作者：胡平

By Hu Ping

The English translation follows below.

正值文革60周年之际，今年6月，美国成家出版社出版了《文革中公民抗争的文字记录》一书。这是一部以编年方式呈现的中国民间抗争史料集，收录的资料来源于地方志、判决书、报刊以及其他原始文字记录。书中，以时间为轴，将散落在各种载体里的中国民间抗争片段重新串联，呈现了文革时公民反抗的连续性及历史脉络。

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《文革中公民抗争的文字记录》一书，分上、下两大册，共947页，由不平（本名许绍吉）编著。

我与不平未曾谋面，但很早就读过他的书和文章，也看到过别人对他的介绍，例如印红标在《失踪者的足迹——文化大革命期间的青年思潮》一书中，就对他有长达8页的介绍。我们是同龄人，都是文革前的高三级学生（他当时就读于上海同济附中）；都在文革中开始了独立的批判思考，呼吁思想自由和言论自由；也都在文革结束后考上了大学，读了研究生；又先后都来到了美国。不平长期以来致力于文革研究及文革史料的发掘，尤其注重文革期间的公民抗争——这也是我一直关切的。

“在历史的狂风巨浪中，寻找中国的良心与脊梁。”不平曾如此描述自己出版此书的初衷。

文革是一场席卷中国的浩劫。在个人崇拜狂热蔓延、普通百姓噤若寒蝉的腥风血雨年代，中国人民的思想与声音遭到了前所未有的钳制。然而，中国人并非全是盲目顺从的“无脑儿”与“软骨儿”。面对“公安六条”（即1967年1月颁布的《关于无产阶级文化大革命中加强公安工作的若干规定》），以及一系列残酷的倒行逆施与严刑峻法，一批有骨气，有血性，也有头脑的勇者挺身而出。即使声音微若蚊鸣，他们依然向狂暴的时代喊出了最坚定的“不”。其中一些人，不畏酷刑、无惧监狱，甚至付出了生命代价，留下了挑战暴政的历史身影。

有关文革期间民间异议者的史料，此前已经出过几本书。重要的有如下：

1、余习广《位卑未敢忘忧国：文化大革命上书集》（湖南人民出版社，1989）。这本书收集了文革期间普通人（多为普通干部、青年学生、知识分子或百姓）向上级、中央或毛泽东本人的上书、信件与进言材料，内容多为对文革错误政策、派性武斗、干部迫害等问题的批评与建议。

2、宋永毅与孙大进合编《文化大革命和它的异端思潮》（香港田园书屋，1996年）。这本书汇集了文革时期“异端思潮”的代表性文章，并附有分析，展现出文革中异端思潮的演进与发展。

3、印红标《失踪者的足迹：文化大革命期间的青年思潮》（香港中文大学出版社，2009年）。这本书是对文革时期民间思想史的挖掘与梳理，系统考察了文革时期中国青年社会政治思潮的演变，并指出这些思想者在当代中国思想史的特殊意义。

4、宋永毅《从毛泽东的拥护者到他的反对派——“文革”中异端思潮文献档案》（上、下册，香港国史出版社，2015年）。这本书选编了文革中93篇最重要的异端思潮文献，探讨红卫兵一代如何从狂热拥护毛泽东转变为反对派的思想过程。

5、宋永毅《文革中公民异议文献档案汇编》（上、下册，香港国史出版社，2018年）。这本书收录了近70名异议人士在文革期间挑战官方统治的个人文献，其形式有匿名传单、私人信件、日记、狱中手稿等。

另外，还必须提到的是王友琴《文革受难者——关于迫害、监禁和杀戮的寻访实录》（香港开放出版社，2004年）。作者通过长期采访与调查，详细记录了659名文革中被迫害致死的普通人的姓名与遭遇。以受难者的视角呈现文革的罪恶，来对抗官方叙事中对普通人苦难的忽视。

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那么，和上面几本书相比，这本《文字记录》有何特点呢？

首先，这本书非常看重“说出来”。这本书收录的文字，不是亲友间的私下交流，也不是抽屉文学，而在当时就以各种方式被公开说了出来。作为文革的过来人，我和本书的编辑不平先生一样，能体会到这些文字的作者当时充溢心中的不可遏制的冲动：说出来，一定要说出来。要在暴政肆虐的时候就说出来，要在暴君活着的时候就说出来——宁鸣而死，不默而生。

另外，这本书收录的不只是那些有代表性的人物和文章，也收录了大量并不知名的人物和文章。2019年，成家出版社曾出版《文革英烈》上、中、下三册，也是不平编辑，《真理是有阶级性的吗》，在这篇文章中，他详细地论证了真理并没有阶级性——中共否定自由民主的一整套话术，是给二者打上阶级的标签，作者从否定真理的阶级性出发，来推出自由和民主没有阶级性的结论，并表达对思想自由、言论出版自由的认同与追求。

寻找和收录原始抗争文字的过程是极其艰难的。我也是一个抗争者，深知，当一个人开始抗争时，最关切的，还不是自己将面临怎样的风险，而是如何让声音传播开去，被尽可能多的民众听见。事情往往是这样的：你贴出的大字报，或者是散发的油印传单，还没有几个人看到，就被撕毁或者截断；而你被逮捕和判刑，审判照例是不公开的。在当局发表的布告上，思想犯的罪状照例也只是空空洞洞的几句话――“该犯一贯思想反动，恶毒攻击党和伟大领袖”云云。

专制政权只让民众知道有一种思想是危险和有罪的，要杀一儆百，但同时又决不让民众知道这些思想的具体内容。甚至，抗争者被游街示众或绑赴刑场时都要扼住他们的喉咙，让他们发不出声来。如是，他们愿以生命为代价所表达的思想，以及为公开表达思想而付出的沉重代价，最终被当局彻底消音。这也使得牺牲无法产生它应该产生的意义——这才是最最悲哀的。

但最终，在有心人的努力下，后人还是听到了其中一部分抗争者的声音。《文字记录》一书中收录的文中200多位公民的抗争文字，有少量当时我就知道其人其文，例如北京遇罗克的《出身论》，广州李一哲的大字报；还有少量是文革结束后知道的，例如王容芬、张志新、王申酉等。其余的多数人是我读了不平编辑的这本书才知道的——都是散落在各地的普通人。

其中有不少表达反抗思想的农民。例如江西安远县濂江公社石湾大队的农民杜善美，在县人民委员会的门口张贴大字报《造“万岁”的反》，说万岁这个口号是封建朝代皇帝的尊称，是广大人民群众的死对头，因此被打成现行反革命（上册，第120页）；而上海南汇县盐仓供销社的会计庄秋寒，散发具名“铲毛林支队”的油印传单至县内38个单位，历数文化大革命的罪恶，被判处了死刑（上册，第157页）。

发出不平之声的人遍布全国。例如云南省东川市粮食部门的石琨等八名职工，因常在一起议论时政，批评毛泽东搞独裁；批评共产党不像话——宪法规定有言论、出版、集会等自由，但别人这样搞，又把别人打成反革命。结果八个人被打成反革命集团，为首三人分别判处15年、10年和5年徒刑（下册，第645页）；成都市王家坝橡胶生产组的会计张建奎，在街头贴出小字报《全国人民深思》，直斥以江青为首的“张春桥、姚文元、王洪文等一小撮集团”，被判反革命罪（下册，第875页），等等。

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当然，这200多位公民的记录，也并不全面，还有许许多多抗争者和他们的文字，人们至今都无从知道。关于他们的记录，有些或许还沉睡在公安机关蒙上灰尘的档案堆里，有些或许已随风而逝，尸骨无存。

我能够想象不平先生为搜寻、抢救这些被封闭、被湮没的原始文本付出了多大的心力。我也想到王友琴，同样是以一己之力，投入拯救文革记忆的伟大工程。王友琴记录的是受难者，不平记录的是抗争者。两者同样重要，互相补充，缺一不可。可以说，不平的贡献不亚于王友琴。

值得一提的是，不平本身也是文革期间的一个抗争者。1972年5月24日，当时还是中学生的不平（许绍吉），在上海市人民广场贴出一份长达22页的大字报《真理是有阶级性的吗》，在这篇文章中，他详细地论证了真理并没有阶级性——中共否定自由民主的一整套话术，是给二者打上阶级的标签，作者从否定真理的阶级性出发，来推出自由和民主没有阶级性的结论，并表达对思想自由、言论出版自由的认同与追求。李逊所著的《革命造反年代》一书，其中第38章《另类思潮，来自边缘的思索》（参见《记忆》杂志118期）中，就用一节专门介绍了许绍吉的思考与行动。

这份大字报当时只贴出半天就被撕掉，作者当时另外写的《论自由的阶级性》等几篇则根本没有机会张贴出来。这些观点在当时的影响非常小，但这种思想文本曾经存在，就是一个很重要的历史事实。今天，通过不平编著的这本书，我们也能看到，即使暴虐如文革，个体自觉而形成的抗争也并非孤立事件，而是如一条看不见的河流，贯穿其中。这是今天我们回看这段历史时，不能忽视，也能因此鼓舞起信心的一个事实。

本期推荐档案与延伸阅读：

《文革中公民抗争的文字记录》目录

《失踪者的足迹：文化大革命期间的青年思潮》

《文化大革命中的异端思潮重要文献》

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

Speaking Out While the Tyrant Still Lives: A Valuable Archive of Civic Resistance During the Cultural Revolution

By Hu Ping

On the occasion of the 60th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution, Chengjia Publishing in the United States released Documentary Record of Civic Resistance During the Cultural Revolution this June. Arranged chronologically, the book is a collection of historical materials documenting grassroots resistance in China. Its sources include local gazetteers, court judgments, newspapers, and other original written records. Organized along a timeline, it reconnects scattered fragments of popular resistance preserved in different kinds of documents, revealing both the continuity of civic resistance during the Cultural Revolution and its historical trajectory.

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Documentary Record of Civic Resistance During the Cultural Revolution consists of two volumes totaling 947 pages and was compiled by Bu Ping (the pen name of Xu Shaoji).

Although I have never met Bu Ping in person, I read his books and articles many years ago and also came across introductions to his work by others. One example is Dr. Yin Hongbiao’s The Footprints of the Missing: Youth Thought During the Cultural Revolution, which devotes eight pages to him. We belong to the same generation. Before the Cultural Revolution, we were both third-year high school students—he attended the affiliated high school of Tongji University in Shanghai. During the Cultural Revolution, both of us began to think independently and critically, calling for freedom of thought and freedom of expression. After the Cultural Revolution ended, we both entered university, went on to graduate school, and eventually came to the United States. For many years, Bu Ping has devoted himself to research on the Cultural Revolution and to uncovering its historical materials, with a particular focus on civic resistance during that period—a subject that has also long concerned me.

“Amid the raging storms of history, to search for China’s conscience and backbone. “This is how Bu Ping described his original intention in publishing this book.

The Cultural Revolution was a catastrophe that swept across China. In those bloody years, when the cult of personality spread unchecked and ordinary people were silenced by fear, the thoughts and voices of the Chinese people were subjected to unprecedented repression. Yet Chinese people were not all mindless followers or spineless conformists. Faced with the “Six Articles on Public Security”—the Several Provisions on Strengthening Public Security Work During the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, issued in January 1967—and a succession of cruel and repressive policies, a number of courageous individuals with integrity, conviction, and independent minds stepped forward. Even if their voices were as faint as the buzzing of mosquitoes, they still uttered the firmest possible “No” to an age of violence. Some endured torture without yielding, faced imprisonment without fear, and even gave their lives, leaving behind enduring examples of resistance to tyranny.

Historical materials on dissent during the Cultural Revolution have appeared in several earlier publications. Among the most important are the following:

1. Yu Xiguang, Though Humble, I Dare Not Forget My Country: A Collection of Letters Written During the Cultural Revolution (Hunan People’s Publishing House, 1989). This volume collects petitions, letters, and memorials written by ordinary people—mostly rank-and-file officials, students, intellectuals, and common citizens—to higher authorities, the central government, or Mao Zedong himself. Most of these writings criticized mistaken Cultural Revolution policies, factional armed struggles, persecution of officials, and related issues, while also offering suggestions for reform.

2. Song Yongyi and Sun Dajin (eds.), The Cultural Revolution and Its Heretical Currents of Thought (Tianyuan Book House, Hong Kong, 1997). This volume brings together representative writings of heterodox thought from the Cultural Revolution period, accompanied by scholarly analysis tracing the emergence and development of these intellectual currents.

3. Yin Hongbiao, The Footprints of the Missing: Youth Thought During the Cultural Revolution (The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2009). This work excavates and reconstructs the history of unofficial thought during the Cultural Revolution, systematically examining the evolution of socio-political ideas among Chinese youth and highlighting the significance of these thinkers in the intellectual history of contemporary China.

4. Song Yongyi, From Mao Zedong’s Supporters to His Opponents: Documentary Archives of Heterodox Thought During the Cultural Revolution (Vols. I & II, Guoshi Press, Hong Kong, 2015). This work presents ninety-three of the most important documents representing heterodox thought during the Cultural Revolution and explores the intellectual transformation of the Red Guard generation from fervent supporters of Mao Zedong into his opponents.

5. Song Yongyi, Collected Documentary Archives of Civic Dissent During the Cultural Revolution (Vols. I & II, Guoshi Press, Hong Kong, 2018). This collection includes personal documents produced by nearly seventy dissidents who challenged the official regime during the Cultural Revolution, including anonymous leaflets, private letters, diaries, prison manuscripts, and other materials.

Also deserving special mention is Wang Youqin’s Victims of the Cultural Revolution: An Investigative Record of Persecution, Imprisonment, and Killing (Open Publishing, Hong Kong, 2004). Through years of interviews and research, the author painstakingly documents the names and experiences of 659 ordinary people who were persecuted to death during the Cultural Revolution. By telling the story from the victims’ perspective, the book confronts the official narrative’s neglect of the suffering endured by ordinary people.

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How, then, does A Documentary Record of Civic Resistance During the Cultural Revolution differ from the books mentioned above?

First of all, this book places great importance on speaking out. The writings collected here were not private exchanges among family and friends, nor were they works hidden away in desk drawers. They were made public in one form or another at the very time they were written. As someone who lived through the Cultural Revolution, I, like the book’s editor Bu Ping, can understand the irrepressible impulse that filled the hearts of these writers:

Speak out. We must speak out. They had to speak out while tyranny was still raging. They had to speak out while the tyrant was still alive. Better to speak out and die than to live in silence.

Another distinguishing feature of this book is that it includes not only well-known figures and famous writings, but also a great many little-known individuals and their writings. In 2019, Chengjia Publishing released the three-volume Martyrs of the Cultural Revolution, also edited by Bu Ping, which profiled 170 heroes and martyrs who resisted during the Cultural Revolution. A Documentary Record of Civic Resistance During the Cultural Revolution contains the writings of more than two hundred citizens who resisted during that period. The two books inevitably overlap in some respects, but the latter includes many more individuals and has a different emphasis.

Martyrs of the Cultural Revolution may be regarded as a collective biography of those heroes and martyrs who openly resisted during the Cultural Revolution, whereas A Documentary Record of Civic Resistance During the Cultural Revolution focuses on preserving the texts produced by those who resisted. It is more like a chronological archive of resistance writings, directing readers’ attention to the original documents of protest that have survived.

The task of locating and preserving these original writings was extraordinarily difficult. I, too, was a participant in resistance, and I know from experience that when a person begins to resist, his greatest concern is not yet the risks he himself will face, but how to spread his voice as widely as possible and let as many people as possible hear it.

Typically, a big-character poster you put up or mimeographed leaflets you distribute would be torn down or confiscated before many people had the chance to read them. Once you were arrested and sentenced, the trial was, as a matter of course, conducted in secret. Official notices issued by the authorities would describe the “crimes” of prisoners of conscience only in the vaguest terms, with formulaic phrases such as:

“The criminal has consistently harbored reactionary thinking and viciously attacked the Party and the Great Leader.”

Nothing more.

An authoritarian regime wants people to know only that certain ideas are dangerous and criminal, thereby making an example of those who express them. At the same time, it is determined to prevent the public from learning what those ideas actually are. Even when resisters were paraded through the streets or taken to the execution ground, their throats were seized so that they could not speak.

In this way, the ideas they sought to express at the cost of their own lives—and the heavy price they paid for expressing them publicly—were completely silenced by the authorities. As a result, their sacrifice was prevented from acquiring the meaning it should have had.

