傘紅旗十萬家。 一夜雲雷屯此地， 滿城風雨滌新華。 居人舊有離人泪，

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九月今開二月花。 不見白衣無酒暖， 山根掃葉且烹茶。

Through sparse woods, the sun shines on Mount Qixia Purple umbrella, red flags, a hundred thousand homes One night, cloud and thunder garrisoned ­here The city’s wind and rain washed out the new China Former inhabitants left ­behind their tears In September bloom February flowers Nowhere in sight is the friend in white robes to bring me wine Sweeping leaves in the vale, let me boil some tea72 For the unnamed interpreter in Nie’s dossier, thunder and rain are code words for the impact of high politics on ordinary ­people, whereas “February flowers in September” refers to a time out of joint, and therefore a veiled criticism of socialism. The ex-­judge Yu Zhen calls this reading a “far-fetched distortion” and instead finds the line a vivid description of autumn fo­liage that innocently alludes to Du Mu’s 杜牧 (803–852) famous line, “The frosted leaves are redder than February flowers” (霜葉紅于二月花). To render the poem po­liti­cally benign in order to acquit Nie Gannu of his “counterrevolutionary” crimes, however, seems to confirm the legitimacy of the accusations. Not only the police and their informers read with a hermeneutics of suspicion. Authors themselves learned to read their own writings like censors, so that authorial intention was always in dialogue with the authorities. For example, when a friend asked him not to destroy “harmless” poems about Chinese classical novels, Nie replied: “What if they ask you to interpret the line: ‘The hero’s face singed with the convict’s golden tattoo; smiling, he lightly enters the White Tiger Hall’ (男兒臉刻黃金印, 一笑身輕白虎堂)? If they look for a prob­lem, they ­will find it.” 73 Knowing that the author had ­little authority over the interpretation of his own writing, on New Year’s Eve of 1965, Nie Gannu de­cided to burn all his poems, yet he also wrote a poem to commemorate the occasion: 自著奇書自始皇， 乾坤袖手視詩亡。 詩亡人豈春秋作， 身賤吟須釜甑妨。  自嚼吾心成嚼蠟， 盡焚年草當焚香。

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鬥牛光焰知何似，  但賞深宵爝火光。 

Writing wondrous books just for oneself, a practice dating back to the First Emperor74 Heaven and earth watch on indifferently as poetry perishes After poetry perishes, would one ­really write the Spring and Autumn Annals?75 A man as lowly as I—­must poetry thwart my daily cooking Chewing my heart ­until it is like chewing wax Burning the year’s manuscripts as incense The light of the Big Dipper and Altair, do you know what it is like? Never mind, let me appreciate the torchlight deep into the night.76 The poet plays the dual role of author and censor, the tyrannical first emperor who burned books and buried scholars alive. Now that poetry has perished, ­there is no need to write history, for the author’s own existence is precarious. On this New Year’s Eve, burning his manuscripts becomes a devotional act like burning incense, whereas his mind’s ruminations are as bland as wax. The light of the Big Dipper suggests a defiant spirit, however ephemeral.77 The final line references Zhuangzi’s 莊子 “­Free Roaming” (逍遙遊): “If, when the sun and moon are shining, you persist in lighting a torch, is that not a misapplication of fire?” While the blinding sun of Mao Zedong Thought eclipsed what­ever illumination his own poetic torch might offer, the poet could still appreciate its light deep into the night. The recurring image of the fire stands at first for the censor’s conflagration and then for the poet’s fighting spirit. Thus, a catastrophe turns into an aesthetic and philosophical experience, while destruction and loss give way to self-­preservation and hope. A poem borne of the burning of poetry, it speaks of lit­er­a­ture’s precarious condition ­under po­liti­cal tyranny, the conditions and (im)possibilities of its production and transmission. When it was no longer safe for an author to publish or even to keep manuscripts in the drawer, the dossier ironically became the last haven for the preservation of cultural memory.

Imprisoned Writing

Nie Gannu was arrested on January 25, 1967, shortly ­after the passage of a new public security law that considered any “attack or slander of the G ­ reat Leader Chairman Mao and his Dearest Comrade-­in-­Arms Lin Biao” to be

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counterrevolutionary. The verdict, issued on May 8, 1974, sentenced Nie to lifelong imprisonment for: stubbornly insisting on a reactionary and hostile stance t­ oward the party and socialism. He often met with other Rightist ele­ments to disseminate reactionary speech and vicious slander against the headquarters of the proletariat. Attacking the party’s vari­ous policies and the socialist system, they attempted in vain to topple the proletarian dictatorship and to restore capitalism. He also wrote many counterrevolutionary poems.78 Although this verdict sounds similar to the one conferred on Lin Zhao, Nie Gannu never meant to become a dissident or martyr, but rather a­ dopted a more acquiescent approach for self-­preservation. Whereas Lin Zhao regarded prison as her front, Nie Gannu considered prison as his retreat. Although taking divergent paths in their negotiations with censorship, both Lin Zhao and Nie Gannu w ­ ere keen to rec­ord and bequeath their experiences and memories to ­later generations. Arresting the author for his “thought crimes,” the police confiscated what­ ever manuscripts Nie Gannu did not manage to destroy, but they did not immediately decipher all of Nie’s poetry. Several de­cades ­later, Yu Zhen discovered some poems Nie had scripted in 1967 in cursive script between the lines of Mao Zedong’s poems during what appeared to be calligraphic practice. One poem, “Tearing Up Some Poetry Drafts” (全撕某詩稿), commemorates the destruction of his own poetic correspondences with Hu Feng for their mutual protection.79 Another hidden poem describes a target of persecution at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution: 慈親岳母死還埋， 家譜續修萬死該。 三載退休都寫稿， 百篇歌頌為貪財。 此真右派枉摘帽， 重扣高冠令掃街。 久在人文出版社， ­ 蒼髯老賊張廣才。 

Your dear mother-­in-­law died—­how dare you bury her! Continuing to compile the ­family genealogy—­you ­ought to die ten thousand times! Retired for three years, you kept writing

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Hundreds of odes to the party—­how greedy you are [for royalties]! They should never have taken away your Rightist cap Put on a dunce cap and sweep the streets! You’ve been around for some time at ­People’s Lit­er­a­ture Press You old scoundrel with a white beard like Zhang Guangcai80 By rendering the strident language of big-­character posters into classical verse, the poem produces absurdist humor. One could also read empathy and self-­mockery in the theatrical accusatory tone ­toward its subject, a Rightist like Nie. The poem is thus not only visually scripted between the lines of Mao’s poetry but also derives its meaning from the gaps in the pastiche of Maoist jargon. Historian Serhy Yekelchyk argues that most of the state reporting and individual writing circulating in the public domain ­under Stalin used the “unifying language” of state socialism. This “unifying language” was, however, time and again frustrated by the heteroglossia of the social and cultural life it was to describe.81 The language of Maoist big-­character posters—­with its mixture of Marxist-­Leninist jargon, street slang, and obscenities as well as its traditional folklore, such as Buddhist demonology—­was arguably “heteroglossic,” but the multiplicity of tongues was melted down into a rude, oppressive, and unitary language of the “proletarian dictatorship” that precluded diversity and difference. Nie Gannu’s poetry, however, appropriated this language only to subvert it through irony, creating a heteroglossic text in the unlikely literary form of classical verse. During a de­cade of incarceration, Nie Gannu’s “literary” production consisted primarily of confessions that assimilated his own circumstances with official discourse. To borrow from literary scholar Cristina Vatulescu’s study of Stalinist and Romanian secret police files, the accused “­were not just written about or, as in Kafka’s Penal Colony, written on; rather they become the authors of their own files.” This required victims to internalize the ideology of the secret police and produce “a ventriloquized confession.” 82 Yet even Nie Gannu’s ventriloquized confessions encompass witty subversion and ironic critique of his interrogators: “I recognize that I am a non-­power-­holding-­ capitalist-­road-­taking-­power-­holder. All my views are wrong and reactionary, and I must ­really reform myself.” 83 Beyond confessions, Nie surreptitiously composed classical-­style poetry in prison and even taught the art to his younger cellmate, Li Shiqiang 李世強, who recalls receiving from Nie a few pieces of paper filled with tiny characters in the winter of 1972: “I am old and do not know if I ­will ever leave prison,” Nie said. “­These are some past and recent poems—­I wrote down ­here every­thing 88

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I could memorize with the hope that my friends beyond t­ hese walls can read them some day. Why ­don’t you read them first?” 84 Deeply moved, Li Shiqiang came up with three strategies to smuggle the poems out of prison should he be released before Nie: to hide them in his cotton jacket, to memorize them, or to copy them into Mao’s Selected Works with a hard pencil and thereafter erase the words, such that the pencil marks would stay but would not be easily detectable.85 ­These tactics succeeded, and Nie’s poems managed to “break” out of prison with Li Shiqiang’s release in 1975.86 One year l­ater, with the end of the Cultural Revolution, Nie also regained his freedom and devoted the remaining de­cade of his life to writing, re-­collecting, and publishing poetry, many of them memorial poems and elegies for friends who had passed away or who had been broken in spirit.

Intellectual Survival and Complicity ­Under Dictatorship

In the Mao era, the archive became the ultimate depository of literary works that could neither circulate in the public sphere nor be kept safe in private hands. The destruction of lit­er­a­ture and the incarceration of writers gave rise to a crisis of cultural memory and to creative ways of transmission. The aforementioned practice of “writing between the lines” of officially sanctioned texts poignantly illustrates intellectual survival in the cracks of the “proletarian dictatorship.” Asking how intellectual life was pos­si­ble ­under communist dictatorship, Romanian writer Andrei Pleșu lists “resignation, sublimation of dissatisfactions, conjunctural cunning, melancholy, and humor” as “the props of our survival,” which would not have been pos­si­ble “if the Communist world had been a world of consistent evil.” 87 In a similar vein, Nie Gannu opens his 1980 essay “Prison Nostalgia” (懷監獄) thus: “Amidst its inhumanity the prison has some ­things that are humane, even very humane.” He elaborates on the “benefits” of prison life, distributed between the three sites of his incarceration: Shanxi’s Jishan prison was a Mecca for learning, since only inmates—­regardless of their educational background—­had the patience to read Marx’s Das Kapital. Linfen prison had the best health care, since imprisoned doctors continued to treat patients in jail and granted generous sick leaves. Fi­nally, the food in the Beijing prison was “not so bad.” Once Nie even overheard a teenage inmate addressing the warden as “­uncle” and asking him to please toast a steamed bun for her.88 Nie’s essay resonates with Romanian writer Nicolae Steinhardt’s introduction to his prison diaries, retrospectively published as The Diary of Happiness: “Naturally the happiness pos­si­ble in prison is dif­fer­ent from pastoral happiness, S ur v eillance F iles

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but it is still a species of happiness, simultaneous and, at times, consubstantial with the tragedy of circumstances.” 89 Moreover, recounting the brilliant analytical and rhetorical skills demonstrated by many prisoners during study sessions on Mao Zedong Thought, Nie might have also agreed with Pleșu that “ ‘The Captive Mind’—to recall Czesław Miłosz’s formula from 1952—is still a mind and not necessarily a stupid one.”90 To speak of happiness and intellectual life in prison, however, is not to trivialize the importance of freedom. Rather, prison life seemed tolerable only in the broader context of material and spiritual deprivations. Some inmates saved up their meager prison income of two yuan per month to support their families, symptomatic of the prevalent poverty in many parts of China.91 As for the loss of freedom, it was not as if high officials or ordinary p­ eople could speak their minds. Like Lin Zhao’s prison diaries, “prison nostalgia” suggests the extent to which the entire country had become a prison. Responding to criticisms of his essay for making prison life sound too good, Nie wrote: As if I should make prison sound scarier. . . . ​I know that ­there are very scary prisons where many ­people ­were tortured or murdered, but I had not gone to such a prison. . . . ​“Life is no life; death is no death / Hills are not hills; rivers not rivers.” ­These are two lines from Wu Meicun’s [吳梅村 (1609–1671)] gift of poetry to his friend who is about to be exiled to Manchuria. Meicun had never been to Manchuria . . . ​but I had been ­there. Even if you cannot call it a paradise on earth, it also did not warrant Meicun’s description.92 As Nie recalled, he and hundreds of fellow Rightists in the ­Great Northern Wilderness worked hard, ate well, and did not bemoan their fate. He self-­ deprecatingly called his optimism his “Ah Q Spirit,” or his sense of spiritual victory.93 By contrast, literati such as the Ming loyalist Wu Meicun, who never suffered exile or incarceration, ­were so frightened by their own pathos-­filled imagination of such places that they lost their backbones.94 Sentimental hyperboles of suffering hardly help to cultivate one’s princi­ples; rather they reinforce the Manichean dichotomy that an intellectual ­under tyranny must always choose between being a courtier or a martyr, between death and disgrace. Turning punishments into opportunities to learn about new worlds, Nie also found a suppler dignity in prison and exile. Still, Nie emphasized that the so-­called Ah Q spirit is a mutation of slavishness and a sign of adaptation to the conditions of dictatorship. ­After all, a major survival mechanism during the Mao era was collaboration with the authorities, sometimes at the expense of ­family and friends. Denouncing a 90

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friend u ­ nder po­liti­cal pressure to demonstrate one’s loyalty to the party was all too common, but how could one come to terms with such “betrayal” ­after it resulted in de­cades of exile or imprisonment, or even death or suicide? Nie discussed such moral dilemmas in his correspondence with his friend Shu Wu 舒蕪 (1922–2009), notoriously known as a “traitorous disciple” of Hu Feng, who submitted to the authorities private letters that constituted the basis for the 1955 Anti–­Hu Feng Campaign. Nie Gannu remained friends with both Hu Feng and Shu Wu from the 1950s to the 1980s, and on Shu Wu’s sixtieth birthday in 1982, Nie composed a poem for him as a gift: 媚骨生成豈我儕， ­ 與時無忤有何哉？ 錯從耶弟方猶大，  何不紂廷咒惡來？  驢背尋驢尋到死， 夢中說夢說成灰。 世人難與談今古，  跳入黃河濯酒杯。 

There are ­those born sycophants—­can they be our fellows? One cannot go against the times—­what is to be done? Wrongly labeled a disciple of Jesus, you are compared to Judas Why did they not curse Elai at the court of the tyrant Zhou?95 Looking for a donkey on a donkey’s back ­until death Speaking of a dream in a dream ­until it turns into ashes With worldly ­people it is hard to speak of the pre­sent and past Can one leap into the muddy Yellow River to wash one’s wine cup? Nie took the fifth and sixth lines verbatim from an ­earlier poem that he had written for Hu Feng in 1966.96 Bestowing the same words again on Shu Wu suggests the shared tragedy of Chinese intellectuals that might transcend personal scores. Nie further clarifies his stance in a letter to Shu Wu: I saw some compare you to Judas and got quite angry. . . . ​Hu Feng was crucified, but then hundreds of thousands w ­ ere crucified in all kinds of ways. Did you anticipate this? I certainly d ­ idn’t, even ­after de­cades as a ccp member. I would never have dreamed of the “ten years of catastrophe.” Yet how strange that ­people hate Judas but not Pilate who sent him to the cross? I feel that the Judas story was in­ven­ted so that p ­ eople could change their target.97

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For Nie Gannu, bickering over personal betrayals only diverted guilt from an oppressive system that extorted denunciations, amplified conflicts, and eroded social trust. ­These words also give us a sense of how Nie himself would have greeted the publication of his dossier. Instead of retrying individuals as innocent or guilty in a retrospective moral court, rereading the dossier could help us understand intellectual complicities—­not so much their ­actual guilt but rather their implication in the larger proj­ect of the Communist Revolution, their hopes, disillusionments, and choices made without the benefit of hindsight. Such was the fluctuating relationship between the individual voice and the revolutionary chorus.

The Digital Afterlife of Maoist Archives

Since the late 1970s, intellectuals who survived the Cultural Revolution have been writing memoirs and forging remembering communities with literary exchanges and print publications. The expansion of the internet in the 2000s, however, ushered in a new media and memory ecol­ogy that awakened dormant and archived memories through digital remediation and viral dissemination beyond small circles of friends and acquaintances. As media theorist Andrew Hoskins has argued, the digital epoch is one of “connective memory” more than “collective memory,” with digital networks enabling the instant retrieval of past traces and spontaneous formation of new memory communities.98 “Potential memory” resides in “per­sis­tent traces . . . ​scattered across proliferating media types,” and ­these constitute “an unpredictable ‘living archive’ through which the unexpected ‘emergence’ of data about the self is always a possibility.”99 The following section examines how a “dormant archive” from the Mao era has been remediated into a sensational “living archive” in the new millennium. Rereading the dossier against the grain, netizens debated the complicity of former informers, the legacy of police archives, as well as uncanny ways the Maoist past still haunts China ­today. Nie Gannu passed away in 1986, but questions of what and who was responsible for his incarceration w ­ ere not raised ­until the 2009 publication of “Nie Gannu’s Case File” and Zhang Yihe’s sensational accusation of Huang Miaozi as the main informer who landed Nie in jail. Born in Canton in 1913, Huang Miaozi began his ­career drawing cartoons in Shanghai in the 1930s, and he ­later joined a group known as the National Salvation Cartoon Propaganda Corps to inspire patriotism and re­sis­tance against the Japa­nese invasion. When serving as editor of the P ­ eople’s Art Press in Beijing in 1957, Huang was labeled a “Rightist” and, together with Nie Gannu, sent to the ­Great Northern Wilderness. Huang 92

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and Nie continued to spend time together with a small circle of friends u ­ ntil Nie’s arrest in 1967. Huang and his wife Yu Feng 郁風 were also imprisoned for seven years for their knowledge about Jiang Qing’s ­career as an actress in Shanghai.100 ­After the Cultural Revolution, Nie and Huang resumed contact and wrote to and about each other in essayistic reminiscences, in which one can find no traces—­neither resentment on Nie’s part nor apology on Huang’s part—to corroborate Zhang Yihe’s indictment. Only Yu Zhen’s postscript to “Nie Gannu’s Case File” poses the question of how Nie’s poems for Huang Miaozi ended up in the file: Nie Gannu sent many gifts of [his] poems to Huang Miaozi, yet for unknown reasons, ­those poems ­were all found in his case files. Hou Jintian 侯井天 [editor of Nie Gannu’s Complete Poems] brought a photocopy of [“Nie Gannu’s Case File”] to Huang Miaozi, who drew circles and dots in praise of the poems, yet he never said a word about the ins and outs of the manuscript.101 In a January 2008 interview with Southern Metropolis Daily, Huang Miaozi spoke of the seventeen poems in Nie’s dossier that had been addressed to him in the 1960s. He claimed that he never received ­those poems ­until forty years ­later in this roundabout manner.102 Zhang Yihe, however, directly attributes the most insidious informer reports anonymized in Yu Zhen’s text to Huang Miaozi and “his likes.” As Zhang’s accusation went viral, a few bloggers defended Huang Miaozi and demanded more definitive evidence before slandering “a generation of intellectuals.”103 As the only one to have perused Nie’s entire dossier, Yu Zhen refused to substantiate or contradict the accusations, claiming that putting informers on trial was far from his original intention: “The entire intellectual world was suffering, and any such act was more coerced than voluntary.”104 For the former judge, publishing ­these files was not at all meant to remind the public of history’s “wind and fire,” its “right and wrong, debts and grievances, ­battles and insults.” In his opinion, “we should have forgotten all this long ago.” It was only meaningful to reread ­these files to discern the “integrity of our best intellectuals” and the “spirit of poetry.”105 When the controversy first broke out in March 2009, Huang Miaozi was hospitalized, and his f­ amily tried their best to keep the scandal at bay. By May, a friend brought Huang a copy of Zhang Yihe’s article, but he chose not to respond in public, an attitude many took as tacit admission.106 It was only a­ fter Huang’s death in 2012 that his c­ hildren revealed some of his private remarks: “Never thought I would encounter this in my old age.” “I have neither energy, time, nor the mood to deal with this—­I have better ­things to do with my time S ur v eillance F iles

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like calligraphy and painting.”107 His ­children also revealed a poetic fragment scribbled on his sickbed: 唧唧復唧唧，老來醫院息。  不聞機杼聲，唯聞刀劍戟。 ­ 問你何所思，問你何所憶。 昨夜見黑帖，妖風捲臭腥。  罪書十二卷，卷卷有爺名。  阿爺是臥底，阿爺害人精。 ­ 阿爺陷好人，投之入死檻。 ­

Tsiek and again tsiek, an old man lies in the hospital Can’t hear the shut­tle’s sound, only the sound of knives and swords What are you thinking? What do you remember? Last night I saw a black written talisman; a foul wind whipped up a stench The indictment had 12 scrolls—on all of them was ­Father’s name Father is a planted agent, ­father is an evil spirit Father framed a good man, and dumped him into the gallows108 Neither admitting nor denying the allegations, this intriguing poetic fragment pre­sents a profound yet ambivalent reflection on memory and remediation of the Maoist past. It borrows from the opening lines of the sixth-­century “Ballad of Mulan” (木蘭詩): the young w ­ oman Mulan sits at her loom worried ­because her old f­ather has just been drafted. Taking on the perspective of the old ­father, Huang Miaozi’s poem can be taken to mean that his informer activities, if any, w ­ ere a form of conscription through state mobilization. Instead of a draft poster, however, he saw a written charm of black magic, and instead of enlistment scrolls, he saw scrolls of crimes like ­those held in the court of hell. In addition to invoking folk religion, the demonological vocabulary hark­­ ens back to the Cultural Revolution’s exorcism of class enemies. The written talisman and indictment scrolls—­clearly referring to the internet blogposts accusing Huang Miaozi of being a planted agent—­are reminiscent of the erstwhile big-­character posters scribbled with vile accusations. The mood is dark, yet the tone is sardonic, with ambiguous suggestions of both trauma and transcendence. It is unclear if past guilt has returned to haunt him or if he is protesting his innocence, but the parallel he establishes between the internet blogposts and the big-­character posters suggests that the very attempt to remember and account for the Mao-­era witch hunts repeats and resorts to the same denunciatory rhe­toric and methods. In his century-­long life, Huang Miaozi was entangled in two nets: the ­information network of 94

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authoritarian surveillance and the digital sensationalism of the World Wide Web, and both trapped him inside a web of complicity from which ­there was no escape. Beyond asking ­whether Huang Miaozi was Nie’s primary informer, wider debates arose in the Chinese blogosphere about the legacy of police archives in ­today’s China, about the commonplace practice of denunciations, and about the complicity of intellectuals ­under the Maoist dictatorship. Journalist Dai Qing 戴晴 asked what gave Yu Zhen the privilege to go through Nie’s police file, copy out excerpts, and name or conceal informers at his whim, whereas the public had no means of checking his sources. She called for the opening of the archives: “Dissipate the fog over history; let posterity learn the truth, no ­matter how cruel the truth might be.”109 Beyond public access to the archives, Zhang Yihe even called for “holding a nationwide exhibition” to “open the eyes of the Chinese ­people, especially the eyes of the youth.”110 But many intellectuals objected to opening up the archival “Pandora’s box” and instead advocated for forgiveness and even forgetting. Exclaiming that “this scar cannot be peeled,” po­liti­cal scientist Zhang Ming 張鳴 speculated that if intellectuals who once denounced o­ thers still managed to live to this day, their “humanity prob­ably has been resuscitated” and ­there was no need to add public shame to their private guilt.111 Similarly, Beijing Youth Daily commentator Zhang Tianwei 張天蔚 believed that one mea­sure of a po­liti­cal system lies in “­whether or not it puts too many ordinary ­people through severe moral tests.”112 Most radically, law professor Yu Fei 俞飞 called not for the declassification but rather the destruction of such personal files. Sighing over the breakup of former East German families and friendships ­after learning about betrayals through reading their own Stasi files, Yu Fei considered it unjust for the moral and psychological burdens of the dictatorship to fall on to the informers rather than on to the police and the judicial authorities.113 Since the break from the socialist past has been less radical in China than in postcommunist Eastern Eu­rope, the ­legal and po­liti­cal questions raised by the files occur purely on a hy­po­thet­i­cal level. As historian Susanne WeigelinSchwiedrzik argues, the 1981 Resolution on Party History constructed “universal complicity” as well as “universal victimhood,” with the aim of “pacify[ing] the tension between dif­fer­ent factions, the perpetrators and victims, the winners and losers, of the Cultural Revolution.”114 In the absence of institutions like “truth and reconciliation commissions,” formerly prominent Red Guard and rebel faction leaders, or con­temporary cultural celebrities who once participated in the Maoist campaigns, might be “tried” in the moral court of public opinion, often with ­little evidence to substantiate the accusations.115 S ur v eillance F iles

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Since archives mediate historical memories, closed archives result in hazy impressions of the past that rely on retrospective fictional repre­sen­ta­ tions or contestable personal remembrances. Without access to the “voluminous accounts collected by the party apparat over the de­cades,” as Geremie Barmé argues, one can hardly write an intellectual history of the ­People’s Republic, especially with “the constant distortion of details and memories by . . . ​ arrant accounts of vital individuals, comments, incidents and ideas that ­were so germane to their lives.”116 Nevertheless, in such a memory and media ecol­ ogy, even an accidental leak of archival materials can trigger a flood of questions that breaks the dam over memories. In this sense, “Nie Gannu’s Case File” casts light not only on the enormous documentary mass hidden in the shadows but also on broader practices of mutual surveillance and denunciations that reverberate down to the pre­sent day.117 This could explain why the 2006 German film about Stasi surveillance, The Lives of ­Others (Das Leben der anderen, dir. Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck), had such widespread resonance in China.118 Given that 2.5 ­percent of the former East German population between the ages of eigh­teen and sixty had served as informers for the secret police,119 Jens Gieseke proposes that “the retrospective significance of the informers lies not in their position in the regime or in the punishable severity of their acts . . . ​but in their social proximity.”120 A similar breach of social trust resulted from the rampant public or secret denunciations of families, friends, colleagues, or neighbors during Maoist campaigns. As Nie Gannu pointed out during his lifetime, however, the infamy of Judas distracts attention from the po­liti­cal and judicial authorities who turned thought and speech into crimes. In this case, debates over Huang Miaozi’s personal integrity can also obscure investigations into the historical moral universe that prompted his alleged actions. The revelations should deconstruct rather than reinforce the Manichean dichotomy that divides ­people into “angels” or “rascals.” Czech writer Vaclav Havel claims that ­under communism, the line between the ruler and the ruled “runs de facto through each person, for every­one in his or her own way is both a victim and a supporter of the system.”121 ­Whether motivated by peer pressure, revolutionary fervor, or careerist ambitions, the key issue is not the denouncer’s personal vice or virtue but rather the exaggerated power of the denunciation. On another comparative note, Michel Foucault has written about the tyranny of denunciations in seventeenth-­and eighteenth-­century France, about a “confinement-­lettre de cachet system” in which anyone could write to the King to report the misconduct of an acquaintance. The police would then investigate the case, gather testimonies, and determine ­whether “this debauch96

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ery or that drunkenness, or this vio­lence and that libertinage, ­really deserved an internment.”122 An abuse of absolutism? Perhaps; yet not in the sense that the monarch purely and simply abused his own power, but in the sense that every­one could make use of the enormity of absolute power for themselves, to their own ends and against ­others: it was a kind of placing of mechanisms of sovereignty, a given possibility, at the disposal of whoever [was] clever enough to tap them, to divert its effects to their profits. . . . ​Every­one, if they knew how to play the game, [could] become a terrible and lawless monarch for another. . . . ​In the nets of power, along fairly complex cir­cuits, came to be caught the disputes between neighbors, the quarrels between parents and ­children, the domestic misunderstandings, the excesses of wine and sex, the public bickerings and many secret passions.123 Such a system of denunciations magnifies the stakes of everyday actions and statements, so that “the trivial ceases to belong to silence, to passing rumor, or to fleeting avowal,” but rather is said, written, transcribed, and filed. It was not that ordinary ­people had no agency, but that they had too much power to denounce ­those around them, just as they ­were vulnerable to accusations by ­others.124 Similarly, starting with the p ­ eople’s tribunals of the early 1950s, the Chinese masses ­were encouraged to help the police ferret out landlords, rich peasants, counterrevolutionaries, “bad ele­ments,” and Rightists by providing clues and details about their guilt. Once accused, virtually no one would be acquitted, as ­there was no due pro­cess in such state-­sponsored vigilante justice.125 The structure of “guilty ­because accused,” writer Margaret Atwood claims, “has applied in many more episodes in h ­ uman history” and “tends to kick in during the ‘Terror and Virtue’ phase of revolutions,” including “the French Revolution, Stalin’s purges in the USSR, the Red Guard period in China, the reign of the Generals in Argentina and the early days of the Ira­nian Revolution,” all “in the name of ushering in a better world.”126 In Mao’s China, “guilty ­because accused” as well as “Terror and Virtue” ­were in place through the designation and degradation of “counterrevolutionaries” during the early years of the P ­ eople’s Republic. As Lin Zhao argues in her prison writings, the purge of so-­called “enemies of the ­people” gave the Maoist regime the appearance of purity, sanctity, and legitimacy: “Only by reducing o­ thers to sinners could [the Communists] call themselves saints.”127 In the Cultural Revolution, “Terror and Virtue” further manifested themselves in the widespread rhetorical practice of “escalation to princi­ples of small errors” (上綱上線),128 so that—­once pitted against words like socialism, communism, revolution, and Chairman S ur v eillance F iles

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Mao—­the most trivial offenses could be construed into egregious sacrileges. This, plus the imposition of guilt by association and inheritance, criminalized Chinese by the tens of millions—­both by accusing ­people of made-up crimes and by drawing p ­ eople into complicity with state vio­lence.129 T ­ hose accused ­were also forced to engage in traumatic exercises of self-­denunciation, which continue to hinder critical reflections of the period to this day. The remediation of the dossier in the age of the internet can very well replicate the culture and logic of the Maoist denunciations. Instead of a digital cult around a rediscovered heroine like Lin Zhao, ­there might emerge a digital mob pointing fin­gers at a cultural celebrity newly exposed as a former “spy.” Geremie Barmé comments on dark stories “lurking in the vaults of the Chinese security organs,” which now and then leak into the “­human flesh search engine” of cyberspace. He invokes the Eu­ro­pean Union’s rulings to protect privacy and “the right to be forgotten,” but also warns against the “memory hole” of state censorship and digital viral mutations.130 Instead of taking the stark and extreme mea­sure of ­either opening or burning the archives, we might instead collect and curate the fractured rec­ords that are in the open—­and that can no longer do any harm—­into exhibits in a memorial museum, which w ­ ill help us recognize the permeability of authoritarian power as well as how, with all its imperfections, hope, humor, and friendship could still find a place.

Conclusion: Surveillance and Memory

How should we curate archival documents, especially individual dossiers, in a memorial museum of the Mao era? Unlike fictional repre­sen­ta­tions, dossiers are the traces and ruins of real ­human lives. Even if they contain lies and outrageous accusations, ­these files once exercised real power over individuals by sentencing them to incarceration, banishment, and sometimes death. Thus, an exhibit of a dossier shows us not only facts and details about specific individuals but also the disciplinary powers that produced the files as well as their ­human impact. In contrast to both the Maoist “red classics” and the post-­Mao “scar lit­er­a­ture,” dossiers feature not so much narratives of revolutionary salvation, heroic martyrdom, or traumatic victimhood; rather, they provide more nuanced stories of complicity, accommodation, and survival u ­ nder socialism: tangled skeins of confessions and denunciations that reveal widespread complicity with authoritarian power as well as a network of eyes, ears, and writing hands so essential to the party’s surveillance and control of the populace. Inclusion of such archival fragments turns the Mao-­era memorial museum not 98

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into a shrine to heroes and martyrs but into a forum for critical reflection about mass participation in revolutionary vio­lence. The Maoist dossier, as argued in this chapter, was both a technology of surveillance and a technology of memory, inhibiting private record-­keeping practices while also confiscating, preserving, and producing candid rec­ords that would become resources for ­future memory. As a palimpsestic metatext, “Nie Gannu’s Case File” reveals the mechanisms of Maoist surveillance and archival production. The dossier was not only a stack of papers hidden somewhere in the vaults of government buildings but also a logic of censorship that loomed large on the author’s horizon of consciousness, prompting him to destroy his own poetry or other writings. The dossier system censored memories not only by seizing personal documents but also by generating paranoia about leaving an incriminating rec­ord. At the same time, ­every Maoist campaign promoted record-­keeping and memory-­production by thickening dossiers with a graphomania of confessions and denunciations. Driven by the party’s pursuit of omniscience over its citizens so as to reform them into socialist subjects, the dossier constituted a low-­tech but highly effective personal data collection and surveillance technology that defined the Maoist information ecosystem. At once censor and muse, prison and ­temple, the dossier system played a central, yet hitherto neglected, role in the memory ecol­ogy of the Mao era—­repressing and advancing memory production as well as incarcerating and safekeeping memories. In short, memory production in the Mao era took place ­under and through surveillance—an argument to be extended in chapters 3 and 4, which turn our attention from textual to visual archives. Studying not only the content and form of camera images but also their production, circulation, and reception, the next two chapters w ­ ill highlight the ethics and politics, aesthetics and mechanics, theories and practices of image-­making through staged harvest images, the absence of famine photos, and controversial cinematic portrayals of China by Western filmmakers. Similar to the police files discussed in chapters 1 and 2, the photo­graphs and films discussed in chapters 3 and 4 take on in the new millennium digital afterlives to reenliven public memory of the Maoist past.

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3 UTOPIAN PHOTO­GRAPHS

Exhibit A

On August 15, 1958, the ­People’s Daily featured on its front page a photo­graph of four c­ hildren standing on the top of a rice paddy (figure 3.1). The subject was a new agricultural “Sputnik” launched in Macheng County of Hubei province, and the caption read: “So dense are the rice stalks in this high-­yield experimental field, c­ hildren can stand on them like a sofa.”1 Reprinted in a myriad of other contexts, this photo­graph soon achieved iconic status and became a model of emulation for photog­raphers and artists (figure 3.2), journalists and poets, and above all for cadres in the p ­ eople’s communes throughout China. They learned that to create such a fantastic image, one must transplant the seedlings from twenty other rice paddies, and deep plant and smother the field with fertilizer.2 ­Whether the c­ hildren actually stood on top of a t­ able hidden beneath the rice stalks is irrelevant. The staging of such photo­graphs forced the communes to surrender their subsistence grain to the state as surplus, thus directly contributing to the ensuing famine. In this sense, images of bounty not only elided from their frames the scarcity at large but caused famine through their very production. Since the 1980s, this photo­graph has been remediated in history textbooks, documentary films, and the internet as an absurd icon of the ­Great Leap Forward, an example of how photo­graphs can lie and how utopian images can kill.3

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Figure 3.1. Yu Chengjian, “Rejoicing on an Early Rice Sputnik,” ­People’s Daily, August 15, 1958.

Exhibit B

The Bloomsbury edition of Frank Dikötter’s 2010 book Mao’s ­Great Famine features on its cover a photo­graph of a skinny boy in rags with a begging bowl (figure 3.3). Shortly ­after the book’s appearance, readers pointed out that the photo, taken by Life magazine photographer George Silk, was first published in 1946 to portray the famine in Hunan province at the time. As po­liti­cal scientist Adam Jones wrote in his blog: “The very extensive airbrushing, replacement/ grafting of background, colorization and so on of the original image is curiously reminiscent of communist practice ­under Mao and Stalin.”4 In published interviews, Dikötter often stated that “no photos of the famine are known to exist,”5 yet media publicity for Mao’s ­Great Famine still resorted to Western photojournalism prior to 1949,6 demonstrating the per­sis­tent need for photography to impress history upon the public’s memory. In response, Chinese neo-­Maoists pointed to the misappropriation of the 1946 Life photo­graph as “evidence” to discredit the book’s “sensational figures and stories.” 7 U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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Figure 3.2. Huang Yongyu, “Greeting the ­Great Harvest,” ­People’s Daily, October 4, 1958.

This 1946 photo­graph’s afterlife, however, is linked to the ­Great Leap famine. Chosen for the ­Family of Man Exhibition at the moma in 1955, Silk’s 1946 photo­graph traveled with the exhibition around the world. When it appeared at the American National Pavilion in Moscow in 1959, the Soviet hosts demanded that the image be removed since they saw it not as a universal symbol of world hunger but rather as an inflammatory Cold War assault and an example of anti-­Communist propaganda. This story of censorship, accompanied by reprints of the photo­graph, circulated widely in the American press in 1959 alongside speculations on food shortages and a pos­si­ble famine in China.8 In this sense, the photo­graph came to evoke the G ­ reat Leap famine outside of China.

Introduction

Since camera images are significant exhibits in memorial museums worldwide,9 what photo­graphs do we have to bear witness to the ­Great Leap Forward and famine (1958–1962), an epoch characterized by utopian images and dystopian realities? What are we to make of the disjunction between the abundance of harvest photos, such as Exhibit A, and the absence of famine photos, as demonstrated in Exhibit B? Was it b­ ecause the party propaganda apparatus had a mono­poly over cameras, and so, as Dikötter puts it, the very absence of photos 102

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Figure 3.3. Cover of Frank Dikötter’s Mao’s ­Great Famine (image courtesy of Bloomsbury Publishing).

proves “the efficiency of Maoist terror”?10 Or was it ­because, as Susan Sontag famously suggests, Maoist China developed a unique and naïve photographic culture isolated from the rest of the world?11 Continuing to examine the production of facts and the documentation of real­ity in the Mao era as bequests of memory for l­ater generations, let us turn our attention from the written rec­ords analyzed in chapters 1 and 2 to documentary photography and film in chapters 3 and 4. Cultural historian Peter Burke argues that images are an impor­tant form of historical evidence ­because “they rec­ord acts of eyewitnessing” and b­ ecause they “bear witness to what is not put into words.”12 In par­tic­u­lar, camera images appear to provide immediate access, visual evidence, and an unblinking witness to vanished pasts. Reproduced and remediated in print, audiovisual, and online media, historical photo­graphs serve as mnemonic shorthand to refer to past events. As media U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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scholar Barbie Zelizer claims, photography’s role in the modern collective memory goes “beyond the mere authentication” and implies the “transmission to ­future generations.”13 If camera images are so impor­tant for historical memory, then the G ­ reat Leap Forward poses a crisis of photographic testimony for the curator of a memorial museum: What images might bear witness to the famine? To what, if anything, can propaganda images testify? Fi­nally, as suggested by Sontag’s remarks, does China have an alternative history of photographic truth that is radically dif­fer­ent from its Western counterpart? Drawing on the magazines Mass Photography (大眾攝影) and News Photography (新聞攝影), this chapter studies photographic images, discourses, and practices from the late 1950s to the early 1960s as well as their afterlives in the post-­Mao media ecol­ogy. Borrowing Deborah Poole’s concept of “visual economy,” I treat camera images not only as illustrations and information carriers but also holistically consider their production, circulation, and reception as well as their role in the Maoist po­liti­cal economy.14 I ­will explore aesthetic, economic, ideological, and technological explanations for the production of what we now may regard as “fake” or “staged” photo­graphs as well as for the absence of famine photography. Instead of the totalitarian suppression of the photographic apparatus, both professional photojournalism and amateur photography proliferated during the G ­ reat Leap, as China began producing its own cameras and promoting photographic “testimonies” (見證) to miracles—­ visual counter­parts to the verbal testimonies to revolutionary faith discussed in chapters 1 and 2. Yet far from being naïve members of what Sontag calls the “first stage of camera culture,”15 Chinese photog­raphers held sophisticated discussions of photography’s medium specificity; its truth-­value and persuasive power; and its historical, po­liti­cal, and social uses and abuses. Their debates about the ethics of posing and intervention, proper and improper subjects, and aesthetic styles unwittingly coincided with, and sometimes prefigured, Western cultural critics, from Theodor Adorno to Pierre Bourdieu, from Guy Debord to Susan Sontag. Such debates also show the inadequacy of e­ ither applying existing theories or considering Mao-­era photography as the naïve “other” to Western conventions. Instead, the photographic legacy from China in the 1950s shows photography’s malleability and power to mediate utopian visions into dystopian realities. Apart from contributing to photography’s global history, the study of camera witnessing during the G ­ reat Leap years intervenes in existing cultural and po­liti­cal histories of the PRC. Scholars have examined Mao-­era paintings, posters, woodcuts, architecture, theatre, dance, exhibitions, and above all, fiction and film in terms of their ideological narratives, formal aesthetics, and 104

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production pro­cesses.16 Venturing into the untrodden field of photography, I turn critical scrutiny from the creative production of “fictions” to the documentation of “facts,” from understanding “socialist realism” and “revolutionary romanticisms” as aesthetic styles to utopian worldviews with real consequences. Such an investigation into the visualization of exuberant promises also intervenes in existing po­liti­cal histories of the ­Great Leap Forward and famine, which ­until now have focused on victim numbers, disastrous policies, and violent implementations.17 Although many “model communes” did in fact sustain a reign of terror for months or even years,18 we cannot afford to ignore the utopian visions that belonged not only to Mao but that ­were propagated in the mass media and internalized by many of the famine’s victims. This chapter argues that photography in the ­Great Leap Forward served as eyewitness testimonies to revolutionary miracles that not only failed to witness and rec­ord but also contributed to man-­made catastrophes. In the 1950s, photojournalism and even everyday photography served less to document “real­ity as it is” and increasingly to visualize “real­ity as it should be” in order to mobilize the masses. Both inspiring and coercive in spreading and “realizing” utopian visions, photographic images and practices s­haped the way p ­ eople looked at the past, pre­sent, and ­future, and at themselves and at the world. The ideals and taboos of photographic repre­sen­ta­tion also modeled action and be­hav­ior, such that the ­people used not only painting and poetry, photography and film, but also the fields and their laboring bodies as media to express, realize, and constitute utopian images. In short, mass media also turned the masses into media. Not merely “fake” or “lies,” the period’s photo­graphs ­were visualizations of projected hopes that so brutally trampled tens of millions of lives. This chapter’s main body begins with a Maoist historiography of pre-1949 Chinese photography and argues that the imperialist gaze of Western photog­ raphers left a major legacy of shame that patriotic Chinese photog­raphers sought to rectify. I go on to chronicle nuanced theoretical debates about photographic truth and photographic practices among photojournalists, ­studio photog­raphers, and amateur photog­raphers, showing how the expansion of photography at the grass roots coincided with a narrowing of Maoist visual conventions. The next sections discuss how photography helped to mobilize ­labor and promote production, and how the doctrine of revolutionary romanticism promoted the staging and manipulation of photo­graphs, with a special focus on photomontage. Fi­nally, I turn from officially sanctioned images to a handful of alternative photo­graphs taken during the ­Great Leap years and their con­temporary remediation, especially with reference to the famine, U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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to consider the possibilities and limits of photography to memorialize the ­human costs of the Chinese Revolution.

Legacies of the Imperialist Gaze: Photography, Patriotism, and Shame

In its April 1959 issue, Mass Photography published a series of retrospective articles on Chinese photography prior to the Communist Revolution, ­under such titles as “Photography of the May Fourth Period” and “Lu Xun on Photography.” Looking back on forty years of photographic history in China, veteran photographer Zheng Jingkang 鄭景康 critiques the legacy of “imperialist” and “bourgeois” photography: Foreign merchants and missionaries took many photo­graphs of Chinese ­people, and their subjects ­were mostly opium-­smoking, foot-­binding, and men’s pigtails. This was how imperialists used photography to humiliate the Chinese ­people and deceive the world, showing the Chinese as ignorant, savage, and backward to further exploit and enslave us. ­These photos repulsed me as they did many other patriots.19 Zheng’s critique shows a keen awareness—­even abhorrence—of photography’s role as a commodity in a global visual economy marked by an asymmetry of power relations between the foreign photog­raphers and their Chinese subjects. He was no less scathing about early Chinese photog­raphers, calling their work “negative” or “passive” (消極). While condemning formalist experiments as “art-­for-­art’s sake” that served the leisurely classes, he also denounced “bourgeois realists” for their “pursuit of titillation” and “Schadenfreude” in focusing on “deformed, degenerate subjects such as prostitution.” According to Zheng, it was not ­until the War of Re­sis­tance against Japan that photography in Yan’an and other base areas began documenting heroic ­battles and the self-­reliant economy. The Communist photographer’s task was to “unite the ­people and combat the ­enemy.”20 ­Here, Zheng’s comments echo the critical insights of cultural studies scholar Laikwan Pang into the difference between the Maoist cultural economy and the liberal cap­i­tal­ist model in terms of the former’s emphasis on integration instead of differentiation. Rather than carriers of cultural capital that elevated one class over another in Pierre Bourdieu’s model, Pang argues, Maoist cultural production and consumption ­were supposed to “connect individuals.”21 We might further compare Zheng’s 1959 historiography with more recent English-­language scholarly accounts of photography and China. Wu Hung describes the introduction of photojournalism to China during the 106

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S­ econd Opium War (1856–1860) and the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, when Eu­ro­ pean photog­raphers took pictures of the ruins of the war from the vantage point of the conqueror to celebrate the triumph of their imperialist ventures.22 Aside from war photography that supported imperialist expansion, however, James Gao shows that early twentieth c­ entury photo­graphs of social suffering in China by Western journalists elicited generous contributions for relief work, invited government censorship, and provided a “mirror” for overseas Chinese students such as Lu Xun—­a mirror that shamed and stirred them to transform the nation.23 Starting with the Second Sino-­Japanese War in 1937, as art historian Claire Roberts argues, photography became enlisted in “national salvation,” in war and propaganda. As a paradigmatic case, photographer Sha Fei 沙飛 (1912–1950) joined the Eighth Route Army in 1937 and took many iconic photos of Japa­nese atrocities and Chinese re­sis­tance.24 Although Sha Fei died in 1950, his colleagues Shi Shaohua 石少華 (1918–1998) and Wu Yinxian 吳印咸 (1900–1994) would go on to become president of the China Photog­raphers Association and vice principal of the Beijing Film Acad­emy, respectively. Chinese retrospectives in 1959 and more recent Western scholarly accounts both emphasize the links of photography to the patriotic movements since the 1930s. The medium’s capacity to elicit national shame prompted the government to censor photos that made China “look bad,” led progressive intellectuals to condemn Chinese tradition, and encouraged soldiers to fight against foreign invaders. The shame elicited by Western portrayals of Chinese social suffering sometimes led to a deep resentment of the Western imperialist gaze that came with the moral high ground of international humanitarian aid. In other words, it was not compassion but dignity that Chinese intellectuals wanted for their ­people. Moreover, they shared a sense of mission to transform, rather than merely to document, the pictured suffering. For t­ hese early Chinese viewers and producers of documentary photos, ­there was no inherent conflict between testimony and propaganda. Indeed, photography had to be partisan in order to be meaningful, and rather than a mechanical, objective medium, it was viewed as an expression of the photographer’s subjectivity. Whereas before 1949 Communist photojournalists used to “expose the crimes of the ­enemy and critique the darkness of society,” their main subjects ­after 1949 became “economic recovery, construction, and socialist reform.” As a watershed moment, the Communist Revolution demanded a w ­ holesale transformation of photography—­content and form, theory and practice. With patriotic aspirations playing a greater role than po­liti­cal suppression, photography was now tasked with transforming China’s images of shame into images of U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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pride, photographic “exposures” of societal darkness into photographic “projections” of the nation’s bright f­ uture. Indeed, photography became part of a broader visual culture testifying to what Xiaobing Tang calls the “deep-­seated origins and aspirations of the Communist-­led revolution.”25 ­These transformations took place gradually over the course of the 1950s, starting with theoretical debates among professional photog­raphers and l­ ater expanding to broader grassroots practices.

Chinese Debates on Photographic Truth

What does it mean for photography to “bear witness,” and how has understanding of photographic testimony evolved over time vis-­à-­vis photographic propaganda? Excavating vari­ous appellations for photography in China from the nineteenth to the early twentieth ­century, art historian Yi Gu traces the emergence of a new understanding of visual truth (真相), which “became a crucial critical concept in the discussion of all visual production.”26 Wu Hung finds that Chinese news photos of Japa­nese atrocities in the 1930s and 1940s ­were often labeled “witness and proof ” (jianzheng 見證)—of war crimes, indicating “the photo­graph’s ­legal power (zheng, meaning evidence) and the presence of a testifying gaze (jian, meaning eyewitness).”27 Formally, Wu Hung also discerns a new subjectivity b­ ehind the camera: whereas colonialist and imperialist photojournalism emphasized truth value, it was produced for a foreign audience, and hence the subjects w ­ ere at a distance, but “nationalist war photography” gave stimuli to the re­sis­tance by “erasing the distance between its subject and viewership.”28 Borrowing militant meta­phors from the war years, photojournalism in the early PRC was considered a “thought weapon with documentary characteristics” and a “shrapnel against conservatives” that made the “moderate faction” crumble, so as to forcefully promote the agricultural ­Great Leap.29 If we do away with notions of neutrality or objectivity, could photo­graphs simply be staged or faked? Referring to the campaign to “Emulate Comrade Lei Feng” beginning in 1960, Simon Leys writes sarcastically of “photographic documents, such as ‘Lei Feng helping an old w ­ oman to cross the street,’ ‘Lei Feng secretly [sic] ­doing his comrades’ washing,’ ‘Lei Feng giving his lunch to a comrade who forgot his lunch box,’ and so forth.” None of ­these raised questions about “the providential presence of a photographer during the vari­ous incidents in the life of that h ­ umble, hitherto unknown soldier.”30 Citing Leys, Sontag concludes: “In China, what makes an image true is that it is good for ­people to see it.”31 108

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Although photography in the Mao era was unabashedly defined as propaganda, its truth value was far from irrelevant. Even the photo­graphs of Lei Feng criticized above ­were reenactments of events that photojournalists had fact-­checked rather than in­ven­ted.32 As early as 1944, Mao Zedong had recommended Aleksandr Korneichuk’s 1942 play “The Front” for publication in Liberation Daily (解放日報), singling out for criticism the character “Krikun” or “Kelikong” (客里空) (literally “polite, inside empty”), a reporter who made up news out of the blue. In 1947, the ­People’s Liberation Army newspaper Jinsui Daily (晉綏日報) launched an “anti-­Kelikong” self-­criticism campaign.33 In a similar campaign at the Xin­hua News Agency in 1953, readers denounced many fake photo­graphs and launched a discussion on truth and posing (擺 佈, mise-­en-­scène, or arranging t­hings before the camera) that lasted u ­ ntil late 1959 in the pages of the Xin­hua News Agency magazine News Photography. Among criticized examples and practices w ­ ere having a nurse pose as a patient in a newly opened hospital, asking a shepherd to bring his flock into the photo of a new railway bridge, making a ­woman embroider an already embroidered slipper, and photographing a Soviet car and then changing the brand name to a new domestic automobile before the latter had been assembled. Photog­ raphers asked their subjects to reenact scenes, and captions often misrepresented images. Sometimes, the subjects themselves dressed up in their best clothes, struck poses, or asked the photojournalist to “direct” them.34 “News photo­graphs must be truthful,” Shi Shaohua, president of the China Photog­raphers Association, gave his authoritative word in 1956. “We must oppose all fabrication and manipulation.” Yet he also cautioned against “naturalism” (自然主義), by which he meant the mechanistic and random capture of phenomena.35 In photographing crowds of ­children, for example, Shi Shaohua suggested making the scene more orderly, for other­wise the chaos would not reflect the “essential characteristics of Communist ­children who are disciplined, polite, and civil.”36 Photojournalists further distinguished between photos of “news events” and photos of “social phenomena,” with posing permissible for the latter.37 Thus Wang Yibo’s 王一波 celebrated 1956 photo “Crossing the Street” (過馬路)—­showing a policeman and two teachers shepherding a class of kindergarteners through traffic—­remained “true” to the ­people’s everyday encounters, even though the photographer had set up the ­whole scene. Such a photo was considered analogous to a work of Socialist Realist fiction.38 A more controversial photo was that of Liu Jiemei 劉介梅 (1919–1997), a former-­beggar-­turned-­local-­cadre who in 1957 objected to rural cooperatives. To “educate” him and the rest of the country, the party or­ga­nized an exhibition U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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and propaganda campaign comparing his life before and a­ fter Liberation, featuring a photo of Liu Jiemei dressed up in a beggar’s tattered clothing with a dog-­beating stick, acting as his former self.39 “Of course,” according to the photo’s defenders, “it would be better to have photos of Liu Jiemei from the old society, but beggars in the old society did not have their pictures taken.” The posed photo­graph thus filled a repre­sen­ta­tional gap, served a clear educational purpose, and was true to Liu’s biography.40 Yu Chengjian’s 于澄建 photo­graph of ­children on the rice paddy (figure 3.1) was also cited as a positive example of necessary and credible staging (in the sense of asking ­children to pose rather than fabricating the thickness of the crops). It was so memorable that Foreign Minister Chen Yi 陳毅 questioned its absence from the Second National Photography Exhibition in 1958.41 Although ostensibly opposed to staging, national leaders ­were often “set up” by photog­raphers. Knowing that Chairman Mao was to meet with a group of model youths in May 1957, the photojournalist Hong Ke 洪克 told one young ­woman to light a cigarette for Mao upon his signal. Another photographer knew that Mao liked maps and passed by a certain room e­ very day during the 1961 Lushan conference, so he hung a map in this room and with his camera “caught” Mao looking at it. No one ever disputed such methods, but when a photographer asked Premier Zhou Enlai to reenact submission of his ballot ­after the fact at the 1954 National ­People’s Congress, he refused: “How can a news photo­graph be faked?” He also objected to the airbrushing of his translator from an official photo.42 Aside from criticizing photographic manipulation, some voices also called for photographic exposure of the “shortcomings and ­mistakes among the ­people.” During the Hundred Flowers Movement in 1957, photojournalist Yuan Ling 袁苓 wrote: “If we report only good news and omit all worries, then we ­will break away from the needs of the masses and bring about inconceivably dreadful consequences.” Yuan Ling criticized editors who refused to publish photos of p ­ eople who wore tattered clothing or w ­ ere considered other­ wise unphotogenic. The long-­term consequence of such editorial prejudice, he argued, was to abet the disjunction of image and real­ity, thereby presenting a false picture of prosperity.43 Throughout the 1950s, Chinese photojournalists sought to strike a careful balance between “looking good” and credibility, derived from the belief that a news photo­graph would not be staged or tampered with. A photo­graph’s testimonial qualities as a most reliable eyewitness rec­ord was thus considered to complement, rather than to contradict, its propagandistic function. From the Anti-­Rightist Campaign to the G ­ reat Leap Forward, however, photojournal110

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ists, studio photog­raphers, and even amateur photog­raphers would all undergo conversion ­toward a utopian worldview and would use their cameras to capture not so much real­ity as it was but real­ity as it should have been. Indeed, camera images would even serve as visual testimonies of revolutionary faith that bore “witness” to socialist miracles.

Reforming Photojournalists, 1957–1958

The debates over visual truth and best practices converged t­ oward a more homogeneous set of photojournalistic conventions and practices with the Anti-­Rightist Campaign in 1957. As I argue in chapters 1 and 2, the Anti-­Rightist Campaign and its sequels rippled through the Maoist media ecol­ogy, closing down public channels for expressing dissent and exposing dark realities. Documentation of truth was thus banished into private realms of the conversation, the diary, the letter, and in rare instances the samizdat, all of which could be confiscated and placed in the police archive. While writing practices remained pos­si­ble in private and even in prison, camera technologies w ­ ere largely in the hands of the state, so the Anti-­Rightist Campaign served to eliminate any form of critical documentary photography. The Anti-­Rightist Campaign in photography started off by attacking individual photog­raphers on ideological grounds. Xin­hua Agency photographer Wei Nanchang 魏南昌, author of three influential photography textbooks, was denounced as a Rightist for compositing an image of a small donkey strenuously pulling an old, unwieldy watermill with that of an ancient pagoda and an apricot branch with remnant blossoms. His critics contrasted this composite image with one he had taken before 1949 of two lofty h ­ orses plowing a spacious field, with apricot blossoms in full bloom. Such a juxtaposition allegedly depicted life “­under feudal landlords” to be more prosperous than ­under communism.44 Another “Rightist,” Dai Gezhi, was denounced for his “malicious attack on New China’s transportation system,” b­ ecause he photographed the muddy tracks left by a truck on a dirt road. According to his critics, a photojournalist’s position was reflected not only through his pictures of parades or conferences but can also be readily detected from the way he photographed “­every flower and grass, ­every ditch and path.”45 Such criticism served to sharpen and fine-­tune the photographer’s sensitivity to visual symbolism as a potential statement on the socialist state. In addition to reading images to detect the photographer’s ideological positioning, critics also cited photos of harvests and happy villa­gers as vis­i­ble “evidence” to “refute” any skepticism about the collectivization of farming.46 U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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Failure to praise such utopian photography could turn into an offense. For example, China Youth Daily photographer Jia Huamin 賈化民 wrote a dismissive review of “The G ­ reat Leap Photography Exhibition,” claiming that none of its 155 pictures “unites ideas with aesthetics.” In response, his colleagues published a joint denunciation of Jia’s “cap­i­tal­ist class background”—he used to own a photo studio.47 They also recalled his contempt for a famous photo­graph of a peasant girl with her “new dowry—­a pair of dung-­collection baskets,” thereby “betraying his aversion to ­labor and the laboring masses.”48 Jia Huamin’s published self-­criticism admitted his main guilt as “aestheticism” (唯美主義) that stemmed from his class origins, his lack of participation in manual ­labor, and the “bad influence of bourgeois publications and imperialist films.”49 The Anti-­Rightist Campaign not only targeted individuals but also served as a “thought disinfectant” (思想消毒) for the entire army of photog­raphers. Vehement denunciations from 1957 and 1958 betrayed profound anx­i­eties among photojournalists about their own, mostly nonproletarian, class backgrounds. At times, their arguments echoed, even anticipated, Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno’s analy­sis of the culture industry, Guy Debord’s theory of the spectacle, and Pierre Bourdieu’s class-­based distinctions in taste.50 “We are not believers of Kant’s notion of ‘disinterested art,’ ” one article in News Photography proclaimed, “but rather Marxists who believe that aesthetics is rooted in class differences.”51 Calling photography a “weapon” of class strug­g le that “­either serves the proletariats or the bourgeoisie,” other articles dismissed notions of objectivity and neutrality and critiqued “bourgeois photography” for failing to portray the proletariat in heroic ways, for concealing its propagandistic nature, and for distracting the masses with vulgar spectacles that ultimately sustain the status quo. They criticized (foreign) cap­i­tal­ist photography “for showing fake prosperity in advertisements,” leading the masses “away from real­ity and putting their ­future in the imagination.”52 Ironically, all Chinese critiques of cap­i­tal­ist photography in the 1950s can be retroactively applied to visual culture throughout the Mao era, with the difference that Chinese poster images focused on utopian images of production, whereas Western advertisement images focused on utopian images of consumption. Indeed, Susan Buck-­Morss incisively argues for a parallel between communist and cap­i­tal­ist dreamworlds: “Both shared intimately the optimistic vision of a mass society beyond material scarcity, and the collective, social goal, through massive industrial construction, of transforming the natu­ ral world.”53 Yet she also considers the visual articulations of both dreamworlds to be shams, whereby “Soviet propaganda production was as divorced from real production as cap­i­tal­ist advertising was (and is) from the use value of the 112

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product.” She concludes that “both allowed the dreaming masses to express themselves without giving them their due.”54 In 1958, many photog­raphers volunteered to spend weeks or even months working in the countryside to cultivate feelings for the laboring masses, which technically should have provided them with more occasions to bear witness to the realities at the grass roots. Such sent-­down photog­raphers learned that “hoes and cameras are both weapons” and that peasants w ­ ere most interested in images of l­ abor and production, hence “formulaic” or “boring” photos w ­ ere a bourgeois worry. They learned that “peasants consider content before form”; they wanted to see first if the ­faces ­were clear, what the ­people ­were ­doing, and what they wore. For agricultural photos, peasants wanted to see exactly what plough was being used and what ropes harnessed the c­ attle. They preferred full shots without fragmentation and tidy images with bright colors. Participation in agricultural l­ abor also realigned photojournalists with the masses, so that a photographer learned to hope for rain rather than rejoice over the good lighting of sunny weather.55 The observations of ­these sent-­down photog­raphers coincide to some extent with Pierre Bourdieu’s findings in 1960s France that dif­fer­ent cultural attitudes ­toward photography depended on one’s class; whereas the working classes considered photo­graphs mainly in terms of their referents and functions, the m ­ iddle and upper classes paid more attention to form and to aesthetic judgments.56 ­Later, in Photography: A ­Middle-Brow Art, Bourdieu further argues that a class-­determined habitus helps explain dif­fer­ ent photographic tastes, practices, as well as the “field of the photographable” among dif­fer­ent social groups.57 More than making so­cio­log­i­cal observations, Chinese photog­raphers had to “learn from the masses.” If ­going to a factory, photog­raphers ­were supposed to become acquainted with the production pro­cess, the workers’ “thoughts and feelings,” and the factory’s history and place in the national economy. If ­going to the rural areas, they w ­ ere supposed to plan with the local party committee and then go among the villa­gers to “observe” and “experience” their lives.58 Meanwhile, as professional photojournalists trained more grassroots amateur photog­raphers,59 the rules and conventions governing the official images of photojournalism increasingly came to apply to everyday photography.

Reforming Everyday Photography

Founded at the height of the ­Great Leap in the summer of 1958, the journal Mass Photography published monthly issues ­until the mid-1960s. With the U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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stated goal to help “the ­people’s photographic enterprise blossom and bear fruit everywhere,” the preamble by Shi Shaohua calls on all Chinese photog­raphers to bear witness to the G ­ reat Leap Forward, to forgo formalist pretensions, and go among the masses. Shi highlights “the army of studio photog­raphers” (照相 業的隊伍) ­because “their work and the photo­graphs they display outside their shops have a significant impact on the masses.”60 By 1958, t­ here ­were over ten thousand photo studios with over forty thousand photog­raphers serving two hundred million customers ­every year.61 In spring 1958, the first nationwide conference of studio photog­raphers emphasized ser­vice to the “laboring ­people” (勞動人民) and condemned shop displays of w ­ omen “bedecked with jewels,” posing coquettishly with “pomaded hair and powdered face.” ­These reportedly had a “bad influence” on adolescent girls, who ransacked their grand­mothers’ wardrobes for “bizarre clothing” to wear for photos, whereas workers and peasants ­were too intimidated to enter photo studios. Representatives agreed that they should display more photos of the proletariat, but some found that workers and peasants w ­ ere too stiff and thus unphotogenic. O ­ thers retorted that if pictorials, newspapers, and films could get beautiful shots of workers and peasants, why c­ ouldn’t studio photog­raphers? They concluded that the working ­people ­were “healthy, down-­ to-­earth, and graceful”; it was the photog­raphers who imposed the bourgeois standards of “beauty” on their proletarian customers and forced them into unnatural poses. Therefore, the photog­raphers ­were to leave their shops and go to the countryside and factories to serve the working ­people and socialist construction.62 An accompanying caricature contrasts the “past” and the “pre­sent” of studio photog­raphers: the “past” features a photographer in his studio taking pictures of an urbanite wearing a Sun Yat-­sen suit and leather shoes, leaning against a flowerpot on a stand, and against a fake backdrop of a lake and willows. The “pre­sent” shows the same photographer outdoors taking pictures of two peasants in work clothes posing with their sickles before a real lake and willows (figure 3.4). To drive the message home, the second issue of Mass Photography published renowned cinematographer Wu Yinxian’s systematic critique of the “bourgeois perspective on photography,” calling on photog­raphers first to “liberate” themselves from the “still subjects” of their photo studios and to capture “live” and “moving” subjects in society. Wu Yinxian wrote that the working classes might indeed feel constrained and look unnatural when placed against a “bourgeois backdrop,” say, of gardens, rocks, and automobiles. Such images supposedly seduced p ­ eople ­toward a leisurely and comfortable lifestyle, “disjointed from real­ity and contrary to the ambitions of the working class” (figure 3.5).63 114

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Figure 3.4. “The Past and Pre­sent of Studio Photog­raphers,” Mass Photography, July 1958.

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Figure 3.5. “Say, how come you went to a cap­i­tal­ist’s ­house to have your photo taken?”—­“No, I took it at XX photo studio,” Mass Photography, August 1958.

Photography had to be “realistic,” on the one hand, and carry a normative mission to promote certain values and be­hav­iors, on the other. In addition to top-­down prescriptions, Mass Photography also published articles from their readers. Two university students denounced a certain photo studio for displaying an image of a girl’s braids taken from b­ ehind. What the photographer sought to express, they argued, was not the girl’s character but rather the “artistic” outline of her braids: “What positive meaning can such a photo possibly have for the laboring masses?”64 Whereas photo studios ­were all collectivized by 1956, aesthetics for its own sake and private souvenir photo­graphs came ­under attack. Instead, the display win­dows of photo 116

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studios ­were entrusted with the much grander task of promoting socialist construction. As the ­Great Leap Forward transformed everyday photographic practices and politicized even private images, individuals found excuses for personal photo­graphs only when they ­were aligned with state ideology. In the myriad snapshots with Tian­anmen as the backdrop, as Yomi Braester argues, subjects “use the landmark for their personal life stories, while at the same time identifying with the collective.”65 Studying everyday photography from the 1970s, Nicole Huang suggests that the blank backdrop in most f­ amily portraits suggests a wish to “keep po­liti­cal symbolism of the time as far away as pos­si­ble from personalized images, made for private consumption and ­future recollection.”66 Thus, by the end of the Cultural Revolution, ­there was a renewed personalization and privatization of a medium that had been hijacked for many years by state propaganda.

The ­Great Leap in Amateur Photography

Not only ­were photojournalists and studio photog­raphers asked to focus their lenses on the proletariat class, some workers and peasants also gained access to cameras during the G ­ reat Leap due to advances in domestic camera production. Before 1956, t­ here was no Chinese photography industry to speak of, and ­until 1958, most factories w ­ ere still experimenting with new models rather than manufacturing cameras. The ­Great Leap, however, ushered in domestic camera brands such as the “Shanghai” (上海), the “­Great Leap” (躍進), and the “Happiness” (幸福) (figure 3.6). Such domestic brands ­were priced around 30 yuan, about one-­tenth that of imported cameras, albeit still a half month’s wages for an average factory worker.67 A ­middle school student and amateur photographer in rural Yunnan celebrated the availability of cameras in his county seat in a letter to Mass Photography, which also reported that the new industrial city of Baoji saw an increase from a handful of cameras in 1949 to more than two hundred a de­cade ­later.68 Along with domestic camera production, amateur photography emerged with photography clubs and classes at local “cultural palaces,” universities, factories, and even some p ­ eople’s communes. Seeking to expand the army of photojournalists, a one-­month photography course was held in early 1959 for more than two hundred county-­level reporters. Similar training sessions ­were held for workers and peasants, students and teachers—­all handpicked by the cadres in their respective factories, schools, or work units.69 In an article entitled “Even Peasants Can Learn Photography,” Liang Chang 梁昌, from a U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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Figure 3.6. “The ­Great Leap in Our National Photography Industry,” Mass Photography, September 1959.

­ eople’s commune in Guangdong province, writes of saving up to buy a foldp ing camera and learning to take, develop, enlarge, and retouch photos.70 Such instances gave credence to the claim that photography was no longer “the toy of the elite” but rather “an indispensable part of socialist construction and mass culture.” 71 Although the ­Great Leap Forward marked the beginning of a domestic photography industry, cameras and film would remain unaffordable luxuries for most grassroots Chinese families for at least two de­cades. In this sense, the Maoist visual economy remained one of scarcity and austerity. Although private individuals could save up and buy cameras and film, photographic technology largely belonged to state institutions and served official purposes. Apart from camera owner­ship, economic austerity had implications for photographic practice. Even among photojournalists, the need to economize on film made some degree of mise-­en-­scène a necessity. As to be discussed in chapter 4, the sheer scarcity of film stock made it impossible for Chinese newsreel documentary filmmakers to adopt the same kind of high shooting ratio used by their Western counter­parts. When Sontag wrote of the ceremonial way Chinese took camera images, she attributed it mainly to culture and habit, as economic austerity and material shortage may not have even crossed her mind. For amateur photog­raphers who did not want to waste film, Mass Photography magazine served as a virtual classroom. The first third of ­every issue was devoted to theoretical discussions and ideological prescriptions; the m ­ iddle third commented on photo submissions by readers; and the last third taught technical know-­how and the art of thrift and bricolage, from using expired film to setting up darkrooms in rural areas without electricity or tap w ­ ater. Sometimes the how-to articles also focused on purely stylistic and technical ­matters, such as photographic silhouettes, but most suggested popu­lar photo118

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graphic subjects that suited the mass campaign of the moment, for example, how to use a high ­angle to photo­graph “the masses sending the cadres off to the countryside,” and how to be sure to capture the lava flowing from the backyard furnaces. “Coming from the masses,” ­these new amateur photog­raphers ­were presumably familiar with the work, life, and tastes of the masses, which should have helped them shoot more informed, thoughtful, and innovative photos.72 The potential heteroglossia of grassroots participation was tempered, however, by the growing rigidity of visual conventions. Mass Photography held three photo contests from 1958 to 1959 and devoted many pages to the winners, who shared tips and received the judges’ praises and critiques of their entries. Most winning photos had agricultural themes and emulated photos published in leading pictorials. As for photos that failed to win despite correct subject ­matters, the judges explained that their themes w ­ ere not clear or prominent: the photographer had no plan, took a random perspective, and snapped a picture without waiting for the right moment.73 Such photos ­were guilty of “naturalism,” defined as “blind documentary photography that neglects the inner meaning of phenomena.” Lacking typicality and without “princi­ple, choice, and arrangement,” naturalism casts aside the primary theme and focuses on secondary and irrelevant details, leading to a “negative attitude t­ oward real­ ity” that fails to move the audience.74 At the other extreme of “naturalism,” some photos ­were criticized for their “formalism” (形式主義) and “disjunction from real­ity” (脫離現實). A negative example was “Seashore” (海涯), a graphically abstract image showing a lone fishing boat offshore (figure 3.7). “This photo is not old,” the commentary begins, “but it was taken by a young amateur photographer.” A ­ fter praising its crispness and composition, the commentator critiques its “dissatisfactory intellectual content”: “The serene environment, the empty fishing net, the sluggish individual laborer, and a single-­oar boat—­all ­these contrast with the fishing industry during the ­Great Leap Forward. . . . ​[This photo] only heeds form and ‘beauty,’ thereby neglecting its subject.” 75 Instead of lyrical landscapes, photog­raphers ­were admonished to focus on “more significant themes,” such as irrigation proj­ects, ­people’s communes, and “new p ­ eople and new phenomena.” 76 Rather than what was already “ripe,” photog­raphers ­were to turn to what was “growing” and “emerging from the horizon,” so as to show not only “life t­ oday but also a more brilliant tomorrow.” 77 Beginners learned to capture the “aura” (神態) and to make model workers look good by manipulating the a­ ngle, lighting, and focus, while taking the time to become familiar with their line of work. Their subjects w ­ ere not to U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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Figure 3.7. Shao Jiaye, “Seashore,” Mass Photography, November 1958.

smile too much while working but instead “concentrate on the machine with shining eyes.” 78 Following such prescriptions, most amateur photos published in Mass Photography featured villa­gers, workers, and soldiers engaging in agricultural and industrial ­labor. ­Human figures, such as ­children hugging ­giant vegetables, helped to set off crops, machinery, and architecture. Except for national leaders, all photographed subjects w ­ ere labeled as representatives of social types, such as “members of the ­people’s commune.” 79 The only emotions portrayed ­were joy, enthusiasm, and intent concentration, with rage allowable if directed at “imperialists,” and desolation allowable in Hong Kong or some other cap­i­tal­ist territory. Having weeded out naturalism and formalism among professional and amateur photog­raphers, the expansion of photography in 1950s China spread the correct repre­sen­ta­tional mode and worldview to the grass roots. Socialist 120

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realism, as Sheila Fitzpatrick argues, was not only a literary theory or artistic style but a way of looking at the world, according to which “a dry, half-­dug ditch signified a f­uture canal full of loaded barges.” 80 Similarly, the photographic legacies of the Mao era are not so much transparent win­dows into the past as glimpses into the utopian visions that mobilized the masses.

