Author Xinran’s China Witness is a truly magnificent book straddling fine scholarship and great storytelling. China Witness is an account of people’s lives during China’s Red history (1949-1978). While some have lived to tell the tale, there are stories of people no more, through the eyes of their near and dear ones. The exercise provides an insightful, and valuable, compass to understand the depth and reach of the dramatic socio-political, economic changes of post-socialist China.
The book takes us on a journey through China’s Red history as great grandparents and grandparents of today unfold less-known, forgotten and glossed over vignettes of those Red years, through an account of their lives, struggles and tribulations.
The book is a moving chronicle of those times. It tells the story, the experiences of 11 different individuals (in different provinces of China) from different walks of life, but all uniformly caught in the vortex of socialism. In some ways, the book is almost a reminder of what is and what was, as it alternates between the past and present, and thus helps us view China through the different lenses of socialism and post-socialism.
Xinran’s stories are probably well-known within China, but have largely escaped the outside English-speaking world. There is, for instance, the story of the legendary “Double-Gun Woman”, Chen Lianshi, recounted by living members of her family. Chen, was once upheld as a revolutionary national heroine, a super-hero in the Robin Hood mould who could do no wrong, but later vilified as a rightist due to the failure of an uprising (which she led) against the Nationalist Forces (Guomindang) in Sichuan (western China) in the 1950’s. The failure was blamed on Chen’s treachery. Chen died a disgraced socialist, but worse was the shackles it tied on her family, who carried the burden of being counter-revolutionaries.
While most of us are aware of the Xinjiang province, the oil-rich extreme north-west province inhabited by Uighurs (an ethnic minority) and the contentious integration and displacement of Uighurs from their land, Xinran provides an understanding of the other side of the picture — what Chinese corps had to undergo working for the relatively unknown and controversial Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps (XPCC), an army unit engaged in reconstruction and assimilation of Xinjiang.
Xinran interviewed old living cadres of Shihezi, the capital of the Xinjiang Construction Corps, Eighth Agricultural Division, who provide an account of how “swords were forged into plough-shares”. What unfolds is the hardship of the soldiers, recruits and hundreds of the “reform through labour convicts” — forced by ideology and destiny to reconstruct the frontier. Chinese cadres apparently lived in appalling conditions and worked long hours in the blistering heat, all for the socialist cause. The memory that most have of those years is extreme exhaustion. As one witness says, “Sometimes we were so tired that we fell asleep in the middle of eating. I think in those days more people died of exhaustion than illness! It is not hard to imagine the fate of “reform through convicts” — probably a lot worse. What a change if we look at the xiao huangdis of today (China’s little emperors, a consequence of the one-child policy) pampered by two sets of grandparents.
One of the interesting voices is of a surviving participant (of which there are few left) of China’s historic Long March, 1934-1936. During the historic march, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) covered 8,000 miles, cutting across 14 provinces on foot at night-time, across a treacherous rural and mountainous terrain from China’s east (the Jiangxi province) to a secure and self-reliant base in the Shaanxi province (north-west).
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The Long March veteran recollects how he was recruited, when he was a 13-year-old in Sichuan. “The head of a Red Army Propaganda unit took me to the local town... they gave me a bowl of rice, with meat too. I went back and told my mother, ‘They’re not bad, the Red Army, I saw their machine guns, they have rice to eat and meat too, I’d like to join up’.”
But in reality, it was quite different. During the march, thousands of soldiers died fighting, or of exhaustion, or disease. It was a struggle for survival — as the eyewitness recollects. “We had to pull up grass and eat that. When there really was nothing to eat, we ate leather...”, but all the same, he says, “it was very hard, but it was for our country.”
Yet another witness helps understand the world of Chinese acrobats. While today acrobats are a diminishing tribe in China, they were once the most popular form of entertainment. As the witness recollects, acrobats spearheaded cultural entertainment for the peasantry tied to the collective farms of the countryside. Later, as socialist politics took peculiar twists and turns, acrobat troupes were roped in to promote party policies, for propaganda. What unfolds is an account of the political milieu, of the acrobats, who had to combine skill and art with amenable revolutionary gestures to popularise political slogans, and of the peasantry, who had to bear the onslaught.
Another eyewitness takes you into the dying world of folk art, of the famous Qin Huai lantern makers of Nanjing (the Jiangsu province, East China). As the eyewitness says, “The lion lantern, for instance, there’s no one left in Nanjing who can make those... and after I’m dead, the tradition may die out.” The lantern maker reflects, “Making revolution was just a pretext for people to settle private scores. If those movements had been really good for China, then we wouldn’t have been poor for so many years. People wouldn’t be so fixated on money, and wouldn’t ignore traditional arts as they do... .”
Xinran’s snatches of bitter-sweet memories and reflections of the times and climes of Red history — the idealism, the everyday struggles, the hard life of sacrifice, the rationed food, the collective life, and a disciplined work ethic — help us understand China’s bygone era, appreciate the resilient Chinese spirit that survived the tumultuous years of intense political campaigns and, indeed, the contribution of the Red generation to China’s reconstruction, rise and glory.
The reviewer is a sinologist based in Singapore
CHINA WITNESS: VOICES FROM A SILENT GENERATION
Xinran
Vintage Books: London 2009
345 pages; Canada $23.95