That, above all, is the greatest tragedy.

Yet in the end, thanks to the efforts of dedicated individuals, later generations have been able to hear at least some of the voices of those who resisted. Among the writings of more than two hundred citizens collected in A Documentary Record of Civic Resistance During the Cultural Revolution, there are a few authors and texts that I knew about at the time—for example, Yu Luoke’s “On Class Origins” in Beijing and the famous big-character poster by Li Yizhe in Guangzhou. There are also a handful that I came to know only after the Cultural Revolution ended, such as Wang Rongfen, Zhang Zhixin, and Wang Shenyou. But I learned about most of the others only by reading this book compiled by Bu Ping. They were ordinary people scattered across different parts of China.

Among them were many peasants who voiced ideas of resistance. One was Du Shanmei, a farmer from Shiwan Production Brigade, Lianjiang Commune, Anyuan County, Jiangxi Province. He posted a big-character poster entitled “Rebelling Against ‘Long Live’”, arguing that the slogan “Long Live” was an honorific reserved for emperors in China’s feudal dynasties, who had always been the mortal enemies of the people. For this he was branded an active counterrevolutionary (Vol. I, p. 120). Another was Zhuang Qiuhan, an accountant at the Yancang Supply and Marketing Cooperative in Nanhui County, Shanghai. He distributed mimeographed leaflets signed by the “Anti-Mao-Lin Detachment” to thirty-eight work units across the county, enumerating the crimes of the Cultural Revolution. He was sentenced to death (Vol. I, p. 157).

Voices of dissent emerged throughout the country. In Dongchuan, Yunnan Province, Shi Kun and seven other employees of the local grain bureau frequently gathered to discuss current affairs. They criticized Mao Zedong for practicing dictatorship and condemned the Communist Party for violating its own Constitution, which guaranteed freedom of speech, publication, and assembly while branding anyone who exercised those rights as a counterrevolutionary. As a result, the eight men were designated a counterrevolutionary group, and the three alleged leaders received prison sentences of fifteen, ten, and five years respectively (Vol. II, p. 645). In Chengdu, Zhang Jiankui, an accountant in the Wangjiaba Rubber Production Group, posted a handwritten leaflet entitled “A Call for Deep Reflection by the People of the Entire Nation.” In it, he openly denounced the small clique headed by Jiang Qing, including Zhang Chunqiao, Yao Wenyuan, and Wang Hongwen. He was convicted of counterrevolutionary crimes (Vol. II, p. 875).

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Of course, the records of these more than two hundred citizens are far from complete. There were many more people who resisted, and many more writings that have never been found. Some records may still lie buried in dusty files kept by the public security authorities. Others may have vanished forever, leaving no trace behind.

I can only imagine how much effort Bu Ping devoted to locating and rescuing these suppressed and forgotten original texts. I am also reminded of Wang Youqin, who likewise, through her own tireless efforts, dedicated herself to preserving the memory of the Cultural Revolution. Wang records the victims; Bu Ping records the resisters. Both are equally important. They complement one another, and neither can be dispensed with. It is no exaggeration to say that Bu Ping’s contribution is no less significant than Wang Youqin’s.

It is also worth mentioning that Bu Ping himself was a participant in resistance during the Cultural Revolution. On May 24, 1972, while still a middle school student, Bu Ping (Xu Shaoji) posted in Shanghai’s People’s Square a twenty-two-page big-character poster entitled “Does Truth Have a Class Character?” In this essay, he argued in detail that truth has no class character. The Chinese Communist Party’s entire rhetorical framework for denying freedom and democracy, he wrote, rested on assigning both concepts a so-called class character. Beginning with the proposition that truth itself has no class character, he went on to conclude that freedom and democracy likewise have no class character, expressing his support for and pursuit of freedom of thought and freedom of speech and publication. In Chapter 38 of Li Xun’s The Age of Revolutionary Rebellion, entitled “Alternative Currents of Thought: Reflections from the Margins” (also published in Remembrance, Issue No. 118), this episode is discussed in a dedicated section.

That big-character poster remained on display for only half a day before it was torn down. Several other essays that Xu Shaoji wrote, including “On the Class Character of Freedom,” were never even given the chance to be posted. At the time, these writings had very little influence. Yet the simple fact that such texts existed is itself an important historical fact.

Through Bu Ping’s book, we are also able to see that throughout the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, acts of resistance arising from individual moral awakening were not isolated incidents. Rather, they formed an invisible river running beneath the surface of that turbulent decade. As we look back on this period today, this is a historical reality that must not be overlooked—and one that should also inspire confidence for the future.

Recommended archives:

Footprints of the Missing: Trends of Youth Thought During the Cultural Revolution

Documentary Records of Civic Resistance During the Cultural Revolution

Heterodox Thoughts during the Cultural Revolution

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：中国民间档案馆编辑部

The English translation follows below.

7月16日，香港独立书店“留下书社”和“田园书屋”遭警方搜查，5人被拘捕。“留下书社”的一位女店员遭拘捕后昂首走出书店的照片，传遍网络，为香港公民社会在高压之下的抗争留下一帧不屈的剪影。

如今的香港，来自官方的密集检视与打压，正在夺走这座城市曾经拥有的自由。“国安法”之下的香港，如一些香港学者所形容的，如同“巨浪之后”，正淹没无数曾诞生于这座城市的书籍、信息、资料、档案，从传媒到出版，从广播电视到街角书店，香港的言论自由与记忆载体已岌岌可危，对香港档案的留存也就格外重要。

中国民间档案馆一直致力于中国民间记忆的留存与守护工作，香港正在发生的变化，以及正在被官方有意识删除和屏蔽的社会文化记忆，也是我们关注的重点。读者可以访问民间档案馆网站，搜寻我们保存的部分与香港有关的资料。

巨变之下，香港公民社会、知识界在档案留存方面有何行动？我们也关注目前香港公民社会对此所做的努力。上一期中国民间档案馆简报，就刊发了梁启智先生的文章《T恤上的香港历史——在既近又远的台湾留存一份档案》，为读者们介绍台湾中央研究院香港资料库的情况。

档案，不仅仅局限于文字、影像，也包括声音。中国民间档案馆存档的香港电台，就颇具代表性。

成立于1928年的香港电台（英文名Radio Television Hong Kong，缩写为RTHK），一直是香港新闻自由的重要象征。作为香港唯一的公共广播机构，尽管由政府拨款运营，但香港电台曾秉持编辑自主和新闻中立的原则，发挥对公权力的监督作用，被认为是香港媒体新闻专业主义的典范。

“后国安法时代”降临后，香港电台的部分栏目迫于政治压力停播，多个栏目也被迫改组，官方YouTube频道大批视频下架，官方网站也删除了上千集节目。

目前，中国民间档案馆已经为香港电台《铿锵集》、《头条新闻》和《视点31》栏目进行部分年份的批量存档，并上传至“互联网档案馆”。

这些节目都曾是香港电台的王牌节目，它们不仅记录了香港社会的变迁，也是香港前国安法时期和国安法时代初期的重要历史见证。对于香港近年来的社会议题，这三档栏目都有紧密的追踪。对于香港近年来的社会运动，如2012年的“反国教”运动、2014年的“雨伞运动”和2019年的“反送中”运动，以及这些运动中涌现的香港民主派人士（其中不少人遭到政治迫害，身陷囹圄），香港电台都曾有详细的报道和采访。

开播于1978年的《铿锵集》栏目，通过长篇幅、深度的调查报道，致力于提供深入的新闻叙事和历史记录。其镜头深入街头巷尾，记录普通香港人的生活与心声。《铿锵集》对2019年香港社会运动的调查与报道，通过多方访谈、详尽的证据梳理，呈现出不同背景、不同立场的市民的所作所为、所思所想，也记录下官方的说辞与回应。

2019年7月21日，香港元朗发生黑衣人无差别袭击市民事件。《铿锵集》的《721元朗黑夜》，通过详尽的视频证据、时间线梳理和当事人访谈，在第一时间复原了事件的脉络。2020年，在“721”发生近一年后的《铿锵集》节目《721谁主真相》中，香港电台记者蔡玉玲调查白衣人的车辆，试图确定白衣人的身份。随后，警方指控蔡玉玲虚假陈述，因为她向政府提交查车牌的申请时，在填写查车牌的用途时选择了“其它有关交通及运输的事宜”。蔡玉玲初审罪成，被判罚款，二审上诉被驳回，直至上诉到终审法院，才免于罪责。这也是近年来香港记者受到打压与迫害的一起典型案件。

如今，《铿锵集》虽然还在延续，但已绕开政治话题，主要关注香港民生，被剥夺了昔日监督权力的职责。对比今昔，可以说，前国安法时代的《铿锵集》，对于研究香港历史和香港新闻界，是不可或缺的材料。

香港电台的另一个著名栏目是《视点31》。作为一个公共对话平台，该栏目自2014年开播起，在香港社会撕裂加剧的艰难时期，为不同政治阵营的人士提供了面对面交流观点的空间。这种多元视角的汇聚，是一种宝贵的社会实践。

在2019年7月23日的《视点31》节目中，民主派议员朱凯迪（后在香港“47人案”中被判刑）与建制派议员何君尧展开激烈的辩论。何君尧曾在“721”当晚与后来攻击市民的白衣人握手。辩论最后，何君尧双手拍桌，气愤地离开了演播室。这种镜头，体现出节目直面冲突的本质。虽然辩论不欢而散，但在当时的背景下，香港电台能将民主和建制两派请到同一个房间辩论，则是罕见而难得的现象。《视点31》也正是通过这种对话来展示香港社会撕裂的根源和复杂性，让观众看到不同的价值观和不同的利益考量相互碰撞。此后，因为《视点31》为不受官方欢迎的声音提供了平台，香港电台遭遇到巨大压力，被迫于2021年6月取消该栏目，民主派的声音在香港的公共空间也越来越小。

香港电台曾经最具特色的栏目，要属1989年首播的《头条新闻》。《头条新闻》以其独特的政治讽刺和戏仿风格，用幽默直中社会议题的要害，凸显现实的荒诞和政治的荒唐。《头条新闻》中最受争议的片段，要属2020年初播出的《惊讯》。《惊讯》讽刺香港电台的另外一档节目《警讯》（《警讯》也于2021年在香港电台官网遭到全部删除），每期由身着警服的演员王喜从一个黑色垃圾箱里钻出，以警察的口吻，讽刺香港警队在2019年社会运动中和2020年疫情初期的作为。这种大胆的幽默讽刺，是对官方话语的解构和对权力的挑战。这也是为什么《惊讯》遭到大量香港“撑警派”市民的投诉、指控其抹黑警队形象的原因。2020年6月，《头条新闻》在国安法正式生效之前，首先被迫停播。

由于其独特的地理位置和历史渊源，香港长期以来都是观察和报道中国大陆的重要窗口。和许多香港媒体一样，香港电台也经常深入地报道中国大陆的新闻。《铿锵集》每年坚持在“六四”周年之际推出相关报道，记录受难者家属的心声，追溯历史真相。在2019年“六四”三十周年之际，《铿锵集》播出五集的《八九演义》，以多重角度探讨六四，其中包括对东欧剧变和共产体制的反思，也包括对“六四”的受害者家属、亲历者和纪念者的采访。

香港电台对中国大陆异见人士的关注，如对诺贝尔和平奖得主刘晓波的报道，在中文媒体中，更是弥足珍贵。《头条新闻》中的讽刺与幽默，不乏中国大陆的流行语，很多对香港政府的批评，也都直指中国大陆的威权政治。

常言说，新闻是历史的初稿。香港电台过往的许多新闻节目，已成为正在发生的历史中珍贵的一稿。而下架香港电台的这些节目，则是官方扭曲历史的第一步。中国民间档案馆希望通过存档香港电台的部分节目，保卫这些原本应该属于所有人的历史记忆。

在2026年7月15日“留下书舍”和“田园书屋”被查之前，香港的多家独立书店被查。7月2日，曾被中共关押的香港铜锣湾书店店主林荣基去世。与此同时，在香港，“禁书”名单越来越长，香港的社会自由与公共文化空间遭遇强力打压的现状，令人齿寒。但正是在这样的艰难时刻，档案、资料的留存，以及对记忆的自觉捍卫，才更凸显其重要性。中国民间档案馆愿携手每一位有心人，为香港留存档案，保存那些正在被删除的自由记忆尽一份心力。

档案征集：

中国民间档案馆长期向读者征集与香港有关的资料、档案。您可将电子化的档案资料发至我们的邮箱：info@minjian-danganguan.org。有相关建议或投稿，也欢迎通过电邮联系。

本期档案推荐：

香港电台《铿锵集》备份

香港电台《头条新闻》备份

香港电台《视点31》备份

中国民间档案馆部分香港档案

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

Editors’ Note: Archiving Hong Kong

On July 16, the police searched two independent Hong Kong bookstores, Have A Nice Stay and Greenfield Book Store, arresting five people. A photo of a female clerk at Have A Nice Stay walking out with her head held high after being arrested went viral, leaving an unyielding portrait of Hong Kong‘s civil society resisting under immense pressure.

In Hong Kong today, relentless official scrutiny and suppression are stripping away the freedom the city once enjoyed. Under the National Security Law—as some Hong Kong scholars describe it—the city is living in the aftermath of “a giant wave.” Countless books, news reports, records, and archives born in this city are being submerged. From mass media and publishing to radio, television, and neighborhood bookstores, Hong Kong’s freedom of expression and the vessels of its collective memory are in critical danger. This makes preserving Hong Kong’s historical record all the more vital.

The China Unofficial Archives has long been dedicated to preserving and safeguarding non-official Chinese memory. The ongoing transformations in Hong Kong, along with the social and cultural memories being deliberately erased and censored by authorities, remain a primary focus of our work. Readers are invited to visit the China Unofficial Archives website to explore our collection of materials related to Hong Kong.

Amid these dramatic changes, how are Hong Kong’s civil society and intellectual communities responding when it comes to preserving history? We closely follow the ongoing efforts within Hong Kong’s civil society. The previous newsletter featured an article by Mr. Leung Kai Chi titled “History Printed on Cotton: The Story Hong Kong’s Civil Society Told Through Iconic T-Shirts,” which introduced the Hong Kong Database at Academia Sinica in Taiwan.

Archives are not limited to written documents and images; they also encompass sound. The audio recordings from Radio Television Hong Kong (RTHK) preserved in the China Unofficial Archives stand as a prime example.

In the pre-National Security Law era, RTHK (Radio Television Hong Kong), was a crucial symbol of Hong Kong’s press freedom. Founded in 1928, RTHK was the city’s sole public broadcaster but consistently upheld the principles of editorial independence and journalistic neutrality. It was once considered the gold standard for journalistic professionalism in Hong Kong media.

But since the start of the National Security Law era, some RTHK programs have been forced off the air due to political pressure, and several others have been reorganized. Vast amounts of video content have disappeared from RTHK’s official YouTube channel, and its official website has deleted thousands of program episodes.

The China Unofficial Archives, however, has archived hundreds of hours of this deleted content, including several years’ worth of key RTHK programs, including Hong Kong Connection, Headliner, and This Week. They are now uploaded and freely available on our channel on the Internet Archive.

As RTHK’s top programs, they not only recorded the transformation of Hong Kong society but are also essential historical documents covering the period before and the early years of the National Security Law. All three shows closely tracked contemporary social issues. RTHK also provided extensive coverage and interviews related to recent social movements, such as the 2012 anti-National Education movement, the 2014 Umbrella Movement, and the 2019 anti-extradition movement, as well as the pro-democracy figures who emerged from them (many of whom have since faced political persecution and are now incarcerated).

Launched in 1978, Hong Kong Connection was dedicated to providing in-depth news narratives and historical records through long-form, investigative reporting. Its cameras explored many corners of Hong Kong communities, documenting the lives and thoughts of ordinary Hong Kong residents.

The program’s investigation and reporting on the 2019 Hong Kong social movement used extensive interviews and detailed evidence to present the actions and viewpoints of citizens across the political spectrum, alongside official statements and responses.

For example, following the indiscriminate triad attack on civilians in Yuen Long on July 21, 2019, the Hong Kong Connection episode, “721 Yuen Long Dark Night,” reconstructed the entire sequence of events using thorough video evidence, a timeline, and interviews with those involved.