Photographic Mobilization through Icons and Models

Apart from representing agricultural and industrial ­labor, photography was also supposed to promote production in practice. If a cap­i­tal­ist visual economy was to stimulate consumption through seductive advertisements, a Chinese socialist visual economy asked images of leaders and models to motivate production. With reference to the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Susan Buck-­Morss argues that “the Herculean task of the socialist collective was to rebuild the world—­ change the course of rivers, electrify the country, transform peasants into proletarians, and create ­whole new cities.” 81 And yet, “the real­ity ­behind this production-­fantasy was state coercion: forced l­ abor built the White Sea Canal, glorified in Rodchenko’s 1933 photo­graphs (and tens of thousands died); forced ­labor collectivized Soviet agriculture, heroized in Vertov’s 1931 film Three Songs of Lenin (and millions perished).” 82 Whereas Buck-­Morss considers ­these Stalin-­era camera images to be deceptive “phantasmagoria” that concealed the “real­ity” of catastrophe, I argue that photography in the Chinese ­Great Leap Forward not only “covered up” real­ity but also contributed to the wreckage. In May 1958, Mao Zedong and other national leaders paid a visit to the Ming Tombs Reservoir, a flagship hydraulic proj­ect during the ­Great Leap. Using hardly any machinery, the ­labor for digging this ­giant reservoir came from the ­People’s Liberation Army and thousands of volunteers, including students, cadres, and even foreign diplomats. When Mao visited, he too dug for half an hour ­under the limelight of myriad cameras, the photos of which “appeared on the front page of ­every newspaper, galvanizing the nation” 83 (figure 3.8, left). During the Cultural Revolution, this iconic photo­graph was retouched so that the man to Mao’s right, Beijing mayor Peng Zhen 彭真, had dis­appeared (figure 3.8, right).84 As Roderick MacFarquhar observes, published photos gave clues to the power dynamics and po­liti­cal undercurrents of the leadership. Viewers scrutinized the hierarchical ordering and sizes of photo­ graphs, noted who was photographed with whom, and, above all, who was included and who was excluded. MacFarquhar argues that the examination of photo­graphs can be part of “Kremlinology,” the “decoding of the ‘esoteric communications’ or [A]esopian language by which propaganda authorities U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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Figure 3.8. “Chairman Mao Taking Part in Volunteer ­Labor at the Construction Site of the Ming Tombs ­Water Reservoir, May 1958.” The image on the left was published in News Photography, July 1958. The image on the right, with the Beijing Party Secretary Peng Zhen airbrushed out, was published in Mao Tse-­tung: A Se­lection of Photo­graphs (Peking: Foreign Languages Press, 1978). The juxtaposition of ­these photo­graphs comes from artist Zhang Dali, A Second History, 2006.

attempt to convey to Party members the realities of power and the direction of policy.” 85 In this sense, Peng Zhen’s disappearance from the photo was not only an attempt by the censors to whitewash history but also a message about his downfall in the Cultural Revolution. Such “disappearing acts” occurred not only with still photography but also with documentary film; for example, Mao’s wife Jiang Qing instructed the Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio in January 1967 to cut out all images of Liu Shaoqi and other denounced leaders, for including them was already “beautifying them.” 86 Meanwhile, the photographic and cinematic images of Mao turned into quasi-­religious icons to be worshiped by the masses. While iconic images of Mao with a shovel inspired the laboring masses to work harder, the goal of photography was also to promote enthusiasm for ­labor by conferring honor upon “models” and “heroes.” If “bad ­people” ­were to “dis­appear” from the photos, then to be photographed was to be exalted above the ordinary. According to a report in Mass Photography, in August 1958, villa­ gers on Qingshui farm in Liaoning province w ­ ere digging a g­ iant reservoir, but the sweltering heat challenged their target of digging eight cubic meters per 122

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Figure 3.9. Wu Min, “Heroes Compete to Have Their Photos Taken with the Red Flag,” Mass Photography, December 1958.

person per day. At this juncture, several marines sent to this farm used their cameras to take “red flag” photos of any individual or team that managed to dig ten cubic meters per person per day for seven continuous days. This initiative worked won­ders: “Shoveling tens of thousands of cubic meters of soil, / carts moving thousands of mountains. / A man is not a man till he reaches 10 cubic meters. / Tens of thousands of heroes are photographed” 87 (figure 3.9). In the ­Great Leap’s system of competitive contests, a “red flag” denoted revolutionary zeal and honor, whereas a “white flag” denoted backwardness and disgrace. Anthropologist Stephan Feuchtwang argues that responsibility for the famine in most places was a “competitive manifestation of revolutionary ardor” to which “the death of millions was a m ­ atter of indifference” and in which “the shame for lack of enthusiasm was enough for ­people to give, not just to risk, their lives without any threat of force or coercion.” 88 As a villa­ger in northern Henan province recalled: “­Those who did not plant densely w ­ ere forced to wear on their backs a piece of paper with a black turtle drawn on it” as a sign of humiliation. If the honor of the “red flag” could make ­people work harder or cheat by moving crops from field to field, then the fear of getting U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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a “white flag” was enough to invoke self-­sacrifice and revoke common sense among many local cadres and ­those whom they mobilized.89

Eyewitness Testimonies to Miracles

In addition to honoring model workers, photography also “authenticated” utopian visions and served as “eyewitness testimonies” to revolutionary miracles that convinced skeptics of new agricultural and engineering techniques.90 “One eyewitness is better than a hundred hearsays,” an article claimed, for when villa­gers saw photo­graphs of astonishing yields of rice and wheat, a sow giving birth to thirty-­nine baby pigs, and a gourd weighing more than fifteen kilos, “their superstitions ­were eradicated and their confidence grew,” committing to ever-­more daring plans for high-­yield experimental plots.91 Camera images took on even greater authority as projected moving images. For example, a mobile film projection unit from Gansu reported the response of a commune member ­after a screening: “Earning only 20 cents a day, I used to think, how can we build socialism in ­these poor mountains and deep forests? Now that I’ve watched Mountain Agricultural Cooperative Prospective Blueprint (山區農業遠 景規劃) and ­Great Leap Forward in the Countryside (農村大躍進), my eyes have grown bright, and I ­will work all my life to turn ­these mountains into a paradise.”92 According to another projectionist report, a­ fter watching lantern slides of Canal Prospective Blueprint (運河遠景規劃), laborers at an irrigation proj­ect agreed that “three years of a ­bitter ­battle ­will provide happiness to ten thousand generations.” 93 Thus camera images helped turn audiences into eyewitnesses who performed inspired and inspiring testimonies to mobilize o­ thers to work ­toward utopian goals. Dubbed “rustic film” (土電影), lanternslide projection was one area where still photography met the moving image.94 Hubei villa­gers came up with the following clapper ballad: “Rustic film is tip top / clear on news and policies / giving technical guidance too / a g­ reat way to share experiences / at once propaganda and entertainment / agitating commune members to work hard!”95 Often part of a mobile film projection team’s repertoire, lanternslide projections ­were considered to have certain advantages over film in terms of their technical ease, localized content, and live per­for­mance. Cheap and easy to produce, lanternslides could be projected in areas without electricity by using gas lamps and not bulky generators. Like cinema, ­people watched the slideshows as a concentrated collective in the darkness, but it could take a much slower speed than film and be subject to repetition on audience demand. Most beloved ­were photographic slides that reflected “real local ­people, places, and 124

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events,” so many communes w ­ ere urged to invest in photographic technology to enable villa­gers to see their own pictures projected on the screen.96 Of course, publications from the ­Great Leap had a penchant for exaggeration, so we must take reports on the efficacy of camera images for ­labor mobilization with a grain of salt, yet they should not be dismissed ­because such lies had true consequences and legitimized government extraction of what l­ittle food the villa­gers actually had. At a meeting of local cadres, for instance, a projection team screened the feature film Five Heroes on Langya Mountain (狼牙 山五壯士, 1958), showing that “­today’s liberation is sanctified by the blood of the revolutionary martyrs, so we cannot only think about short-­term gain and ignore long-­term benefits.” ­After the screening, the cadres pledged to turn over some thirteen thousand kilograms of hidden grain storage to the state,97 which likely meant additional starvation for the villa­gers, thus revealing, once again, how images could kill. As film and lanternslide projections ­were coordinated with po­liti­cal rallies, audiences acted like members of a religious congregation who performed their conviction and conversion on the spot, regardless of the authenticity of their feelings. For example, one commune projection team combined the screening of newsreels about the country’s industrial and agricultural ­Great Leap with a “martial arts contest” (比武), whereby young commune members went onstage with the projectionists’ microphone and pledged to finish the harvest at rec­ord speed.98 Neither transparent reflections of real­ity nor illusions detached from real­ity, camera images projected models that transformed real­ity: utopian visions that left ­behind ­actual ruins.

Revolutionary Romanticism and Photomontage

From September 1958 to March 1959, Mass Photography featured an ongoing discussion of “revolutionary romanticism” in photography. Displacing the imported concept of “socialist realism,” the tenet of “revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism” was accredited to Mao Zedong and explicated by the writer Guo Moruo 郭沫若 in early 1958 with reference to Mao’s poetry.99 How does this new theory apply to photography? Popu­lar science writer Tao Shilong 陶世龍 writes that “unlike poetry, fiction, and drama,” photography is both a “science” and an “art,” yet he reconciles the contradiction by observing that “our life ­today is already filled with a revolutionary romantic spirit.”100 ­Others agreed that they lived in “what Marx prophesied as ‘the era of one day equaling twenty years,’ ” whereby “yesterday’s fantasy became ­today’s real­ity, and t­oday’s real­ity brought fantasy for tomorrow.”101 In an age of miracles, photography’s visual truth did not contradict its expression of utopian fantasy. U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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Figure 3.10. Liu Entai, “Morning of the First Automobile Factory,” Chinese Photography, February 1958.

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Figure 3.11. Zhong Guangkui, “Competition,” Mass Photography, October 1958, back cover.

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Photos that exemplified the conjunction between “revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism” included “Morning of the First Automobile Factory” (第一汽車廠的早晨, figure 3.10), with large smoking chimneys typical of the industrial sublime of this era, and “Competition” (比高, figure 3.11), a low-­angle shot of sorghum stalks appearing nearly as tall as a telegraph pole on which a female technician is at work.102 With their vertical, monumental compositions, both images visualize Chinese dreams of modernization by valorizing the power of technology to dominate the natu­ral landscape and the ­human world. The torrid chimney stacks did not yet spell smog and pollution; instead, they promised power­ful transformations and national pride. The thriving crops promised the bounty of the land, soon to be “wired” into a national network of electricity and telecommunications. Together, ­these images had the symbolic, even iconic, potential of showing the parallel and competing developments in industry and agriculture. Chinese photography theorists at this time considered photography to be a tool and a medium, like a paper and paintbrush for an artist, to be used not only to convey a “physical resemblance” (形似) but also to capture the “likeness of spirit” (神似). ­Others contend that, unlike a painter who could visualize Chairman Mao’s poetry, a photographer, no m ­ atter how imaginative, could never capture a picture of the goddess of the moon by photographing the sky.103 The discussion attracted the attention of the original theorist of revolutionary romanticism, Guo Moruo, who gave his verdict on this m ­ atter: “The art of photography is a kind of spiritual production best endowed with realism, but its aestheticization allows for romanticism. The choice of subject, the mise-­en-­scène, and the lighting must all have aesthetic purpose. Good photog­raphers should also be outstanding artists.”104 The discussions of “revolutionary romanticism” in photography often referred to photomontage (照片剪輯 or 剪輯照片) as a way to overcome the limitations of the photographic medium. Chinese artists created photomontages as early as the 1930s with an aesthetics of fragmentation to make vis­i­ble what William Schaefer calls “the shadows of modernity,” depicting, for example, “the Shanghai landscape as a violent assemblage of body parts and colonial artifacts.”105 A very dif­fer­ent type of photomontage, however, emerged by the late 1950s. With the condemnation of formalism and naturalism, photomontage came to be considered the most “thoughtful,” “combative,” and innovative form that photography had to offer.106 In 1958, Xin­hua News Agency published a number of photomontages to protest against the American military intervention in the ­Middle East, such as one mounting a headshot of Eisenhower over an American cobra that is twined around oil pipes.107 Defending 128

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the “realism” of photomontage against accusations of “fabrication,” one author valorized photomontage’s ability to “expose the nature and truth of ­matters” that “reactionaries” seek to cover up. Borrowing from the truth-­value invested in photography without submitting to the limitations of superficial appearances, photomontage was said to resolve the “contradiction between essence and phenomena.”108 Instead of a “fake photo­graph,” it was considered a higher form of visual truth. Acknowledging Chinese photomontage’s Western influences, Mass Photography cited renowned works of Soviet photomontage and profiled the German photomonteur John Heartfield. Working in a mostly satirical register, Heartfield’s early antifascist photomontages altered the meanings of well-­known source photo­graphs, hence forcing “the documentary photo­graph to reveal the lie that it told.”109 When visiting the Soviet Union in 1931, Heartfield gave lectures on photomontage and helped design the September 1931 cover of the pictorial USSR in Construction to promote the Central Committee’s plans for rebuilding Moscow. Heartfield’s design was an oblique-­angle photo­graph of a monumental bronze sculpture of Lenin, with an aerial view of a recently completed housing estate for workers in Moscow.110 Likely with reference to this par­tic­u­lar photomontage, during his brief October 1957 visit to China, Heartfield proposed to “create a photomontage of Chairman Mao overlooking Beijing.”111 Heartfield’s trajectory shows an ambivalent relationship between photomontage and the truth claims of documentary photography. In a critical register, photomontage interrogated and deconstructed, fragmented and defamiliarized photographic verisimilitude, yet in an affirmative register, it conflated ­future visions with pre­sent realities by exploiting the promise of truth that most viewers invested in photography.112 Like Heartfield, the ­careers of many Chinese left-­wing writers and artists, photog­raphers, and filmmakers spanned the critical realism of the 1930s and the revolutionary romanticism of the 1950s and 1960s. They too shifted from a critical register to an affirmative register ­after the Communist liberation, a pro­cess that was voluntary as well as compulsory. Whereas the first Chinese photomontages dealt mainly with foreign affairs in a satirical register with ­simple cut-­and-­paste methods, the new art form soon developed into fantastic, even surreal visions of an agricultural utopia. Rather than mimicking German or Soviet models, photomontages from the ­Great Leap Forward are far more indebted to the visual tropes and styles of traditional Chinese New Year prints (年畫) with auspicious motifs of bumper harvests and plump c­ hildren, dubbed a “cult of happiness” by historian James U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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Plath.113 The photomontages also resembled contemporaneous peasant paintings, which “showed huge wheat stalks and gigantic maize, and pumpkins so big that they could be used as boats.” Instead of accusing ­these paintings of “lying,” historian Joshua Jiang considers them repre­sen­ta­tions of wish fulfillment.114 The same can be said of the photomontages of this period. Hebei Daily photographer Li Yu 李棫 shared his experience with making agricultural photomontages: “During the wheat harvest, as one ‘Sputnik’ a­ fter another was launched, my photographic output ­couldn’t catch up. Apart from a retouched photo­graph of the busy harvest, all my other photos looked like prior wheat harvests without highlighting the ‘Sputniks’ . . . ​so I tried using close-­ups to exaggerate the subject, and a­ fter some cutting and re-­integration, the resulting picture could ­really impart to the readers the joy of the harvest.”115 In other words, his photomontage sought to bear witness to agricultural miracles he believed to be r­ eally happening but that eluded visualization as straightforward photo­graphs. Inspired by Soviet cartoons, Peking Opera, and even xiangsheng (相聲, crosstalk) comedic per­for­mances, Li Yu made several photomontages with a corn theme, including a teenage girl holding a ­giant cob of corn taller than herself and a corncob launching into the sky like a rocket. Similarly combining folk imagery of food bounty with futuristic dreams of the space age, another creative photomonteur, Zhao Yao 照耀, created “Flower of Corn” (玉米之花), showing ­children climbing onto ­giant ears of corn shooting into the clouds (figure 3.12).116 When I showed this photomontage to my gradu­ ate students in the United States, they immediately noted the phallic symbolism of the corn rocket, with generative potential in several senses—­agrarian harvest, ­children, and fertility, as well as the technologized reproduction of the photographic image.117 Zhao Yao’s photomontage “High-Producing Sputniks Replace Fireworks” (高產衛星代禮花) shows vari­ous crops—­corn, rice, and wheat—­arranged in the pattern of fireworks superimposed over an eve­ning shot of Tian­anmen Square (figure 3.13). This image is indebted to the L ­ abor Day (May 1) and National Day (October 1) parades held in Tian­anmen Square e­ very year throughout the 1950s, with colorful floats, banners, balloons, and p ­ eople in uniforms or costumes arranged into mass ornaments, followed by dancing and fireworks at night, and capturing the exuberant hopes of the de­cade.118 In hindsight and placed into a memorial museum, however, the transformation of crops into fireworks unwittingly also suggests the illusory nature of the ­Great Leap’s utopian visions. Another photomontage by Zhao Yao, “Cotton Girls” (棉花姑娘, figure 3.14), shows two dancers in costume on a g­ iant ball of cotton, each swaying another 130

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Figure 3.12. Photomontage by Zhao Yao, “Flower of Corn,” New Observations, October 1958, inside back cover.

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Figure 3.13. Zhao Yao, “High-­Producing Sputniks Replace Fireworks,” Mass Photography, January 1959, back cover.

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Figure 3.14. Zhao Yao, “The Making of Cotton Girls,” Mass Photography, July 1959.

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g­ iant cotton ball over her head. The accompanying poem reads: “Cotton blossoms everywhere / Floating like clouds and white like snow / Girls sing and dance on the cotton clouds / Look like the Moon Goddess coming from afar.” The artist explained that he went to an arts troupe and selected a set of twins who ­were both dancers to pose for his photomontage.119 Flaunting the visual artistry of the manipulation rather than any real­ity effect, the resulting image can hardly be mistaken as an ordinary photo­graph, for it far more resembles a piece of folk art. Cartoons in the pages of Mass Photography also demonstrate the “how-to” of photomontage and other forms of photographic manipulation in order to create fantastic images, such as that of a boy standing on a cloud like Nezha 哪吒 (the protection deity in Chinese folk religion) and lifting a ­giant ear of corn over his head, or how to enlarge a small fish into a ­giant fish by closely foregrounding it against the fisherman in the background (figure 3.15). Photographic truth ­here was to be constructed as much as it was to be captured, and exaggerations w ­ ere not meant to be deceptions as much as they ­were intended to convey the joy of socialist miracles. Though initially inspired by Western avant-­garde examples, the photomontages of the ­Great Leap Forward reappropriated a critical practice for affirmative propaganda that aimed not so much to deceive as to inspire a utopian imagination. Chinese photog­raphers “Sinicized” their photomontages by borrowing the visual tropes and hyperbolic style of Chinese New Year prints. Their unique combination of photographic indexicality with folkloric fantasies perfected the style of “revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism.” Just as the G ­ reat Leap Forward gave rise to new forms of poetry, as shown in chapter 2, it also occasioned the production of a new visual culture. However, considering the hunger that enveloped the nation by 1959, one cannot help but won­der if the photomontages and cartoons may have appeared to their viewers in an ironic register. Perhaps such images can only testify to the hallucinations of the famished on their deathbeds.

The ­Great Leap through a Foreign Lens

Before discussing (the absence of ) photographic testimonies to the famine, I turn to photo­graphs of China’s ­Great Leap Forward taken by the French photographer Henri Cartier-­Bresson in 1958 as an alternative visual archive to the official Chinese images examined so far. Like the Eu­ro­pean documentary films of China’s Cultural Revolution to be discussed in chapter 4, Cartier-­Bresson’s photo­graphs and practices highlight sharp differences between Maoist photo­graphic conventions and what had become standards of Western ­photojournalism ­during the 134

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Figure 3.15. Cartoons demonstrate the “birth of a photomontage” and other forms of photographic manipulation, Mass Photography, January 1960.

same period. Furthermore, the debates they triggered among Chinese photog­ raphers suggest an intense consciousness of the legacies of the imperialist gaze and the Cold War visual economy. Nine years a­ fter taking some epoch-­defining photos of the kmt retreat and the ccp takeover in 1949, Henri Cartier-­Bresson returned to China on an assignment for Life magazine from June to October 1958 to observe and document the “New China.” In his 1964 book of photo­graphs, Cartier-­Bresson called the ­Great Leap “a violent gesture . . . ​needed to realize the dreams,” an attempt U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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by the Chinese to “wrench themselves out of their fossilized economy to compete in a world where atoms and automatons are the norm.”120 Mobilization of the energy of six hundred million p ­ eople gave the photographer the impression that “China had become a gigantic beehive: swarms of peasants building roads, factories, bridges, reclaiming arid fields, reforesting bare mountains.” He also noted the festive air about the construction, comparing the dams and irrigation proj­ects to Egypt’s pyramids “in terms of l­abor by man’s hands and sweat,” but “while the pyramids served as monuments to the dead,” t­ hese dams “­will control ­water and give life.”121 Writing in 1964, Cartier-­Bresson was clearly unaware of the massive ­human tolls of the ­Great Leap. Asked if he had been able to work freely, Cartier-­Bresson noted the mediation of the interpreter and the fact that being a white foreigner meant being a spectacle more often than a spectator: “It’s a rule of the game of photographic hide-­and-­seek that he who sees first wins, but with them you lose if you . . . ​ stop for a fraction of a second.”122 When he did manage to catch his subjects unaware, they would be offended by such candid photography: ­ here ­were times when I felt sure that the subject in my lens thought he T had been chosen as an insult to the Chinese p ­ eople. For instance, I learned that angry letters had been sent to Peking to denounce the foreigner who photographed laborers carry­ing crates suspended from poles slung across their shoulders to barges on the Yangtze River, where the steep banks demanded ­either massive cranes or ­human legs [figure 3.16].123 Cartier-­Bresson diagnosed such a reaction as the “inferiority complex of the Chinese” and went on to describe, not without condescension, “a long stream of ­human beings carry­ing material to be fabricated by automated machines,” which “provided an in­ter­est­ing comparison between their industrial ambitions and their current possibilities.”124 Unimpressed by Chinese industry “still in swaddling cloths,” Cartier-­Bresson was deaf to the chanting of the “inevitable statistics,” which might have had “a satisfying resonance” for “the peasant who suffers from drought, whose ancestors have been victims of floods.” The French photojournalist soon got tired of the routine reports of socialist achievements while he “wistfully watched the hours of good photo­ graphic light sliding by.”125 When invited to lecture for Chinese photog­raphers, Cartier-­Bresson criticized the photo of a harvest with a ­woman holding a bunch of wheat, smiling excessively and extremely clean, unlike the one engaged in dusty, sweaty l­abor. “If you interfere with your subject, then your photo­graph is no longer true. Life is rich and vari­ous—we cannot take pictures like formulas.”126 136

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Figure 3.16. Photo taken by Henri Cartier-Bresson in Chongqing in 1958 for Life magazine (Magnum Photos).

For Chinese photog­raphers in the 1950s, Cartier-­Bresson’s work methods ­ ere at once inspiring and insolent. Chen Bo, who accompanied the foreign w photojournalist to the Ming Dam, reported his impressions: “A ‘machine-­ gun-­shooter,’ [Cartier-­Bresson] took photos of every­thing he saw and multiple photos of the same scenes, using up seven rolls of 35mm black-­and-­white film plus one roll in color in just four hours.” When a soldier brought a bundle of cucumbers to his comrades, who stretched out their hands from ­under the tent, Cartier-­Bresson ran over “like a cat trying to catch a mouse,” but when the soldier discovered him and smiled at his lens, the French photographer put away his camera and shook his head with regret. “Photography is like fishing,” he said afterward. “You ­can’t scare the fish away.” Chen Bo noticed that Cartier-­Bresson much preferred photographing individuals over crowds, comparing the latter to plain rice and the former to flavored dishes. Chen Bo concluded that Chinese photog­raphers should learn from the French photographer’s “capturing” method to take more vivid, in­ter­est­ing photos, yet he also criticized the Frenchman for “looking without listening,” thus seizing surface phenomena without understanding the “essence of ­matters.”127 Following the publication of Cartier-­Bresson’s photos in the January 1959 issue of Life magazine, the China Photog­raphers Association criticized them U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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for their “contemptible distortion of our nation’s ­Great Leap Forward and the p ­ eople’s communes.” Invoking imperialist legacies and a Cold War visual economy, the China Photog­raphers Association considered what Cartier-­ Bresson captured to be “accidental” phenomena that catered to the interests of “bourgeois salons” and “negated the achievements of the ­Great Leap,” hence serving “American imperialists’ anti-­China propaganda.” They considered his work especially “deceptive,” “reactionary,” and “dangerous,” precisely b­ ecause it seemed ­free from ­every trace of manipulation. ­Under the “camouflage” of “objective real­ity” without staging or doctoring or cropping, such “neo-­realist” Western photog­raphers pretended to be fair, objective, and truthful, even though “their bourgeois point of view is very clear.”128 Indeed, Cartier-­Bresson never engaged with his subjects or asked how they wished to be photographed, much in contrast to Chinese photog­raphers who always consulted the local cadres and made their subjects collaborators in the image-­ making pro­cess.129 Life magazine’s choice, layout, and captions of Cartier-­Bresson’s photos in January 1959 do suggest an antagonistic portrayal of China in a Cold War context. Featuring the “new generation Chinese at an anti-­U.S. rally” on the cover, the introductory text promises the reader a view of “how the Chinese individually react and live amid the oppressive regimentation imposed on them.”130 Despite this emphasis on the “individual,” most photos Life chose for its nine double-­page spreads show groups or crowds in regimented formation or engaging in “backbreaking toil.” Many have their backs turned to the camera, and the few clearly vis­i­ble ­faces look a bit dazed or mistrustful. What was and is remarkable about the photos, however, is their vibrant color; not only the many red flags fluttering in the wind but also the many shades of blue and green and yellow of ­people’s clothes. In comparison, Cartier-­Bresson’s own 1964 paperback photobook, simply entitled China, pre­sents a more vivid and varied portrait of the Chinese ­people with less po­liti­cally charged captions. Among his subjects are ­children paving the sidewalks u ­ nder the supervision of their m ­ others, hard-­of-­hearing old scholars discussing a new biography of young heroes, and the National Day parade of female athletes marching in swimsuits ­under the portraits of Marx and Engels. Most subjects seem more at leisure than engaged in ­labor, as if Cartier-­Bresson sought idiosyncrasy in p ­ eople’s rare “­free” moments. Many photos focus on the youths and the el­der­ly,131 who could symbolize China’s past and ­future. Several show images of ­giant wall posters or slogans dwarfing the ­people under­neath.132 Thus, a central visual princi­ple is the incongruous juxtaposition between g­ rand aspirations and h ­ umble realities, the living and 138

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the inanimate, the young and the old, the violent and the tender, the collective and the individual. Even if some of his subjects ­were aware of being photographed, Cartier-­ Bresson chose the “decisive moments” when they w ­ ere so absorbed in their tasks that they paid no heed to the photographer. A few photos showing subjects staring at the camera underscore that they had not been forewarned and ­were candidly photographed in the split second when they detected the photo­grapher. Most of his subjects’ eyes are engaged elsewhere, scrutinizing ­machinery, or looking at wall posters or exhibitions of the nation’s progress since the founding of the PRC.133 Indeed, whereas Cartier-­Bresson sought to capture an ephemeral historical moment, the subjects ­were looking into a utopian ­future.

Photographic Testimony to the Famine?

The Second Five-­year Plan ­Shall be completed in advance this year Come photog­raphers, Let us bear witness to history Using tens of thousands of cameras To document the speed of the nation’s continued leap Using tens of thousands of film rolls, To reflect the masses’ support for the general line. Photog­raphers, The Party sounded its bugle to ­battle Actively depict the movement to “Increase Production and Exercise Thrift” Enthusiastically praise: “The ­People’s Commune Is Good!” Upon seeing our pictures, let our friends feel happy Upon seeing our pictures, let our enemies ­tremble Let ­every good shot Testify to the nation’s ­Great Leap!134 “Hurry and Bear Witness to History” (趕快為歷史提供見證), the poem above, by Peng Benli 彭本立, a farm worker from Hubei, was published in the September 1959 issue of Mass Photography. As in other articles, photography was harnessed with the mission to “see” and “prove” (見證) the momentous and U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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miraculous happenings of the time. The many newly available cameras w ­ ere to capture both the speed and the scale of the ­Great Leap. The intended audience of such visual testimony consisted of both con­temporary “friends and enemies” as well as f­ uture generations who would look back on this era as “history.” T ­ hese images ­were taken from a utopian, futuristic perspective as a form of anticipatory memory. In retrospect, however, we cannot help but ask the same photog­raphers about their failure to document the ruination of this utopia and to bear witness to “the worst famine in ­human history.”135 ­Here lies an unbridgeable gulf between “eyewitness testimony” in a quasi-religious sense of revolutionary faith and the photographic illustration of catastrophic facts that we would look for in a memorial museum. Alternatively, we might see in all the exuberant photo­graphs of the G ­ reat Leap Forward what Roland Barthes calls “death in the ­future”: “In front of the photo­graph of my ­mother as a child, I tell myself: she is ­going to die: I shudder. . . . ​­Whether or not the subject is already dead, ­every photo­graph is this catastrophe.”136 Perusing Mass Photography from 1959 to its last issue in June 1960—or any other publications in China from the same period—­one would be hard-pressed to find any pictures even hinting at the widespread starvation at the time. Yet the very texture of the paper on which the magazine was printed underwent a sharp decline by the ­middle of 1959, turning so dark and coarse, one could only barely make out the text and images that celebrated the happy communes and bountiful harvests. Indeed, the materiality of the paper publications from the ­Great Leap already makes them worthy of museum display, as a material testimony to the period’s austerity. The magazine’s polemic, meanwhile, became increasingly defensive: If our imperialist enemies maliciously slander the formation of the ­people’s communes as the result of coercion and our peasants’ voluntary ­labor as forced ­labor, then photo­graphs such as “Singing the Harvest in a Bountiful Field” can strike back at them. H ­ ere, commune members who are also amateur singers cannot help but feel the joy in their hearts while they are harvesting in the fields. . . . ​Can forced ­labor produce such a happy scene? Can the working ­people in the so-­called “­free and demo­cratic” West feel such joy?137 Another article instructing novices on how to photo­graph warns against incorrect choices of subject ­matter: “For example, when we launch a patriotic pest-­elimination campaign, a reporter from the cap­i­tal­ist world would not propagate our ­grand achievements but rather look around ­until he finds a 140

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few flies and then snaps this ‘trea­sure.’ ”138 Other complacent photog­raphers would take “so-­called rural landscapes” of two ducks and a straw hut instead of the masses. Such “naturalist tendencies” to capture random pictures “­under the cover of truth” end up actually “distorting” real­ity, critics argued. As many articles repeated the mantra of “­going among the masses,”139 one cannot help but won­der what photog­raphers saw and failed to photo­graph in rural China at the time. The only permissible exception for photographing poverty and destitution in the socialist pre­sent would be to serve as a pos­si­ble contrast against a better ­future,140 just as the “­bitter” prerevolutionary past was used as a foil for the “sweet” postrevolutionary pre­sent. For example, a pla soldier first photographed four beggar boys in 1949 and photographed them again ten years l­ ater as happy socialist citizens.141 In a similar instance of anticipatory memory-­ making, the photographer Xu Yanghui followed a peasant ­family for five de­ cades beginning in 1950, for he hoped to demonstrate the pro­gress the nation had made through this one ­family. But as he explained, “sometimes when I went to see them they ­were having bad times and so I would not take pictures.” Xu Yanghui did not photo­graph this ­family between the years 1958 and 1962.142 In this case, gaps and absences can be as telling as extant images. Following the visual conventions of this period, poverty, hunger, and suffering in the New China ­were not to be documented or represented at all. In this sense, Xu Yanghui’s failure to photo­graph this ­family during the G ­ reat Leap years owes as much to patriotic sentiment as to po­liti­cal censorship. On a comparative note, Susan Sontag contrasts the abundance of photo­graphs of suffering from the Vietnam War—­“defined by a significant number of ­people as a savage colonialist war”—­against the paucity of such photos from the Korean War, understood “as part of the just strug­g le of the ­Free World against the Soviet Union and China.”143 As much as atrocity photo­graphs could “easily be conscripted as totems of ­causes,” Sontag argues that no moral outrage would be pos­si­ble without “a relevant po­liti­cal consciousness.”144 Analogously, in the po­liti­cal atmosphere of the G ­ reat Leap Forward, t­ here was no place for famine pictures ­because the famine could not be named. So which photo­graphs have been used retrospectively to mediate testimony to and memory of the G ­ reat Leap famine? If one w ­ ere to search on Google Image and look at photos that illustrate this history, one would still come across quite a number of Life magazine photos taken by Theodore White in 1942 and George Silk photo­graphs taken in 1946, including the image of a child beggar lying on the sidewalk (similar to the image used as the cover to ­ reat Famine, as shown in figure 3.3) the first edition of Frank Dikötter’s Mao’s G U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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Figure 3.17. In May 1962, Life magazine photographer Larry Burrows shot a series of photo­graphs of Chinese refugees who arrived illegally in Hong Kong and ­were sent back to the Mainland (Getty Images).

posted on the Wikipedia page for the G ­ reat Leap (for about a month u ­ ntil 145 other readers disputed its provenance). ­Later editions of Dikötter’s book used a dif­fer­ent, “au­then­tic” photo­graph of Chinese refugees who allegedly arrived illegally in Hong Kong in May of 1962 and who w ­ ere being sent back to the Mainland. Taken by Life photojournalist Larry Burrows, this image belongs to a series of photo­graphs showing desperate men, w ­ omen, and ­children with open, empty, grasping hands, their twisted necks revealing the wrenching tension as they are wrested away (see figure 3.17). In the global visual economy 142

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Figure 3.18. Photo­graph taken by Xin­hua photojournalist Li Feng, “Five Boys with Tattered Jackets and Bare Legs,” in rural Gansu in 1958 (Guangzhou Integrated Image Co.).

of the Cold War, when the photo was first taken and published, however, this image is far from ideologically innocent, as it conveys more about longing for Western capitalism than about the famine occurring within Chinese borders. The 2012 edited volume Photographing Atrocity represents the ­Great Leap famine in China with an image of five boys with ragged clothing and bare legs, taken in the Gansu corridor in 1958 by Xin­hua Agency photographer Li Feng 黎楓 (figure 3.18). The essay’s author, D. J. Clark, considers it the “only image” he has “found in mainland China that has any reference to the famine” ­after searching for six years. Had the photo been published at the time, Clark argues, it would have had the “same shock value as a much more graphic image of hunger in a Western context.” Although in interviews U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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Li Feng insisted that he took the picture thinking that he would return in ten years to show how much pro­gress China had made, Clark still won­ ders if the true reason was that “for one brief moment, he was so overcome with anger at what he was witnessing, that he chose—­against all he had learned—to rec­ord the famine with this single image.”146 Prob­ably agreeing with Clark’s assessment, this image is on the cover of historian Zhou Xun’s 2013 book Forgotten Voices of Mao’s ­Great Famine, 1958–1962: An Oral History. Li Feng’s photo­graph is indeed extraordinary for its frank portrayal of poverty by an official photographer, but the malnourishment that Clark diagnoses in the boys in Li’s photo is not self-­evident in the outward appearance of their bodies. Instead, their bare legs and feet—­set against the cold suggested by their padded cotton jackets and the bare branches in the background—­ highlight a scarcity of clothing rather than of food. Their f­aces look quite cheery and utterly unaware of how the camera and subsequent photographic mediation might render them retrospective subjects of compassion. Portraying vulnerable ­children, of course, this image readily figures into what David Campbell calls the “iconography of famine,” which often portrays individual “victims without a context” and “­people needing our pity.”147 Along similar lines, Marianne Hirsch argues that photo­graphs of child victims facilitate “an identification in which the viewer can too easily assume the position of a surrogate victim,” thereby risking “the blurring of impor­tant areas of difference and alterity—­context, specificity, responsibility, history.”148 Thus curating and identifying a photo­graph of “poor c­ hildren” as a “famine photo” addresses an empathetic audience without interrogating the specific c­ auses of their poverty. However, the same photo­graph’s inclusion in a 2003 Guangzhou exhibition and photobook, Humanism in China (中國人本), suggests an alternative interpretation of the image as expressing resilience in the face of material hardships.149 Much in contrast to the humanistic compassion elicited by the photo of the five boys are the shocking and horrific photos of cannibalism related to the 1960 criminal case “Liu Jiayuan Eats His Child” (劉家遠食子案), in Hunan’s Li County (澧縣), first posted on teacher and amateur historian Yu Xiguang’s 余 習廣 blog, which was then reposted on thousands of other websites. Also from Li County, Yu Xiguang first heard about this incident of cannibalism when he was a child, and the story haunted him ever since. According to his investigations in the county archives and through oral-­history interviews, Liu Jiayuan’s ­family was forced to submit all their grain to the commune by the Chinese New Year in 1960. ­After his wife fled the village with another man, Liu Jiayuan and his toddler son had no food for days. Hallucinating about meat and seeing 144

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that his son was ­dying, Liu allegedly killed and cooked the child overnight. A relative living next door discovered the boy in the pot the second morning and promptly informed the police, who forced Liu to eat a few bites. A 10,000-­person rally followed, culminating with Liu’s execution.150 The extant photo­graphs appear to have been taken by the police at the scene of Liu’s arrest, with apparent staging and posing to reconstruct the visual “evidence” of his crime.151 The main photo is a frontal long shot of the suspect handcuffed and standing against a wall; a second photo­graph features in close-up the child’s hacked-­off limbs and head next to a pot of carrots. A third photo­graph shows the murder weapons—­the same pot and a kitchen knife. Scholars of the ­Great Leap famine cite reports of cannibalism in vari­ous parts of the country, though most did not kill to eat as much as they, scavenged the meat of cadavers. Putting this in the historical context of state-­sponsored vio­lence, Dikötter points out that “necrophagy was neither the most common nor the most widespread way of degrading a ­human being.”152 In both oral testimonies and literary repre­sen­ta­tions, however, cannibalism was the most terrifying and sensational symbol of the famine, both as real­ity and as allegory of the general breakdown of the moral world as well as the sense of universal complicity.153 As much as providing photographic evidence and illustration of a historical incidence of cannibalism, the Li County photos and their reemergence in the public eye also illuminate a pro­cess by which the historical memory of the ­Great Leap famine has been visually mediated and remediated from the 1950s to the new millennium. When the archival photos first surfaced on the internet, skeptical netizens claimed that the photos ­were taken by American journalist Theodore White in Henan in 1943, while ­others accused them of anachronism—­the style of clothing, a long gown, seemed more typical of the Republican era,154 which might also have suggested that they ­were wearing clothing more than a de­cade old, thus indicating the extent of their material poverty. When questioned about the provenance of t­ hese images, Yu Xiguang claimed to have taken them from the Li County archives, whose official website featured the same photos at a much higher resolution from August to November 2011, when too many clicks and repostings alarmed the authorities of the photos’ po­liti­cal sensitivity and sheer horror.155 The photos resurfaced again with many archival documents and personal testimonies of the famine ­after April 2012, when Lin Zhibo 林治波, head of the Gansu bureau of the ­People’s Daily, posted microblog posts on Sina Weibo that denied the deaths of tens of millions as pure fabrication to “bash Chairman Mao.” His comments enraged thousands of netizens, who crowd-­sourced the stories of their families, eliciting U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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an apology from Lin Zhibo the following day.156 This way, as Hui Zhao and Jun Liu write, “the weibo sphere generates, articulates, and integrates fragmented and disjointed individual memories and experiences into a shared, collective memory of the famine,”157 as with the remediation of viral replication of the archival in the new media age. Unlike the images of utopian harvests discussed e­ arlier, ­these photos ­were not meant for publication; rather they w ­ ere to serve as criminal evidence in the local police archives. Yet, like the utopian photo­graphs, the photos clearly indicate practices of staging and posing for the camera, not the modeling of a desired real­ity but rather a negative example for public warning—we do not know who actually saw t­hese images, but their exhibition at a mass rally was not altogether improbable. Stored away in the official archives for half a ­century, their digital remediation and accidental exhibition on the local government website provoked viral dissemination and sensational reverberations in the new media ecol­ogy. Netizens mobilized ­these photos as horrific visual testimony to ­counter deniers of the ­Great Leap famine, which in turn invoked other viewers to suspect the photos’ authenticity. ­These photos took on the dual qualities of immediacy and hypermediacy, qualities Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin identify as the “double logic of remediation,” where immediacy seeks to make the medium transparent and invisible, hypermediacy wants to multiply our media and heighten our awareness of them.158 Like the digital remediation of the police archives discussed in chapters 1 and 2, ­these archival photo­graphs have taken on public afterlives to memorialize long-­buried histories from the Mao era. If we already have plenty of evidence from textual archives and oral testimonies that t­ here was indeed a famine of enormous scale resulting from the ­Great Leap Forward, then why do we even need photo­graphs? Asking a similar question about why books pertaining to slavery in the West Indies use photographic illustrations taken a­ fter the abolition of slavery, Krista Thompson argues that the books’ creators ­were trying to “lay claim to the ontology of the photographic image and its indexicality to substantiate their narrative accounting of slavery,” thereby rendering “the unrepresentable more imaginable, the unrecorded more truthful, the past more pre­sent.”159 The same desire to access and reenliven historical awareness of the G ­ reat Leap famine underlies the search for—­and sometimes the misappropriation of—­photo­graphs that pre­sent us with ­faces and bodies we can identify with, that can bear witness to the atrocities beyond words and numbers, and thus can visually imprint history onto our memories. “Visual testimony,” as Sharon Sliwinski contends with re­spect to 1945 photo­graphs of the Dachau concentration camp, “is less about verifying material evidence as about registering the impact of experi146

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ence.” In contrast to “bare facts,” visual testimony can “transmit the force of this experience that has shattered the existing frames of reference.”160 If our hy­po­thet­i­cal memorial museum of the Mao era seeks to mediate memory and witnessing through camera images, how might curators work with the paucity of photographic evidence of vio­lence and hunger as well as turn available utopian propaganda images into visual testimony? I turn to this question in the concluding section.

Conclusion: Photography as Memorial Exhibits

What is the role of photography in a memorial museum of the Mao era? “The planning of memorial museum exhibitions,” as Paul Williams finds in his study, “always proceeds with an implicit acknowl­edgment of the indispensability of primary visual evidence,” not only as proof of what happened but also “as cues for ­mental visualization.”161 ­There are mainly two kinds of photo­graphs in global memorial museums: “action photos” depicting vio­lence, taken by photojournalists or perpetrators, and identity photo­graphs of victims who have vanished, serving as “a visual testimony to their former existence.”162 In the case of the Mao era and especially the ­Great Leap years, we have a paucity of both types of images—­since the rural victims of the famine often did not leave ­behind photos of themselves—­yet we have a wealth of utopian propaganda images that might still be critically curated into exhibits in a memorial museum. This chapter shows how Chinese photographic culture and practice from the 1950s to the early 1960s led to a proliferation of utopian images or “testimonies to revolutionary miracles” as well as to the prohibition of visual testimony to the famine that followed. Rather than dismissing propaganda photos or treating them as objective win­dows onto a historical past, we should recognize both the aspirations they express and their complicity in the catastrophe. Instead of categorizing photo­graphs as “fake” or “real,” how we circulate, exhibit, remediate, and receive historical images can very well contribute to their truth or falsehood. Located between propaganda and testimony, photography is at once the most readily credible and the most easily manipulated medium.163 It may be useful to consider Mark Anderson’s notion of the “speed” of the image. With emphasis “on the ‘now’ of aesthetic, sensual response or, at times, of po­liti­cal and social anger,” the “fast image” produces “immediate, power­ful, clashing impressions.” A “slow image,” by contrast, yields its meanings through reading, rereading, research, and critical reflection, so that the image functions “not as a document of real­ity but as a set of questions about real­ity and its repre­sen­ta­tion.”164 So while e­ very photographic image is a “real­ity scrap” U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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and “a memorial to what has dis­appeared,” ­every image “is capable of lying, and must be subjected to careful scrutiny and interpretation.”165 A memorial museum of the Mao era should foster a “slow” contemplation of the period’s photo­graphs rather than use them as expedient visual signifiers. Even when a photo­graph has been exposed in some way as “fake” or “forged,” the history of its creation potentially can tell us more than an “au­then­tic” documentary photo­graph on the same subject. We ­ought to treat surviving photo­graphs of the Mao era as mysteries that invite attention, examination, and investigation into the original scenarios—­not only what they reveal but what they conceal. In fact, I first encountered photo­graphs from the G ­ reat Leap in 2009 at an outdoor exhibition in the Jianchuan Museum Cluster, a private museum in Sichuan to be discussed in chapter 6. Framed and hung in an inconspicuous corridor next to a restaurant named the “­People’s Commune Canteen,” the images of an agricultural utopia, clearly doctored and bearing their original captions, would have appeared ironic to anyone with historical knowledge of the ensuing famine. If it had not been for censorship, the display of such images should have been accompanied by population statistics from 1958 to 1962, and/or by an exhibition of the food ration coupons and what p ­ eople ate to survive t­ hose years. Along t­ hese lines, a memorial museum curator could collect r­ ecipes of hunger as oral histories and then serve meals that follow t­ hose ­recipes in the neighboring ­People’s Commune Canteen restaurant, thereby critically reviving the recalling-­bitterness meals widely practiced during the Mao era.166 Apart from hunger and food consumption, another memorial exhibit could focus on food production, highlighting the so-­called “Sputnik” fields as reported in the press, photos, posters, and newsreels. In the summer of 2015, I visited the famous Sputnik rice paddy in Macheng County, (figure 3.1 at the beginning of this chapter), following an el­derly ­woman who in 1958 was 14 years old and part of the village propaganda troupe that guided journalists to this field. She remembered how the propaganda troupe dressed up and sang songs in praise of the revolutionary miracle paddy, and how “the journalists took countless pictures.” She also remembered how “at night they moved the crop from another field over. . . . ​We knew but dared not talk. We ­were too young, just blindly following the cadres,” whereas other villa­gers who might have talked ­were forced out of sight to ­labor in the mountains. Walking with me from the rice paddy back to the village, this old ­woman spoke of the famine that followed, pointing to weeds along the path that her ­family had eaten to survive: “You are too young,” she concluded, “you ­don’t understand.” 148

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It was to bridge such generational gaps of historical memory that documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang 吴文光 launched the Folk Memory Proj­ect (民間記憶計劃), an oral history video archive built by young filmmakers who returned to their ­family villages to interview villa­gers about their memories of hunger and death during the ­Great Leap.167 Like documentaries remembering the vio­lence and terror in Latin Amer­i­ca that took place “far from the public eye,” the Folk Memory Proj­ect incorporates visual testimonials and experimental per­for­mances “as strategies of repre­sen­ta­tion and as an audiovisual landscape ­towards the construction of historical memory.”168 In the absence of photographic evidence of the famine, ­these oral histories captured on film serve as another form of visual testimony that not only narrate the past but also visually foreground and remediate embodied memories and haunted spaces. The visual conventions established in the 1950s, which privileged idealized portrayals of worker-­peasant-­soldier subjects, would continue to govern official image production for the remainder of the Mao era, becoming more rigid and codified by the 1960s and 1970s. Apart from official publications such as China Pictorial (人民畫報), however, ­there ­were also alternative photographic memories and archives. ­These included visual testimonies to Cultural Revolution vio­lence, such as Wang Jingyao’s photos of his wife, mentioned at the beginning of this book, as well as photojournalist Li Zhensheng’s 李振盛 coverage of strug­g le sessions and factional conflicts, concealed for de­cades and then published for the first time in 2003.169 Alternative photo archives also include such memory forums as the Old Photo­graphs (老照片) magazine and vari­ous sent-­down youth websites, mediating contested memories that complicate a more monolithic official historiography.170 The next chapter ­will shift from photography to documentary film as a mediator of Mao-­era memories, from the ­Great Leap to the late Cultural Revolution, and from a domestic to an international visual economy. Still rarer than photo cameras, the technology of film production remained ­under state mono­poly throughout the Mao era and was tasked with creating socialist heroes and models for emulation. Audiovisual rec­ords from this period exclude not only the widespread poverty and hunger and the eruptions of vio­lence but also everyday snapshots of ­people’s quotidian lives. It is in this sense that two long documentaries portraying China in the early 1970s through the lenses of Eu­ro­pean filmmakers gain special significance, as they provide an alternative audiovisual archive of the Mao era and illuminate both the rules and the taboos of the Maoist visual regime.

U topian P hoto­ g raphs

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4 FOREIGN LENSES

When the P ­ eople’s Republic began to reestablish diplomatic relations with Western countries in the early 1970s, Premier Zhou Enlai invited Eu­ro­pean filmmakers Joris Ivens and Michelangelo Antonioni to visit China with their film cameras. Antonioni’s Chung Kuo: Cina was first released in 1972, only to be denounced by the ­People’s Daily in 1974 for its “vicious motives” and “despicable tricks,” and the “Chinese masses” w ­ ere mobilized into a criticism campaign against a film that hardly any of them had seen. When Ivens and his partner Marceline Loridan fi­nally released their twelve-­hour epic series How Yukong Moved the Mountains in 1976, history had turned a new page with Mao’s death and the negation of the Cultural Revolution. Having portrayed the Maoist enterprise in a glorious light, this film series soon fell into the shadow of disrepute and oblivion. It was not u ­ ntil the 2000s, several de­cades ­after they w ­ ere made, that both documentaries became available to Chinese viewers through digital remediation. Along with still photography, documentary film—­both historical footage and filmed testimonies—­can constitute compelling exhibits in memorial museums. As a “sensuous, experiential medium,” cinema is central to the creation of what Alison Landsberg calls “prosthetic memories,” of a past beyond one’s lived experience.1 Archival footage in par­tic­u­lar seems to “bring us into ‘contact’ with the past,” making the past “not only knowable but

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perceptible” as well as offering “an experience of pastness.”2 If the indexical medium of film can help us “touch” and “feel” the past, what audiovisual resources might we draw upon for a memorial museum of the Mao era? Classics of “red cinema” have been massively remediated beginning in the 1980s through tele­vi­sion, dvds, and online streaming. Yet Yomi Braester has critiqued such films for allowing viewers “to look back nostalgically at Communist heroics without raising the specters of suffering caused by Maoist policies.” 3 Moreover, the Maoist aesthetic focuses on the “utopian” and the “heroic,” precluding from (audio)visual documentation not only catastrophes such as the ­Great Leap famine but also large swathes of quotidian social life that did not constitute representative models. As filmmaker Jia Zhangke puts it: “When Chinese try to recall certain impor­tant historical moments from their past, such as the Cultural Revolution, we find nothing in the film archive that shows concern for ordinary p ­ eople. We only have official images and newsreels.”4 Apart from official newsreel productions from the Mao era, I propose to curate memorial exhibits by drawing upon the audiovisual archive in Chung Kuo: Cina and How Yukong Moved the Mountains. ­These two documentaries—­ along with their production and reception histories—­provide metacinematic testimonies to some utopian aspirations as well as quotidian realities of the Mao era with affective intimacy and critical distance. Intended to showcase the achievements of Communist China since 1949 to a Western audience during a moment of thawing in the Cold War, the two long documentaries capture the margins of official repre­sen­ta­tions that illuminate the long-­standing power dynamics and social relationships in “actually existing Maoism.”5 Furthermore, the controversies around ­these films shed light on the media ecol­ ogy of audiovisual memory-­making and provide us with a critical lens with which to examine other cinematic legacies from the Mao era. This chapter ­will flesh out three components of this audiovisual memory ecol­ogy: the Maoist audiovisual regime, the global audiovisual economy, and postsocialist audiovisual memories. Just as the previous chapters focus on the Maoist regime of memories, this chapter argues that Chung Kuo: Cina and How Yukong Moved the Mountains are coproductions between Westerners’ cameras and the Maoist audiovisual regime. As I showed in chapter 3, patriotic sentiments and ideological discipline in the 1950s transformed photographic aesthetics and practices, and the imperative to replace shameful images of China with proud ones both expanded and delimited the repertoire of photographable subjects. Maoist photojournalistic mise-­en-­scène conventions of “real­ity as it should be” also applied to the F orei g n L enses

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production of documentary newsreels. With the deepening po­liti­cal censorship and the continued economic austerity of the Cultural Revolution, such visual conventions became even more rigid and codified by the early 1970s. In contrast, with dif­fer­ent technologies, practices, and perspectives, the Eu­ro­ pean filmmakers recorded not only the officially sanctioned, iconic, and codified mise-­en-­scène but also a messier real­ity at its frayed edges. As metatexts that comment on the circumstances of their own making, t­ hese films render vis­i­ble some unspoken princi­ples of the Maoist audiovisual regime. In addition to documenting Chinese realities, t­ hese documentaries originated and participated in a Cold War visual economy. Their production and reception whisked up tensions and contestations between the foreign filmmakers and their Chinese hosts, which render vis­i­ble po­liti­cal, aesthetic, and ethical prob­lems of image-­making across cultures. Since both films have become available through pirated dvds and online streaming,6 this chapter analyzes their retrospective reception as visual memories of the high socialist period as well as their influences on con­temporary Chinese artists and filmmakers. Instead of momentous historical events, ­these films evoked childhood memories akin to the kind one encounters in home movies and f­amily snapshots. Chinese audiences thus reclaimed t­ hese documentaries as mediated memories of their own recent past: a socialist world of simplicity, serenity, and stability, but also of poverty, conformity, and stilted per­for­mance. This chapter w ­ ill start with a brief genealogical overview of China’s cinematic images as captured by foreign filmmakers from the early twentieth ­century to the 1970s, arguing that foreign lenses provided (distorted) mirrors to stimulate nationalist self-­consciousness as well as cinematic rec­ords to mediate historical memories. I ­shall then analyze the revealing confrontations between the Westerners’ intrusive camera and the Maoist mise-­en-­scène, arguing that the Chinese w ­ ere keenly aware of themselves as images in the eyes of the authorities. Next, I ­will analyze the criticism of Antonioni’s film in China and the international reverberations in light of not only Cultural Revolution politics but also Orientalist visual legacies and imaginaries. Fi­nally, I ­will turn to the remediation and reception of ­these films as reemerged memories in the new millennium.

Just Images: Historical China through Foreign Lenses

“It’s not a just image; it’s just an image.” 7 ­These famous words from French filmmaker Jean-­Luc Godard first appeared in his 1970 film Wind from the East (Le Vent d’est), which seeks to reveal the artifice and “hidden i­ deological 152

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articulations” embedded in images we might take as natu­ral or transparent.8 First inspired by Maoism, Godard’s dictum has since taken on a life of its own to refer to image ethics more generally,9 but it takes on a paradoxical edge when applied to ­these two Eu­ro­pean documentaries about Maoist China. If a “just image” can be defined as “an image that does justice,” then both Eu­ro­pean film crews described h ­ ere sought to “do justice” to a country and a revolution both vilified and valorized in the West. Yet their conceptions of a “just image” (­often as a “real” or “au­then­tic” image that has not been staged or manipulated) were utterly dif­fer­ent from the Chinese government’s ideas of a “just image” (as an “ideal” and “dignified” image of China and the Chinese on the world stage). Therefore, we have ontological truth pitted against national pride. Since a “just image” also raises the question of what are “unjust images,” the production and reception of the two documentaries make manifest the conflict between an aversion to staged or deceptive images, on the one hand, and indignity against stolen or “backward” images, on the other. To determine what constitutes a “just image” of China through a foreign lens, we must reckon with the much longer history of foreigners’ film productions about China and about the Chinese. American, Eu­ro­pean, and Japa­nese cinematographers shot some of the earliest cinematic images in China, mainly brief actualities while traveling through the treaty ports or reenacted newsreels from the Boxer Uprising to the Russo-­Japanese War.10 Matthew Johnson argues that such films, “culled from the midst of modern warfare, missionary activity and ethnographic travel,” belonged to “the same constellation of imperialist forces which included extraterritoriality, fixed tariffs and indemnities arranged for the benefit of western powers.”11 The broader Chinese response to ­these early foreign films shot in China was curiosity about cinema as a new media technology,12 but a legendary account from writer Lu Xun also suggests that the foreign lens could catalyze a nationalist self-­consciousness. According to the author’s preface to his 1918 short story collection A Call to Arms (吶喊), written while studying medicine in Japan from 1904 to 1906, Lu Xun sometimes watched lantern slides of the ongoing Russo-­Japanese War ­after a microbiology lecture, having “to join in the clapping and cheering in the lecture hall along with the other students.” One day, he saw a slide depicting the imminent decapitation of a Chinese spy for the Rus­sians by Japa­nese soldiers, surrounded by a Chinese crowd that came to “enjoy the spectacle.” Lu Xun goes on to write that “­after this film I felt that medical science was not so impor­tant ­after all. The ­people of a weak and backward country, however strong and healthy they may be, can only serve to be made examples of, or to F orei g n L enses

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witness such futile spectacles.”13 In her reading of Lu Xun’s account, Rey Chow calls attention to the power of “the film medium” and “technologized visuality” to conjure up a sense of national identity: “To put it simply, Lu Xun discovers what it means to ‘be Chinese’ in the modern world by watching film.”14 Yomi Braester’s reading highlights the medium of the projected slide not as a transparent win­dow onto the historical incident but rather as “an impenetrable, mirrorlike surface” in which Lu Xun sees himself and attains “third-­person consciousness of the colonized.”15 By the 1920s and 1930s, Lu Xun’s nationalist self-­consciousness in response to projected images of his compatriots came to be shared more broadly by Chinese audiences of Hollywood films that dominated the film market. Racist ste­ reo­types in foreign films of China and the Chinese as barbaric and archaic, as historian Zhiwei Xiao’s research shows, provoked anti-­imperialist backlashes in Chinese film criticism, kmt government censorship, as well as patriotic film-­making agendas to restore national dignity and sovereignty.16 In 1931, the National Film Censorship Committee drafted the “Regulations Regarding Foreigners Shooting Films in China” to prevent foreigners from “filming scenes that could l­ ater be used to disgrace China and Chinese ­people.”17 Yet Lu Xun himself never participated in protests against “films insulting to China” (辱華影片).18 Instead, he commented acerbically in a 1936 essay that “the Chinese do not have sense enough to know themselves” but are “content to practice self-­deceit and try to deceive ­others too,” like someone “suffering from dropsy but afraid to see a doctor, who hopes o­ thers may be foolish enough to think he is simply growing fat.”19 For Lu Xun, foreign lenses remained a sobering mirror for the Chinese, albeit what Laikwan Pang calls a “distorting mirror” through which “the viewing subject acquired an alluring yet threatening sense of identity.”20 Aside from Hollywood’s Orientalist fantasies—­“unjust images” that roused Chinese nationalist self-­consciousness—­a few foreign filmmakers also made films in China with an anti-­imperialist agenda. In 1927, a Soviet film crew took an “expedition” to Shanghai to document everyday life in the city as well as the unfolding suppression of the ccp by the kmt that culminated in the Shanghai massacre of April 12. Director Yakov Bliokh edited the footage into the 1928 documentary Shanghai Document, using parallel montage to juxtapose the worlds of the exploiting and the exploited, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, ­labor and leisure.21 In the 1930s, “foreign friends” of the Chinese Communist Party, such as Edgar Snow and Harry Dunham, took some of the earliest documentary footage of ccp leaders and the Red Army in Yan’an to help raise international awareness of their cause.22 154

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A “Just Image” as Utopian Faith: Cinematic Witnessing of the Chinese Revolution

It was the Dutch documentary film pioneer Joris Ivens who provided the Chinese Communist Party with its first movie camera. In 1938, Ivens went to China with Life magazine photographer Robert Capa to film China’s re­sis­ tance against Japa­nese aggression, resulting in the solidarity film The 400 Million. Having read Edgar Snow’s Red Star over China, Ivens originally wanted to film the ccp in Yan’an, but the kmt officials who accompanied the film crew would not let him near Mao’s Eighth Route Army, and they blocked spontaneous capture of messy real­ity and staged or­ga­nized scenes for the foreigners’ camera.23 When Ivens managed to shake off his kmt censors, he met with ccp leader Zhou Enlai and, in a taxi on a dark street, handed over a Bell & Howell Eyemo camera with a few reels of film to a young man from Yan’an—­the cinematographer Wu Yinxian, who ­later became vice president of the Beijing Film Acad­emy.24 Enlisted as a “weapon of strug­g le,” this camera would help capture iconic images of ccp leaders in Yan’an, and in recent years, it has been placed on exhibit at the National Museum of China.25 Meanwhile, much footage from The 400 Million would be reenlisted in Frank Capra’s 1944 compilation film ­Battle of China, part of the Why We Fight “orientation film” series shown to American soldiers fighting on the Pacific front.26 In 1957, Ivens returned to the P ­ eople’s Republic as an advisor and lecturer at the Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio (中央新聞紀錄電影製 片廠), with which he shot a lyrical cinematic portrait of the Chinese countryside, Before Spring (早春), just prior to the launch of the ­Great Leap Forward.27 Composed of three parts, “Winter,” “Early Spring,” and “Spring Festival,” Before Spring takes its viewers on a journey from Inner Mongolia to the Yangtze River delta, capturing natu­ral landscapes, local customs, and everyday life with a visual lyricism inspired by traditional Chinese ink paintings.28 ­After this brief sojourn, this “Flying Dutchman” went off to make anticolonial documentaries in Latin Amer­i­ca, Africa, Eu­rope, and elsewhere in Asia, not to return to China ­until 1971. With few interactions with foreign image-­makers in the 1950s and 1960s, as argued in chapter 3, documentary photog­raphers and filmmakers in China developed their own standards of visual truth. Just as the China Photog­raphers Association in 1956 prescribed that news photos had to be “truthful,” yet warned against random capture of phenomena, ccp leaders at the first conference on documentary and newsreel production in 1953 admonished filmmakers against “fabrication” or “concoction” (臆造), on the one hand, and “unedited naturalF orei g n L enses

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ism” (不經剪裁的自然主義), on the other.29 Between fabrication and naturalism, a per­sis­tent keyword for a “just image” of real­ity throughout the Mao era was dianxing 典型, which translates into “typical” but can also mean “representative” or “model.” Central to socialist realism more broadly, the idea of typicality can be traced back to Friedrich Engels’s much-­quoted phrase “typical characters ­under typical circumstances,” the portrayal of which became a standard requirement for literary production in Maoist China.30 In his 1942 Yan’an talks, Mao used the word dianxing both as an adjective and as a verb for writers and artists to synthesize real­ity into archetypes.31 Yet dianxing was significant not only for the production of socialist realist fiction but also as a criterion for documentary production. Establishing documentary filmmaking guidelines in the ­People’s Republic, leaders at the 1953 conference emphasized the “choice of real, typical, and essential material from real life” in addition to the shooting plan, script, and the direction of the production pro­cess.32 By the late 1950s, dianxing as a criterion of truthful repre­sen­ta­tion had evolved from meaning “typical” to meaning “model” and even “ideal.” During the ­Great Leap Forward, camera images ­were harnessed to bear witness to revolutionary “miracles” through images of agricultural bounty and industrial prowess. By the mid-1960s, Chinese visual culture shifted from a utopia of material plenitude to a utopia of proletarian power, best embodied by heroic figures of workers, peasants, and soldiers in propaganda posters, stage productions, sculpture, photography, and film.33 This “development of iconology across the arts,” as Yomi Braester suggests, resulted in a “porous border between fiction and documentary” cinema during the “seventeen years.”34 Notably, the “artistic documentaries” (藝術性紀錄片) pioneered in the ­Great Leap Forward used actors to reenact “real p ­ eople and real events.”35 While this new “documentary” genre was short-­lived, having socialist models play themselves and reenact heroic feats in photojournalism and newsreels became an accepted convention that persisted throughout the Mao years.36 Although few foreigners ­ were allowed to capture images in Maoist China, Maoist images circulated outside of Chinese borders beginning in the late 1950s—­not only to Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca but also in Africa, Latin Amer­i­ca, and other parts of Asia—­mainly via propaganda posters and pictorial magazines.37 Megan Ferry argues that such images provided a common ideological space for a transnational Maoism, whereby China served as a revolutionary model for other nations seeking and undergoing po­liti­cal change.38 Mainstream Western media, however, continued to depict Maoist China as an irrational and totalitarian state. For example, journalist Theodore White’s 1967 Emmy-­award-­winning tv documentary China: The Roots of Madness opens 156

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Figure 4.1. Opening montage from China: The Roots of Madness, a 1967 made-­ for-­TV documentary written by Theodore H. White.

with a voiceover narration: “Revolution in China, bloody and most terrible of all, an entire civilization blown apart. T ­ here are seven hundred million Chinese ­today, one-­quarter of humankind, and they are taught to hate.” T ­ hese words are illustrated with a chaotic montage of archival photos and footage (see figure 4.1) dating from the late Qing to the start of the Cultural Revolution, including: old men d ­ oing taichi, a ­woman caressing a naked (dead?) child, throngs of refugees, a Peking opera per­for­mance, a stone lion, the Empress Dowager, a kneeling man with a pigtail, warlords in vari­ous uniforms, Chiang Kai-­shek and Mao Zedong, fanatic-­looking youths raising guns, fists, F orei g n L enses

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or Mao’s portrait, soldiers singing off-­key, mass rallies, and Red Guards smashing something. T ­ hese images compress the narrative of the Chinese Revolution into a succession of tyrannies u ­ nder which the Chinese p ­ eople emerged as a mindless, violent, and crazy horde. It was to combat “unjust images” such as China: The Roots of Madness that Joris Ivens de­cided to return to China and make another film about the country in 1971. During a three-­month sojourn, Ivens and his partner Marceline Loridan met with top party leaders and went on an intensive tour of the country, even working for several days at a locomotive factory. Returning to Eu­rope, the pair reported their glowing impressions of Maoist China as an “example of the purity of a socialist state.”39 They took two hundred questions from the public as the starting point for their documentary proj­ect, the aim of which was to “reflect the Cultural Revolution and its influence on dif­fer­ent Chinese social classes.”40 At a time when Maoist China was so vilified in mainstream Western media, Ivens thought that the country “obviously needed a film” to improve its international reputation.41 Ivens and Loridan chose the members of their crew from the Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio, which gave them official authorization and unpre­ce­dented access. They spent fourteen months, from March 1972 to the end of 1973, shooting the film series, and then two more years for postproduction. The title of the twelve-­part film series, How Yukong Moved the Mountains (愚公移山), refers to an ancient fable about a foolish old man (Yukong) who, with the help of his sons, de­cided to remove two mountains in front of his ­house that blocked his way and his vision. When ridiculed for their efforts, Yukong replied that ­after his death, his sons would carry on, and that successive generations would eventually flatten the mountains. Moved by their per­sis­tence, Heaven sent down two fairies to carry away the mountains. Referring to the fable in a famous 1945 speech, Mao claimed that the two mountains facing the Chinese Revolution ­were feudalism and imperialism, and if Communist Party members followed Yukong’s example, they would also move Heaven, which is none other than the P ­ eople.42 For Ivens and Loridan, the Yukong myth also applied to their attempt to clear away the mountains of “slander” against Maoist China in the West so that other nations could share the “vision” of Maoist China as a revolutionary model. In their cinematic witnessing of the revolutionary transformations in Maoist China, Ivens and Loridan ­adopted Maoist documentary filmmaking practices akin to the photojournalism conventions discussed in chapter 3. Upon arrival, they first took time to learn about a given community, win its trust, and put its members at ease. This accorded with the Maoist tenet that artists 158

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Figure 4.2. Stills from Joris Ivens and Marceline Loridan, How Yukong Moved the Mountains, 1976.

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and writers must “experience life” (體驗生活) and go live among the ­people to be able to properly portray their lives—­what Xiaobing Tang calls a “socialist mode of cultural production.”43 In addition to capturing compelling visual images, Yukong includes many individual interviews and group discussions. Similar to ethnographic participant observation and what Bill Nichols ­later called an “interactive mode” of documentary, this approach allowed many subjects to emerge as “live and identifiable characters”44 instead of anonymous ­faces and bodies. The films in the twelve-­hour Yukong series thus sought to capture an epic pa­norama of Maoist China (figure 4.2). With the exception of the travelogue Shanghai, Impressions of a City, the other episodes are portraits of dianxing, or “typical,” workers, soldiers, villa­gers, students, ­women, and ethnic minorities, all discussing how the Cultural Revolution transformed their thoughts, lives, and communities. About Petroleum celebrates the workers in the oil fields of Daqing, a symbol of Chinese energy self-­sufficiency. The Generator Factory showcases how workers could criticize management through big-­character posters. The Pharmacy shows how a Shanghai pharmacy’s employees creatively experimented with new ways to “serve the ­people.” A ­Woman, A F ­ amily is a portrait of a model worker’s views on ­career, marriage, and ­women’s liberation. The Fishing Village focuses on a collective of female sailors and fishers. A Barracks provides glimpses of how army officers eat with the soldiers, and how soldiers and their families help local peasants in the fields and workers in the factories. The Football Incident zeroes in on a classroom discussion of a playground confrontation between a teacher and a student. Professor Tsien, once a target of strug­g le by Red Guards, recounts his thought reform since the Cultural Revolution. Taken as a ­whole, the Yukong films provide a testimony of faith in proletarian power by witnessing the radically egalitarian social relationships between workers and cadres, soldiers and officers, students and teachers, and ­women and men.

“Just an Image” as a Utopian Surface: Antonioni’s Skeptical Glance

Unlike Joris Ivens, Antonioni had never been to China before 1972 and was commissioned to make a film t­ here by the Italian TV station rai ­after the establishment of diplomatic relations between Italy and the PRC.45 Antonioni ­later recalls his imaginations of this distant land: “the Yellow River; the Blue Desert, the place where t­ here is so much salt that they make ­houses and streets out of salt, and therefore they are all white; the deserts; the mountains with animal shapes; the farmers dressed in fanciful clothes.”46 His documentary 160

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Figure 4.3. Shots of the Bund from Michelangelo Antonioni’s Chung Kuo, 1972 (left), and Ivens and Loridan, How Yukong Moved the Mountains, 1976 (right).

would retain, but also acknowledge and self-­critique, such Orientalist fantasies. That is, Antonioni knew too well that the China he was allowed to see was “utopian,” not in the sense of an ideal but in the sense of inaccessible. Antonioni arrived in China in May 1972 with an i­magined itinerary sketched out on a map, but his Chinese hosts had a dif­fer­ent plan. Antonioni recalls their negotiations: “Three entire days, closed up in a room of the h ­ otel, seated in armchairs arranged along the walls, in front of coffee ­tables and cups of tea, which a girl was continuously passing out and filling up. The center of the room, empty, was an im­mense space that made one uneasy, as though the ten thousand kilo­meters that separated China from Italy w ­ ere all concentrated ­there.”47 Indeed, the limits of any foreigner’s glimpse of Maoist China can be illustrated through two virtually identical shots in Chung Kuo and Yukong: the view of the Bund from the Peace ­Hotel where Antonioni and Ivens both stayed during their respective Shanghai sojourns (figure 4.3). The very frame and pane of that ­hotel win­dow was metonymic for the Western lens on Maoist China. ­After watching Antonioni’s film, French theorist Roland Barthes, who visited China in 1974, mused that if he had published his travel notes just as they ­were, “it would be exactly a piece of Antonioni.”48 Following the negotiations, Antonioni’s Italian crew fi­nally agreed to go along with the Chinese plan, a twenty-­two-­day itinerary that covered Beijing and the surrounding areas—­Suzhou, Nanjing, Shanghai, and rural Henan. Structured as a travelogue, the final 220-­minute film was divided into three parts for televisual transmission. It documents visits to tourist attractions that signify China’s ancient civilization (such as the G ­ reat Wall, Beijing’s Forbidden City, and Suzhou’s gardens and ­temples), and to the ­People’s Republic’s F orei g n L enses

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iconic sites (such as Tian­anmen Square, Nanjing Bridge, Red Flag Canal in Henan, and the founding site of the ccp in Shanghai). The film also features schools and kindergartens, markets and restaurants, factories and hospitals, the homes of workers and peasants, as well as a puppet show, a sports match, and an acrobatic per­for­mance. As was the case with Ivens and Loridan, all ­people and places that Antonioni was allowed to film ­were considered dianxing in the Maoist criterion of truth, with a slippery range of connotations from “typical” and “representative” to “model” and “ideal.” Despite harboring leftist sympathies, Antonioni was hardly a “true believer” in Maoism, unlike Joris Ivens. Instead of having faith in cinema’s capacities to “bear witness” to revolutionary change, or to “do justice” to China’s dignity in the world, Antonioni maintained skepticism and self-­reflexivity throughout the production of Chung Kuo. Combining Bill Nichols’s typologies of the “expository,” “observational,” and “reflexive” modes,49 Chung Kuo’s versatile hand-­held cinematography and Antonioni’s voiceover commentary often call attention to his cinematic rec­ord as “just an image,” or surface appearances. G ­ oing from site to site, Antonioni’s voiceover introduces the location, lets the audience look around for a few minutes, fills us in with what his guides just told him, or comments on the filmmaking pro­cess itself. In contrast to Ivens and Loridan, Antonioni includes no interviews and does not interact with his subjects. Instead, he seems more interested in archiving expressions, gestures, and the sounds of p ­ eople’s voices than in focusing on their discourses. While announcing that “the Chinese p ­ eople are the protagonists of our movie,” Antonioni underscores that his crew is “not pretending to understand China” b­ ecause “most of China remains inaccessible and forbidden.” Rather than a “just image” that conveys some deeper truth about the country, he was keenly aware of recording a collage of enigmatic surfaces, for he closes the film with ­these words: “China has opened its doors, but it still remains a distant and largely unknown world. We’ve given it but a single glance. ­There is an old saying in China: ‘You can depict a tiger’s skin, but not his bones. You can depict p ­ eople’s ­faces, but not their hearts.’ ” Antonioni was prob­ably unaware that this saying carries an insulting implication, as if saying China is rotten in the core though it looks fine on the outside. The tensions between appearance and real­ity had been a long-standing concern in Antonioni’s oeuvre, which, as Homay King argues, “embraces an aesthetic of surfaces.”50 In his canonical 1966 film Blow Up, the photographer protagonist attempts to reconstruct a hom­i­cide that he accidentally captured on film. He obsessively magnifies the details of his negatives u ­ ntil the developed photos turn into abstract grainy dots. Some of the probing cinematography 162

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of Chung Kuo is reminiscent of the photographer’s futile endeavor in Blow Up to capture the truth on camera. Segmenting details through close-­ups and zooms, establishing idiosyncratic connections by tracking and panning, the camera in Chung Kuo seems curious, voy­eur­is­tic, and aimless. All such movements draw attention to the mediation of the camera and the spontaneity of capture, thereby adding an ele­ment of self-­reflexivity to the images we see as fleeting glimpses of a traveler in a foreign land. In sum, both foreign film crews approached China as “utopia,” but in very dif­fer­ent senses: as a revolutionary model for the ­future or as an ancient “Orient” still to be fathomed. Whereas Ivens and Loridan considered themselves to be revolutionary combatants spearheading a “just image” of the Maoist revolution, Antonioni considered himself a tourist capturing “just an image” of an exotic, inaccessible foreign land. Whereas Ivens and Loridan operated with a hermeneutics of faith, Antonioni’s commentary and cinematography surrounded his snapshots with a hermeneutics of suspicion. Both crews, however, ­were more interested in the quotidian than the iconic, and both brought with them lightweight 16mm cameras with synchronous sound associated with the new observational documentary styles of cinema vérité and direct cinema.51 ­These technologies and practices broadened prior audiovisual recording thresholds and thus provide alternative cinematic testimonies of Maoist China rather than official images. As foreign guests, however, both had to work with an officially stipulated itinerary and point their cameras at what I call a “Maoist mise-­en-­scène.”

The Westerner’s Intrusive Camera versus the Maoist Mise-­en-­Scène

Having now contextualized Chung Kuo and Yukong in the longer history of Western filmmaking about China, as well as having analyzed the intentions and itineraries of the two foreign film crews to capture utopian “just images” of Maoist China, the next several sections shift to a discussion of what t­ hese films reveal about the media ecol­ogy of 1970s China. More than any other cinematic rec­ords from the Mao era, I argue, t­hese two documentaries render vis­i­ble a long-­standing Maoist visual regime characterized by spectacle and surveillance. Several critics have pointed to a par­tic­u­lar sequence in Chung Kuo as an archetypal encounter between a Western filmmaker and his non-­Western subjects, where the Western filmmaker is likened to a safari hunter who robs his native subjects of their image.52 In Lin County of Henan province, Antonioni insisted on taking his crew to a mountain village outside of their F orei g n L enses

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Figure 4.4. Antonioni’s crew entered a village that was not part of their official itinerary (stills from Chung Kuo).

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­official itinerary (figure 4.4). The surprise of the villa­gers, mixed with what the voiceover interprets as curiosity and fear, is vis­i­ble in their blatant stares into the camera.53 Most of them had prob­ably never seen a Westerner before. The camera meanders with spontaneous pans and zooms, ­eager to capture any subject that chances into its frame, including a man tying his pants ­after emerging from a latrine and a pig that urinates on the road. If such images offended the Chinese government, Eu­ro­pean critics at the time, such as Serge Daney of Cahier du Cinéma, ­were also disturbed by the Westerner who imposed his camera upon “­those for whom ­there exists no reversibility, no chance of becoming themselves ‘filmeurs,’ no possibility of participating in the image which is made of them, no hold on the image. Mad ­people, ­children, primitives, the excluded, filmed without hope (for them) of a reply, filmed ‘for their own good’ or for the sake of science or scandal: exoticism, philanthropy, horror.”54 Indeed, no consent is being sought or granted ­here, and the power imbalance between the filmmaker and his subjects is all too evident. With more information about the production, however, this sequence can yield a dif­fer­ent interpretation. Prior to their “surprise attack” on this village in Lin County, Antonioni’s crew had dutifully visited the province’s proud socialist achievement, Red Flag Canal, dug by hand during the G ­ reat Leap Forward, and a model agricultural commune that had received countless visitors. According to cinematographer Luciano Tovoli, the crew arrived at the village one eve­ning and promised to return the next morning, but overnight, all the walls of the village w ­ ere painted anew. Irked, Antonioni refused to film the village dressed up for his camera, claiming that he wanted to document rather than transform real­ity.55 Whereas Antonioni wanted to film an “au­then­tic” China, the village cadres returned the gaze of his camera with a careful mise-­ en-­scène, a less extreme form of staging than the cadres who staged “Sputnik harvests” for the eyes of the higher authorities during the ­Great Leap Forward, as discussed in chapter 3. Instead of a primitive society unassimilated to the modern image-­making apparatus of the movie camera, I argue that t­ hese Chinese villa­gers ­were hyper-­aware of themselves as images in the eyes of the outsiders, so they took ­great pains to create a camera-­ready mise-­en-­scène. Even in the village that Antonioni “invaded” with no advance warning, the cadre is shown swaggering in front of the camera, leading and blocking the camera’s view of the village in the backdrop. ­Here we have a triangulation of the power relationship that previous critics of Chung Kuo saw in binary terms: it is not only the foreigner’s camera versus the native subjects but rather a three-­way negotiation of visibility among the Western film crew, Chinese F orei g n L enses

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government officials, and ordinary Chinese p ­ eople. The village cadre, Antonioni tells and shows us, is giving instructions for the el­derly and the shabbily dressed to get out of sight, to dis­appear ­behind doors framed with revolutionary slogans (figure 4.4). Resembling theatrical stages on which actors must appear and dis­appear according to script, ­these red doorframes make vis­i­ble the official ideological frame that governed image-­making in Maoist China. In a sense, the village cadre was only trying to be patriotic and not allow his village and country to lose face in the eyes of the foreigners, yet it was by the same logic of exclusion that fallen politicians dis­appeared from published photo­ graphs and the G ­ reat Leap famine eluded photographic testimony. The villa­ gers in Antonioni’s film, however, had not yet rehearsed their act, and their dispersal before the camera that pursued them highlights the bound­aries between the profilmic on-­screen and off-­screen spaces, visibility and invisibility, repre­sen­ta­tion and exclusion. While indeed “mystif[ying], exotici[zing], and coloni[zing]”56 his subjects with the camera, pinning them down like butterflies, Antonioni is also making them vis­i­ble in a way that they had never been before and even making vis­i­ble the Maoist visual regime ­under which they had lived for de­cades. In the same year that Antonioni filmed t­ hese Henan villa­gers, Ivens and Loridan brought their crew to Xinjiang, chosen for its population of Uyghur minorities and for a “scoop,” which for the filmmakers means to film “in a region where no one has yet filmed.”57 When they arrived in Kashgar, Ivens wrote in retrospect, “I was allowed to make the most sumptuous directorial decisions [mise-­en-­scène] of my entire c­ areer.” Recalling his Hollywood friends’ suggestion for him to advise crowd scenes, Ivens thought that they would have been astounded by what Kashgar had to offer: At seven o­ ’clock in the morning, an intersection and w ­ hole streets enlivened with hundreds of extras: men and w ­ omen, all smiling, dressed in immaculate blue; and school c­ hildren, each wearing a brand-­new apron . . . ​ the mosque with several men sunk in prayer to show that ­there ­really was freedom of religion; a tradesman in a working-­class neighborhood—­a tinker—to convince us that individual enterprise ­really did exist in China; and as the climax of this astonishing display, a large store with happy citizens filing through it and picking products at ­will from fully stocked shelves.58 Had Ivens and Loridan been postmodernists exploring the dynamic interface between fact and fiction as well as the pro­cess of image-­making, they could have documented a spectacular feat of the Chinese official metteurs-­en-­ scène or stage man­ag­ers. The Kashgar authorities ­were ­eager to dress up their 166

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city to create a utopian image for their foreign guests to capture and disseminate. This was their “just image” in the sense of a public relations image or “real­ity as it should be,” but Ivens and Loridan instead wanted a “just image” in the sense of an au­then­tic and untampered “real­ity.” Antonioni, Ivens, and Loridan went to China in search of an au­then­tic world where social relations w ­ ere not mediated by mass-­produced images, only to find another kind of “society of spectacle”59 where the Maoist visual regime penetrated the most remote villages and peripheral “autonomous regions.” Even if they rarely saw films, the Henan villa­gers Antonioni encountered and the Kashgar “masses” at Ivens’s disposal ­were well used to playing their parts in a Maoist mise-­en-­scène that had long preexisted the presence of the foreigners’ cameras.

A Visual Regime of Spectacle and Surveillance

“In socie­ties where modern conditions of production prevail,” as French Marxist theorist Guy Debord famously proclaimed in 1967, “all of life is presented as an im­mense accumulation of spectacles.” More than a collection of images, the spectacle is “a social relation among p ­ eople, mediated by images.”60 Debord’s seminal theory of the “society of spectacle,” aimed to critique late capitalism, served as the motto of many May 1968 demonstrators in Paris, with reverberations throughout Western Eu­rope. Indeed, Godard’s 1970 dictum of “just images” arose out of the same intellectual movement, for which Maoist China presented a radical alternative to both the cap­i­tal­ist West and the Stalinist USSR. Yet both documentaries show that Chinese society ­under Mao was also mediated by images of another kind. Instead of the “commodity fetishism” in Debord’s theory, the Maoist “society of spectacle” was constituted through revolutionary per­for­mances and mutual surveillance. As I argued in chapter 3, beginning in the 1950s, photography and other mass-­disseminated images in the P ­ eople’s Republic helped to spread ideologically correct worldviews and to mobilize the masses to express and realize utopian visions. The p ­ eople, as Mao proclaimed, w ­ ere like blank sheets of paper on which the most beautiful pictures could be painted,61 so he liked to see the masses arranged into the “total artwork” of parades and rallies at Tian­anmen Square. Filmed and screened to hundreds of millions, t­ hose parades and rallies ­were occasions when, as Rey Chow puts it, “the masses came to ‘know’ themselves not only as the subject, the audience, but as the object, the spectacle, the movie.”62 The transformation of bodies into spectacles culminated in the Cultural Revolution, and the need to put on a per­for­mance of revolutionary F orei g n L enses

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enthusiasm ­under peer surveillance generated images of frenzied crowds even when individual participants did not feel particularly excited.63 Ban Wang argues that the Cultural Revolution created not only its own art but also a “way of life” that was “aesthetically driven, ritualistic, and theatrical.” A ­ fter all, “in the violent overhaul of the old and the introduction of the new, ­there was no longer a ‘natu­ral way’ of carry­ing oneself and living one’s life. One had to enter a prescribed ‘theatrical’ realm in which the individual acted out well-­ demarcated roles.”64 Prevalent in the Mao era and culminating in the Cultural Revolution was a competitive and exhibitionist per­for­mance of revolutionary fervor for the eyes of the authorities and the “masses.” The title and opening sequence of Chung Kuo pre­sent a self-­reflexive metacommentary on Maoist image-­making as ritualistic per­for­mance. Beginning his film tour at Tian­anmen Square, Antonioni’s voiceover states that this was “the place for parades, speeches, and public demonstrations,” where “Red Guards started their march for the Cultural Revolution.” T ­ here was no rally on the day of his visit, so he took snapshots of scattered Chinese tourists from the ground level and captured individual ­faces and gestures with telephoto close-­ups (figure 4.5, left). In par­tic­u­lar, he focuses on Chinese tourists lining up and getting ready to have their souvenir photos taken with Tian­anmen as a backdrop. In contrast to the official photographer directing each subject to stand at the same spot in order to take ceremonial, formulaic, and posed images on this revolutionary stage (figure 4.5, right), Antonioni wanted to capture his subjects unawares as they ­were tidying their hair or rearranging their collars for the photo-op, images that anticipate post-­Mao cinematic portrayals of Tian­anmen that, as Yomi Braester argues, “juxtaposed the official images with the citizens’ unscripted life.”65 ­After wandering away from Tian­anmen Square, Antonioni takes us to a hospital where a ­woman is giving birth by Caesarean delivery and receiving anesthesia with acu­punc­ture. The camera patiently stares at the long n ­ eedles penetrating vari­ous parts of her body, a procedure that combines vis­i­ble Western surgery and the invisible mysteries of Chinese medicine. Wrapped up in gauze and immobilized to the operating ­table like the victim of a guillotine magic trick, the patient is shown eating a pear while the doctors cut open her womb. Even the interiority of her body is rendered into a spectacular demonstration of a revolutionary miracle to be witnessed by the foreigner’s camera.66 Next, we follow Antonioni to a Beijing kindergarten where ­children perform song-­and-­dance numbers in praise of Chairman Mao. Even at this tender age, the ­children can coordinate their arms, legs, and voices into sculptural patterns. Turning bodies into spectacles of revolutionary faith, t­hese song-­ 168

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Figure 4.5. Left: title sequence of Antonioni’s Chung Kuo, showing tourists at Tian­anmen Square queuing to have their photos taken. Right: an official image of how Tian­anmen ­ought to be photographed as a photo spread, intended as a correction of Antonioni’s Chung Kuo, China Pictorial, July 1974.

and-­dance numbers also served as a form of body discipline that would evolve into military drills, calisthenics, and marches (figure 4.6), captured throughout Chung Kuo and Yukong. As Laikwan Pang astutely argues, “the Cultural Revolution involved a huge campaign of bodily reengineering,” from “body perfection” in revolutionary ballet to “body torture” in strug­g le sessions.67 The ­human body was so central to Maoist utopian visions b­ ecause it was “an ideal self to be achieved—­a yearning for the promise of the revolution.”68 Collecting expressions and gestures not discernible from textual rec­ords, both documentaries pre­sent a repertoire of revolutionary per­for­mances by ordinary Chinese that make manifest the Maoist society of spectacle. Both Chung Kuo and Yukong feature anonymous crowds on streets and squares, and in villages, as well as in shops, factories, and schools (see, for example, figure 4.2). They march in pro­cessions, travel by truckloads, exercise in groups, study in circles, work on assembly lines, eat in canteens, and sleep in dormitories. Work, life, and leisure are collectivized, and many families are used to seeing each other only periodically. Crowds constitute spectators and spectacles at cele­brations of model workers, at the launch of a ship in Shanghai, at a factory’s annual “long march” through the countryside. Beyond festive occasions, F orei g n L enses

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Figure 4.6. Disciplining the bodies of ­children and youth (stills from Chung Kuo).

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Figure 4.7. A puppet show and an acrobatic per­for­mance close the first and last thirds of Chung Kuo.

e­ very filming location is turned into a spectacle through the presence of the camera and the foreign filmmakers. Most interviews in Yukong are conducted with small groups, so when individuals speak up, they seem intensely aware of being watched by their peers. Far more skeptical than Ivens and Loridan, Antonioni’s sensitivity to the theatrical, spectacular, and orchestrated nature of what he saw before his camera is manifest in his choice to conclude the first and last thirds of Chung Kuo with a marionette orchestra and an acrobatic per­for­mance (figure 4.7). Each begins with audiences filing into the theatre and ends with the curtains closing on cheery yet wooden painted ­faces. Chinese critics in the 1970s denounced Antonioni for suggesting that Chinese ­children ­were like puppets and that Maoist “art workers” w ­ ere held up by po­liti­cal strings.69 During the film’s last twenty minutes, Shanghai acrobats employ s­ imple, everyday props, such as bowls and plates, to put on a mesmerizing spectacle. Both Homay King and Dan Edwards have pointed to the acrobatic conclusion as “retroactively cod[ing] the entire film . . . ​as a recording of a series of per­for­mances and displays,” 70 as well as of “a real­ity the regime carefully stage-­managed for foreign eyes.” 71

The Margins of Official Repre­sen­ta­tions

If all of China ­were a stage, and all Chinese men and ­women ­were actors, ­there ­were still imperfect rehearsals, spontaneous lapses, and tears at the edges of the stage set. It is the inclusion of accidental figures and unscripted moments alongside the iconic images and polished per­for­mances that distinguish both Chung Kuo and the Yukong series from official documentary newsreel productions. F orei g n L enses

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Figure 4.8. Antonioni’s juxtaposition of official posters with more down-­to-­ earth figures at the margins (stills from Chung Kuo).

To achieve true “realism (pretty word, rare ­thing),” critic Serge Daney argues with re­spect to both documentaries, it is necessary “to break such a premise-­en-­scène” and “to render it vis­i­ble.” 72 In Antonioni’s case, this is often achieved through the telephoto zoom, the hidden camera, and sudden ­ambushes, whereas in the case of Ivens and Loridan, it is achieved through the long takes of observational cinema. From their Shanghai h ­ otel win­dows (figure 4.3), we see above all the g­ iant propaganda poster of a robust worker, but both films pan and zoom into the tiny h ­ uman figures at its margins, as if questioning the relationship between the iconic model image and the real Chinese p­ eople. Chung Kuo includes many such juxtapositions between gigantic posters of heroic workers, peasants, and soldiers and more down-­to-­earth figures passing by, such as laborers dwarfed by the cargo in their handcarts (figure 4.8). Connected through a pan, a zoom, or a cut, t­ hese two ­orders of images in Chung Kuo point to a disjunction between the utopian image and the quotidian real­ity in the Maoist visual regime. 172

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Whereas the slices of life captured by Antonioni contradicted, undercut, and undermined omnipresent heroic images, Ivens and Loridan ­were ­eager to humanize their Chinese heroes. The Yukong series begins in Daqing, the icon of Chinese industry and self-­reliance, and devotes a sequence to its legendary founder, “Iron Man” Wang Jinxi 王進喜 (1923–1970), who led the drilling team that discovered oil in Daqing and with it the promise of China’s energy selfsufficiency. The subject of many propaganda posters and statues, Wang Jinxi also appears as black-­and-­white “archival footage” in Yukong, reenacting his heroic feat of kicking open some frozen reservoirs and jumping into the mud and stirring it with his own body for a 1966 “newsreel documentary” (figure 4.9, left). Whereas archival footage usually adds an aura of authenticity, h ­ ere the dramatic lighting and acting appear much more staged and artificial than the vérité style of the rest of the film.73 The voiceover refers to the pioneers, the “iron men” who are now dead, and then reverts to the pre­sent tense in color: interviews with the more ordinary heroes of Daqing in 1972, men who are homesick and ­women who rarely see their hard-­working husbands. The film also shows their everyday activities from ­going shopping to getting a haircut (figure 4.9, right), thereby presenting a dialectic between the heroic and the quotidian, which Xiaobing Tang posits as “an embedded structure of ambivalence” between “passions for a utopian f­uture” and a longing “for a fulfilling everyday life that is however constantly postponed.” 74 Whereas Antonioni filmed the spatial margins of the Chinese official mise-­ en-­scène, Ivens and Loridan captured temporal margins through long takes, the twelve-­hour length of their film series, and the eigh­teen months they spent on production. Members of their crew recall that “wherever we took them had been planned ahead of time, but once we got ­there, it was up to them what and how to film.” Ivens and Loridan usually interviewed members of any given community before deciding on their focus, which sometimes conflicted with the wishes of the local authorities. According to their former Chinese assistants, the interviewees ­were preselected and had learned some lines by heart, but the interactive mode of interviewing without rehearsals allowed the subjects to speak off-­script with greater spontaneity and candor. Ivens and Loridan further trained their Chinese cinematographer Li Zexiang 李則翔 not to use the tripod but rather to keep his ears and eyes open so as to move his camera accordingly. Insisting that the camera should keep rolling even when nothing exciting appears to be happening, they also hindered interventions to aestheticize the real­ity before their lens, such as wiping off the dirt from a tractor driver’s face.75 Their Chinese crew in turn learned that Ivens wanted every­ thing to look “natu­ral” and hence perfected their mise-­en-­scène accordingly.76 F orei g n L enses

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Figure 4.9. The heroes of Daqing: “Iron Man” in official newsreels and the quotidian lives of oil workers filmed in How Yukong Moved the Mountains.

Most films in the Yukong series revolve around the everyday lives of a given community and include extended conversations with their subjects. Yet they show not only the speeches of model workers onstage but also other model workers learning their lines offstage. Whereas Antonioni dismissed the many meetings and group discussions at schools and factories as “repetitive and boring,” Ivens and Loridan filmed such meetings at length and thereby allowed the audience to discern a power strug­g le beneath the liturgy of clichés, between teachers and students, between workers and management, sometimes even tensions within the same ­family. As Serge Daney argues, “the most embittered and violent ideological and po­liti­cal strug­g les speak the same language,” but their discourse should not be taken for granted, but rather as a “complex and rich” po­liti­cal practice.77 This is apparent in the “big-­character poster” campaign launched by the workers against the management in The Generator Factory. In The Football Incident, a high school class holds a discussion on a student who kicked a soccer ball over the head of a teacher who told him to stop playing (figure 4.10). The meeting turns out to be a mini-­criticism session, where the semblance of demo­cratic voices turns into unan­i­mous denunciations of the accused, who must eventually admit his “guilt” ­under peer pressure. In A ­Woman, A ­Family, a young w ­ oman excitedly shows her f­ amily a new pair of pants she bought—­since she has only one other pair—­but every­one criticizes her “materialism” and forgetting of revolutionary values. The elders’ grandiose reproaches and the young ­woman’s hanging head suggest a domestic economy in straitened circumstances. To the extent that many films in the Yukong series are portraits of individuals, collectives, and institutions, it is a much more so­cio­log­i­cal exploration of early 1970s China. 174

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Figure 4.10. A minicriticism session from A Football Incident in How Yukong Moved the Mountains.

Denouncing the Foreign Lens

When Antonioni finished editing Chung Kuo in early 1973, he screened it for about two dozen representatives of the Chinese Embassy in Rome. Yu Quanxi 郁泉錫, the embassy interpreter who had translated the film during the screening, recalled that the representatives found the film “just OK,” neither good nor bad.78 Yet Antonioni recalled being told by a Chinese diplomat at the end of the screening, “You, Signor Antonioni, have looked at our country with a very affectionate eye. And we thank you.” 79 The film went on to screen in Italian cinemas and to be broadcast on tele­vi­sion in Western Eu­rope, the United States, and Taiwan. By the end of 1973, the film caught the attention of Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, and was screened for the entire ccp Central Committee Politburo and for members of the Central Broadcasting and Tele­vi­sion Bureau. Decrying the documentary for “uglifying” (丑化) socialist China, Jiang Qing F orei g n L enses

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or­ga­nized an investigation committee to track down the “traitors” who had invited and collaborated with Antonioni, with Zhou Enlai as an implicit target.80 Given Jiang Qing’s ­earlier ­career as an actress in Shanghai in the 1930s, she was likely reminded of the nationalist protests against Hollywood films for being “insulting to China” and hence she rehashed a similar rhe­toric. In January 1974, the ­People’s Daily published an editorial denouncing the film and launched a nationwide campaign to criticize Antonioni. Although the film was never officially shown in cinemas, some recall attending screenings of Chung Kuo with a denunciatory voiceover narration as well as being assigned to thereafter write an essay criticizing the film.81 A book titled The Chinese ­People Are Not to Be Humiliated (中國人民不可侮) collected denunciations of the film by local officials at e­ very shooting location. As one critic put it: “The choice of e­ very shot in the film shows the director’s position and point of view; the camera a­ ngles, lighting, colors all vividly reflect the filmmaker’s thought and emotions. All techniques of cinema follow certain po­liti­cal purposes.” 82 According to such an ideological coding of cinematic form, cold colors and shadows denoted a miserable life u ­ nder communism; a high-­angle shot of the proletariat and a low-­angle shot of the Buddhist ­temple expressed the director’s contempt for the former and veneration of the latter.83 Denunciations of Chung Kuo may be classified into three interrelated objections. First, Antonioni was a bad guest whose hidden cameras and sudden ambushes ­were intrusive and disrespectful. Even by con­temporary Western documentary ethical standards, most subjects captured on camera—­such as the Lin County villa­gers mentioned e­ arlier (figure 4.4) and traders at a rural “black market”—­never consented to being filmed. For the traders, visibility spelled the danger of exposure and punishment, and ­here Antonioni’s camera became complicit with state surveillance. At the same time, the foreigner’s camera documented a shadow economy within the planned economy. This ambivalent relationship between the dark folds of Chinese society and media exposure continues to date, and e­ very Chinese excluded from official repre­ sen­ta­tion must still weigh the risks and benefits of visibility before appearing before the camera of a foreign journalist. At another extreme, Antonioni did have permission to film the aforementioned Caesarean delivery with acu­punc­ture anesthesia, a scene many found difficult to watch—­even the cameraman closed his eyes while filming.84 This sequence, however, was criticized not for its violation of the ­mother’s privacy but rather for its “slandering of Chinese medicine,” since “the extreme close-­ ups on the tiny acu­punc­ture ­needles made them look big and thick, thereby 176

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creating a terrifying atmosphere.” The m ­ other was quoted for her outrage at Antonioni’s “distortion” of and “attack on acu­punc­ture anesthesia.” 85 In other words, at stake was not her personal rights but rather the international image of Chinese medicine. Besides intrusive camerawork, another set of criticisms charged Antonioni for privileging the old and “backward” over the new and “revolutionary” aspects of China, for filming an old ­woman’s bound feet and oxcarts rather than automobiles, donkey mills rather than tractors, boats rather than ships, straw ­houses rather than cement buildings, wooden bridges rather than railway bridges, weeds rather than crops, taichi and street gymnastics instead of modern sports halls and swimming pools, and so forth (for examples, see figures 4.4, 4.8, left sides of 4.11 and 4.12, and upper row of 4.14). Reminiscent of the iconography of “feudal China” that featured so prominently in films like China: The Roots of Madness (figure 4.1), such images, for the Chinese authorities, insidiously communicated the enduring backwardness of China despite the Communist Revolution. Rather than to historical sensitivities in a Cold War visual economy, Susan Sontag attributes the violent reaction against Antonioni’s film to “certain old conventions of decorum in conduct and imagery” in China, “the characteristic visual taste of ­those at the first stage of camera culture.” By insisting that China was indeed a modern nation, Sontag writes, they end up making “a negative cata­logue of all the devices of modern photography.” Hence they failed to appreciate “the beauty of the cracked peeling door, the picturesqueness of disorder, the force of the odd ­angle and the significant detail, the poetry of the turned back.” 86 Conflating traditional and revolutionary Chinese aesthetics, Sontag, like Antonioni’s commentary in Chung Kuo, stumbles upon their disavowed similarity. Antonioni was criticized for pairing revolutionary model opera ­music with images of bodhisattvas in a t­emple, hence suggesting that “our heroes are no more than idols” and that “revolutionary operas are like Buddhist chanting.” 87 ­Because Antonioni’s editors did not understand Chinese, this could hardly have been a deliberate move, but the criticism betrays a profound anxiety about the nature of the new revolutionary culture as a substitution for “feudal superstitions.” As we can see in Chung Kuo, Mao’s portrait has taken the place of the ancestor’s portrait above e­ very ­family altar, while much of the revolutionary propaganda art takes on traditional color schemes and princi­ples of composition. The third and angriest set of criticisms focused on Antonioni’s way of filming—or not filming—­Communist icons, such as Tian­anmen Square and the Nanjing Bridge: F orei g n L enses

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The film . . . ​does not show the pa­norama of this g­rand, magnificent Square and takes shots of Tien An Men Gate, which the Chinese ­people ardently love, in such a way as to strip it of all grandeur. On the other hand, a lot of film is used to photo­graph crowds in the Square; t­ here are sometimes long-­shots, sometimes close-­ups, sometimes from the front and sometimes from ­behind, at one moment throngs of heads and at another legs and feet moving helter-­skelter. ­These shots are intended to make Tien An Men Square look like a boisterous marketplace. Is this not aimed at defaming our ­great motherland? In photographing the Yangtze River Bridge at Nanking, the camera was intentionally turned on this magnificent modern bridge from very bad a­ ngles in order to make it appear crooked and tottering. A shot of trousers hanging on a line to dry below the bridge is inserted as a mockery of the scene.88 Thus Antonioni failed to re-­present ­these iconic, even sacred sites according to Chinese formal conventions, violating what Serge Daney calls a “brand image” (image de marqué): “­Every prolonged strug­g le forges an image of itself that is a brand image, a banner, an emblem on which its identity rests.” 89 Any fragmentation or distortion of that proper image was considered an affront to the Chinese nation and revolution, and this was why Chinese officials called Antonioni a fascist. Yet as Umberto Eco discerns, while the shot of Tian­anmen Square was seen by the Chinese authorities “as the denunciation of swarming mass disorder,” for Antonioni an “ordered shot would be the picture of death, or would evoke the Nuremberg stadium.”90 For Eu­ro­pean eyes, the squads of Chinese students carry­ing spades like guns as they march into the countryside—­ appearing throughout Chung Kuo and occasionally in Yukong—­could be reminiscent of the l­ abor ser­vice (Arbeitsdienst) in Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the ­Will, giving credence to Sontag’s observation that “features of fascist art proliferate in the official art of communist countries.”91 The more relevant point, however, is that camera images take on meanings by interacting with an existing repertoire of images in the cultural memories of their audiences. Since most Chinese criticisms of Antonioni’s Chung Kuo in 1974 ­were written as po­liti­cal assignments, to what extent do they represent the opinions of the “Chinese p ­ eople,” few of whom had actually seen the film and yet had to criticize it? Sure enough, the campaign against Antonioni was launched from above, but it solicited “grassroots participation” down to the kindergarten level. A ­children’s ditty at the time went: 紅小兵，志氣高， 要把社會主義祖國建設好。 178

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學馬列，批林彪， 從小革命勁頭高。 紅領巾，胸前飄， 聽黨指示跟黨跑。 氣死安東尼奧尼， 五洲四海紅旗飄。

­ ittle Red Guards, heads up high, L ­We’ll build our socialist homeland right Up with Marx and Lenin, down with Lin Biao, Passionate revolutionary since I could count Bright red scarf waving on my chest, Listen to the Party, the Party knows best Make that Antonioni oh so mad The red flag flies from east to west.92 For ­children and adults, denouncing Antonioni meant playing their part in a collective sing-­along and professing their faith in the party. The campaign also heightened mass vigilance against foreigners’ cameras as inherently hostile. Among the first cohort of Western students to study in the ­People’s Republic, Isabel Hilton arrived in China in the fall of 1973 and, several months ­later, had to participate in the campaign to denounce Antonioni. On a walk with her camera around her university, Hilton took snapshots of a few w ­ omen mixing cement on the street and was ­stopped by a local cadre: “Why did you deliberately come to this backward, run-­down part of Beijing to take an anti-­ Chinese photo­graph?” Hilton tried to explain that her pictures showed China’s success at getting ­women to “hold up half the sky,” but her interrogator was not impressed. A small crowd formed, and each person stepped forward to repeat the same accusatory question. Hilton ­later realized that “anyone who did not speak up risked being accused afterwards of failing to defend the honor of the nation against t­ hese ‘­little Antonionis.’ ” Yet “the indignation level was dropping as the hour of the eve­ning meal approached,” and the standstill came to an end ­after two police officers arrived, confiscated the film, and escorted ­Hilton back to campus.93 This anecdote suggests the strained, half-­hearted, and performative nature of the criticism by ­those at the grass roots, who learned to be ashamed of their real­ity as backward and therefore unrepresentable. Indeed, self-­effacement became the P ­ eople’s best defense of national dignity. Chinese officials also wanted to “strike back at Antonioni” by retaking what they considered correct images of revolutionary China. A ­ fter watching F orei g n L enses

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Figure 4.11. Antonioni’s shot of the Nanjing Bridge in Chung Kuo (top left) versus a “correct image” of the same bridge (right) published in China Pictorial, July 1974. Antonioni also filmed Suzhou (bottom left), often referred to as “China’s Venice.”

Chung Kuo, producers at the China Central Tele­vi­sion (cctv) submitted a petition to film a “documentary counterattack against Antonioni to clarify the truth and restore our dignity.” 94 Local officials also took their own corrective mea­sures. Liang Shengting 梁生廷, who worked in the Cultural Bureau of Lin County, revisited the elementary school filmed by Antonioni, asked all students to change into clean clothes, and then took a set of photo­graphs of them playing ping pong.95 A teacher at a Nanjing model kindergarten that was filmed by Antonioni recalled how her class used to receive countless impor­ tant visitors, such as Cambodian Prince Sihanouk, so the ­children “­didn’t get stage fright” (不怯場) when they saw foreign guests. Although the ­children prepared song-­and-­dance numbers, Antonioni was only interested in “what­ ever was dirty and chaotic . . . ​straddling in and out of the win­dow . . . ​he loved to film the kids’ toilets.”96 During the campaign against Antonioni, the Xin­hua News Agency retook pictures of the same kindergarten as a “rebuttal against Antonioni.” One of ­those photos—­showing a row of colorfully dressed ­children washing their hands with white basins and towels—­was ­later published in the July 1974 issue of China Pictorial (人民畫報) as part of a twenty-­page photo spread showcasing the glorious socialist achievements of the places that Antonioni had visited, alongside criticisms of the Italian director (see the right sides of figures 4.5, 4.11, 4.12, and 4.13).97 Using the same visual conventions 180

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Figure 4.12. Antonioni’s shots of a village school in Chung Kuo (left) versus a “correct image” (right) of a socialist kindergarten published in China Pictorial, July 1974.

that were discussed in chapter 3, t­ hese photo­graphs showcase architecture in high-­angle pa­noramas to highlight their monumental grandeur. ­Human figures—be they families, ­children, workers, or peasants—­gather in unified circles with a variety of sculpted poses and smiling ­faces, their gazes fixated on each other, on the work at hand, or on some utopian f­ uture offscreen—­ what Stephanie Donald calls the “socialist realist gaze.”98 Their rules of composition correct the fragmentations and contingencies of Antonioni’s drifting camerawork.

China as Utopia in the Eyes of Western Beholders

The campaign against Antonioni soon spilled over China’s borders to launch a re-­reception of Chung Kuo in the West. ­After two de­cades of closed communications, growing numbers of Western “revolutionary tourists” brought back impressionistic accounts of Mao’s China from their carefully curated travels.99 Chung Kuo and the Yukong series can be considered cinematic travelogues in the same vein, highlighting two utopian conceptions of China in the 1970s Western imaginary: as an ancient and exotic other or as a successful revolution and a model of alternative modernity. F orei g n L enses

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Figure 4.13. The correct way to photo­graph youths, smiling and in full bloom, China Pictorial, July 1974. Contrast this with Antonioni’s images as seen in figures 4.6 and 4.12 (left).

Antonioni’s view of China as a timeless other was reproduced in Sontag’s and Eco’s essays on Chung Kuo and its Chinese reception, commentaries based primarily on an East versus West, them versus us dichotomy. With the ironic subtitle “The Difficulty of Being Marco Polo,” Eco’s essay emphasizes the “search for China as a potential utopia by the frenetic, neurotic West,” whereas Sontag contrasts “a society unified by an ideology of stark, unremitting conflict” against “this society, unified by the denial of conflict.”100 Echoing official Chinese criticism of Chung Kuo, Western leftist critics asked to see a juxtaposition of China’s pre­sent against its past, hence objecting to the film for portraying China “as if it had always been like this, [without] interrogating its pre­sent and past relationships with the world.”101 Yukong, however, would satisfy one’s 182

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“minimal expectation” that a film about China—­“a society which itself lets the ­people speak”102—­should “at least let the Chinese speak, and . . . speak . . . ­­ historically of China.”103 Much speaking about the past throughout Yukong follows the Maoist po­liti­cal ritual of “remembering bitterness,” testimonies of suffering and salvation as well as of strug­g le and sacrifice, all of which help to sanctify the revolution.104 Whereas some of the intradiegetic audience in the films appear to have grown weary of ­these remembering bitterness rituals, Western critics of Yukong found such speeches power­ful and called the film an example of “cinematic Maoism,”105 a cinema that makes the subaltern speak, a cinema that, like the Communist state, gives “voice” to the ­People, whose individual “histories” are narrated to constitute a single epic of History. In the 1970s, the questions Western leftists had about China ­were tied to antiauthoritarian, antibureaucratic, antiwar, socialist, egalitarian, feminist, and environmental movements at home.106 For ­those who perceived their own society as “wasteful and acquisitive,” Harry Harding points out, Maoist China “promoted socialism rather than capitalism, harmony over competition, collectivism over individualism, and egalitarianism over modernization.”107 For this audience, the principal objective of a film “on China” must be, as French critic Jacques Aumont puts it, “to contribute to the pro­gress of the revolutionary consciousness and recognition of socialism in France.”108 This contingent of the Western audience was interested in China as a po­liti­ cal symbol and utopian alternative. Protesting against alienated ­labor, they wanted to see the success of collectivization and the achievement of class equality. With burgeoning awareness of the environment and a vocal feminist movement, the audiences saw poverty-­induced recycling and technological insufficiencies as signs of a green movement and a militarization of the entire population, male and female, as liberation of ­women. What became clear only ­later ­were the mass deforestations and the other environmental degradations that followed Mao’s belief in the power of humanity to dominate nature109— an alternative interpretation of the Yukong myth. The gender politics of the Mao era, rallying u ­ nder the slogan of “­women hold up half the sky,” indeed broke down many traditional gender roles, but as Thomas Waugh notes, gender equality advanced much farther on the vocational arena than on the home front, and married ­couples often lived apart to fulfill the demands of their jobs.110 In the 1974 campaign, the Chinese authorities also called on Ivens and Loridan, still editing Yukong, to publicly denounce Antonioni. They responded with tactful silence, even though they did not think highly of Chung Kuo.111 However, when they sent their cinematographer Li Zexiang to do some F orei g n L enses

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supplementary shooting, he reverted back to filming what was staged for his camera and seemed to have “forgotten” all vérité techniques—­the campaign against Antonioni served as a much more forceful counterpedagogy. In early 1975, Ivens and Loridan screened rough cuts to representatives of the Ministry of Culture, which came up with sixty-­one “suggestions for revision,” objecting to gray skies, an old ­woman’s bound feet, the figure of a handcart puller, and so forth. The Yukong series might have suffered a similar condemnation or might have been altered beyond recognition had Zhou Enlai not passed on a message to Ivens to take the film and leave China.112 With Mao’s death and the arrest of the “Gang of Four” in the autumn of 1976, the po­liti­cal tides had turned and Chinese media not only began to unveil the Cultural Revolution’s h ­ uman tragedies, but also criticized virtually all kinds of “new-­born ­things” (新生事物)—­formerly shown off to and praised by foreign visitors. Among Western intellectuals, as Harry Harding describes it, “fascination with and idealization of the PRC in the mid-1970s gave way to more dispassionate and cynical views by the early 1980s.”113 The same phenomena w ­ ere now perceived differently; for example, poverty was no longer spiritually ennobling but simply debasing; sending elites to the countryside was no longer a sign of egalitarianism but rather an act of persecution. In this new ideological atmosphere, parts of the Yukong series w ­ ere shown briefly in China, whereas other parts that featured supporters of the Gang of Four w ­ ere withdrawn from circulation. The film continued to be screened in E ­ u­rope and North Amer­i­ca, though Ivens would come to be attacked as a “liar, propagandist, Chinese lunatic, blind communist, and trumpeter for an inhuman system.”114 According to Loridan, the film made them unemployed for ten years.115 In the 1970s, Chung Kuo and Yukong ­were praised and condemned on ideological grounds by both Chinese and Western film critics, who would agree that forms are not neutral, nor is “real­ity,” and that “­behind the auteur and his rich subjectivity ­there is always, in the last analy­sis, a class which is speaking.”116 If Chinese visual culture during the Cultural Revolution, with its own inviolable brand images, can be called iconographic, then Western film theory in the 1970s—­under the influence of semiotics, Marxism, and psychoanalysis as well as u ­ nder the moral pressure of 1968—­was dominated by what Martin Jay calls “iconophobia,” a severity of spirit that treated cinema suspiciously, that “did not appreciate films but rather conspired to ‘read’ them as symptoms of hidden structures.”117 Another three de­cades would pass before ideological criticism gave way to a re-­viewing of ­these films—­not as po­liti­cal discourse but as a reemerged visual memory. 184

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Foreign Lenses as Visual Memories

In 2004, thirty-­two years a­ fter it was made, Chung Kuo was publicly screened in China for the first time without truncation or denunciatory voice-overs—to eight hundred p ­ eople at an Antonioni retrospective at the Beijing Film Acad­ emy. Unable to speak more than a few syllables a­ fter suffering a stroke, Antonioni sent a message through his wife: “The idea that Chung Kuo can now be publicly seen in Beijing gives him enormous satisfaction and totally vindicates his efforts.”118 For this audience, many born in the 1970s, watching the film was like a “pilgrimage” to both Antonioni the auteur—­whose works ­were tremendously influential for con­temporary Chinese filmmakers—­and to the “mysterious China” of 1972, a world buried deep in their early childhood memories. Many responses focused on the “truthfulness” of t­ hese images: “We kept on judging: which parts did he capture for real, and which parts are staged? But even if it was staged, was it any less real? Collective life, po­liti­cal slogans, per­ for­mances, meetings, studies, praises, prosperity. . . . ​Are ­these not real slices of life from that era?”119 Distinguishing between “manufactured scenes” u ­ nder official surveillance and “impossible-­to-­manufacture real­ity,” another viewer wrote: “You can feel how the camera takes avid deep breaths when it dashes into a real world.”120 Chung Kuo met with a broader audience in subsequent years through digital remediation: by the time of Antonioni’s passing in 2007, pirated dvds of Chung Kuo could easily be purchased in metropolitan video stores, and ­after several more years, the film could be downloaded or streamed on the internet. The digitally remediated film has engendered much online commentary as well as intergenerational conversations, since many younger viewers born ­after the Cultural Revolution shared Antonioni’s film with their parents who had once participated in its criticism without ever having watched it. Such re-­viewings led to new interpretations of the film’s documentary ethics: Instead of hidden cameras or snatched images, Antonioni’s telephoto close-­ups came to be understood as an affable gesture to approach the Chinese ­people.121 Although some viewers still found Antonioni condescending,122 many also saw his re­spect for the Chinese ­people and thanked him for recording “real images” of Maoist China, defined against the available visual legacies from the Cultural Revolution—­the carefully posed and composed posters, pictorials, photos, newsreels, and revolutionary model works—as well as against the retrospective reconstructions in cinema and tele­vi­sion; against both socialist realism culminating in the “three prominences” and against scar lit­er­a­ture, art, and film that portray the Cultural Revolution as the “dark ages” of endless F orei g n L enses

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vio­lence and trauma. Instead of “positive” or “negative” images, they saw nuances: “Our impression of the Cultural Revolution is a sea of green and blue, but close-­viewing reveals that the young ­women’s clothes have fine checkered patterns and some pretty collars—­even in ­those days, ­people never gave up their pursuit of beauty.”123 Instead of a world dominated by politics, many saw serene and leisurely everyday life, intimate communities, “pure” and “­simple” ­people, especially in juxtaposition with China in the 2000s—­a restless society of strangers drowning in the pandemonium of bulldozers and commodities. Even t­ hose born in the 1980s recognized with nostalgia the songs, the radio gymnastics, the fashions, and the games from their childhood. In this sense, the film became a mirror and time machine: “In the lens/mirror are our grandparents, our parents, and ourselves.”124 Moreover, such comments suggest a retrospective viewing of Antonioni’s film as a kind of “home video” from an era when ordinary Chinese had no such memory technology at their disposal. One popu­lar review came up with a wedding analogy: it was as if a young ­couple had asked a talented videographer to film their wedding, but his meandering shots showed the bride in unfinished make-up, the groom flirting with the bridesmaid, and a bunch of bawdy poor relatives, with the guests of honor nowhere to be seen. The ­couple got so mad that they raised an uproar against the videographer, but many years ­later, the old ­couple watched the dusty old tape and rediscovered visual rec­ords of their youth in many inconspicuous details. By contrast, they ­couldn’t recognize themselves in the cosmetic studio wedding photos.125 Also in a self-­reflexive mode, documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang commented on the “mono-­simplicity” (单一) of Antonioni’s China from 1972. Whereas the monochrome cities (单一色彩的城市) evoked for him a sense of nostalgia, the monotony of p ­ eople’s expressions and speech (表情和 说话的单一) evoked terror, as if “­people’s brains w ­ ere tightly wound up.” In this fleeting travelogue with an officially imposed itinerary, Wu Wenguang notes that Antonioni’s camera seized many images of ­children singing the same songs and playing the same games, and he mused that the c­ hildren socialized through such mass rituals are now in their prime and populating all spheres of life in China ­today.126 Although the twelve-­hour Yukong series has never been publicly screened in its entirety in China, in 2009, cctv’s “Old Story” (老故事) digital channel showed a four-­part documentary, China in the Eyes of Joris Ivens, which included brief excerpts from the Yukong films and interviews with Chinese members of Ivens’s crew. Another cctv digital channel, “Nostalgic Stage” (懷舊劇場), rebroadcast Ivens’s 1958 documentary Before Spring. ­These tv programs highlight the films’ aesthetic qualities and their testimonies to the idealism of their 186

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time, without pointing out their omissions. In 2009, the Eu­ro­pean Foundation Joris Ivens released a dvd box of Ivens’s films, including The Pharmacy ­ ere also screened at and The Football Incident from the Yukong series, which w the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.127 Chinese critics and bloggers wrote warm reviews of the films, with some preferring Yukong ­because of the director’s humility and willingness to listen to the Chinese, and o­ thers considering Ivens an earnest “socialist believer” blinded by his utopian visions. Still ­others wondered if some ideals and practices documented in Yukong—­such as Shanghai pharmacists bringing medicine to the countryside and a fishing village working for collective prosperity—­could still inspire and renew efforts to reduce the urban-­rural disparities in ­today’s China.128 Wu Wenguang saw the film as a “mirror” of his generation’s adolescent years during the Mao era, when all students had to dress in white shirts and blue pants to participate in parades, singing competitions, sports contests, and when foreign guests came to visit—­ “we ­couldn’t appear without make-up and playacting.” The China in Yukong was certainly a “China on stage,” and watching the film after three de­cades had passed was similar to confronting an “old scar in the mirror” and seeing an “ugly charade.” Still, this staged real­ity was a “Chinese real­ity of playacting, at once coerced and voluntary.”129 Perhaps ­because Chung Kuo and Yukong have been too enshrouded in ideological polemics, l­ittle has been said of their expressive, poetic, or lyrical ele­ ments. Sinologist Jaroslav Průšek describes the cultural dynamics of modern China in terms of “the lyrical versus the epic,” or the individual poetic expression versus the collective po­liti­cal articulation.130 Understood as an epic, Chung Kuo, the Chinese press bitterly accused, was used by the “Soviet revisionists” and the Nationalists in Taiwan as anti-­PRC propaganda.131 Nevertheless, a primary-­school student who watched the film on Taiwanese tele­vi­sion at the time recalls his surprise upon seeing that villa­gers in the ­people’s communes ­were not being used as oxen to plow the fields as he had been taught. Moreover, the same viewer remembers being impressed by a fleeting image, taken with a telephoto lens near Tian­anmen Square, tracking a taichi master on a bicycle like a soaring bird with wings stretching out hither and thither (figure 4.14, top row).132 This may be what Christian Keathley calls a “cinephiliac moment,” or “the fetishizing of fragments of a film” that “cannot be reduced or tamed by interpretation.”133 It is “just an image” chanced upon by a curious and meandering camera, rather than a “just image” burdened with ideological significance. Neither a symbol of feudalism nor a symbol of revolutionary China, this image wrests an agile body from class signifiers and a transcendent gesture from rigid postures. As a douban​.­com viewer puts it, “such an image moves me so much F orei g n L enses

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Figure 4.14. A cinephiliac moment in Antonioni’s Chung Kuo, echoed ­later in Jia Zhangke’s Platform, 2000.

more than the hordes of Red Guards on army trucks,” whereas another viewer is reminded of Jia Zhangke’s Platform, with its poster image featuring the protagonist and his friend holding out their arms while riding a bicycle, an image of flight whose poetic hieroglyphics resist being pinned down to any fixed meaning (figure 4.14).134 Apart from awakening lyrical memories, Chung Kuo and Yukong also left ­behind impor­tant legacies for Chinese filmmakers. While assisting with the shooting of ­these documentaries, Chinese film and tele­vi­sion producers had already “quietly traded stories about western directorial methods: the use of long tracking shots, sound and dialogue that w ­ ere not dubbed but recorded on location and the professional relationships on set.”135 Both documentaries provide precursors to—if not ­actual influences on—­postsocialist in­de­pen­dent Chinese documentary cinema, whose “spontaneous, open-­ended and unpredictable spirit” is encapsulated in the concept of xianchang 現場, or liveness, which literally means the “scene” or “site” of a film, at once a “visceral experience of shooting live” and “an aesthetic effect for the viewer.”136 Yet the kind of 188

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Figure 4.15. Tribute to Antonioni’s Chung Kuo in Jia Zhangke’s I Wish I Knew, 2010.

criticisms hurled against Antonioni would return to haunt postsocialist filmmakers for making China look “backward” and “exotic” ­under a hegemonic Western gaze. As Sheldon Lu points out, since Chinese critics’ conception of cinematic verisimilitude had been largely conditioned by Maoist aesthetics from the 1950s to the 1980s, they find new films by the Fifth Generation to be “distortions” of China’s image.137 Nevertheless, as the socialist realism of Maoist cinema was phased out by the 1990s, the documentary styles and practices pioneered in China by Antonioni and Ivens in the 1970s have turned into newly accepted realisms of postsocialist cinema, epitomized by the works of Jia Zhangke.138 In his 2010 film I Wish I Knew (海上傳奇), Jia Zhangke interviews a former cultural cadre who accompanied Antonioni in Shanghai in 1972. The interview takes place in the tea­house by the Yuyuan Gardens and is prefaced by Jia’s meandering shots of the Chinese tourists on site: a middle-­aged ­woman maneuvering a digital camera (figure 4.15), a girl with a large lollipop, a white-­haired old ­woman making a “V” sign. This quasi-­remake of the opening credits of Chung Kuo pays tribute to Antonioni’s interest in the f­aces and gestures of Chinese ­people as well as their own acts of image-­making, except that digital technology in the new millennium allows ordinary Chinese to take souvenir snapshots of their own. During the interview, the former cadre recalls his protest against the Italian director’s focus on “­things that reflected our backwardness” and the po­ liti­cal strug­g le sessions he had to endure two years ­later, only to confess in the end that, “Even ­today I have no idea what Antonioni had filmed.”139 F orei g n L enses

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Since the late 1990s, in­de­pen­dent documentaries by Chinese filmmakers have gone far beyond Antonioni and Ivens and Loridan to break the official molds of mise-­en-­scène and to bring China’s most marginalized ­people into the realms of repre­sen­ta­tion. Defined by Lü Xinyu as “the solicitude for the ­human spirit, attention to the rock bottom of society and a bottom-up perspective,”140 China’s New Documentary Movement uses techniques like sync-­ sound, long takes, follow shots, and on-­the-­spot interviews. A representative work—­Wang Bing’s nine-­hour, three-­part epic West of the Tracks, to be discussed in chapter 5—­can be considered a sequel on the fate of China’s working class and the heir of the Yukong series in style and content, except that ­there is no more faith in the redeeming power of a po­liti­cal, social, or cultural revolution.

Conclusion: Curating Audiovisual Memories

As cinema was “the original multimedia,” combining moving images, sound, and text a c­ entury before new media,141 it serves as an optimal form of a museum exhibit to facilitate vicarious experiences of history. In documentary cinema’s nonfictional pledge and indexical link to real­ity is the foundation for a memorial museum’s truth claims. Since the Maoist state monopolized filmmaking technology to forge idealized and heroic icons that excluded not only the darker but also the quotidian aspects of Chinese society, this chapter discussed two documentaries on China filmed in the early 1970s and made by foreign filmmakers. With Chinese officials deciding on filming locations and Westerners ­behind the camera, Chung Kuo and Yukong reworked and deconstructed Maoist visual conventions, revealing that the Chinese had a heightened awareness of themselves as images ­under the Maoist society of spectacle and surveillance. If we read Chung Kuo and Yukong as metacinema that illuminates image-­making at the intersection of the national and international visual economies, we might discern the pre-­mise-­en-­scène before the arrival of the film crews and the interventions of the foreigners’ cameras. The criticisms and controversies over ­these films, then and now, reflect diverse and conflicting understandings of how China should be portrayed on film, along with the associated emotions of pride or shame, admiration or condescension, and amusement or nostalgia. By tracing the production and reception of ­these films, we can turn foreign lenses on China into a kaleidoscope of subjectivities and memories. Lastly, I return to the question of documentary ethics posed at the beginning of this chapter, on the “justness” of images. For the Chinese authorities during the Cultural Revolution, a “just image” was an ideal icon, carefully sculpted, posed, and rehearsed to represent life as it should be. For Antonioni, 190

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a “just image” was an unposed snapshot, captured spontaneously, at its best when the subject was unaware of the camera. For Ivens and Loridan, a “just image” was a respectful portrait, filmed with the consent and cooperation of the subject. ­These dif­fer­ent beliefs in the justness of images came to clash during the production and reception of both documentaries, which weathered criticisms of being staged, and hence unreal, or stolen, and hence unethical. De­cades ­later, ­after ­these films no longer carried the burden of representing “China” or the “Cultural Revolution” to the world but instead had become a kind of found footage—­that is, when “just images” became “mere images”—­ they took on entirely new meanings as cinematic memories. What moved Chinese cinephiles who fi­nally saw t­ hese films w ­ ere the incidental details and ambient sounds, facial expressions and bodily gestures, nuanced colors and lyrical nostalgia for a China that has all but vanished. Through the lenses of foreigners, they found their grandparents, parents, and themselves, and it is in this sense that ­these films have been reclaimed as “Chinese.”

F orei g n L enses

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5 FACTORY RUBBLE

In Jia Zhangke’s 2010 documentary film I Wish I Knew (海上傳奇), Huang Baomei 黃寶妹, once a national model worker, walks through the rubble of the cotton mill where she had worked for a lifetime (figure 5.1) and recalls her first meeting with Chairman Mao half a c­ entury ­earlier—so awestruck at the time, she forgot to let go of his hand. ­After starring as herself in the 1958 “artistic documentary” Huang Baomei, directed by Xie Jin 謝晉, her name and image became synonymous with the slogan “To ­Labor is Glorious.” Using excerpts from Huang Baomei as “archival footage,” the 2010 documentary cuts from a low-­angle shot of a smoking chimney from 1958 to a high-­angle shot of the same factory in 2009, empty and half-demolished. A song from the ­Great Leap Forward—­ “We the workers have power; busy working ­every day”—­accompanies a lingering look at the factory’s peeling walls and defunct smokestack. The golden age of the proletariat has passed, and the song, less propaganda than requiem, bridges the old socialist working class with a new generation of mi­grant workers who apparently do not share the ethos or memory of their “proletarian” pre­de­ces­sors. Where do Chinese workers figure within a memorial museum of the Mao era? Surely, t­ here must be a place for the legend and memories of Huang Baomei and the millions who shared her narrative and values? Besides bearing witness to famine, vio­lence, and repression, might visitors also partake in nos-

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Figure 5.1. Former model worker Huang Baomei walks through the ruins of her Shanghai factory in Jia Zhangke’s I Wish I Knew.

talgia for the “time of Chairman Mao,” a time when the “vanguard class” of industrial workers felt liberated, empowered, and dignified? For most of them, as sociologist Ching Kwan Lee argues, socialism meant psychological and economic security, relative egalitarianism, social justice, and collective purpose, even if some also had negative memories of the violent campaigns, cadre despotism, and poverty.1 For industrial workers more than any other social group, the Communist Revolution provided a utopian ecosystem that quite literally had turned into ruins as most state-­owned enterprises had become bankrupt by the late 1990s and early 2000s. With the de­mo­li­tion of their factories, which ­were not only sites of production but also their residences and their moral universes, tens of millions of workers lost their “iron rice bowls” and turned into a “lost” or “dis­appeared” class.2 In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Maoist symbols flared up in waves of protest by laid-­off workers of socialist industry who still lived in the same areas and networked with the same communities. The shared physical spaces of factories and surrounding neighborhoods mediated their collective memories and forged power­ful and spectacular collective action.3 But as ­these former workers ­were physically removed from the old industrial districts that by the 2010s had gentrified into commercial real estate, their memories seemed to have dissipated. The most pressing question for us now is not only how the memories of Chinese workers translated into po­liti­cal action, as has been the focus of existing scholarship,4 but also how such memories might Factory R ubble

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be ­mediated and transmitted beyond this memory-­carrier group. In other words, how might the rubble of the socialist factories be transformed into memorial exhibits?

The Testimony of Ruins and the Witnessing of Ruination

Whereas chapters 1 and 2 examined written testimonies collected in the dossiers of intellectuals, and whereas chapters 3 and 4 analyzed documentary photography and cinema attesting to utopian visions and quotidian realities, chapters 5 and 6 study physical spaces and material relics as tangible testimonies of the Mao era. What can the formation and transformation of such “utopian ruins” tell us about the transition from socialism to postsocialism, from industrialization to urbanization, and from collectivism to individualism? Like the commemorative media curated in e­ arlier chapters, physical ruins and material relics are palimpsests, with additions and erasures over time. Rather than retrospective repre­sen­ta­tions, they anchor pre­sent memories in past traces while undergoing remediation to become public sites of memory that transcend fragmented communities. Furthermore, whereas e­ arlier chapters explored the strug­g le of memory against the erasures of state censorship, chapters 5 and 6 highlight efforts to rescue Mao-­era memories from the amnesiac forces of economic development. With their focus on tangible testimonies, t­ hese final two chapters reckon with the spatial and material bases of memorial museums around the world, many of which are built at what Patrizia Violi calls “trauma sites”: “In contrast with other forms of memorial sites [created ex novo], trauma sites exist factually as material testimonies of the vio­lence and horror that took place ­there.” Transformed from spaces “originally designated for imprisonment and extermination,” trauma sites are defined by their “indexical character” and maintain a “real spatial contiguity with the trauma itself.”5 By enmeshing trauma with nostalgia, and dreams with vio­lence, the factory ruins at the center of this chapter are much more ambiguous memorial sites. Industrial ruins, as Caitlin DeSilvey and Tim Edensor argue, index “both the hope and hubris of the ­futures that never came to pass—­whether early capitalism’s promise of abundance and ease, or socialism’s vision of collective ­labor and equality.”6 While retaining an indexical link to the socialist past, con­temporary China’s industrial ruins also bear indexical traces from the post-­Mao cap­i­tal­ist reforms that initiated such ruination. During the Mao era, factories ­were the lifeworld for their one-­hundred million employees, or “Mao’s working class.” This vanguard class achieved 194

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po­liti­cal, economic, and cultural prominence as members of communist state-­owned enterprises that bestowed a secure livelihood and im­mense pride upon its workers.7 During the reform era, however, despite the improvements in living standards, the workers lost their po­liti­cal status, social re­spect, and cultural capital. From their perspective, the periodization of socialism can be extended to the 1980s rather than ending abruptly with the Cultural Revolution in 1976, since the ruination of their factories took place gradually rather than overnight. As socialist industries became bankrupt in the 1990s, their empty, dilapidated, yet still monumental spaces attracted the attention of artists, photog­raphers, filmmakers, and real-­estate developers. As art historian Wu Hung notes, images of depopulated industrial zones gained momentum in con­temporary Chinese art beginning in the 2000s, often presenting “the artists’ retrospective reflection on the country’s socialist past.” 8 Moreover, many con­temporary artists formed alliances with businessmen, celebrities, and open-­minded officials to set up “artistic districts,” such as Beijing’s 798, by developing abandoned socialist factories into studios, galleries, entertainment spaces, cafes, restaurants, and clubs. While retaining traces of the Maoist slogans on the peeling walls, however, commercial interests often overshadowed historical preservation.9 Compared to real-­estate development capitalizing on the socialist industrial legacy, cinematic works, I submit, have done much more to excavate, salvage, and remediate the memories of Mao’s working class from the factory ruins. Apart from collecting workers’ testimonies that mix pride and pain, idealism and endurance, cinema has also documented the ruination of socialist factories. ­Here I draw on Ann Laura Stoler’s distinction between ruins as “enchanted, desolate places” that invite aestheticization, on the one hand, and ruination that recalls “ruin” as a verb “to inflict or bring g­ reat and irretrievable disaster upon, to destroy agency, to reduce to a state of poverty, to demoralize completely,” on the other hand.10 Stoler thus shifts the focus from “leftover” relics to ­those “left with” what remains.11 This pro­cess of ruination resembles what Rob Nixon calls the “slow vio­lence” of environmental injustice, “a vio­ lence that occurs gradually and out of sight, a vio­lence of delayed destruction that is dispersed across time and space, an attritional vio­lence that is typically not viewed as vio­lence at all.”12 This chapter discusses the memorialization and remediation of socialist factories through three seminal films that bear witness to the slow vio­lence of their ruination: Wang Bing’s West of the Tracks (鐵西區, 2002), Jia Zhangke’s 24 City (二十四城記, 2008), and Zhang Meng’s The Piano in a Factory (鋼的琴, 2011). All born in the 1970s, the three filmmakers have childhood memories of Factory R ubble

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late socialism, but they came of age during the reform era. All three films feature two or more generations in their panoramic frescoes of the working class, shot on location in the ruins of the old socialist factories. In their respective foci on “rust,” “memory,” and “legacy,” the three films adopt diverse aesthetic strategies to remediate the socialist industrial ruins that reflect back on their makers’ self-­positioning. While contributing to intellectual debates on the fate of the Chinese working class, ­these films resist theoretical abstraction as they reach out sensually, emotionally, and mnemonically to an online cinephiliac community. Attending to the film texts and the contexts of their production and reception, this chapter seeks to address several broader questions: Was the Mao era truly a utopia for Chinese workers? What can we salvage from its ruins? And fi­nally, how might cinema serve as virtual memorials in the age of de­mo­li­tion?

Salvaging Rubble in West of the Tracks

In the early 1990s, Wang Bing, a photography student at the Lu Xun Acad­emy of Fine Arts in Shenyang, spent many weekends in the city’s Tiexi District, China’s oldest and largest industrial base, to photo­graph its factories, workers, and residents. A palimpsest of not only Chinese but also of global history, the first factories ­were built ­there in 1934 by the Japa­nese to produce war goods for the Imperial Army and w ­ ere then nationalized a­ fter World War II. With the Communist takeover in 1949, the Soviet Union began to supply additional machinery that had been dismantled and removed from Germany. As late as the early 1980s, the factories in Tiexi employed about one million workers, mostly mi­grants from other parts of the country. As China made the transition from a planned to a market economy in the 1990s, ­these state-­owned factories operated at a loss and closed down one by one, while the workers lost their jobs, or their “iron rice bowls,” along with their homes and social networks. Wang Bing, who went on to study cinematography at the Beijing Film Acad­emy, returned to Tiexi in 1999 with a small rented digital video (dv) camera, motivated by “the sense that a history which used to be impor­tant is now slowly declining, dissolving in front of our eyes.”13 The ruination of socialist industry coincided with the emergence and spread of dv technology, often considered a watershed in in­de­pen­dent film and documentary production. In contrast to the Maoist mono­poly of cinematic technology, inexpensive and versatile dv technology allowed filmmakers to shoot, edit, and distribute on shoestring bud­gets, with l­ittle dependence on or restrictions imposed by the state-­controlled media.14 Thus, Wang Bing was able to shoot some three 196

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hundred hours of footage about several remnant factories and the p ­ eople who worked and lived in the area, which he then edited into a nine-­hour documentary trilogy, Tiexi Qu, or West of the Tracks. Its three parts, Gongchang 工廠 (Factory), Yanfen jie 艷粉街 (Rouge Street), and Tielu 鐵路 (Rails), are poetically rendered into En­glish as Rust, Remnants, and Rails, indicating not only their respective subjects—­factory, residential district, and the network of tracks linking them—­but also Wang Bing’s tactics as a filmmaker. The order of the trilogy moves from delineating the contours and texture of a place to portraying the increasingly vagabond ­human beings who are si­mul­ta­neously trapped in and driven from it, from the district’s monumental decline to the individuals trying to survive in its rubble. The thematic focus on the working class and the observational style combined with on-­site interviews are reminiscent of How Yukong Moved the Mountains, discussed in chapter 4. With relatively l­ittle surveillance by the authorities, however, Wang Bing went far beyond his pre­ de­ces­sors in his patient and immersive documentation of the workers’ lived environment as it underwent ruination. Considered now a landmark of world cinema, West of the Tracks was voted in 2014 by Sight and Sound as number 17 in the “top 50 documentaries of all time.”15 For Western reviewers, the film’s images of a (post)industrial landscape and the workers’ laboring bodies evoke Amer­i­ca’s Detroit or Germany’s Ruhr.16 For many Chinese critics, however, the film was above all a requiem for a socialist utopia. Yet rather than what Lü Xinyu calls “a paean to the remains of the socialist ideal,”17 I contend that the film deconstructs romanticized images of industrial ­labor from the Mao era to remediate and museumify the material rubble and ­human remnants of a disintegrating industrial ecosystem. Using a small DV camera to penetrate the massive factory complex, Wang Bing’s cinematic practice maintains solidarity with the individual scavengers in the film who meander through the debris to pick up found objects that suggest expired hopes, broken promises, and mundane strug­g les. As Tiexi District and other Chinese industrial spaces have been converted into commercial real estate, and as all physical traces of their pasts dis­appear, West of the Tracks grows in significance as a memorial to the Chinese workers whose ­labor and lives paved the way for China’s long modernizing path.

Excavation of a Ruin

The film’s opening, a static, high-­angle shot of Tiexi District, shows a complex of factories covered in snow. Amidst this im­mense ruin, the high chimneys, once icons of the Northeast, stand like obelisks to China’s industrial revolution. Factory R ubble

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Figure 5.2. Establishing shots of Tiexi’s factories from Wang Bing’s West of the Tracks, 2003.

The distant but diegetic lull of machinery continues over a sound bridge throughout the scrolling text that relates the area’s history. The next few shots are taken from a camera mounted in the front of a small goods train as it traverses Tiexi District’s factories and residential areas (figure 5.2). Snowflakes stick to the lens as if to one’s eyelashes, and this sticking snow, along with the occasional small jerk of the camera due to the old railroad tracks, serves to make the cinematography tangible, vulnerable, and h ­ uman. The camera not only observes or rec­ords, it also stares, it braves, it searches, and it salvages. The train passes through endless, ­giant complexes of steel and iron, structures of pure function and mysterious anonymity, and through mushroom clusters of dwarf-­like shacks. In contrast to the inexorable velocity that characterizes early filmic repre­sen­ta­tions of the locomotive, such as the 1920s’ city symphonies that used montage to enhance the train’s kinetic energy,18 long takes of the train suggest stagnation and lethargy as it joins the languid traffic of the city. The third establishing shot is a handheld tracking shot through a copper smelting site at Shenyang Foundry. A whirlwind of rising white smoke assails and envelops the lens. Walking on a layered ruin, Wang Bing is a filmmaker-­ archaeologist whose shots resemble the rubble that he films, much like the neorealist cinema that André Bazin describes as treating real­ity like “big rocks that lie scattered in a ford.” Their “real­ity as rocks” are preserved even if one uses them to cross the river and arrive at meaning, unlike “bricks or cut stones” that form narrative arcs in classical cinema.19 Like rubble, Wang Bing’s shots have a physical quality that sensitizes us to the filmmaker’s presence beyond 198

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image and sound. As his camera takes us through the industrial ruin, it not only replicates what the filmmaker sees or hears, but also seems to go through the same ­trials of cold, heat, and dust. Maintaining solidarity with its subjects, West of the Tracks never flaunts the superhuman technological resources of cinematic editing. Wang Bing eschews extradiegetic ­music, commentary, and any additional source of lighting. He does not spare us the monotone dullness or clamor of machine sounds nor their blinding glare or darkness. Often placed on a t­ able along with thermoses and rags, his small dv camera becomes a banal object stripped of its powers of surveillance. Or, if Wang Bing is holding the camera, then it is perceived as merely another familiar pair of eyes, neither confronted nor averted by the other eyes in the room. His subjects are at such ease that they often walk nude in the presence of his camera. Ever responsive to the contingency of the profilmic event, Wang Bing’s cinematography sketches out the contours of habitual arabesques through ­these inhuman structures of metal and concrete.