In the 2020 episode “721 Who Holds the Truth?” (aired nearly a year after the “721” incident), RTHK reporter Choy Yuk-ling investigated the vehicles used by the white-shirted attackers to confirm their identities. The police subsequently accused Choy of making a false statement because she had selected “other traffic and transport related matters” as the purpose when applying to search vehicle registration records. Choy was convicted and fined in the lower court, her appeal was rejected at the intermediate level, and she was only finally cleared of the charge after appealing to the Court of Final Appeal. This case serves as a prime example of the suppression and persecution faced by Hong Kong journalists after the city entered the National Security Law era.

Although Hong Kong Connection still airs today, it now avoids political topics and primarily focuses on livelihood issues, having been stripped of its former function of holding power accountable. Comparing the program then and now is an example of the demise of independent journalism in Hong Kong.

Another important RTHK program was This Week. Since its 2014 launch, the show functioned as a public dialogue platform, offering a space for people from different political camps to meet and exchange views during a difficult period of worsening social division in Hong Kong. This gathering of diverse perspectives was a valuable social experiment.

In its July 23, 2019, episode, pro-democracy legislator Eddie Chu Hoi-dick (later convicted in the “Hong Kong 47” case) engaged in a fierce debate with pro-establishment legislator Junius Ho Kwan-yiu. Ho had been seen shaking hands with the white-shirted attackers on the night of “721.” The debate concluded with Ho angrily slamming his hands on the table and exiting the studio. This scene exemplifies the program’s nature of directly confronting conflict. While the debate ended abruptly, RTHK’s ability to invite both pro-democracy and pro-establishment figures into the same room for a debate was a rare and notable achievement at the time.

This Week used this kind of dialogue to reveal the roots and complexity of Hong Kong’s social division, allowing the audience to witness the clash between different values and interests. Subsequently, RTHK faced immense pressure because This Week had provided a platform for voices unwelcome by the authorities, and the program was forced into cancellation in June 2021. Since then, the space for pro-democracy voices in Hong Kong’s public sphere has shrunk significantly.

The most distinctive RTHK program was Headliner, which premiered in 1989. Famous for its unique blend of political satire and parody, Headliner used humor to expose the core of social issues, highlighting the absurdity of reality and politics.

The most controversial segment within Headliner was “Shock News,” which aired in early 2020. “Shock News” satirized RTHK’s other program, Police Report (which was also completely deleted from the RTHK website in 2021). In each episode, actor Wong Hei, dressed in a police uniform, would emerge from a black trash bin and use a police-like tone to mock the Hong Kong Police Force’s actions during the 2019 social movement and the initial phase of the 2020 pandemic. This daring, humorous satire was both a deconstruction of official narratives and a challenge to authority. This explains why “Shock News” generated numerous complaints from Hong Kong citizens who supported the police, accusing it of tarnishing the force’s image. It is also why Headliner was the first to be forced off the air in June 2020, even before the National Security Law officially went into effect.

Due to its unique geographic location and historical ties, Hong Kong has long served as an important window for observing and reporting on Mainland China. Like many Hong Kong media outlets, RTHK frequently provided in-depth coverage of news from the Mainland.

Hong Kong Connection consistently produced related reports on the anniversary of June Fourth each year, recording the voices of victims’ families and investigating historical truth. On the 30th anniversary of June Fourth in 2019, Hong Kong Connection aired the five-episode “History of ’89,” which explored the event from multiple angles, including reflections on the collapse of Eastern European communist regimes and interviews with victims’ families, eyewitnesses, and those who commemorate June Fourth. RTHK’s focus on Mainland Chinese dissidents, such as its reporting on Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo, is especially invaluable among Chinese-language media.

The satire and humor in Headliner often incorporated Mainland Chinese popular sayings, and many criticisms directed at the Hong Kong government were also thinly veiled critiques of the Mainland’s authoritarian politics. Many RTHK programs made it clear that Hong Kong society had a sophisticated understanding of the nature of Communist Party rule, but this awareness ultimately could not avoid suppression under the pretext of national security.

Many of RTHK’s past news programs have become a vital first yet only draft of Hong Kong’s unfolding history. Removing these RTHK programs represents the authorities’ initial move to distort that history. The China Unofficial Archives hopes to safeguard these memories, which rightly belong to all of us, by joining hands with everyone who cares about preserving Hong Kong’s history and memories of freedom that are actively being erased.

China Unofficial Archives welcomes archival contributions from readers. If you have digital archives to share, please contact us via email at info@minjian-danganguan.org.

Recommended archives:

China Unofficial Archives RTHK Hong Kong Connection Backup

China Unofficial Archives RTHK Headliner Backup

China Unofficial Archives RTHK This Week Backup

Selected items from China Unofficial Archives’ Hong Kong Collection

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

作者：梁启智

By Leung Kai Chi

The English version follows below.

2021年12月，我离开自己生活40年的香港，来到台湾。如今，我在台湾的中央研究院从事香港研究和资料保存的工作。在香港巨变之后，今天我们如何在台湾留存香港记忆？每次我向公众讲述时，都会从几件T恤讲起——它们离开了香港，但每一件都与香港历史上一个重要时刻紧密相连。

过去，香港的社运人士、社区团体和公民社会组织，都习惯用T恤来纪念和表达，以及传递倡议。人们在集会和示威中，穿上这些T恤，表示彼此之间的团结与支持。许多团体也会售卖T恤筹募经费。随着时间推移，这些T恤成为香港曾经充满活力的公民社会象征，承载着集体记忆、政治参与，以及香港人的社群精神。

近几年来，随着香港政治生活巨变，这些T恤也没有了容身之所。不过如今在台湾中央研究院的香港资料库，你可以看到它们。这些T恤不仅串联起香港的故事，也反映出公民社会为保存香港档案的努力。

T恤上的历史转折：1989

很多时候，我的介绍会从1989年的一件T恤开始。

这件T恤出现在北京学生运动最高潮时期的香港。1989年的天安门运动，对香港而言，是一次深刻的民主觉醒，并在往后数十年间深深影响了香港的政治发展。

T恤上的文字“您好，请您下来！”看起来似乎十分温和。但其实，这是借用1984年的一句政治标语——1984年中国国庆阅兵期间，北京街头曾经出现一面写着“小平您好”的大型横额，表达民众对中国领导人邓小平的支持。到了1989年，这句话的意思被完全颠倒了过来。“您好，请您下来！”传达的是另一层意思：邓小平已经“待得太久”，中国人民如今希望他交出权力，退出政治舞台。

值得注意的是，T恤的上方写着Giordano，这是佐丹奴的英文名。佐丹奴是香港当时最著名的休闲服饰品牌之一，公司的创办人就是黎智英。黎智英后来创办了《苹果日报》，并使其成为香港最具影响力的民主派报章之一。1989年，黎智英只是一位商人，还不是媒体大亨。天安门运动深深触动了他，他决定公开表达立场，支持学生运动。他的故事，也反映了香港此后经历的巨大政治变迁。

2021年，《苹果日报》资产遭政府冻结而被迫停刊；黎智英其后亦因《香港国安法》及其他相关控罪遭到起诉，目前已在多宗案件中被判有罪，累计刑期达20年。

反基本法23条: 香港的公民参与“黄金年代”

我们收藏的一件T恤上，写着“反对23”，这里“23”指的是《香港基本法》第23条，也就是香港宪制文件中要求香港自行立法维护国家安全的条文。2003年，香港政​​府提出相关立法，以履行这项宪制责任。然而，无论是法案内容，还是政府处理咨询工作的方式，都迅速引发巨大争议。许多香港市民担心，这项法例将削弱公民自由，限制言论自由。

2003年7月1日，约50万香港市民走上街头抗议，成为香港历史上规模最大的示威之一。面对空前的民意压力，政府最终撤回法案。

许多人认为，这场抗争揭开了香港公民参与的“黄金年代”序幕。随后十多年里，大量公民社会组织、倡议团体及草根运动相继成立，共同塑造出一个充满活力、政治参与度极高的公共空间。

今天，我们已身处一个截然不同的时代。2020年，北京在香港实施《国安法》；2024年，香港政​​府亦根据《基本法》第23条完成本地国家安全立法。这两部法律共同彻底改变了香港的政治与公民社会面貌，也让今天的香港，与这件T恤诞生时所处的社会氛围形成鲜明对比。

T恤上的香港文化保育以及社区认同

在香港，并非所有抗议的运动都直接围绕着民主发展或宪政改革。有不少抗议运动，关注的是市民的日常生活，例如城市规划与都市更新。

我们收藏的一件“利东街”T恤就是如此。它印着一幅充满想像力的图像：一条鱼飞翔在利东街上空。这个街道有一个更被香港人熟知的名字——囍帖街。这里曾是香港著名的印刷街，但在2000年前后被政府纳入市区重建计划。

几十年来，香港市民都在这条街上印制喜帖、贺卡及各种传统礼仪用品。这条街不仅具有经济价值，也承载着深厚的文化意义。当政府宣布重建计划时，居民和关注者们并没有只要求提高赔偿金额。相反​​，他们提出了更深层的问题：城市究竟应该如何规划？他们要求保留社区网络、保存地方文化，让市民真正参与城市规划的决策过程。

今天看来，这些理念似乎十分理所当然，但在当时的香港，却是相当新的城市发展观念。这场运动也促使更多香港人开始思考文化保育、社区认同，以及以人为本的都市规划。从许多角度来看，它也象征着香港新一代都市社会运动的开端。

最终，行动未能阻止重建政府计划。利东街仍然遭到拆除，原址如今已变成商业购物区。然而，这场运动留下了深远的影响——它改变了许多香港人对于发展、社区，以及市民是否有权塑造自己生活环境的理解。

雨伞运动：持续79天 争取真普选

2014年，香港争取普选运动来到重要转折点——占领中环运动（Occupy Central），这场运动，在国际上更广为人知的名称是雨伞运动（Umbrella Movement）。

2014年8月31日，中国的全国人大公布了香港行政长官普选的框架。乍看之下，这似乎是一项重大进展，因为方案允许香港市民一人一票直接选举行政长官。然而，一项重要限制是：所有候选人都必须先经提名委员会批准，才能正式参选。许多香港市民认为，这套提名机制将使北京得以实际控制哪些人可以参选，所以并不是真正的普选。

在这样的背景下，占领中环运动爆发。自2014年9月底开始，示威者占领了香港多处主要道路及公共空间。整场占领行动持续了79天，成为香港历史上规模最大的公民抗命运动之一。

最终，政府提出的政改方案在立法会遭到否决。支持运动的人士认为，方案限制过多，无法接受；政府则认为，这是一条务实且可行的前进道路。结果，香港陷入了一场政治僵局——方案遭到否决，但新的改革方案也没有出现。香港距离普选并没有更进一步。

我们收藏的这件文物，正来自那个许多香港人仍相信民主改革近在咫尺的年代。回头来看，它既象征了香港民主理想的高峰，也象征着此后政治两极化与社会冲突逐渐加剧的开始。

2019反修例：香港历史上最大的公民抗命运动

2019年的反修例运动，可以说是香港历史上规模最大、影响最深远的公民抗命运动。

2019年初，香港政府提出《逃犯条例》修订，允许将刑事嫌疑人移交至香港没有正式引渡协议的司法管辖区，包括中国大陆。许多香港市民担心，这项修订将削弱香港与中国大陆司法制度之间原有的界线，而这种司法制度的分隔，长期以来一直被视为香港最重要的制度保障之一。反对声浪迅速扩大，2019年6月，一连串大型游行相继举行。

据主办单位估计，6月9日的游行有超过100万人参与，是香港历史上规模最大的示威之一。尽管有如此庞大的民意反对，政府最初仍然坚持推动修例。

就在社会气氛日益紧张之际，一名示威者梁凌杰攀上商场外的棚架抗议。结果他从高处坠下，其后伤重不治。许多人将他的离世视为香港政治危机的悲剧象征，也象征政府始终未能回应市民的诉求。

一星期后，更大规模的游行再次举行。主办单位估计，接近200万人参与。我们收藏的这件T恤正是为纪念那次游行而制作。上面的口号写着：“二百万零一人”。其中的“一”，指的正是梁凌杰。这句口号的意思是：即使他已离世，他的精神仍与所有参与者同行。通过在“二百万”之后加上“零一”，这句口号把原本的一个政治数字，转化为一种集体追思，也同时表达了香港人的悲伤与团结，成为整场运动中极具代表性的象征。

作为文物的香港T恤

2023年7月，设立于台湾中央研究院的香港研究资料库启动。资料库设立于社会学研究所的香港主题小组之下，如今已保存了超过100件与香港社会运动相关的T恤。

不过T恤只是香港研究资料库典藏的一部分。资料库同时收藏各类与香港研究相关的资料，包括书籍、小册子、传单、报章，以及期刊、影音资料、照片、海报，以及许多不同形式的研究素材。

因这些香港记忆的承载物正处于消逝之中，资料库所做的，其实是一份抢救工作。

香港政府近年大规模下架各种承载香港公民社会记忆的资料。例如由社运人士和反对派政治人物撰写的书籍，在各个公立图书馆被下架。又如各种官方的审计、调查和研究报告，也大规模地从政府网站上面消失。这改变不单限于政府部门，也延伸到大学校园。香港公营广播部门香港电台的纪录片，就在香港各大学的图书馆中下架。如果不尽快抢救，以后的研究者就不一定能看得到。

不仅仅是政府出版的资料面对消失的风险。过去数年，大批公民社会团体相继解散。他们过去收藏的资料，以及他们自己生产的资料，都面对着散失的巨大风险。

过去在网上可以随时下载取阅的资料，如今变成要在指定地点和预约时间取阅。另外，不少关心香港的学者和记者，已无法再进入香港境内，例如2023年10月，香港中文大学副教授何晓清就被香港政府拒绝入境。要让这些研究者有机会看到过去的资料，唯一的方法就是在香港境外建立备份。

在香港，也有不少潜在的资料捐赠者，他们也希望把资料捐到香港以外的地方去。因为一些可能被认为“敏感”的资料，如果捐到香港本地的博物馆或图书馆，很大可能会被闭架收藏，不被公开展出或让公众查阅，使收藏失去价值。

“很近，同时又很远”：在台湾收藏香港档案

我常觉得，台湾和香港很近，同时也很远。举例而言，今天很多台湾人是看香港的周星驰电影长大的，随便说一句电影里的台词，台湾人都能接下去。但同时，台湾人对香港也知之甚少，例如很多人不知道香港也使用繁体字。“很近，同时又很远”。这或许也可以显示在台湾推动香港研究的特点：有先天优势，但还有很多后天要努力的地方。

我们的调查发现，目前有4000多位香港学生在台湾的高等院校就读，早几年最高峰时，有9000多人。在台湾，每年生产出来的硕士和博士论文中，差不多有70篇以香港为题材，能看出，不少台湾学生对香港研究有兴趣，对研究资源有很大需求。但台湾几所主要大学，开设的香港相关课程并不多，学生了解香港的学习渠道相对有限。

在这些背景下，中央研究院社会所研究所成立了香港研究计划，推动台湾的香港研究。2023年，举办了“当香港研究走向全球”的国际研讨会，有75篇论文发表，300多人出席。2024年和2025年，又分别在东京和台北再次召开相关的会议。

研究计划的另一个重点，就是成立香港研究资料库，这可以算是香港研究的基础建设之一。

台湾是重要的华文出版基地。近年来，许多不能在香港出版的书在台湾出版，丰富了两地的学术交流。台湾本身是华文社会，处理香港研究材料本来就比较方便。当我们收到一箱香港议题的专书捐赠，交给台湾的图书馆便可以处理，因为他们都懂得华文。在其它地方，就有语言的门槛要跨过。当然，台湾的地理位置也很重要，两地距离很近，可以让不同的人得以见面，对推动研究工作十分有利。

T恤之外

目前，香港资料库登录的项目已经有3万多条。我们收集的资料重点，并不限于书，而是各种不同的资料，例如报告、档案，以及各种出版物等等。关注点是反映香港公民社会变迁，并专注寻找以下的材料：在各个界别有代表性的；纪录重大事件的；和已解散和正休眠的组织相关的；在香港的流通受到限制的，以及能代表一个时代的宏观政治和社会脉络的资料。

这些资料，有些从公开渠道收集，有些从二手书店购入，还有不少来自个人和专家的收藏。例如马岳教授是香港选举研究的权威，他所收藏的数以千计香港各届选举的选举宣传品，就全数捐赠了香港资料库。我们尤其要感谢那些匿名捐赠人。