Machines and Bodies: A Toxic Social Contract

Rust’s true protagonist, as the Chinese title suggests, is the factory itself, whereby “the workers appear as mere appendages of this vast complex.”20 The film shows us the intermingling of the daily rhythms and life cycles of the factory and its workers but also witnesses the final severing of their destinies. The machines and bodies of Tiexi District share a history of migration and displacement from the 1930s to the 1940s, nationalization and collectivization from the 1950s to the 1970s, followed by decollectivization and obsolescence from the 1980s to the 2000s. The machines’ relentless tempo necessitated work shifts that subverted the natu­ral rhythms of work and rest. The seasons had ­little impact on the working environment, since most factory workshops had to be maintained at a constant temperature. In West of the Tracks, machines and bodies are reminiscent of, but bear an altogether dif­fer­ent relation to, socialist visual repre­sen­ta­tions that depict workers as paragons of strength, with exaggerated heroic postures in propaganda posters and documentary films, as well as public monuments and statues. Perhaps the most iconic image of the Chinese socialist worker is that of Daqing Oilfield’s “Iron Man” Wang Jinxi, who, as noted in chapter 4 (figure 4.9), mixed cement with his legs to stop an eruption from destroying an oil well.21 Such images vividly illustrate what Tina Mai Chen identifies as a utopian “human-­ machine continuum” central to Mao’s vision of socialist transformation, where youths “steeled their bodies for the ­future and against the past.”22 In Factory R ubble

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contrast to such power­ful machine-­like bodies, however, the workers in Rust appear dwarfed and emasculated by the g­ iant machines they supposedly control (figure 5.3). They have to muster up all their strength to lift a small fraction of a machine’s effortless load, as in sequences where they must transport raw material or finished products at a missing junction of a conveyer ­belt. “Eating, chatting, cursing, talking dirty, taking showers, and watching pornography,” as Ban Wang puts it in his analy­sis of this film, “gone are the proud images of the socialist working class of the old days.” Wang concludes that “the film tells a tragic story of uneven development and global capitalism whose one casualty is the national industry base losing out to capital-­intensive, trade-­oriented, information-­related economic trends.”23 Certainly, the film undoes utopian images of industrial l­abor from the Mao era, but is it r­ eally an exposé of the “waste products of reckless industrialization and cap­i­tal­ist modernity” in the post-­Mao era?24 Worker testimonies throughout West of the Tracks recall not so much the glory of the Maoist vanguard class as the hardships and health ­hazards accumulating from the Maoist to the post-­Mao eras. As Susan Buck-­Morss puts it wryly, “industrial contamination of w ­ ater and air has the same chemical composition ­whether it has been produced ­under socialism or capitalism.”25 Along ­these lines, West of the Tracks shows that, beyond a shared rhythm and a shared physical environment, the workers’ bodies w ­ ere intimate with the machines they used: as a copper worker confides to Wang Bing’s camera, the face masks they wore could not prevent them from inhaling one hundred times the national standard of lead in the air, which led to dire medical consequences such as infertility. In the second half of Rust, workers in the bankrupt lead foundry receive their last injections to eliminate lead from their blood, a one-­month treatment formerly conducted four times a year (figure 5.3). That is, they render up their health to the factory, which had promised to care for them in sickness and old age, a social contract sealed by the toxin in their blood. For this reason, the sequence has a valedictory overtone, a final severing of machine from body, since the hospital becomes the final station of their journey to a common destiny. ­Toward the end of Rust, Wang Bing’s camera returns to haunt the closed factories before they are dismantled and finds a fellow scavenger who digs through the garbage left in the locker rooms and who picks up, among other found objects, workers’ IDs, old accounting sheets, and some faded slogans—­ gesturing ­toward the workers’ lost identities. The filmmaker then walks through a factory’s labyrinthine basement and opens a door onto a big collective bathtub, empty but still steaming. A fade to black and dissolve conjure two indistinct and dreamlike figures in the same space, one sitting cross-­legged 200

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Figure 5.3. Machines dwarfing worker bodies (left) and workers being treated for lead toxins (right) from Wang Bing’s West of the Tracks.

and scrubbing his feet briskly; the other washing his face with a towel. The film then cuts back to the empty bathtub, now cold and no longer steaming. The ghost-­like apparition and disappearance ­here suggest the absorption of the workers’ bodies into the fabric of the factory as well as the ephemerality of both corporeality and materiality, lest embalmed and remediated by the filmmaker’s camera.

Figure of the Recycler

Part II, Remnants, documents the ruination of a residential neighborhood inhabited by factory workers with a focus on the figure of the recycler, whose acts of salvaging objects from the rubble mirrors the filmmaker’s ragpicking strategy of image collection. This part opens with a public raffle in a residential neighborhood of Tiexi District, where the master of ceremony’s appeal to the crowd is a tongue-­in-­cheek collage of stock propaganda phrases and folk witticisms—­“an approximation of the call to collective Communist discipline and of the liberal incitation to consumerism.”26 Zooming onto the stage from a low ­angle without a tripod, Wang Bing seems to be shuddering from the cold along with other audience members. A ­ fter the crowd disperses, a scavenger of fortune picks up discarded raffle tickets from the ground. The next day, the raffle site is covered by a new layer of snow. A lone man hammers the field ­until he finds a small repository of scrap iron. A scrap iron collector passes by, pays the man, and loads the unwieldy sticks onto his skeletal tricycle. Factory R ubble

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This opening sequence establishes the figure of the recycler, already at work by the end of Rust but only gaining prominence in this part of the trilogy. Recycling is, a­ fter all, the final means of eking out a living for the unemployed. Regardless of age, every­one could find and sell reusable waste for a small profit. Their ­labor puts to use not only waste paper, scrap iron, cans and b­ ottles, wood and bricks, and other material waste, but also their own physical and psychological energy, which other­wise would also go to waste. Yet their l­ abor collaborates with the very same forces of destruction that dismantle their factories and raze their homes to the ground. In a rare use of extradiegetic sound, Wang Bing superimposes a loudspeaker announcement about the neighborhood’s imminent de­mo­li­tion over images of the residents reading the announcement on electricity poles. Such a dominant soundscape establishes the omnipresence of a panoptic authority. As the developers are about to seize possession of this neighborhood, its inhabitants find their homes transformed into what Michel de Certeau calls “the space of the other,” and so they respond to the developers’ “strategies” with guerrilla “tactics.”27 Residents break into small groups to discuss the exact mea­sure­ments of their homes so as to maximize their compensation. They calculate against not only the developers but also against their neighbors and ­family members, some trying to exclude the elder generations or orphans from receiving resettlement claims. T ­ hose who refuse to move out understand that ­every day they hold on ­will entail a financial loss for the developers, whose impatience may turn into grudging generosity or reckless cruelty. When the developers impose more punitive strategies by cutting off the neighborhood’s ­water and electricity, the residents revert to a premodern way of existence as their everyday infrastructure is downgraded: from locomotives to dirt roads, from electrical lamps to sunlight and candles, from r­ unning ­water to rain collection. The w ­ omen prepare meals before nightfall; a man burns books as fuel; and another f­ amily burns “spirit money” to pacify the soul of their dead ­mother so that she might help them receive a decent apartment. In the wake of the failed promises of the socialist utopia, p ­ eople revert to time-­ honored ancestral worship. As a one-­man documentarist who cannot be in several places at one time, Wang Bing chooses to stay with the final residents—­with the “leftovers of ­human life”—as the neighborhood empties out.28 Walking through the neighborhood ruins, the filmmaker scavenges for serendipitous material amid the rubble and recycles it for his film. To shed light on his subjects, his camera relies on the same candles and gas lamps the residents use to illuminate their homes during the dark winter nights. Just as the residents, cut off from the 202

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urban infrastructure, know how to secretly tap into the neighborhood’s network of wires and pipes, Wang Bing edited his film at night in local tele­vi­sion facilities, assisted by a friend who helped him gain unofficial access.29 Scraping together meager resources, Wang Bing’s then-precarious status as an in­de­pen­ dent filmmaker may well account for the extraordinary ease with which he assimilated into the world of Tiexi District. Mimicking the tactics of his subjects, Wang Bing thus recycled the de­mo­li­tion rubble into the building blocks of his documentary, turning remnants into the collection in a virtual memorial museum.

Vagabonds Living with and in Ruins

Rails, the third part of the trilogy, follows a small team of railway men responsible for transporting raw materials and finished products in and out of Tiexi District. Their locomotive is named “The East is Red,” a­ fter a hosanna to Chairman Mao, which in the new millennium rings with hollow historical grandeur. The men are often filmed sleeping in the driver’s cabin as the locomotive drones through the monumental skele­tons of the old factories, their win­dows of broken glass like empty eye sockets, and their last recyclable remnants being carried away by ­human scavengers. While Rails surveys the spaces explored in the first two parts of the trilogy, it also zooms in on a portrait of a f­ ather and son, vagabonds and scavengers of what remains of the industrial complex. To recall Stoler’s distinction, this is an exploration of not only ruins but also of ruination, of “how p ­ eople live with and in ruins,” which redirects our engagement “to the social relations avidly coalesced or shattered around them.”30 Old Du, who is not an employee of the railroad, lives with his seventeen-­year-­old son, Du Yang, in a makeshift shack of sheet iron built adjacent to a factory store­house. They eke out a living by ­doing menial chores for the railway men who have come to tolerate them and who take Old Du on trains from factory to factory so that he might gather (or steal) coal to sell. One day, Old Du is arrested, and Wang Bing’s camera stays with Du Yang in the shanty as he receives an ultimatum about their imminent eviction. When the f­ather is released a week ­later, Wang films their reunion dinner as Du Yang breaks down from the pent-up pressure of the past several days. This scene, one of the film’s most heartrending, ends with Old Du carry­ ing his son home on his back. In an interview, Wang Bing explains his focus on Old Du and his son as “ ‘typical Chinese,’ of the low [social] level, but who carry themselves with dignity. They can survive in what­ever situation.”31 Old Du’s resilience, in other Factory R ubble

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words, is a parable of the common destiny of the millions of workers to whom West of the Tracks is dedicated. His theft of coal, indispensable h ­ ouse­hold fuel in the severe winters of Northeast China, is a modern Promethean act of stealing light and warmth from an authoritarian and corrupt state in which big thieves never get caught. Although the ­father and son truly belong to the “have-­nots” in their economic impoverishment and material destitution, they do not seem to harbor any Marxist proletarian “class consciousness.” Instead, Old Du had clashed with the socialist system in the 1970s, when his f­ ather had tried to teach him an “honest trade” of stewing meat. Since private business, however small, was considered illegal, all their tools ­were confiscated, and his ­father was thrown into a makeshift jail. The story seems to repeat itself in the next generation with Old Du and Du Yang. On the night ­after his ­father’s arrest, Du Yang sits in a dark room with a single candle. For a good while, we see nothing but the tiny light of his cigarette swinging up and down through the darkness, a meager but unmistakable light testifying to his existence and to that of the filmmaker-­witness. The next morning, when Du Yang waits for his f­ather to return home, he enters the shack from the outside desolate landscape and fills a stove with coal, rhyming with an e­ arlier gesture from his f­ ather. This practical act of keeping warm is at the same time an allegorical act of keeping the fire ­going, of staying alive. In filming Du Yang, Wang Bing incorporates emotionally charged facial close-­ups he rarely uses in the rest of the film. Perhaps it is ­because this young face, expressive despite its apparent numbness, cast out of the same mold as ­those of his parents and grandparents, is a palimpsest of their suffering and resilience. The lad also serves as the guardian of his ­family history, as he digs out from a flour sack, between ner­vous puffs of his cigarette, a stack of ­family photo­graphs wrapped inside layers of plastic. As he caresses them (figure 5.4), the photo­graphs have the tactility of a relic, since we know that his ­mother had abandoned him and his ­brother at a young age. The electronic clock on the wall now strikes, its flat and cheerful melody an eerie accompaniment to the large tears welling up in the lad’s eyes. This scene, along with the youth’s ­later breakdown, in which he keeps blowing his nose and flinging about on the dirty floor, allows us to witness the full extent of his adolescent despair, unaestheticized by ­music or soft lighting. Apart from Wang Bing’s long-­term development of his relationship to ­these subjects, such intimate access to ­father and son is also indebted to the unobtrusive digital video camcorder, which promises to offer a more immediate and au­then­tic experience while making us won­ der ­whether such a private scene should have been filmed and exhibited at all. 204

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Figure 5.4. Du Yang and his ­father in their shanty in Wang Bing’s West of the Tracks.

The Ethics of Exhibiting Ruins

Introducing the French dvd of West of the Tracks, Pompidou curator Dominique Païni considers this epic documentary’s special plasticity to be a realization of Bazin’s “luminous mold” of real­ity.32 To watch nine hours without narrative is trying for any audience, yet the work conveys the sense that twenty-­four frames per second are not quick enough to compete with the rust that encloses the world we see. In the years ­after Wang Bing made West of the Tracks, several industrial museums opened in Tiexi District, including the gigantic Industrial Museum of China (中国工业博物馆). Their formulaic chronologies and decontextualized artifacts ­under glass vitrines seem hollow and lifeless next to Wang Bing’s documentary. Nevertheless, the construction of t­ hese museums follows a global trend, as Caitlin DeSilvey and Tim Edensor observe, to transform relics of the industrial past from “painful reminders of economic failure” into “restored memorials to past industrial prowess.”33 Reframed and contained by such museums, industrial ruins become “anchors for regional redevelopment and rebranding schemes,”34 meanwhile erasing the slow vio­lence of their disintegration as well as the socialist memories of their workers. Wang Bing’s cinematic remediation of the ruination pro­cess, however, has entered museums of another kind, as exhibits, installations, and collections in museums and galleries for con­temporary art. ­After West of the Tracks, his camera roamed the vast expanses of China’s geography: from Northeast to Southwest, from coastal sweatshops to the Gobi Desert. His subjects have ranged from laid-­off workers to mi­grant workers, from inmates of a ­labor camp to inmates of a ­mental asylum, from rural ­children to Burmese refugees. His Factory R ubble

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oeuvre has sal­vaged precious vestiges and voices from the rubble of both socialist and neoliberal “pro­gress.” Critics, curators, and prize juries of international art­house cinemas praise Wang Bing as an auteur whose signature lies in the extraordinary intimacy his camera achieves with his marginalized subjects, shedding on them “a dignified light” and thus making his work “profoundly empathetic and humanist.”35 Yet some dissenting voices condemn the same images on ethical grounds, revisiting questions about “just images” discussed in chapter 4. Most saliently, Abé Mark Nornes criticizes Wang Bing and other Chinese documentary filmmakers for using the “vis­i­ble hidden camera” that captures “life unawares” without getting consent to “circulate their [subjects’] personal lives around the world and to compete in competitions for cash prizes and fame.”36 Central to Nornes’s critique is the absence of an established distribution system or reception context for in­de­pen­dent documentaries in China, so the subaltern subjects of ­these films cannot anticipate the afterlives of their own images.37 I had an extensive discussion about documentary ethics with Wang Bing when he visited my class in November 2018. His response distinguished between ethics in theory and ethics in practice, suggesting that ethics is not only a ­matter of academic discussion but also a ­matter of dipping ourselves into the moral quagmire of real­ity. Regarding ethical obligations to subjects, Wang Bing emphasized that the princi­ple of “do no harm” is more fundamental than “obtaining consent,” especially the kind of legalized permission or release forms that are technically merely surrenders of the subjects’ portrait rights. He also spoke of an affective relationship to his subjects that should not be reduced to monetary or l­ egal relationships.38 This affective relationship echoes the notion of intersubjectivity in documentary criticism—­which maintains that the camera is always embodied and subjective.39 Indeed, one Chinese word for ethics, lunli 倫理, literally means the “rules and princi­ples governing the network of ­human relationships.”40 Speaking of “making a film for” some of his subjects,41 Wang Bing suggests that filmmaking can be an act of giving as much as an act of taking, not hunting or exploitation but rather preservation and communication. Many ethical dilemmas Chinese documentary filmmakers face are specific products of China’s media ecol­ogy. Echoing Nornes’s emphasis on the absent distribution system for in­de­pen­dent documentaries, Wang Bing highlighted the inhospitable environment for both making and for exhibiting his type of cinema. Shortly ­after the dvd of West of the Tracks was released in France in 2004, hundreds of thousands of pirated dvds of the film appeared on the Chinese market, quickly turning it into a bestseller, especially among former industrial workers in Shenyang and other Northeastern cities.42 The most common 206

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r­ esponse Wang Bing heard from such audiences was the pithy phrase “it’s too real!” (太真實了). The popularity of the film also rapidly politicized it, as the documented real­ity was still too painfully and outrageously pre­sent for ­those workers losing their livelihoods amidst an unjust and violent pro­cess of deindustrialization. Therefore, the Liaoning provincial government cracked down on pirating of this film and put an end to its popu­lar yet transient reception in China. With piracy and censorship defining the Chinese media ecol­ogy, Wang Bing has embraced support from international institutions for art­house cinema and con­temporary art, which not only provide funds for production and venues for exhibition, but also permanent collections allowing for a slow reception of his long films with l­ ittle entertainment or propaganda value. As the lived memories of the socialist factories dissipate, a cinema that museumifies their ruins and ruination finds a lasting home in the art museum, mediating testimonies from the past into the ­future.

Excavating Memories of the Third Front in 24 City

If Wang Bing’s West of the Tracks museumifies the ruins and ruination of the socialist factories, Jia Zhangke’s 24 City also takes a curatorial approach but with a greater interest in the subjectivities of t­ hose workers who look back on the Mao era with trauma and nostalgia. Consisting of both real and fictional worker testimonies, this quasi-documentary collects, remediates, and refashions the memories of workers in an about-­to-­close aviation engine factory that relocated from the Northeast to the Southwest in 1958. The relocation of this factory was a precursor for what ­later came to be known as the “Third Front” (三線), a massive Maoist industrial development proj­ect in southwest and western China between 1964 and 1971 that involved the migration of twelve million ­people from Chinese cities closer to potential US and USSR war fronts.43 In this sense, 24 City is a commemoration of the Third Front as well as of the Mao-­era’s industrial workers. From the beginning of his ­career, Jia Zhangke has used his camera to illuminate “cinema’s blind spots, its silences, on the kind of life I knew.”44 Although official films from the Mao era also created collective memories, Jia found them to have obscured individual feelings, personal experiences, and private spaces.45 By contrast, his Hometown Trilogy (Xiao Wu 小武, 1997; Platform 站台, 2000; and Unknown Pleasures 任逍遥, 2002) ­was anchored in autobiographical memories covering the postsocialist period from the late 1970s to the late 1990s. With The World (世界, 2004) and Still Life (三峽好人, 2006), Jia focused on mi­grants from his Shanxi hometown in Beijing and the Three Factory R ubble

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Gorges area that was undergoing de­mo­li­tion. In a subplot of Still Life, a w ­ oman looks for her husband at a bankrupt socialist factory where he used to work. Wandering past de­mo­li­tion workers who dismantle the rusty architecture and witnessing shouting matches between the former man­ag­er and the laid-­off workers, she walks into an abandoned workshop and finds in her husband’s old locker his work-­unit id card, a worker’s glove, an enamel cup, and an unopened bag of tea. Instead of her husband, she finds objects that once belonged to him and examines them like archaeological findings. This plot tangent of the socialist factory in ruins becomes the focus of 24 City. As an adolescent, Jia Zhangke used to envy the industrial workers in his hometown for their stable salaries, retirement pensions, communal bath­ houses, and movies at workers’ clubs. But the same classmates who got coveted factory jobs in the 1980s lost their iron rice bowls by the 1990s and w ­ ere struggling precariously to eke out a living. Jia had long wanted to make a film showing how this “vanguard class” got pushed to the margins of society, and in 2000, he even wrote a script entitled “Factory Gates” (工廠的大門).46 Although Jia Zhangke never made a film of that script, the credit sequence of 24 City does begin with factory gates and throngs of workers in their blue uniforms, assembling once more to sing and then to hear the verdict about their dispersion. The idea for 24 City originated from a news item that Jia Zhangke heard in late 2006 about the sale of an old factory in Chengdu to a real-­estate developer. A military security unit, Factory 420, had been established in 1958 to produce aviation engines for the national defense industry. Most of its machines and thousands of its workers came from another factory in Shenyang that had been bombed during the Korean War.47 Half a c­ entury ­later, the factory still had thirty thousand employees, but including f­amily members, ­there ­were some one hundred thousand ­people. All their individual memories bound to the factory would dis­appear with its transformation into a complex of luxury apartment blocks. The filmmaker felt both the urgency to salvage some of ­those lived experiences and the allegorical potential of this event: the end of a monumental socialist experiment, the systematic change from a planned to a market economy, from industrialization to urbanization, and from collectivism to individualism.48 To remediate the workers’ memories, Jia Zhangke devoted the bulk of his film to oral testimonies, a genre new to his filmmaking practice but much more commonly associated with memorial museums, archives, and documentaries. The video testimony, as Aleida Assmann argues, transcends “the frame of f­ amily memory” by “forging a transgenerational link between the f­ aces and 208

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voices of victims and ­those who listen to them.”49 Moving from the eldest generation of workers to the c­ hildren of workers, the testimonies in 24 City interpellate the audiences as visitors of a memorial museum and invite them to participate in a “mediated remembering community.”50

The Nostalgia and Endurance of El­derly Workers

Jia Zhangke initially wanted to make a straightforward documentary juxtaposing the factory’s de­mo­li­tion with testimonies by real workers.51 He placed an advertisement in the local newspaper to solicit memories of Factory 420 and interviewed more than one hundred individuals. Yet most middle-­aged or el­ derly workers ­were far from articulate and seemed more comfortable talking about ­others rather than about themselves.52 Their inchoate memories come across in the first of nine testimonies featured in 24 City, which also adopts an aesthetic style reminiscent of a museum exhibit: the foregrounding of spaces, the portraiture of interviewees, dossier-­like intertitles and artifacts, the brief yet emotionally resonant narrative excerpts, and the slow fades to black. We first see He Xikun 何錫昆, a retired fitter, walking up the staircase of an old factory building at the end of the film’s credit sequence, following the ceremony for the land transfer from factory to real-­estate developer. The solitary sound of his footsteps slowly overtakes the hollow reverberations of loudspeakers from the assembly hall, signaling the transition from collective ideology to the individual subject. The camera pans blurrily over the green painted walls of the building’s interior and then dwells on a close-up of the worker’s face. In the ensuing interview (figure 5.5), He Xikun describes with affection and gesticulation the scraping tools that he and his coworkers used to make themselves; how even ­after they became worn, his supervisor and mentor Master Wang continued to use them “­because this small t­ hing came into our hands through ­those of many ­others.” This story of frugality sanctifies and humanizes the rusty tools and machine parts on which the camera fixes its lens throughout the film. As shown in West of the Tracks, machines and bodies ­here have a symbiotic relationship, but in a dif­fer­ent sense. In contrast to the Marxist idea that industrial ­labor alienates ­human beings, Elaine Scarry writes of artifacts as projections of ­human sentience. Subjectivity is thus not effaced but, on the contrary, constructed and reconstructed in the making of artifacts.53 If, in the socialist factory, workers submitted themselves as “bolts” (螺 絲釘) in the collective machinery, then the caress of their hands also invested sentience into e­ very inanimate bolt. Furthermore, as Tina Mai Chen argues, the human-­machine continuum in the Mao era sustained a utopian meaning: Factory R ubble

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Figure 5.5. Interview with retired 420 worker He Xikun and his old ID in Jia Zhangke’s 24 City, 2008.

the “repetitive nature of collective ­labor and the extension of organs to render everyday technology part of the body ­were part of a proj­ect in Maoist China to enliven the senses, render them aware of a ­future real­ity, and to conjure this real­ity into being.”54 Apart from focusing on machine tools as poignant artifacts, Jia Zhangke’s film also museumifies ordinary workers and factory spaces. A fade to black takes us to a dossier-­like two-­line bio in the intertitle—­“He Xikun, born in Chengdu in 1948, apprenticed in 1964 in Workshop 61, l­ ater joined the army”—­ and then shows us his worker id from 1980 as if in a virtual museum exhibit (figure 5.5, right). He Xikun continues to talk about Master Wang, how he still came to work during the factional warfare of the Cultural Revolution. As he breaks off his narrative, the film cuts to an extreme long shot of the retired worker in the empty workshop that resembles an exhibition hall. In fact, the film’s locations seem deliberately chosen to represent the archetypal public and private spaces inhabited by factory workers over the de­cades. When he arrived at Factory 420, Jia Zhangke was struck by its “disconnection from con­ temporary Chinese society,” and how in the homes of factory workers “time seems to have ­stopped in the late 1970s or 1980s.”55 It is this congealed quality of time that the slow pan of the camera museumifies. Having never been employed by a work unit, Jia first began production on the film with a very critical mindset t­ oward a system that “exacted a heavy toll from h ­ uman beings, that obliterated individual values, dignity, and character.” But once he started interviewing old workers, he came to understand that their initial decision “to work in the system . . . ​was often a very idealistic 210

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choice, a very pure and humane choice.” 56 One retiree asked Jia if he knew the phrase “treating the factory as home”: “I was born in this factory and went through kindergarten, elementary, and secondary school h ­ ere. ­After that I worked ­here. . . . ​The factory’s glory is my glory; its demise is my demise.”57 As the socialist microcosm provided cradle-­to-­coffin welfare, workers found it difficult to separate themselves from the factory. Jia noticed that “the older the workers ­were, the more they defended this system, not out of lack of reflection or critique but ­because they could not betray the choices of their youth.”58 The idealism and nostalgia that Jia Zhangke speaks of ­here, however, are less a testimony to a lost socialist utopia than a tribute to the revolution’s ­human sacrifices. The socialist community, as Thomas Lahusen contends, was one “cemented by ‘endurance,’ . . . ​extraordinary efforts in primitive and chaotic times and conditions.”59 The workers’ nostalgia encompasses and absorbs a ­great deal of individual trauma. The next interviews reveal the h ­ uman toll of mass displacements that lay at the factory’s very origins. Interviewed inside a bus and speaking in a heavy Northeastern accent, Hou Lijun 候麗君, born in 1953, moved to Factory 420 in Chengdu from Shenyang with her parents in 1958. They could not revisit her grandparents in the Northeast ­until fourteen years ­later, when the joy of reunion was overwhelmed by the distress of another imminent parting. Hou began to work for Factory 420 in 1976, only to be dismissed in 1994. She spoke of her subsequent strug­g le to find another job, “so I could age slower.” As a second generation Third Front worker, she had experienced both the trauma of displacement in the Mao era and the pain of unemployment in the post-­Mao era.

Performed Testimonies and Screened Remembrances

While conducting interviews with more than one hundred factory workers during preproduction, Jia Zhangke noticed much overlap in their narratives, some of which converged around individuals who had already passed away. To weave together ­these fragmented narratives, Jia Zhangke cast movie stars to perform pseudo interviews, in part to attract domestic audiences to a marginalized subject and in part to allow “a vaster imaginary space, into which [the Chinese audiences] can proj­ect their own experience and stories.”60 The final film features a total of nine interviews, five of which ­are “real” and four that feature scripted per­for­mances. In par­tic­u­lar, renowned actresses Lü Liping 呂麗萍, Joan Chen 陳沖, and Zhao Tao 趙濤 strung together half a ­century of history by playing three generations of w ­ omen, for whom 1958, 1978, and 2008 ­were pivotal moments. Factory R ubble

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Lü Liping plays a ­woman named Hao Dali 郝大麗, among the first cohort of workers relocated to the Third Front. The ­actual person had already passed away, but many Factory 420 workers recalled Hao’s story and provided vivid details that furnished the performed interview. It begins with fond memories of privileges granted to employees of a military factory: she and her coworkers had decent meat rations even during the famine, and they deposited monthly wage surpluses in bank savings; she was able to help her s­ister’s ­family in the countryside, who reciprocated her kindness ­after the closing of her factory. Her “testimony” closes, however, with a traumatic incident from half a ­century ­earlier. When moving the factory in 1958, their ship s­ topped briefly en route, and she went onshore with her husband and three-­year-­old son, who then dis­appeared. Amidst their desperate search, the ship’s siren, sounding like an “army bugle,” commanded them to return, and the child was never found. As she falls s­ ilent, a melancholic trumpet sounds over a black screen followed by another shot of Lü Liping eating alone and watching a revolutionary war film on tv. As Thomas Austin points out, this maternal melodrama—­along with “the ineluctable pressure to conform and disavow this loss”—­resonates with Lü Liping’s ­earlier role as the long-­suffering ­mother in Tian Zhuangzhuang’s 田壯壯 1993 Blue Kite (藍風箏), which shares with 24 City the theme of the “intervention of state power into ­family structures and relations.”61 Whereas Lü Liping’s narrative is based on a single “true story,” Joan Chen plays a Shanghai girl who is a composite of many interviewees, and who first appears in a choir of middle-­aged ­women in opera costume rehearsing a piece on the evanescence of youth. Afterward, sitting in a hair salon with her back to the mirror, Chen’s character recounts how she first arrived in Chengdu from Shanghai in 1978 and was nicknamed “­Little Flower” 小花, ­after the 1979 movie starring eighteen-­year-­old Joan Chen. ­Later, her coworkers teasingly make a “perfect match” for her with a handsome young man whose photo they saw on a poster, only to learn that this was a pi­lot who died in a plane crash due to technical defects in a Factory 420 product. ­After that, all her romances end in disappointment, and the sequence closes with her in a public kitchen alone and watching ­Little Flower on a tele­vi­sion screen, with the song “A Tearful ­Little ­Sister Looking for her ­Brother” on the soundtrack (figure 5.6). The use of such “found footage,” as Rey Chow observes, is characteristic of Jia’s documentary style, which “pre­sents the past not as a bygone real­ity . . . ​ but rather as a (re)collection, one that curates materials in fragmented form from dif­fer­ent media.”62 Like other quotations of historical media in Jia’s overall oeuvre, the playful intertextual references and clippings of ­Little Flower evoke the popu­lar media memories of Chinese audiences. Made shortly ­after 212

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Figure 5.6. In Jia Zhangke’s 24 City, actress Joan Chen plays a retired worker, nicknamed “­Little Flower” ­because she resembles the young Joan Chen in the 1979 film ­Little Flower, shown on tele­vi­sion playing in the background.

the end of the Cultural Revolution, ­Little Flower’s personal sentiments obscure its ostensibly revolutionary storyline and provide a refreshing emotional outlet to audiences ­after a repressive de­cade. Yet Joan Chen’s character in 24 City, as Jie Zhang points out, cannot strug­g le ­free of a revolutionary discourse that “controlled, intercepted and eventually voided personal happiness,” making her a “po­liti­cally chaste ­widow” sacrificed “on the altar of a Communist soldier.”63 Together with elder workers, such as Hao Dali and Master Wang, Joan Chen’s character submits to the demands of the state and eventually makes peace with her individual sacrifice through poignant endurance. Factory R ubble

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­ ater considered ­either the film’s most innovative achievement or its most L contrived failure,64 interviews performed by famous actors synthesize the wisps of narratives collected from real factory workers. They also carry intertextual references that evoke the mass mediated memories of their audiences while si­mul­ta­neously drawing attention to their artifice and fictionality. In museological terms, t­ hese performed interviews resemble wax statue exhibits that are vivid, readily recognizable, but also clearly artificial and potentially alienating.

Postsocialist Postmemory

The last third of 24 City shifts attention from the ruination of the socialist factories and the lived experiences of el­derly workers to what I call “postsocialist postmemory,” or the inheritance of socialist legacies by a younger generation, potential ­future inhabitants of the luxury apartments that would replace the old factory. Literary scholar Marianne Hirsch defines postmemory as “the relationship that the ‘generation a­ fter’ bears to the personal, collective, and cultural trauma of ­those who came before.”65 As 24 City demonstrates, the postsocialist generation born in the late 1970s and early 1980s witnessed the decline of socialist industry in their childhood and embody changing values from collective sacrifice to individualist desire. As a result, their relationship to their parents is often a mixture of rebellion and gratitude. The son of a Factory 420 worker, Zhao Gang, born in 1974 and a news broadcaster for Chengdu TV, first appears on a monitor publicizing a real-­ estate development proj­ect and then meets with a broker showing him housing models. Sitting on a chic leather sofa, Zhao Gang reminisces about the excitement of leaving home at age sixteen to attend a technical school in the Northeast. T ­ here, he put on a worker’s uniform like his ­father and apprenticed in a workshop, but a­ fter polishing the rough edges of one hundred component parts—­and being told by his master that “if you d ­ on’t finish ­today, you can continue tomorrow”—he de­cided to quit and return to school. We then see Zhao Gang and his f­ ather posing for a souvenir photo in front of a Factory 420 plane, which accentuates at once both their kinship and contrast. The connection and gap between the two generations is fleshed out more fully in the last interview with an entirely fictional character named Su Na played by actress Zhao Tao, who appears in nearly all of Jia Zhangke’s films. Born in 1982, Su Na makes a living by traveling to Hong Kong to shop for the nouveau riche in Chengdu. Fashionably dressed, and with a new VW Beetle, Su Na clearly embodies a new materialist lifestyle, yet her testimony reveals that 214

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her “bourgeois consumerism” is a reaction to and the redemption of the sacrifices of her working-­class parents. In the film, she recalls a visit to her ­mother’s factory: “Inside, I was deafened by the noise. You had to shout to be heard. But I ­couldn’t see my ­mother. The workers ­were all wearing blue uniforms. . . . ​ Fi­nally I found her over in a corner. She was carry­ing ingots of steel and throwing them one ­after the other into boxes. E ­ very time she threw one, it went bang! . . . ​I ­didn’t even know if it was a man or a ­woman when I approached.” The factory’s regime of production obscures the workers’ ­faces and drowns out their voices, such that the ­daughter can neither see nor hear her ­mother, yet it is precisely this confrontation with self-­effacing factory l­ abor that motivates her filial piety. Su Na vows to make a lot of money to buy an apartment in the 24 City apartment complex for her parents b­ ecause “I’m the d ­ aughter of a worker.” This closing note shows the dynamics of intergenerational memory as well as the continuities and discontinuities between a socialist and postsocialist China.66 Su Na’s visit to her ­mother in the factory can be understood in terms of what Paul Pickowicz calls a “postsocialist homecoming,” in that it links “China’s socialist past to related social, po­liti­cal, economic, and cultural prob­lems in the pre­sent.”67 Whereas real estate erases and displaces socialist industry, individualist consumerist fantasies grow out of the de­cades of self-­ denying collective ­labor. If past privations can feed pre­sent desires, socialist heritage can also turn into symbolic capital for real-­estate developers. Since acquiring the land of former Factory 420, China Resources publicized its historical-­preservation intentions amid its real-­estate development, telling potential buyers: “History is always worth our re­spect, and cultural vein is always worth our inheritance.” To that end, the com­pany hired a British expert on historical preservation, planned a building design with thick red bricks and vertical steel lines to suggest an industrial past, exhibited old photos and machines from Factory 420 at its sales area, and provided partial funding for Jia Zhangke’s film.68 Yet without “any concrete, real connections with the workers,” as Hai Ren argues, the real-­estate developer cares “about socialism not as a princi­ple of equality or justice but as a spectacle useful in generating additional value for the real-­ estate proj­ect.”69 Where does this leave Jia Zhangke’s film? The promotional materials from China Resources mention its collaboration with the “famous director” who won the “Golden Lion at the Venice Film Festival” to “rec­ord the memory of this place and explore changes in p ­ eople’s lives.” 70 Clearly, China Resources treats Jia Zhangke as a marker of cultural capital and invested in his film for public-­relations reasons. From Jia’s perspective, accepting funding from the Factory R ubble

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real-­estate com­pany and entitling his film 24 City further befuddles the genres of documentary, fiction, and commercial advertising. In response to criticisms of “selling out,” Jia Zhangke said: “We cannot avoid the real­ity of commerce. Without 24 City, I would never have made this film.” 71 In another context, Jia spoke against the rarefied artistic status of in­de­pen­dent cinema and said films should be circulated commercially before becoming part of museum and library collections.72 Ideally, Jia Zhangke would like to find a ­viable place for memory in the media ecol­ogy. His work would go on to inspire still younger filmmakers, such as Zhang Meng in the making of The Piano in a Factory.

Socialist Inheritance in The Piano in a Factory

Like Wang Bing and Jia Zhangke, Zhang Meng also wished to preserve on film memories of a disappearing socialist era as its physical structures ­were demolished and its workers dispersed. Indeed, watching Jia Zhangke’s films on pirated vcds first inspired Zhang to “take up a camera and document our era.” 73 Departing from the solemn elegy of West of the Tracks and 24 City, however, Zhang Meng chose to make a musical comedy and explore intergenerational relationships. Through location shooting and tracking shots, his 2011 feature film The Piano in a Factory turned industrial ruins into theatrical stages and transformed the factory rubble into art. ­Going beyond the material residue of factories and embodied memories of workers, this fanciful film excavates the creative and collaborative spirit among socialist workers as a special legacy for the younger generations. Born in Shenyang in 1975 and a member of the postsocialist generation, Zhang Meng came of age amid the culmination and ruination of Chinese socialist heavy industry. His grand­father and many aunts and u ­ ncles had been steel workers who lived and worked in Tiexi District. In ­those Soviet-­style worker villages, ­there ­were schools, clubs, parks, cinemas, swimming pools, bath­houses, and marketplaces. Zhang Meng fondly recalls the aluminum cacophony of spoons knocking against lunch boxes in the workers’ canteen and how, at his u ­ ncle’s nonferrous metal factory, soda pop flowed out of a faucet on a wall. Through a child’s eyes, the workers w ­ ere happy, confident, and omnipotent, but their glory began to fade with the bankruptcy of many factories in the 1990s. Biking through Tiexi as a student, Zhang Meng often came across workers’ sit-­ins and could not understand how such optimistic ­people had become so plaintive.74 ­After a steel mill closed down, many ­people went to rummage through its remains, so that “an abandoned factory was a bit like a dead ox in Animal World, eaten by many scavengers.” 75 Meanwhile, laid-­off workers 216

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took up new livelihoods—­from peddling goods to pedicab-­driving, shoe polishing to hairdressing—­while songs like “Start Over Again” blasted from speakers on streets and alleyways. Zhang Meng sought to capture such an ethos in his first feature film, Lucky Dog (耳朵大有福, 2007), about a newly retired railroad worker named Wang Kangmei 王抗美 (literally “Resist Amer­i­ca” in the Korean War). With his wife hospitalized and h ­ ouse­hold income reduced, our protagonist scouts the city for a new job, tries out shoe-­polishing, driving a pedicab, salesmanship, and a local opera troupe—­since he used to be the lead singer of The Long March Cantatas (長征組歌)—­all for naught. He invites his ­daughter and rich son-­in-­law over for dinner, only to be caught in their bickering over an implied extramarital affair. He also visits a former coworker, who dashes his hopes for getting help, and his el­derly ­father, who leads a miserable life with his negligent b­ rother and sister-­in-­law. Wang Kangmei finishes his day dancing at a disco and singing The Long March Cantatas. Despite this depressing plot, the film, hailed as an “ordinary ­people’s New Year’s film” (平民賀歲劇) brought tearful laughter to its audiences ­after its theatrical release in Northeast China. Viewers praised the optimism and resilience of the film’s “­little ­people,” in whom they recognized themselves, their friends, and their f­athers. One viewer noted how the red songs, pop songs, and official tv jingles in the film constituted the soundtrack of his own childhood. Another viewer praised the film’s pace as the same as that of his ­father’s bicycle.76 ­After the l­imited success of Lucky Dog, Zhang Meng went on to make his second feature, The Piano in a Factory, the concept for which had been brewing in his mind for nearly a de­cade. Shortly ­after graduating from college, Zhang Meng went to help his aunt decorate her fashion shop in the nearby city of Tieling. While searching for some wooden planks, he came across a crumbling homemade harmonium made by his ­father’s old per­for­mance troupe (文工團) to rehearse revolutionary model operas during the Cultural Revolution. His ­father recalled that someone ­else in his per­for­mance troupe had made an erhu (二胡, a two-­stringed fiddle) for his son ­because he could not afford to buy it. To decorate his aunt’s shop, Zhang Meng visited the local steel market, where laid-­off steel workers acquired old machine tools and re­created an assembly line to make what­ever steel parts their clients wanted.77 Inspired by the handcrafted harmonium, the improvised steel market, and the ­father who made the erhu for his son, Zhang Meng came up with a s­ imple but elegant premise for his film: ­after his wife divorces him for a nouveau-­ riche man, a laid-­off steel worker named Chen Guilin seeks to win custody of his ­daughter by making a piano for her. As a piano is, in Chinese, literally a Factory R ubble

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“musical instrument of steel,” Chen scavenges for raw materials and assem­bles his former steel coworkers with specialized skills in the old factory workshop. ­These coworkers provide subplots for the film to explore the diverse plights of the working class in the age of market reforms, while the product of their creative collective ­labor becomes their bequest to the next generation.

Location Shooting in Factory Ruins

Zhang Meng’s original intention was to shoot the film on location in Tiexi in Shenyang, but the district retained l­ittle trace of its industrial past. Although the streets still bore names such as “Construction Boulevard” and “Protect the Workers Road,” the cityscape was now ­free of smokestacks and trains shipping coal. Factories had been replaced by shopping malls and apartment complexes bearing names like “Barcelona Crystal Palace.” Further location scouting took Zhang Meng to the Red Flag Tractor Factory in nearby Anshan, whose tens of thousands of workers had been reduced to only a few hundred. Its dilapidated workshops and half-­demolished housing looked more like old steel workshops of the socialist era than the modernized Angang Steel Works.78 For a low-­budget film, location shooting is an economic necessity, but The Piano in a Factory includes many scenes that seem tangential to the film’s main storyline, yet they deliberately exhibit the remnant industrial landscape in ruins. For instance, Chen Guilin’s pal “Fat Head” is caught cheating at mahjong early in the film, and we see him run out of a factory workers’ residential building, walk on a ­giant iron pipe, and climb onto a brick chimney to flee from his fellow players. L ­ ater, to catch the young man who had impregnated Fat Head’s unmarried d ­ aughter, the entire piano-­making gang mount their vehicles—­a posse of two mopeds, a motorcycle with a sidecar, and a butcher’s van—­and drive out of the factory’s iron gates, passing old ware­houses, along and across railroad crossings, and then stopping at the old Workers’ Palace (figure 5.7). They run around green painted hallways and staircases with faded slogans and a huge portrait of Marx. They cast their shadows onto a gangster movie being projected in an empty auditorium before nailing the “culprit” in the back of the building, only to tell him in the most anticlimactic fashion to “get lost.” With a certain tongue-­in-­cheek humor reminiscent of Wes Anderson’s films, t­ hese are two of several other wild goose chases that visit and revisit the vari­ous spaces of work, life, and play familiar to several generations of Chinese industrial workers now on the verge of disappearance. One significant plot tangent in The Piano in a Factory thematizes the destruction of an industrial architectural icon. Two smokestacks first appear 218

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Figure 5.7. Location shooting to highlight socialist ruins in Zhang Meng’s The Piano in a Factory, 2011.

prominently with the film’s opening credits as the backdrop to a funeral where Chen Guilin’s band is told to change from playing a lugubrious song to an upbeat tune. L ­ ater, we learn that two other smokestacks at the steel factory are slated for de­mo­li­tion, but the old workers want to make a last-­ditch effort to preserve their legacy. They hold large and small meetings to discuss ways to transform their sentimental value into a “pretty tourist attraction,” not unlike the decorative industrial remnants in Chengdu’s 24 City or Beijing’s 798 Art Zone. ­After all preservation efforts fall through, former workers gather on a slope to watch the blasting of their beloved smokestacks, producing a fog of dust that envelops and effaces them. This scene follows Chen Guilin’s surrender of the custody of his d ­ aughter to his ex-­wife. In interviews, Zhang Meng explicates the smokestacks as the “phallus of the working class,” and with their “castration,” the symbolic death of the worker as ­father.79 Zhang Meng not only anthropomorphizes the industrial landscape, but also comments on the film’s location through cinematography. Especially noteworthy is his preference for the lateral tracking shot, a film technique Johannes von Moltke calls “an aesthetic dominant” in the cinematic portrayal of ruins: “Often extended into long takes, ­these shots suggest a cinematographic affinity for tracking the ruin in order to suggest its extensiveness and invite a specific mode of contemplation on the part of the viewer.” 80 As discussed ­earlier, West of the Tracks also includes many handheld tracking shots of industrial ruins to create a panoramic rec­ord. Although featuring fewer tracking shots, Factory R ubble

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24 City is filled with slow, poised, and lingering pans that, as Qi Wang puts it, “create a mood of contemplation and appreciation of the suggested plenitude of time, history, and experience in the lived space of Factory 420.” 81 The tracking shots in The Piano in a Factory, however, do more than museumify industrial ruins. As Dai Jinhua astutely points out, the camera’s highly mechanical tracking movements often “reframe, decenter, and push out stationary characters, as their voices and dialogues continue off-­screen.” 82 She interprets this as the “working class’s experience of marginalization.” It is only ­after the workers return to the factory that “the camera gradually reduces and eventually stops its highly autonomous movement.” As they “regain a sense of dignity, honor and the happiness of work,” the workers are no longer abandoned by the camera but instead “dominate the screen and control the camera’s movement and rhythm.” By the end of the film, tracking shots are “synchronized with the characters’ movements and create panoramic scrolls that lay out the factory’s vari­ous ­labor procedures.” 83 Thus endowed with h ­ uman agency, tracking shots no longer alienate but rather empower the workers. Instead of a monumental mechanical complex dwarfing individual workers, the industrial landscape becomes a theatrical stage or platform for their spectacular per­for­mances.

Theatricality and Bricolage

Featuring musically talented protagonists in a band, The Piano in a Factory is punctuated throughout by song-­and-­dance numbers with spotlights, curtains, colorful costumes, and ­music from the former Soviet Union and Eastern Eu­ rope. Their apparent artifice notwithstanding, ­these musical numbers harken back to the cultural life of industrial workers in the socialist era. The factory was more than a workplace or welfare provider: it was also a site of amateur creativity and spiritual pursuits. In the 1950s and 1960s, municipal governments and trade ­unions set up workers’ cultural palaces and enterprise-­level workers’ clubs all over China. Per­for­mance troupes, collective singing, and other amateur activities took on a special intensity during mass campaigns.84 As suggested by Antonioni’s and Ivens’s documentaries, the factory workshop, the street, and the countryside all became theatrical stages for revolutionary songs, loyalty dances, dramatic skits, and poetry recitations. Invested into this participatory revolutionary culture were the pride and dignity of the working class, the creativity and energy of youth, and the utopian promises of socialism. In addition to musical numbers, The Piano in the Factory also emphasizes worker creativity through bricolage, central to the film in several ways. In the first place, China’s socialist industry was cobbled together out of Western 220

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imperial and Japa­nese colonial legacies, Soviet aid, and nascent national industries. Second, far from indifferent bolts in the machinery, all the workers are tinkers with specialized and idiosyncratic skills and resources: from the retired engineer Wang, who prepares the blueprints from a Rus­sian piano-­ making manual, to B ­ rother Ji, who manages the digging of scrap metal from the foundry and casts the sand mold for the piano’s steel frame, to “Lightning Fin­gers,” worker-­turned-­thief-­turned-­locksmith, who makes the piano keys. The ingenuity of their collaborative bricolage takes on a noble pathos amidst the bleak despair of unemployment. This group portrait is much closer to the heroes of Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai than to the assembly line workers of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times. Fi­nally, bricolage characterizes the way Zhang Meng went about making this low-­budget film, with such precarious finances that he once had to pour diesel from the car into the power generator. Fortunately, friends helped Zhang Meng make his film the same way that the film’s supporting characters help the protagonist in his piano-­making endeavor.85 If the film is about the Chinese working class, however, why choose a piano—­such a Western, “bourgeois” instrument—as its central artifact, symbol, and motivation?86 Why not choose a traditional Chinese instrument, such as the erhu or flute, or imported instruments associated with socialist mass recreation, such as an accordion or harmonica? In the film, however, this ultimate emblem of Western highbrow art is deconstructed into raw materials, mechanical components, and pure functionality by an idiosyncratic bunch of former industrial workers. T ­ hese workers from the grass roots are also parents who harbor middle-­class aspirations for their ­children, who may or may not appreciate the sacrifices of their elders. Furthermore, the conversion of their vocational skills and l­abor into a “bourgeois” work of art is also analogous to Zhang Meng’s transformation of a factory’s remnants into an art­house film.

Mediating Postmemory

When Zhang Meng and his crew ­were shooting on location at an old factory, old workers passing by w ­ ere baffled: “Why would you make a film about us? Are you crazy? Who would watch it?” No longer ­going to the cinema, ­these ­elderly workers did not seem to value their own memories.87 By contrast, the film resonated most with the postsocialist generation, as suggested by the many viewer comments on douban​.­com, where the film received a high average rating of 8.4 by more than 250,000 voters, along with nearly 65,000 short comments and 2,000 reviews. Three modes of reception dominate: in a sentimental mode, the c­ hildren of workers testified to the film’s evocation of their nostalgic Factory R ubble

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Figure 5.8. The piano made by steel workers at the conclusion of Zhang Meng’s The Piano in a Factory.

childhood memories; in an aesthetic mode, cinephiles praised or critiqued the film’s cinematographic style; fi­nally, in a so­cio­log­ic­ al mode, commentators used the film as an allegory for the plight of China’s “working class.” A widely circulating review in the so­cio­log­i­cal mode, entitled “The Sorrow of the Chinese Working Class,” written by economist Wu Xiaobo 吳曉波, points out that The Piano in a Factory could have taken place any time between 1998 and 2003, when over twenty million workers lost their jobs. The massive layoffs ­were particularly brutal in the Northeast, where entire families ­were workers. Wu cites his own so­cio­log­i­cal investigations in Tiexi District in 2002 and tells a poignant story about an unemployed ­couple with a son in ­middle school: “One day, the boy said that his teacher required all students to wear sneakers to an athletic game, but his parents could not afford them. At dinner, the husband ate in silence as his wife nagged and blamed him. Fi­nally, he put down his chopsticks, walked over to the balcony, and jumped off.” 88 The despair of ­these laid-­off Chinese workers is akin to their counter­parts in post-­Communist Eu­rope, for whom, as Anca Pusca writes, “industrial horizons became unrecognizable, collapsed in a pool of dust, regrets, corruption, and, more impor­tant, a sense of self-­destruction and futility that directly challenged discourses of pro­gress and positive change.” 89 The new millennium absorbed the trauma of laid-­off workers, who moved out of the former industrial zones that have now been converted into prosperous commercial real estate. Watching the film in a nearly empty cinema in 222

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2011, Wu Xiaobo comments: “Bygone is the crisis of reforming state-­owned enterprises as well as the lives of 20 million laid-­off workers. All that remains now is a bit of melancholy left in a low-­budget film entitled The Piano in a Factory.”90 Yet some bloggers also regarded the state-­owned enterprise workers not so much as the “victims” of reform but rather as the “elite class” of the Mao era whose welfare came at the expense of rural folk.91 Ideological debates aside, the film and its douban.com website served to mediate memory and postmemory for a postsocialist generation, especially the adult ­children of former factory workers. Identifying himself as “the son of a laid-­off Northeastern worker,” one viewer recalls the “forest of flesh” in the factory bath­house and the myriad bicycle bells a­ fter a workday, “plus the clattering of spoons inside the mess tins on the bicycles’ backseats.” Another viewer wrote a moving prose-­poem entitled “Dad, I’ve Grown Up.” As a child, she used to ­ride on crane trollies, eat ­free popsicles till her tummy hurt, and pick fruits in the factory garden. ­After both of her parents ­were laid off, her mom watched TV all day while her dad smoked all night, before coming up with a new livelihood: frying sesame cakes, pickling cabbage, and making caramel candy. One summer, Dad bought sour plum powder and an insulated bucket, Dissolved the powder with hot ­water, added vinegar, sugar, and ice And said he’d take me to sell sour plum juice, 50 cents a cup ­Under the hot sun, he pedaled a tricycle, seating me and the bucket of sour plum juice in the back, to a raffle ­People ­were still dumb back then, a big crowd showed up A Xiali brand car was placed up high on the stage Stimulating poor ­people’s fantasy to get rich fast Maybe our bucket looked too wretched That after­noon, we only sold four cups for 2 yuan, When I threw a tantrum, Dad gave me the money to buy a raffle ticket. We ­didn’t win anything. He pedaled for another eight bus stops To bring home that bucket of sour plum juice.92 Still young then, the author did not understand life’s hardships, for her parents sheltered her from their worries. Other ­children ­were not so lucky: a dad in the neighborhood became a gangster and beat his wife ­until she lost her mind, and a mom upstairs was arrested for participating in a pyramid scheme. Many classmates left school to become mi­grant workers, whereas the author went to university and got an office job in another city. Over New Year’s, she planned to take home a dvd of The Piano in a Factory and watch it with her Factory R ubble

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dad, buy a ­bottle of good liquor, and cook him a banquet, so she could tell him: “Dad, I’ve grown up.” With over 3,100 “likes,” the hundreds of responses to this post overwhelmingly came from young ­people whose parents had been workers—­several said they ­were moved to tears, and ­others shared their own reminiscences of growing up in factory districts. Although The Piano in a Factory was shot on celluloid, its remediation and circulation in portable dvd format transported its exhibition and reception into a more intimate familial sphere and enabled intergenerational conversations among el­derly workers—­who no longer went to the cinema—­and their adult c­ hildren. Online platforms such as douban​.­com further generated a “mediated remembering community,” 93 in which cinephiles could share with each other their personal memories evoked by the film. As with the digital cult of a martyr in chapter 1, the cyber-­controversy over Maoist denunciations in chapter 2, the viral circulation of ­Great Leap photography in chapter 3, and the online streaming of formerly inaccessible documentaries in chapter 4, new media technologies have enabled the reemergence of buried memories, their mediation across generations, and new modes of sharing memories among strangers.

Conclusion: From Rubble to Memorial

This chapter has argued that a memorial museum of the Mao era must give a prominent place to commemorating socialist factories and their workers, whose memories of the Mao era are not reducible to ­either trauma or nostalgia but rather are a mix of pride and idealism, on the one hand, and endurance and sacrifice, on the other. Memories of workers converge at the physical ruins of the socialist factory, which was not only a site of industrial production but also a self-­contained ecosystem that governed and provided for all aspects of the workers’ lives—­from housing, health care, and education to community, belonging, and identity.94 The socialist factory’s capacious workshops and canteens, residential neighborhoods and recreational spaces, all constituted significant milieus to mediate and collect the memories of their workers. The bankruptcy and de­mo­li­tion of ­these factories in the 1990s and 2000s, however, destroyed ­those inhabited realms of living memories and instead created the urge to memorialize and museumify ­these spaces. In the pro­cess of ruination and disappearance, socialist factories were thus transformed, to borrow from Pierre Nora’s famous distinction, from milieux de mémoire, real environments of memories, to lieux de mémoire, or sites of memory.95 Although some factory ruins have been physically preserved as quaint relics in trendy art districts and real estate, cinema has proven to be a less superficial and more versatile means 224

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of remediating the workers’ soon-­to-­be-­lost memories as well as of replicating on screen the rusty material texture and monumental scale of socialist industry. Memorialization of industrial ruins and workers who lost their “iron rice bowls” often occurs at an elegiac and nostalgic register, as the three films demonstrate, yet ­these cinematic memorials of the former “masters of the country” do not simply celebrate the Mao era as a utopia for the Chinese working class and an alternative to cap­i­tal­ist exploitation. In West of the Tracks, Wang Bing’s camera remediates the monumental rust of the factory complex and museumifies the material rubble and h ­ uman remnants of this disintegrating industrial ecosystem. Undoing iconic images of socialist workers as superheroes, this epic film shows machines and bodies sealed by a toxic social contract, whereby workers sacrificed their health to the factory that promised to care for them in their old age. In solidarity with the scavengers, recyclers, and vagabonds who wander the industrial wasteland, Wang Bing also chronicles their resilient survival amid the ruins of the socialist system. Shifting the focus from physical spaces and bodies to the workers’ experiences and subjectivities, Jia Zhangke’s 24 City excavates the memories of several generations of workers as their factory turns into a real-­estate development. This film shows how membership in a socialist work unit spelled pride and privilege as well as hardship and sacrifice; how the factory forged identities and communities as well as suppressed hopes and aspirations. Such a complex alchemy of nostalgia and trauma adds much greater nuance to viewing the factory as a glorious symbol of Mao’s working class. Fi­nally, in The Piano in a Factory, Zhang Meng turns industrial ruins into a theatrical stage whereby workers could showcase their creativity. This resurrects the ideal of the socialist factory as not only a workplace and welfare provider but also a space of leisure and play, of artistic and spiritual pursuit. Briefly overcoming the impotence and atomization of unemployment ­under a market economy, former steel workers re­unite to make a piano out of steel, a work of collaborative bricolage full of dignity, ingenuity, and pathos. The conversion of this proletariat camaraderie and craftsmanship into a bourgeois instrument is analogous to the filmmaker’s transformation of the factory’s ruins into a museum-­worthy work of art. Writing about Hong Kong before the 1997 handover, Ackbar Abbas famously captured the city’s zeitgeist with the term “aesthetics of disappearance,” or déjà disparu, “the feeling that what is new and unique about the situation is always already gone, and we are left holding a handful of clichés, or a cluster of memories of what has never been.” 96 Robin Visser notes a similar aesthetics of disappearance in the urban lit­er­a­ture, film, and art of con­temporary Factory R ubble

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mainland China, with their “detached, raw aesthetic” and “achronicities,” where past and pre­sent dis­appear in each other.97 Yomi Braester calls attention to the “documentary impulse” of both art films and commercial productions since the 1990s, which often feature de­mo­li­tion as “a symbol for the need to chronicle the city’s transformation.”98 Albeit driven by the aesthetics of disappearance and the documentary impulse, the three films discussed in this chapter also take on the weight of monumentality and the tone of requiem, a retrospective gaze and a museum aesthetic that turn them into cinematic memorials. ­These films came into existence as their subjects—­places, communities, and ways of life—­dis­ appeared, so that the films already had a relic-­like quality when they were first released. Bringing together texts, images, sounds, bodies, artifacts, and spaces, ­these cinematic memorials resemble museum exhibits that at once conjure up and deconstruct Maoist visual legacies. Turning the factory into a protagonist, they foreground locations through panoramic tracking shots, lingering long takes, and narrative tangents. They display and scrutinize material artifacts as still-­life objects and reflect on their history and meaning through oral histories, dialogues, and intertitles. In episodic yet structured narratives, they frame individual subjects in portraiture and feature collective subjects in sculptural frescoes or staged per­for­mances. More than telling an individual story or fashioning a national myth, the resulting films create a space for reflection and remembrance for several generations of audiences, who in turn share their personal and familial memories in online cinephilia communities. Such cinema not only remediates vanis­hing physical spaces, material artifacts, aging bodies, and fading voices into audiovisual images but also serves as a virtual museum whose collection of memory fragments inspires further recollections by their audiences. Continuing to focus on the material ruins of Chinese socialism, the next chapter surveys physical ruins and memorabilia collections that commemorate the Mao era both in terms of its everyday culture and its cataclysmic ­ruptures. Whereas each of the five chapters so far has focused on dif­fer­ent types of media—­from textual archives to audiovisual rec­ords—­that can constitute museum exhibits, chapter 6 w ­ ill consider the memorial museum in more literal terms, asking how physical places and tangible artifacts mediate testimony and memory in ways dif­fer­ent from words and images. As the book’s last chapter, it returns to Ba Jin’s original proposal for a Cultural Revolution museum to examine how the idea evolved over the de­cades in both theory and in practice; in other words, what attempts have been made to turn the idea of a memorial museum into a material real­ity? 226

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6 MUSEUMS AND MEMORIALS

In a short story titled “Ba Jin’s Dream” (巴金的夢), writer Ye Yonglie 葉永 烈 casts himself as the secretary for a “Shanghai Museum Society” and establishes a committee to plan the Cultural Revolution museum proposed by Ba Jin. A ­ fter issuing a call to the public for suggestions, the story goes, the committee receives nearly thirty thousand letters of support from older and younger generations, offering monetary donations, artifact collections, and imaginary blueprints. Most agree on Tian­anmen Square as the ideal location, though opinions are divided on the museum’s color: should it be red to suggest the era’s passion, black to evoke catastrophe, or white, the color of mourning? An in­ter­est­ing proposal for the main entrance is to nail the sculpted heads of the sixteen ringleaders of the “Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counterrevolutionary clique” on a pillar of eternal shame. Ye’s teacher suggests building a hell-­like “museum of souls” under­neath Tian­anmen Square, since the Cultural Revolution was dubbed “a revolution that touched p ­ eople’s souls.” The long entrance corridor is to be wallpapered with big-­character posters, and the three exhibition halls are to display three shapes of souls. The “square souls,” like ink stones blackened myriad times without losing their “squareness,” are heroes and martyrs, such as Peng Dehuai 彭德懷 and Zhang Zhixin 張志新. The “triangle souls,” like daggers that stab ­people in the back, are the Cultural Revolution’s villains, such as Lin Biao 林彪 and Jiang Qing 江青. Fi­nally, “round souls,” like

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cobblestones scraped smooth over time, are t­ hose who neither harmed ­others nor stood up to the tyranny. The exit is to display clubs, whips, denunciation letters, handcuffs, and vari­ous dunce caps; in the ominous glint of this “mirror,” the visitor can reflect on the shape of his or her soul. To build such a museum, however, requires fifty official seals of approval, and a­ fter describing the Kafkaesque journey to obtain only the first ten seals, Ye’s short story ends with the planning committee’s ­bitter laughter about its own pipe dream.1 First published in a science fiction magazine in 1986, Ye Yonglie’s story envisages what it would be like to put Ba Jin’s call for a Cultural Revolution museum into practice, using mass participation or crowd-­sourcing to come up with a curatorial blueprint. Like a ­temple that enshrines gods and demons, this ­imagined museum enshrines heroes and villains in accordance with the official 1981 resolution on party history. Although renouncing the Cultural Revolution, its museology bears clear influences from Mao-era museums that portray the “old society” as a hell-­like space with torture instruments. True to Ba Jin’s original vision, this ­imagined museum and its material exhibits are meant to serve as a “mirror of the soul” for visitors to reflect on their own conscience. The story’s ending, however, mocks Ba Jin’s proposal as an absurdist fantasy given the realities of Chinese politics. More than three de­cades ­later, the only museum standing in Tian­anmen Square is the National Museum of China.2 In its permanent exhibition on modern Chinese history, entitled “The Road to Rejuvenation” (復興之路), the Mao era appears in a corner exhibit, ­behind a pillar, with a few black-­and-­white photos portraying “socialist modernization,” such as dam construction during the G ­ reat Leap Forward, and “bumps on the road to socialism,” a single image of a Red Guard rally.3 Official amnesia, however, does not mean blanket censorship of the memorial landscape. Instead, as the last five chapters of this volume show, ­there have been wide-­ranging strug­g les against forgetting: to rec­ord, collect, preserve, transmit, exhibit, and disseminate words, images, and artifacts that can attest to the Maoist past, that can be curated as exhibits of a f­ uture memorial museum. By the new millennium, most potential exhibits discussed thus far entered a wider public consciousness by means of digital remediation and online circulation. In this new media and memory ecol­ogy, is Ba Jin’s call for a museum simply too old-­fashioned and outdated? Does the materiality of the museum still ­matter? Might tangible ruins and relics provide us with any privileged access to the real­ity of the past? Continuing the last chapter’s focus on the materiality of socialist ruins, this chapter examines Chinese museums and memorials that commemorate

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the Mao era by collecting, preserving, or exhibiting its material remains. The first section returns to Ba Jin’s original proposal to ask, “Why a museum?” and “What kind of museum?” What models inspired him, what w ­ ere the specifics of his vision, and, above all, how has his museum concept been implemented, appropriated, or revised? The bulk of the chapter provides a guided tour of specific museums and memorial sites within China’s borders—­most of them local and private initiatives—­where visitors may encounter Maoist legacies in tangible form. Our first stop w ­ ill be a local “landlord manor” museum in Sichuan, founded in the 1950s and still open ­today, so as to reflect on how Chinese museums have curated material objects as historical testimony. In the same town, we ­will visit China’s largest private museum, with a most impressive collection and exhibition of everyday artifacts from the Cultural Revolution, a museum ­either praised as a realization or condemned as a travesty of Ba Jin’s vision. The remainder of the chapter focuses on places that commemorate the ­human costs of Maoist campaigns, including the ruins of a ­labor reeducation camp in Gansu, a Red Guard graveyard in Chongqing, a former May Seventh Cadre School (五七幹校) in Hubei, and the “Cultural Revolution Museum” in Guangdong. Studying the conservation, transformation, and memorialization of t­ hese “trauma sites”4 helps us understand the politics and ethics of commemorating the h ­ uman costs of Maoist campaigns. This chapter argues that material manifestations of Ba Jin’s museum concept have bifurcated between red memorabilia collections and trauma sites. Red memorabilia collections commemorate the Mao era as a civilization, as a bygone society and culture, a socialist way of life with everyday artifacts expressing utopian ideologies while illuminating the hardships and austerity. Maoist trauma sites are grounded in the ruins of cataclysms, or repression, vio­lence, famine, and other manmade catastrophes that left b­ ehind many unmourned ghosts who continue to haunt China t­oday. Although both make claims to authenticity as material testimonies to the Mao years, red memorabilia collections mediate mostly nostalgic memories of the sensory worlds and lived environments of a generation’s childhood and youth, whereas trauma sites foreground death, loss, and pain, or terror. The former have been criticized for commodifying socialist legacies or trivializing Maoist vio­lence, therefore less materialization than mockery of Ba Jin’s museum proposal. The latter are so marginalized and neglected that they receive few visitors and are often left to decay as derelict ruins. A ­future memorial museum would best integrate both types of material remains in order to testify to the revolution’s inspiring and destructive powers.

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Why a Museum? Ba Jin’s Inspirations from Global Memorial Culture

In the fall of 1950, Ba Jin joined the Chinese del­e­ga­tion to the World Congress of Intellectuals in Defense of Peace in Warsaw and visited Auschwitz-­Birkenau as part of his itinerary. Several months ­later, he published a reportage essay detailing what he saw and heard, thought and felt at the memorial in order to provide his Chinese readers with a vicarious tour of Auschwitz. As if motivated by a “forensic impulse,”5 Ba Jin painstakingly cata­logued the camp’s physical spaces and material artifacts as remnant criminal evidence that the Nazis attempted to destroy ­toward the end of the war. Meanwhile, his description sustains a tension between presence and absence, between the weight of historical facts and the precariousness of testimony: “We have come to the world’s largest extermination camp but only see a forsaken wilderness.”6 To further illustrate the horrors he witnessed second­hand, Ba Jin edited a photobook reproducing twenty-­two iconic images showing the gates, electrified barbed wires, emaciated inmates, piles of hair and suitcases, gas chambers, incinerators, and artwork by the inmates. His preface considers t­ hese material artifacts “more real and more power­ful than words” to prove Nazi crimes and to warn humankind against fascism.7 As early as 1950, Ba Jin recognized the potential of physical ruins and material vestiges to evoke the historical crime scene for later-­day visitors. He further suggests a hierarchy of testimonial media with diminishing force, from the physical ruins to the photographic images to the verbal descriptions. Perhaps Ba Jin would agree with David Lowenthal that “written history demarcates past from pre­sent,” but that “artifacts are si­mul­ta­neously past and pre­sent.” 8 Thirty years l­ ater in 1980, Ba Jin (figure 6.1) led a del­e­ga­tion from the Chinese Writers Association to visit Japan. A ­ fter seeing the torch-­bearing statues in Hiroshima’s memorial park, Ba Jin vowed to light the torch of memory in China so that ­later generations ­would not forget “our ten years of catastrophe—­ another ­great tragedy of ­human history.” In another essay on Nagasaki, Ba Jin writes of a nightmare in which the memorial statues come to life and the horrors of the atomic bomb are replayed before his eyes. He wakes up shouting: “We c­ an’t allow Hiroshima and Nagasaki to be repeated! We c­ an’t allow the Cultural Revolution to be repeated!”9 Clearly, Ba Jin’s museum concept was inspired by his visits to World War II trauma sites. As he writes in the preface to the 1987 edition of Random Thoughts: I heard that a West German youth refused to believe that the Nazis had built a genocide murder factory in Poland. He thought it was some ­people’s “fantasy”! Who would have thought! In less than four de­cades, ­people 230

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Figure 6.1. The “Cultural Revolution Museum” in Shantou’s Pagoda Park enshrines Ba Jin at its entrance (photo by the author).

have already forgotten the Nazis’ monstrous crimes against humankind. I have been to Auschwitz. The ruins of the extermination camp are still preserved t­ here. The ghastly sights of the gas chambers and incinerators appeared before my eyes, and yet some p ­ eople are already denying their existence. Then let us look back at the Cultural Revolution. Where are its traces ­today? ­After less than twenty years, ­people already consider this unpre­ce­dented catastrophe a distant dream and they want every­one to forget all about it.10 As this passage suggests, authenticity, authority, permanence, and memorability are the four major qualities of the memorial museum that appealed to Ba Jin, who emphasizes the significance of material remains to bear witness to historical vio­lence and to combat denial and forgetting. Perceiving the amnesia about the Mao years as early as the mid-1980s, Ba Jin wanted his own generation’s evanescent memories to outlast their mortal bodies and to be transmitted to young ­people such as his grand­daughter in ­middle school, “who has nothing in her head but homework and grades.”11 Although Ba Jin never specified what types of objects or scenes he envisioned, Ye Yonglie’s story that M useums and   M emorials

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began this ­chapter suggests dunce caps, big-­character posters, clubs, whips, and handcuffs—­“civil” and “militant” weapons and props of the public strug­ gle sessions as well as of the behind-­the-­doors torture in the “ox-­sheds” that detained the victims. Ba Jin’s emphasis on primary artifacts is well aligned with global memorial museums that seek to provide what Paul Williams calls “tangible proof in the face of debate about, and even denial of, what tran­spired.”12 Yet ­there is a “basic difficulty with the object base of memorial museums” b­ ecause “the injured, dispossessed, and expelled are left object-­poor,” and “the clandestine nature of much po­liti­cal vio­lence means that perpetrators aim to purposefully destroy evidence of their destruction.”13 Much vio­lence from the Cultural Revolution actually took place in the open, but few had the foresight or dared to collect “witnessing objects” from the strug­g le sessions in which every­one had to raise his or her fist. The only known collection of big-­character posters ­today is in the possession of Yang Peiming 楊培明, founder of the Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center, who serendipitously came across “big-­character posters” being used as wrapping paper.14 Another exceptional collection of objects testifying to Red Guard vio­lence is Wang Jingyao’s suitcase of bloodstained clothes and other artifacts recovered from his wife’s body.15 ­These material remnants are examples of what Marianne Hirsch and Leo Spitzer call “testimonial objects” that “carry memory traces from the past and embody the pro­cess of its transmission,” that serve as “points of intersection between past and pre­sent, memory and postmemory, personal and cultural recollection.”16 Apart from testimonial objects that support a museum’s authority in terms of trustworthiness, Ba Jin also wants the Cultural Revolution museum to serve as a moral authority, akin to the sacred space of a t­ emple for one’s conscience. With the apocalyptic ring of Judgment Day, the envisioned museum is to remind visitors of both the panoramic historical “march of events” and “his or her be­hav­ior during that de­cade. . . . ​Masks ­will fall, each ­will search his or her conscience, the true face of each one ­will be revealed, large and small debts from the past ­will be paid.”17 The museum’s purpose is to reestablish moral clarity and humanistic values in the wake of lies and betrayal, vio­lence and injustice “when humiliation and inhuman tortures ­were inflicted on our compatriots, that ­great chaos in which truth and falsehood w ­ ere reversed, white and black confounded, loyalty and treason mistaken for each other.”18 Emphasizing conscience and complicity, Ba Jin constructed his own “museum on paper” through extensive reflections on his personal participation in the persecution of friends. Jotted from 1978 to 1986, many essays in his Random Thoughts (隨想錄) recall his own complicity in the po­liti­cal campaigns of the 232

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1950s, implicitly extending the timeline of the Cultural Revolution to the early PRC: “I truly would like to forget the past, but I cannot forget 1957. . . . ​I followed the crowd to throw stones. I believed in o­ thers and wanted to preserve myself. . . . ​Looking back, so many wronged souls are hovering b­ ehind me. How can I face myself ?”19 Other essays in Random Thoughts suggest proper curatorial practices vis-­à-­vis Maoist cultural artifacts, such as revolutionary model works (yangbanxi 樣板戲) that still gave Ba Jin nightmares, b­ ecause Cultural Revolution rebels used to impersonate the yangbanxi “heroes” and terrorize intellectuals condemned as “ox-­demons.”20 Therefore, Ba Jin suggests that the period’s mainstream cultural artifacts, if exhibited at all, should be exposed as oppressive propaganda tainted by a history of vio­lence, not innocent works of art: “The flowers that bloom in h ­ uman blood are bright and beautiful, but they are poisoned.”21 In 1986 and 1987, Ba Jin’s essay “A Cultural Revolution Museum” was reprinted in vari­ous newspapers and broadcast on the radio. Yet despite the widespread resonance of his proposal, in 1988, the ccp Central Propaganda Department issued explicit regulations that forbade the publication of works on the Cultural Revolution.22 ­After the Tian­anmen crackdown in 1989, the Cultural Revolution museum idea fell into hibernation, only to be transformed several years ­later during the “Mao fever” of the early 1990s.23 “Red collectors” spoke of their trea­sure troves of Mao badges, propaganda posters, and other “revolutionary” everyday artifacts as de facto Cultural Revolution museums.24 Yet as Laurence Coderre discerns, even as ­these “collector/curators” spoke of historical responsibility, they followed the same connoisseurial logic as “collector/investors” who engaged in for-­profit trading of red memorabilia.25 Decorating their walls with old propaganda posters, staging Red Guard song-­and-­dance numbers, and serving dishes once consumed by sent-­down youth, Cultural Revolution–themed restaurant o­ wners also invoked Ba Jin and described their enterprises as mini-­ museums and public memorial spaces.26 Tinged by playful nostalgia, such spaces ­were designed to bring back the “red old days” of ­people’s youth rather than to impart historical knowledge. Instead of commemorating the traumatized bodies and souls of the victims, t­ hese “museums” re-­present the Cultural Revolution with the era’s mass-­produced artifacts, often turning erstwhile Mao cult objects into commodity fetishes.27 Cultural critic Xu Ben argues that such spaces of nostalgic consumption are less implementations than travesties of Ba Jin’s original proposal, as they conflate propagandistic illusion with historical real­ity and aid collective amnesia rather than collective memory.28 Alongside private “red” artifact collections and themed spaces, many also attempted to implement Ba Jin’s proposal for a Cultural Revolution museum in print and in virtual media. In 1995, photography editor Yang Kelin 楊克林 M useums and   M emorials

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published a large, two-­volume book in Hong Kong entitled The Cultural Revolution Museum (文化大革命博物館), which pre­sents a chronology of the de­cade through historical photo­graphs and documents. Blessed with Ba Jin’s calligraphy, this book is or­ga­nized into twelve “exhibition halls” devoted to themes such as “origins,” “deification,” “factional warfare,” “the arts,” “reeducation,” “economy,” and so on.29 Privileging the medium of photography, this joins other Cultural Revolution sourcebooks, historiographies, memoirs, and oral history collections published in the 1990s and 2000s.30 In spring 1996, the first “Virtual Museum of the Cultural Revolution” was launched by the online Chinese periodical Huaxia wenzhai (華夏文摘), or China News Digest (cnd), based overseas and blocked in China. Consisting almost exclusively of textual materials, its contents are cata­logued ­under “exhibition halls” such as “Documents and Sources” and “Literary and Artistic Works.”31 This and many other websites devoted to the Cultural Revolution32 are mainly databases archiving myriad documents rather than exhibition spaces highlighting selected artifacts. An exceptional “multimedia exhibit” in a virtual Cultural Revolution museum is Hu Jie’s documentary Though I Am Gone, mentioned at the beginning of this book. This film is prominently featured on the “Chinese Holocaust Memorial” website, founded in 2000 by Chicago-­based scholar Wang Youqin 王友琴 to commemorate the victims of the Cultural Revolution by name.33 But how adequate is it to call the Cultural Revolution a “Chinese Holocaust”? Certainly, the Holocaust has been a “touchstone and paradigm” for the “discourse on collective, social and cultural memory,”34 and Auschwitz served as an impor­tant inspiration for Ba Jin. In a historically informed comparison between Maoism and Nazism, Vera Schwarcz points out resemblances between the euphoric support of both the Chinese and the German masses for a savior-­dictator, between the Night of Broken Glass (Kristallnacht) and the campaign to Smash the Four Olds, between concentration camps and l­abor reeducation camps.35 Yet some other scholars have found the comparison less than productive, such as the editors of the volume Some of Us: Chinese W ­ omen Growing Up in the Mao Era: Nowadays, it seems one of the easiest ways to arrive at a higher moral ground is to accuse someone of e­ ither being like Hitler or his mindless followers or even, curiously, his helpless victims. . . . ​Such accusations have often themselves become like ­those gao maozi [high hats] that ­were readily forced onto the heads of the designated enemies during the Cultural Revolution. . . . ​To be sure, lessons of the Cultural Revolution have yet to be 234

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fully learned, but is it to be done only through a dichotomized framework of victims versus victimizers, namely “helpless” (therefore good) Chinese versus “evil” Chinese?36 The use of Nazi-­related “high hats” could obscure the power and appeal of Maoist utopian visions that mobilized mass participation as well as the cycles of vio­lence wherein targets of one campaign might have been activists in an ­earlier campaign. In this sense, a more productive international comparison would be to other (post)communist countries with their enmeshed memories of victimhood and complicity, trauma, and nostalgia. ­Until his death in 2005, Ba Jin took l­ittle substantial initiative to implement his vision, but his proposal for a Cultural Revolution museum underwent multiple appropriations, revisions, and contestations. Instead of a concrete monument in Tian­anmen Square, the museum proposal has turned into a topos, or a place of discourse where contested memories of the Mao era intersect. Critics have interrogated Ba Jin’s silence over Mao’s role and adherence to the official 1981 resolution on party history,37 as well as his focus on the suffering of intellectuals. He never mentioned the ­Great Leap famine, which had a much higher death toll than the Cultural Revolution, nor considered workers’ memories of the Mao years as a time of job security, ­free health care, and safe streets; a time of tight communities, selfless idealism, and ­simple virtues; or a time of scarcity and deprivation when one knew the worth of t­ hings. Even for dissidents, as anthropologist Yiching Wu argues, the Cultural Revolution provided slivers of opportunity for the expression of righ­teous protest against the status quo. Indeed, Wu’s book cites Ba Jin’s plea for a museum as an example of “concerted efforts” since the 1980s “to reduce the extraordinary complexity of the Cultural Revolution to the simplicity almost exclusively of barbarism, vio­lence, and ­human suffering.”38 Has Ba Jin’s museum remained nothing more than “empty talk,” or, as Yiching Wu puts it, “moralistic condemnation and exhortation” that “[flattens] historical memory?”39 The remainder of this chapter ­will shift from theory to practice and give a guided tour to museums and memorials of the Mao era in material form. In recent years, as Kirk Denton points out in Exhibiting the Past, China’s patriotic education campaign and development of tourism have overseen a museum boom driven as much by top-­down po­liti­cal directives as by local economic initiatives.40 Although official history museums in Beijing and Shanghai elide traumatic upheavals from the Mao era,41 some local socie­ ties and private entrepreneurs have begun tapping into more sensitive layers of their historical palimpsests. The following survey consists of physical and M useums and   M emorials

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publicly accessible sites in China that consciously preserve and exhibit material remains from the Mao era. I categorize such memorial sites into red memorabilia collections, on the one hand, and Maoist trauma sites, on the other, with their respective foci on the Mao era as utopia versus ruin, civilization versus cataclysm, and everyday life versus po­liti­cal dictatorship.

Never Forget Class Strug­gle: A Memorial Museum from the Mao Era

We begin in the small town of Anren in Sichuan’s Dayi County, home to the most famous museum of “class strug­g le” in the Mao era and the site of China’s largest private museum cluster ­today. Formerly the residence of the local landlord Liu Wencai 劉文彩, the Dayi Landlord Manor Exhibition Hall (大邑地主 莊園陳列館) opened in 1959 and garnered nationwide fame in 1965 ­after installation of the life-­size clay sculpture series Rent Collection Courtyard (收租院). The transformations of this “landlord manor” show us the changing ontology, function, and curatorial practices of Chinese museums to make material objects bear witness to the historical past. Most surprisingly, it shows how Ba Jin’s heartrending plea for a museum so that ­future generations ­will “never forget” past vio­lence and suffering already has pre­ce­dence in—or was possibly a legacy of—­Maoist exhibitionary practices to “never forget class strug­g le.” As soon as the Communists “liberated” the town of Anren in 1950, they seized Liu Wencai’s estate, divided up his property to catalyze revolutionary sentiment among the peasants, and turned his home into a cadre school.42 But beyond redistributing the landlord’s ill-­gotten “loot” as the revolution’s spoils, the revolutionaries also wanted to show—as if in Walter Benjamin’s “historical materialist fashion”—­how the landlord’s trea­sures ­were not so much “documents of civilization” but rather “documents of barbarism” and exploitation.43 So they held multiple exhibitions juxtaposing the landlord’s luxuries against material evidence of exploitation and vio­lence, such as oversized peck grain containers and iron shackles.44 By 1959, the most symbolic of the revolution’s spoils, Liu Wencai’s home, was turned into a museum in response to the Ministry of Culture’s call to create a museum in e­ very county. Museum booklets from the 1960s emphasize that the landlord manor, with its twenty-­seven courtyards and 180 rooms, was built with corvée l­abor on “piles of white bones” and the “ruins of over a hundred peasant homes.”45 Close to the entrance is a garage for cars and sedan chairs between Chinese-­style and Western-­style reception rooms; inside are living quarters still decked out as examples of de­cadence, with opulent bedrooms and an “opium room”; located ­behind a “hypocritical Buddhist shrine” is a ­water dungeon that supposedly 236

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Figure 6.2. Rent Collection Courtyard sculpture series on exhibit in the former Landlord Manor museum in Anren town, Sichuan province (photo by the author).

imprisoned tenants in arrears. Other spaces of vio­lence and exploitation include an accounting office, a granary, a yard for hired laborers, and a courtyard for rent collection. When museum officials did not have Liu Wencai’s original belongings to furnish the period rooms, they used substitutes from other landlord families and even commissioned local carpenters to make a gilded “dragon bed” to illustrate his extravagance.46 During the Socialist Education Movement of the early to mid-1960s, the museum added dioramas and waxworks portraying the landlord’s “evils,” mostly images of torture and incarceration loosely based on peasant bitterness-­ remembrances, that complemented the exhibitions of “real” artifacts, such as handcuffs and shackles, spring steel whips, guns, and a w ­ ater dungeon.47 Combining the vivid re-creations with the aura of primary artifacts, the efficacy of ­these exhibitions lay in their ability to “speak” even to the illiterate, helping to sharpen ­children’s antennae for class enemies who might be lurking in their everyday lives. By 1965, the Landlord Manor museum added the Rent Collection Courtyard sculpture series (figure 6.2), modeled in part on clay sculptures of hell in the local City God ­Temple, in order to create a “socialist ­temple” that portrays the “hell of the old society.”48 Reproduced in illustrations, posters, comic strips, and films, the work was upheld as an exemplar of Mao’s revolutionary realism and served as a key precursor to the Cultural Revolution.49 In the 1960s M useums and   M emorials

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and the 1970s, the manor-­museum received tens of millions of visitors, who also performed their visceral response to the exhibition with slogans and tears, some even spitting at or beating the clay figures with walking sticks.50 ­After the de-emphasis on class education in the 1980s, the number of museum visitors dwindled.51 Tourists started returning in the 2000s a­ fter the con­temporary artist Cai Guoqiang 蔡國強 controversially hired artisans to re­create the Rent Collection Courtyard for the 1999 Venice Biennale.52 At about the same time, popu­lar revisionist historiography began to portray the evil landlord as a good philanthropist, and it exposed the old horrors—­such as the “­water dungeon” that imprisoned tenants who ­were in arrears—as Mao-­ era ideological fabrications.53 Bathed in waves of fame and notoriety, this local museum with a national reputation made a successful transition into the postsocialist era. In the summers of 2009 and 2013, I visited the manor museum amid tourist crowds. Renamed the Liu F ­ amily Estate Museum (劉氏 莊園博物館), its written and spoken scripts for tourists emphasize Liu Wencai’s biography and ­family lineage instead of condemning him as a demon of the “feudal old Society.” Liu’s material possessions, his multiple wives, and his protection by the local militia are presented from the double perspective of the rich and the poor, as double-­edged objects of desire and d ­ etestation. I overheard the whispers of my underwhelmed fellow tourists: “Is this all the luxury that a landlord had?” In some ways, the museum has become just another mansion of the rich gentry, the basis of heritage tourism that has sprung up in small towns all over China since the 1990s. When explicating the tools of exploitation and The Rent Collection Courtyard, the tour guides on my visits tried to disentangle myth from fact, but they mostly borrowed the language of art connoisseurship in describing the sculpture series. If class strug­g le was more ambiguous than previously assumed, it was at least pos­si­ble to reclaim the sculptures’ “artistic” value. In the Liu F ­ amily Estate Museum, the tourist revisits two kinds of pasts: the prerevolutionary mythical past of class strug­g le and the more recent Mao era of mythmaking. In addition to distinguishing between the “real” and the “fake,” visitors learn how historical narratives serve po­liti­cal ideologies as well as how “testimonial museums” serve propaganda purposes. Their melodramatic dichotomy of good and evil certainly inspires compassion for the oppressed and hatred of the oppressors, which in turn legitimates desires for justice and revenge. Thus, the psychological origins of the revolutionary vio­lence may have less to do with insensitivity and malevolence than with a misguided sense of righ­teousness. ­Future Mao-­era museum curators might be forewarned against such Manichean repre­sen­ta­tions, in which Red Guards, rebel leaders, 238

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or local cadres are demonized in the place of the cap­i­tal­ists and landlords. In addition to testifying to atrocities, a good memorial museum might also warn against the hubris of righ­teous outrage and the emotional manipulation of horror chambers. Outside of the manor museum, the town of Anren developed other tourist attractions, with well-­preserved Republican-­era mansions, an old film museum, an ethnographic museum, and several elegant tea­houses and vacation resorts. On the main tourist drag w ­ ere kiosks and snack shops that offered up the landlord for sale. Restaurants served “mistress ribs” and “landlord noodles.” A silk “landlord hat” was sold next to an army-­green baseball cap with a Chairman Mao in profile on its visor. In addition to books and pirated VCDs about Liu Wencai, one of the best-­selling souvenirs was a set of poker cards with cute cartoon figures adapted from the Rent Collection Courtyard—­the jack cards portraying the landlord’s lackey and his dog, and the joker card reserved for Liu Wencai himself, rosy-­cheeked and twirling his beard (figure 6.3). In the eve­ nings, townsfolks gathered to play “Strug­g le against the Landlord” (鬥地主), the most popu­lar card game in the county. A pack of cards are dealt to three or more players, and each takes a turn to bid for the position of the landlord, whereas the losers become tenant farmers who unite against the landlord. Even as t­ hese restaurants, souvenir shops, and card games turn history into a figment of the imagination, they tell us of local aspirations to eat, to sell, and to strug­g le against the landlord—­all at the same time. Tracing exhibition culture in Anren from the 1950s to the pre­sent, Denise Y. Ho and I have argued that—­far from mausoleums that relegate objects safely to history—­museums in China have been dynamic and vital public spaces that have defined and redefined the past for the pre­sent, serving as both a medium and a product of revolutionary culture. During the last six de­ cades, museums have paraded the revolution’s spoils, served as schoolrooms for class education, replaced traditional t­ emples with new ritual sites, staged theatrical per­for­mances, held court over historical cases, and, fi­nally, commodified their collections into tourist memorabilia.54 The Maoist curatorial strategy to juxtapose wealth and poverty and to expose exploitation gave way to less critical exhibitions of luxuries as enviable objects in the post-­Mao era, while the discourse of class strug­g le gave way to connoisseurship. Speaking purely in terms of curatorial strategy, Ba Jin’s proposal to expose the vio­lence and complicity of cultural artifacts from the Cultural Revolution seems more aligned with Maoist museology, as does his conception of a museum as a secular t­ emple that “reconstructs striking scenes” in order to “never forget” past horrors. M useums and   M emorials

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Figure 6.3. Poker cards inspired by characters from the Rent Collection Courtyard (photo by Denise Y. Ho).

Red Memorabilia at the Jianchuan Museum Cluster

A ten-­minute pedicab r­ ide connects Liu Wencai’s manor with the g­ iant Jian­ chuan Museum Cluster, founded in 2005 by Fan Jianchuan 樊建川, a real-­estate developer with a passion for collecting. My pedicab driver, a local who claimed that his grand­father used to be one of Liu Wencai’s tenant farmers, was now Fan Jianchuan’s employee, and he told me that the “new landlord in town” was “much richer than Liu Wencai.” He added that both ­were “good men” ­because they gave his f­ amily jobs and developed the town’s economy. Whereas Liu Wencai collected only some gems and jewels, Fan Jianchuan amassed tens of millions of modern historical artifacts, bought thirty-­three hectares of land, and built dozens of museums divided into four series—­the War of Re­sis­tance, Red Era, Folk Customs, and the Sichuan Earthquake—­along with supporting 240

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Figure 6.4. The Worker-­Peasant-­Soldier ­Hotel at Jianchuan Museum (photo by the author).

facilities such as the “Worker-­Peasant-­Soldier ­Hotel” (see figure 6.4), a P ­ eople’s Commune Restaurant, a revolutionary model-­opera-­themed tea­house, and vari­ous souvenir shops. Outside the exhibition halls, loudspeakers blast “red songs,” consisting of hosannas to Chairman Mao and patriotic songs of re­sis­ tance against the Japa­nese invaders in the 1930s. The museum staff uniform is at once reminiscent of the Red Army soldiers and Red Guards, visually conflating the War of Re­sis­tance and the Cultural Revolution themes and thereby using the former to legitimize the latter. Instead of paying his re­spects to Ba Jin, Fan Jianchuan claims to have begun collecting Cultural Revolution artifacts as early as 1966. Trying to understand why his cadre ­father was criticized and incarcerated, nine-­year-­ old Fan Jianchuan collected Mao badges, Red Guard armbands, and mimeographed pamphlets. He continued this hobby as a sent-­down youth, soldier, student, and cadre from the 1970s to the 1980s, but Chinese society was then “congealed like a pond of stagnant ­water.” It was not ­until the 1990s, when all of urban China was undergoing de­mo­li­tion and relocation, that Mao-­era artifacts rolled out of private homes and into flea markets. Funding his collecting M useums and   M emorials

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fever with his real-­estate fortune since the 1990s, Fan Jianchuan would receive hundreds of containers of artifacts annually from his nationwide network of flea-­market contacts. In his six thousand square meters of ware­house space, ­there are thirty tons of handwritten materials (among them half a million letters and twenty thousand diaries), one million photo­graphs, and more than one hundred thousand propaganda posters and lp rec­ords from the Mao era.55 As a collector guided by a connoisseurial logic, however, Fan Jianchuan knows that quality ­matters as much as quantity, and he prides himself on the “quality goods” appraised as “first-­rate cultural relics” by experts. In the category of red artifacts, he initially favored porcelain b­ ecause it is “fragile, yet if well preserved can last for ten thousand years.” This delicacy and permanence of objects are part of his sense of “mission” to collect for “posterity.” ­Later, his interest turned from porcelain to paper artifacts as more profound reflections of the Cultural Revolution: pamphlets, newspapers, letters, diaries, confessions, denunciations, testaments, photo­graphs, receipts of confiscated goods from home searches, and so forth. He trea­sured the materiality of ­these paper artifacts—­bored through by worms, covered in dust, and even soiled with bodily excretions—as much as the individual stories and sentiments they contained.56 To accommodate and exhibit his collection, Fan Jianchuan de­cided to build museums, and he sought inspiration from museums around the world—­ his favorites being the Auschwitz-­Birkenau State Museum and the Yasukuni Shrine Museum. He admired the “sacred aura of Yasukuni’s exhibitions. . . . ​I saw Japa­nese ­people weep inside, and silence reigns. The museum’s sentiments ­toward its fallen warriors are boiling, not at all lukewarm.”57 By contrast, Fan scoffed at Ba Jin’s Cultural Revolution museum concept, finding its periodization to “make no sense whatsoever” ­because it was not just “ten years of catastrophe.” According to Fan, “The 1957 Anti-­Rightist Movement was a turning point—if you stop p ­ eople from speaking, then 30 million died. The Cultural Revolution came out of this, and even ­today, we are living in its shadows.”58 Instead of following Ba Jin’s proposal, Fan Jianchuan had a distinct curatorial vision of his own. He considered his museum a “supermarket” that supplies spiritual and cultural products according to p ­ eople’s everyday needs. Unlike the chronological order of history museums, Fan Jianchuan, like collectors of everyday objects from the former East Germany, or­ga­nized artifacts into “thematic assemblages interspersed with dioramas.”59 The first four museums in the Red Era series, for example, are devoted to (1) porcelain, (2) daily necessities, (3) Mao badges, clocks, and seals, and (4) mirrors. The museum of Red Era Daily Necessities showcases items and furnishings from “typical” 242

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Figure 6.5. Displays in the Red Era Series of the Jianchuan Museum (photo by Denise Y. Ho).

homes during the Mao era—­those of a worker, a peasant, a soldier, and a cadre—as well as a library, a clinic, a broadcasting station, a photographer’s studio, and a kindergarten. Two large halls display other everyday artifacts by category: matches, rec­ords, lanternslides, enamel cups, pencil boxes, musical instruments, and radios—­all depersonalized to evoke collective memories and to represent social types rather than individuals (figure 6.5). Instead of referring to specific historical events, this museum conveys the texture of everyday life through artifacts and memorabilia, making the period relatable through ­simple and quaint mass consumer products. Emblazoned with revolutionary slogans and imagery, ­these everyday artifacts serve as omnipresent mediators of the Maoist ideology. They seem to confirm Vladislav Todorov’s insight that “communism created ultimately effective aesthetic structures and ultimately defective economic ones,” resulting “in a deficit of goods, but an overproduction of symbolic meanings.”60 Yet in contrast to the lived real­ity of scarcity ­under state socialism, the sheer quantity of exhibited artifacts at the Jianchuan Museum Cluster reproduces utopian images of plenitude in Maoist propaganda. To show off its own­er’s im­mense collection, exhibitions in the Jianchuan Museum Cluster ­were often curated with an aesthetic of the mass ornament: arranging Mao badges into four ­giant Mao ­faces, turning revolutionary committee seals into pavements, clocks into a catacomb-­like wall display, and mirrors into labyrinths. Some installations remind us of the complicity of the artifacts: “­These seals,” the tour guides explain, “once had power over p ­ eople’s M useums and   M emorials

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Figure 6.6. Rotunda of Cultural Revolution photo­graphs with exhibit of clocks representing history’s “alarm bells” at the Jianchuan Museum (photo by the author).

life and death, so now we step on them to show our contempt.”61 The eerie ticking and chiming of 112 clocks from the Cultural Revolution period next to a rotunda displaying violent photo­graphs from the time (figure 6.6) are meant to serve as “alarm bells” (警钟) against history’s repetition. The fifth and newest collection, the Red Era Museum of Sent-­Down Youth, contains a central atrium filled with broken Cultural Revolution–­era mirrors amidst rusty farm tools, poignantly suggesting the disenchantment that accompanied the mass movement (figure 6.7). With the number of sent-­down youths (1776 万, or 17,760,000) clearly vis­i­ble on the white wall in the background, this installation is clearly inspired by the famous display of the mountain of shoes at Ausch­ witz, a paradigmatic “trauma icon” that inspired many memorial museums around the world.62 The word mirror is also a synonym of “history”—­the past is to serve as a mirror for the pre­sent (以史為鑒)—so Fan Jianchuan was especially proud of his Red Era Mirror Museum. He used to hire pick-up trucks to drive through the countryside, loaded with new mirrors and a loudspeaker that blared: “Good news, folks! A big fool wants to give you new mirrors and some 244

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Figure 6.7. A memorial installation of broken mirrors and shovels at the Red Era Museum of Sent-­Down Youth at the Jianchuan Museum Cluster (photo by the author).

money in exchange for your old mirrors.” This was how he managed to collect 50,000 mirrors from the Cultural Revolution.63 The mirror museum’s white, hazy labyrinth not only dazed and trapped many a tourist but also played hide-­ and-­seek with the censors. A ­ fter the original curated exhibit received official approval, Fan Jianchuan furnished a formerly empty room with “Wanted Circulars” (通緝令) from the Cultural Revolution and ­later filled another alcove with confessions and denunciations of neighbors and f­amily members. He ­adopted the same guerrilla tactic for the alcove devoted to film actor Feng Zhe 馮喆 in the Red Era Museum of Daily Necessities; Feng Zhe committed suicide in Anren in 1969, and Fan Jianchuan, an avowed fan, collected photos, documents, and some personal artifacts from Feng’s surviving f­ amily members and created a small shrine to his memory ­after the displays in the museum had passed the censors. Though hardly as shocking as Wang Jingyao’s collection of bodily relics from his wife’s violent death, the Feng Zhe collection also consists of “testimonial objects” that remain ­after “the loss of a loved one.”64 With ­little introduction or explanation, such “guerrilla exhibits” can easily elude the casual tourist without prior historical consciousness but M useums and   M emorials

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may well become gems of discovery for observant and cognizant visitors. Such unsanctioned exhibits ­were often ephemeral. For example, I saw an outdoor exhibition of photo­graphs from the ­Great Leap Forward next to the ­People’s Commune Canteen during my 2009 visit to the Jianchuan Museum Cluster. On my next visit in 2013, this photography exhibit had dis­appeared. Instead, several of the Red Era museums had added new vitrines that held po­liti­cally sensitive documents: interrogation rec­ords, lists of counterrevolutionary slogans, reportage on economic crimes, and inventories of objects confiscated by Red Guards. ­These guerrilla exhibits served as placeholders for the museums Fan Jianchuan still wanted to build, including special museums devoted to the G ­ reat Leap famine and to Red Guard terror. Meanwhile, he kept amending the exhibits in the open museums, replacing propaganda photo­graphs with everyday photo­graphs that are “more ­human and less idealized.”65 In a 2005 essay, “From Culture Industry to Mao Industry,” Michael Dutton wrote about the Jianchuan Museum Cluster as it was still being planned: “What might at first appear as ­little more than a perverse and ironic parody of Ba Jin’s solemn and heartrending vow to remember the victims proves to be the very best antidote to the infectious allure of the Sirens’ song,” that is, Mao’s revolutionary politics. Dutton argues that both Ba Jin’s call for a museum and Mao’s posthumous hagiography continue to reify the “auratic” quality of the Chairman’s politics. By contrast, “the commodified simulacrum of the Cultural Revolution Museum [in Anren] makes the past unthinkable as a horrendous event by remembering it nostalgically and by offering it to con­temporary audiences as a light-­hearted form of distraction.”66 Despite its playful atmosphere, the Jianchuan Museum Cluster has turned out to be more than a commodified theme park. Less confrontational than Ba Jin’s original vision, its exhibitions of Mao-­era artifacts with minimal textual explanations can still open up a space for public remembrance and plural interpretations. Visitors might find endearing artifacts of their childhood or reminisce about the “drab spiritual life in the ultra-­leftist years.”67 Similar to the Documentation Center of Everyday Life in East Germany in Eisenhüttenstadt, the exhibits in the Red Era series of the Jianchuan Museum Cluster create “a site of mourning” and a “stage for a requiem for communism.”68 Its cata­logue speaks of “red collections” as picking up “foundlings” discarded by ­people who are weary of that era, so the museum can serve as their “tomb.” It is also mindful of the po­liti­cal instrumentality of many everyday objects as a means of social and psychological control—­the exhibition of ration coupons, for example, is meant to testify to the “failure of the planned economy.”69 246

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When I asked Fan Jianchuan what takeaways he wished for his visitors, he replied: “Leftists think Mao could solve the prob­lems, and Rightists think the West can solve the prob­lems. My own view keeps swaying left and right, but what I think ­doesn’t ­matter. A museum must restrain its own attitude and let the artifacts speak.” Indeed, many of the museums in the cluster had signs: “Hush, do not speak; let the artifacts speak.” When asked what kind of “education” he hoped ­children would receive from his museum, Fan Jianchuan expressed the belief that “you ­can’t impose views on ­people. It’s more impor­tant to give them something concrete, like the ration tickets for tofu, matches, cigarettes, and sanitary napkins. The kids can go home and talk to their parents and grandparents and they can go online, eventually piecing together their own historical views from t­hese concrete fragments.” 70 Indeed, taciturn exhibitions of visual and material artifacts allow for more pluralistic interpretations of the past than any historical master-­narrative. Displaying the largest collection of “red artifacts” in China, the Jianchuan Museum Cluster is the most prominent example of the many red memorabilia exhibitions staged by “red collectors” throughout China, in their own shops, in red-­themed restaurants, and in other spaces open to visitors or consumers. Even the casual tourist would find it difficult to miss the myriad antique and souvenir shops selling au­then­tic and knock-­off Cultural Revolution memorabilia—­from tiny Mao badges to gigantic posters, from L ­ ittle Red Books to model opera ceramic figurines, from cigarette lighters playing “The East is Red” to alarm clocks with a waving Mao at the center. The more sophisticated tourist might also visit Beijing’s 798 Art Zone, the “Shanghai Propaganda Art Center,” or go off the beaten path to the “historic town” of Fengjing in Shanghai’s suburbs, which developed the former site of its ­people’s commune headquarters and a bunker dug in the late 1960s into red heritage sites with exhibitions of Mao badges. What accounts for the mass appeal, collection, and consumption of red memorabilia in the post-­Mao era? What memories do such memorabilia mediate, and in what ways, if any, can t­ hese material artifacts serve as historical testimony? Scholars and journalists have located the reinvigorated currency of red memorabilia in generational nostalgia for one’s youth, in widespread discontent with the postsocialist pre­sent, and in speculative investments into the latest fads of a b­ ubble economy.71 They have also commented on the irony of how revolutionary artifacts meant to smash and replace the “four olds” are now lumped together with other “antiques” at flea markets,72 and how Maoist memorabilia meant to glorify an anti-­capitalist ideology are now commodities circulating in a cap­i­tal­ist marketplace.73 At the same time, few critics take M useums and   M emorials

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seriously the historical value of red memorabilia and instead juxtapose the frivolity of the marketplace against the gravity of the museum, the sentimental appeal of Maoist kitsch against intellectual reflections on historical vio­lence in the spirit of Ba Jin’s proposal.74 The Jianchuan Museum Cluster demonstrates that exhibitions of red memorabilia can draw attention to the mass participation in Maoist campaigns and the role of material culture as a medium of communication, mobilization, and re­sis­tance. Red collectibles are distinguished from older antiques due to their mass production and sense of being commonplace, so that the sheer quantity and volume bespeak the revolution’s scale and spread as well as its diversity of meanings.75 As tangible museum exhibits, Maoist memorabilia can facilitate vicarious imaginations of everyday life for t­ hose who never lived through this period. The curiosity of visitors could develop into critical inquiry, even though the consumption of Maoist kitsch in the form of tourist souvenirs often stops short at unreflective nostalgia and playful irony. This bears some similarities to the “naïveté as well as a knowing wink” that Marita Sturken uses to characterize con­temporary American responses to terror and trauma. She argued that the consumption of kitsch objects, such as snow globes and teddy bears, offers formulaic emotional reassurance that fails to recognize the global context and thus promotes notions of American innocence.76 Material artifacts inscribed with Maoist propaganda similarly convey youthful innocence, plus self-­righteous posturing and tongue-­in-­cheek humor, that leave out or render benign a history of revolutionary vio­lence. Much as they convey the Mao era’s utopian longings, red memorabilia elide its ­human costs.

Maoist Trauma Sites and Ruins

To reckon with the cataclysmic events of the Mao era and to memorialize the lives sacrificed to utopian schemes, one might turn to the ruins of banished and vanished communities. Po­liti­cal campaigns from the 1950s to the 1970s led to the involuntary internal migration of tens of millions of ­people, mostly from urban to rural areas, from the coast to the interior, and from the center to the peripheries. Apart from the trauma of exile and f­ amily separations, the ghosts of many who died violent, unnatural deaths haunt many former l­abor reeducation camps, collective farms, and mass graves—­sites where communities forged through Maoist policies survived or perished. As physical ruins, ­these sites bear the ravages of time’s passage and thus are visibly palimpsestic. In a longer trajectory of Chinese literary and visual culture, ruins—as art historian Wu Hung suggests—­mediate losses and erasures, often caused by ­human 248

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conflict, and move poets to “lament the past” or the “vanished historical real­ ity.” 77 Akin to the ruins at Auschwitz and Hiroshima that originally inspired Ba Jin’s idea of a Cultural Revolution museum, they are what Patrizia Violi calls “trauma sites.” In contrast to other memorial sites created ex novo, trauma sites are defined by their “indexical character” and “real spatial contiguity with the trauma itself.” As such, they “exist factually as material testimonies of the vio­lence and horror that took place ­there” ­because “the past they reveal to us is not a reconstruction or a ‘re-­evocation’ of what is no more . . . ​but something much more cogent, something they have directly witnessed.” 78 Located far from metropolitan centers, the trauma sites surveyed below receive few visitors, yet their geographic marginality contributed to the preservation of their material traces from the erasure of development and de­mo­ li­tion. Among ­these are the ruins of a ­labor reeducation camp in Jiabiangou (夾邊溝) of Gansu province, a May Seventh Cadre School in Xianning ­Prefecture of Hubei province, a Red Guard graveyard (紅衛兵墓園) in the city of Chongqing, and Pagoda Park Cultural Revolution Museum (塔園文革博物館) in Shantou of Guangdong province. Applying geographer Kenneth Foote’s categories of responses to trauma through the physical landscape, we can say that whereas most metropolitan sites of vio­lence and catastrophe from the Mao era have been “rectified” (returned to everyday use) or “obliterated” (with all traces of tragedy effaced), the sites surveyed below present rare instances of struggle for “sanctification” (the creation of a sacred place) and “designation” (the marking of a site).79 The transformation of ruins into memorials had to thank the commemorative vigilance of the survivors, the support of enlightened local officials, as well as publicity and remediation through print, film, and the internet.

Jiabiangou ­Labor Camp

Let us begin with Jiabiangou, once a ­labor reeducation prison camp located by a crumbling section of the G ­ reat Wall in Gansu. In operation between 1957 and 1961, this camp incarcerated approximately three thousand Rightists, fewer than six hundred of whom survived the G ­ reat Leap famine. Remediated through books and films since the 2000s, the ruins of Jiabiangou came to be associated with the traumas of the Anti-­Rightist Campaign, the ­Great Leap famine, and the l­abor reeducation camp system that incarcerated tens of millions of victims for po­liti­cal reasons.80 Public memories of Jiabiangou first resurfaced in the early 2000s with the publication of survivor memoirs and Yang Xianhui’s 楊顯惠 much-acclaimed Chronicles of Jiabiangou (夾邊溝記事), a work of reportage based on interviews M useums and   M emorials

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with former Jiabiangou inmates and their ­family members. Filmmaker Wang Bing collected video testimonies of more than one hundred Jiabiangou survivors between 2003 and 2016, which would become the basis of the documentaries Fengming: A Chinese Memoir (和鳳鳴, 2007), Dead Souls (死靈魂, 2018), and a fictional film, The Ditch (夾邊溝, 2010).81 As mentioned in the introduction, He Fengming’s account best represents the commemoration of the camp’s victims. ­After her first husband died in Jiabiangou in 1961, Fengming had to postpone her work of mourning for three de­cades. As she wrote in her 2001 memoir: “For thirty years we never poured libation on his grave. Cruel politics forced us to cut off our kinship. I rarely spoke of him to our ­children, for if the ­children expressed sympathy for their ­father, they would hardly have a foothold in school or society.” 82 When He Fengming fi­nally visited Jiabiangou’s burial ground in 1991, she turned over hundreds of stones but still could not find her husband’s grave.83 This account resonates metonymically with the millions of dead from the Mao era who ­were never properly identified or mourned. “Without a ­people’s intention to remember,” as James Young argues with re­spect to the sites of former concentration camps, “the ruins remain ­little more than inert pieces of the landscape, unsuffused with the meanings and significances created in our visits to them.”84 However belated, He Fengming’s remembrances in writing and on film, along with t­ hose of other Jiabiangou survivors, helped commence a commemorative vigilance that turned the camp ruins into an unlabeled memorial. With more visitors trickling in over the years, local officials took some preservation mea­sures, such as surrounding the ruins with barbed wire and paving the path with cement slabs.85 In 2013, with the approval of some local officials, He Fengming and a number of Jiabiangou survivors commissioned the construction of memorial ­stelae for two mass graves at Jiabiangou, together with an attached cenotaph to bury the scattered bones, so that f­ uture mourners would have a place to grieve. Before the steles could be erected, however, they w ­ ere smashed by unidentified individuals following unknown o­ rders from the authorities, ­reversing previous policies of sympathy and tolerance. On Qingming Tomb Sweeping Day of 2014, survivors returned to Jiabiangou to mourn, only to be blocked and intimidated by the local police. But this time, they ­were accompanied by retired professor and activist filmmaker Ai Xiaoming 艾曉明, whose video of the thwarted mourning became the opening of her documentary Jiabiangou Sacrifice: Life and Death of the Rightists (夾邊溝祭事, 2017). The five-­part, seven-­hour documentary also includes interviews with as many survivors as Ai Xiaoming could find, along with the spouses and c­ hildren of former inmates and former employees of the l­abor camp, to trace the c­ auses and after250

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math of their incarceration. While investigating the past, Ai Xiaoming was keenly aware of documenting its legacies in the pre­sent: “Jiabiangou is not far away. Its shadows have once again overcast our lives,” for she saw the renewed relevance of this history in t­ oday’s “repression of the freedom of speech and the sentencing of innocents.” 86 In addition to victims from 1959 and 1960, the film also documents the grief, terror, shame, and anger of the survivors that lasted beyond the Mao years to the pre­sent day. The film thus focuses not only on the ruins of Jiabiangou—­vestiges of the past with ­little relevance to the ­pre­sent—­but also on ruination as an active, ongoing pro­cess, or “what ­people are left with.” 87 ­After the destruction of the memorial and cenotaph at Jiabiangou in 2014, filmmaker Wang Bing de­cided to build a cinematic memorial to the camp and its victims at a similarly monumental scale as his cinematic memorial of socialist factories and their workers in Tiexi District, as discussed in chapter 5. Wang Bing returned to the extensive archive of footage and interviews he had gathered between 2003 and 2008 and did more follow-up shooting before editing the eight-­hour documentary Dead Souls by 2018. Wang Bing explained that he did not make the film ­earlier so as not to put his subjects at risk. It was only ­after most of his interviewees had passed away that he de­cided to fulfill his ethical obligation to pass on their testimonies.88 In the final film, survivor-­ witnesses, mostly men and many once “revolutionaries” who ­were then “revolutionized,” tell the camera how and why they ended up at the camp, as well as how and why some survived and ­others did not. Incarcerated for minor criticisms of the party, for past support of the kmt, for their Christian faith, or for no reason they could fathom, former camp inmates recount ­recipes of starvation, logistics of death, and ruinations of families. Recalling names, details, and stories they would other­wise take to their graves, witnesses in the twilight of their lives search their souls for the reasons for their condemnation and survival. Occasionally, we also see their wives in the margins of the frame or hear offscreen voices of ­children too young to understand. The overlay of their testimonies—­full of resonances, contradictions, digressions, and silences—­ metonymically point to past injustices and suffering on a much larger scale. The monumental scale, unsensational precision, and multiple perspectives of Dead Souls have drawn comparisons to Claude Lanzmann’s 1985 documentary Shoah,89 though Wang Bing plays the role of a much quieter listener whose cinema serves as a “spirit medium” to hold communion with the d ­ ying and the dead. Among the most searing sequences of Dead Souls are the filmmaker’s repeated wanderings with a handheld camera on the site of the former ­labor M useums and   M emorials

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camp, searching for ruins and relics from half a c­ entury ­earlier. What he finds ­there are mostly bones strewn about the landscape, too shallowly buried to withstand the Gobi Desert wind, which we hear along with the filmmaker’s stumbling footsteps and heavy breathing. Wang Bing used some of this footage in his 2014 film Traces (遗址), exhibited as a video installation at several con­temporary art venues—­either projected from the ceiling onto the floor, or placed opposite ­later photo­graphs taken at the same site, but where the traces had already dis­appeared. “Of all the objects on display at memorials,” as Laurie Beth Clark argues, “­human remains are the most blatant and the most recalcitrant, the most literal and the most elusive,” moving audiences “­toward both empathy and alienation.” 90 The cinematic mummification of Jiabiangou’s exposed bones suggests the unburied state and haunted quality of Mao-­era traumas. Notwithstanding recent censorship, Jiabiangou’s evolution into a virtual memorial exemplifies an emergent interest in revisiting sites of formerly banished and now vanished communities. Apart from the approximately ten million prisoners of l­abor reeducation camps, an estimated seventeen million young ­people ­were “sent down” to the countryside between 1962 and 1979. In the ­later years of the Cultural Revolution, millions of cadres and intellectuals ­were sent to May Seventh Cadre Schools.91 The sites of banishment ­were mostly collective farms that straddled organ­ization and wilderness, discipline and freedom, cruelty and camaraderie. Most of ­those banished eventually returned home, but some did not, and many thought they would be forever uprooted, an assumption that imbued their memories of such places with vari­ous configurations of despair, pathos, and the sanctity of voluntary or involuntary sacrifice. Revisiting the former sites of trauma and exile inspired the creation of more permanent memorials. Mile East Wind Farm (彌勒東風農場) in Yunnan began as a l­abor reeducation camp that hosted about four hundred Rightists in the late 1950s and ­later received large groups of sent-­down youth in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Hu Jie’s documentary film about the farm collects oral histories by former camp inmates and concludes with the construction of a memorial statue in a socialist realist style that portrays Rightists and sent-­ down youth not as victims but as heroic pioneers who reclaimed the wilderness as farmland.92 A similar sublimation, or conversion, of b­ itter experiences from hapless victimhood to heroic sacrifice dominates the Heihe Sent-­Down Youth Museum (黑河知青博物館) that opened in the fall of 2009, which tends to echo rather than critique the ideology that sent urban-­educated youths to the “­Great Northern Wilderness.” 252

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May Seventh Cadre School, Xianning

Representing victims as heroes and martyrs is a common strategy to memorialize the ­human costs of the Mao era. In the pro­cess, the meaning of death and suffering is turned from waste to sacrifice, from indictment to glorification, and from delegitimation to sanctification of the status quo. ­After Maoist ideology took away ­people’s youth, and even their lives, does it continue to usurp the meaning of their deaths? Yet if true believers in Maoist ideals wanted their sacrifice to wear the halo of a grander purpose, is it necessary to accuse such faith as the result of brainwashing or false consciousness? The art, politics, and ethics of turning the darker legacies of the past into a cultural resource or even symbolic capital for the pre­sent are perhaps best exemplified at the former site of the May Seventh Cadre School in Xianning, Hubei province, which hosted, ­under austere conditions, more than six thousand cadres and intellectuals from Beijing’s Ministry of Culture from 1969 to 1974, among them the renowned writers Shen Congwen 沈從文 and Bing Xin 冰心.93 In the mid-1990s, Xianning’s local official, Li Chengwai 李城外, rediscovered this bit of local heritage in a prefectural gazetteer and de­cided to excavate what he saw as a “cultural gold mine” (文化金礦). Since then, he built up an impressive collection of books, documents, and oral histories of “cultural celebrities” who spent time t­ here, convened several conferences with former cadre school members and literary historians, and constructed a small museum of photo­graphs and artifacts at its former headquarters.94 While publicizing its history through mass media, Li Chengwai also urged officials at higher levels to develop this “cultural resource” for ­future tourism. Asking with some derision what t­ here is to “harvest” on the “ruins of culture,” critics accused the site’s developers of “selling a shameful history” that would necessarily apply cosmetic lyricism to a cruel real­ity. Invoking Ba Jin’s idea for a Cultural Revolution museum, Li Chengwai fiercely defended his efforts as rescuing history from oblivion and reclaiming the resilient spirit of Chinese intellectuals.95 To date, however, memorialization of the Xianning May Seventh Cadre School has not secured much po­liti­cal or financial investment, even while growing academic research and media publicity have contributed to its status as a memorial site of the Cultural Revolution.

Red Guard Graveyard, Chongqing

In addition to touring the former sites of banished communities, one can also reflect on the ­human costs of the Cultural Revolution by visiting the graves of M useums and   M emorials

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Figure 6.8. Views of the Red Guard Graveyard in Chongqing in 2013 (photo by the author).

t­ hose who perished during the de­cade, be they famous individuals such as Liu Shaoqi, Lao She, and Lin Zhao, or more unknown, ordinary ­people, such as ­those buried in the Red Guard graveyard tucked away in Chongqing’s Shaping Park (figure 6.8). This is the last remaining cemetery in China that is filled with the graves of ­those killed during the factional vio­lence among rebel factions in 1967–1968. ­Because of its concentration of munition factories, Chongqing ranked among the cities worst affected by such vio­lence. Sociologist Guobin Yang analyzes the escalation of vio­lence in terms of “revolutionary competition,” whereby “groups fought one another to show and prove that they, and not o­ thers, ­were the true revolutionaries. . . . ​As death was the ultimate proof, vio­lence at the risk of one’s life became an attractive option.” 96 Unlike the Jiabiangou mass grave, those buried at this cemetery are not so much the wretched casualties of state oppression but rather the active participants in the factional vio­lence. Their victimhood is comparable to the deaths of soldiers in a civil war without clearly “right” and “wrong” sides, for every­one died in the name of defending the sanctity of the revolution and Chairman Mao. For the survival of this cemetery, one has to acknowledge not only the commemorative vigilance of the visitor but also Chongqing’s Communist Party Secretary in the 1980s, Liao Bokang 廖伯康, who suffered persecution during 254

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the Cultural Revolution. In 1985, faced with the decision to preserve or demolish the cemetery, Liao allocated funds to build a wall around it and ordered it closed to the public ­until the late 1990s.97 Anthropologist Everett Zhang divides mourning activities at this graveyard into three historical phases. In the late 1960s, the Red Guards and rebels who ­were buried ­there ­were glorified for their “revolutionary sacrifice.” In the late 1970s and early 1980s, the official negation of the Cultural Revolution stigmatized the Red Guards as wrongdoers, thus ­those buried in the cemetery “died a second death.” Since the early 2000s, relatives of the dead have returned for private mourning ceremonies, and the park administration photographed ­every tomb and collected relevant historical rec­ords and oral histories for its archives, even securing for the cemetery the official designation of a protected cultural relic in 2009. This new designation legitimated a resurgence of mourners, whose open quarrels and graffiti at the site express their conflicting interpretations of the deaths and of the Cultural Revolution itself; some considered the Red Guards’ young lives to have been wasted by their deluded belief in Mao and see the graveyard in light of Ba Jin’s warning not to let history repeat itself; o­ thers wished to reaffirm the Cultural Revolution as a critique of con­temporary China’s socioeconomic inequalities and corruption. For fear of stirring up social unrest, the park administration closed down the graveyard and now allows entry only to f­ amily members on the Qingming festival.98 In August 2013, a colleague and I ­were able to enter the Red Guard graveyard when a retired park man­ag­er, a childhood friend of a ­family acquaintance, briefly unlocked its gates, signaling us to disregard a surveillance camera above our heads and a sign warning against the taking of pictures. Amid overgrown weeds and mosquitoes, we stood in awe of towering tombstones—­ often obelisks built in the style of the Monument to the ­People’s Heroes in Tian­anmen Square and bearing grandiose inscriptions in Mao-­style calligraphy that refer to the dead as “revolutionary martyrs.” Yet four de­cades of neglect and erosion have turned even the most heroic monuments into decrepit ruins, rendering many inscriptions illegible. The incongruities between form and content, between the site’s state of dilapidation and the very miracle of its survival, made manifest the palimpsestic formation of history and memory. A few graves displayed traces of recent mourners: fruits and flowers, liquor and cigarettes, incense and paper money, and red tracings over the faded inscriptions of the names. While wandering through this impressive ruin, we could hear a choir of retirees singing Cultural Revolution songs just beyond the cemetery wall, but we could not tell if ­these ­were the sirens of memory or amnesia.99 M useums and   M emorials

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The Chongqing Red Guard graveyard has also been remediated through photographic installations that in turn have circulated through gallery exhibitions as well as art books and online reproductions. In 2006 and 2007, con­temporary artist Tian Taiquan 田太權 created a series of photomontage works with the Chongqing Red Guard graveyard as the setting, using digital manipulation to create composite images that superimpose female bodies onto the desolate graves. Often half-­clothed in Red Guard uniforms, the bodies or body parts, at once corporeal and ghostly and often mutilated, suggest at once eroticism and death. The bleak tombstones set off, merge with, and squash the vivid colors of their red armbands, L ­ ittle Red Books, Mao badges, and bloody wounds. Grouped into series and exhibitions with titles such as “Mourning” (祭), “Lost” (遺忘), “Marks” (印痕), “Totem Memories” (圖騰記憶), and “Tears of Eros” (愛神的眼淚), ­these striking images serve to commemorate the crushed idealism, buried desires, and ruined lives.100

Cultural Revolution Museum, Shantou

As cemeteries are commonsensical public commemoration sites, the first and only memorial site to adopt the name “Cultural Revolution Museum” originated as a burial ground of warring Red Guard factions. In 1996 Peng Qi’an 彭啟安, retired deputy mayor of the city of Shantou in Guangdong province, chanced upon dozens of disorderly graves by the Pagoda Mountain Scenic Spot (塔山風 景區) in the northern suburbs. Having learned that ­those buried ­there died in the factional vio­lence between 1967 and 1968, Peng conceived of a memorial park to commemorate that history and marshaled his former colleagues ­behind what he named the Pagoda Park (塔園) proj­ect. During the next de­cade, Peng raised funds to build an array of outdoor memorials whose commemorative style largely draws on premodern Chinese architecture and landscape design, including a “corridor of history-­inscribed steles,” a “pagoda of contemplation,” and a “pavilion of the vigilant bell” (figure 6.9). In 2003, a friend gave him a copy of Yang Kelin’s book, Cultural Revolution Museum, and two years l­ ater, Peng managed to transform this “museum on paper” into a “museum in stone.” He commissioned a circular building whose architecture resembles Beijing’s T ­ emple of Heaven, enshrined Ba Jin’s portrait and calligraphy at the entrance (figure 6.1), and lined its inner walls with hundreds of gray granite slabs ­etched with pages from Yang Kelin’s two volumes, mostly photo­graphs of mass rallies and graphic deaths. The museum also displayed in vitrines a few Red Guard armbands, copies of Mao’s Little Red Book, and Mao busts and badges, but t­ hese ­were removed ­after some artifacts dis­appeared in the absence of security guards.101 256

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Figure 6.9. Entrance to Shantou’s Pagoda Park in 2013 (photo by the author).

In 2006, on the fortieth anniversary of the Cultural Revolution, the first and only Cultural Revolution museum to be named as such attracted a good deal of domestic and international media attention. Peng Qi’an had hoped to turn his Pagoda Park into a “reflection education base” (反思教育基地), a name that both replicates and critiques the state-­sponsored “patriotic education bases” (愛國教育基地). He sought legitimacy for the site by asking famous and prominent visitors to leave ­behind a sample of their calligraphy, often their injunctions against forgetting history.102 ­These calligraphic tributes ­were in turn ­etched into steles and other stone monuments strewn throughout Pagoda Park, expressing its found­er’s belief in granite as a more tangible and permanent medium than paper. From 2006 to 2013, Peng and a group of young volunteers held an annual memorial ser­vice to mourn the “20 million lives claimed by the Cultural Revolution”—­taking up a well-­known estimate given by Marshal Ye Jianying 葉劍英 in 1978 (although it has been discredited by scholars)—­and for this purpose, they built a special “Rest in Peace Garden” (安 息園), with a statue of Liu Shaoqi at the center and the names of thousands of victims carved into the surrounding walls.103 A victim’s museum rather than a collector’s museum, the stone inscriptions at Shantou’s Pagoda Park explic­itly indicted Mao Zedong for the “catastrophe” M useums and   M emorials

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of the Cultural Revolution and other mass campaigns, but such bold statements also rang hollow in the absence or paucity of an audience. The Pagoda Park’s self-­published book claims that the site had received more than three million visitors by 2012,104 though I encountered only two other tourists when visiting in the summer of 2013. The authorities condemned Pagoda Park to neglect and desolation by prohibiting media publicity and excluding the site from tourist itineraries. Local villa­gers who helped to manage the park compared this Cultural Revolution memorial complex to a child whose growth was stunted but who was not yet strangled to death by the authorities.105 Though assisted by young volunteers, its aging founder could find no adequate successor with enough po­liti­cal and symbolic capital to help Pagoda Park thrive in the f­ uture. Indeed, during the fiftieth anniversary of the Cultural Revolution in 2016, greeted with silence by China’s official media, Shantou’s local government covered the Cultural Revolution Museum and other related memorials in Shantou’s Pagoda Park with slogan banners and propaganda posters advertising the “China Dream” and “Socialist Core Values.”106 A YouTube video posted in October 2019 by a recent visitor to the Pagoda Park indicates that all inscriptions referring to the Cultural Revolution have been removed or replaced by “main melody” and “harmonious” propaganda.107

Conclusion

When Ba Jin first called for the construction of a Cultural Revolution museum, taking inspiration from international trauma sites such as Auschwitz and Hiroshima, he could not have anticipated the unrelenting state repression of its memory, nor the disparate paths and afterlives this idea has taken. Among the major revisions of his original concept is the expanded scope of remembrance: from the Cultural Revolution de­cade to the three de­cades from the 1950s to the 1970s; from victims of Maoist po­liti­cal campaigns (especially intellectuals) to t­ hose who considered themselves overall beneficiaries of Chinese socialism (such as industrial workers), and from the trauma of cataclysmic and destructive events to the nuances of socialist culture and everyday life. With this expanded understanding of a Mao-­era memorial museum, this chapter has surveyed physical sites that preserved material traces from the socialist to the postsocialist eras and that collected its memorabilia and memorialized its ruins. More than textual and audiovisual documents, material traces of the past help make history more concrete, tangible, and even inhabitable. By revisiting museums from the Mao era, such as Anren’s Landlord Manor Exhibition Hall, we learn about the roles exhibitions of material culture played 258

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in the making of revolution as well as how emotionally charged repre­sen­ta­ tions of suffering do not necessarily lead to historical understanding. Through material artifacts, such as Mao badges, clocks, seals, mirrors, ration coupons, and other quotidian objects on exhibit at the Jianchuan Museum Cluster, we access the aesthetics and texture of everyday life as well as the dreams and passions, monotony and creativity, economy of austerity and excess of affect. By visiting the graves and ruins of Jiabiangou ­labor camp, Chongqing’s Red Guard graveyard, and Shantou’s Pagoda Park, we lament lives lost through man-­made catastrophes and reckon with what Ann Laura Stoler calls “ecologies of remains.”108 Featuring a variety of exhibitionary practices and commemorative styles, ­these memorial sites address their audiences in nostalgic, ironic, playful, or moralistic registers. Their memorial architecture, sculpture, and spatial design bear influences from traditional Chinese gardens, from socialist realism, and from Western modernism. Whereas some sites (such as Anren’s landlord manor, the ruins of Jiabiangou ­labor camp, and the Chongqing Red Guard graveyard) have done ­little more than to preserve material traces from the Mao era, other places (such as the Jianchuan Museum Cluster and Shantou’s Pagoda Park) have been built up from scratch. Juxtaposing the last two memorial complexes, we also see an abundance of artifacts without explanation versus a profusion of didactic words ­etched into stone as well as a dialectic between memorabilia and ruin. ­Because museums and memorials occupy physical spaces, tracing their construction and evolution brings into special relief the social and po­liti­cal realities of con­temporary China’s memory landscape. Precariously and resiliently persisting in the cracks of state censorship, museums and memorials of the Mao era came into being through the efforts of entrepreneurs and collectors, enlightened local officials, and vari­ous survivor groups, artists, and intellectuals. Even though ­there are no prospects of building a memorial museum of the Mao era in the nation’s capital, state-­sponsored amnesia is neither ubiquitous nor omnipotent, and remembrances of the Mao era do not have to be hidden away among fading private lives. Expanding beyond the memory places described in this chapter, in the Epilogue I suggest some f­ uture curatorial proj­ects.

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EPILOGUE

NOTES FOR FUTURE CURATORS

The end of the twentieth c­ entury saw a global shift from imaginations of the ­future to obsessions with the past, from envisioning utopia to gazing upon its ruins with both horror and nostalgia. During the last several de­cades, nations around the world have been building more museums and memorials than ever before, yet might this feverish search for the past also be symptomatic of a ­ eople’s Republic of China has participated in this growing amnesia?1 The P global memory boom and memory crisis but in ways that distinguish it from other national contexts. Amidst a barrage of patriotic commemorations of the Japa­nese invasion and the revolutionary legacy from the 1930s and 1940s, more recent mass movements from the 1950s to the 1970s that left no Chinese ­family untouched seem to be sinking into “memory holes” of mainstream public culture. Chinese and Western commentators alike have lamented this “Chinese amnesia” when it comes to the younger generations’ awareness of their nation’s recent history. In 1990, Fang Lizhi drew attention to the Communist Party’s “techniques of forgetting history.”2 Journalist Louisa Lim entitled her book on Tian­anmen, written twenty-­five years ­after the event, The ­People’s Republic of Amnesia.3 In his 2009 novel The Fat Years (盛世), set in the near ­future of 2013, Hong Kong author Chan Koonchung 陳冠中 creates a vivid allegory for

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such amnesia in the plotline: the government adds small doses of a drug called “ecstasy” to the drinking ­water to induce euphoria and forgetting among the populace so that they can celebrate China’s “Golden Age of Ascendancy.”4 This parable neatly encapsulates the dual forces of state suppression and economic modernization to reinforce forgetting over remembering. Official amnesia as such is not surprising, nor is it unique to China. U ­ ntil recent de­cades, most countries have chosen to build monuments to the proudest moments and greatest heroes in their national histories. States often commemorate traumatic history only when the pain was inflicted by external enemies (e.g., by Japan on other Asian countries during World War II), or by a previous regime just toppled by the current one (e.g., the transitional justice in post-­Communist USSR and Eastern Eu­rope, postdictatorial Latin Amer­ i­ca, and postapartheid South Africa). By contrast, nations seek to forget, or to put to rest, shameful or contentious memories that might interfere with national unity, social harmony, and po­liti­cal stability.5 If they occur at all, public commemorations of and official apologies for past wrongs are often belated. It took 150 years a­ fter the end of the Civil War for the United States to build a federally funded museum dedicated to the history of slavery.6 Germany is often cited as a model and exception among nations for memorializing its past crimes, though the Holocaust became mainstream memory beginning only in the 1980s among the generations who never lived through World War II and whose historical memories ­were exclusively inherited or mediated.7 More than four de­cades have passed since the end of the Mao era in China, and it is neither too early nor too late to discuss a memorial museum that transmits memories for younger generations. Not only a “history textbook on the wall,” a memorial museum’s mission goes beyond the statement of facts and the passing of judgments. Instead, it should mediate empathetic encounters with the past through an engaging collection of testimonial voices, images, and objects as well as make critical sense of the fractured rec­ords and traces of a bygone era. Even for memorial museums dedicated to uncensored histories in other national contexts, as Paul Williams argues, ­there is often a scarcity of primary documents, images, and objects to testify to the past under commemoration.8 The dearth of such artifacts means we have to extrapolate the most out of surviving vestiges—as evidence, metonymy, and synecdoche of larger worlds9—­without mistaking them for transparent win­dows onto the past. In the Chinese context, the collection of archival documents, audiovisual images, and mnemonic objects is perhaps more urgent than the construction of vacant architectural monuments labeled as “museums”—­the approach of 2 6 2 E pilo g ue

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nearly ­every Chinese local official ­these days to developing tourism through the symbolic capital of “heritage,” sometimes even constructing fake “cultural relics.”10 Even though the Mao years are still within living recall, memories are vanis­hing with the passing of the el­derly generations, the de­mo­li­tion of communal spaces, and sustained po­liti­cal censorship. Yet the tides of amnesia do wash ashore precious fragments of the past, serendipitous survivals of archival documents, audiovisual rec­ords, and material remains. ­These primary artifacts mediate countermemories of the Maoist past and are remediated by in­de­pen­ dent cinema and con­temporary art, internet websites and social media, private museums, memorials, and memorabilia markets. Working with such primary documents and indexical traces, this book has assembled six memorial exhibits that offer corporeal, written, photographic, cinematic, spatial, and material testimonies: Lin Zhao’s “blood testament” and Nie Gannu’s “surveillance file” constitute intricate and gripping dossiers of intellectual participation and re­sis­tance in the Chinese Revolution, focusing on the period from the Hundred Flowers Movement to the Cultural Revolution. “Utopian photography” from the G ­ reat Leap Forward and documentary films of the Cultural Revolution through “foreign lenses” proj­ect agricultural bounty and proletarian power while raising questions about the potentials and limits of camera witnessing. “Factory rubble” and “museums and memorials” pre­sent tangible places of memory for the beneficiaries and the victims of Chinese socialism; they are places that persist against not only po­liti­cal censorship but also against the amnesiac forces of economic modernization. Taken together, ­these six exhibits bear witness to utopian longings from the Mao era as well as to their associated h ­ uman costs. Moreover, as all t­ hese traces have been digitally remediated, stimulated connective memory, and mediated remembering communities, they also illuminate the evolving media and memory ecologies from the Maoist to the post-­Mao eras. By calling ­these exhibits “utopian ruins,” I draw attention to the deep-­ seated aspirations that motivated broad swathes of the Chinese populace to support and participate in the Maoist mass movements as well as to the complicity of utopian visions in the disasters of mass mobilization. For intellectuals who began as revolutionary activists, as shown in chapters 1 and 2, communist promises of equality, freedom, and national salvation w ­ ere profoundly appealing ­until such intellectuals w ­ ere disillusioned by the new tyrannies of the party’s a­ ctual practices. For rural villa­gers, as discussed in chapter 3, illusory images of bountiful harvests and industrial miracles mobilized their l­ abor and exacted sacrifices by hundreds of millions. For foreign travelers, as shown in chapter 4, Maoist China presented a radical utopian alternative to the N otes for F uture   C urators  2 6 3

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cap­i­tal­ist West, even if such foreigners ­were aware of the limits of their cursory glimpses. For the industrial workers discussed in chapter 5, utopia manifested itself in the security and community of the socialist factory that has now been bankrupted, dismantled, and dispersed in the postsocialist era. Chapter 6 analyzed how material artifacts and relics from this period—­first discarded and neglected, ­later collected and protected—­have become memorial sites of the revolution’s inspiring and destructive powers. The utopian and catastrophic dimensions of the Mao era left b­ ehind trauma as well as nostalgia, enmeshed sentiments shared by other post-­ Communist socie­ties. Just as relevant to the post-­Mao memoryscape is Martin Sabrow’s classification of memories of East Germany between the “memory of dictatorship” (that defines the post-­Communist critique of the socialist state), the “memory of arrangement or accommodation” (that describes most ordinary p ­ eople’s everyday experiences ­under socialism), and the “memory of pro­ gress” (that insists on socialism’s legitimacy as an alternative to capitalism).11 Maria Todorova explains nostalgia for communism in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Eu­rope not only as “longing for security, stability, and prosperity” but also as a desire—­even among ­those opposed or indifferent to Communist ideology—­“to invest their lives with meaning and dignity, not to be thought of, or remembered, or bemoaned as losers or ‘slaves.’ ”12 While commemorating the ­human toll of dictatorship, I have argued that a memorial museum should also seek to recover the subjectivity and creativity, re­sis­tance and complicity of ­those who lived ­under Maoism, not to treat them as passive victims of vio­ lence and brainwashing. From the blood writings of a prisoner-­witness-­martyr to the poetic exchanges between “Rightist” intellectuals, from the G ­ reat Leap of cultural production to the socialist factory that was “home” to its workers, I have shown that historical actors exercised intellectual, cultural, and po­liti­cal agency ­under Maoism and ­were not simply the cogs and wheels of totalitarianism. If utopia consists of visions yet to be realized, ruins are traces of what has already been destroyed. If utopia suggests projection into the ­future, then ruins invite us to gaze back at the past. Combining the prospective and retrospective points of view allows us to trace the palimpsest formation of memories from the Maoist to the post-­Mao eras. Rather than equating memories with hindsight narratives in the form of firsthand remembrances or cultural repre­sen­ta­tions, I have argued that memories are also coproductions between past, pre­sent, and ­future generations—­a multilayered pro­cess involving acts of documentation and transmission, erasure, and excavation. Giving special attention to the technologies of memory that rec­ord and transmit the past into 2 6 4 E pilo g ue

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the ­future, I have argued that censorship and propaganda—­defining features of the Chinese media ecology—­have had a profound yet complex impact on the documentation and memorialization of the Mao era. Reconsidering propaganda as testimony of revolutionary faith and censorship as generative as well as prohibitive, I have argued that the Maoist regime of memories produced both fictions and realities, albeit not realities according to utopian blueprints. Whereas existing cultural histories of Chinese socialism privilege the creative production of fictions, this book focuses on the Maoist production of “facts.” I have thus focused on “fact-­making” media genres and institutions—­ journalism, police archives, photography, cinema, and museums—­whose mission is to witness and rec­ord real­ity as well as to collect and transmit documents, traces, and testimonies. A media-­centered lens on fact-­making in the PRC provides us with new insights into its history, such as the finding that the Anti-­Rightist Campaign and the ­Great Leap Forward constituted major turning points in media witnessing. Rather than documenting real­ity as it was, journalism—­inclusive of written reports and camera images—­increasingly had to “bear witness,” in a quasi-religious sense, to revolutionary faith and Communist miracles. From the G ­ reat Leap to the Socialist Education Movement to the Cultural Revolution, Maoist mass media testified to utopian visions of agricultural bounty and proletarian power, which not only excluded the darker realities from repre­sen­ta­tion but also helped cause famine and v­ io­lence through mass mobilization. To find documentary rec­ords of dissent and disasters obscured or produced by utopian visions, we have to turn to serendipitous leaks from police archives and other surveillance files—­which I have argued are also technologies that have inhibited and generated, confiscated and preserved memories. To find cinematic documentation of everyday life beyond staged and codified official images, we have to turn to rare audiovisual rec­ ords captured by foreign lenses. It was only in the post-­Mao era that the state loosened some of its mono­poly and censorship of the Chinese media ecol­ogy so that writers, filmmakers, artists, collectors, curators, and scholars could excavate and salvage, collect and curate, remediate and disseminate repressed traumas and unsanctioned memories, especially through the use of digital ­technologies and platforms. As the Chinese state t­oday deploys new media technologies to build up a dystopian infrastructure of Orwellian surveillance over its populace,13 it is worth recalling how surveillance worked during the Mao era: through the “masses whose eyes are as bright as snow.” Indeed, apart from taking a media-­ centered lens on PRC history and considering how propaganda and censorship ­shaped its memory ecol­ogy, I have further argued that the party not only N otes for F uture   C urators  2 6 5

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reached the masses with media but also turned the masses into media to realize its utopian dreams. Thus, instead of assigning agency to only a small coterie of po­liti­cal elites, this book shows how the Chinese p ­ eople actively invested in a revolutionary proj­ect that by its conclusion had exacted staggering h ­ uman costs. Expanding beyond the exhibits in this book, I now conclude with some notes for f­uture memory curators. I say f­uture, ­because the po­liti­cal climate since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 hinders the implementation of many curatorial proposals and b­ ecause it is up to the f­uture generations to inherit and pass on memories. Now is the time, however, to collect documents, artifacts, and testimonies in anticipation of ­future museums. I also use “curators” with broader valences than professionals in the museum or art world. Since the verb curate derives from the verb care, ­here a curator is anyone who takes care of memories: scholars and educators, artists and filmmakers, private entrepreneurs and citizens, with dif­fer­ent resources, media technologies, and audiences. For example, a student in a seminar can be a curator of an online exhibition for an audience consisting of classmates and f­ amily members. Rather than passively receiving knowledge about the past or memorizing canonical texts, the mediation of memories must be an active and plural pro­cess, which I summarize in five verbs: excavate, account, exhibit, converse, and imagine. Excavate: To curate utopian ruins means to trace how utopian blueprints came to ruin as well as to excavate utopian impulses from the ruins. It means to join scholars, writers, filmmakers, artists, and collectors in sifting through surviving textual, audiovisual, and material traces from the Mao era that are metonymic of broader subjective visions and objective realities so as to arrive at what Yiching Wu calls a “historically grounded understanding of the vicissitudes of Chinese socialism, with all its contradictions and complexities.”14 In par­tic­u­lar, the first three chapters in this volume show how utopia came to ruin in the 1950s when the party prohibited media witnessing of prob­lems ­under socialism and turned revolutionaries into the revolutionized, thereby facilitating the creation of utopian facades at the cost of millions of lives. The three chapters excavate utopian moments from Maoist ruins by recalling idealistic longings for alternative modernity and proletarian agency, both of which have renewed relevance in postsocialist China. Using stories and images from vari­ous archives, this book excavates countermemories against more mainstream narratives as well as engages in what Kirstin Weld calls “archival thinking,” or “look[ing] past the words on a document’s page to examine the conditions of that document’s production.”15 Excavating fragments of lives collected in police files, photo­graphs, documentary films, museums, and cemeteries also 2 6 6 E pilo g ue

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illuminates the media ecologies that shape our rec­ord and knowledge of the past. Account: To reckon with any traumatic event, it is imperative to tally the losses and count the dead. As phi­los­o­pher Alain Badiou writes, “ethical judgment can only locate its real in the devastating excess of the crime, in the counting—by the millions—of the victims.”16 To go beyond impersonal and faceless statistics, “the count” must be turned into “accounts” of individual lives, which can also anchor larger historical chronologies. Looking beyond publications and into the dossiers of writers, as in chapters 1 and 2, we find tangled familial and intellectual biographies as well as diverse engagements with and reactions to Maoist campaigns. To account for t­hose who do not identify as intellectuals, ­future curators might also tap into the rich dossiers of socialist heroes and models or collect oral histories from rural villa­gers and urban workers. The inclusion of diverse accounts not only helps to create empathetic identification with the victims but also provides a critical understanding of the participants. As Ban Wang puts it, “to account for vio­lence as historical vicissitudes and as po­liti­cal dynamics is not to endorse it.”17 Rather than depicting victims as hapless, perpetrators as heartless, and vio­lence as senseless, specific historical accounts are needed to arrive at accountability.18 As much as the commemoration of victimhood, a memorial museum must also reflect on complicity, not only in terms of taking part in crimes but also in terms of “­human folded-­together-­ness,” as theorized by Mark Sanders in the South African context.19 Rather than distancing ourselves from past injustices, a memorial museum can also fold its audiences into a sense of “responsibility-­ in-­complicity”20 to consider how self-­righteous words can contribute to po­liti­ cal persecution, how utopian images can eclipse and produce disasters of mass mobilization, and how objects and places may well carry traumatic histories. Exhibit: At the origins of the Chinese Revolution, dreams of bounty and equality are vividly depicted in Mao-­era propaganda media, yet simply to exhibit mass culture as decorations in red-­themed restaurants facilitates nostalgia and amnesia rather than critical memory. Hence, I also privilege another sense of exhibit, not only as a museum display but also as forensic evidence. Instead of dismissing Maoist propaganda as outrageous lies or quaint curiosities, a memorial exhibit considers not only the deceptive and coercive but also the inspiring and empowering aspects of mass media that helped transform the masses into revolutionary media.21 To curate Maoist propaganda as utopian ruins also means to attend to the wide disjuncture between discourse and practice, vision and implementation. Indeed, exhibitions should complement t­ hose romantic images and stirring songs with the realities that eluded N otes for F uture   C urators  2 6 7

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audiovisual testimony by pointing out their omissions, exclusions, distortions, and, indeed, complicities. An existing model is the 2003 documentary Morning Sun, “a psychological history” of the Red Guard generation that grew up with t­ hose images, songs, and movies, so that their voices can tell us how such media influenced their thoughts and actions. Thus, while reclaiming propaganda media as creative products, we must also treat them as products of—­and productive of—­the historical realities. Converse: The same exhibits might evoke altogether dif­fer­ent responses due to the fragmented and contested memories of the Mao era. Following repeated calls for “repentance” by t­ hose complicit in the physical or psychic vio­lence of the Maoist campaigns,22 recent public apologies by former Red Guards to their teachers instigated criticisms and backlash that revived old factional divisions and turned “memory of the Cultural Revolution . . . ​into a battlefield of conflicting carrier groups.”23 Clearly, ­there is no easy way to appease the litany of injuries from victims and survivors, and such public controversies feature more impassioned polemic than rational dialogue, yet they are still productive conversation openers. When younger generations are not as defensive about this past as their parents, a memorial museum might mediate conversations between dif­fer­ent kinds of memories. Falling short of ­legal arbitrations of past conflicts, “truth and reconciliation” may still take alternative forms, such as poetic exchanges, cinematic testimonies, internet forums, or private gatherings. Think of the popu­lar attraction in Chinese ­temples and shrines of writing down prayers and hanging them on a “wish tree.” Now imagine an “atonement tree” or “a garden of truth and reconciliation” at, say, the Chongqing Red Guard graveyard, where t­ hose with a guilty conscience could write anonymous notes of penance. In short, the creation of more productive and tactful memory places would counteract the tendency for each to remember her or his own victimhood while singling out the guilty individuals. Imagine: A ­ fter excavating historical facts, accounting for them, and having a conversation about their exhibition, we ask some “what if ” questions: if we ­were in the shoes of historical actors, what would we have done differently? Are ­there alternative paths to the same ideals that motivated erstwhile revolutionaries without incurring the same ­human costs? As Elizabeth Perry argues, “the challenge for f­ uture generations is not to forget or falsify the past but to mine the revolutionary inheritance in ways that encourage its inspiring vision to triumph over its appalling vio­lence.”24 Such “what if ” questions contest the inevitability thesis in two renditions: first, utopia inevitably leads to ruin; and second, the revolution—­and its accompanying vio­lence—­was a historical necessity. Instead, we can use both the pre­sent to critique the past and the past 2 6 8 E pilo g ue

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to critique the pre­sent. “To recall revolutions,” as historian Arif Dirlik argues, “is not merely to single out one or another revolution for its virtues or vices but to keep open the possibility of alternative forms of social existence and organ­ization.”25 Thus, we should not regard with only irony and condescension the fantastic photomontages of agricultural miracles during the G ­ reat Leap or the nostalgia for working class solidarity but, rather, engage with their utopian longings that remain salient in critiquing the status quo. In a memorial museum, it is as impor­tant to access the true past as it is to imagine a dif­ fer­ent past, pre­sent, and ­future. In this spirit, the remainder of this epilogue is devoted to utopian thought experiments about ­future memorial proj­ects.