我们收藏的不少书已在香港的公立图书馆下架。旧书能反映时代的，有一本是《中国共产党》，这本书是香港政府出版的。背景是1997年之前，当时候的香港政府公务员训练处，要向公务员介绍什么是中国共产党，就出版了这本书。

我们收藏教科书，比较新旧教科书的分别。我们也收集以社区为题材的出版，例如社区报，还有街头导赏等等。现在在香港喊“我爱香港”也变得敏感了，那么“我爱九龙”可不可以？“我爱沙田”又如何呢？于是就出现了一批地方书写的出版物。

有一些很有趣的收藏品，例如香港第一届行政长官选举的报名表。它对候选人提出身家调查，会问到父母、配偶、子女的情况。香港过去从来没有选举报名表会问这些问题。因为，一般香港的选举报名表都是香港政府自己制作，以前是港英政府，1997年后是特区政府。唯独这份行政长官选举的报名表，因为选举的时候特区政府还未成立，于是便由中国政府制作，内容也就很不一样了。

还有一份“车辆进入许可证”。香港的行政长官选举只有1000多人可以投票，一般都是和中国政府关系友好的大老板，所以也被批评为“小圈子选举”，这个许可证就是很好的说明。选举当天会场外会有很多人抗议，那些大老板是如何进去投票的呢？他们有司机开车，车上放这个许可证就可以进去了。

我们还收藏政府档案。英国档案处有上万份关于香港的档案，当中有1000多份被人在现场数位化了，送了给我们。英国档案处同意我们保留，只要不放上网。这样，大家就可以来台北看，不用专门飞去伦敦。

香港的很多非政府组织在过去几年纷纷解散，他们的出版物需要好好保留下来，让以后的研究者可以用到——例如每年六四维园晚会的场刊，我们就留存下来。

我们不只收集旧的东西。过去数年有数十万香港人移民到世界各地，我们就收藏有一整套香港人在加拿大参选国会议员的选举宣传品。

在我们收藏的文物中，除了100多件记录公民社会的T恤。还有各式各样襟章、海报等等。例如我们收藏有两个眼罩，是“占中三子”中的朱耀明和陈健民，在占领中环运动现场使用过的。这些文物，我们都会逐一登录和编号。

在今天的政治高压之下，关于香港公民社会的历史记忆正在流失，我们的目的不止在于收藏，也希望它们能“活”起来，流动起来——最近，这些T恤就正在台湾巡回展出。我们也正在酝酿网上博物馆，未来，会让一些资料在网上公开，让更多人可以看到。

（作者梁启智，曾在香港大学和香港中文大学任教，常年参与香港公民社会。现居台湾。本文由作者最近在美国季风书园的讲座内容整理。）

本期档案推荐：

台湾中央研究院香港研究资料库

梁启智著《香港第一课》

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

History Printed on Cotton: The Story Hong Kong’s Civil Society Told Through Iconic T-Shirts

By Leung Kai Chi

In December 2021, I left Hong Kong, where I had lived for 40 years, and came to Taiwan. Today, I work at Academia Sinica in Taiwan, focusing on Hong Kong research and archival preservation. In an era of profound change in Hong Kong, how do we preserve the memory of Hong Kong in Taiwan? Every time I speak to the public, I start by showing photos of a few T-shirts.

In the past, activists, community groups, and civil society organizations in Hong Kong were accustomed to using T-shirts to express, commemorate, and convey public advocacy. People wore these T-shirts during rallies and demonstrations to express mutual solidarity and support. Many groups also sold T-shirts to raise funds to sustain their organizational operations. Over time, these T-shirts became symbols of Hong Kong’s once-vibrant civil society, carrying collective memory, political participation, and the community spirit of Hong Kong people.

As Hong Kong’s political situation evolves, these T-shirts no longer have a place to stay. But in the Hong Kong Database at Academia Sinica in Taiwan, you can see them. These T-shirts not only connect the stories of Hong Kong but also reflect the efforts of civil society to preserve Hong Kong’s archives.

A Historical Turning Point on a T-Shirt

More often than not, my introduction begins with a T-shirt from 1989.

This T-shirt appeared in Hong Kong during the height of the student movement in Beijing. For Hong Kong, the 1989 Tiananmen movement was a profound democratic awakening, deeply influencing Hong Kong’s political development for decades to come.

The words on the T-shirt, “Hello, Please Step Down,” seem quite mild. But in fact, this was borrowed from a political slogan from 1984—during China’s National Day military parade in 1984, a large banner reading “Hello, Xiaoping” appeared on the streets of Beijing, expressing the public’s support for Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping. By 1989, the meaning of this phrase was completely turned upside down. “Hello, Please Step Down” conveyed another layer of meaning: Deng Xiaoping had stayed “for too long,” and the Chinese people now wanted him to hand over power and step down from the political stage.

Notably, the top of the T-shirt reads “Giordano.” Giordano was one of Hong Kong’s most famous casual wear brands at the time, and the company’s founder was Jimmy Lai. Jimmy Lai later founded Apple Daily, making it one of Hong Kong’s most influential pro-democracy newspapers. In 1989, Jimmy Lai was just a businessman, not yet a media tycoon. The Tiananmen movement deeply moved him, and he decided to publicly take a stand and support the student movement. His story also reflects the immense political changes that Hong Kong has experienced since then.

In 2021, Apple Daily was forced to cease operations after its assets were frozen by the government. Jimmy Lai was subsequently prosecuted under the Hong Kong National Security Law and other related charges; he has since been convicted in multiple cases, with a cumulative sentence reaching 20 years.

The Golden Age

On one of the T-shirts in our collection, it reads “Anti-23.” Here, “23” refers to Article 23 of the Hong Kong Basic Law, which is the provision in Hong Kong’s constitutional document requiring Hong Kong to enact its own laws to safeguard national security. In 2003, the Hong Kong government proposed relevant legislation to fulfill this constitutional responsibility. However, both the contents of the bill and the government’s handling of the consultation process quickly triggered immense controversy. Many Hong Kong citizens worried that this legislation would undermine civil liberties and restrict freedom of speech.

On July 1, 2003, around 500,000 Hong Kong citizens took to the streets in protest, becoming one of the largest demonstrations in Hong Kong’s history. Facing unprecedented pressure from public opinion, the government ultimately withdrew the bill.

Many believe that this struggle unveiled the prologue to Hong Kong’s “golden age” of civic participation. In the decade or so that followed, a vast number of civil society organizations, advocacy groups, and grassroots movements were established one after another, together shaping a vibrant public sphere with extremely high political engagement.

Today, we already find ourselves in a completely different era. In 2020, Beijing implemented the National Security Law in Hong Kong; in 2024, the Hong Kong government also completed local national security legislation in accordance with Article 23 of the Basic Law. Together, these two laws have fundamentally transformed the face of Hong Kong’s politics and civil society, creating a sharp contrast between today’s Hong Kong and the social atmosphere that created this T-shirt.

Cultural Conservation and Community Defense

In Hong Kong, not all protest movements revolved directly around democratic development or constitutional reform. Quite a few protest movements focused on the daily lives of citizens, such as urban planning and urban renewal.

This is exactly the case with a “Lee Tung Street” T-shirt in our collection. It is printed with a highly imaginative image: a fish flying over Lee Tung Street. This street has a name better known to Hong Kong people—Wedding Card Street. It was once Hong Kong’s famous printing street, but around the year 2000, it was incorporated into the urban redevelopment plan by the government.

For decades, Hong Kong citizens printed wedding invitations, greeting cards, and various traditional ceremonial items on this street. This street possessed not only economic value but also carried deep cultural significance. When the government announced the redevelopment plan, residents and activists did not merely demand higher compensation. Instead, they raised deeper questions: how should a city actually be planned? They demanded the preservation of community networks, the protection of local culture, and genuine public participation in the decision-making process of urban planning.

Looking back today, these concepts seem entirely natural, but in the Hong Kong of that time, they were quite new ideas for urban development. This movement also prompted more Hong Kong people to start thinking about cultural conservation, community identity, and people-oriented urban planning. From many perspectives, it also symbolized the beginning of a new generation of urban social movements in Hong Kong.

Ultimately, the actions failed to stop the government’s redevelopment plan. Lee Tung Street was demolished, and its original site has now become a commercial shopping district. However, this movement left a profound impact—it changed how many Hong Kong people understood development, community, and whether citizens have the right to shape their own living environment.

The 79-Day Struggle for Universal Suffrage

In 2014, Hong Kong’s movement for universal suffrage reached an important turning point—the Occupy Central movement, which is more widely known internationally as the Umbrella Movement.

On August 31, 2014, China’s National People’s Congress announced the framework for the universal suffrage of Hong Kong’s Chief Executive. At first glance, this seemed to be a major development, as the proposal allowed Hong Kong citizens to directly elect the Chief Executive on a one-person, one-vote basis. However, an important restriction was that all candidates had to be approved by a nomination committee before they could formally run. Many Hong Kong citizens believed that this nomination mechanism would enable Beijing to effectively control who could run for office, so it was not genuine universal suffrage.

Against this background, the Occupy Central movement erupted. Beginning in late September 2014, protesters occupied major roads and public spaces in several parts of Hong Kong. The entire occupation lasted for 79 days, becoming one of the largest civil disobedience movements in Hong Kong’s history.

Ultimately, the political reform package proposed by the government was voted down in the Legislative Council. Supporters of the movement believed the proposal was too restrictive and unacceptable; the government, on the other hand, argued that it represented a pragmatic and feasible path forward. As a result, Hong Kong fell into a political stalemate—the package was rejected, but no new reform proposal emerged. Hong Kong was no closer to universal suffrage.

This artifact in our collection comes precisely from an era when many Hong Kong people still believed that democratic reform was within reach. Looking back, it symbolizes both the peak of Hong Kong’s democratic aspirations and the beginning of a period where political polarization and social conflict gradually intensified.

The 2019 Anti-Extradition Bill Movement

The 2019 anti-extradition bill movement can be described as the largest and most far-reaching civil disobedience movement in Hong Kong’s history.

In early 2019, the Hong Kong government proposed amendments to the Fugitive Offenders Ordinance, which would allow criminal suspects to be transferred to jurisdictions with which Hong Kong had no formal extradition agreements, including mainland China. Many Hong Kong citizens worried that this amendment would erode the existing boundary between the legal systems of Hong Kong and mainland China—a separation that had long been regarded as one of Hong Kong’s most vital institutional safeguards. Waves of opposition expanded rapidly, and in June 2019, a series of massive rallies took place.

According to organizers’ estimates, the march on June 9 drew over one million participants, making it one of the largest demonstrations in Hong Kong’s history. Despite such immense public opposition, the government initially insisted on pushing forward with the legislative amendments.

Amidst the increasingly tense social atmosphere, a protester named Leung Ling-kit climbed onto a scaffold outside a shopping mall to protest against the bill. Consequently, he fell from a height and later succumbed to his severe injuries. Many people viewed his passing as a tragic symbol of Hong Kong’s political crisis, and a symbol of the government’s persistent failure to respond to citizens’ demands.

A week later, an even larger march took place. Organizers estimated that nearly two million people participated. This T-shirt in our collection was produced precisely to commemorate that march. The slogan on it reads: “Two Million and One.” The “one” refers precisely to Leung Ling-kit. The meaning of this slogan is: even though he has passed away, his spirit still marches alongside all the participants. By adding “and one” after “two million,” this slogan transformed what was originally a political statistic into an act of collective remembrance, while simultaneously expressing the grief and solidarity of Hong Kong people, becoming a highly representative symbol of the entire movement.

When Memories Become Artifacts

The Hong Kong Research Database at Academia Sinica was launched in July 2023, and today it has preserved over 100 T-shirts related to Hong Kong’s social movements.

T-shirts are only a small part of the entire collection. The database simultaneously houses all kinds of materials relevant to Hong Kong studies, including books, pamphlets, leaflets, newspapers, journals, audiovisual materials, photographs, posters, and many other forms of research materials.

As they are in the process of disappearing, this is, in fact, a rescue mission.

In recent years, the Hong Kong government has removed large quantities of various materials that carry the memory of Hong Kong’s civil society. For example, books written by social activists and opposition political figures have been removed from public libraries. Similarly, various official audit, investigation, and research reports have also disappeared from government websites on a large scale. This change is not limited to government departments but extends to university campuses as well. Documentaries from Radio Television Hong Kong, the city’s public broadcaster, have been removed from libraries across Hong Kong’s universities. If we do not act quickly to rescue them, future researchers may not necessarily be able to access them.

It is not only government-published materials that face the risk of disappearing. Over the past several years, a large number of civil society groups have disbanded one after another. The materials they collected in the past, as well as the materials they produced themselves, face a massive risk of being scattered and lost.

Materials that could previously be downloaded and accessed online at any time have now become accessible only at designated locations and by appointment. Furthermore, many scholars and journalists who care about Hong Kong can no longer enter Hong Kong territory; for instance, in October 2023, Associate Professor Rowena He of the Chinese University of Hong Kong was denied entry by the Hong Kong government. To give these researchers the opportunity to see past materials, the only way is to establish a backup outside of Hong Kong.

In Hong Kong, there are also many potential donors who wish to donate materials to places outside Hong Kong. This is because some materials that might be considered “sensitive,” if donated to local museums or libraries in Hong Kong, would very likely be placed in closed stacks, hidden from public exhibition or public access, causing the collection to lose its value.

“Very Close, Yet Very Far Away”: Archiving of Hong Kong in Taiwan

I often feel that Taiwan and Hong Kong are very close, yet at the same time, very far away. For example, many Taiwanese people today grew up watching Stephen Chow’s Hong Kong movies; if you quote any random line from a movie, a Taiwanese person can immediately follow it up. But at the same time, Taiwanese people actually know very little about Hong Kong—for instance, many do not even know that Hong Kong also uses traditional Chinese characters. “Very close, yet very far away.” This perhaps illustrates the characteristics of promoting Hong Kong studies in Taiwan: there are inherent advantages, but there is still much work to be done.

Our survey found that there are currently more than 4,000 Hong Kong students studying at higher education institutions in Taiwan, down from a peak of over 9,000 a few years ago. In Taiwan, among the master’s and doctoral theses produced each year, about 70 focus on Hong Kong. It is clear that quite a few Taiwanese students are interested in Hong Kong studies, creating a significant demand for research resources. Yet, major universities in Taiwan offer relatively few Hong Kong-related courses, leaving students with limited channels to learn about and understand Hong Kong.

Against this background, the Institute of Sociology at Academia Sinica established the Hong Kong Studies Program to promote Hong Kong studies in Taiwan. In 2023, it hosted the international conference “When Hong Kong Studies Go Global,” where 75 papers were presented and over 300 people attended. In 2024 and 2025, related conferences were held again in Tokyo and Taipei respectively.

Another core focus of the research program is the establishment of the Hong Kong Research Database, which can be considered part of the basic infrastructure for Hong Kong studies.

Taiwan is an important center for Chinese-language publishing. In recent years, many books that could not be published in Hong Kong have been published in Taiwan instead, enriching the academic exchange between the two places. Taiwan itself is a Chinese-speaking society, making it inherently more convenient to handle Hong Kong research materials. When we receive a box of donated books specializing in Hong Kong topics, we can simply hand them over to a Taiwanese library for processing because they understand Chinese. In other places, there is a language barrier to overcome. Of course, Taiwan’s geographical location is also vital; the close proximity between the two places allows different people to meet, which is highly beneficial for advancing research work.

Beyond T-Shirts

Currently, the items logged in the Hong Kong database have already exceeded 30,000. The focus of our collection is not limited to books, but spans a wide variety of materials, such as reports, archives, and various publications. Our focus is on reflecting changes in Hong Kong’s civil society, and we concentrate on searching for the following materials: those that are representative of various sectors; those that document major historical events; those related to organizations that have disbanded or become dormant; those whose circulation is restricted in Hong Kong; and materials that represent the macro political and social context of an era.

Some of these materials were collected through public channels, some were purchased from second-hand bookstores, and quite a few came from the personal collections of individuals and experts. For instance, Professor Ma Ngok is a leading authority on Hong Kong election studies; he donated his entire collection of thousands of campaign materials from various Hong Kong elections to us. We would especially like to thank those anonymous donors.