The Memories of ­Others: Curatorial Proposals Stumbling Stones

Imagine that for e­ very unnatural death from the Mao era, the bereaved ­family could set a stone into the pavement at the trauma site or close to the former residence of the deceased, no bigger than the size of a foot, with the name, the dates of the person’s birth and death, perhaps a photo­graph, and a line or two about the cause of death. The stone would be small enough to be ignored, but as ­there would be hundreds, perhaps even thousands of such stones laid in the remnant alleys of Beijing, the new leisure districts of Shanghai, and the main streets of small towns and villages—as omnipresent as the vari­ous door gods, wealth gods, and earth gods that have reemerged in the landscape in recent years—­then the unassuming presence of each might add up to a kind of rosary of vigilant memory. Perhaps it does not have to be stones; the markers could also be tiny t­ emples, or perhaps they could appear only on the Qingming Festival of Mourning, flickers of light to show an awareness of the former lives of the dead, especially t­hose who died unjust, violent deaths. The wronged ghosts could be enshrined as ­little gods of history. I cultivated this fantasy as I “stumbled” over countless small Holocaust memorial plaques, called “stumbling stones,” on the sidewalks of busy urban centers and sparsely populated towns in Germany. Each handmade by a single artist, Gunter Demnig, t­hese stumbling stones begin with the words “­Here lived,” followed by the person’s name, year of birth, and place and year of death. Modestly unassuming and yet like a fishbone that sticks in one’s throat, ­these stones commemorate victims of National Socialism directly in front of their last voluntary place of residence. Demnig began the proj­ect in 1996 and by 2018 had laid some seventy thousand stones in almost two thousand places

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in Eu­rope.26 The donor must secure a permit from the local government, and each stone costs, including installation, a l­ittle over a hundred euros. A ­ fter being laid, the stones often arouse a deeper interest in t­ hose named, giving rise to further historical research, especially among schoolchildren.27 More than any monumental obelisk or ­giant museum, I find the stumbling stone an inspiring paradigm for f­uture memorials in China that seek to acknowledge past victimhood and injustice ­because they mourn the loss of a life without turning it into an ideological instrument and ­because each stone can inspire a deeper interest in ­those named in their respective neighborhoods. They are so small and the cost is so modest, just about anyone can start a memorial initiative without having to amass enormous funds or apply for approval from the central government. The stumbling stones thus allow repre­sen­ta­tional and interpretative plurality as well as concrete situation in local communities, where historical facts are much easier to ascertain than statistics about millions of ­people. In the Chinese context, perhaps such specific memorials—as opposed to monuments that subsume individual plights ­under a larger national tragedy—­ can reinvigorate vindictive sentiments, yet the passage of time and politic forms of mourning could also allow reconciliation without reprisal. In an age of de­mo­li­tion and renewed authoritarianism, any physical memorial, plaque, or sign marking out victims in public spaces could be rapidly removed, as discussed in chapter 6. Yet when and if the po­liti­cal climate changes, negotiations between official and unofficial memories are pos­si­ble, depending on the content, form, location, and timing of the intended memorials. Fi­nally, ­those who object to the negligence of villa­ger and worker suffering ­under feudal or cap­ i­tal­ist exploitation might also use the stumbling-­stone model to remind us of pre-­or postrevolutionary cruelties. What makes this model work is precisely its inclusion of dif­fer­ent types of victimhood. Reappropriating Mao-­Era Traces

­ fter the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Eu­rope, thouA sands of statues of Lenin, Stalin, and other Communist leaders w ­ ere removed from their pedestals in city centers. A good number of such disgraced statues have landed in the “Graveyard of the Fallen Monuments” in Moscow, Memento Park in Budapest, and Grutas Park in Lithuania, serving as open-­air museums of Soviet times and open to a variety of interpretations.28 Although China had seen a similar mass disappearance of Mao statues as early as the 1980s, their removals w ­ ere much more discreet and less iconoclastic. Instead of the appearance of a Mao Ruins Park next to, say, the Yuanmingyuan Ruins 2 7 0 E pilo g ue

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Park in Beijing, what we see instead is a posthumous revival of the Mao cult and the rise of “red tourism,” turning new statues of Mao into “big business in the Chairman’s hometown.”29 As Mao joins a pantheon of other gods worshipped in the homes of ordinary ­people, one could curate a fascinating exhibition on everyday appropriations of Mao’s likeness in vari­ous postsocialist contexts. Amid the mass de­mo­li­tions in Chinese cities, towns, and villages, developers have rediscovered the touristic value of faded Maoist slogans and murals on the walls of former socialist factories and commune headquarters. Nostalgic, ironic, or simply quaint, such Mao-­era remnants can serve to enhance a historical consciousness by highlighting a place’s palimpsest history. Even when old neighborhoods dis­appear ­under the pressures of modernization and global capital, developers might still preserve traces of a place’s socialist past. Instead of perfect restorations, even the vis­i­ble damage of cultural relics or the “Four Olds” destroyed in the Cultural Revolution can serve as poignant historical testimonies. Where new designs cannot accommodate old ruins, one might photo­graph the ruins before they are torn down and then exhibit the pictures at the original sites. Con­temporary Chinese artists and filmmakers have appropriated forgotten relics and ruins of the Mao era, turning them into mementos through remediation and recontextualization. In the photography series Mao on the Wall, con­temporary artist Wang Tong 王彤 photographed hundreds of faded Mao portraits found in the Henan countryside (featured on the cover of this book).30 In a similar vein, as mentioned in chapter 6, artist Tian Taiquan incorporated Chongqing’s Red Guard graveyard into composite photographic installations that commemorate crushed idealism, buried desires, and ruined lives.31 As discussed in chapter 5, filmmakers Wang Bing, Jia Zhangke, and Zhang Meng have remediated the rubble of socialist industry before its final de­mo­li­tion in cinematic memorials to Mao’s working class. In his installation Waste Not, artist Song Dong 宋冬 moved the entire contents of his m ­ other’s home—­where every­thing from old shoes to toothpaste holders was indiscriminately hoarded and where many of the ­everyday artifacts ­were remains from the socialist era—­into the Museum of Modern Art in New York. To borrow Svetlana Boym’s comment on Ilya Kabakov’s re-­creations of Soviet everyday life in a Soho gallery, Song Dong’s collection “resembles Noah’s ark, only we are never sure ­whether the artist escaped from hell or from paradise.”32 Although the Mao era has been a major inspiration and resource for con­temporary Chinese artists,33 few have engaged in public memorial art, conceived of as a per­for­mance of encounters between visitors and the past, N otes for F uture   C urators  2 7 1

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where the work is not only the object itself but a set of relationships among art, space, time, and audience.34 In contrast to Amer­i­ca’s “memorial mania,” whereby dif­fer­ent interest groups use memorials to compete for public recognition,35 the Chinese government has taken the utmost care to avoid drawing impassioned crowds to any memorialization of this traumatic and contested period. Should the state become less paranoid in the ­future, however, curators might also consider memorial installations of Maoist traces in public spaces— for example, projecting old photos or documentary films onto the places they w ­ ere first taken to evoke historical curiosity, recognition, and reflection among passersby so as to have apparitions from the past return to “haunt” an amnesiac landscape.36 Although it is not yet pos­si­ble to build memorials of the Mao era in public squares, artists, filmmakers, and curators could still make use of private exhibition spaces with thoughtful niche audiences. In 2009 and 2010, the Songzhuang Art Museum in a Beijing suburb unveiled statues of three Chinese dissident-­martyrs from the Cultural Revolution: Lin Zhao, Yu Luoke, and Zhang Zhixin. Although the authorities prevented memorial activities around t­ hese taboo figures from spilling out of the gallery spaces,37 one might well come up with subtler and less confrontational exhibitions around other historical topics. Imagine, for example, an exhibition on steel, consisting of old propaganda posters, a backyard steel furnace relic or reconstruction with samples of the ­house­hold iron that was collected and the “steel” that was produced as well as a section on the steel industry and the lives of the workers. Imagine another museum of the Mao-era childhood that exhibits c­ hildren’s books and films, songs and images, toys and games, food and clothes, in which selected artifacts are accompanied by diverse oral histories of what it was like to grow up between the 1950s and the 1970s. The curator can also create a memory-­sharing corner or crowd-­source childhood memorabilia with personal annotations in the form of written notes, voice recordings, or video testimonies.38 With archival research, imagination, and entrepreneurial spirit, such exhibition proj­ects could bring university or high school students into collaborations with private museums, art galleries, or even a red-­ themed restaurant, café, or boutique. Rather than dismissing or condemning the nostalgia industry for promoting nothing but amnesia, more curators might consider combining their economic viability and distractive capacity with some historical and critical content. In fact, commodified spaces might precisely allow for greater visitor participation and engagement with multiple senses. 2 7 2 E pilo g ue

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Multisensory Exhibits

In A Continuous Revolution, Barbara Mittler seeks to “make sense of Cultural Revolution culture” by structuring her chapters according to “Nose—­Smells,” “Ears—­Sounds,” “Mouth—­Words,” “Eyes—­Images,” and “Hands—­Touch.” Although t­ hese senses are more meta­phors for reading cultural texts than literal engagements with smell, taste, and touch, one can very well apply this creative structure to a memorial museum, with exhibits that are primarily to be heard, smelled, tasted, and touched, hence offering visitors “corporeal involvement” and reproducing in their bodies a “felt real­ity of the past.”39 Although Maoist visual culture has been widely studied and exhibited, the Maoist soundscape remains a new scholarly frontier despite its enduring resonances.40 In a more curatorial vein, the Morning Sun website features some innovative audible virtual exhibits, such as radio broadcasts from the Cultural Revolution and audiovisual clips of the “The East is Red,” from its folk song origins to a revolutionary song-­and-­music epic.41 Taking a cue from the commonplace practice of “singing red” in public parks, a curator might add a critical dimension to such “red karaoke” by annotating each song with its cultural history, and then inviting the singer to add his or her own associated memories. Beyond musical culture, a sound installation can also foreground listening technologies, such as the radio and loudspeaker—­which numbered close to one hundred million by the mid-1970s42 and defined the soundscape of the Mao era—as well as program typical broadcasts at dif­fer­ent times of the day. Fi­nally, inspired by the sound landmark proj­ect in London to commemorate a demolished neighborhood, one can create historical audio tours to vanished socialist spaces using the recorded voices and memories of former residents, which could take the form of podcasts that one can access by scanning the qr code at a given site.43 As we know from Marcel Proust’s famous madeleine, “the smell and taste of ­things . . . ​amid the ruins of all the rest . . . ​bear unfaltering . . . ​the vast structure of recollection.”44 The Chinese Communist Party well understood the power of food to mediate memories, even of times one never lived through, and thus created “remember bitterness meals” for t­ hose “born u ­ nder the red flag” to teach them the hardships of the “old society.”45 When this generation became middle-­aged, they in turn took their c­ hildren to “red-­themed restaurants” to taste the austerity that made food so delicious in their own youth. Yet as Claire Conceison argues, although “red restaurants [are] engaging the five senses” through not just food but interactive per­for­mances, they offer sanitized versions of the Maoist past and serve overpriced, overabundant foods N otes for F uture   C urators  2 7 3

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with too much meat, whereas “feelings of fear, pain, and humiliation are not on the menu.”46 For a more critical yet still sensual engagement with history, an experiential museum could re­create “bitterness meals” from the times of famine and rationing with authenticated r­ ecipes of hunger and survival, for example by showing visitor-­participants how to recognize and cook edible plants with minimal fuel. One could also re­create the smellscape of a time when coal was the primary burning material, when all used the same brands of soap, cream, tobacco, and toothpaste, annotated by personal accounts of the odors and tastes of one’s childhood and youth. “Look, but ­don’t touch” is the first rule we learn in modern museums with most exhibits ­behind glass cases. Prior to the nineteenth ­century, however, it was not taboo for visitors to touch, feel, hold, or shake objects from private and public collections, and such engagements of the tactile sense have been revived in a new museology, especially exhibits for c­ hildren or for the blind.47 Although many museum artifacts are too rare or fragile to be handled by untrained hands, it is pos­si­ble to curate a tactile exhibit using mass-­produced “revolutionary” everyday objects, such as the Mao badges, enamel cups, or mirrors held in huge quantities at the Jianchuan Museum and used to furnish its restaurants, ­hotels, and souvenir shops. ­Here again, commodification does not have to mean forgetting: one could turn the increasingly popu­lar activity of cosplay and dressing up for photo-­ops into more critical historical engagement by inviting visitors to put on clothes ­people typically wore during the Mao era, from the cadre suit to the Red Guard outfit, along with such clothing of economic deprivation as “detachable collars,” “gunnysack shirts,” and “fertilizer trousers,” as described in sociologist Sun Peidong’s fascinating study of everyday fashion during the Cultural Revolution.48 Literally putting ourselves into the leather, cotton, and straw shoes of dif­fer­ent classes can give us a grounded understanding and concrete grasp of the nuanced heterogeneity and inequalities beneath the seeming homogeneity and egalitarianism of the Mao era. Just as impor­tant as learning about what p ­ eople wore is how their clothes were made and who made them: from cotton growing, spinning, and weaving, to sewing, knitting, and darning, hands-on demonstrations of the handicrafts that preoccupied (mostly rural) ­women’s domestic lives can pass on memories not typically articulated through writing, image, or sound.49 A multisensory museum would facilitate affective yet critical understandings of history, what Alison Landsberg calls “prosthetic memory,” a “sensuous engagement with the past” that also teaches ethical thinking by fostering “empathy”—­distinct from “sympathy” in that it is “not purely emotional but also contains a cognitive component”—­for to empathize means “to feel 2 7 4 E pilo g ue

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connected to, while recognizing the alterity of, the ‘other.’ ”50 Seeing the sights, hearing the sounds, smelling and tasting the foods, and touching the fabrics of “­others”—of dif­fer­ent times and places, of another generation, class, or gender—­can help museum visitors inherit and reconcile a plurality of memories other­wise fragmented within survivor groups.

Barefoot Historians: Reinventing Mao-­Era Practices

As anthropologist Yunxiang Yan points out in his study of a village in Northeast China, decollectivization in the early 1980s quickened the demise of community-­based social and cultural activities. Participation in public life surely was not entirely voluntary in the Mao era, and “the kind of sociality generated in this social space inevitably bore the imprint of the official ideology of the party-­state.”51 Yet we might still productively reinvent Maoist public cultural practices to commemorate the Mao era—­among them, turning “speaking bitterness” into intergenerational dialogue, turning Mao’s call to “go among the masses” into “barefoot historians” and collecting subaltern memories, and turning mobile movie projection into localized and indigenous cinema. Throughout the Mao era, the party compiled local histories of class strug­ gle and staged public articulations of private memories through “recalling bitterness” per­for­mances. Since the end of the Mao era, scar lit­er­a­ture, oral histories, in­de­pen­dent documentaries, and tele­vi­sion programs have similarly collected and transmitted the “bitterness narratives” of the victims of the Maoist campaigns.52 More than the content of ­these traumatic accounts, I contend that the intergenerational transmission of memories is the aspect of “speaking bitterness” most worth inheriting. To that end, schools and media platforms could launch essay or video competitions for young ­people to rec­ord stories from their parents and grandparents. Although the publication or exhibition of “winning works” are likely to be heavi­ly (self-)censored, the participants may well learn more about history than from any form of rote learning in the classroom. ­Going a step further would be to creatively transform the Maoist legacy of “barefoot doctors” into “barefoot historians,” or amateur historians who “go among the masses” in order to recover accounts of traumatic pasts as a first step ­toward healing fractured communities. One emergent example of a “barefoot historian” proj­ect is the Folk Memory Proj­ect, initiated by the documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang 吳文光, who has dispatched young filmmakers to their f­amily villages to document and transmit memories of the ­Great Leap famine. In Luo Village: Me and Ren N otes for F uture   C urators  2 7 5

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Dingqi (羅家屋：我和任定齊, 2011), Luo Bing 羅兵 searched for an elusive memoir by his neighbor Grandpa Ren and contrasts the halting, inchoate testimonies of the el­derly generation against his history textbook. In Starving Village (飢餓的村子, 2010) and Satiated Village (吃飽的村子, 2011), Zou Xueping 邹雪平 collected video testimonies about the famine from el­derly villa­gers and then invited them to a screening and discussion. In her next film, ­Children’s Village (孩子的村子, 2012), Zou mobilized the village c­ hildren to raise funds and to collect the names and backgrounds of the village’s famine victims in order to erect a memorial for them.53 In the Folk Memory Proj­ect, each young filmmaker became a barefoot historian who used cinema as a therapeutic medium to help multiple generations of villa­gers work through a traumatic past. Their return to the village ­every year, as Wu Wenguang writes, “is like sowing seeds or reclaiming wasteland,” and their “original status as amateur recorders of history and documentary filmmakers begins to take on the quality of builders and participants in the village’s pre­sent real­ity.”54 More than any central monument on Tian­anmen Square to represent a nation’s memories, grassroots memorial initiatives turn historical knowledge from rote school learning (or lack thereof ) into an active and collaborative venture. Instead of prescribing an authoritative canon of knowledge about the past, the best memorial proj­ects should inspire and enable young ­people to discover not only national but also local and familial histories in all their complexity. Granted that con­temporary politics and economics have had a profound impact on the memory landscape, ­there can be even more places in ­today’s China for public and collective remembrances of officially repressed histories—­places that seek to be more politic than po­liti­cal. The ­future of the Maoist past is by no means certain, but now that the state no longer monopolizes technologies of memory, it is up to each of us to salvage memories from fading lives and de­mo­li­tion rubble and to construct out of ­those utopian ruins an inclusive and reflective memorial museum of the Mao era.

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NOTES

Series Editor’s Preface

1 Alison Flood, “Frankfurt Book Fair: Orhan Pamuk Denounces Turkish Opression,” The Guardian, October 15, 2008. Introduction: Mediating Memories of the Mao Era

1 See Hu Jie’s 2006 documentary film Though I am Gone (我雖死去). 2 Ba Jin 巴金, “ ‘Wenge’ bowuguan” “文革”博物館 (A Cultural Revolution Museum), in Suixiang lu, 601–4. An En­glish translation of this essay: http://­www​.­cnd​.­org​/­cr​ /­english​/­articles​/­bajin​.­htm (accessed July 5, 2019). 3 See Song, ed., Wenhua da geming, esp. 916–40, 1004–16. 4 Chapter 6 of this book provides a more extensive analy­sis of the Jianchuan Museum Cluster and other spaces that facilitate a nostalgic engagement with the Maoist past. For discussions of the afterlife of the Mao cult and the proliferation of red memorabilia, see Barmé, Shades of Mao; Schrift, Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge; Hubbert, “(Re)collecting Mao”; Conceison, “Eating Red.” 5 Schoenhals, “Is the Cultural Revolution ­Really Necessary?” 6 MacFarquhar, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution; Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins; Hinton, Barmé, and Gordon, Morning Sun (documentary film). 7 Arnold-­de Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, 1–8. Also see Crane, ed., Museums and Memory; Williams, Memorial Museums. 8 Zhong and Wang, eds., Debating the Socialist Legacy, 2–3. 9 Arnold-­de Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, 10. 10 Ho and Li, “From Landlord Manor to Red Memorabilia,” 3–37. 11 I borrow this idea of cultural memory as a shamanistic medium from Assmann, “Texts, Traces, Trash,” 123–34. 12 Popu­lar books espousing the catastrophe thesis include bestselling memoirs and biographies by Jung Chang such as Wild Swans and Mao: The Unknown Story and historian Frank Dikötter’s trilogy history: Mao’s ­Great Famine (2011), The Tragedy of Liberation (2013), and The Cultural Revolution: A ­People’s History, 1962–1970 (2016), all published by Bloomsbury USA. Directly contradicting the catastrophe thesis is Mobo Gao’s The ­Battle for China’s Past, whereas the alternative modernity thesis is best represented by Wang Hui’s influential works, especially The End of the Revolution. 13 For a thoughtful commentary on the two intellectual factions, see Andrew ­Kipnis, “Neo-­Leftists versus Neo-­Liberals,” 242–46. Also see Davies, Worrying about China.

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14 “Farewell to Revolution” comes from the famous essay by Li and Liu, Gaobie geming. 15 Goldman, From Comrade to Citizen; Wang, The End of the Revolution. 16 Wang, “Understanding the Chinese Revolution through Words,” 7. 17 I borrow the term “utopian impulses” from Jameson, Archaeologies of the ­Future. 18 Williams, Memorial Museums, 8. 19 Gao, The ­Battle for China’s Past, 3. 20 Lee, Against the Law, chap. 1; Shao, “Waving the Red Flag,” 224. 21 For more nuanced studies of how Maoism was experienced and remembered at the grass roots, see Lee and Yang, eds., Re-­envisioning the Chinese Revolution; Brown and Johnson, eds. , Maoism at the Grassroots. 22 For a magisterial study of grassroots remembrances of the Mao era, see Hershatter, The Gender of Memory. 23 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 5. 24 The mediation of memories through bodies and artifacts is implied in classical memory theories that distinguish between communicative and cultural memory (Assmann), milieux and lieux de mémoire (Nora), and between incorporated and inscribed memory (Connerton). See Assmann and Czaplicka, “Collective Memory and Cultural Identity”; Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 7–24; Connerton, How Socie­ties Remember. Marianne Hirsch similarly argues that postmemory depends on mediation through “stories, images, and be­hav­iors” from elder generations, “imaginative investment, projection, and creation” from younger generations, as well as cultural memory technologies “like lit­er­a­ture, photography, and testimony.” Hirsch, ­Family Frames, 22; Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 2, 35. 25 Exemplary interview-­based studies of Mao-­era memories include: Kleinman and Kleinman, “How Bodies Remember,” 707–23; Rofel, Other Modernities; Lee, Against the Law; Mittler, A Continuous Revolution; Hershatter, The Gender of Memory; Davies, “Old Zhiqing Photos”; Yang, The Red Guard Generation and Po­liti­cal Activism in China; Watson, ed., Memory, History and Opposition ­under State Socialism. 26 Notable studies of post-­Mao literary and cinematic repre­sen­ta­tions of the Mao era include Braester, Witness against History, chaps. 6, 8, and 9; Wang, Illuminations from the Past, chaps. 3–5; Knight, The Heart of Time, chaps. 6 and 7; Berry, A History of Pain, chap. 4; Huang, Tapestry of Light. 27 Rosen, Change Mummified, 115. 28 Fang, “The Chinese Amnesia.” 29 Zhang Yihe has made this statement in vari­ous contexts. I quote ­here from a newspaper article by Richard Spencer, “A Lone Voice Fights Chinese Censorship,” The Telegraph, April 25, 2007. 30 ­These are the intertitles closing Hu Jie’s 2004 in­de­pen­dent documentary, In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul, to be discussed in greater detail in chapter 1. 31 Most scholarship on Mao-­era memories focuses on first-­generation accounts of personal and familial experiences that can be generalized to represent social groups defined by class, gender, generation, and geography. For example, books that focus

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on ­women’s memories of the Mao era include: Hershatter, The Gender of Memory; Zhong, Zheng, and Bai, eds., Some of Us; Rofel, Other Modernities. 32 Van Dijck, Mediated Memories in the Digital Age; Erll and Rigney, eds., Mediation, Remediation, and the Dynamics of Cultural Memory; Neiger, Meyers and Zandberg, eds., On Media Memory. 33 Sturken, Tangled Memories, 9, 19–20; the quotations can be found in Sturken, “Memory, Consumerism and Media,” 73–78. 34 Kittler, Discourse Networks, 284. 35 Assmann, “Canon and Archive,” 98–107; Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization, 130. 36 Bolter and Grusin, Remediation, 18. To trace the remediation of memory is to highlight the “medial frameworks” of memory-­making in addition to the po­liti­cal institutions and civil socie­ties. See Erll and Rigney, “Introduction,” 2. 37 I discuss Though I Am Gone in greater detail in Li, “Virtual Museums of Forbidden Memories,” 539–49. Also see chapter 3 of Hillenbrand’s Negative Exposures for an extensive discussion of the remediations of Bian Zhongyun’s photo­graph. 38 Hoskins, “Media, Memory, Meta­phor,” 29; Hoskins, “Memory Ecologies,” 348–57; Neiger, Meyers, and Zandberg, eds., On Media Memory. 39 This definition of memory ecol­ogy is inspired by work on “media ecol­ogy,” first introduced by Neil Postman. For a lucid explanation of how ecol­ogy is used as a productive meta­phor in media studies, see Scolari, “Media Ecol­ogy,” 204–25. 40 Young, The Texture of Memory, 2. 41 Arnold-­de Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, 13 42 Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory. 43 Derrida, “Sending,” 307. 44 Rosen, Change Mummified, 18–20. For a discussion of indexicality with a focus on the “having-­been-­there” of the photographic image, see Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 36–78. 45 Williams, Memorial Museums, 25. 46 Peters, “Witnessing,” 25. 47 I ­shall discuss the term “crisis of witnessing” in greater detail in the following section. 48 Frosh and Pinchevski, eds. “Introduction,” 1. 49 Even when ­people, artifacts, and other indexical traces “bear witness” to a bygone era by “having been ­there,” ­there remains what John Durham Peters calls a “veracity gap” or “epistemological gap” between their testimonies and the “real past.” See Peters, “Witnessing,” 34. 50 In Writing History, Writing Trauma, Dominick LaCapra discusses “secondary witnesses” as oral historians or interviewers of Holocaust survivors, as ones “bearing witness both to the witness and to the object of testimony conveyed by the witness” (97ff.). Aleida Assmann also discusses the way testimonies by survivors of trauma appeal “to humanity at large, which—to the extent that it registers and

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memorializes the event—­constitutes itself as a moral community.” See Assmann, “History, Memory, and the Genre of Testimony,” 261–73. 51 Williams, Memorial Museums, 107. 52 I borrow the quoted phrases from Owen, Remembrances, 82. 53 Williams, Memorial Museums, 21. 54 Bennett, The Birth of the Museum. 55 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 2. 56 Koga, The Inheritance of Loss. 57 Buruma, “The Joys and Perils of Victimhood,” 4–8. 58 Zhuoyi Wang, Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema. 59 Han, Wenge houji, 104–5. 60 Owen, Remembrances, 8. 61 Owen, Remembrances, 17–18. 62 Jing, The ­Temple of Memories. 63 See chapters 1, 2, and 6 in this volume. 64 Wu, “Speaking Bitterness,” 3–23. Also see Sun, Social Suffering and Po­liti­cal Confession. 65 Wu, “Recalling Bitterness,” 245–68. 66 Such po­liti­cal mobilization, as Xiaobing Tang argues, served to empower the wretched of the earth, giving them a new vocabulary, discourse, and worldview to articulate and make sense of other­wise ineffable experiences. Tang, Visual Culture in Con­temporary China, 20–24. 67 Xu and Luo, Chengshi de jiyi, 159–66; Ying Du, “Shanghaiing the Press Gang.” 68 Chen, “Propagating the Propaganda Film,” 154–93; Li, “Revolutionary Echoes.” 69 In Mao’s New World, Chang-­Tai Hung examines how the Communists forged a new po­liti­cal culture in the 1950s by transforming public spaces, staging mass parades, exhibiting revolutionary history, disseminating visual propaganda, and constructing monuments. In Socialist Cosmopolitanism, Nicolai Volland analyzes literary exchanges and influences between the PRC and other socialist countries. For studies of the visual arts during the Mao era, see Andrews, Paint­ers and Politics and Tang, Visual Culture in Con­temporary China. In Revolutionary Cycles in Chinese Cinema, Wang examines the production, distribution, and reception of fictional films. In Curating Revolution, Ho studies how exhibitions supported po­liti­cal movements. In their respective monographs on the Cultural Revolution, Paul Clark’s The Chinese Cultural Revolution, Barbara Mittler’s Continuous Revolution, and Laikwan Pang’s The Art of Cloning propose that the revolutionary model works combined innovation with prerevolutionary traditions, held popu­lar appeal, and engaged active audiences. 70 Liu, “That Holy Word, ‘Revolution.’ ” 71 Mao, “China Is Poor and Blank” and “The Question of Agricultural Cooperation.” 72 Schaefer, “Poor and Blank.” 73 Laub, “An Event without a Witness,” xvii; Caruth, Unclaimed Experience, 5. 74 Studies of modern Chinese lit­er­a­ture and cinema that have engaged with trauma theory include Berry, A History of Pain; Braester, Witness against History; Wang, Monster that is History; Wang, Illuminations from the Past.

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7 5 Watson, “Making Secret Histories.” 76 He Fengming, Jingli. Also see Wang Bing’s 2007 documentary film Fengming : A Chinese Memoir. 77 Cook, The Cultural Revolution on Trial. 78 Béja, “Forbidden Memory,” 94. 79 See Knight, “Scar Lit­er­a­ture,” 527–32; Link, The Uses of Lit­er­a­ture; Wang, The Monster that is History. For a thoughtful distinction between scar and wound, see Huang, Tapestry of Light, 10–13. For a discussion of “scar” cinema, see Berry, Postsocialist Cinema in Post-­Mao China. 80 Weigelin-­Schwiedrzik, “In Search of a Master Narrative for 20th-­Century Chinese History,” 1087. 81 Béja, “Forbidden Memory” 94–95; Yang, “Days of Old Are Not Puffs of Smoke,” 21–22; Kleinman and Kleinman, “How Bodies Remember”; Weigelin-­Schwiedrzik, “In Search of a Master Narrative.” 82 Lin, “A Search for China’s Soul,” 173, 178. 83 Most prominently, Chang, Wild Swans; Nien Cheng, Life and Death in Shanghai. 84 Zarrow, “Meanings of China’s Cultural Revolution,” 165–91. 85 Kaplan and Wang, eds., Trauma and Cinema, especially the chapter by Ban Wang. 86 Barmé, In the Red, 318–19. 87 Barmé, Shades of Mao. 88 Yang, “China’s Zhiqing Generation”; Yau, “Film and Digital Video as Testimony of Chinese Modernity,” 156. 89 Hurst, “The Power of the Past.” 90 Barmé, In the Red, 316–17. 91 Berry, A History of Pain, 3. 92 Kuhn, “Memory Texts and Memory Work.” 93 Media scholars have debated ­whether digitization eliminates the indexicality of photographic images. I subscribe ­here to Tom Gunning’s argument that “storage in terms of numerical data does not eliminate indexicality” and Frank Kessler’s argument that “new media have brought forth a proliferation of practices that foreground the indexical properties of digitally recorded images.” See Gunning, “What’s the Point of an Index?” and Kessler, “What You Get Is What You See,” 187–98. 94 Bolter and Grusin, Remediation, 17. 95 Analyzing mediated memories in the digital age, José van Dijck argues that even personal recollections are inextricable from recording, sharing, and archiving technologies, such as cameras and computers, blogs and play­lists. See van Dijck, Mediated Memories in the Digital Age. 96 Brown and Hoskins, “Terrorism in the New Memory Ecol­ogy,” 87–107; Hoskins, “7/7 and Connective Memory.” 97 Yang, “A Portrait of Martyr Jiang Qing”; Yang, “Alternative Genres.” 98 Erll, “Lit­er­a­ture, Film, and the Mediality of Cultural Memory,” 392–94. 99 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 15–16.

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100 Mao Zedong formulated the contrast between “fragrant flowers” and “poisonous weeds” in a key speech during the 1956–57 Hundred Flowers campaign. See Barmé, “Beijing, a Garden of Vio­lence,” 612–39. 101 This is an argument I have elaborated in Shanghai Homes, chap. 2. 102 Stoler, ed., Imperial Debris, 22. Chapter 1: Blood Testaments

1 The total number of Rightists has been estimated to be anywhere between a half-­ million to 1.8 million. See Ding Shu, Yang mou, 297–310. 2 This is how Lian Xi describes Lin Zhao in the biography Blood Letters. 3 Peters, “Witnessing,” 23–48. 4 I borrow the phrase “blood letters” from Lian, Blood Letters. 5 Paul Ricoeur has highlighted the connection between the witness and the martyr in “The Hermeneutics of Testimony.” Also see Assmann, “History, Memory, and the Genre of Testimony,” 261–73. 6 Wegenstein, “Body,” 33. 7 The journalist Chen Weisi 陳偉斯 first copied this poem from the court archives in 1981 and published an excerpt in “Lin Zhao zhi si” 林昭之死 (The Death of Lin Zhao), Minzhu yu fazhi 民主與法治 (Democracy and Law) (March 1981); reprinted in Xu Juemin, ed., Lin Zhao, 2. 8 Suzhoushi zhi, vol. 3, 1222. Also see Zhao Rui, Jitan shang de shengnü, 19–21. 9 “Peng Guoyan yu Xu Xianmin” 彭國彥與許憲民 in Suzhou difangzhi (Suzhou Gazetteer), accessed May 15, 2019, http://­www​.­dfzb​.­suzhou​.­gov​.­cn​/­database​_­books​_­detail​ .­aspx? bid=3677. 10 Zhang Min, “Interview with Peng Lingfan,” 2004. 11 Feng, “Xu Xianming ershinian ji”; Zhao Rui, Jitan shang de shengnü, 9–29. 12 Zhang Min, “Interview with Peng Lingfan.” Also see Peng, “He waipo yiqi duguo de rizi.” 13 Ouyang Ying 歐陽英 [Lin Zhao’s pseudonym], “Dai he dai” 代和代 (Generation and Generation), Chusheng 初生 (Newborn), no. 3 (June 1947). Reprinted in Beijing zhichun (北京之春) (Beijing Spring), April 2015, accessed May 9, 2019, http://­ beijingspring​.­com​/­bj2​/­2010​/­550​/­426201544408​.­htm. At this time, Lin Zhao’s ­father worked for the kmt Bank of China and her ­mother served as a representative to the kmt National Assembly while secretly helping the ccp collect intelligence with two radio transmitters. 14 For a detailed account of Lin Zhao’s Christian education, see Lian, Blood Letters, 16–30. 15 Zhang Min, “Interview with Peng Lingfan” Zhao Rui, Jitan shang de shengnü, 30–31. 16 The poem is quoted in Zhao Rui, Jitan shang de shengnü, 35–38. 17 Lin Zhao prob­ably had in mind land reform novels such as Ding Ling’s The Sun Shines over the Sanggan River and Zhou Libo’s Hurricane, both published by 1949 and written in a Socialist Realist style. For studies of the land reform novel, see Wang, The Monster that is History, 165–68. 18 Xu Juemin, ed., Lin Zhao, 170–90, 229–34. 282

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1 9 See Hu Jie, In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul and Xu Juemin, ed., Lin Zhao, 212–13. 20 Xu Juemin, ed., Lin Zhao, 213. 21 Lao She, “Da bei si wai,” 41. The quote in Chinese reads: “有許多青年的血是能極 熱，同時又極冷的。” 22 Quoted in Xu Juemin, ed., Lin Zhao, 213. 23 Lin Zhao, “­Women de xin.” 24 Quoted in Zhao, Jitan shang de shengnü, 100. 25 For an overview of Chinese historiographies and memoirs of the Anti-­Rightist Campaign, see Christine Vidal, “The 1957–1958 Anti-­Rightist Campaign in China: History and Memory (1978–2014),” accessed March 12, 2020, https:// halshs.archives-­ouvertes.fr/halshs-01306892/document. 26 Qian Liqun, “­Women de xieguan li liuzhe wusi de xue.” 27 The journal is named ­after the “Democracy Square” on the Beida campus where students first gathered on May 4, 1919. The first issue of The Square is reproduced with an introduction in Beijing zhichun 248 (2014): http://­beijingspring​.­com​/­bj2​ /­2010​/­550​/­201401–1​-­3. pdf (accessed May 9, 2019). 28 Zhang Yuanxun 張元勳, “Guangchang fakanci” 廣場發刊詞 (Preface to the Publication of The Square), May 1957, reprinted in Beijing zhichun 248 (2014), accessed March 12, 2020, http://­beijingspring​.­com​/­bj2​/­2010​/­550​/­201401–1​-­3.pdf, 60. 29 Ji Cengshan 紀增善, “Bianzhe shuoming” 編者說明 (Editor’s Note), in Beijing zhichun 248 (2014), accessed March 12, 2020, http://­beijingspring​.­com​/­bj2​/­2010​/­550​ /­201401–1​-­3.pdf, 6–7. 30 Zhang Yuanxun, Beida 1957; Qian Liqun, Jujue yiwang. 31 Gan Cui, “Beida hun.” 32 Gan Cui, “Beida hun.” 33 Xu Juemin, ed., Lin Zhao, 23, 43, 186, 243–44. 34 Zhao Rui, Jitan shang de shengnü, 84–85. 35 See Gan Cui, “Beida hun”; Zhao, Jitan shang de shengnü, 91. 36 Veg, “Testimony, History and Ethics.” 37 Link, Roses and Thorns, 11–13. 38 Tan, Qiusuo, 35–51, 85–94. 39 Tan, Qiusuo, 19–27, 95–115. 40 Most references to the Chinese counterpart of the Soviet samizdat discuss a wave of unofficial periodicals from ­after the Cultural Revolution. See Widor, The Samizdat Press in China’s Provinces. 41 Scholl, The White Rose. 42 The title also evokes the well-­known Bai Juyi poem: 野火烧不尽，春风吹又生 (Even the Prairie Fire Cannot Destroy the Grass: It Grows Again When the Breeze Blows). 43 For a study of reportage as a literary genre in modern China, see Laughlin, Chinese Reportage. 44 The first and second issues of Spark have been reprinted in Tan, Qiusuo, 27–95. 45 Tan, Qiusuo, 72–73. The original lyr­ics of the song being parodied read: “Socialism is good, socialism is good! / ­People of socialist countries have high social status.

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/ Reactionaries are overthrown. / Imperialism tucks its tail and flees. / The entire country is united / Setting off a tide in socialist construction.” 46 Qian Liqun, “Da yuejin”; Tan, Qiusuo, 18. 47 For a transcript of Lin Zhao’s poem about Prometheus, please see http://­jyushyur​ .­blogspot​.­com​/­2014 ​/­03 ​/­blog​-­post​_­11​.­html (accessed May 9, 2019). In the Chinese May-­Fourth Movement, revolutionaries ­were often compared to Prometheus, e.g., Lu Xun described himself as a “stealer of fire” (see Liu, “Farewell to the Gods,” 2). 48 Zhang Min, “Interview with Peng Lingfan”; Zhao, Jitan shang de shengnü, 27. 49 On Peng Guoyan in the 1950s, see Zhao, Jitan shang de shengnü, 27, 96, 197; and Feng, “Xu Xianming ershinian ji.” 50 Zhang Min, “Interview with Peng Lingfan.” Also see Xu Juemin, ed., Lin Zhao, 226. 51 Xu Juemin, ed., Lin Zhao, 122–23. Also see Zhao Rui, Jitan shang de shengnü, 200–208. 52 The 1964 indictment (起訴書) by the Jing’an ­People’s Court called “Zhongguo ziyou qingnian zhandou lianmeng” 中國自由青年戰鬥聯盟 (China F ­ ree Youth Fighting League) an “or­ga­nized counterrevolutionary clique with an agenda” (有組織、有綱領的反革命集團). As its “ringleader” (主犯), Lin Zhao was accused of “organ­izing counterrevolutionary agitprop, colluding with imperialists to provide enemies with information, planning to cross the border, instigating riots among prisoners, sabotaging the socialist enterprise, and conspiring to overthrow the ­people’s demo­cratic dictatorship.” The indictment traced Lin Zhao’s crimes back to her participation in the publication Square and detailed her involvement with Spark, but focused its charges on her 1962 activities, first for “blackmailing” Beida president Lu Ping, next for drafting a po­liti­cal program with Huang Zhuan, and third for passing on intelligence to the “imperialists.” The text for the indictment and Lin Zhao’s commentary are included in Lin Zhao’s papers in the Hoover Institution Archives, Box 1: 1; also available at http://­tw​.­epochtimes​.­com​/­gb​/­9​/­6​/­6​ /­n2550096​.­htm (accessed May 19, 2019). 53 Lin Zhao, “Panjue hou de shengming.” Chinese original: “你們這一非法的可恥判 決，從另一方面看恰恰是林昭個人戰鬥生涯的上好見證！” 54 The 1964 verdict cites titles of Lin Zhao’s unclassified prison writings including “Laoyu zhi hua” 牢獄之花 (Flower of Prison), “Tilanqiao de liming” 提籃橋的黎明 (The Dawn of Tilan Bridge), and “Xuehua” 血花 (Blood Flowers). 55 “Lishi dang’an: Lin Zhao an jiaxing cailiao zhailu” 林昭案加刑材料摘錄 (Excerpts from Lin Zhao’s Case File Pertaining to the Augmentation of her Sentence), reproduced at http://­beijingspring​.­com​/­bj2​/­2010​/­550​/­20131216204128​.­htm. Her death sentence is reproduced at: http://­jyushyur​.­blogspot​.­com​/­2015​/­05​/­blog​-­post​_­45​.­html (accessed May 9, 2019). 56 Lin Zhao, “Zhi Renmin ribao bianjibu,” 1. Chinese original: “人民日報編輯部： 在 這個肇始以來一直以其崇高勇烈的人道激情深深叩動每個愛自由者之心絃的著名的 日子裏，我—­奇怪的讀者，又開始起稿給你們寫信，假如這久被折磨的衰弱負病之 軀的記憶 力還不曾十分喪失了其準確性的話，那末我記得這是法國大革命首義的日 子！就在今天—­七月十四日，再也不堪專制壓迫的憤怒的巴黎市民奮起攻破了封

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建王朝的黑暗堡壘和暴力中心，巴士底獄！而作爲歐洲中世紀時代的葬歌和人權世 紀黎明的基調, 那震撼寰區深入人心的 舉世聞名的人的戰鬥口號—­自由、平等、博 愛！—­乃從此被戰鬥者的鮮血煥然大書於人類編年史的篇頁之上。 / 光華燦爛的歷 史！血腥慘厲的現實！面對着現實回顧歷史更覺其燦爛，而緬懷着歷史審察現實卻 益顯得慘厲了！當然，我決不是爲了討論歷史纔來給先生們寫信的，除了無此必要， 更還無此雅興。我所在之處既非書齋，更何況今日以中國之大不僅早已放不下一張安 靜的書桌，甚至都早已容不得一個正直的書生！不！我既不需要一般地討論歷史， 甚至也不需要一般地議論現實！ 這個奇怪的讀者—­從第一次給你們寫信我就已經坦 然說明了自己的身份：我是你們這 統治下的一名反抗者，而且正在牢獄之中—­於去 年十二月和今年二月羈押在上海第一看守 所期間曾兩次給你們寫信：信是以自己的 鮮血所寫, 因爲當時我被非法地剝奪了紙筆！”

5 7 Lu Xun, “Preface to Outcry,” 23. 58 Lu Xun penned ­these famous words as an epitaph for the dozens of student protesters shot to death by Beijing security forces on March 18, 1926. See Spence, Chinese Roundabout, 300. This line is quoted by Lin Zhao in “Zhi Renmin ribao bianjibu,” 125. 59 Lin Zhao, “Zhi Renmin ribao bianjibu,” 9. Chinese original: “所謂的公安警察—­特 務系統這是中共黨內、因之也是中國大陸的大動脈！循着它流去的一切東西都是十分 容易、甚至必然會得直接去到心臟的！” 60 Lin Zhao, “Zhi Renmin ribao bianjibu,” 8. Chinese original: “只要散發出去，共產 黨自然會得代替我們去進一步擴大影響：即不公開，內部學習、傳達、調查以至翻印 等等恐怕大致上都是免不了的。”

61 Prior to her departure from Beijing, Lin Zhao entrusted her manuscripts to a friend who ­later burned every­thing during the Cultural Revolution for fear of trou­ble. See Zhao, Jitan shang de shengnü, 91. 62 See Hansen, Negotiating Daily Life in Traditional China, 7. 63 Kieschnick, “Blood Writing in Chinese Buddhism”; Lian, Blood Letters, 136. 64 Dardess, Blood and History in China, 5. 65 Zhang Yuanxun, Beida 1957, 257–58. ­There is also a direct reference to Dou E in Lin Zhao’s “Zhi Renmin ribao bianjibu,” 97. 66 Lin Zhao, “Zhi Renmin ribao bianjibu,” 75–76. Chinese original: “天知道！我是 如此地一點也不吝惜自己的血！猶如一九六二年冬天初來此間 . . . ​之際人們對於我 寫血書這一舉動所說的 . . . ​： “一個人身上有幾千c.c. 血呢！流出這麼一點不會死 的！” 上帝啊！作爲人，我們這個軀體之中所蘊藏的血可能是太多一點了罷？ . . . ​ 好極了，夠我這麼慢慢流的了！既然我沒有如阮文追那樣於光天化日之下公衆眼目之 前慷慨從容地拋卻頭顱而灑去熱血的福分！”

67 Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 104–33; Wakeman, “Romantics, Stoics, and Martyrs in Seventeenth-­Century China.” 68 Lin Zhao, “Zhi Renmin ribao bianjibu,” 63. 69 Wai-­yee Li, “The Repre­sen­ta­tion of History in The Peach Blossom Fan,” 430. 70 Harrison, “Martyrs and Militarism in Republican China,” 41–70. 71 Chang and Saussy, eds., ­Women Writers of Traditional China, 634. 72 Written when Lin Zhao had reached Qiu Jin’s age of death, this poem is accompanied by an autobiographical preface and takes on the classical lulu 轆轤 form,

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with five stanzas of eight lines each and with Qiu Jin’s leitmotif recurring in each stanza. The poem is included in Appendix II of Lin Zhao’s “Zhi Renmin ribao bianjibu.” 73 Wasserstrom, Student Protests in Twentieth-­Century China, 110–17. 74 Hung, “The Cult of the Red Martyr,” 282, 302. 75 Xu Juemin, ed., Lin Zhao, 51; Zhao Rui, Jitan shang de shengnü, 91. 76 This translation comes from Pan, Out of Mao’s Shadow, 65–66. The Chinese original, in “Zhi Renmin ribao bianjibu,” 27, reads “怎麼不是血呢？！陰險地利用着我們的天 真、幼稚、正直，利用着我們善良單純的心地與熱烈激昂的氣質，予以煽惑，加以驅 使。而當我們比較成長了一些，開始警覺到現實的荒謬殘酷，開始要求着我們應有的 民主權利時，就遭到空前未有的慘毒無已的迫害、折磨與鎮壓！怎麼不是血呢？我 們​的青春、愛情、友誼、學業、事業、抱負、理想、幸福、自由 . . . 我們之生活的一 切，爲人的一切幾乎被摧殘殆盡地葬送在這個污穢、罪惡而更僞善的極權制度恐怖統 治之下！怎麼不是血呢？！這個玷污了祖國曆史與人類文明的罪惡政權可謂完全是以 鮮血所建立、所鞏固、所維持下來的.”

7 7 Mao, “China is Poor and Blank,” 252. 78 Buck-­Morss, “Aesthetics and Anaesthetics,” 37. 79 Lin Zhao, quoting her own 1961 poem in “Zhi Renmin ribao bianjibu,” 31. Chinese original: “當復仇的大地血海潮起 / 逐食的鴉羣呵何枝可棲？！/ . . . ​想到一個問題我 每打冷噤：/ 天哪！誰知道你們將來怎麼死？ . . .” 80 Lin Zhao, “Zhi Renmin ribao bianjibu,” 29. Chinese original: “我們反對什麼那是很 清楚的，可是我們到底要建立什麼呢？要把自由的概念化爲藍圖而具體地按着它去建 設生活，可不是一件簡單輕易的事情，特別是要在這樣一個廣大分散痼疾深沉的國家 裏來建設它，就更其複雜艱鉅！誠然我們不惜犧牲，甚至不避流血，可是像這樣一種 生活到底能不能以血洗的辦法使它在血泊之中建立起來呢？中國人的血歷來已經不是 流得太少而是太多，面臨着二十世紀六十年代的世界風雲局面，即使在中國這麼一片 深厚的中世紀遺址之上，政治鬥爭是不是也有可能以較爲文明的形式去進行而不必定 要訴諸流血呢？”

81 Conway, ed., The Sacred Anthology, 150. 82 Salisbury, The Blood of Martyrs, 136. 83 Xu Juemin, ed., Lin Zhao, 15. 8 4 Lin Zhao, Xinling de zhange, 1. Chinese original: “一個兵士扼守在他的陣地上，隸屬於世 界自由人類反共抗暴統一陣線的一個年輕兵士。人們，一切正直善良的懷有正義良知 的人們，還記得我的呼籲書嗎？ . . . ​幾年以前我已經以自己的鮮血向他們作了宣告： 監獄是我的反抗陣地！活在這個萬惡極權制度之下，真正的反抗者幾乎只有這樣一個 陣地！ . . . ​當然，監獄當作陣地還是外在的，真正內在的陣地那是反抗者戰鬥不屈的 心靈！有了這樣一個陣地，戰鬥者才能確保有堅強的毅力和決死的意志去面對敵人！”

8 5 Peters, “Witnessing,” 31. 86 See Lin Zhao’s letters to her ­mother on October 4 and 10, 1967, in the notebook Xueshu jiaxin. 87 See entry dated February 10, 1967, in Lin Zhao, Beiwanglu, 15–16. 88 Lian, Blood Letters, 209. 89 Wu, “Speaking Bitterness”; Wu, “Recalling Bitterness”; Sun, Social Suffering and Po­liti­cal Confession.

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90 See Lin Zhao’s letter to her ­mother dated October 29, 1967, in the notebook Xueshu jiaxin. Chinese original: “有些衣裳已經夠作有朝一日回憶對比的控訴材料了! 雖然在 這裏面我還算是身上較光鮮的一類。莫說裏面，有時眺望街路，看看來往行人竟沒個 衣着像樣的！上海如此，他處可想。”

91 Lin Zhao, letter to Xu Xianmin on November 2, 1967, in the notebook Xueshu jiaxin. 92 Lin Zhao, “Fuqin de xue,” 38. Chinese original: “只有在想到你們、想到我是在向你 們傾訴的時候，我胸中這顆創鉅痛深的麻木的心靈才感覺到一點人性的溫暖！誠然你 們目前暫時還什麼都不曾讀到，但那並不關乎緊要；反正我是以自己自由的心靈在向 這個星球上遼闊空間裏生存着、搏動着、活躍着的衆多的自由心靈傾訴！ 而到了公 義伸張的來日當你們終於讀到這些瀝血和淚寫下的披露心靈的篇章時，我想你們，一 切正直善良的懷有正義良知的人們應該能夠而且會得充分理解以至同情我個人的悲哀 與愴痛 !”

93 Lin Zhao, “Yige shibing zai zhendi shang,” 3. According to Lian Xi’s speculation, Newman was “prob­ably one of some twenty thousand Eu­ro­pean Jews who, in the 1930s–1940s, fled the Nazis and found safe haven in the International Settlement in Shanghai.” See Lian, Blood Letters, 124. 94 Assmann, “History, Memory, and the Genre of Testimony,” 269. 95 Lin Zhao, “Fuqin de xue,” 21. Chinese original: “我父親拒絕向他們 ‘認罪’ 就意味 着某個人格獨立人性清醒的個人拒絕向他們屈服受他們奴役！ . . . ​而極權主義分子 們則有了聊當快意的阿Q 的精神勝利 : 這個人拒絕向我們屈服，可是我們糟蹋過他 了！” 96 Lin Zhao, “Fuqin de xue,” 21. Chinese original: “謝謝上帝！十八年來以迄於今，遍 地腥羶的中國大陸上總算還有一些拒絕向共產黨人 ‘認罪’ 屈服的所謂 ‘頑固分子’勉 力維持着我輩黃帝子孫之不絕如縷的民族正氣！” 97 Lin Zhao, “Fuqin de xue,” 24. Chinese original: “在極權統治下我們這些被侮辱者， 我們這些 ‘異民’—­ 名稱是我杜撰的，我想不出在現成的詞彙中有哪一個比較恰當的名 詞可以用來概括地稱呼我們這樣一些被共產匪幫極權暴政顯於所謂之 ‘政治否定’ 地位 上的人！這裏面包括像我父親那樣的 ‘歷史反革命’、地主、富農以及歷次 ‘運動’ 中受 到打擊者等等。我這樣的 ‘右派分子’ 和 ‘現行反革命’ 當然更不必說！而除了這樣一些 人本身之外，我們的直系親屬，配偶以至近親，友人們竟也程度不等地屬於我所說的

‘異民’ 即政治否定的不可靠者 ‘之列’！” 98 Lin Zhao, “Fuqin de xue,” 24. Chinese original: “任何人都可以對我們肆意禍加侮辱 以作他們忠於共產暴政的一種 ‘積極表現’ ！我們這些 ‘異民’ 沒有任何人權可言！更談 不到什麼法權了！如我的一句憤語所說：我們這裏的 ‘反革命’是放在大街上給衆人糟 踐的！” 99 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 47. 100 Agamben, Homo Sacer, 12. 101 Lin Zhao, “Fuqin de xue,” 21. Chinese original: “這是中國共產黨人普遍使用於一切 人的慣技之一種：只有把別人放到了罪人的地位上去他們才可以恬不知恥地自充聖 人！” 102 Lin Zhao, “Fuqin de xue,” 26. Chinese original: “可是這個該死的制度！它除了無 所不至地虐待、歧視、侮辱迫害着這些 ‘異民’，更還無所不至地使用着它之骯髒不 義的行政力量強迫一切處於高壓統治之下的人都來參與它所提倡和推行的對於我們

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這些 ‘異民’的虐待歧視侮辱迫害！‘劃清界線’！既以表示它之統治是如何地強大，並 以對我們造成心理威脅使我們感到孤立無助：哎呀！一切人都是站在共產黨一邊的 哪！看起來我們這些被了 ‘政治否定 ’的 ‘異民’ 可真是上天無路入地無門！” 103 Lin Zhao, “Fuqin de xue,” 24. Chinese original: “作爲農民之純出自發的樸素的報復 行動那是另一回事，至少還是可以理解的！但當這樣一種東西成爲了 ‘毛澤東思想’ 的組成部分並且拿來對於一切不向他們屈服以及他們需要加予打擊的人普遍使用起 來以後 ! . . . ​血 ! 血 ! 血 ! 在我已哽塞住了滿腔的灼烈的悲憤裏我只能把全部問題概 括爲這麼一個字了：血！”

104 Lin Zhao, “Fuqin de xue,” 24. Chinese original: “許多中國同胞像我的父親一樣毅然 結束了自己的肉體生命！不用說這些人多半是知識分子而且(當然！) 都是那些比較 具有立身操守持身品德的知識分子！” 105 Confucius. The Book of Rites. Translated by J. Legge. Beijing and Washington: Intercultural Press 2013. Location 6999 of Kindle Edition. 106 Lin Zhao, “Fuqin de xue,” 28. Chinese original: “正是爲了維護生命的美好和尊嚴、 自由和純潔！” 107 Lin Zhao’s letter to her ­mother on December 12, 1967, in the notebook Xueshu jiaxin. Chinese original: “海水乾了也要活，石頭爛了也要活。” 108 Xu Xianmin’s letter to Lin Zhao dated December 26, 1967, copied by Lin Zhao into the notebook Xueshu jiaxin. Chinese original: “林昭：你的信，我全收到。我 一直沒有勇氣給你回信，我沒有勇氣前來接見你。因爲你的行動語言太激動，太荒 唐，也太胡鬧了。由於你對我毫無信任，到達了沒有一點兒感情一點兒理解的地 步。我只得忍住了家庭慘變骨肉間的劇痛而得撒手人天。這是作爲一個母親所無法 忍受的劇痛，那劇痛分分秒秒都在腐燭我的精神，心靈和體力。這劇痛，像你今天 這樣一味胡鬧下去的女兒，是絕不會有所理解有所體會的。每讀來信，日夜不安久 之，每來接見你，我帶回來的是一種無休無止的失望和痛苦，要許多天神思恍惚， 也有不少次臥床不起，曾經有一次昏倒在歸途中經路人送歸。你弟妹因不理解我， 不能和你斷然隔絕。友人又屢屢向我進諫，要我從思想上擺脫你，不然我定然會爲 你這個小冤家憂鬱而終。”

109 See Lin Zhao’s letter to her ­mother on January 14, 1968, in the notebook Xueshu jiaxin, 125–37. This letter is reproduced at http://­beijingspring​.­com​/­bj2​/­2010​/­550​ /­201441214958​.­htm (accessed May 9, 2019). Chinese original: “前一晌跟他們胡嚷 之際儘管嬉笑怒罵而中夜輾轉不免蒼涼徹骨，那天穿上你給我這件灰絨線衫時心中 一陣莫名的奇異的感觸，一時不禁熱淚如傾 . . . ​親愛的媽媽，你記得卓婭麼？抗戰 後期這個聖女貞德式的蘇聯青年女戰士的事蹟經茅盾他們翻譯介紹過來以後似乎在 大後方也很風傳過一時而激勵着人們之愛國熱情的呢！四九年以後卓婭母親所寫關 於一雙兒女的回憶錄‘卓雅與舒拉的故事’ 譯成中文了，她本人也曾應邀來到中國訪 問。我見到她是—­大約1955 年或56 年，在北大，她向我們全體同學作了一次簡短的 講話 . . . ​我們吻她，向她獻花束和紀念品，請她簽字，和她握手。而當最後汽車將 要啓動之時，她坐在座位上帶着微笑向我們微微點頭並且舉手示意。 . . . ​她的微笑 雖然含着母性的愛意，可是那麼深沉地寂寞，充分流露了她內心深處的蒼涼！我每 每帶着慘然之感會想起她—­卓婭母親那最後一瞥的寂寞的母性的微笑並且不勝感慨 地想到：作爲一個母親，恐怕與其寧願自己兒女成爲死去的英雄，還只是更願兒女 成爲活着的庸人或說常人！異國青年的熱情雖然真誠, 於她何補？！她內心的空虛難 道是可以從我們的花束和書信擁抱中得到任何一點補償的麼？”

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110 Lin Zhao’s letter to her ­mother on January 14, 1968, 129. Chinese original: “總算還好，我的媽媽，我手上沒有血！土改啦什麼啦那些時候沒有一個人是由 於我之工作而流血的！這我經得起審查！可是，手上沒有血身上還不多少濺了血 嗎？！” 111 Lin Zhao’s letter to her ­mother on January 14, 1968, 137. Chinese original: “見不見 的你弄些東西齋齋我！我要吃呀，媽媽！給我燉一鍋牛肉，煨一鍋羊肉，煮一隻鹹 豬頭，再熬一二瓶豬油，燒一副蹄子，烤一隻雞或鴨子，沒錢你借債去。 . . . ​/ 魚也 別少了我的，你給我多蒸上些鹹帶魚、鮮鯧魚，鱖魚要整條的，鯽魚串湯，青魚白 蒸—­—­總要白蒸，不要煎煮。再弄點鯗魚下飯。 . . . ​糧票不夠你們化緣去 . . . ​/ 黃 鱔不要，要鰻鯉和甲魚。統統白蒸清燉，連鍋子拿來鍋子還你。—­—­等等，放在汽 車上裝得來好了。齋齋我，第一要緊是豬頭三牲，曉得吧媽媽？豬尾巴—­—­豬頭！ 豬尾巴？—­—­豬頭！豬尾巴！—­豬頭！豬頭！豬頭！ . . . ​/ 嘿！寫完了自己看看一 笑！—­塵世幾逢開口笑？山花須插滿頭歸！還有哩：舉世皆從忙裏老，誰人肯向死 前休！ 致以女兒的愛戀，我的媽媽！ ” 1 12 Mu Qing 穆青, Guo Chaoren 郭超人, and Lu Fuwei 陆拂为, “Lishi de shenpan” 历史的审判 (The Verdict of History), Renmin ribao, January 27, 1981.

1 13 Xu Juemin, ed., Lin Zhao, 265–66. 114 Zhang Min, “Interview with Peng Lingfan,” 2004. 115 Zhang Min, “Interview with Peng Lingfan,” 2004; Chen Weisi, “Lin Zhao zhi si” (The Death of Lin Zhao), in Xu Juemin, ed., Lin Zhao, 2. 116 Peng, “Wo de jiejie Lin Zhao,” 47–48. Also see Peng, “Lin Zhao anjuan de lailong qumai.” 117 Barthes, Camera Lucida, 96. 118 In 2011, a group of documentary filmmakers at the Nanjing In­de­pen­dent Film Festival issued a manifesto declaring cinema to be a form of “shamanism,” whereby filmmakers “are conduits through which ­others find voice.” For an account of this manifesto, see Ying Qian, “Just Images.” Although Hu Jie did not sign the manifesto, he has implicated himself as a cinematic shaman by entitling his documentary In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul. 119 Felman, “Film as Witness,” 100. 120 Baron, The Archive Effect, 23, 36. 121 Prior to this sequence, the film follows Lin Zhao’s former fiancé Gan Cui, by 2000 an old man, to revisit the church to which Lin Zhao took him on Sundays in 1958, so the Christian ­music begins ­there and carries over in a sound bridge to the archival footage montage. 122 For a detailed account on the making of the film, see Pan, Out of Mao’s Shadow, 21–80. 123 For more lyr­ics, see http://­anzhan​.­forums​-­free​.­com​/­topic​-­t348.html (accessed May 9, 2019). 124 The outpouring of articles on the “Lu Xuesong Incident” are collected in Yan, Zhongguo shi gaomi, 235–307. 125 Wyschogrod, Saints and Postmodernism, 28–29. 126 See blogpost by Weijun Chenyin 為君沉吟, “Xue gei ­women de naxie jiyi” 血給我 們的那些記憶 (Memories Given to Us by Blood), accessed June 26, 2019, http://­ blog​.­sina​.­com​.­cn​/­s​/­blog​_­4b0d38e4010006c1​.­html.

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127 Cai Yongmei 蔡咏梅, “Ba yingxiong Lin Zhao huangei ­women de minzu” 把英 雄林昭還給我們的民族 (Give the Heroine Lin Zhao Back to Our Race), accessed May 7, 2019, http://­www​.­epochtimes​.­com​/­gb​/­4 ​/­7​/­8​/­n590205​.­htm. 128 Barmé, In the Red, 316–17. 129 For more explorations on the tradition of the cult of the ­woman martyr in pre-­ modern China, see Ropp, Zamperini, and Zurndorfer, eds., Passionate ­Women. 130 Lu Xun, “Medicine.” 131 Zhang Yihe 章詒和, “Yueshi qiqu yuetanping: Huiyi fuqin Zhang Bojun” 越是崎嶇越坦平—回憶我的父親章伯鈞 (Memories of My ­Father Zhang Bojun), accessed May  7, 2019, http: //­mjlsh​.­usc​.­cuhk​.­edu​.­hk​/­book​.­aspx? cid=6&tid=157&pid=2759. 132 For examples, see http://­www​.­voachinese​.­com​/­content​/­activists​-­remember​ -­anniversity​-­of​-­linzhao​-­20140425​/­1901238​.­htm; http://­hk​.­apple​.­nextmedia​.­com​ /­international​/­first​/­20140430​/­18704860; http://­www​.­boxun​.­com​/­news​/­gb​/­china​ /­2013​/­10​/­201310291934​.­shtml#​.­VJToS50CE. All accessed May 9, 2019. 133 Andén-­Papadopoulos, “Citizen Camera-­Witnessing.” 134 This petition to the United Nations is included in Lin Zhao, Xinling de zhange, Appendix III. Also reproduced at: http://­beijingspring​.­com​/­bj2​/­2010​/­550​ /­201444195357​.­htm (accessed May 9, 2019). Chinese original: “公布林昭的全部案件 包括我本人在生之際所寫下的—­切！” Also see Zhang, Beida 1957, 257–58. 135 I made two research trips to the Hoover Institution Archives and spent several weeks reading and copying the Lin Zhao Papers. Some lines in the digital documents appeared in a brown color that I took to be blood. 136 Williams, Memorial Museums, 8. 137 Connerton, How Socie­ties Remember. Chapter 2: Surveillance Files

1 Zhang Yihe, “Shui ba Nie Gannu song jin le jianyu?”; Zhang Yihe draws on police file excerpts published by Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an.” 2 Many articles written in response to ­these questions ­were collected in a thick anthology of articles published in Hong Kong two months ­later: Yan, Zhongguo shi gaomi. 3 Ba Jin, “ ‘Wenge’ bowuguan” (A Cultural Revolution Museum), in Suixiang lu, 601–4. 4 Lu, Rhe­toric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, 140–42; Thurston, “Victims of China’s Cultural Revolution.” 5 Schoenhals, Spying for the ­People. 6 I am borrowing the term graphomania from Svetlana Boym, who defines it in the context of Rus­sian lit­er­a­ture as a “literary disease, an uncontrollable obsession to write and to be a writer.” But I use it differently ­here to refer to the compulsory writing of confessions and denunciations in Mao’s China. However, similar to the Slavic context, graphomania in China also “poses the prob­lem of the bound­aries of lit­er­a­ture, of the relationship between writing and the making of the self.” See Boym, Common Places, 168–72. 290

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7 Derrida, Archive Fever, 11. 8 Nora, “Between Memory and History,” 13. 9 Assmann, Cultural Memory and Western Civilization, 130–32. 10 Mbembe, “The Power of the Archive and Its Limits,” 19, 23. 11 Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-­Four, 37. 12 Ketelaar, “Archival ­Temples, Archival Prisons,” 226, 229. 13 Weld, Paper Cadavers, 6. 14 For an extensive study of transitional justice ­after the Cultural Revolution, see Cook, The Cultural Revolution on Trial; Xu, “Memory and Reconciliation in Post-­Mao China.” 15 Practicing such “garbology,” scholars contributing to the edited volume M ­ aoism at the Grassroots excavated diverse local and personal experiences of the Mao era across social strata, ethnicities, and regions. Michael Schoenhals’s Spying for the People has even unveiled the surveillance operations of the Central Ministry of Public Security, the functional equivalent of the Soviet KGB, and its branch offices from 1949 to 1967, with a focus on the bureaucratic process of recruiting and training covert informers from all levels of society to ferret out the “counterrevolutionaries.” 16 Chen Sihe, “­Women de chouti,” 65–92. 17 I borrow the phrase from Jiang Nanxiang 蔣南翔 (1913–1988), a Communist activist at Tsing­hua University, who famously proclaimed in 1935 that “for all of its vastness, North China can no longer accommodate a quiet desk” (華北之大，竟容不下 一張安靜的書桌). See Jiang, Jiang Nanxiang Wenji 蔣南翔文集 (Selected Works of Jiang Nanxiang) (Beijing: Qinghua daxue chubanshe, 1998), 1213. 18 Chen Sihe, “­Women de chouti,” 75. 19 I borrow this phrase from a museum in Romania, the former site of Sighet prison that incarcerated po­liti­cal prisoners ­under communism. 20 Since graphomania is often generated by and structured by po­liti­cal campaigns, in Chinese one might also refer to the writing produced as one’s “campaign files” (運 動檔案). 21 For his theories of interpretation, phi­los­o­pher Paul Ricoeur coined the concepts of “hermeneutics of faith” or “hermeneutics of the sacred,” in opposition to a “hermeneutics of suspicion,” concerned not with “recovering the object, but rather with tearing away masks.” See Holub, “Hermeneutics,” 282. 22 This observation is based on my interviews with about twenty former sent-­down youth in Shanghai, November, 2016. 23 Zhang Yihe, Wangshi bing buru yan, 1. 24 Foucault, “The Historical a Priori and the Archive,” 28–29. 25 Chen Sihe, “­Women de chouti,” 68–69. 26 For a concise overview of Nie’s biography and oeuvre in En­glish, see Tian, “Muffled Dialect Spoken by Green Fruit.” 27 Shaw, Social Control in China, 72–83. 28 Fu, Autocratic Tradition and Chinese Politics, 225. 29 For an overview of the archival resources at the disposal of the Chinese public security organs, see Schoenhals, Spying for the ­People, 121–27.

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3 0 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 65. 31 Wallen, “Narrative Tensions” 270. 32 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 5. 33 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 15. 34 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 15. 35 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 16. 36 Shentalinsky, The kgb’s Literary Archive. 37 Zhang Yihe, “Shui ba Nie Gannu song jin le jianyu?” 38 Zhang Yihe, Wangshi bing buru yan, 245. 39 Derrida, Of Grammatology, 92. 40 Foucault, “Life of Infamous Men,” 84. 41 Foucault, “Life of Infamous Men,” 78. 42 Gallagher and Greenblatt, Practicing New Historicism, 10. 43 Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 163. 44 Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu quanji, vol. 10, 39. 45 Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu quanji, vol. 10, 58. 46 Goldman, “The Party and the Intellectuals,” 243. 47 For an overview of the experiences of Rightists such as Nie Gannu in Manchuria, see Wang Ning, “Border Banishment.” 48 Chen, “Multiplicity in Uniformity.” 49 Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 8. 50 Quoted in Vatulescu, Police Aesthetics, 65. 51 Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 430. 52 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 18. 53 Huang, Literati and Self-­Re/presentation, 17–18. See also the commentaries in Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 489. 54 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 12. 55 Shi Zecun’s commentary in Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 446–49. 56 Wang Xijian’s commentary in Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 487–89. 57 Tian, “Muffled Dialect Spoken by Green Fruit,” 26. 58 Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 25–26. 59 Kwong, “The Rural World of Chinese ‘Farmstead Poetry’,” 57–84. 60 In 1978, Nie collected ­these poems into a mimeographed book entitled Zenda cao 赠答草 (Gift Poems), collected in Nie Gannu shi quanbian. 61 Tian, “Muffled Dialect Spoken by Green Fruit,” 15–16. 62 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 24. 63 Boym, The ­Future of Nostalgia, 61–62. 64 Nie noted the “high maintenance” of this “feudal culture”: “Besides leisure you also need a group of friends, a collection of books, calligraphy, and paintings, ­because if you ­haven’t read and seen enough, you also cannot write well. So feudal culture is an organic ­whole, but since it is useless and contingent on so many conditions, it is doomed to decline.” See Yu Zhen, “Gannu qijie, yushi changcun.” 65 Brockmann, Lit­er­a­ture and German Reunification, 86–88. 66 Hartman, “Poetry and Politics in 1079,” 35.