Many of the books in our collection have already been removed from Hong Kong’s public libraries. Among the old books that reflect their era, there is one titled The Chinese Communist Party, which was published by the Hong Kong government. The background is that before 1997, the Civil Service Training Division of the Hong Kong government at the time needed to introduce civil servants to what the Chinese Communist Party was, so they published this book.

We collect textbooks to compare the differences between old and new editions. We also collect publications themed around local communities, such as community newspapers, street-guided tours, and so forth. Nowadays, even shouting “I love Hong Kong” has become sensitive in Hong Kong, so is “I love Kowloon” acceptable? What about “I love Sha Tin”? Consequently, a wave of publications focused on local writing has emerged.

There are some very interesting items in our collection, such as the application form for Hong Kong’s first Chief Executive election. It required a background check on the candidates, asking about the status of their parents, spouses, and children. In the past, no election application form in Hong Kong had ever asked such questions. This is because ordinary Hong Kong election application forms were always produced by the Hong Kong government itself—the British colonial government before 1997, and the SAR government after 1997. This specific Chief Executive election application form was unique because the SAR government had not yet been established at the time of the election; therefore, it was produced by the Chinese government, making its contents very different.

There is also a “Vehicle Entry Permit.” Only a little over 1,000 people could vote in Hong Kong’s Chief Executive elections, and they were generally big bosses with friendly relations with the Chinese government, which is why it was criticized as a “small-circle election.” This permit is an excellent illustration of that. On election day, there would be many people protesting outside the venue; how did those big bosses get inside to cast their votes? They had drivers to chauffeur them, and by placing this permit in the car, they could simply drive straight in.

We also collect government archives. The UK National Archives holds over ten thousand files related to Hong Kong, and over a thousand of them were digitized on-site by individuals and gifted to us. The UK National Archives agreed to let us keep them, as long as we do not put them online. This way, everyone can come to Taipei to look at them instead of having to fly specifically to London.

Many non-governmental organizations in Hong Kong have disbanded over the past few years, and their publications need to be well-preserved so that future researchers can use them—for instance, we have preserved the annual programs from the June Fourth candlelight vigils in Victoria Park.

We do not only collect old things; we collect new things as well. Over the past few years, hundreds of thousands of Hong Kong people have migrated to all parts of the world, and we have collected a complete set of campaign materials from a Hong Kong immigrant running for parliament in Canada.

Among the artifacts in our collection, besides the 100-odd T-shirts documenting civil society, there are also various badges, posters, and so on. For instance, we have a pair of goggles used at the site of the Occupy Central movement by Reverend Chu Yiu-ming, one of the leaders of the movement. Every piece of data we collect is individually cataloged and assigned a unique number.

In archiving these fading historical memories, we hope that these materials are not merely stored away, but can “come alive” and circulate. Recently, these T-shirts have been on a touring exhibition across Taiwan. Next, we will also launch an online museum to make some materials publicly accessible online, so that more people can see them.

Recommended archive:

Hong Kong Research Database at Academia Sinica

Leung Kai Chi: Hong Kong: Lesson One

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：费常道

By Fei Changdao

The English translation follows below.

2026年5月16日，北京什刹海附近的南门涮肉馆。80岁的张德华一边喝茶，一边等待着和两位老友聚会，祝贺他的八十岁生日。

老张没有等来他的朋友——老刘和老郑先后打来电话，说警察警告他们：当天不能聚会。因为60年前的那天，是中共中央发表“五一六通知”，宣布文化大革命正式开始的日子。

看来这生日是过不成了。老张掐指算算，接下来就是6月4日“天安门事件”纪念日，然后是“七一”（共产党的生日），再接下来，是文革的几个重要纪念日——对党来说，都是敏感日子。事实上，就像本文作者在全国范围内的寻访所发现的一样——2026年，中国针对文革信息的管控，以及相关的思想镇压，正在普遍地发生着，且并无掩饰。

消音文革：罚款查抄、警察上门、子女连坐

张德华的遭遇在习近平的中国并不罕见。1966年爆发、1976年结束的文化大革命，隔着六十年的光阴，至今依影响着今天中国人的生活。

在老张被禁止和朋友聚会的13天后，2026年5月29日，居住在广西柳州市、75岁的韦文德，接到了当地政府对他的《行政处罚决定书》。韦文德因为在微信里向读者介绍《难忘的岁月——广西柳州文革纪实》一书，被柳州公安局找上门，不仅被没收了手里的114本书，还被罚款8000元人民币。印刷这本书的工厂，则被政府罚款15万元。

韦文德收到的这份《行政处罚决定书》称：“2025年8月，我局接到举报，称此书内容涉政、涉文革，疑似违禁书籍，我局向自治区新闻出版局申请鉴定该图书样本是否存在违禁内容。2025年8月27日，该局出具鉴定书，证实此书含有损害国家荣誉和利益等国家禁止的内容，属于违禁出版物……”

事实是，这本书于2013年8月由中国文史出版社出版，书中根据广西政府的内部机密档案与亲历者回忆，记录了文革期间柳州地区的派系斗争及其它重大历史事件，对地方史的研究有重要价值。

2026年是文革爆发60周年。60周年在中国被称做一个甲子。中国传统史观认为，历史是在治与乱之间周期性的循环，每个甲子初年的到来，都意味着循环的开始。 或许因为这种周期重启、历史更替的含义，加之当下中国高压的政治环境，当局的信息管控比往年更为严厉——纪念文革60周年的言论，则成为重中之重——所有的维稳部门都积极行动起来，试图将一切可疑的苗头掐死在萌芽状态。

清华大学的退休教授孙怒涛和他的同事，用了近十年的时间，呕心沥血，编辑了14卷本的《清华大学文革资料》一书，收集了大量资料，记录下毛泽东如何以权谋对待知识分子，以及清华大学师生在文革中付出的鲜血与冤屈。但此书即将推出时，主编受到了官方严厉的警告——不准传播、出版。孙怒涛也是《良知的拷问——一个清华文革头头的心路历程》、《凝固的生命——清华文革死难者实录》等书的作者。

其实，早在2016年，文革爆发50周年的时候，中国体制内包括在大学和研究院所的文革学者，已几乎被完全控制住了。让当局头疼的是，民间的文革研究者分散在全国各地，且大部分都是退休人员，他们中的很多人，虽然年逾古稀，仍旧在抢救记忆——从搜集文革资料到撰写文革回忆，从发表研究论文，到出版文革书籍。为了控制他们，主管部门通过当地党的宣传部门和地方的的公安局和派出所，对他们实施监控甚至上门胁迫。

以家住陕西宝鸡的章铎女士为例。章出生于1944年，1963年考入北大生物系，毕业后长期在陕西宝鸡有色金属加工厂工作。作为一位民间历史学者，她用30年的时间，收集资料，研究母校北京大学的文革史，引起官方的恐慌。2016年起，当地四个部门对她实行监控。她所在单位的党委、公安保卫处，以及宝鸡市宣传部、扫黄打非办公室，还有她所在小区的片警和居委会主任，几乎每周都会敲开家门，要求她停止收集资料，或交出写好的书稿，并警告她不得在境外发表——理由是“会被境外反动势力利用，煽动国内的不满情绪。”

据笔者调查，面对官方的骚扰，章铎曾拿出1981年邓小平公布的彻底否定文革的《历史决议》（即《中国共产党中央委员会关于建国以来党的若干历史问题的决议》），据理力争，但没有起到什么作用。警方依然查扣她的快递；她外出受到跟踪；经常为她开车的司机告诉她，上面要求他报告她的行踪，以及与什么人来往。面对这些，章女士不肯让步，党委就用切断退休金来威胁她。看她仍然不为所动，当地警方找到她在北京工作的儿子和女儿，让他们出面劝说母亲——如果母亲不听，他们会被炒鱿鱼。

顶住重重压力，章女士于2020年通过美国华忆出版社，自费出版了《北京大学文革资料选编》（全三册）；2022年又出版了《北京大学文革资料续编》、《北京大学文革研究文选》以及上下两卷本的《北京大学文革史榷》。2024年，章女士患病去世，当地宣传部、北京大学党委和陕西警方终于松了一口气。

在中国，维稳的全面性和有效性，让一个即使已熟知监控存在的人也会震惊——不管你是在广西的四线城市，还是内蒙古的草原；不管是退休的老人，还是正在上大学的学生；不管你是回忆录的写作者，还是病危老人的采访者，如果你开始试图自己去寻访或研究历史，就会得到官方精准的“关照”——在北京，作家陈先生出了两本关于毛时代的书，为学界所重，官方随即叫停了他查阅档案的资格，并将他的另外两本书列为禁书。

据笔者调查，今年5月，文革“五一六通知”发布60周年纪念日的前夕，三位上了年纪的女士，只因在微信里讨论“西方的一些学术研究误解了文革派系的性质”，就招来警察登门造访。被警察谈话时，她们才发现，自己的人生经历、家人信息，以及日常购物、看病的生活细节，警方都了如指掌。

类似事件并非只发生在北京、上海等大城市。据笔者调查，在山东临沂，早年毕业于山东大学的钟先生，花费五年心血，写了一本文革回忆录，托朋友在海外出版，但书到手仅一周，就被当地的文化执法大队上门没收，在他再三恳求下，执法者给他留下了一本；在河北邯郸，王女士在海外出版了一本造反派口述，就遭到当地警方的连番审讯，书被查没，一本也没给她留下；在云南，一位七旬老太在香港跟某位出版商吃了一顿饭，回到昆明的当晚，就被警察从被窝里叫起来，盘问到半夜——为了当事人的安全，笔者只能在此隐去他们的名字。

据了解，这些民间历史学者，虽然住在不同的地方，但在被官方约谈或警察调查时，他们都会被要求“三不准”：不准传播文革信息；不准出版文革书籍；不准见外国记者。

中国式维稳：从大学、出版社、海关到街头打印店

本文作者长期从事历史研究工作，深知中共对文革研究领域的管控其实从未放松过——自1976年文革结束，毛泽东夫人江青沦为阶下囚，中共就意识到，中国人对文革的回望与质疑，可能动摇他们的合法性基础。

1978年启动改革开放之后，中共在学术层面曾一度鼓励探索、讨论历史与理论问题（包括敏感议题），但也一直强调政治方向与意识形态边界。1989年“六四”事件之后，中共进一步认识到，文革是自身合法性的命门，如果研究无禁区，就会动摇主流的政治叙事。

所以，从邓时代对文革研究的有限开放，到江胡时代的“研究无禁区，发表有纪律”，再到习近平时代的“研究有禁区，发表不允许”。可以说， 对文革研究的管控，一直是中共思想言论管控的重点。

2012年底习近平上台后，在媒体、出版、印刷、网络、海关的多重监控之下，文革研究更成了不可触碰的红线。出版社、互联网、印刷厂甚至打印店都成了重点监控对象。

1997年以后，中国的民办印刷厂必须有官方开出的“准印许可证”才能印书。对于民间的回忆录、家史、传记、画册、摄影集等，官方要求印厂将委托人的各种信息登记在案。

2000年代中后期，公安系统将印刷业列入“特种行业管理”之中，街头的快印店也成为管控对象。公安要求店主张贴《警示公告》，这类公告的内容包括：“严禁印刷含有反动、煽动颠覆国家政权、危害国家安全、泄露国家秘密的内容。”以及“严禁印刷国家明令禁止出版、印刷的其他非法内容。”这意味着，那些谈论毛时代历史的文本，都无法在快印店打印或复制出来。

对印刷业的经营者来说，在本职工作之外，他们还要承担验证、登记、保管、交付和残次品销毁等义务。经营者还有义务向公安部门报告——中宣部下属的“扫黄打非办公室”规定，凡举报非法印刷物的，可获得10万元以上的奖励，重大案件能达到或超过20万。违反规定的，则将面临停业整顿、罚款、吊销许可证等处罚，还可能坐牢。2024年，北京海淀图书城“家谱传记图书公司”的创办人涂金灿先生，因承印了海外某华人的回忆录，据称已被判3年半有期徒刑。如今不仅公司关门，职工星散，为其他客户印刷的书籍也被封存。

公安局下属的“文化执法大队”会突击检查快印店，一旦发现所谓的违纪违规，轻则罚款，重则停业。在敏感时期（如六四、文革周年、两会、领导人（如江泽民、李克强）逝世等），公安片警、文化执法大队和扫黄打非办会全体出动，上门检查，提醒快印店经营者不得打印控告信、上访材料和任何政治敏感的内容。

不屈服的民间历史研究者：沉井三百年又如何？

2002年8月5日，北京人朱元涛从香港返回北京时，首都机场海关查扣了他从香港购买的高华著作《红太阳是怎样升起的——延安整风运动的来龙去脉》，称这本书是“禁止入境物品”，对朱予以行政处罚，没收该书。

朱元涛为此状告首都机场海关，向北京市第二中级人民法院提起行政诉讼，官司一直打到北京高院。2003年9月，北京高院宣判，朱元涛胜诉。尽管朱最终没有拿回自己的书，但此案表明，在江胡时代，法院还有一点可怜的独立性——至少公民还能通过诉讼挑战官方的禁书行为。

到了习时代，这样的事情已经不可能发生——海关往往以“内部掌握”、“印刷品审查”和“敏感内容”为由，任意查没图书，而被扣书的人已不再寄希望法院保护自己的权利。

2013年10月，原中组部常务副部长李锐的女儿李南央，从香港返京，被海关扣押了50多本香港出版的《李锐口述往事》。李南央再三交涉无果，将海关告上了法庭。北京市中级法院接案后，一直拒不开庭审理，至今已经13年。李南央催问北京法院开庭审理的信已达百封，她戏称此事可上“吉尼斯大全”。李锐作为中共元老，其回忆录仍被视为禁书，说明习时代言论审查的任意性和扩大化。

2024年，年过八旬的陈吟吟用了20年时间，完成了一部记录家族四代人经历的百万字著作，名为《夜吟应觉月光寒》。因国内出版无望，作者自费交美国的世界华语出版社出版。2024年11月，沈阳邮政海关收到了这家出版社寄来的18套样书（每套三册，共计54本）后，以书中有敏感内容为由，全部没收。陈吟吟从北京三次前往千里之外的沈阳海关交涉，在她“上访”和“上网”的威胁下，海关被迫把书退还她。但到她手里的，只有书的前两册，涉及到毛时代的第三册拒不退还。

从李、陈两位的遭遇可以看到，习时代的言论控制已从“特定禁书”扩大到所有涉及毛时代的印刷品。个人家史或回忆录成了禁区，而且审查机构一视同仁，无论是中共元老还是退休老者都不会放过。法院的独立性全无，行政权力成为绝对强势的存在。

而与此同时，官方对大学的控制更是变本加厉。2010年，中国高校已达到3100多所，其中200多所设有人文综合专业。这些大学曾有学者关注文革，也出版过一些有独立见解的学术著作，但如今，关于文革的论文和著作根本无法发表和出版，硕博研究生在选择课题时，也自觉远离毛时代的主题。

而官方的株连政策，更扩大了这一灾难性后果——在海外发表文革文章，或文革著作的教师或研究人员，不但本人要受到行政处罚，其所在的学校也可能受到株连——减少拨款，压缩课题。例如一向敢言的资中筠女士，她所在的单位（中国社会科学院美国研究所）就得到了有司明确的警告——如果资女士再发表言论，美国研究所的科研经费将大幅度减少，研究人员将被限制出国访学。

高压之下，如今的中国高校，文革研究成为绝响，其应有的功能丧失殆尽。如今只有一南一北两所大学——北京大学国史中心和华东师范大学当代史资料中心，还在小心翼翼地做着与文革沾边的工作，但也仅限于收集资料。文革研究的重任落在了民间学者肩上——例如，甘肃天水一对夫妇，退休后致力于历史研究，一直是《记忆》杂志的作者，老两口被当地严密管控，在外地工作的子女都受到威胁，但他们并不屈服——如今，老先生已经去世，但他身后留下了和妻子合著的十本书，四本资料集。

宋朝末年，写下《铁函心史》一书的学者郑思肖，因著述无法出版，曾用铁函将书封存，沉入深井，一直到300多年后的明朝，书才被人发现。郑思肖曾留下一首诗，后两句是“宁可枝头抱香死，何曾吹落北风中”。今天中国的这些民间历史学者，他们可能无法看到凝聚自己心血的书出版，但他们和郑思肖一样，也有把作品“沉井三百年”的意志。

（本文作者为历史研究学者。为保护受访者，部分信息做了处理。）

本期推荐档案：

《记忆》杂志（中国民间档案馆已收藏300余期，欢迎查看、收藏、分享）

《良知的拷问——一个清华文革头头的心路历程》（孙怒涛）

《凝固的生命——清华文革死难者实录》（孙怒涛）

《北京大学文革史榷》 （胡宗式 章铎）

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

From Universities and Customs to Copy Shops: How China Silences the Memories of the Cultural Revolution

By Fei Changdao

On May 16, 2026, at the Nanmen Hot Pot Restaurant near Shichahai in Beijing, eighty-year-old Zhang Dehua sipped his tea. He was waiting to meet two old friends to celebrate his eightieth birthday.