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7 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 77. 6 68 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 77. 69 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 78. 70 Gu, “Literary Openness,” 126. 71 Zhang, Allegoresis, 61. 72 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 20. 73 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 13. The golden tattoo is the mark of the convict, but it is also what the heroes bear on their ­faces in The ­Water Margin. Nie’s poem may be read as “counterrevolutionary” ­because the power that brands the hero’s face can be interpreted as the ccp. “White Tiger Hall” is the site of a trap set up by a hero’s enemies, so the line could be interpreted as the party setting up a trap for intellectuals such as Nie Gannu. 74 ­Here Nie Gannu refers to ­those who, since the days of the First Emperor who was famous for burning books and burying Confucian scholars, wrote books only for themselves with ­little expectation of being understood. 75 The first three lines allude to Mencius, Book IV, Part B: “When all trace of the sage emperors had vanished, the Songs ­were no longer gathered from the ­people. ­After they ­stopped gathering the Songs, the Spring and Autumn was written.” Mencius, trans. David Hinton (Washington DC: Counterpoint, 1998), 147. 76 Dou and niu are names of asterisms. The poem can be found in Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 24. 77 The remainder of the line echoes Su Shi’s famous poem “Hezi you mianchi huaijiu” (和子由澠池懷舊) (Brooding on Former Experiences at Mianchi), which opens with the line: “Do you know what it’s like?—­human life everywhere?” (人生 到處知何似). This is followed by the meta­phor of the traces left in the snow by a wild goose and the image of erased writing and lost poetry. See Owen, Traditional Chinese Poetry and Poetics, 131. 78 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 11. 79 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu de liangye qiyi shigao.” Mei Zhi 梅志, “Nie Gannu zeng Hu Feng de shi” 聶紺弩贈胡風的詩 (Nie Gannu’s Poems for Hu Feng), in Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 574–75. 80 Zhang Guangcai is a character in the Ming-­dynasty play Pipa ji 琵琶記 (Lute)— an old neighbor who helps the female protagonist Zhao Wuniang look for her husband in the capital. Their dialogue before her departure is a famous episode in Peking opera. 81 Yekelchyk, “Archiving Heteroglossia,” 460. 82 Vatulescu, “Arresting Biographies,” 250. 83 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 13. 84 Li Shiqiang, “Jiadai shigao chuyu,” 597–99. 85 Li Shiqiang, “Jiadai shigao chuyu,” 597–99. 86 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 11. 87 Pleșu, “Intellectual Life ­under Dictatorship,” 63. 88 Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu zixu, 490–99. 89 Pleșu, “Intellectual Life ­under Dictatorship,” 63–64.

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0 Pleșu, “Intellectual Life ­under Dictatorship,” 63. 9 91 Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu zixu, 499. 92 The criticism refers to the fact that Wu Meicun, instead of remaining a Ming loyalist, held office for almost two years ­under the Qing. See Nie Gannu’s letter to Shu Wu on August 15, 1984, in Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 422–23. 9 3 Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 164–65. 94 Nie Gannu, “Letter to Shu Wu,” August 15, 1984, in Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 422–23. 95 Elai was an evil minister at the court of the tyrant Zhou in the Shang dynasty. 96 See Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 219. The original poem written for Hu Feng in 1966 can be found in Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 267. Nie also repeated the same line for himself in a poem entitled “Self-­mockery” (自嘲), in Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 194. 97 Nie Gannu, Nie Gannu shi quanbian, 418–19. 98 Brown and Hoskins, “Terrorism in the New Memory Ecol­ogy”; Hoskins, “7/7 and Connective Memory.” 99 Hand, “Per­sis­tent Traces, Potential Memories,” 270. 100 Harrist, review of The Art of Calligraphy in Modern China; Song, ed., Biographical Dictionary of the ­People’s Republic of China, 141. 101 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 79. 102 Huang Miaozi 黃苗子, ”Zuihou de wenhua guizu” 最後的文化貴族 (The Last Cultural Aristocrats), Nanfang dushibao 南方都市報 (Southern Metropolis Daily), January 2008. 103 Yan Ruoke, ed., Zhongguo shi gaomi, 147–52. 104 Yu Zhen, “Mo guai wuren fan dang’an.” 105 Yu Zhen, “Nie Gannu xingshi dang’an,” 81. 106 Yan Ruoke, ed., Zhongguo shi gaomi, 122, 128. 107 Li and Shao, “Huang Miaozi liangshou yishi shuxie ‘gaomi’ shijian xinjing.” 108 Li and Shao, “Huang Miaozi liangshou yishi shuxie ‘gaomi’ shijian xinjing.” 109 Yan Ruoke, ed., Zhongguo shi gaomi, 140–43. 110 Zhang Yihe, “Wo mei cuo” 我沒錯 (I’m not wrong), accessed March 7, 2020, https://­www​.­boxun​.­com​/­news​/­gb​/­pubvp​/­2009​/­04​/­200904232224​.­shtml. 111 Yan Ruoke, ed., Zhongguo shi gaomi, 131–33. 112 Yan Ruoke, ed., Zhongguo shi gaomi, 180–81. 113 Yan Ruoke, ed., Zhongguo shi gaomi, 189. 114 For more on official approaches to coming to terms with the Cultural Revolution, see Weigelin-­Schwiedrzik, “In Search of a Master Narrative”; Weigelin-­Schwiedrzik and Cui, “Whodunnit?” 115 See contributions to Yu Kaiwei, ed., Chanhui haishi bu chanhui. 116 Barmé, “Jiu” and “Yang Xianyi.” 117 See Yan Ruoke, ed., Zhongguo shi gaomi, parts 3 and 4. 118 Many Chinese reviews of Das Leben der anderen relate it to the Mao era as well as to con­temporary China, see viewer reviews at: https://movie.douban​.­com​ /­subject/1900841/.

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119 Koehler, Stasi, 8. 120 Gieseke, “Die Stasi und ihr IM,” 102. 121 Havel, The Power of the Powerless, 37. 122 Foucault, “Life of Infamous Men,” 85. 123 Foucault, “Life of Infamous Men,” 84–85. 124 Foucault, “Life of Infamous Men,” 86, 87. 125 Mühlhahn, Criminal Justice in China, chap. 4. 126 Atwood, “Am I a Bad Feminist?” 127 Lin Zhao, “Fuqin de xue” (­Father’s Blood), 21. 128 Kwok Sing Li, comp., Glossary of Po­liti­cal Terms, 393. 129 One is reminded of Hannah Arendt’s 1945 comment that the Nazis’ policies “destroyed the neutral zone in which the daily life of ­human beings is ordinarily lived,” thereby making “the existence of each individual in Germany depend ­either upon committing crimes or on complicity in crimes.” See Arendt, “Or­ga­ nized Guilt and University Responsibility,” 148–49. 130 Barmé, “Jiu” and “Yang Xianyi.” Chapter 3: Utopian Photo­graphs

1 Yu Chengjian 于澄建, “Huanyue zai zaodao weixinshang” 歡悅在早稻衛星上 (Rejoicing on an Early Rice Sputnik), Renmin ribao 人民日報 (­People’s Daily), August 15, 1958. The same image also appeared inside the front covers of the September 1958 issues of both Xinwen sheying 新聞攝影 (News Photography) and Dazhong sheying 大眾攝影 (Mass Photography). 2 “Macheng jianguo yishe chuxian tianxia diyitian” 麻城建國一社出現天下第一田 (Macheng’s Jianguo Commune Produces the World’s Top Rice Paddy), Renmin ribao, August 13, 1958. 3 I spoke to vari­ous Chinese students in their teens and twenties who recognized this photo­graph from their high school history textbooks. The photo also made an appearance in the 1987 tele­vi­sion documentary River Elegy (河殤) and remains a frequently occurring image when one searches for “­Great Leap” in Chinese on the internet. 4 Adam Jones, “Misrepresenting a Famine Image,” October 7, 2010, accessed March 8, 2020, http://­jonestream​.­blogspot​.­com​/­2010​/­10​/­did​-­dikotter​-­misrepresent​ -­famine​-­image​.­html. 5 Issac Stone Fish, “Greeting Misery with Vio­lence,” Newsweek, September 26, 2010, accessed March 8, 2020, http://­www​.­newsweek​.­com​/­maos​-­great​-­famine​-­72301. 6 See, for example, this NTDTV introduction to Dikötter’s book, accessed March 8, 2020, https://­www​.­dailymotion​.­com​/­video​/­xul1fm. 7 See, for example, the posting “Frank Dikötter, The ­Great Propagandist,” accessed March 8, 2020, http://­bbs​.­chinadaily​.­com​.­cn​/­thread​-­679829–1​-­1​.­html. 8 Kaplan, American Exposures, 55–80. 9 Williams, Memorial Museums, 51–75. 10 “Cannibal China, Starved by Mao, Ate Earth, Robbed Graves: Books,” Bloomberg, https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.bloomberg.com/news/ articles/2010-08-29/cannibal-chinese-starved-by-mao-ate-earth-bartered-sexN O T E S T O C hapter 3  2 9 5

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for-food-books__;!!OToaGQ!_2iwn1UD-VvZxTLhdg-mlu8VDYeM1V5lGYb​ Vh7A_9nVMepoRUF_Xko9yuxxJfUWIEoHMSBo$, accessed August 29, 2010. 11 Sontag, On Photography, 170. 12 Burke, Eyewitnessing, 14, 31. 13 Zelizer, Remembering to Forget, 10–11. Also see Tagg’s The Disciplinary Frame for a cultural history of photographic truths. 14 Deborah Poole defines “visual economy” as the consideration of “visual images as part of a comprehensive organ­ization of ­people, ideas, and objects,” an organi­ zation that “has as much to do with social relationships, in­equality, and power as with shared meanings and community.” See Poole, Vision, Race, and Modernity, 8. 15 Sontag, On Photography, 171. 16 For art during the ­Great Leap Forward, see Andrews, Paint­ers and Politics in the ­People’s Republic of China, chap. 5. For lit­er­a­ture, see King, Milestones on a Golden Road, chaps. 3–4. For cinema, see Johnson, “Cinema and Propaganda during the ­Great Leap Forward” and Qian, “When Taylorism Met Revolutionary Romanticism.” Jin Yongquan’s Hongqi zhaoxiangguan provides an illuminating account of this period’s photojournalism through case studies, though, prob­ably for reasons of censorship, it stops short of discussing the ensuing famine. 17 Dikötter, Mao’s ­Great Famine; Yang, Tombstone; Manning and Wemheuer, Eating Bitterness; Kung and Chen, “The Tragedy of the Nomenklatura.” 18 Thaxton, Catastrophe and Contention in Rural China, 143. 19 Zheng Jingkang 鄭景康, “Muzhu sheying sishinian de bianqian” 目矚攝影四十年的 變遷 (Witnessing Photography’s Transformation over Forty Years), Dazhong sheying (April 1959), 7. 20 Zheng Jingkang, “Muzhu sheying sishinian de bianqian,” Dazhong sheying (April 1959), 7. 21 Pang, The Art of Cloning, 57–61. 22 Wu Hung, A Story of Ruins, 121–45. 23 Gao, “Shooting Social Suffering,” 99–124. 24 Roberts, Photography and China, 92–94. 25 Tang, Visual Culture in Con­temporary China, 21. 26 Gu, “What’s in a Name?,” 120. 27 Wu Hung, A Story of Ruins, 141–43. 28 Wu Hung, A Story of Ruins, 141–43. 29 “Da yuejin sheying zhanlanhui” 大躍進攝影展覽會 (­Great Leap Forward Photography Exhibition), Dazhong sheying (July 1958), 4–5; “Dao sheng­huo zhong qu, xiang renmin qunzhong xuexi” 到生活中去，向人民群眾學習 (­Going to Life: Learning from the Masses), Dazhong sheying (March 1959), 17–18. 30 Leys, “Chinese Shadows.” 31 Sontag, On Photography, 175. 32 Tao Ke 陶克, “Dangshiren huanyuan zhenshi de Lei Feng: Shou tiaojian suo xian youxie zhaopian shi baipai” 當事人還原真實的雷鋒：受條件所限有些照片是擺拍 (Persons Involved Restore the Real Lei Feng: Some Photos ­Were Staged due to Historical Conditions), Xin­hua Net, March 5, 2014, accessed March 8, 2020, https://­ gongyi​.­ifeng​.­com​/­news​/­detail​_­2014​_­03​/­05​/­34441619​_­0. shtml.

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33 Yi Shui 亦水, “Mao Zedong tuijian huaju ‘Qianxian’ jiqi chansheng de yingxiang” 毛澤東推薦話劇《前線》及其產生的影響 (Mao Zedong Recommends the Play “The Front” and its Influence), accessed March 8, 2020, http://­cpc​.­people​.­com​.­cn​/­GB​ /­64162​/­64172​/­85037​/­85038​/­6079981​.­html. 34 Jin Yongquan, Hongqi zhaoxiangguan, 3–58; “Xinwen sheying de zhenshixing zuotanhui shilu” 新聞攝影的真實性座談會實錄 (Minutes of the Discussion on Truth in News Photography), Xinwen sheying (September 1958), 10–14; Tang Maolin 唐茂 林, “Zhe shi yizhang bu zhenshi de zhaopian” 這是一張不真實的照片 (This is Not a Truthful Photo), Xinwen sheying (June 1958), 10–11; Yuan Ruxun 袁汝遜, “Xinwen sheying shi buzhun zuzhi jiagong he baibu de” 新聞攝影是不准組織加工和擺佈的 (News Photography Cannot Tolerate Mise-­en-­scène and Manipulation), Xinwen sheying (December 1958), 37. 35 Writer Mao Dun 茅盾 (1896–1981) prob­ably played the most impor­tant role in “translating” the literary style of “naturalism” into the Chinese context in the 1920s. See Wang, Fictional Realism in Twentieth-­Century China, 70–73; Huters, “Ideologies of Realism in Modern China,” 147–73. 36 Quoted in Jin Yongquan, Hongqi zhaoxiangguan, 37–38. 37 Chen Yineng 陳一能, “Baibu bixu tingzhi” 擺佈必須停止 (Manipulation Must Stop), Xinwen sheying (December 1958), 35–36. 38 Xiao Ling 蕭陵, “Ye tan sheying suxie” 也談攝影速寫 (On Photographic Sketches), Xinwen sheying (March 1958), 23–26. 39 Liu Jiemei 劉介梅, “Cong sixiang shang wadiao zibenshuyi genzi” 從思想上挖掉 資本主義根子 (Digging Up the Cap­i­tal­ist Roots from the Mind), Renmin ribao, September 30, 1957, 3. 40 Du Xiuxian 杜修賢, “Dui xinwen tupian zhenshixing de yidian renshi” 對新聞 圖片真實性的一點認識 (Thoughts on the Truth of News Images), Xinwen sheying (August 1958), 5. 41 “Gongye sheying baodao huishang zuotan xinwen sheying zhenshixing jiyao” 工 業攝影報道會上座談新聞攝影真實性紀要 (Minutes of the Discussion of the Truth in News Photography at the Industrial Photography Conference), Xinwen sheying (December 1958), 31; also see Jin Yongquan, Hongqi zhaoxiangguan, 160n. 42 Jin Yongquan, Hongqi zhaoxiangguan, 46–49. 43 Jin Yongquan, Hongqi zhaoxiangguan, 51–54. 44 Jin Yongquan, Hongqi zhaoxiangguan, 210–23. 45 Wang Qin 汪欽, “Jiaqiang ­women de lichang duanlian” 加強我們的立場鍛鍊 (Strengthen and Exercise Our Position), Xinwen sheying (April 1958), 6–10. 46 Photojournalists at Sichuan’s Xin­hua News Agency (新華社四川分社攝影記者組), “Jianjue ting dang de hua, chedi fandiao zichan jieji de chun yishu guandian” 堅決 聽黨的話，徹底反掉資產階級的純藝術觀點 (Insist on Obeying the Party and Oppose Bourgeois Aesthetics), Xinwen sheying (April 1958), 21–23. 47 Hong Ke 洪克 et al., “Jia Huamin tongzhi de sheying yishu guandian shizhi shi shenme?” 賈化民同志的攝影藝術觀點實質是什麼 (What is the Essence of Comrade Jia Huamin’s Photographic Aesthetic Views?), Xinwen sheying (August 1958), 11–13; Chen Zhengqing 陳正青, “Dajia doulai pipan zichan jieji sheying yishu guandian”

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大家都來批判資產階級攝影藝術觀點 (Let Us All Criticize Bourgeois Photographic

Aesthetics), Xinwen sheying (September 1958), 31–33. 48 Wu Yin 吳茵, “Tupo gongshihua de fanli: Ping ‘Xin jiazhuang—yi dui fenkuang’ ” 突破公式化的範例：評“新嫁妝—­ 一對糞筐”(A Model for Breaking Down Formulas: On the “New Dowry—­A Pair of Dung-­Collection Baskets”), Xinwen sheying (March 1958), 30–31. 49 “Jia Huamin tongzhi de ziwo jiancha” 賈化民同志的自我檢查 (Self-­Criticism by Comrade Jia Huamin), Xinwen sheying (September 1958), 32–33. 50 In Dialectic of Enlightenment, Horkheimer and Adorno argue that culture is a crucial area of ideological domination and helps to maintain the cap­i­tal­ist status quo. In The Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord argues that the mass media, as a quin­tes­sen­tial manifestation of the spectacle, are anything but neutral, for they invest and sustain the power of the existing po­liti­cal and economic system. In Distinction, Pierre Bourdieu claims that aesthetic judgments are related to one’s class positions. 51 Chen Zhengqing, “Dajia doulai pipan zichan jieji sheying yishu guandian,” 31–33. 52 The cited articles all appeared in Xinwen sheying: Chen Changqian 陳蟬鳴, “Xinwen sheying shi jieji douzheng de gongju” 新聞攝影是階級鬥爭的工具 (News Photography is the Tool of Class Strug­g le) (January 1958), 8–10; Zhang Lei 張磊, “Xinwen sheying yu zhengzhi” 新聞攝影與政治 (News Photography and Politics) (January 1958), 10–12; “Chen Chanming tongzhi zhujiang: Pipang zichan jieji xinwen sheying guandian” 陳蟬鳴同志主講：批判資產階級新聞攝影觀點 (Lecture by Comrade Chen Chanming: Criticism of Bourgeois News Photography) (July 1958), 55. 53 Buck-­Morss, “The City as Dreamworld and Catastrophe,” 3. 54 Buck-­Morss, Dreamworld and Catastrophe, 207. 55 All of the following articles are from Dazhong sheying: Yang Putao 楊溥濤, “Laodong renmin zui you xingqu de shi laodong he shengchan” 勞動人民最有興趣的是勞 動和生產 (The Laboring ­People are Most Interested in ­Labor and Production) (June 1958), 26; “Duo ting gongnong qunzhong de husheng” 多聽工農群眾的呼聲 (Listen to the Voices of Workers and Peasants) (July 1958), 27–28; Yuan Ling 袁苓, “Dao sheng­huo zhong qu, xiang renmin qunzhong xuexi” 到生活中去，向人民群 眾學習 (­Going to Life, Learn from the ­People) (March 1959), 17–18; “Zai laodong zhanxian shang” 在勞動戰線上 (On the ­Labor Front) (August 1958), 23, 28. 56 Bourdieu, Distinction, 35–46. 57 Bourdieu, Photography, 34. 58 Hong Ke 洪克, “Renmin gongshe xinxian shi duo” 人民公社新鮮事多 (Novel Happenings at the ­People’s Commune), Dazhong sheying (December 1958), 7; Zeng Rui 曾銳, “Manhua shenru” 漫話深入 (Speaking of Deepening), Dazhong sheying (January 1959), 13. 59 “Quanguo qingnian shehuizhuyi jianshe jiji fenzi: Sheying jizhe Li Guangyang” 全國青年社會主義建設積極份子：攝影記者李光羊 (National Youth Socialist Construction Activist: Photojournalist Li Guangyang), Dazhong sheying (December 1958), 8.

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60 Shi Shaohua 石少華, “Rang renmin de sheying shiye biandi kaihua jieguo” 讓人民 的攝影事業遍地開花結果 (Let ­People’s Photography Blossom and Bear Fruit Everywhere), Dazhong sheying (July 1958), 4–5. 61 “Feiyue fazhanzhong de woguo sheying gongye” 飛躍發展中的我國攝影工業 (Our Photography Industry in a Flight of Development), Dazhong sheying (September 1958), 6–10. 62 “Zhaoxiangye yao wei laodong renmin fuwu: Zhuiji zhaoxiangye Tianjin huiyi” 照 相業要為勞動人民服務：追記照相業天津會議 (Studio Photography Must Serve the Laboring ­People: Report on the Tianjin Conference), Dazhong sheying (July 1958), 8–9. 63 Wu Yinxian 吳印咸, “Pipan zichan jieji sheying yishu guandian” 批判資產階級攝 影藝術觀點 (Critique of Bourgeois Views on Photographic Art), Dazhong sheying (August 1958), 7–9. 64 Gao Jinxuan 高金軒 and Lu Gengping 陸浭平, “Kan zhaoxiangguan chuanghu yougan” 看照相館櫥窗有感 (Thoughts on the Display Win­dow of a Photo Studio), Dazhong sheying (February 1959), 13. 65 Braester, “Photography at Tian­anmen,” 636. 66 Huang, “Locating ­Family Portraits,” 684. 67 Even with the exaggerated vows of the Great Leap Forward, the Shanghai Camera Factory only planned to produce 20,000 cameras in 1959, thus the overall numbers ­were no comparison to the wide availability of cameras during the reform era. See Dazhong sheying (September 1958), 6–7, 10, and St. Denny, Cameras of the ­People’s Republic of China, 20–21. 68 Chen Lian 陳廉, “Guochan zhaoxiangji mingnian yao bi jinnian zengchan babei” 國產 照相機明年要比今年增產八倍 (Domestic Camera Production to Increase Eightfold Next Year), Dazhong sheying (December 1958), 5; Chen Naiyi 陳乃鎰, “Wei guochan zhaoxiangji yundao nongcun huanhu” 為國產照相機運到農村歡呼 (Hailing the Arrival of Domestic Cameras in the Rural Areas), Dazhong sheying (January 1960), 17; Zhang Wen 張文, “Baojishi de qunzhong yeyu sheying huodong” 寶雞市的群眾業餘 攝影活動 (Amateur Photography in Baoji City), Dazhong sheying (December 1959), 4. 69 Kang Hua 康驊, “Kuoda xinwen sheying duiwu de hao banfa” 擴大新聞攝影隊伍 的好辦法 (A Good Way to Expand the Army of News Photog­raphers), Dazhong sheying (March 1959), 12–13; Commentator (本報評論員), “Reqing fudao qunzhong xue sheying” 熱情輔導群眾學攝影 (Enthusiastically Tutoring the Masses to Learn Photography), Dazhong sheying (December 1959), 3. 70 Liang Chang 梁昌, “Nongmin ye neng xuehui zhaoxiang” 農民也能學會照相 (Even Peasants Can Learn Photography), Dazhong sheying (December 1958), 18. 71 Shi Shaohua, “Rang renmin sheying shiye biandi kaihua jieguo,” 4–5. 72 “Zhongguo sheying xuehui di’erci lishihui kuoda huiyi pangting ji” 中國攝影學會 第二次理事會擴大會議旁聽記 (Notes on Listening to the Second Meeting of the China Photog­raphers Association), Dazhong sheying (December 1958), 3. 73 “Canjia bisai zhaopian luoxuan de yixie yuanyin” 參加比賽照片落選的一些原因 (Some Reasons for Not Being Chosen for the Competition), Dazhong sheying (October 1958), 7–8. 74 Wu Yinxian, “Pipan zichan jieji sheying yishu guandian,” 7–9.

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75 “Duzhe zuopin fenxi” 讀者作品分析 (Analy­sis of Readers’ Submissions), Dazhong sheying (November 1958), 23–24. 76 Li Qin 李沁, “Cong duzhe laigao zhong kandaode” 從讀者來稿中看到的 (Notes on Readers’ Submissions), Dazhong sheying (May 1960), 16–17; Jin Se 金瑟, “Zhaopianshang changjia nde maobing zhiyi” 照片上常見的毛病之一 (Frequently Seen Prob­lems in Amateur Photography), Dazhong sheying (February 1959), 20; “Sheying aihaozhe yuandi” 攝影愛好者園地 (Photography Enthusiasts), Dazhong sheying (November 1958), 20–22. 77 Yuan Yiping 袁毅平, “Gei chuxuezhe: Weishenme ren zhao? Zhao shenme?” 給初 學者：為什麼人照 ？ 照什麼 ？ (For Novices: Photographing Whom and What?), Dazhong sheying (February 1960), 40–41. 78 Hong Ke 洪克, “Zenyang paishe xianjin renwu” 怎樣拍攝先進人物 (How to Photo­ graph ­Labor Models), Dazhong sheying (January 1960), 40–41. 79 This insight is indebted to Lei Shuye, “Wutuobang shenhua yu dayuejin shiqi de xinwen sheying,” chaps. 1–2. 80 Fitzpatrick, “Becoming Cultured,” 217. 81 Buck-­Morss, “The City as Dreamworld and Catastrophe,” 19. 82 Buck-­Morss, “The City as Dreamworld and Catastrophe,” 19. 83 Dikötter, Mao’s ­Great Famine, 29–30; Shao Xiangxian 邵向賢, “Qunzhong xi’ai de liangben sheying zhuan: Jianping ‘Mao zhuxi zai renmin qunzhong zhong’ ” 群眾喜 愛的兩本攝影專集：簡評“毛主席在人民群眾中” (Two Photo Collections Beloved by the Masses: On Chairman Mao Among the Masses), Dazhong sheying (February 1959), 19. 84 The juxtaposition is indebted to a set of manipulated photos curated by the artist Zhang Dali. See Zhang Dali, A Second History, 39. For a thoughtful analy­sis of A Second History, see Hillenbrand, Negative Exposures, 210–16. 85 MacFarquhar, “On Photo­graphs,” 290. 86 “Comrades Chiang Ch’ing and Ch’i Peng-­yu’s Talk with the Representatives of the Revolutionary Masses of the Central Documentary Films Studio and the August 1 Movie Studio,” February 1, 1967, in Madame Mao: A Profile of Chiang Ch’ing, by Hua-­min Chung and Arthur C. Miller (Hong Kong: Union Research Institute, 1968), 250–63. 87 Zhu Jiashi 朱家實, “Yingxiong zheng zhao hongqi xiang” 英雄爭照紅旗相 (Heroes Compete for Red Flag Photos), Dazhong sheying (December 1958), 18. 88 Feuchtwang, ­After the Event, 72, 78, 79. 89 Feuchtwang, ­After the Event, 72, 78, 79. 90 Chen Changqian 陳昌謙 , “Cong shengchan laodongzhong kan xinwen sheying baodao de ruogan wenti” 從生產勞動中看新聞攝影報道的若干問題 (A Few Issues about Production and L ­ abor in Photojournalism), Xinwen sheying (December 1958), 8–9. 91 Hu Zihui 胡自輝 and Feng Qisheng 馮琪生, “Sheying shi wei nongye shengchan fuwu de lianghao gongju” 攝影是為農業生產服務的良好工具 (Photography is a Good Tool to Serve Agricultural Production), Dazhong sheying, (January 1960), 8; Ou Zhiyuan 歐志元, “Dao gongshe qu wei nongmin paizhao” 到公社去為農民拍照 (Taking Photos of Peasants in Communes), Dazhong sheying (January 1960), 9.

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92 “Mao zhuxi de fangying dui shangle Qinling” 毛主席的放映隊上了秦嶺 (Chairman Mao’s Projection Team in Qinling), Dianying fangying 電影放映 (Film Projection), no. 2 (1959), 19. 93 Ma Shijun 馬石駿, “Lingnan hua hong yipian” 嶺南紅花一片 (Lingnan Flowers Everywhere Red), Dianying fangying, no. 9 (1960), 22. 94 Dong Qing 董青 and Xiao Ma 肖馬, “Guanyu huabao de zhuanti baodao” 關於 畫報的專題報道 (On Special Features in Illustrated Magazines), Dazhong sheying (February 1959), 5–6. 95 Hu Zhiren 胡致仁, “Shezhi gengduo huandeng pian” 攝製更多幻燈片 (Producing More Lantern Slides), Dazhong sheying (January 1960), 13. 96 Hu Zhiren, “Shezhi gengduo huandeng pian,” 13 97 Ma Shijun, “Lingnan hua hong yipian,” 22. 98 “Wudao renmin gongshe fangyingdui de yiye” 五島人民公社放映隊的一夜 (One Eve­ning with the Five Island ­People’s Commune’s Projection Team), Dianying fangying, no. 2 (1959), 21. 99 Guo Moruo, “Romanticism and Realism,” 315–24. 100 Tao Shilong 陶世龍, “Sheying yishuli ye you geming de langmanzhuyi ma?” 攝影 藝術裡也有革命的浪漫主義嗎 (Is ­There Revolutionary Romanticism in Photographic Art?), Dazhong sheying (September 1958), 16. 101 Lu Hua 陸樺, “Jiefang sixiang, dadan chuangzao: dui yishu sheying zhong nengfou you geming langmanzhuyi de yijian” 解放思想，大膽創造：對藝術攝影 中能否有革命浪漫主義的意見 (Liberate Thought, Daring Creation: Opinions on ­Whether Artistic Photography Can Have Revolutionary Romanticism), Dazhong sheying (November 1958), 12. 102 Several discussions on “revolutionary romanticism” in photography appear in Dazhong sheying (October 1958), 14–15; (November 1958), 13; (December 1958), 14–15. 103 Nye, American Technological Sublime, chap. 5. 104 “Guo Moruo tan sheying shifou baohan you langmanzhuyi de shoufa” 郭沫若談 攝影是否包含有浪漫主義的手法 (Guo Moruo on Romanticism in Photography), Dazhong sheying (March 1959), 14. 105 Schaefer, Shadow Modernism, esp. chap. 4. 106 “Weile chuangzuo zuixin zuimei de sheying zuopin” 為了創作最新最美的攝影作品 (To Create the Newest and Most Beautiful Photographic Works), Dazhong sheying (December 1958), 3–4. 107 Li Ruifeng 李瑞峰, “­Women yong zhaopian jianjihua canjia zhandou” 我們用照片 剪輯畫參加戰鬥 (We Use Photomontage to Participate in the Strug­g le), Dazhong sheying (August 1958), 5. 108 Wang Sanli 王三力, “Shilun jianji zhaopian” 試論剪輯照片 (On Photomontage), Dazhong sheying (July 1959), 16. 109 Gough, “Back in the USSR,” 138. 110 Gough, “Back in the USSR,” 146–66. 111 “Yuehan hatefei’erde he ta de zhaopian jianji” 約翰哈特菲爾德和他的照片剪輯 (John Heartfield and His Photomontages), Dazhong sheying (October 1958), 11.

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112 As Tupitsyn chronicles in The Soviet Photo­graph, a parallel trajectory might be found in the Soviet Union from the 1920s to the 1930s, when photography changed from a “Brechtian stand” to seamlessly transparent realism and shifted from the “factographic” to the “mythographic.” 113 Flath, The Cult of Happiness; Hung, Mao’s New World. 114 Jiang, “The Extermination or the Prosperity of Artists?,” 177. 115 Li Yu 李棫, “Zhi buguo shi kaishi: Shezhi zhaopian jianji de tihui” 只不過是開始 : 攝製照片剪輯的體會 (Only the Beginning: Reflections on Making Photomontages), Dazhong sheying (October 1958), 16–17. 116 Zhao Yao 照耀, “Wo shi zenyang zhi zuo jianji zhaopian de” 我是怎樣製作剪輯照 片的 (How I Made Photomontages), Dazhong sheying (July 1959), 17. 117 I thank Dylan Suher for this par­tic­u­lar insight. 118 See Wu Hung, Remaking Beijing, chap. 2; Hung, Mao’s New World, chap. 4. 119 Zhao Yao 照耀, “ ‘Mianhua guniang’ de shezhi guocheng” “棉花姑娘” 的攝製過程 (The Making of the Photomontage “Cotton Girls”), Dazhong sheying (July 1959), 33. 120 Cartier-­Bresson, China. 121 Cartier-­Bresson, China. 122 Assouline, Henri Cartier-­Bresson, 207. 123 Cartier-­Bresson, China. 124 Cartier-­Bresson, China. 125 Cartier-­Bresson, China. 126 Jin Yongquan, Hongqi zhaoxiangguan, 235. 127 Jin Yongquan, Hongqi zhaoxiangguan, 231–33. 128 Jin Yongquan, Hongqi zhaoxiangguan, 239–44. 129 I thank one of the anonymous reviewers of this book for this par­tic­u­lar insight. 130 Cartier-­Bresson, “Red China Bid for a ­Future.” 131 See Cartier-Bresson’s photos taken in Beijing and Shenyang in 1958: https://­pro​ .­magnumphotos​.­com​/­Asset​/­​-­2S5RYDE60Y3​.­html and https://­pro​.­magnumphotos​ .­com​/­Asset​/­​-­2S5RYDWSVTEZ​.­html (accessed May 21, 2019). 132 See Cartier-Bresson’s photo taken in Beijing in 1958: https://­pro​.­magnumphotos​.­com​ /­Asset​/­​-­2S5RYDY72FE​.­html (accessed May 21, 2019). 133 See Cartier-Bresson’s photos taken in Beijing and Shenyang in 1958: https://­ pro​.­magnumphotos​.­com​/­Asset​/­​-­2S5RYDIZC2UG​.­htm and https://­pro​ .­magnumphotos​.­com​/­Asset​/­​-­2S5RYDIHUEW3​.­html (both accessed May 21, 2019). 134 Peng Benli 彭本立, “Gankuai wei lishi tigong jianzheng” 趕快為歷史提供見證 (Hurry and Bear Witness to History), Dazhong sheying (September 1959), 13. 135 Yang, Calamity and Reform in China, 21. 136 Barthes, Camera Lucida, 96. 137 Commentator (本報評論員), “Zhuhe di sanci sheying bisai chenggong” 祝賀第三 次攝影比賽成功 (Congratulations on the Success of the Third Photography Contest), Dazhong sheying (September 1959), 29. Also see Di Xianghua 狄祥華, “Yuejin de zhanlan dongren de yishu” 躍進的展覽，動人的藝術 (Moving Art in the ­Great Leap Exhibition), Dazhong sheying (October 1959), 6.

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138 Shen Xia 沈硤, “Gei chuxuezhe: Shijieguan zhengque cai neng pai hao zhaopian” 給初學者：世界觀正確才能拍好照片 (For Novices: Good Photos Come from a Correct Worldview), Dazhong sheying (March 1960), 40–41. 139 Lei Wen 雷文, “Gei chuxuezhe: Xuexi zhengzhi lilun, tigao sixiang jiaoyang” 給 初學者：學習政治理論，提高思想教養 (For Novices: Learn Po­liti­cal Theory and Improve Ideological Education), Dazhong Sheying (May 1960), 40–41. 140 Jia Jun 葭君, “Jiaqiang nongcun sheying baodao” 加強農村攝影報道 (Strengthen Photojournalism in the Rural Areas), Xinwen sheying (March 1958), 4–8. 141 Du Xiuxian 杜修賢, “Hua ‘yi zhang zhaopian hua shi nian,” 話 “一張照片話十年” (On “One Photo that Tells the Story about Ten Years”), Dazhong sheying (September 1959), 17. 142 Quoted in Clark, “A Single Image of Famine in China,” 99–100. 143 Sontag, On Photography, 175. 144 Sontag, On Photography, 175. 145 The image was first added to Wikipedia on June 10, 2012. A user objected to the image by pointing out that it had been published in 1946; the post was deleted shortly thereafter. Accessed March 8, 2020, http://­en​.­wikipedia​.­org​/­w​/­index​.­php​ ?­title​=G ­ reat​_­Leap​_­Forward&action​=­history. 146 Clark, “A Single Image of Famine in China,” 93, 101–3. 147 Campbell, “The Iconography of Famine,” 83, 86. 148 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 167. 149 Wang, ed., Humanism in China. 150 Yu Xiguang 余習廣, “Da jihuang zhong chiren egui: Liu Jiayuan ‘cansha qinzi shi zi’ an zai diaocha” 大饑荒中吃人餓鬼：劉家遠 “慘殺親子食子” 案再調查 (A Cannibalistic Hungry Ghost from the ­Great Famine: A Reinvestigation into Liu Jiayuan’s Case of the “Parent Killing the Child for Food”), accessed March 12, 2020, http://­celluloses3​.­rssing​.­com​/­chan​-­3195769​/­all​_­p1​.­html#item8. 151 We see a similar police practice of taking photographic evidence of a man being caught red-­handed in Zhao Liang’s 2007 documentary film Crime and Punishment (罪與罰). 152 Dikötter, Mao’s ­Great Famine, 320–23; Becker, Hungry Ghosts, 211–31. 153 For recorded testimonies of cannibalism during the ­Great Leap famine, see Wang Bing’s documentary Dead Souls (死靈魂, 2018). For an analy­sis of cannibalism as a Chinese literary trope and meta­phor, see Yue, The Mouth that Begs. 154 He Ling 鶴齡, “ ‘Liu Jiayuan shi zi an’ yaoyan zheng wei” 劉家遠殺子食子案謠言 證偽 (False Evidence about the Rumor “Liu Jiayuan Eats His Child”), accessed March 8, 2020, http://­www​.­wyzxwk​.­com​/­Article​/­lishi​/­2013​/­12​/­311371​.­html. 155 The original url for the deleted website containing the photos was http://­daj​ .­lx​-­gov​.­cn​/­news​_­show​.­asp? id=570 (accessed May 2016). I saw screenshots of the original page in a reposting that has also been deleted: http://­tbmhx​.­blog​.­163. com/blog/static/2629128201192472714230/. 156 Offbeat China, “Denial from ­People’s Daily Branch Head Ignites Fury and Discussions of the ­Great Famine,” accessed March 8, 2020, https://­listsprd​.­osu​.­edu​ /­pipermail​/­mclc​/­2012​-­May​/­000627​.­html.

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1 57 Zhao and Liu, “Social Media and Collective Remembrance,” 41–48. 158 Bolter and Grusin, Remediation, 5–6. 159 Thompson, “The Evidence of ­Things Not Photographed,” 55–56. 160 Sliwinski, “Visual Testimony,” 402. 161 Williams, Memorial Museums, 71–72. 162 Williams, Memorial Museums, 56–63. 163 Morris, Believing Is Seeing. 164 Anderson, “Documents, Photography, Postmemory,” 131–35. 165 Anderson, “The Edge of Darkness,” 109. 166 Wu, “Recalling Bitterness,” 265. 167 The Folk Memory Proj­ect has received considerable critical attention in recent years so I ­will not discuss it at length. See instead Pickowicz and Zhang, eds., Filming the Everyday. 168 Gómez-­Barris, “Visual Testimonies of Atrocity,” 411. 169 Li Zhensheng, Red-­Color News Soldier. 170 Mulloy, “Photography and the Cultural Revolution”; Wu Hung, Zooming In, chap. 7; Davies, “Old Zhiqing Photos.” Chapter 4: Foreign Lenses

1 2 3 4 5 6

Landsberg, Engaging the Past, 5–8; Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory. Baron, The Archive Effect, 1. Braester, “The Post-­Maoist Politics of Memory,” 443. Andrew, “Encounter,” 83. Walder, “Actually Existing Maoism.” Chung Kuo was first released on dvd in Italy in 2007, and pirated versions appeared soon thereafter in China. All parts of How Yukong Moved the Mountains ­were released on dvd, by arte France in 2014, with French and En­glish voiceover narration. 7 The French original was “Ce n’est pas une image juste, c’est juste une image.” 8 Lesage, “Godard and Gorin’s Left Politics” and “Godard-­Gorin’s Wind from the East.” 9 For example, see the edited volume by Hagin, Meiri, Yosef, and Zanger, Just Images. 10 Fang, Zhongguo jilupian fazhanshi, 30–32; Gao Weijin, Zhongguo xinwen jilu dianying shi, 5–7. 11 Johnson, “Journey to the Seat of War.” 12 Fang, Zhongguo jilupian fazhanshi, 32. 13 Lu Xun, “Preface to Outcry.” 14 Chow, Primitive Passions, 9. 15 Braester, Witness against History, 38–39. 16 Xiao, “Anti-­Imperialism and Film Censorship,” 35–58. 17 Xiao, “Anti-­Imperialism and Film Censorship,” 43. 18 ­These films included Raoul Walsh’s The Thief of Baghdad (1924), Clyde Bruckman’s Welcome Danger (1929), and Josef von Sternberg’s Shanghai Express (1932). 19 Lu Xun, “Lici cunzhao, 3,” 625–26. 20 Pang, The Distorting Mirror, 2. 21 Cull and Waldron, “Shanghai Document.” 304

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22 23 24 25 26 27 28

Gao Weijin, Zhongguo xinwen jilu dianying shi, 46–47. Waugh, “The 400 Million (1938) and the Solidarity Film.” Schoots, Living Dangerously, 148. Film Archive of China, Joris Ivens and China, 6–7. Barsam, Nonfiction Film, 142–44, 224–25. Schoots, Living Dangerously, 249, 254–58. Before Spring has been broadcast as part of cctv’s “Nostalgia” Channel and can be streamed on bilibili: https://­www​.­bilibili​.­com​/­video​/­av9990991​/ (accessed May 30, 2019). For an appreciation by a Chinese newsreel and documentary filmmaker, see Han Junqian 韩君倩, “Ganwu Yiwensi” 感悟伊文斯 (Inspired by Ivens), accessed May 30, 2019, http://­www​.­cctv​.­com​/­cndfilm​/­history​/­200503​/­200503​-­wen4​.­htm. 29 Gao Weijin, Zhongguo xinwen jilu dianying shi, 114. 30 King, Milestones on a Golden Road, 142. 31 Mao Zedong, “Talks at the Yenan Forum on Lit­er­a­ture and Art” (1942), accessed May 30, 2019, https://­www​.­marxists​.­org​/­reference​/­archive​/­mao​/­selected​-­works​ /­volume​-­3​/­mswv3​_­08​.­htm. 32 Gao Weijin, Zhongguo xinwen jilu dianying shi, 114–16. 33 For insightful analyses of Cultural Revolution posters, see Evans and Donald, eds., Picturing Power in the ­People’s Republic of China. 34 Braester, “The Po­liti­cal Campaign as Genre,” 120, 126. 35 Gao Weijin, Zhongguo xinwen jilu dianying shi, 139–40. An archetypal “artistic documentary” was Xie Jin’s 1958 film Huang Baomei, featuring the model worker Huang Baomei, which ­will be briefly discussed at the beginning of chapter 5. 36 As we can see in the 1966 documentary newsreel “ ‘Iron Man’ Wang Jinxi” (“鐵人” 王進喜), accessed May 30, 2019, https://­www​.­bilibili​.­com​/­video​/­av10924469​/­. 37 Barnes, Museum Repre­sen­ta­tions of Maoist China, 65. 38 Ferry, “China as Utopia,” 236–69. 39 Schoots, Living Dangerously, 316–24. 40 Quoted in Zhang, “The Legend of a Filmmaker and a Country,” 40. 41 Ivens and Destanque, Joris Ivens ou la mémoire d’un regard, 106. 42 Wang, The Sublime Figure of History, 187. 43 Tang, Visual Culture in Con­temporary China, 20; Denton, The Problematic of Self in Modern Chinese Lit­er­a­ture, 99–100. 44 Waugh, “How Yukong Moved the Mountains.” 45 Chen Donglin, “Ershi shiji 70 niandai dianying: ‘Zhongguo’ de fengbo.” 46 Antonioni, The Architecture of Vision, 110. 47 Antonioni, The Architecture of Vision, 110. 48 Barthes, Travels in China, 195. 49 Nichols, Introduction to Documentary, chaps. 6 and 7. 50 King, Lost in Translation, 15, 111. 51 Ivens first became acquainted with Loridan through her acting in Chronicle of a Summer by Jean Rouch and Edgar Morin, the founding film of Eu­ro­pean cinema vérité. See Schoots, Living Dangerously, 276–78. 52 Waugh, “How Yukong Moved the Mountains”; Barker, “Bodily Irruptions.”

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53 For an insightful discussion of the many “staring encounters” throughout Antonioni’s film, see Xiang, “When Ordinary Seeing Fails.” 54 Daney, “La Remise en Scène,” 268–69. Translation from John Caughie, Tele­vi­sion Drama: Realism, Modernism, and British Culture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 112. Even recent criticism emphasizes that Antonioni “looked at ­these ­people and their environment with a calmness bordering on coldness.” See Sun Hongyun, “Two China?,” 50. 55 Hou and Liu, Andongni’ao ni yu Zhongguo, 70. 56 Waugh, “How Yukong Moved the Mountains.” 57 Ivens and Destanque, Joris Ivens ou la mémoire d’un regard, 321. 58 Schoots, Living Dangerously, 325. 59 Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 6. 60 Debord, The Society of the Spectacle, 7, 8. 61 Mao, “China Is Poor and Blank” and “The Question of Agricultural Cooperation.” 62 Chow, Primitive Passions, 33. 63 See the interview with Wang Lixiong in the documentary film Morning Sun. 64 Wang, The Sublime Figure of History, 208, 209. On the theatricality of the Cultural Revolution, also see Chen, Acting the Right Part; Wang, The Cultural Revolution and Overacting. 65 Braester, Painting the City Red, 154. 66 A 1968 official newsreel entitled Mao Zedong Thought Cures Deaf-­Mutes (毛澤東思想治好 了聾啞人) also provides “cinematic testimony” to acu­punc­ture’s efficacy in conjunction with Mao Zedong Thought as “revolutionary miracle medicine” that “cures” deaf-­mute ­children so that each can shout “Long Live Chairman Mao” ­after their treatment. 67 Pang, The Art of Cloning, chap 6. 68 Pang, The Art of Cloning, 185. 69 Zhongguo renmin buke wu, 75–76. 70 King, Lost in Translation, 106. 71 Edwards, “Looking at/Looking in.” 72 Daney, “La Remise en Scène,” 61. 7 3 In The Archive Effect, Baron fleshes out the many ways “archival footage” appears in what she terms “appropriation film,” putting special emphasis on “temporal disparity” and “intentional disparity” that are perceptible to the viewer (17–23). 74 Tang, Chinese Modern, 1. 75 Li Zexiang, “Gen Yiwensi pai ‘Yugong Yishan.’ ” 76 Sun Hongyun, Yiwensi yu jilu dianying, 349–51. 77 Daney, “La Remise en Scène,” 62. 78 Yu Quanxi, interviewed by Shanghai Documentary Channel in 2006, accessed February 23, 2020, https://­www​.­bilibili​.­com​/­video​/­av26897995​/­. 79 Bachmann, “Antonioni ­after China,” 29. 80 Chen Donglin, “ “Ershi shiji 70 niandai dianying”; Yang, “Andongni’ao ni yu yingpian ‘Zhongguo’ de fengbo.” 81 Author interview with Hao Jian (October 2017) and with Li Bin (February 2018). A memoir also recounts attending a criticism screening of Chung Kuo at a secondary

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school in the 1970s and being assigned afterward to write an essay criticizing the film. See Zhang Jiantian, Wo shi datian ren, 144–45. 82 Zhongguo renmin buke wu, 117 8 3 Zhongguo renmin buke wu, 38, 107. 84 Luciano Tovoli, “­Women wei Zhongguo zuole yi jian hen zhongyao de shi” 我們為 中國做了件很重要的事 (We Did Something Impor­tant for China), Duku 讀庫 0606 (2006), 290. 85 Zhongguo renmin buke wu, 77–83. 8 6 Zhongguo renmin buke wu, 170–73; Sontag, On Photography, 169. 87 Zhongguo renmin buke wu, 74. 88 Renmin Ribao Commentator, A Vicious Motive, Despicable Tricks, 11–12. 89 Daney, “La Remise en Scène,” 54–56. 90 Eco, “De Interpretatione,” 10. 91 Sontag, ­Under the Sign of Saturn, 91. 92 The translation comes from Xiang, “When Ordinary Seeing Fails.” 93 Hilton, “Struggling with Antonioni.” 94 Ren Yuan, “Wo suo zhidao de Yiwensi Andongni’ao ni.” Upon receiving approval, they made documentaries, such as New Masters of Shanghai, Spring in Suzhou, and ­Little Red Guards ­under the Purple Gold Mountain. 95 Liu Fang 刘芳, 1974: Yi bu jilupian de ‘edu yongxing’” 1974: 一部纪录片的“恶毒用心 (1974: A Documentary’s ‘Vicious Intention’), Liaowang Dongfang Zhoukan (Oriental Outlook Weekly), November 17, 2009, accessed July 26, 2020, http://m.fx361.com/ news/2009/1117/5601188.html 96 Hou and Liu, Andongni’ao ni yu Zhongguo. 97 Renmin huabao 人民畫報 (China Pictorial) (July 1974): 10–29. 98 Donald, Public Secrets, Public Spaces, 59. 99 Hayot, Chinese Dreams; Brady, “Red and Expert.” 100 Sontag, On Photography, 174. 101 Aumont, “Sur la Chine,” 44. 102 Waugh, “How Yukong Moved the Mountains.” 103 Aumont, “Sur la Chine,” 44. 104 Sun, Social Suffering and Po­liti­cal Confession; Wu, “Recalling Bitterness.” 105 Louis Marcorelles, “Pèlerinage et voyage de deux cinéastes occidentaux en Chine,” Le Monde, March 11, 1976, 16. 106 Sergent, “The Chinese Dream of Joris Ivens,” 64. 107 Harding, “From China, with Disdain,” 941, 945. 108 Aumont, “Sur la Chine,” 42–44. 109 Smil, The Bad Earth. 110 Waugh, The Conscience of Cinema, 590–93. 111 Li Zexiang, “Gen Yiwensi pai ‘Yugong Yishan,” 68. 112 Lin Xudong, “Documentary in Mainland China.” 113 Harding, “From China, with Disdain,” 934–58. 114 Hogenkamp, “A Special Relationship,” 183. 115 Sergent, “The Chinese Dream of Joris Ivens,” 66, and Sun Hongyun, “Two China?,” 55.

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1 16 117 118 119

Daney, “The Critical Function,” 57. Andrew, “The ‘Three Ages’ of Cinema Studies,” 343. Geoffrey York, “China Lifts Ban on Film Icon,” Globe and Mail, December 2, 2004. “Andongni’aoni hao shijian jiqi: Zhongguo” 安東尼奧尼號時間機器 (Time Machine: Antonioni’s Chung Kuo), accessed May 31, 2019, http://­ohmymedia​.­com​ /­2005​/­01​/­05​/­348​/­. 120 See blogger reviews of the film: http://­qing​.­cinepedia​.­cn​/­​?­p​=­360 and http://­ blog​.­donews​.­com​/­laobai​/­archive​/­2006​/­07​/­05​/­946607​.­aspx (both accessed May 31, 2019). 121 Viewers have posted their responses to the film on the douban site for Chung Kuo, which for unknown reasons was deleted by 2015. ­There is also an archived version from May 2013, accessed March 21, 2020, http://web.archive.org/web /​20130510232321/http://movie.douban​.­com/subject/1292327/. 122 See Sun Hongyun’s “Two China?” and Ren Yuan, “Wo suo zhidao de Yiwensi Andongni’ao ni.” 123 Accessed May 31, 2019, http://web.archive.org/web/20130706181428/http://movie​ .douban​.­com/review/1000349/. 124 Accessed May 31, 2019, http://web.archive.org/web/20130706181428/http://movie​ .douban​.­com/review/1000349/. 125 Accessed June 24, 2019, https://www.douban​.­com/note/195951965/. 126 Wu Wenguang 吳文光, “Gensui Andongni’aoni huidao 1972 nian de Zhongguo” 跟隨安東尼奧尼回到1972年的中國 (Following Antonioni on a Return to China in 1972), accessed June 24, 2019, http://­bbs​.­tianya​.­cn​/­post​-­free​-­217489-1.shtml. 127 Eu­ro­pean Foundation Joris Ivens, “From Shanghai with Love.” 128 Reviews of Yukong, accessed May 31, 2019, http://movie.douban​.­com/subject​ /1451496/. 129 Wu Wenguang 吳文光, “He Yiwensi dianying xiangyu” 和伊文斯電影相遇 (Meeting the Films of Ivens), Shucheng 書城 (Book City Magazine), no. 2 (2000): 27. 130 Průšek, “Subjectivism and Individualism in Modern Chinese Lit­er­a­ture,” 1–28. 131 See Hsin Chung, “The Chinese ­People Are Not to be Bullied,” 15–17. 132 “Taiwan haizi diyici kan Andongni’aoni de ‘Zhongguo’ ” 台灣孩子第一次看安東 尼奧尼的《中國》 (A Taiwan Child’s Memories of First Watching Antonioni’s Chung Kuo), accessed June 22, 2019, http://­mypaper​.­pchome​.­com​.­tw​/­kuan0416​ /­post​/­1281895770. 133 Keathley, Cinephilia and History, 7. 134 See collections of short comments on Chung Kuo, accessed July 1, 2019, https://­ wenku​.­baidu​.­com​/­view​/­509be66aaf1ffc4ffe47aca0.html; http://­bbs​.­wenxuecity​ .­com​/­80912969724​/­901003.html. 135 Lin Xudong, “Documentary in Mainland China.” 136 Although vari­ous filmmakers, critics, and scholars have written about xianchang, it is most thoroughly theorized in Robinson, In­de­pen­dent Chinese Documentary, 5–6. 137 For commentary on indigenous criticism of the Fifth Generation, see Chow, Primitive Passions, and Lu, “National Cinema, Cultural Critique, Transnational Capital.”

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138 On cinematic realism from the socialist to the postsocialist era, see McGrath, “Post-­socialist Realism in Chinese Cinema.” 139 Aside from Jia Zhangke, two other filmmakers have made entire documentaries tracing Antonioni’s path in China—­Pan Jun, Bianlian: Zhi Andongni’ao ni de yifeng xin (Mask Changing: A Letter to Antonioni) (2004) and Liu Haiping, China Is Far Away: Antonioni and China (2008)—­showing clips of Chung Kuo captured by Antonioni and juxtaposing the past and the pre­sent. Recalling her own participation in the protest against Antonioni in 1974, dancer Yin Mei choreographed a piece of interpretive dance called dis/oriented: Antonioni in China, performed at the Asia Society in New York in 2013. 140 Lü Xinyu, Jilu Zhongguo. 141 Manovich, The Language of New Media, 50. Chapter 5: Factory Rubble

1 Lee, “What was Socialism to Chinese Workers?”; also see Hurst, “The Power of the Past.” 2 Ngai and Chan, “The Subsumption of Class Discourse in China,” 88. 3 Rofel, Other Modernities; and the following works by Ching Kwan Lee: Against the Law; “The ‘Revenge of History’ ”; and “What Was Socialism to Chinese Workers?” 4 Lee, “The ‘Revenge of History.’ ” 5 Violi, “Trauma Site Museums and Politics of Memory,” 37, 38, 39; emphasis added. 6 DeSilvey and Edensor, “Reckoning with Ruins,” 468. 7 Ngai and Chan, “The Subsumption of Class Discourse in China,” 78–81. 8 Wu Hung, A Story of Ruins, 241. 9 Wu Hung, A Story of Ruins, 241–51. 10 Stoler, Imperial Debris, 9–13. 11 Stoler, Imperial Debris, 12. 12 Nixon, Slow Vio­lence and the Environmentalism of the Poor, 2. 13 Wang Bing, “Interview: Filming a Land in Flux,” 123. 14 On the demo­cratizing potentials of dv in Chinese cinema, see Zhang and Zito, dv-­Made China, and Johnson, Wagner, Yu, and Vulpiani, eds., China’s iGeneration. 15 See “Critics’ 50 Greatest Documentaries of All Time,” accessed May 28, 2019, http://­ www​.­bfi​.­org​.­uk​/­sight​-­sound​-­magazine​/­greatest​-­docs. Dominique Païni, director of the “Cinéma-­Paroles-­Spectacles” of the Centre Pompidou, introduced the 2006 MK2 French dvd release, calling West of the Tracks “the most surprising ­thing” he had seen in the cinematic world “­after Godard and David Lynch.” 16 See, for example, Louis Proyect, “Wang Bing: Cinematic Bard of the Chinese Working-­Class and Peasantry,” May 10, 2013, accessed May 28, 2019, http://­ louisproyect​.­org​/­2013​/­05​/­10​/­wang​-­bing​-­cinematic​-­bard​-­of​-­the​-­chinese​-­working​-­class​ -­and​-­peasantry​/­. 17 Lü Xinyu, “West of the Tracks:” 70. 18 Montage sequences of trains and trams feature at pivotal moments of city symphonies such as Walter Ruttmann’s Berlin: Symphony of a ­Great City (1928) and Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera (1929). N O T E S T O C hapter 5  3 0 9

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19 Andrew, André Bazin, 108. 20 Lü Xinyu, “Ruins of the ­Future,” 130. 21 Funari and Mees, “Socialist Emulation in China.” 22 Chen, “The ­Human–­Machine Continuum in Maoism,” 176. 23 Wang, “Of ­Humans and Nature in Documentary,” 162. 24 Wang, “Of ­Humans and Nature in Documentary,” 163. 25 Buck-­Morss, “The City as Dreamworld and Catastrophe,” 4. 26 Bégaudeau, “Après le siècle,” 33. 27 De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, 36–37. 28 Reynaud, “Dancing with Myself.” 29 Zhang Xianmin, “Weixian, wujin,” 56–61. 30 Stoler, Imperial Debris, 196. 31 Wang Bing, “Plutôt agréable,” 34–35. 32 Bazin, What Is Cinema?, 98. 33 DeSilvey and Edensor, “Reckoning with Ruins,” 468, 473. 34 DeSilvey and Edensor, “Reckoning with Ruins,” 473. 35 Jeannette Catsoulis, “Casualties of China’s Transformed Economy: Tie Xi Qu West of Tracks,” New York Times, April 18, 2007, accessed July 24, 2020, https:// www.nytimes.com/2007/04/18/movies/18trac.html. 36 Nornes, “Marking the Body,” 45. 37 Nornes, “Marking the Body,” 11. For an overview of the 2011 debate on documentary ethics in China, see Ying Qian, “Just Images.” 38 Author interview with Wang Bing, November 14, 2018. 39 Sniadecki, “The Cruelty of the Social.” 40 The other Chinese word for ethics is daode (literally the “way of virtue”). Lunli and daode are often used interchangeably or together to refer to ethics. For an explanation of their dif­fer­ent valences, see Wang, Yinyang, 20, 129. 41 Wang Bing’s responses to questions ­after the screening of Mrs. Fang at the Harvard Film Archive, November 9, 2018. 42 Author interview with Wang Bing, November 14, 2018. 43 Naughton, “The Third Front,” 351–86. 44 Chan and Jia, “Moving with the Times.” 45 Jia Zhangke, Jia xiang, 100. 46 The script also pays tribute to the Lumière ­Brothers’ Workers Leaving the Lumière Factory (1895), the first work in film history that established the prolific genre of industrial films. Jia Zhangke, “Xu: Qiyu de doushi chenmo,” 2–3; Hediger and Vonderau, eds., Films That Work, 9–10. 47 Huang Aihe 黄艾禾, “ ‘Sanxian’ zhi zi” 三線之子 (Child of the “Third Front”), accessed March 12, 2020, http://­mjlsh​.­usc​.­cuhk​.­edu​.­hk​/­book​.­aspx​ ?­cid=6&tid=177&pid=1378. 48 Jia Zhangke, “Xu: Qiyu de doushi chenmo,” 3; Jia and Gao, “ ‘Ershisi chengji’: Zhen gushipian yu jia jilupian,” 20–23. 49 Assmann, “History, Memory, and the Genre of Testimony,” 261.

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50 I borrow the term mediated remembering community from Sara Jones, who uses the phrase to describe the bringing together of “diachronically produced texts” with “recipients of the memorial medium.” See Jones, The Media of Testimony, 37. 51 Jia and Gao, “Ershisi chengji: Zhen gushipian yu jiajilupian,” 21; Jia Zhangke, “Bu ‘anquan’ de dianying.” 52 Jia Zhangke, “Xu: Qiyu de doushi chenmo,” 5. 53 Scarry, The Body in Pain, 291. 54 Chen, “The Human–­Machine Continuum in Maoism,” 176. 55 Andrew, “Encounter: An Interview with Jia Zhangke,” 83. 56 Veg, “Building a Public Consciousness,” 64. Also Jia Zhangke, “Bu ‘anquan’ de dianying.” 57 Jia Zhangke, “Bu ‘anquan’ de dianying.” 58 Jia Zhangke, “Bu ‘anquan’ de dianying.” 59 Thomas Lahusen, “Decay or Endurance,” 744. 60 Andrew, “Encounter,” 82. 61 Thomas Austin, “Indexicality and Inter/textuality,” 263. 62 Chow, “China as Documentary,” 27. 63 Zhang, “Joan Chen,” 109–10. 64 Shu-chin Wu argues that the fictional interviews emphasize “human time” that is “not less real than historical time.” See Shu-chin Wu, “Time, History, and Memory.” In their respective articles, however, Jiwei Xiao and Qi Wang critique the film for its seamless blending and lack of distinction between fiction and nonfiction. See Xiao, “Quest for Memory”; Wang, Recalcitrance of Reality.” 65 Hirsch, The Generation of Postmemory, 5. 66 As Slavoj Žižek notes, Jia Zhangke is keenly aware of the “link between the Cultural Revolution and the ongoing cap­i­tal­ist revolution.” Žižek, First as Tragedy, 133n37. 67 Pickowicz and Zhang, eds., Filming the Everyday, 11. 68 From a publicity pamphlet for 24 City published by China Resources, quoted in Ren, “Re­distribution of the Sensible in Neoliberal China,” 229. 69 Wang and Lu, eds., China and New Left Visions, 234. 70 Wang and Lu, eds., China and New Left Visions, 230–33. 71 “Jia Zhangke: wo de dianying juebuhui bianyuanhua” 賈樟柯：我的電影絕不會邊 緣化 (Jia Zhangke: My Film Will Not Be Marginalized), accessed March 12, 2020, http://­www​.­zgnfys​.­com​/­m​/­view​.­php​?­aid​=­34636. 72 Veg, “Building a Public Consciousness,” 58. 73 Zhang Meng 張猛, “Wushuge buzhuanye de ren chengquanle wo” 無數個不專 業的人成全了我 (Countless Unprofessional ­People Have Fulfilled Me), accessed March 12, 2020, https://­www​.­lz13​.­cn​/­lizhirenwu​/­6060​.­html. 74 “Daoyan Zhang Meng zhuanfang: Neng jianchi, jiu zai jianchi yixia” 導演張猛專 訪：能堅持，就再堅持一下 (Special Interview with Director Zhang Meng: Persist as Much as You Can), Dianying Shijie 6 (2011), accessed March 12, 2020, https://­ cinephilia​.­net​/­7646.

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75 “ ‘Gang de qin’ daoyan guanzhong si ren tan” 《鋼的琴》導演觀眾四人談 (Director and Audience Discuss The Piano in a Factory), April 29, 2011, accessed March 12, 2020, https://movie.douban​.­com/review/5062604/. 76 See reviews of the film on douban, accessed March 12, 2020, https://movie.douban​ .­com/subject/2272222/. 77 Jiang Hong 姜弘, “Wo buzao lieqiang, wo zhi zao gang de qin” 我不造獵槍，我 只造鋼的琴 (I D ­ on’t Make Shotguns, I Only Make a Piano out of Steel), Nanfang zhoumo (Southern Weekend), July 14, 2011, accessed March 12, 2020, http://­www​ .­infzm​.­com​/­content​/­61335. 78 Yu Ying 喻盈, “ ‘Gang de qin’: yi qu gongye shidai de wange”《鋼的琴》：一曲工 業時代的輓歌 (“The Piano in a Factory: A Requiem for an Industrial Age”), accessed July 1, 2019, http://­business​.­sohu​.­com​/­20110630​/­n312113686​.­shtml. 79 Jiang Hong, “Wo buzao lieqiang, wo zhi zao gang de qin.” 80 Von Moltke, “Ruin Cinema,” 411. 81 Wang, “The Recalcitrance of Real­ity,” 225. 82 Dai, ­After the Post–­Cold War, 95–97. 83 Dai, ­After the Post–­Cold War, 95–97. 84 Clark, Youth Culture in China, 23; Zhong, Zheng, and Bai, eds., Some of Us. 85 Yang Ji 楊擊, “Hou xiandai xiangchou: ‘Gang de qin’ de qinggan jiegou he xushi celue” 後現代鄉愁:《鋼的琴》的情感結構和敘事策略 (Postmodern Nostalgia: The Structure of Feelings and the Narrative Strategy of The Piano in a Factory), Yishu pinglun, no. 20 (2011): 73–77. 86 On the “class character” of the piano in modern China, see Kraus, Piano and Politics in China. 87 Xue Feng, “Daoyan Zhang Meng zhuanfang.” 88 Wu Xiaobo, “Zhongguo gongren jieji de youshang.” 89 Pusca, “Industrial and ­Human Ruins of Postcommunist Eu­rope,” 241. 90 Wu Xiaobo, “Zhongguo gongren jieji de youshang.” 91 Wu Xiaobo, “Zhongguo gongren jieji de youshang.” 92 Yabisha 亞比煞, “Ba, wo zhang dale” 爸, 我長大了 (Dad, I Grew Up), April 17, 2012, accessed May 29, 2019, http://movie.douban​.­com/review/5392728/. 93 Jones, The Media of Testimony, 37. 94 Bray, Social Space and Governance in Urban China. 95 Nora, “Between Memory and History.” 96 Abbas, Hong Kong, 26. 97 Visser, Cities Surround the Countryside, 38. 98 Braester, “Tracing the City’s Scars,” 161. Other film scholars have also noted the prominence of de­mo­li­tion ruin and construction sites in con­temporary art and cinema. See, for example, Lu and Mi, eds., Chinese Ecocinema, chaps. 2, 7, and 10. Chapter 6: Museums and Memorials

1 Written shortly ­after Ba Jin’s call for a Cultural Revolution museum in 1986, Ye Yonglie’s story was first published in a science fiction magazine in Sichuan in 1988; in ­later republications it was renamed “ ‘Wenge’ bowuguan zhi meng” (Dream of 312

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a Cultural Revolution Museum). The full text is available in the inaugural issue of the Virtual Museum of the Cultural Revolution website, accessed March 7, 2020, http://­www​.­cnd​.­org​/­CR​/­ZK96​/­zk77​-­2​.­hz8​.­html#1. 2 The National Museum of China was created out of the 2003 merger of the Museum of the Chinese Revolution and the National Museum of Chinese History. 3 Denton, “China Dreams and the ‘Road to Revival.’ ” 4 Violi, “Trauma Site Museums and Politics of Memory,” 37. 5 Clark, “Mnemonic Objects,” 156. 6 Ba Jin, “Aosiweixin ji zhongying de gushi.” 7 Ba Jin, “Qianyan,” 123, 127. 8 Lowenthal, The Past is a Foreign Country, 248. 9 Ba Jin, “Fangwen guangdao” 訪問廣島 (Visiting Hiroshima) and “Changqi de meng” 長崎的夢 (Dream of Nagasaki), in Suixiang lu, 176–81, 226–29. 10 Ba Jin, “Xu yan: Meiyou shen” 序言：沒有神 (Preface: No Gods), in Suixiang lu, 7. 11 Ba Jin, “Xu yan: Meiyou shen, 7. 12 Williams, Memorial Museums, 25. 13 Williams, Memorial Museums, 25. 14 Author interview with Yang Peiming, November 2017. Yang lent his posters for an exhibition at Harvard’s Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies in 2017. ­There are also digital versions of the posters and the discussants’ comments, accessed March 7, 2020, https://­medium​.­com​/­fairbank​-­center​/­exhibiting​-­the​-­cultural​-­revolution​-­part​ -­1​-­reading​-­big​-­character​-­posters​-­d3edd7bb0104. 15 Jie Li, “Virtual Museums of Forbidden Memories,” 539–49. 16 Hirsch and Spitzer, “Testimonial Objects,” 353. 17 Ba Jin, “ ‘Wenge’ bowuguan” “文革” 博物館 (Cultural Revolution Museum), in Suixiang lu, 601. 18 Ba Jin, “ ‘Wenge’ bowuguan,” in Suixiang lu, 603. 19 Ba Jin, “Jinian xuefeng” 紀念雪峰 (Memories of Xuefeng), in Suixiang lu, 119. 20 Ba Jin, “Yangbanxi” 樣板戲 (Model Operas), in Suixiang lu, 594–96. 21 Ba Jin, “ ‘Wenge’ bowuguan,” in Suixiang lu, 603. 22 See Schoenhals, China’s Cultural Revolution, 310–12. 23 Barmé, Shades of Mao, 3–74. 24 Schrift, Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge, 169–200. 25 Coderre, “The Curator, the Investor, and the Dupe,” 435. 26 Hubbert, “Revolution Is a Dinner Party.” 27 Hubbert, “(Re)collecting Mao.” 28 Xu Ben 徐賁, “Quanqiu chuanmei shidai de wenge jiyi” 全球傳媒時代的文革記憶 (Cultural Revolution Memories in the Age of Global Media), in Wenhua da geming, ed. Song Yongyi, 916–40. 29 Yang Kelin, ed., Wenhua da geming bowuguan. 30 Xu Youyu 徐友漁, “Wenge yanjiu zhi yipie: Lishi, xianzhuang he fangfa” 文 革研究之一瞥 : 歷史 , 現狀與方法) (A Glimpse of Cultural Revolution Studies: History, State of the Field, and Methodologies), in Wenhua da geming, ed. Song Yongyi, 2–32.

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31 Virtual Museum of the Cultural Revolution, accessed March 7, 2020, http://­www​ .­cnd​.­org​/­CR​/­english​/­. 32 Yang, “A Portrait of Martyr Jiang Qing.” 33 Li, “Virtual Museums of Forbidden Memories.” 34 Hirsch and Spitzer, “The Witness in the Archive.” 35 Schwarcz, “The Burden of Memory.” 36 Zhong, Wang, and Bai, eds., Some of Us, xviii. 37 Zhu Jianguo 朱建國, “Wenge bowuguan choujian de xianzhuang yu qushi” 文革 博物館籌建的現狀與趨勢 (Current State and Trends in the Construction of the Cultural Revolution Museum), in Wenhua da geming, ed. Song Yongyi, 1004–16. 38 Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, 3. 39 Wu, The Cultural Revolution at the Margins, 3. 40 Denton, Exhibiting the Past, 1–26. 41 Denton, Exhibiting the Past, 73, 92. 42 Zhou, Dizhu zhuangyuan cangsang lu, 159–64. 43 Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” 256. 44 Zhou, Dizhu zhuangyuan cangsang lu, 162, 165–66; Xiaoshu, Da dizhu Liu Wencai, 297; Wang Zhi’an, Hongtian juechang, 131. 45 Zui’e de dizhu zhuangyuan, 7, 41. 46 Ho and Li, “From Landlord Manor to Red Memorabilia.” 47 Zui’e de dizhu zhuangyuan. 48 Xiaoshu, Da dizhu Liu Wencai, 17; Wang Zhi’an, Hongtian juechang, 141. 4 9 Rent Collection Courtyard, 5. 50 Wu Jinzhong, Dayi Liu Wencai dizhu zhuangyuan, 1. 51 Hynes, Letters from China, 109. 52 Erickson, “The Rent Collection Courtyard,” 121–35. 53 Xiaoshu, Liu Wencai zhenxiang. 54 Ho and Li, “From Landlord Manor to Red Memorabilia.” 55 Fan, Daguan nu, 108–11. 56 Fan, Daguan nu, 115–16. 57 Author interview with Fan Jianchuan, August 26, 2013. 58 Author interview with Fan Jianchuan, August 26, 2013. 59 Bach, What Remains, 59. 60 Todorov,  Red Square, Black Square, 10. 61 Fan, Jianchuan bowuguan jieshouci, 108–17. 62 Arnold-­de Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, 80–81. 63 Fan, Daguan nu. 64 Hirsch and Spitzer, “Testimonial Objects.” 65 Author interview with Fan Jianchuan, August 26, 2013. 66 Dutton, “From Culture Industry to Mao Industry,” 164–65. 67 See a visitor’s comments on Jianchuan Museum at: https://www.cdp.edu.cn /Item/31857.aspx, accessed July 26, 2020. 68 Scribner, “Left Melancholy,” 303–5. 69 Zhongguo Anrenzhen Jianchuan bowuguan juluo, 78–130.