But Old Zhang waited in vain. Instead of his friends arriving, Old Liu and Old Zheng called him one after the other to report that the police had warned them not to gather that day. Exactly sixty years earlier, on that very date, the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party had issued the “May 16 Notification,” marking the official start of the Cultural Revolution.

It was clear the birthday celebration was ruined. Counting the days on his fingers, Old Zhang realized that the June 4 anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown was just around the corner, followed by the Party’s anniversary on July 1, and then several key anniversaries of the Cultural Revolution—all highly sensitive dates for the regime. Indeed, as the author of this article discovered during travels across the country, pervasive and blatant state control over information regarding the Cultural Revolution, along with accompanying ideological crackdowns, has reached unprecedented levels in 2026.

Silencing the Cultural Revolution: Fines, Home Raids, Police Harassment, and Punishing the Next Generation

Zhang Dehua’s experience is far from unique in Xi Jinping’s China. Sixty years after it began, the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976) continues to cast a long shadow over the daily lives of the Chinese people.

On May 29, 2026—just thirteen days after Old Zhang was barred from meeting his friends—75-year-old Wei Wende, a resident of Liuzhou in Guangxi, received an official Administrative Penalty Decision from the local government. Wei’s offense was sharing an introduction to the book Unforgettable Years: A Record of the Cultural Revolution in Liuzhou, Guangxi on WeChat. Local public security officers raided his home, confiscated 114 copies of the book, and fined him 8,000 RMB. The printing house that produced the book was hit with a 150,000 RMB government fine.

According to the Administrative Penalty Decision, “In August 2025, our bureau received a report that this book contained politically sensitive material regarding the Cultural Revolution and was suspected of being a banned publication. We requested an official appraisal of the book from the regional Press and Publication Bureau. On August 27, 2025, the bureau issued its assessment, confirming that the book contains content prohibited by the state—such as harming national honor and interests—and is therefore a banned publication.”

In reality, the book had been published back in August 2013 by the official China Culture and History Press. Based on confidential internal archives of the Guangxi government and firsthand accounts, the book documented factional struggles and other major historical events in the Liuzhou region during the Cultural Revolution, making it an invaluable resource for local history.

The year 2026 marks the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, a milestone known in China as a jiazi, a full sixty-year cycle. Traditional Chinese historiography views history as a cyclical progression between order and chaos, meaning the start of a new jiazi symbolizes a potential reset of the cycle. Likely driven by the symbolic weight of historical recurrence and the current high-pressure political climate, the authorities have tightened information control more aggressively than in previous years. Suppressing any commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution has become a top priority, with security agencies working tirelessly to nip any suspicious activities in the bud.

Sun Nutao, a retired professor from Tsinghua University, spent nearly a decade working alongside colleagues to compile the 14-volume Historical Materials of the Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University. The collection contains vast documentation of how Mao Zedong manipulated intellectuals and records the immense suffering and bloodshed endured by Tsinghua’s faculty and students. Yet, just as the book was prepared for release, the chief editor was handed a stern official warning: the material must not be distributed or published. Sun is also the author of An Interrogation of Conscience: The Journey of a Tsinghua Cultural Revolution Rebel Leader and Solidified Life: Records of the Victims of the Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University.

By 2016, during the 50th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution, establishment scholars at Chinese universities and research institutes had already been silenced. What continues to frustrate the authorities, however, are the independent, grassroots historians scattered across the country. Though most are retired and well into their seventies, they remain dedicated to preserving historical memory—collecting raw materials, writing memoirs, publishing research papers, and printing books. To rein them in, the state deploys local Party propaganda departments, public security bureaus, and local police stations to monitor them and conduct intimidating home visits.

Consider Ms. Zhang Duo of Baoji, Shaanxi Province. Born in 1944, Zhang was admitted to the Biology Department of Peking University in 1963 and spent her career at a non-ferrous metal processing plant in Baoji. As a grassroots historian, she spent thirty years gathering materials to document the Cultural Revolution at Peking University, a project that deeply unnerved the authorities. Starting in 2016, four separate government departments placed her under surveillance. Representatives from her former employer’s Party committee, the security department, the Baoji Municipal Propaganda Department, the local “Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publications” office, the neighborhood beat cop, and the community committee director knocked on her door almost weekly. They demanded she stop collecting materials, order her to hand over her manuscripts, and warned her against publishing overseas, claiming her work “would be weaponized by hostile foreign forces to stir up domestic discontent.”

The author’s investigation revealed that during these confrontations, Zhang Duo would try to argue her case using the 1981 “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the PRC”—the official document under Deng Xiaoping that thoroughly condemned the Cultural Revolution—but her efforts were in vain. The police intercepted her mail, tailed her whenever she left home, and pressured her regular driver into reporting her daily movements and associates to his superiors. When Ms. Zhang refused to back down, the Party committee threatened to cut off her pension. When that failed to move her, the police targeted her son and daughter, who were working in Beijing, warning them to convince their mother to stop or face being fired from their jobs.

Despite the intense pressure, Ms. Zhang persevered. In 2020, she self-funded the publication of the three-volume Selected Materials on the Cultural Revolution of Peking University through the U.S.-based Remembering Publishing. In 2022, she followed up with Sequel to the Materials on the Cultural Revolution of Peking University, Selected Research Papers on the Cultural Revolution of Peking University, and the two-volume A Study of the Cultural Revolution History of Peking University. When Ms. Zhang passed away from an illness in 2024, the local propaganda department, the Peking University Party committee, and the Shaanxi police finally breathed a sigh of relief.

The sheer scale and efficiency of China’s stability-maintenance apparatus would shock even those well-accustomed to state surveillance. Whether you reside in a fourth-tier city in Guangxi or on the grasslands of Inner Mongolia; whether you are a retired senior or a university student; whether you are writing a memoir or simply interviewing a dying elder, the moment you begin researching history independently, you receive highly targeted official attention. In Beijing, after a writer named Mr. Chen published two highly acclaimed books on the Mao era, the authorities immediately revoked his access to historical archives and banned his other two books.

According to the author’s investigation, in May of this year, on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the “May 16 Notification,” three elderly women were visited by police simply for discussing on WeChat how “some Western academic research misunderstands the nature of Cultural Revolution factions.” During their interrogation, they were horrified to discover that the police possessed detailed files on their lives, family members, and even their daily shopping and medical records.

Such incidents are not confined to major hubs like Beijing and Shanghai. In Linyi, Shandong, a Shandong University alumnus named Mr. Zhong spent five years writing a Cultural Revolution memoir and had a friend publish it overseas. Within a week of receiving his copies, the local cultural enforcement squad raided his home and confiscated them all, leaving him with a single copy only after he begged them. In Handan, Hebei, Ms. Wang was subjected to repeated police interrogations and had all her books seized, without even a single copy returned, after she published an oral history of rebel factions overseas. In Yunnan, a seventy-year-old woman who met a publisher for dinner in Hong Kong was awoken in her Kunming home by police the night she returned and interrogated until midnight. To protect their safety, their real names have been omitted.

Despite living in different parts of the country, these independent historians all faced the same “Three No’s” mandate during their interrogations and official chats: no distributing information about the Cultural Revolution, no publishing books on the subject, and no meetings with foreign journalists.

The Machinery of Stability Maintenance: From Universities and Publishers to Customs and Copy Shops

As a long-time historian, I know that the Chinese Communist Party’s grip on Cultural Revolution research has never actually loosened. Ever since the movement ended in 1976 and Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing, was imprisoned, the Party has recognized that public reflection and questioning of the era could undermine its very legitimacy.

During the early days of reform and opening up in 1978, the Party occasionally tolerated academic debates on sensitive historical and theoretical issues, but always maintained strict ideological boundaries. Following the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, the Party realized that the Cultural Revolution was a critical vulnerability. If research were left unrestricted, it would inevitably threaten the official historical narrative.

Consequently, control over the subject has evolved from the limited academic openness of the Deng Xiaoping era, to the Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao era’s policy of “no forbidden zones for research, but strict discipline for publication,” and finally to the Xi Jinping era’s policy of “forbidden zones for research, and no publication permitted.” Suppressing Cultural Revolution research has remained a central pillar of the Party’s ideological control.

Since Xi Jinping took power in late 2012, this research has become an absolute red line, policed through a multi-layered apparatus spanning media, publishing, printing, the Internet, and customs. Publishing houses, online platforms, printing factories, and even local copy shops are now subject to rigorous surveillance.

Since 1997, private printing houses in China have been required to obtain an official permit for every book they print. For independent memoirs, family histories, biographies, and photo albums, printers must log detailed personal information about the clients.

By the mid-to-late 2000s, the public security apparatus placed the printing industry under “special industry management,” extending this control to street-side copy shops. Owners are required to display prominent warning signs stating: “It is strictly forbidden to print materials containing reactionary content, incitement to subvert state power, threats to national security, or state secrets,” and “It is strictly forbidden to print other illegal materials banned by the state.” This ensures that any personal writings discussing the Mao era cannot even be photocopied.

Printers must act as state deputies, taking on the burden of verifying, registering, storing, and destroying defective copies, as well as reporting suspicious clients to the police. The “Anti-Pornography and Anti-Illegal Publications Office” under the Central Propaganda Department offers rewards starting at 100,000 RMB—and up to 200,000 RMB for major cases—to anyone who reports illegal printing. Violators face business suspension, fines, loss of licenses, or imprisonment. In 2024, Tu Jincan, founder of the Genealogy and Biography Book Company in Beijing’s Haidian Book City, was reportedly sentenced to three and a half years in prison simply for printing a memoir for an overseas Chinese client. His business was shuttered, his employees let go, and books printed for other clients were sealed and seized.

Undercover inspections by the public security’s cultural enforcement squad are common. Any perceived infraction leads to heavy fines or closure. During sensitive periods—such as the Tiananmen Square anniversary, Cultural Revolution milestones, the Two Sessions, or the passings of major political figures like Jiang Zemin and Li Keqiang—local police, cultural enforcement teams, and anti-illegal publication officials conduct sweep inspections of copy shops to ensure no petition letters or politically sensitive documents are processed.

The Unyielding Grassroots Historians: Prepared to Wait Three Hundred Years

On August 5, 2002, Beijing resident Zhu Yuantao returned from Hong Kong only to have Capital Airport Customs confiscate Gao Hua’s landmark book, How the Red Sun Rose: The Origin and Development of the Yan’an Rectification Movement. Customs declared it a “prohibited import” and issued an administrative penalty.

Zhu sued the Capital Airport Customs, launching an administrative lawsuit that went all the way to the Beijing High People’s Court. In September 2003, the High Court ruled in Zhu’s favor. Although he never recovered the book, the case proved that during the Jiang and Hu eras, the judiciary still retained a modicum of independence, allowing citizens to legally challenge state censorship.

Under the Xi administration, such a legal recourse is unthinkable. Customs officials now routinely seize books under vague pretexts of “internal guidelines,” “printed matter inspection,” or “sensitive content,” and citizens no longer look to the courts to defend their rights.

In October 2013, Li Nanyang, daughter of the former Executive Deputy Head of the Central Organization Department Li Rui, returned to Beijing from Hong Kong with over fifty copies of The Oral History of Li Rui. When customs confiscated them, she sued. Thirteen years later, the Beijing Intermediate Court has still refused to hold a trial. Having sent over a hundred letters urging the court to hear the case, Li jokingly remarks that the delay belongs in the Guinness World Records. That the memoirs of a Party elder like Li Rui are treated as contraband illustrates the arbitrary and expansive nature of modern censorship.

In 2024, eighty-year-old Chen Yinyin completed a million-word, four-generation family history titled Night Chanting Should Feel the Chill of Moonlight, a project twenty years in the making. Knowing it could never be published in China, she self-funded its publication through the U.S.-based World Chinese Publishing House. In November 2024, the Shenyang Postal Customs intercepted eighteen sets of the book (fifty-four volumes in total) sent by the publisher and confiscated them all for “sensitive content.” Chen traveled over a thousand miles from Beijing to Shenyang three times to confront customs. Only after she threatened to petition and expose the matter online did they return her books—but they kept the third volume, which covered the Mao era.

As the experiences of Li and Chen demonstrate, speech control under Xi has broadened from specific banned works to any printed material touching upon the Mao era. Personal memoirs and family histories have become forbidden zones, with censorship agencies targeting Party veterans and ordinary citizens alike. Judicial independence has been entirely hollowed out, leaving administrative power absolute.

Meanwhile, state control over universities has intensified. By 2010, China had over 3,100 higher education institutions, with more than 200 offering comprehensive humanities programs. Scholars at these universities once produced independent research on the Cultural Revolution, but today, publishing such work is impossible. Graduate students now actively avoid Mao-era topics when selecting thesis subjects.

The state’s policy of collective punishment has worsened this chilling effect. Academics who publish articles or books on the Cultural Revolution overseas face personal penalties, and their home institutions suffer guilt-by-association—often through funding cuts and rejected research grants. For instance, the Institute of American Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, where the outspoken scholar Zi Zhongyun worked, was explicitly warned that if she continued to speak out, the institute’s research funding would be slashed and its researchers barred from traveling abroad.

Under this intense pressure, independent research on the Cultural Revolution has vanished from Chinese academia. Only two institutions—the National History Research Center at Peking University and the Contemporary History Data Center at East China Normal University—still gingerly compile archives, but their work is strictly limited to preservation. The burden of active research has fallen entirely on independent, grassroots historians. In Tianshui, Gansu, a retired couple who regularly wrote for Memory magazine faced relentless local surveillance and threats against their children’s careers, yet they refused to yield. Although the husband has since passed away, he and his wife left behind ten co-authored books and four compiled archives.

At the end of the Southern Song Dynasty, the scholar Zheng Sixiao wrote Tiehan Xinshi (The Heart History in an Iron Box). Unable to publish his work, he sealed the manuscript in an iron box and sank it into a deep well, where it remained hidden for over three hundred years until it was discovered during the Ming Dynasty. Zheng wrote a famous poem containing the lines: “I would rather die holding fragrance on the branch / Than ever be blown down into the cold north wind.” Today’s independent historians in China may never see their life’s work published, but like Zheng Sixiao, they possess the quiet resolve to let their writings wait in a well for three hundred years.

(The author is a historical researcher. Some identifying details have been modified to protect the safety of the interviewees.)

Recommended archives:

Remembrance

Sun Nutao: An Interrogation of Conscience: The Journey of a Tsinghua Cultural Revolution Rebel Leader

Sun Nutao: Solidified Life: Records of the Victims of the Cultural Revolution at Tsinghua University

Hu Zongshi, Zhang Duo: A Study of the Cultural Revolution History of Peking University

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：伊莎贝尔·莫

By Isabelle Mo

本文原文为英文。

The English original follows below.

编者按：17年前，2009年7月5日，新疆乌鲁木齐发生了震惊世人的“7·5事件”。事件发生后，一代维吾尔族知识分子，包括记者、歌手、诗人、学者等致力于用维吾尔语构建公共领域的人，遭受残酷的镇压，而这个数字至今不为外界所知。作家Isabelle ·Mo为中国民间档案馆撰写的这篇文章，对此做了梳理。其中《狭窄的小路》是惨死的歌手米尔扎特的一首歌，如今寓意着“7·5”事件及镇压之后，新疆维吾尔族人再也难以回去的生活，以及那个世界。

2009年8月2日，维吾尔族歌手米尔扎特·阿里木离开了位于乌鲁木齐的家，随后杳无音讯。两天后，人们在附近街道一辆停放的汽车内发现了他的遗体。他的头上被套了一个黑色塑料袋，一只眼睛突出，遗体上有疑似棍棒殴打的痕迹。死亡时，他年仅43岁。

中国官方的法医鉴定称，米尔扎特·阿里木死于心脏病，但他的家人拒绝接受这个结论。根据当年8月24日自由亚洲电台维吾尔语部的报道，他的家人要求对 米尔扎特·阿里木的死因进行独立调查。但三天后，因为当局巨大的压力，家人不得不同意安葬他的遗体。8月7日星期五，他的葬礼在乌鲁木齐延安路的吉格德里克清真寺举行。葬礼前的一场祈祷仪式，有四、五千名哀悼者参加。当送葬的人群离开清真寺时，被十多辆警车包围。最终，在武警和军人的环绕中，人们一起前往墓地——从那以后至今，他的家人一直被噤声，不能公开谈论他的死因。

其实阿里木不是记者，也不是政治评论员，他只是一位歌手。他的表演饱含情感，善于将悲伤的心绪化为优美的音乐，所以深受维吾尔族观众的喜爱。据自由亚洲电台当时的报道，他失踪的当晚，曾给一位朋友打电话，说目睹了一些可怕的事情，武警正在追捕他，话还没说完，他的电话就断掉了。

阿里木死于新疆“7·5事件”之后不久——7月5日当天，一场基于种族的暴力（中国的常见说法是“民族冲突”）席卷了乌鲁木齐，这被称之为“7·5事件”。中国官方宣布，这场冲突造成了包括汉族和维族在内的 197 人死亡，1700 多人受伤——不过长期以来，维吾尔族组织一直对这些数字持有异议。

无可争议的一个事实是，“7·5事件”最终促成了一场大镇压：不仅仅是针对那些被指控参与了暴乱的人，也针对整整一代维吾尔族的记者、网站管理员、音乐家，以及知识分子——“7·5事件”爆发之前的那些年，他们一直在用自己的母语构建出一个公共领域。对此，任教于乔治城大学的历史学家詹姆斯·A·米尔沃德（中文名米华健），曾在发表于《中亚调查》Central Asian Survey 的一篇文章中，将2009年7月5日描述为一个分水岭——从这一天开始，中国政府对新疆的政策，再没有回头。

7月5日

“7·5事件”爆发的直接导火索，出现在6月26日。当时，在中国南部城市韶关的一处工人宿舍，维吾尔族工人性侵汉族妇女的谣言开始迅速传播，并引发暴力冲突，两名维吾尔族工人死亡。当相关的图片和消息传至新疆时，那些因长期存在的歧视、经济不平等，以及政府对宗教和文化生活的限制而压抑着的不满爆发了。7月5日下午，维吾尔族民众聚集在乌鲁木齐市的人民广场，要求政府对事件展开调查。夜幕降临之际，这场原本和平的示威活动，演变为该地区数十年来最严重的民族暴力事件。

那几个小时究竟发生了什么？至今仍存在争议。中国当局强调，当时民众袭击的目标是汉族平民，而维吾尔族组织则记录了随后的安全镇压和报复性暴力事件。那之后，整个地区的通讯被切断长达数月，国际记者面临严格的限制，无法报道真实情况。17年过去了，今天，“7·5事件”的真相和关键信息，依然成谜。

因预警而被抓的人

当时，一位年轻的维吾尔人决心让外界了解事态的真相及其发展，他就是买买提江·阿卜杜拉。这位32岁的新闻系毕业生，当时是中国国家广播电台的维吾尔语频道播音员和编辑。7月5日的抗议活动爆发前几天，他曾悄悄联系外国记者，说一场和平示威活动正在筹划中，但他担心，这场示威活动可能会演变成暴力事件。他说，当局可能会放任局势的恶化。买买提江对与外国媒体交谈的风险心知肚明，他也清楚，自己的行为在中国非常“敏感”，但他还是这么做了。他判断，情况复杂，事态即将朝着一个可能造成毁灭性后果的方向发展。

7月5日，当数百人聚集在广场开始示威时，买买提江向此前他联系过的外国记者发送了照片和视频素材。这些素材，也是最早出现在国际媒体上的照片和视频之一。由于他的警告，使得记者们在当局实施全面限制、实际上封锁该地区与外界联系之前，赶往新疆。

买买提江与外国记者的交流并非出于政治目的，也并不是为了塑造某种特定的叙事。那些收到他信息的记者们，至今记得，他和大家一样，最关心的点只是——如果有大事发生，那人们不应该在事前和事后毫不知情。

此前，买买提江为世界维吾尔代表大会翻译过关于韶关事件的声明，并将其发布在他利用业余时间管理的维吾尔语网站上。这后来也成了他的罪名。

“7·5事件”两个月后，这位年轻的记者被捕了。2010年4月，乌鲁木齐中级人民法院在对其秘密审判后，以分裂国家、泄露国家秘密，以及组织非法示威等罪名，判处了买买提江无期徒刑。2010年12月，自由亚洲电台、纽约时报等都对此进行了报道。2024年，身穿囚服的买买提江，出现在中央电视台一部关于“7·5骚乱”的纪录片里。据新疆受害者数据库显示，他目前被关押在伊犁哈萨克自治州的希霍监狱（Shikho prison）。对买买提江的判决，是“7·5”事件后对记者最严厉的刑罚之一。

买买提江并非孤例。另一位受人尊敬的记者，前官方媒体《新疆法制日报》的副主编海莱提·尼亚孜，多年来一直倡导维吾尔族和汉族之间的对话，批评分裂主义暴力，也批评他认为加剧民族分裂的政府政策——这一切都无济于事。他因“危害国家安全”被判处了15年有期徒刑；维吾尔族网站“萨尔金网”（Salkin）的管理员古丽米拉·依明，被判处了无期徒刑；另一个维吾尔族网站“迪亚里姆”的创始人迪尔沙特·帕尔哈特，被判处5年有期徒刑。沙布南网站的站长尼扎特·阿扎特，则被判处10年有期徒刑。另一位萨尔金网站管理员努尔利被判3年。所有这些审判，均不公开进行，当时也未引起国际社会的广泛关注。

另一位在骚乱后镇压中被抓的年轻维吾尔族记者兼博主，是当时34岁的尼亚兹·卡哈尔。他在骚乱发生三周后被抓，最终秘密审判，被以“宣扬维吾尔族分裂主义”的罪名判处13年监禁。卡哈尔1975年出生于库尔木附近的一个村庄，曾在新疆大学学习文学，此后加入当地一家报社。他后来创办了维吾尔语网站“金色塔里木”（Golden Tarim），发表过有关维吾尔族历史、文化、政治和社会生活的文章。多年后，他的家人才首次公开谈及他的遭遇，他们最初以为他已在镇压中丧生，2010年才得知他被关在监狱。据自由亚洲电台2014年的报道，他在监狱中的健康状况恶化。在一次隔着玻璃板的15分钟电话探视中，他的母亲发现他明显变得消瘦和虚弱。

其实，这些网站本身并非反对派的媒体，它们只是以维吾尔语来发表文学作品，文化评论，以及一些关于社区的讨论和新闻信息——这种公共领域，在上一代人中几乎不存在。然而，伴随着7月5日之后，新疆全境的互联网接入中断数月，这些网站都消失了——它们的管理员则被投入监狱。

那段时期，最引人注目的受害者无疑是伊力哈木·土赫提，他是教授、经济学家，也是维吾尔族人的权利倡导者。2014年，他被判处无期徒刑。然而，伊力哈木以外，还有很多被捕者从未出现在国际媒体的视野中——他们是学者、艺术家、网站管理员、广播员，很多情况下，他们也是新疆与外部世界之间的桥梁。他们是那一代维吾尔人中最有才华的知识分子。然而，今天，他们中的大多数人都被遗忘了。

《塔尔·科恰 》：一条狭窄的道路

死去的歌手米尔扎特·阿里木，最著名的录音作品是《塔尔·科恰》（Tar Kocha），翻译成中文，意思是“狭窄的小路”。改编自一首诗，作者是诗人、民族音乐学家兼乐器演奏大师亚辛·穆克斯普尔。然而，这首歌之所以名扬天下，并非歌词本身，而是阿里木的音乐诠释。这种关系，类似于智利诗人巴勃罗·聂鲁达与音乐家维克多·哈拉，或是洛尔卡（西班牙文学巨匠）与伊瓦涅斯（西班牙音乐家）：诗人谱写诗篇，歌手赋予其新的生命。阿里木保留了歌曲的细腻情感，着重描绘了乡愁、记忆和对故土的眷恋。

谁说你狭窄？一个完整的世界蕴藏于你之中。

歌中这样唱道。这里描绘的狭窄小路，指的是蜿蜒穿过的小巷，这是传统的维吾尔族居民区——在外人看来狭小的空间，却是人们心中一个完整的世界：童年、家庭、集体记忆、日常生活的点点滴滴。人类学家杰伊·道彻认为这首诗非常重要，并因此将其放入了他的民族志作品——《走在狭路上：新疆一个村庄维吾尔男性的身份、性与变迁》Negotiating the Narrow Path: Identity, Sexuality, and Change among Uyghur Men in a Xinjiang Village（哈佛大学出版社，2009年）。他认为，对维吾尔人来说，这首诗事实上颠覆了一种局外人的视角：看似渺小的事物，蕴含着一切。

2009年之后，喀什老城开始大规模拆迁，这首歌的意义也随之加深。许多维吾尔人后来回首，来才将这首歌视为一首哀悼逝去世界的挽歌，以及对他们的生存环境日益狭窄的一个隐喻。如同许多维吾尔族的文化表达形式一样，它的意义不仅在于直白的言辞，更在于暗示的方式——通过隐喻和层层递进的潜台词，来传达信息。

米尔扎特的死曾被藏族作家唯色记录，后来被米尔沃德引用。世界维吾尔代表大会将他列入一张名单——其中包括了“7·5”后遇害或遭袭的一系列维吾尔族文化名人。

除此之外，关于他的死，相关信息其实很少，目前只有自由亚洲电台的一篇报道，一篇学术期刊的脚注，以及一个倡导组织的声明。多年来，新疆实行的信息管制，使得对这些信息的独立核实工作异常困难。而这种可靠信源和档案的匮乏，本身就是事实的一部分。

新疆是中国面积最大的省级行政区，也是独立报道最难进入的地区之一。尽管新疆具有重要的地缘政治意义，且民族众多，但获取当地有关非汉族群体（特别是维吾尔族、哈萨克族、柯尔克孜族等）日常生活的可靠信息，如今正变得越来越困难。对记者、研究人员和国际观察员的严格限制，加上无处不在的监控，以及当地居民与外国媒体交谈所面临的风险，使得独立调查无法在当地大部分地区进行。如今，随着全球关注点转移到乌克兰、伊朗、以及加沙战争和其他地区的冲突，新疆逐渐淡出了国际视野。

2009年7月5日之前，新疆拥有充满活力的维吾尔文化圈，自20世纪80年代改革开放以来，这个文化圈发展迅猛。维吾尔语的报刊杂志发行，大学培养相关的历史学家、语言学家和民族音乐学家，音乐学院保存并教授维吾尔族传统音乐。十二木卡姆古典音乐的传统，已被联合国教科文组织认定为人类非物质文化遗产。作家、音乐家和学者创作了大量作品，这些作品既反映了当地传统，也反映了该地区沿着丝绸之路的悠久交流历史。

7月5日之后的大多数打击目标，并非传统意义上的异见人士。他们在国家机构内部工作——在官方电台广播、在持牌报纸上发表文章、在大学任教。他们相信维吾尔文化可以通过学术研究和艺术实践得以传承。

他们的名字值得铭记：歌手米尔扎特·阿里木；记者买买提江·阿卜杜拉；评论员海莱提·尼亚孜；诗人兼网站管理员古丽米拉·依明；还有迪尔沙特·佩尔哈特；尼贾特·阿扎特。他们被逮捕并非孤立事件，而是席卷新疆各地的、镇压知识分子行动的一部分。如今，人权组织和一些倡导新闻自由的机构，记录了大量此类案件，但真实规模仍难以确定——许多拘留和失踪事件，从未被公开承认过。

从中也可以看到，这种对知识分子、艺术家的镇压，其实镇压的是那些唱歌、写作、出版作品，维系着维吾尔社会与其自身，以及外部世界联系的人。

到2017年，当大规模拘禁事件的报道引起国际社会持续关注时，新疆地区的大部分独立文化生活，其实已被摧毁殆尽。随后全球关注的讨论，主要是围绕卫星图像、人口估算和法律定义展开。但至今，究竟有多少人被拘禁仍存在争议。一百万？两百万？这些数字固然令人震惊，但因为信息的封锁，并无法说明这些人究竟是谁。

《塔尔·科恰》这首歌，至今仍在海外维吾尔人中广为传唱。对许多维吾尔人来说，歌名的含义早已超越了字面含义：它不仅指一条狭窄的小路，其实更象征着一条狭窄的道路——一种受限的生活，一种黯淡的未来。这首歌哀悼的并非一个国家的消亡，而是一条街道、一个街区、一种生活方式的逝去。或许正因如此，它才得以流传至今：并非作为一种政治宣言，而是作为它所描绘的那个世界曾经存在的证据。

附录：歌曲《狭窄的小路》（歌词从英文版翻译而来）

我睁开双眼，
来到这世间，
便看见了你美丽的容颜——
狭窄的小路。

如同依偎在慈母的怀抱，
我紧紧依恋着你，
而你温柔地拥抱着我——
狭窄的小路。

当我沿着你
缓缓走过你，
我的目光永远也看不够你——
狭窄的小路。

谁能说你狭窄？
一个完整的世界蕴藏于你之中，
野罗勒盛开的芬芳弥漫其间——
狭窄的小路。

你满溢着千百位
温柔母亲的慈爱，
你的爱将我的心点燃——
狭窄的小路。

无论我身在
巴黎，还是伊斯坦布尔，
我的灵魂都燃烧着对你的思念——
狭窄的小路。

你是生我养我的母亲——
狭窄的小路。

你是将我抚养成人的母亲——
狭窄的小路。

你守护着无数
充满希望的男孩和女孩，
你是一片美丽而令人深爱的土地——
狭窄的小路。

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

Xinjiang After July 5: A Narrow Road

By Isabelle Mo

On August 2, 2009, the Uyghur singer Mirzat Alim left his home in Ürümchi and did not return. Two days later, his body was found inside a parked car on a nearby street. By then it had begun to decompose. A black plastic bag had been placed over his head. One eye was protruding. His body bore marks consistent with having been beaten with clubs. He was 43 years old.

Government forensic doctors concluded that Mirzat Alim had died of a heart attack, a finding his family rejected. According to a report published by the Uyghur exile website Vetenim on August 24, 2009, and later relayed by Radio Free Asia’s Uyghur Service, relatives kept his body for three days, demanding an independent investigation into the cause of death before agreeing to bury him under pressure from the authorities. The same report states that his funeral prayer was held on August 7, after Friday prayers at Jigdilik Mosque on Yan’an Road. It further claims that between 4,000 and 5,000 mourners attended and that, as the procession left the mosque, more than ten police vehicles surrounded the crowd before armed police and soldiers escorted the mourners to the cemetery.

His family has never been permitted to speak publicly about his death.

Alim was neither a journalist nor a political commentator. He was a singer, celebrated by Uyghur audiences for the emotional depth of his performances and his ability to transform lived sorrow into music. According to the same Vetenim report, on the night he disappeared he called a friend and said he had witnessed something horrifying and that armed police were chasing him. The line went dead mid-sentence.

His death came in the weeks following July 5, 2009 — the day ethnic violence engulfed Ürümchi and left, by official count, 197 dead and more than 1,700 injured. Uyghur organizations have long contested those figures. What is beyond dispute is what the violence made possible: a crackdown that targeted not only those accused of participating in the unrest, but an entire generation of Uyghur journalists, webmasters, musicians and intellectuals who had spent years building a public sphere in their own language. Georgetown historian James A. Millward has described July 2009 as a watershed — the moment Xinjiang policy entered a phase from which it never turned back.

July 5

The immediate trigger had come five weeks earlier. On June 26, rumors accusing Uyghur factory workers of sexually assaulting Han Chinese women spread through a dormitory in the southern city of Shaoguan, provoking violent attacks that left two Uyghur workers dead. Images and accounts reached Xinjiang, where longstanding discrimination, economic inequality and restrictions on religious and cultural life had already generated deep resentment. On the afternoon of July 5, Uyghurs gathered in People’s Square in Ürümchi demanding an investigation. By nightfall, the demonstration had become the deadliest outbreak of ethnic violence in the region in decades.