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70 Author interview with Fan Jianchuan, August 26, 2013. Fan Jianchuan’s attitude corroborates my own observations of visitor engagement with the exhibits in his museum as well as David J. Davies’s ethnographic study of an exhibition of old photos of sent-­down youth in Shanghai in the 1990s. Davies shows how, despite sparse narration and explanation, the photos and objects on display rely on the flexibility of the visual form to evoke many dif­fer­ent memories and speak to many dif­fer­ent experiences—­both positive and negative—­among the visitors. See Davies, “Vis­i­ble Zhiqing,” 172–73. 71 Writing of Maoist propaganda posters, Harriet Evans contends that beyond their explicit ideological messages, ­these visual artifacts hold varied and ambiguous appeal for viewers, who may engage with the images through nostalgia and irony. Evans, “Ambiguities of Address.” 72 Xu Ben 徐賁, “Huaijiu wupin he wenge jiyi” 懷舊物品和文革記憶 (Nostalgic Objects and Cultural Revolution Memories), in Wenhua da geming, ed. Song Yongyi, 982–1003. 73 Malcolm Moore, “China’s Latest ­Bubble: Chairman Mao Memorabilia,” The Telegraph, October 7, 2014. 74 Xu Ben posits a sharp distintion between the museum and the market as two dif­ fer­ent forms of heterotopia. See Song, ed., Wenhua da geming, 982–1003. 75 An exhibition of Mao badges, for example, may well corroborate anthropologist Melissa Schrift’s findings on how this portable medium contributed to Mao’s personality cult and served as aesthetic outlets in an era of monotonous fashion. See Schrift, Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge. 76 Sturken, Tourists of History, 18. 77 Wu Hung, A Story of Ruins, 13, 19. 78 Violi, “Trauma Site Museums and Politics of Memory,” 37, 39. 79 Foote, Shadowed Ground. 80 Mühlhahn, Criminal Justice in China, 270. 81 For a comprehensive overview of literary and cinematic works focusing on Jiabiangou, see Sebastian Veg, “Testimony, History, and Ethics” and “The Limits of Repre­sen­ta­tion.” Accounts of Jiabiangou that have been translated into En­glish include: Yang Xianhui, ­Woman from Shanghai; Er Tai Gao, In Search of My Homeland. 82 He Fengming, Jingli. 8 3 He Fengming, Jingli. Also see Wang Bing’s documentary Fengming: A Chinese Memoir. 84 Young, The Texture of Memory, 119. 85 Xu Guokang 許國康, “Qu le yitang Jiabiangou” 去了一趟夾邊溝 (I Took a Trip to Jiabiangou), accessed March 24, 2020, https://­www​.­weibo​.­com​/­ttarticle​/­p​/­show​?­id​ =­2313501000014130567351367152. 86 Zeng Jinyan 曾金燕, “ ‘Jiabiangou jishi’ siren tan”《夾邊溝祭事》四人談 (Four ­People Talking about “Jianbiangou Sacrifice”), accessed March 7, 2020, https://­ theinitium​.­com​/­article​/­20170224​-­culture​-­movie​-­jiabiangou​/­. 87 Stoler, Imperial Debris, 9. 88 Author interview with Wang Bing, November 2018. 89 Wang Bing considers his approach to be quite dif­fer­ent: first, unlike Lanzmann who was working with a known history of the Holocaust, Wang Bing excavates

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a past much rawer and more unworked through. Second, unlike Lanzmann who plays a much more active role in questioning, even interrogating, his interviewees, Wang Bing seeks to mediate the testimonies of his interviewees in as complete a form as pos­si­ble. Author interview with Wang Bing, November 2018. 90 Clark, “Mnemonic Objects,” 169–70. 91 Pieke and Mallee, eds., Internal and International Migration, 41–42. 92 Hu Jie, Guoying dongfeng nongchang 國營東方農場 (East Wind State Farm) (in­de­pen­ dent documentary film, 2009). 93 I have written about Shen Congwen’s stay at this May Seventh Cadre School in “Writing from Revolution’s Debris.” 94 In January 2013 Li Chengwai gave me a tour of the site and showed me his collection. The most recent developments are available on his blog, accessed March 15, 2020, http://­blog​.­sina​.­com​.­cn​/­wcltzw. 95 Li Chengwai, ed., Xiangyanghu wenhua yanjiu, 338–78. 96 Guobin Yang, The Red Guard Generation, 19. 97 Pan, Out of Mao’s Shadow, 81–112, esp. 110. 98 Everett Zhang, “Grieving at Chongqing’s Red Guard Graveyard.” 99 Also see Edward Wong, “Repackaging the Revolutionary Classics of China,” New York Times, June 29, 2011. 100 Reproductions of ­these images and interviews with the are available at http://­ artist​.­artron​.­net​/­yishujia0007072; https://­bowarts​.­org​/­nunnery​/­tears​-­eros​-­tian​ -­taiquan; http://­image​.­fengniao​.­com​/­301​/­3010416​.­html; http://­review​.­artintern​ .­net​/­html​.­php​?­id​=­38421; and http://­photo​.­popart​.­hk​/­newweb​/­archives​/­3532 (all accessed June 1, 2019). 101 Ke Peizhong, ed., Shantou Chenghai Tayuan wenge bowuguan ziliaoji zhiyi, 246–53. 102 See Guangdong Chenghai Tayuan jianshe weiyuanhui, Tayuan shiwu nian. 103 For scholarly estimates of the Cultural Revolution’s death toll, see Song Yongyi, “Chronology of Mass Killings during the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966–1976),” Online Encyclopedia of Mass Vio­lence, August 25, 2011, accessed March 7, 2020, https://­www​.­sciencespo​.­fr​/­mass​-­violence​-­war​-­massacre​ -­resistance​/­en​/­document​/­chronology​-­mass​-­killings​-­during​-­chinese​-­cultural​ -­revolution​-­1966​-­1976. 104 Guangdong Chenghai Tayuan jianshe weiyuanhu, Tayuan shiwu nian. 105 Author interview with local villa­gers near Pagoda Park, August 2013. 106 “Wenge bowuguan zao weifeng zheyan” 文革博物館遭圍封遮掩 (The Cultural Revolution Museum Is Covered Up), Mingbao (Hong Kong), May 5, 2016. 107 Video uploaded by museum visitor. Accessed February 27, 2020, https://­www​ .­youtube​.­com​/­watch​?­v​=­NTU4zoh1EN0. 108 Stoler, Imperial Debris, 22. Epilogue: Notes for ­Future Curators

1 Andreas Huyssen calls this “twilight memories,” or “generational memories on the wane due to the passing of time and the continuing speed of technological modernization.” See Huyssen, Twilight Memories, 3. 316

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2 3 4 5

Fang Lizhi, “The Chinese Amnesia.” Lim, The ­People’s Republic of Amnesia. Chan Koonchung, Shengshi. The following edited volumes provide helpful overviews on memories of World War II in Asia and on memories of communism in Eu­rope: Jager and Mitter, eds., Ruptured Histories; Lebow, Kansteiner, and Fogu, The Politics of Memory in Postwar Eu­rope. 6 For an overview of memorials dedicated to slavery and racism in the United States, see Doss, Memorial Mania, chap 5. 7 For an overview of the evolution of the West German memorial landscape vis-­à-­vis the Holocaust, see Kansteiner, In Pursuit of German Memory and Wüstenberg, Civil Society and Memory in Postwar Germany. 8 Williams, Memorial Museums, 25. 9 Clark, “Mnemonic Objects.” 10 This is based in part on my impressions from travel and fieldwork in vari­ous counties and prefectural cities of more than ten provinces during the last five years. A concrete instance of constructing a fake “cultural relic” is shown in Zhou Hao’s 2014 documentary Chinese Mayor, on the efforts by the mayor of Datong to transform a polluted industrial city into a tourist destination by reconstructing Ming dynasty city walls that required the de­mo­li­tion of 200,000 homes. 11 Sabrow, ed., Erinnerungsorte der DDR, 11–27. 12 Todorova, “Introduction,” 2. 13 Mozur, “Inside China’s Dystopian Dreams.” 14 Wu, “Coping with Crisis in the Wake of the Cultural Revolution,” 147. 15 Weld, Paper Cadavers, 13. 16 Badiou, The ­Century, 2. 17 Wang, “Understanding the Chinese Revolution through Words,” 4. 18 This discussion of accountability is inspired by Han Shaogong, “Why Did the Cultural Revolution End?,” 100. Also see Dirlik, Postmodernity’s Histories, 34. 19 Sanders, Complicities, 5–11. 20 Sanders, Complicities, 11–18. 21 I follow recent reconsiderations of socialist culture in monographs such as Tang, Visual Culture in Con­temporary China; Pang, The Art of Cloning; Mittler, A Continuous Revolution. 22 Yu Kaiwei, ed., Chanhui haishi bu chanhui. 23 Yang, The Red Guard Generation and Po­liti­cal Activism in China; Weigelin-­Schwiedrzik and Cui, “Whodunnit?” 24 Perry, Anyuan, 296. 25 Dirlik, “Revolutions in History and Memory,” 58. 26 See the official stumbling stones website for the most recent updates: http://­www​ .­stolpersteine​.­eu​/­en​/­technical​-­aspects​/ (accessed March 16, 2020). 27 Richarz, “Stumbling Stones,” 325–38. 28 Williams, “The Afterlife of Communist Statuary,” 185–98.

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29 For a vivid photo essay on the phenomenon, see Xu Xiaolin, “Mao Statues Are Big Business in the Chairman’s Hometown,” Sixth Tone, March 27, 2016, accessed March 16, 2020, http://­www​.­sixthtone​.­com​/­news​/­654​/­mao​-­statues​-­are​-­big​-­business​ -­chairman’s​-­hometown. 30 Sample photos from the series are available online: “Wang Tong,” accessed March 16, 2020, http://­www​.­chinaphotoeducation​.­com​/­Carol​_­China​/­Wang​_­Tong​ .­html. 31 Reproductions of ­these images and interviews with Tian Tiaquan are available at the following: http://­artist​.­artron​.­net​/­yishujia0007072; https://­bowarts​.­org​ /­nunnery​/­tears​-­eros​-­tian​-­taiquan; http://­image​.­fengniao​.­com​/­301​/­3010416.html; http://­review​.­artintern​.­net​/­html​.­php​?­id​=­38421; and http://­review​.­artintern​.­net​ /­html​.­php​?­id​=3­ 8421 (all accessed June 1, 2019). 32 Boym, The ­Future of Nostalgia, 311. 33 Jiang, ed., Burden or Legacy. 34 Hein, Public Art, 49. 35 Doss, Memorial Mania. 36 In his 1991 installation The Writing on the Wall, photographer Shimon Attie slide-­ projected photo­graphs dating from the 1920s and the 1930s of a neighborhood’s Jewish residents and shops in the same locations where the original images ­were taken. See chapter 3 of Young, At Memory’s Edge, 62–89. In January 2010, I saw a variation of the same idea at a remaining building in the Warsaw Ghetto, where enlarged photo­graphs of former ghetto residents ­were mounted onto the win­dows. 37 See photos of the statues at http://­www​.­peacehall​.­com​/­news​/­gb​/­china​/­2010​/­09​ /­201009092044​.­shtml (accessed March 16, 2020). 38 This idea is inspired by an exhibit at the National Museum of American History called “World War II: Sharing Memories.” See Lubar, “Exhibiting Memories,” 397–405. 39 Levent and Pascual-­Leone, eds., The Multisensory Museum. The quoted text comes from Violi, “Trauma Sites,” 44–45. 40 Mittler, A Continuous Revolution; Huang, “Listening to Films”; Jones, “Quotation Songs,” 43. 41 Chen, “Singing ‘The Internationale.’ ” 42 Zhongguo de youxian guangbo, 201. 43 In 1999, the m11 Link Road in London was completed ­after de­mo­li­tion of 400 homes. In 2003, an artist commissioned by the Museum of London interviewed local citizens and broadcast their testimonies from twenty transmitters along a three-­mile route of the Link Road. ­Those who wished to listen simply could borrow a receiver from a city library. The sound landmark has an official website: http://­www​.­linkedm11​.­net​/ (accessed June 1, 2019). 44 Proust, Swann’s Way, 1. 45 Wu, “Recalling Bitterness.” 46 Conceison, “Eating Red,” 109, 113. 47 Classen and Howes, “The Museum as Sensescape,” 199–222; also see Pye, ed., The Power of Touch.

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4 8 Sun, “The Collar Revolution.” 49 Hershatter, The Gender of Memory, 45–49, 191–95; Eyferth, “­Women’s Work and the Politics of Homespun in Socialist China,” 365–91. 50 Landsberg, Prosthetic Memory, 9, 21, 149. 51 Yan, Private Life ­under Socialism, 35. 52 Documentary films about Jiabiangou, as discussed in chapter 6, would be examples of post-­Mao collections of “bitterness narratives.” 53 Pickowicz and Zhang, eds., Filming the Everyday. 54 Wu Wenguang, “Opening the Door of Memory with a Camera Lens,” 37.

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Before Spring (早春) (aka, Letters from China) (dir. Joris Ivens, 1958) ­Children’s Village (孩子的村子) (dir. Zou Xueping, 2012) Chung Kuo, Cina (中國) (dir. Michelangelo Antonioni, 1972) Dead Souls (死靈魂) (dir. Wang Bing, 2018) Ditch (夾邊溝) (dir. Wang Bing, 2010) 3 4 8  B iblio g raphy

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Fengming: A Chinese Memoir (和鳳鳴) (dir. Wang Bing, 2007) East Wind State Farm (國營東風農場) (dir. Hu Jie, 2009) How Yukong Moved the Mountains (愚公移山) (dir. Joris Ivens, 1976) Huang Baomei (黃寶妹) (dir. Xie Jin, 1958) In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul (尋找林昭的靈魂) (dir. Hu Jie, 2004) Iron Man Wang Jinxi (鐵人王進喜) (dir. Pu Junxi, Song Jiangbo, 1966) I Wish I Knew (海上傳奇) (dir. Jia Zhangke, 2010) Jiabiangou Sacrifice (夾邊溝祭事) (dir. Ai Xiaoming, 2017) Lucky Dog (耳朵大有福) (dir. Zhang Meng, 2007) Luo Village: Me and Ren Dingqi (羅家屋：我和任定齊) (dir. Luo Bing, 2011) Morning Sun (dir. Carma Hinton, Geremie Barmé, and Richard Gordon, Long Bow Group, 2003) Platform (站台) (dir. Jia Zhangke, 2000) Readymady (現成品) (Mao impersonators), documentary (dir. Zhang Bingjian, 2008) Satiated Village (吃飽的村子) (dir. Zou Xueping, 2011) Still Life (三峽好人) (dir. Jia Zhangke, 2006) The Piano in a Factory (鋼的琴) (dir. Zhang Meng, 2011) Though I Am Gone (我雖死去) (dir. Hu Jie, 2006) Traces (遺址) (dir. Wang Bing, 2014) 24 City (二十四城記) (dir. Jia Zhangke, 2008) West of the Tracks (鐵西區) (dir. Wang Bing, 2002)

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INDEX

Italic page numbers refer to figures. Abbas, Ackbar, 225 acu­punc­ture, 168, 176–77, 306n66 Adorno, Theodor, 104, 112, 298n50 aesthetics: anesthetics and, 46; of disappearance, 225–26; film, 209, 219, 222; Maoist, 168, 189, 243; photography and, 104, 112–13, 116, 119, 128, 147, 151; politics and, 73, 84 Agamben, Giorgio, 51 agriculture: collectivization of, 12, 111–12; photo­graphs of harvests, 100, 102, 111–12, 128, 130, 136, 139, 148; photo­graphs of ­labor, 113, 120; poetry on, 81–82; Sputnik fields, 100, 101, 130, 148; surpluses submitted to state, 100, 125, 144. See also ­Great Leap Forward; peasants Ai Xiaoming, Jiabiangou Sacrifice: Life and Death of the Rightists, 250–51 amateur photography. See photography, amateur amnesia, 4, 7, 11, 16, 228, 231, 233, 261–63 Andén-­Papadopoulos, Kari, 64 Anderson, Mark M., 147 Anren: Dayi Landlord Manor Exhibition Hall, 236–38, 237; tourist attractions in, 239. See also Jianchuan Museum Cluster Anshan, Red Flag Tractor Factory, 218 anticipatory memory, 26, 41, 43, 66, 141 Anti-­Hu Feng Campaign, 73, 79, 91 Anti-­Rightist Campaign: amnesia of, 2, 7; on campus, 32–34, 82–83, 111; histories of, 2, 7, 32; individuals sent to rural areas, 34–37, 73, 79, 113; legacy

of, 242; Lin Zhao on, 41, 46, 50; Nie Gannu on, 76–77, 80, 82; in photography, 111, 113; trauma sites associated with, 249–52. See also Rightists Antonioni, Michelangelo, 150, 160–68, 171, 174, 185; campaign against, 175–81, 189. See also Chung Kuo: Cina archival regime of memory, 70, 72, 79 archives: audiovisual, 149, 151; of criminal cases, 68, 145, 146; of Cultural Revolution, 70; of dictatorships, 69–70; digital access to, 92, 98; excavation of, 266–67; film, 150–51; Foucault on, 72, 78; memory and, 69–70, 72, 96, 243, 262–63; oral history, 149, 255; photo­ graphy, 149; power and, 69, 74, 78; of secret police, 69, 77, 83, 88, 95; as source of transitional justice, 69–70, 95; as subject, 70. See also dossiers; Lin Zhao; Nie Gannu Arendt, Hannah, 295n129 art: factory ruins used in, 195; peasant paintings, 130; public, 271–72 Assmann, Aleida, 8, 69, 208–9, 279–80n50 Attie, Shimon, 318n36 Aumont, Jacques, 183 Auschwitz-­Birkenau, 231, 234, 242, 244 Austin, Thomas, 212 Ba Jin: call for Cultural Revolution museum, 1–3, 68–69, 227–33, 235, 239, 246, 258; calligraphy by, 234; portrait of, 231, 256; Random Thoughts, 230—33

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“Ba Jin’s Dream” (Ye Yonglie), 227–28, 231–32 Badiou, Alain, 267 Bai Juyi, 82 barefoot historians, 275–76 Barmé, Geremie, 17, 62, 96, 98 Baron, Jaimie, 59 Barthes, Roland, 57, 140, 161 ­Battle of China, 155 Bazin, André, 198, 205 Beijing 798 Art Zone, 195, 219, 247 Beijing Film Acad­emy, 107, 155, 185, 196 Beijing University. See Peking University Beijing Youth Daily, 95 Benjamin, Walter, 236 Bennett, Tony, 11 Bian Zhongyun, 1, 245. See also Wang Jingyao Bing Xin, 253 Bliokh, Yakov, 154 blogosphere, 61–63, 68, 70, 93–95, ­144–46, 187, 223. See also internet; netizens blood: of Christ, 47; of kinship, 52; of martyrs, 45–47; meta­phors, 32–33, 51, 65 blood writing: Chinese traditions of, 42–44; as indictment and sacrament, 45–47, 66. See also Lin Zhao body: discipline of, 167–71; in Maoist utopian visions, 169; as medium, 13–16, 26, 65–66, 105; unburied, 252; of workers, 199–201, 209–10. See also blood; Lin Zhao; masses as media Bolter, Jay David, 18, 146 Bourdieu, Pierre, 104, 106, 112–13, 298n50 Boxer Rebellion, 107, 153 Boym, Svetlana, 271, 290n6 Braester, Yomi, 117, 151, 154, 156, 168, 226 bricolage, 118, 220–21, 225 Brockmann, Stephen, 83 Buck-­Morss, Susan, 46, 112–13, 121, 200

Buddhist rituals, 38, 43, 51, 177 burial grounds. See graveyards Burke, Peter, 103 Burrows, Larry, 142–43, 142 cadre schools. See May Seventh Cadre Schools Cai Guoqiang, 238 cameras: Chinese brands, 117, 118; digital, 189, 256, 281n93; domestic production of, 104, 117, 299n67; prices, 117–18; video, 18–19, 57, 196–97, 199, 204; of Wang Jingyao, 1, 2, 8. See also films; photography Campbell, David, 144 cannibalism, 144–46 Cao Xueqin, The Dream of the Red Chamber, 54, 84 Capa, Robert, 155 capitalism, 112–13, 140, 200, 225, 247–48, 264, 270, 298n50 Capra, Frank, 155 Cartier-­Bresson, Henri, 134–39, 137 ccp. See Chinese Communist Party cctv (China Central Tele­vi­sion), 180, 186 cemeteries. See graveyards censors: interpretations of poetry, 84–85; as muses, 78–83 censorship: during Cultural Revolution, 152; evidence of, 73; of films, 154, 207; during ­Great Leap Forward, 37; influence on memory-­making, 6–9, 14–18, 265; of museums, 148, 245; of photography, 102, 107, 110; in post-­Mao era, 17–18, 63–64, 233; self-­, 72–73, 85–86, 141 Central Broadcasting and Tele­vi­sion Bureau, 175 Central Newsreel and Documentary Film Studio, 122, 155, 158 Certeau, Michel de, 202 Chan Koochung, 261–62 Chen Bo, 137

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Chen, Joan, 211–213, 213 Chen Sihe, 70–71, 73 Chen, Tina Mai, 199, 209–10 Chen Weisi, 56 Chen Yi, 110 Chengdu, Factory 420, 208–12, 214–15, 219–20 Chiang Kai-­shek, 157 China Central Tele­vi­sion (cctv), 180, 186 China Photog­raphers Association, 107, 109, 137–38, 155 China Pictorial, 149, 169, 180–81, 180, 181, 182 China: The Roots of Madness, 156–58, 157, 177 China Youth Daily, 112 Chinese Communist Party (ccp): amnesia techniques of, 7; Central Committee Politburo, 175; Central Propaganda Department, 233; documentary films on, 154–55; film policies of, 155–56, 158–60; land reform by, 12, 28–30, 49; leadership hierarchy of, 121–22; martyrology of, 45; personnel dossiers of, 74; photog­raphers of, 106–10, 113; propaganda of, 12–15, 265, 267–68; Resolution on Party History, 16–17, 95, 228, 235. See also Mao era Chinese Communist Revolution: ideals of, 5, 11, 267; photography and, 106–8; propaganda of, 12, 267; as under­ ground movement, 35; victims of, 5, 11, 65 “Chinese Holocaust Memorial” website, 234 Chinese New Year prints, 129, 134 Chinese Writers Association, 230 Chongqing, Red Guard Graveyard, 249, 253–56, 254, 271 Chow, Rey, 154, 167, 212 Chris­tian­ity, 26, 28, 34, 47, 59 Chung Kuo: Cina: Chinese reception of, 150–52, 175–81, 183–84, 187, 190–91;

cinematography of, 162–63; digital remediation of, 150–52, 185, 304n6; as epic, 187; filming of, 161–66, 176, 188; legacies of, 188–91; lyrical ele­ments of, 187–88; as metacinema, 190; Orientalism of, 160–61; release of, 150; retrospective view of China in, 185–86, 191; scenes in, 168–69, 171, 176–78, 180; screenings of, 175–76, 185; stills from, 161, 161, 164, 170, 171, 172, 180, 181, 188; subjects of, 161–66, 169–71, 176–77; as testimony, 151; title sequence of, 168, 169, 189; unscripted moments in, 171–73, 172; voiceover narration of, 162–63; Western reception of, 181–82, 184 Cicero, 15 cinema. See films cinematic memorials, 183, 225–26, 251–52 cinephiliac moments, 187–88, 188 Clark, D. J., 143–44 Clark, Laurie Beth, 252 Coderre, Laurence, 233 Cold War, 102, 138, 142–43, 151–52, 177 collections. See red memorabilia collections Communist Revolution. See Chinese Communist Revolution Conceison, Claire, 273–74 Confucius, 12 Connerton, Paul, 66 consumerism, 214–15, 233 Crow Terrace Poetry Trial, 83 Cultural Revolution: aftermath of, 12, 55, 70; artifacts of, 231–33, 241–42, 244–45, 247–48; books on, 233–34; censorship during, 152; clothing during, 274; compared to Holocaust, 234–35; end of, 89, 184; histories of, 2; memoirs of survivors of, 17, 92; ­memories of, 17, 185–86, 268; official films from, 151; origins of, 3, 17; photography during, 1, 117, 121–22, 149, 233–34, 244, 244, 315n70; posters in, 1, 172, 172, 232–33; reassessments of,

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Cultural Revolution (continued) 16–17; sent-­down youth in, 149, 233, 241, 244, 245, 252, 315n70; songs of, 255, 273; spectacles and per­for­mances in, 167–71, 179, 187, 190, 220, 233; “Terror and Virtue,” 97–98; victims of, 257, 272; vio­lence in, 2–5, 8–9, 69, 77, 194, 197, 235, 238–39, 244, 254, 267–69; visual legacy of, 185–86. See also Red Guards Cultural Revolution museums: Ba Jin’s call for, 1–3, 68–69, 227–33, 235, 239, 246, 258; “Ba Jin’s Dream,” 227–28, 231–32; discussions of, 231–32, 235; memorial sites, 253–56; moral purpose of, 232; Pagoda Park, Shantou, 231, 249, 256–58, 257, 259; photography book as, 233–34, 256; restaurants as, 233; revisions to Ba Jin’s concept, 258; virtual, 234. See also Jianchuan Museum Cluster; red memorabilia collections curatorial notes for ­future: pro­cesses, 4, 266–69; proposals, 269–76 Dachau, 146–47 Dai Gezhi, 111 Dai Hao, 84 Dai, Jinhua, 220 Dai Qing, 95 Daney, Serge, 165, 172, 174, 178 Daqing Oilfield, 160, 173, 199 Davies, David J., 315n70 Dayi Landlord Manor Exhibition Hall, 236–38, 237 Debord, Guy, 104, 112, 167, 298n50 Demnig, Gunter, 269–70 Deng Xiaoping, 16 Denton, Kirk A., 235 denunciations: in Anti-­Rightist Campaign, 33; in archives, 95–98; of Chung Kuo, 175–81; Foucault on, 96–97; language of, 17; of photog­raphers, 112; pressure for, 90–92; public or secret,

68–69, 96; written, 64, 69, 72, 78–80, 242, 245. See also informers Derrida, Jacques, 10, 69, 77–78 DeSilvey, Caitlin, 194, 205 dianxing, 156, 160, 162 digital cult, 61–62, 98 digital photography, 189, 256, 281n93 digital remediation. See remediation digital video cameras, 196–97, 199, 204 Dikötter, Frank, Mao’s ­Great Famine, 101–3, 103, 141, 145 Dirlik, Arif, 269 documentary films. See Chung Kuo: Cina; films; How Yukong Moved the Mountains; In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul; 24 City; West of the Tracks Donald, Stephanie, 181 Dong Zhongshu, 84 dossier lit­er­a­ture, 70–73, 78 dossiers: in China, 73–74; contents of, 71–74, 99; digital remediation of, 98; exhibits of, 98–99; of intellectuals, 71–72, 83; legacy of, 92–98; literary genres in, 74, 78; of literary inquisitions, 83; memory production by, 13, 71, 99; of party members, 74; as portraits, 78; as surveillance technology, 70–78, 99; uses of, 74, 98. See also archives; Lin Zhao, prison dossier of; Nie Gannu, police file of douban, 187–88, 221–24 drawer lit­er­a­ture, 70–72 The Dream of the Red Chamber, 54, 84 Dutton, Michael, 246 Eastern Eu­rope: nostalgia for communism, 264; Romania, 88–89; secret police files, 69, 88, 95; statues of communist leaders removed, 270 East Germany: memories of, 264; Stasi, 69, 83, 95, 96 Eco, Umberto, 178, 182 Edensor, Tim, 194, 205

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Edwards, Dan, 171 Eighth Route Army, 107, 155 Engels, Friedrich, 156 ethics, 11, 206–7, 267. See also image ethics Eu­ro­pean Union privacy policies, 98 Evans, Harriet, 315n71 everyday photography. See photography, amateur excavation, 197–99, 266–67 exhibits. See memorial exhibits; red memorabilia collections factories: automobile, 126, 128; “iron rice bowls,” 17, 193, 208, 211–12, 225; machinery in, 196, 199–200, 209; in Maoist era, 194–95; relocations of, 207; in Tiexi District, Shenyang, 196–201, 198, 216–17. See also workers factory ruins: effects of decline, 193; films shot in, 208, 216, 218–20, 221, 225; images in documentaries, 192; as memorial exhibits, 194, 224–26; redevelopment of real estate, 195, 197, 202, 208, 214–16, 218, 224–25, 271; remediation in films, 195–97, 225; scavengers in, 197, 200, 203–4, 225; traces of Mao era preserved, 271; transformed into museums, 205; as trauma sites, 194; use by artists, 195. See also The Piano in a Factory; 24 City; West of the Tracks ­Family of Man Exhibition, 102 famines, photo­graphs of victims, 101–2, 144. See also ­Great Leap famine Fan Jianchuan, 240–42, 244–47 Fang Fang, 47 Fang Lizhi, 7, 261 Felman, Shoshana, 15 Feng Zhe, 245 Fengjing, 247 Ferry, Megan, 156 Feuchtwang, Stephan, 123

film cameras, 155, 163, 196–97, 199, 204 films: archival footage, 150–51, 157, 173; artistic documentaries, 156, 192, 305n35; ccp policies on, 155–56, 158–60; censorship of, 154, 207; digital remediation of, 150–52, 185, 224; Eu­ro­pean filmmakers in China, 150, 152, 155, 158–62, 163–67; Folk Memory Proj­ect, 149, 275–76; foreign views of China in, 153–58; ­Great Leap propaganda, 124, 156; Hollywood, 154, 176; industrial, 310n46; In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul, 25, 42, 56–60, 58, 59, 60, 64; on Jiabiangou ­labor camp, 250–52; Maoist mise-­en-­scène, 163–66; as memorial exhibits, 150–52, 190–91, 208–9, 224–26, 234; metacinema, 190; montage sequences, 198; naturalism in, 155–56; New Documentary Movement, 190; newsreels, 59–60, 118, 122, 125, 151–52, 155, 173, 174; piracy of, 61, 152, 185, 206–7; realism in, 151–52, 172; on Red Guard generation, 268; remediation in post-­Mao era, 185–90, 191; screening in villages, 124–25; socialist realism in, 189; Soviet, 154; as testimony, 151; tracking shots in, 219–20; truth of, 156; utopian visions in, 156; The White-­Haired Girl, 52. See also Chung Kuo: Cina; How Yukong Moved the Mountains; The Piano in a Factory; 24 City; West of the Tracks Fitzpatrick, Sheila, 121 Five Heroes on Langya Mountain, 125 Folk Memory Proj­ect, 149, 275–76 foods, 273–74. See also agriculture; ­Great Leap famine; restaurants Foote, Kenneth E., 249 Foucault, Michel, 72, 78, 96–97 The 400 Million, 155 France: class differences in, 113; industrial films in, 310n46; monarchy of, 96–97; socialists in, 183 French Revolution, 40, 97

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Gan Cui, 34, 289n121 Gang of Four, 55, 184 Gansu province, Jiabiangou ­labor camp, 15–16, 249–52 Gao, James Z., 107 Gao, Mobo, 6 Germany, memorials in, 262, 269–70. See also East Germany; Holocaust; Nazi Germany Gieseke, Jens, 96 Godard, Jean-­Luc, 167; Wind from the East (Le Vent d’est), 152–53 graphomania, 13, 64, 69, 71, 79–80, 99 graveyards: at Jiabiangou ­labor camp, 15–16, 250; Red Guard, 249, 253–56, 254, 271 ­Great Leap famine: absence of photo­ graphs, 101–3, 140–44, 146–47, 149; cannibalism incidents in, 144–46; in collective memory, 145–46; denial of, 145–46; evidence of, 145–46; ­factors in, 100, 123, 125; histories of, 2, 105; memorial exhibitions on, 148, 246; oral histories of, 144–45, 149; ­recipes from, 274; trauma sites associated with, 249; under­ground publications on, 35; witnesses of, 34–35, 37, 275–76 ­Great Leap Forward: censorship during, 37; construction proj­ects in, 121, 136, 165; documentary newsreels on, 59– 60; histories of, 105; museum exhibits on, 228; poetry in, 79–80; propaganda in, 81, 124, 156; songs from, 37, 192 ­Great Leap photography: by amateurs, 104, 117–19, 139–40; by Cartier-­Bresson, 134–39; contests, 119; exhibitions of, 112, 148, 246; goals of, 108; of harvests, 100–2, 111–12, 128, 130, 136, 139, 148; ­labor mobilization through, 121–25; lantern slides, 124–25; legacy of, 104; as memorial exhibits, 147–48; in ­People’s Daily, 100, 101; photomontages, 128–30, 131, 132, 133, 134; by police, 145, 146; production promotion through, 121;

professional, 104, 139–40; “red flag” photos, 122–23, 123; remediation in post-­Mao era, 144–46; revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism, 125, 128–29, 134; staging, 100, 110, 136, 138, 148; subjects and themes of, 119–21, 140–41; as testimony, 104–5; utopian visions in, 105, 111–12, 121, 124–25, 128–30, 147 Grusin, Richard, 18, 146 Gu, Yi, 108 Guan Hanqing, Injustice to Dou E, 43 Guangdong Province. See Shantou Guatemala, 69–70 Guo Moruo, 125, 128 Guomin­dang. See kmt Hai, Ren, 215 Han Shaogong, 11 Harding, Harry, 183–84 Harrison, Henrietta, 44 Hartman, Charles, 83 Hável, Vaclav, 96 He Fengming, 15–16, 250 He Xikun, 209–10, 210 Heartfield, John, 129 Hebei Daily, 130 Heihe Sent-­Down Youth Museum, 252 Henan province: ­Great Leap Forward in, 123; Lin County, 163–66, 180; ­Mao portraits in, 271; Red Flag Canal, 162 hermeneutics, of faith or suspicion, 72, 74–75, 84–85, 163, 291n21 Hilton, Isabel, 179 Hiroshima, 230 Hirsch, Marianne, 6, 19, 144, 214, 232, 278n24 historical preservation, 215, 219, 271 Ho, Denise Y., 239 Holocaust: Auschwitz-­Birkenau, 231, 234, 242, 244; concentration camp ruins, 250; crisis of witnessing, 15; Cultural Revolution compared to, 234–35;

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historical memory of, 230–31, 262; memorial exhibits, 318n36; memorials to, 269–70; photo­graphs of Dachau, 146–47; Shoah, 58, 59, 251, 315–16n89 Hong Ke, 110 Hong Kong, 120, 142, 225 Horkheimer, Max, 112, 298n50 Hoskins, Andrew, 9, 18, 92 Hou Jintian, 93 How Yukong Moved the Mountains: Chinese reception of, 152, 184, 187, 190–91; cinematography of, 173; crowd scenes in, 169; digital remediation of, 150, 152, 186–87, 304n6; filming of, 158–60, 163, 166–67, 173, 183–84, 188; interviews in, 160, 171, 173; legacies of, 188–91; as metacinema, 190; release of, 150; stills from, 159, 161, 161, 174, 175; subjects of, 160, 169–71, 173–74; as testimony, 151; title of, 158; unscripted moments in, 171–74; Western reception of, 182–84 Hu Feng, 73, 79, 87, 91 Hu Jie: documentary on Mile East Wind Farm, 252; In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul, 7, 25, 42, 56–60, 58, 59, 60, 64; Though I Am Gone, 9, 234 Huang Baomei, 192, 193, 305n35 Huang Miaozi, 68, 92–95, 96 Huang, Nicole, 117 Huang Yongyu, “Greeting the ­Great Harvest,” 102 Huaxia wenzhai, 234 Humanism in China, 144 Hundred Flowers Movement, 32–33, 61, 79–80, 110 hypermediacy, 18, 146 image ethics, 152–53, 190–91, 206–7. See also just images imperialist gaze, 105–8, 135, 138, 153–54 industrial museums, 205 industry: bricolage of, 220–21; ­Great Leap photography and, 120–21, 126, 128, 156; photography of, 126, 128;

state-­owned enterprises, 17, 193, 195–96, 208; Third Front, 207, 211–12. See also factories; factory ruins; workers informers, 68–69, 75–77, 83–84, 92–96. See also denunciations In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul, 25, 42, 56–60, 58, 59, 60, 64 intellectuals: censors as muses of, 78–83; dossiers of, 71–72, 83; effects of persecutions, 82–83; as informers, 75–77, 83–84, 92–95; May Fourth Movement, 12, 32, 79, 82, 284n47; “New Left,” 5; Rightists, 76–77, 79, 82–84, 87–88; sent to cadre schools, 253; in Soviet Union, 82; statues of, 272; surveillance of, 71–72; survival ­under dictatorship, 89–91 internet: archives accessible on, 92, 98; douban website, 187–88, 221, 223–24; memories transmitted through, 18; netizens, 61–63, 92, 145–46; photo­graphs accessible on, 141, 145; virtual Cultural Revolution museums, 234. See also blogosphere; remediation invisible writing, 70–73 “Iron Man” (Wang, Jinxi), 173, 174, 199 “iron rice bowls,” 17, 193, 208, 211–12, 225 Italy, 160, 175 Ivens, Joris, 150, 183, 191, 305n51; China in the Eyes of Joris Ivens, 186; The 400 Million, 155; Before Spring, 155, 186; visits to China, 155, 158, 161. See also How Yukong Moved the Mountains I Wish I Knew, 189, 189, 192, 193 Japan: Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 230; Russo-­Japanese War, 153–54; Yasukuni Shrine Museum, 242. See also Second Sino-­Japanese War Jay, Martin, 184 Jia Huamin, 112 Jia Zhangke, 151, 195–96, 207–8, 216; Hometown Trilogy, 207; I Wish I Knew, 189, 189, 192, 193; Platform, 188, 188,

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Jia Zhangke (continued) 207; Still Life, 207–8; 24 City, 195–96, 207–16, 210, 213, 219–20, 225; Unknown Pleasures, 207; The World, 207–8; Xiao Wu, 207–8 Jiabiangou ­labor camp, 15–16, 249–52 Jiabiangou Sacrifice: Life and Death of the Rightists, 250–51 Jianchuan Museum Cluster: exhibits and installations in, 2, 242–47, 243, 244, 245, 248, 259, 274; facilities of, 240–41; founder of, 240–42, 244–45, 246, 247; photography exhibition at, 148; Red Era Mirror Museum, 244–45, 274; Red Era Museum of Daily Necessities, 242–43, 245; Red Era Museum of Sent-­ Down Youth, 244, 245; Red Era Series, 2, 242–45, 243, 244, 246; theme park atmosphere of, 2–­3, 246–47; visitors to, 245–47; Worker-­Peasant-­Soldier ­Hotel, 241, 241 Jiang, Joshua, 130 Jiang Qing, 56, 93, 122, 175–76, 228 Jinsui Daily, 109 Johnson, Matthew, 153 Jones, Adam, 101 journalism. See Lin Zhao; media; photojournalism just images, 152–53, 155–56, 167, 190–91, 206–7 Kashgar, 166–67 Keathley, Christian, 187 Ketelaar, Eric, 69 KGB archives, 69, 77 King, Homay, 162, 171 Kittler, Friedrich, 8 kmt (Guomin­dang): censorship by, 154, 155; officials of, 27–28, 38, 44, 50, 73, 155; Shanghai massacre, 154 Kong Shangren, Peach Blossom Fan, 43 Korean War, 141, 208 Korneichuk, Aleksandr, “The Front,” 109 Kremlinology, 121–22

­labor. See workers ­labor camps, 15–16, 33, 249–52 ­labor mobilization, 121–25 ­Labor Reform Bureau, 38 LaCapra, Dominick, 279n50 Lahusen, Thomas, 211 Landlord Manor museum: exhibits in, 236–37; in post-­Mao period, 238; The Rent Collection Courtyard, 236–38, 237, 239, 240; visitors to, 237–38 land reform, 12, 28–30, 49 Landsberg, Alison, 10, 150, 274–75 lantern slides, 124–25, 153–54 Lanzhou University Rightists, 34–35 Lanzmann, Claude, Shoah, 58–59, 251, 315–16n89 Lao She, 30, 254 Laub, Dori, 15 Lee, Ching Kwan, 193 leftists, 5, 32, 38, 82, 129, 162, 182–83, 247 Lei Feng, 108–9 Leys, Simon, 108 Li Chengwai, 253 Li Dazhao, 31 Li Feng, “Five Boys with Tattered Jackets and Bare Legs,” 143–44, 143 Li Shiqiang, 88–89 Li Yu, 130 Li Yuzhen. See Yu Zhen Li Zexiang, 173, 183–84 Li Zhensheng, 149 Lian Xi, 49 Liang Chang, 117–18 Liang Shengting, 180 Liao Bokang, 254–55 Life magazine, 101, 135, 137–38, 137, 141–43, 142 Lim, Louisa, 261 Lin Biao, 56, 228 Lin Zhao: “The Anxious Wait for This Age,” 28–29; arrests and imprisonments of, 25, 38–39, 40–41, 43, 48–50, 60–61, 87; artifacts associated with, 56–57; Chris­tian­ity of, 28, 34; com-

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memorations of, 25–26, 55–57, 61—64, 66; “A Day in Prometheus’s Martyrdom,” 35, 37–38; diary of, 34; dissident writings of, 31–32, 34–35; education of, 28, 30, 32; execution of, 25, 39, 54–56; f­ amily of, 27–28, 38, 50–54, 65; grave of, 63–64, 254; land reform work of, 28–30; life of, 25–34, 65–66; as martyr, 26, 43–45, 47, 57, 61–62; photo­graphs of, 29, 30, 31, 33; poetry of, 28–29, 35, 37–38; po­liti­cal views of, 30–32, 65–66; “The Song of the Seagull,” 35; statue of, 272; student writings by, 25, 28–31; suicide attempt by, 34; as witness, 26, 57, 64 Lin Zhao, prison dossier of: access to, 56, 64, 66–67; as anticipatory memory, 26, 41, 43, 66; “Autumn Ballad,” 44–45, 285n72; Battlefield Diary: Rec­ords for the Public and Posterity, 48; ­Battle Hymn of the Soul, 48–50; ­Family Letters in Blood, 48, 52–54; “­Family Sacrifice,” 27, 56; “­Father’s Blood,” 50–52; indictment, 39, 284n52; “Letter to the ­People’s Daily Editorial Board,” 39–42, 47, 57; letter to United Nations, 64; messages of, 55, 62, 65–67; notebooks, 48–52; poetry, 27, 44–47, 56; prison meta­phors in, 49; on purges, 97; safeguarding, 41, 64; as testimony, 26; written in blood, 25–26, 38–47, 50, 54–57, 65–66 Lin Zhibo, 145–46 literary inquisition, 83–86 lit­er­a­ture. See drawer lit­er­a­ture; poetry; writing ­Little Flower, 212–13 Liu Entai, “Morning of the First Automobile Factory,” 126, 128 Liu Jiayuan, 144–46 Liu Jiemei, 109–10 Liu Shaoqi, 122, 254, 257 Liu Wencai, 236–40 Liu ­Family Estate Museum, 238 The Lives of ­Others (Das Leben der anderen), 96

Loridan, Marceline, 150, 158, 183, 191, 305n51. See also How Yukong Moved the Mountains Lowenthal, David, 230 Lü Liping, 211–12 Lu, Sheldon, 189 Lü Xinyu, 190, 197 Lu Xuesong, 61, 62 Lu Xun: A Call to Arms, 153–54; on foreign views of Chinese, 154; influence on Lin Zhao, 41, 46; iron ­house parable of, 40; Nie Gannu and, 73; as reformer, 107; writings of, 63, 79, 284n47, 285n58 Luo Bing, 275–76 MacFarquhar, Roderick, 121–22 Manchuria, 79–82, 90, 92, 252 Mao Zedong: blamed for Cultural Revolution, 257–58; death of, 16, 184; film images of, 157–58; Lin Zhao on, 30–31, 41, 51; on masses, 14, 46, 167; photo­graphs of, 110, 121–22, 122, 129; on photojournalism, 109; poems by, 87–88; portraits of, 17, 177, 271; posthumous cult of, 17, 270–71; “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan,” 51; on revolutionary realism and romanticism, 125; “A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire,” 35; statues of, 270–71; on Yukong fable, 158. See also Mao era Mao badges, 233, 241–43, 247, 256, 315n75 Mao era: cultural amnesia of, 16–17, 228, 231, 233, 261–63; cultural production in, 106; end of, 16; first seventeen years, 3, 17, 156; informers in, 68–69, 75–77, 83–84, 92–95; memories of, 4–7, 11, 193, 263; museums in, 4, 228, 236–38, 258–59; social uniformity in, 186, 187; soundscape of, 273; victims of, 5, 17, 253, 269, 275; visual culture of, 156. See also Anti-­Rightist Campaign; Cultural Revolution; ­Great Leap Forward; Hundred Flowers Movement; propaganda; red memorabilia collections

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Mao fever, 233 Maoist mise-­en-­scène, 163–66 martyrs: blood of, 45–47; female, 62; Lin Zhao as, 26, 43–45, 47, 57, 61–62; in Republican China, 44–45 masses as media, 12, 14, 46, 78, 105, 265–66 mass media. See media Mass Photography: amateur photo­graphs published in, 119–20, 120; articles in, 106, 114–18, 122–23, 123, 129, 140–41; camera illustration in, 118; contents of, 118; contests in, 119; goals of, 113–14; how-to instructions in, 118–19, 134, 135; paper quality of, 140; photo­graphs published in, 104, 127, 132, 133, 140; poem published in, 139; on revolutionary romanticism, 125; on studio photography, 114–17, 115, 116; time period of publication, 113 May Fourth Movement, 12, 32, 79, 82, 284n47 May Seventh Cadre Schools, 249, 252–53 Mbembe, Achille, 69 media: Communist use of, 12–13, 79, 265; digital, 18–19, 281n93; fact-­making, 265; mass, 13–14; masses as, 12, 14, 46, 78, 105, 265–66; at Peking University in 1950s, 32–33; samizdat, 34–38, 41, 61, 111; state mono­poly on, 15. See also photojournalism media ecol­ogy: in Mao era, 32–34, 41, 74, 79, 111; memory and, 7–9; in post-­Mao era, 16–18, 92, 96, 146, 151, 163, 206–7, 216, 228, 265, 267 media studies, 8–9 mediation: across generations, 6–7, 11; of memories, 4, 281n95; technologies of, 7–9; between utopia and ruin, 4–6. See also remediation media witnessing, 10, 26, 66, 265–66 memorabilia. See red memorabilia collections memorial exhibits: dossiers as, 98–99; ethical questions related to, 11; as

evidence, 10–11, 262–63, 267–68; factory ruins as, 194, 224–26; films as, 150–52, 190–91, 208–9, 224–26, 234; on ­Great Leap famine, 148, 246; multisensory, 273–75; photography as, 147–49, 318n36; as testimony, 10, 263; as utopian ruins, 263–65 memorial museums: in China, 261; functions of, 7, 9–11, 65, 262, 264; goals of, 4–6; multisensory exhibits, 273–75; notes for ­future curators, 4, 266–76; recent, 261; scope of, 258; spatial and material bases of, 194; state-­sponsored, 262. See also Cultural Revolution museums; trauma sites memorials: cinematic, 183, 225–26, 251–52; in Germany, 262, 269–70; public art, 271–72 memories: anticipatory, 26, 41, 43, 66; archives and, 69–70, 72, 96; chain of remembrances in Chinese culture, 12; childhood, 272; historical amnesia, 261–62, 263; of Mao era, 4–7, 11, 193, 263; mediation of, 4, 281n95; palimpsest formation, 3, 7, 264; propagandization of, 12; prosthetic, 10, 150, 274–75; “remembering bitterness,” 12, 49, 148, 183, 237, 275; repressed, 15; of socialist socie­ties, 264; storage technologies, 8. See also amnesia; nost­ algia; testimonies; transgenerational memories memory ecol­ogy: definition of, 8–9, 279n35; in Mao era, 41, 79, 81, 99, 111, 151, 263; in post-­Mao era, 16–18, 92, 96, 146, 163, 206–7, 216, 228, 265, 267 memory technologies, 7–9, 18 Mencius, 84, 293n75 migrations: forced, 248; ­labor, 196, 199, 207–8, 211–12 Mile East Wind Farm, 252 Miłosz, Czesław, 90 Ming Tombs Reservoir, 121, 137 Ministry of Culture, 184, 236, 253

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Mittler, Barbara, 273 Mohammed, Prophet, 47 Morning Sun, 268, 273 Mulan, 94 multisensory exhibits, 273–75 Museum of Modern Art (moma), 102, 271 museums: censorship of, 148, 245; as exhibitionary complexes, 11; functions of, 4; industrial, 205; Maoist, 4, 228, 236–38, 258–59; mediation of memories in, 4; in post-­Mao era, 235, 238–39; in Tian­anmen Square, 227–28, 313n2. See also Cultural Revolution museums; Jianchuan Museum Cluster; memorial museums museum witnessing, 10–11 Nagasaki, 230 Nanjing Bridge, 177–78, 180 National Film Censorship Committee, 154 National Museum of China, 155, 228, 313n2 naturalism: in films, 155–56; in photography, 109, 119, 141 Nazi Germany, 35, 69, 178, 230–31, 234, 295n129. See also Holocaust netizens, 61–63, 92, 145–46 New Documentary Movement, 190 New Enlightenment intellectuals, 5 New Historicism, 78 Newman, Arnold, 50 News Photography, 104, 109, 112, 122 Nichols, Bill, 160, 162 Nie Gannu: arrest and imprisonment of, 68, 73, 82, 86–89; on betrayals, 91–92; death of, 92; friends as informers, 76–77, 83–84, 92–95; life and literary ­career of, 73, 79–81, 89; poems by, 75, 77, 79–82, 83—89, 91, 93; “Prison Nostalgia,” 89–90 Nie Gannu, police file of: confessions in, 88; contents of, 73, 74–75, 99; informer reports in, 68, 75–77, 83–84, 93; poems

in, 75, 77, 80–81, 83–85, 93; publication of, 68, 75, 77, 92, 93 “Nie Gannu’s Case File,” 77, 92–93, 96, 99. See also dossiers Nixon, Rob, 195 Nora, Pierre, 69, 224 Nornes, Abé Mark, 206 nostalgia: consumption and, 233, 247–48; of film audiences, 186, 217; of masses, 6; at memorial sites, 259; in popu­ lar media, 2, 17, 151; in real estate redevelopment, 271; of Red Guards, 17; of workers, 17, 193, 207, 209–11, 225; of workers’ ­children, 221–23. See also red memorabilia collections oil industry, 160, 173, 199 Old Photo­graphs, 149 Opium Wars, 106–7 oral histories: of cadre school, 253; collecting, 267, 272; of Cultural Revolution, 234, 255; in films, 226, 252; Folk Memory Proj­ect, 149, 275–76; of ­Great Leap famine, 144–45, 148–49; mediation of memories by, 6–7; as testimony, 149, 208–9, 275 Orientalism, 154, 160–61 Orwell, George, 69 Ouyang Xiu, 81 Owen, Stephen, 12 Païni, Dominique, 205 palimpsest memory formation, 3, 7, 12, 66, 194, 255, 264 Pang, Laikwan, 106, 154, 169 patriotic education, 235, 257 patriotism, 62, 106–8, 141, 154 peasants: paintings by, 130; photo­graphs of, 113–14, 124–25, 141; photography by, 117–19, 139–40; songs of, 37. See also agriculture; Landlord Manor museum Peking University, 30, 32–34, 38, 53, 56 Peng Benli, “Hurry and Bear Witness to History,” 139

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Peng Dehuai, 227 Peng Guoyan, 27–28, 38, 50–52, 282n13 Peng Lingfan, 56–57, 64 Peng Qi’an, 256–58 Peng Zhen, 121–22, 122 ­People’s Daily, 39–42, 47, 55–57, 100, 101, 176 ­People’s Liberation Army, 109, 121, 141 per­for­mances, in Cultural Revolution, 167–71, 179, 187, 190, 220, 233 Perry, Elizabeth J., 268 personal files. See dossiers Peters, John Durham, 10, 48, 279n49 Photographing Atrocity, 143 photography: airbrushing figures from, 110, 121–22, 122; archives, 149; cap­i­ tal­ist, 112–13; censorship of, 102, 107, 110; class differences in attitudes on, 113; during Cultural Revolution, 117, 121–22, 149, 233–34, 244, 244, 315n70; digital, 189, 256, 281n93; ­Family of Man Exhibition, 102; as relics, 204, 245; film scarcity, 118; formalism, 119; historiography in China, 106–8; imperialist legacy in, 106–7, 138; Maoist culture of, 103–4; Mao on the Wall (Wang Tong), 271; as memorial exhibits, 147–49, 318n36; memories recorded and transmitted by, 1, 8–9, 103–4; national exhibitions of, 110; naturalism in, 109, 119, 141; by police, 145; as propaganda, 107–10, 112, 121, 124, 134, 246; at Red Guard Graveyard, 256, 271; revolutionary functions of, 105; in Soviet Union, 121, 302n112; speed of images, 147–48; studio photog­raphers, 112, 114–17, 115, 116; as testimony, 104–8, 110, 124, 146–47; truth of, 104, 108–11, 129, 134, 147–48; utopian visions in, 110–11; in Western advertising, 112–13. See also ­Great Leap famine; ­Great Leap photography photography, amateur: audiences of, 140; cameras, 117–18; clubs and classes,

117–18; digital, 189; during ­Great Leap, 104, 117–19, 139–40; snapshots, 117, 179, 189; by soldiers, 141; by Western visitors, 179. See also Mass Photography photojournalism: Anti-­Rightist Campaign and, 111–13; Communist goals of, 107–10; during ­Great Leap, 104; introduction to China, 106–7; on Japa­nese atrocities, 108; patriotic, 108; staged or posed photos, 108–10, 118, 138; Western photog­raphers, 106–7, 134–39, 141–43, 145 photomontages, 128–30, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 256 The Piano in a Factory, 195–96, 216–24, 219, 222, 225 Pickowicz, Paul G., 215 piracy, 25, 61, 152, 185, 206–7, 216, 239 Platform, 188, 188, 207 Plath, James, 129–30 Pleşu, Andrei, 89, 90 poetry: burning, 85–86; classical-­style, 81–83, 88–89; by farm workers, 139; of ­Great Leap Forward, 79–80; interpretations, 83–86; by Lin Zhao, 27, 35, 37–38, 44–47, 56, 239; literary inquisition, 83; by Mao Zedong, 87–88. See also Nie Gannu police files, 74, 88. See also dossiers; Nie Gannu, police file of Poole, Deborah, 104, 296n14 posters: appeals to viewers of, 315n71; big-­character, 1, 88, 94, 174, 232; in Cultural Revolution, 1, 172, 172, 232–33; in red memorabilia collections, 2, 232–33, 247 postmemory, 6, 214, 223 postsocialist postmemory, 214–15, 223 poverty, 141–45, 184, 203–4 Prometheus, 37, 62, 284n47 propaganda: anti-­China, 102, 138, 187; cartoons, 92; of Chinese Communist Party, 12, 15, 102, 265, 267–68; as exhibits, 267–68; films as, 59, 174;

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in ­Great Leap Forward, 81, 124, 156; lit­er­a­ture as, 70–71, 80–81; material culture as, 247–48; memories and, 6–7, 12–16; museums as, 238–39; photography as, 107–10, 112, 121, 124, 134, 246; realities produced by, 14; Soviet, 112–13; testimony and, 4, 7, 13–16, 104, 147, 267; troupes, 148; utopian images in, 13, 243, 267–68. See also posters prosthetic memory, 10, 150, 274–75 Proust, Marcel, 273 Průšek, Jaroslav, 187 Qian Liqun, 37 Qiu Jin, 44–45, 62 real estate developers, 195, 197, 202, 208, 214–16, 218, 271. See also Fan Jianchuan realism: in films, 151–52, 172; revolutionary, 125, 128, 129. See also socialist realism recyclers, 201–2, 225 Red Flag Canal, 165 “red flag” photos, 122–23, 123 Red Guard Graveyard, Chongqing, 249, 253–56, 254, 271 Red Guards: apologies by former, 268; film images of, 9, 158, 268; former leaders of, 95; graves in Shantou, 256; museum repre­sen­ta­tions of, 228, 238, 241, 246; nostalgia by, 17; vio­lence by, 1–2, 9, 232, 249, 252, 256. See also Cultural Revolution; sent-­down youths red memorabilia collections: of childhood, 272; criticism of, 229, 247–48; as de facto museums, 233, 272; of everyday objects, 247–48, 271; exhibitions of, 247–48, 315n75; in Landlord Manor museum, 236–38; nostalgia in, 2, 229, 247; posters, 232–33, 247; tactile exhibits of, 274; trading objects, 233. See also Jianchuan Museum Cluster reeducation camps. See ­labor camps refugees, 142–43, 142

remediation: digital, 18–19, 98, 150–52, 185, 224, 263; double logic of, 146; of films, 150–52, 185–91, 224; of ­Great Leap photography, 144–46; of relics and ruins, 271; technologies, 18 The Rent Collection Courtyard, 236–38, 237, 239, 240 Republican China: martyrs in, 44–45; May Fourth Movement, 12, 32, 79, 82, 284n47 Resolution on Party History, 16–17, 95, 228, 235 restaurants, 233, 239, 241, 273–74 revolutionary realism and revolutionary romanticism, 82, 125, 128–29, 134 Ricoeur, Paul, 291n21 Riefenstahl, Leni, Triumph of the W ­ ill, 178 Rightists: in ­labor camps, 33, 249, 252; number of, 282n1; photog­raphers, 111; samizdat, 34–38, 41. See also Anti-­ Rightist Campaign; Lin Zhao; Nie Gannu Roberts, Claire, 107 Romania, 88, 89 ruination pro­cess, 195, 203, 205, 251 ruins: meanings of, 195, 248–49; of Nazi concentration camps, 231, 250; of neighborhoods, 202–3; remediation of, 271; as testimony, 230–31; utopian, 4–8, 14, 263–67. See also factory ruins; trauma sites Russo-­Japanese War, 153–54 rust, 196, 205 Sabrow, Martin, 264 Salisbury, Joyce E., 47 samizdat, 34–38, 41, 61, 111. See also Spark Sanders, Mark, 267 scar lit­er­a­ture, 16–17, 185–86, 275 Scarry, Elaine, 209 scavengers, 197, 200–4, 225 Schaefer, William, 14, 128 Schoenhals, Michael, 3, 291n15 Schwarcz, Vera, 234

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Second Opium War, 106–7 Second Sino-­Japanese War, 28, 92, 106–8, 155, 196 senses, multisensory exhibits, 273–75 sent-­down youths, 149, 233, 241, 244, 245, 252, 315n70. See also Red Guards Sha Fei, 107 shame, 107–8 Shanghai Bund, 161, 161 Shanghai Document, 154 Shanghai ­People’s Court, 56 Shanghai Propaganda Poster Art Center, 232, 247 Shanghai World Expo, 187 Shantou, Pagoda Park Cultural Revolution Museum, 231, 249, 256–58, 257, 259 Shao Jiaye, “Seashore,” 119, 120 Shen Congwen, 253 Shentalinsky, Vitaly, 77 Shenyang, 208, 211. See also Tiexi District Shi Shaohua, 107, 109, 114 Shi Zecun, 81 Shoah, 58–59, 251, 315–16n89 Shu Wu, 91 Silk, George, 101–2, 141 Sima Qian, 81 Simonides, 15 Sliwinski, Sharon, 146–47 Snow, Edgar, 154–55 Socialist Education Movement, 49, 237, 265 socialist factories. See factory ruins socialist realism, 109, 120–21, 125, 156, 181, 185, 189 society of spectacle, 167–71, 298n50. See also per­for­mances Some of Us: Chinese ­Women Growing Up in the Mao Era, 234–35 Song Dong, Waste Not, 271 Song Dynasty, 83 songs: of Cultural Revolution, 255, 273; of ­Great Leap Forward, 37, 192; parodies, 37; of peasants, 37; of workers, 217 Songzhuang Art Museum, 272

Sontag, Susan, 103–4, 108, 118, 141, 177–78, 182 Soviet Union: agricultural collectivization in, 121; censorship of famine photo­graph in, 102; films crews in China, 154; forced ­labor in, 121; intellectuals in, 82; KGB archives, 69, 77; Khrushchev’s secret speech, 32; Kremlinology, 121–22; machinery exports to China, 196; nostalgia for, 264; photography in, 121, 302n112; photomontages in, 129; propaganda in, 112–13; purges in, 97; samizdat in, 35; secret police files of, 88; statues of communist leaders removed in, 270; unifying language of state socialism in, 88; Zoya, 53 Spark (Xinghuo), 35–38, 36, 61, 284n52. See also samizdat “speaking bitterness,” 12, 28–29, 49, 275 The Square, 32–33, 283n27, 284n52 Stanford University, Hoover Institution, 64 Stasi, 69, 83, 95, 96 state-­owned enterprises, 17, 193, 19–596, 208. See also factories; industry Steinhardt, Nicolae, 89–90 Still Life, 207–8 Stoler, Ann Laura, 23, 70, 195, 203, 259 studio photog­raphers, 112, 114–17, 115, 116 stumbling stones, 269–70 Sturken, Marita, 8, 248 Su Shi, 83, 293n77 surveillance: foreign filmmakers and, 176; Lin Zhao and, 41, 49; memory and, 8, 12–16; in post-­Mao era, 64; society of spectacle and, 167–68; technology of, 13, 49, 68, 70, 72–78, 96–99, 265. See also censorship; dossiers; informers Taiwan, 187 Tănase, Stelian, 80 Tang, Xiaobing, 108, 160, 173 Tao Shilong, 125

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Tao Yuanming, 81, 82 technologies: digital, 18–19, 92, 189, 196, 265, 276; of memory, 7–9, 18, 26, 70, 72, 78, 99, 186, 265; remediation, 18; surveillance, 13, 49, 68, 70, 72–78, 96–99, 265; transmission, 8. See also cameras; internet; photography testimonial exhibits, 9–10 testimonies: films as, 151; journalistic, 26; of ­labor camp survivors, 251; memorial exhibits as, 10, 263; by objects, 231–32; oral histories, 149, 208–9, 275; photography as, 104–5, 107–8, 110, 124, 146–47; propaganda and, 4, 7, 13–16, 104, 147, 267; “remembering bitterness,” 12, 49, 148, 183, 237, 275; of revolutionary faith, 13, 15, 26, 29; ruins as, 230–31; of workers, 200, 207–12. See also witnessing Third Front, 207, 211–12 Thompson, Krista, 146 Tian Taiquan, 256, 271 Tian, Xiaofei, 81, 82 Tian Zhuangzhuang, Blue Kite, 212 Tian­anmen Square: crackdown (1989), 233; films shot in, 168, 169, 177–78; Monument to the ­People’s Heroes, 45; National Museum of China, 228, 313n2; parades and rallies held in, 130, 167–68; photomontages including, 130; photos taken in, 33, 117, 168, 169; as site of Cultural Revolution museum, 227 Tiexi District, Shenyang: factories in, 196–201, 198, 216–17; industrial museums in, 205; railroad workers in, 203; redevelopment of, 218; residential neighborhoods in, 201–3, 216; workers in, 199–201, 203, 222 Tiexi Qu. See West of the Tracks Tilanqiao Prison, 48–49, 60–61 Todorov, Vladislav, 243 Todorova, Maria, 264 tourism: in Anren, 239; Chinese, 161, 168, 189; at former factory sites, 219, 271;

heritage, 263, 317n10; museums and, 235, 238; Western, 181 Tovoli, Luciano, 165 transgenerational memories: of Cultural Revolution, 230, 236; Lin Zhao on, 27; mediation of, 6–7, 11, 17, 221–24; museums and, 4, 19, 262–69; transmission of, 275–76; of workers and their ­children, 208–9, 214–15. See also anticipatory memory; postmemory trauma: of Mao era, 2, 5–6, 11, 15–17, 26, 98, 249, 252, 258, 264–65, 267, 275; theories of, 15, 214; of workers, 211–12, 222, 224–25 trauma sites: defined, 249; functions of, 194; Jiabiangou ­labor camp, 249–52; Maoist, 229, 248; May Seventh Cadre School, Xianning, 249, 253; Red Guard Graveyard, Chongqing, 249, 253–56, 254, 271; ruins as, 194; transformed into memorials, 249–50, 252, 256; visitors to, 250, 259; of World War II, 230–31 truth: of films, 156; of photography, 104, 108–11, 129, 134, 147–48; visual, 108–11, 125, 129, 155 truth and reconciliation pro­cesses, 70, 95, 268 24 City, 195–96, 207–16, 210, 213, 219–20, 225 United Nations, Lin Zhao’s letter to, 64 United States: Hollywood films, 154, 176; memorials in, 262, 272; Museum of Modern Art, 102, 271 utopian images: disjunction from real­ity, 172–73; Maoist mise-­en-­scène, 163–66; propaganda as, 13, 267–68; reproduced in museums, 243; of workers, 199 utopian ruins, 4–8, 14, 263–65, 266–67. See also factory ruins utopian visions: in films, 156; in ­Great Leap photography, 105, 111–12, 121, 124–25, 128–30, 147; in photography, 110–11; of Revolution, 5–6; Western views of China, 181–83

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vagabonds, 197, 203–4, 225 Vatulescu, Cristina, 88 video cameras, 18–19, 57, 196–97, 199, 204. See also film cameras Vietnam War, 141 Violi, Patrizia, 194, 249 virtual memorials and museums, 9, 56, 196, 203, 226, 234 Visser, Robin, 225–26 visual culture. See films; photography visual economy, 104, 106, 118, 121, 152, 177, 296n14 visual truth, 108–11, 125, 129, 155 von Moltke, Johannes, 219 Wang, Ban, 168, 200, 267 Wang Bing, 195–96, 205–7; Dead Souls, 250–52, 315–16n89; films on Jiabiangou ­labor camp, 250–52; Traces, 252. See also West of the Tracks Wang Jingchao, 15–16 Wang Jingyao, 1, 2, 8–9, 149, 232 Wang Jinxi (Iron Man), 173, 174, 199 Wang, Qi, 220 Wang Tong, Mao on the Wall, 271 Wang Wei, 82 Wang Xijian, 81 Wang Yibo, “Crossing the Street,” 109 Wang Youqin, 234 war crimes, 69–70, 108 Warsaw Ghetto, 318n36 Waugh, Thomas, 183 Wei Nanchang, 111 Weigelin-­Schwiedrzik, Susanne, 95 Weld, Kirsten, 69–70, 266 West of the Tracks, 195–96; Chinese reception of, 206–7; cinematography of, 198, 219; filming of, 196–97; French reception of, 205–6; as memorial exhibit, 225; opening of, 197–98, 198; Rails, 197, 203–4, 205; relationship to How Yukong Moved the Mountains, 190; Remnants, 197, 201–3; Rust, 197, 199–201, 201

White, Theodore, 141, 145, 156–57 The White-­Haired Girl, 52 Williams, Paul, 10, 147, 232, 262 witnessing: by cameras, 64; crisis of, 15; by films, 57; by intellectuals, 66, 77; by Lin Zhao, 26, 57, 64; by media, 10, 26, 66, 265–66; by museums, 10–11; by prisoners, 48; by secondary witnesses, 10, 279n50; visual images as, 103. See also testimonies Worker-­Peasant-­Soldier ­Hotel, Jianchuan Museum Cluster, 241, 241 workers: agricultural, 113–14, 120; bodies of, 199–201, 209–10; ­children of, 221–24; cultural life of, 220; health ­hazards for, 200, 225; industrial, 120, 156, 193, 199–200; “iron rice bowls” of, 17, 193, 208, 211, 212, 225; layoffs of, 193, 196, 216–17, 222; machines and, 199–200, 209–10; marginalization of, 220; memories of, 193–94, 207, 224–25; mi­grant, 196, 199, 207–8, 211–12; mobilizing through camera images, 121–25; model, 173, 192, 199; nostalgia for Mao era, 17, 192–93, 207, 209–11, 225; photo­graphs of, 114, 119–20, 127, 128; photography by, 117–19; place in memorial museums, 192–93; protests by, 193; railroad, 203; residential neighborhoods of, 201–3, 216; in Shenyang, 196–203, 216–17; status in Mao era, 193–95, 208, 223; testimonies of, 200, 207–12; unemployed, 201–2, 211, 216–18, 221–24. See also factories; industry The World, 207–8 World War II, 230–31, 262. See also Holocaust; Nazi Germany; Second Sino-­Japanese War writers. See intellectuals; poetry writing: to express suffering, 81; graphomania, 13, 64, 69, 71, 79–80, 99; as instrument of repression, 77–78; invisible, 70–73. See also blood writing; dossiers

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Wu, Hung, 106–8, 195, 248–49 Wu Meicun, 90, 294n92 Wu Min, “Heroes Compete to Have Their Photos Taken with the Red Flag,” 123 Wu Wenguang, 149, 186–87, 275–76 Wu Xiaobo, 222–23 Wu, Yiching, 235, 266 Wu Yinxian, 107, 114, 155 Wyschogrod, Edith, 61–62 Xi Jinping, 266 Xiang Sigeng, 84 Xianning, Hubei province, May Seventh Cadre School, 249, 253 Xiao, Zhiwei, 154 Xiao Wu, 207–8 Xie Jin, Huang Baomei, 192, 305n35 Xinghuo. See Spark Xin­hua News Agency, 56, 109, 111, 128, 180. See also News Photography Xinjiang, 166–67 Xu Ben, 233 Xu Jinyuan, 27 Xu Xianmin, 27–28, 29, 34, 38, 52–55, 282n13 Xu Yanghui, 141 Xu Youyu, 61 Yan, Yunxiang, 275 Yang, Guobin, 18, 254 Yang Kelin, 233–34, 256 Yang Peiming, 232 Yang Xianhui, Chronicles of Jiabiangou, 249–50 Yasukuni Shrine Museum, 242 Ye Jianying, 257 Ye Yonglie, “Ba Jin’s Dream,” 227–28, 231–32 Yekelchyk, Serhy, 88

yimin, 50–51 Young, James, 9, 250 Yu Chengjian, “Rejoicing on an Early Rice Sputnik,” 101, 110, 148 Yu Fei, 95 Yu Feng, 93 Yu Jie, 61 Yu Luoke, 272 Yu Quanxi, 175 Yu Xiguang, 144–46 Yu Zhen (Li Yuzhen), 68, 75, 77, 84–85, 87, 93, 95 Yuan Ling, 110 Yukong fable, 158. See also How Yukong Moved the Mountains Zelizer, Barbie, 103–4 Zhang Bojun, 76 Zhang, Everett Y. Z., 255 Zhang, Jie, 213 Zhang Meng, 195–96, 216–17; Lucky Dog, 217; The Piano in a Factory, 195–96, 216–24, 219, 222, 225 Zhang Ming, 95 Zhang Tianwei, 95 Zhang Yihe, 7, 63, 68, 72, 77, 92–93, 95 Zhang Zhixin, 56, 227, 272 Zhao Tao, 211, 214–15 Zhao Yao: “Cotton Girls,” 130, 133, 134; “Flower of Corn,” 130, 131; “High-­ Producing Sputniks Replace Fireworks,” 130, 132 Zheng Jingkang, 106 Zhong Guangkui, “Competition,” 127, 128 Zhou Enlai, 110, 150, 155, 176, 184 Zhou Hao, Chinese Mayor, 317n10 Zhou Xun, 144 Zhou Ying, 73, 79 Zhuangzi, 86 Zou Xueping, 276

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