Exactly what unfolded during those hours remains contested. Chinese authorities have emphasized attacks on Han civilians. Uyghur organizations have documented the security crackdown and retaliatory violence that followed. Communications across the region were severed. International journalists faced strict restrictions. Seventeen years on, key aspects of the events remain unresolved.

Early Warnings

One person determined to ensure the outside world understood what was unfolding was Memetjan Abdulla. At 32, the journalism graduate worked as a broadcaster and editor for the Uyghur-language service of China’s state-run National Radio. In the days before the protests, he quietly reached out to foreign journalists, warning that a peaceful demonstration was planned but that he feared it could descend into violence. He said the authorities would allow the situation to spiral. Abdulla understood the risks of speaking to the foreign press and knew the political sensitivity of his actions, but insisted that, because of what he described as “complicated issues,” events were about to unfold in a way that would have devastating consequences.

On July 5, as hundreds gathered in People’s Square for what began as a peaceful demonstration, Memetjan started sending photographs and video footage to the foreign journalists he had contacted in the preceding days. His images were among the first to reach the international media. His warnings also prompted correspondents to travel to Xinjiang before the authorities imposed sweeping restrictions that effectively sealed the region off from outside reporting.

Memetjan’s exchanges with foreign journalists were not acts of political advocacy. Nor did they seek to shape a particular narrative. Those who received his messages recall a single overriding concern: that whatever was about to happen should not unfold unseen.

He was also cited for having translated a World Uyghur Congress statement about the Shaoguan killings and reposted it on Salkin, a Uyghur-language website he helped manage in his spare time.

The young journalist was arrested two months later. In April 2010, following a closed trial at the Ürümchi Intermediate People’s Court, he was sentenced to life in prison on charges of separatism, disclosing state secrets and organizing an illegal protest. Radio Free Asia reported the sentence in December 2010, citing an unnamed witness present at the trial. The World Uyghur Congress confirmed it through contacts in the region. In 2024, Memetjan appeared in a Chinese state television documentary about the July 5 riots, wearing a prison uniform. According to the Xinjiang Victims Database, he is currently held at Shikho Prison in the Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture. If accurately reported, his sentence ranked among the harshest imposed on any journalist in the aftermath of July 2009.

He was not alone. Gheyret Niyaz, another respected journalist and former deputy editor of the state-run Xinjiang Legal Daily, had spent years advocating dialogue between Uyghurs and Han Chinese, criticizing both separatist violence and government policies he believed deepened ethnic divisions. It made no difference. He was sentenced to fifteen years for “endangering state security.” Gulmira Imin, an administrator of Salkin, received life. Dilshat Perhat, founder of the Uyghur website Diyarim, received five years. Nijat Azat, webmaster of Shabnam, received ten. Another Salkin administrator, Nureli, received three. All trials were closed. None attracted significant international attention at the time.

Another young Uyghur journalist and blogger swept up in the wave of detentions was Niyaz Kahar, who was 34 at the time of his arrest. Following the July 2009 unrest in Urumqi, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison on charges of “promoting Uyghur separatism.” Arrested three weeks after the riots, Kahar was tried behind closed doors, and his family was not permitted to attend the proceedings. Born in 1975 in Yokuri Aqyer, a village near Kumul (Hami), Kahar studied literature at Xinjiang University from 1994 to 1999 before joining a local newspaper. He later founded the Uyghur-language website Golden Tarim, which published articles on Uyghur history, culture, politics, and social life. Kahar’s family first spoke publicly about his case in 2014, according to reports by Radio Free Asia. The family initially believed he had been killed during the post-riot crackdown and did not learn until the following year that he had been imprisoned. During prison visits, relatives found him noticeably thinner and physically weakened. According to Radio Free Asia, his health continued to deteriorate in custody.

The websites themselves were not opposition organs. They published literature, cultural commentary, community debate and news in Uyghur — the kind of public sphere that had barely existed in the language a generation earlier. After July 5, internet access across Xinjiang was severed for months. The sites disappeared. Their administrators went to prison.

The most prominent casualty of that period is with no doubt Ilham Tohti, the professor, economist and advocate for Uyghur rights, sentenced to life in prison in 2014. But behind his name stand many others who never reached the international press — scholars, artists, webmasters, broadcasters, people who were, in many cases, the bridge between Xinjiang and the outside world. Some of the most gifted intellectuals of their generation. Most of them were forgotten.

Tar Kocha — a Narrow Road

Singer Mirzat Alim’s best-known recording was “Tar Kocha” — a Narrow Road or Narrow Path. The poem was written by Yasin Muxpul, a poet, ethnomusicologist and master instrumentalist. What made it famous, however, was not the text itself, but Alim’s musical interpretation. The relationship resembles that of Pablo Neruda and Víctor Jara, or Federico García Lorca and Paco Ibáñez: the poet supplied the words; the singer gave them a second life. Alim preserved its intimacy, emphasizing nostalgia, memory and attachment to homeland.

“Who can call you narrow? An entire world is contained within you.”

The narrow path evoked in the poem refers to the small lanes that wind through the mahalla, the traditional Uyghur neighborhood. What outsiders might perceive as a cramped space was experienced by its residents as a complete world: childhood, family, collective memory, the texture of everyday life. Anthropologist Jay Dautcher considered the poem sufficiently important to place it at the opening of his ethnography Down a Narrow Road: Identity and Masculinity in a Uyghur Community in Xinjiang China. Its famous refrain, he argued, reverses the outsider’s gaze: what appears small contains everything. The song’s significance deepened after 2009, when large-scale demolition began transforming Kashgar’s Old City. Although Tar Kocha predates those events, many Uyghurs came to hear it retrospectively as an elegy for a disappearing world—and as a metaphor for how narrow their lives were becoming. Like much Uyghur cultural expression, its meaning resided as much in suggestion as in explicit words, conveying its message through metaphor and layered subtext.

Alim’s death was documented by the Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser and later cited by Millward. The World Uyghur Congress named him among a series of prominent Uyghur cultural figures killed or attacked in the aftermath of the violence. Beyond those accounts: a Radio Free Asia dispatch, a footnote in an academic journal, a statement from an advocacy organization. The information controls imposed across Xinjiang made independent verification extraordinarily difficult. That scarcity of documentation, reliable sources, archives is itself part of this story.

Xinjiang, China’s largest provincial-level administrative division by land area, remains one of the country’s least accessible regions for independent reporting. Despite its geopolitical significance and ethnic diversity, reliable information about the daily lives of its non-Han communities—particularly Uyghurs, Kazakhs, Kyrgyz and others—has become increasingly difficult to obtain. Tight restrictions on journalists, researchers and international observers, together with pervasive surveillance and the risks faced by local residents who speak to foreign media, have left much of the region beyond independent scrutiny. As global attention has shifted to successive crises—from the wars in Ukraine, Iran and Gaza to conflicts elsewhere—Xinjiang has gradually faded from the international spotlight.

Before July 5, 2009, Xinjiang was home to a vibrant Uyghur cultural sphere that had expanded significantly since the reform era beginning in the 1980s. Uyghur-language newspapers and magazines circulated, universities trained historians, linguists and ethnomusicologists, and conservatories preserved and taught the Twelve Muqam, the classical musical tradition recognized by UNESCO as part of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. Writers, musicians and scholars produced a growing body of work that reflected both local traditions and the region’s long history of exchange along the Silk Roads.

Most of those targeted after July 5 were not dissidents in any conventional sense. They worked inside state institutions — broadcasting on official radio, publishing in licensed newspapers, teaching at universities. They believed Uyghur culture could endure through scholarship and artistic practice

Their names deserve to be remembered: singer Mirzat Alim; journalist Memetjan Abdulla; commentator Gheyret Niyaz; poet and webmaster Gulmira Imin; Dilshat Perhat; Nijat Azat. They were not isolated cases but part of a campaign that swept up writers, journalists, academics and cultural figures across Xinjiang. Human rights organizations and press freedom groups have documented scores of such cases, though the true scale remains difficult to establish — many detentions and disappearances were never publicly acknowledged.

What the documented evidence makes clear is the pattern. A crackdown that targeted artists, intellectuals, people who sang, wrote, published and kept Uyghur society connected to itself and to the outside world.

By 2017, when reports of mass internment drew sustained international attention, much of the region’s independent cultural life had already been dismantled. The global debate that followed centered on satellite imagery, population estimates and legal definitions. How many people were interned remains contested. One million. Two million. The figures convey magnitude. They do not say who those people were.

“Tar Kocha” is still widely played by the diaspora. For many Uyghurs, the title has come to mean something beyond the literal: not just a narrow street, but a narrow road — a constrained life, a diminished future. The song does not mourn the loss of a state. It mourns a street, a neighborhood, a way of life. That may be why it endures: not as a political statement, but as evidence that the world it describes once existed.

Appendix: The Lyrics of “Tar Kocha”

English translation:

Narrow Road

My eyes opened
I came into the world
And saw your beautiful face
narrow road

Like to my dear mother’s breast
I clung to you
And you embraced me
narrow road

When I pass along
the length of you
I could gaze upon you forever
narrow road

How can they call you narrow
an entire world is within you
The fragrance of wild basil blooming
narrow road

Overflowing with the kindness of a
thousand sweet-tempered mothers
Your love sets me aflame
narrow road

Whether I find myself in
Paris or Istanbul
My soul is a bonfire of longing for you
narrow road

You are the dear mother who bore me
narrow road

You are the mother who raised me
narrow road

Protector of so many promising young
girls and boys
You are a beautiful and beloved land
narrow road

Tar Kocha (Uyghur with Latin transliteration)

köz echip
alemge törelgende men
xu güzel hösningge bakhtim
tar kocha

jan anamning baghridek
baghringgha men
khanmidim, baghrimni yakhtim
tar kocha

boyliringdin ötkenimde
herkhachan
telmürüp toymay kharaymen
tar kocha

kim seni tar deydu
khoyning bir jahan
gül chichek reyhan puraysen
tar kocha

sende xushxuy
ming anining mehri jem
shunga men ishkhingda yandim
tar kocha

meyli parizh meyli
istanbulda men
séghinish khelbimde gülkan
tar kocha

méni tughkhan jan anamsen
tar kocha

meni östürgen anamsen
tar kocha

shunche berna khiz-yigitke
pasiban
bir güzel dilber makansen
tar kocha

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：于飞

By Yu Fei

The English translation follows below.

今年4月，中国《三联生活周刊》旗下的“三联生活实验室”推出纪录短片《2026中国外卖员生存报告》，采访了穿梭于北京大街小巷的多名外卖员，记录当下这一群体的生存境况。随后，《生存报告》被勒令全网下架。

外卖员是中国城市中再常见不过的群体——是什么让这样一个劳动群体的生活记录，在中国也变成了禁忌？6月12日，国际劳工组织通过了全球首部有关平台经济体面劳动的公约，中国代表团投下了赞成票。在缺乏劳工对话机制的中国，这对中国外卖员的生存状况，会产生正面影响吗？

1. 外卖员收入在下降，超时劳动和对健康的摧残依然

外卖行业是中国人灵活就业的“新铁人三项”（即“快递、外卖、网约车”）之一。媒体近日报道，中国灵活就业已到关键的规模拐点，2025年从业人员2.8亿，预计2026年将达3.2亿人。这个数据来自“中国新就业形态研究中心”上周发布的一个报告——《2025中国蓝领群体就业研究报告》。

近年来，“中国经济低迷”成了很多人的共识，而《生存报告》聚焦外卖行业从业者的就业、收入等具体状况，可以看作是中国经济境况的一个切片式呈现。当下的外卖从业者是否还能“生存”？《生存报告》给出的答案是肯定的。就如一位受访者所说：“外卖还是可以赚钱的，只要你愿意付出体力和健康。”

受访者中，有一位“单王”，在2025年11月曾拿到一个月17000元的“高薪”，但这是极其个别的现象，其他受访的骑手，最高月薪七、八千元，最低则只有三、四千元。这些数字和中国总人口的收入相比较并不算低——国务院前总理李克强曾在2020年的全国两会上称，中国有6亿中低收入及以下人群，月人均可支配收入仅约1000元人民币（不过这里的收入并非单指个人工资，而是指”可支配“的钱），但考虑到北京的高生活成本，外卖员的这个收入，对普通蓝领劳动者来说，只能是“还过得去。”

同时，中国外卖员这份并不高的月收入，付出的代价是超长时间的劳动，以及对健康的摧残。受访的全职外卖员，每天都要工作十几个小时，大部分人，每周连一天的休息时间都没有。虽然有的外卖员提到了“灵活就业”的自由，但对大部分外卖员来说，这份收入是全家赖以生存的经济来源，所谓的“灵活性”，其实不是外人理解的“自由”，而是为了生存，在激烈竞争之下，不断无休止地“超时劳动”。

另外一个真相是：外卖员的收入，几乎必须依靠在路上的冒险。《跑外卖：一个女骑手的世界》的作者王晚在《生存报告》中接受采访时说道，“但凡是一个送外卖的，基本上都会闯红灯。”为了生存，为了多挣一点，外卖员为什么宁愿冒违反交通规则可能带来的生命危险？事实是：骑手们看起来是自主选择接单，但其实都是被外卖平台的算法控制的，包括接单、送餐路上的时间，精确到每一分秒。而关于平台的算法，早在2020年，《人物》的深度报道《外卖骑手，困在系统里》一文，就提到：外卖平台严格限时，使得外卖员不得不抄近道、逆行、闯红灯，许多外卖员由此付出了健康甚至生命的代价。如今，六年过去了，平台算法对外卖员的压迫，不但没有解决，较几年前，反而变本加厉。

《生存报告》中受访的外卖员，也普遍指出，现在的收入不如以前。一位做了八年的外卖员说，新冠疫情前（也就是2020年前）他跑一单可以挣十几元，而现在很多时候只有三、四块一单，“明年打死都不干了”。多名外卖员表示，激烈的竞争下，订单“辛苦又不挣钱”。一个外卖员的一个订单显示，一小时的车程，只有6.5元的收入。

外卖单价的减少，一方面是由于外卖行业的竞争——选择灵活就业的外卖员越来越多了——为什么灵活就业的人越来越多了，这将需要更详实的经济分析，但肉眼可见的是，更多人没有工作了——那些十年前在工厂和建筑工地上干活的农民工，和如今一些毕业即失业、找不到工作的大学生们，都转去了外卖。而另一个原因可能是，伴随着人们消费能力的下降，选择外卖服务的顾客也在减少。

在竞争激烈、收入下降的背景下，外卖行业的劳动权益保障这个老问题，似乎更加无解：作为低门槛的“灵活就业”，外卖员没有劳务合同，也几乎没有任何集体协商的渠道。如今的外卖平台，往往也并不是直接的雇主，外卖员实际上是被层层外包的——这使得外卖员如果遭遇了工伤，连自己与平台的劳动关系都无法证明，基本上得不到有效的赔偿。

据中国劳工通讯的《中国外卖行业研究报告》称，一位在网络上发声，为骑手们争取权益的“盟主”，此前因涉嫌“寻衅滋事”而被拘留。在中国高度管控言论的背景下，这是一个清晰的现实——外卖员根本没有和平台议价的任何能力——他们没有发声渠道，也没有自主成立的工会，以及参与集体谈判的机制。

2. “流动性很强，但一直在底层流动”

《生存报告》中的一位外卖员说：“吃饭都是问题了，还担心命呢！”这位外卖员居住的地方，是位于北京昌平区城乡结合部的“外卖村”——于辛庄村。于辛庄村正是北京市政府前些年重点驱赶所谓“低端人口”的区域。《生存报告》指出，虽然人们经常能在媒体上看到高学历白领人士送外卖的新闻，但是绝大部分外卖员，依然是教育程度有限的农村外来务工人口。

如果说，以前的外来务工者，和城市人群之间有着较深的隔阂甚至不可跨越的鸿沟，如今，随着网络经济和外卖行业的兴起——这些与城市中产的生活也息息相关，外卖行业在社会中的可见度其实在不断提高。中国的公共话语里，对外卖员的生存困境和系统性压迫，近些年已经不属于边缘的话题——从《人物》和《三联》的报道，到社会学的学术研究，再到几本有名的畅销书——如胡安焉的《我在北京送快递》，参与“新铁人三项”的打工者，已是中国城市生活不可或缺的组成部分。

2023年出版的《我在北京送快递》，是近年打工者自述中的代表作。作者没有做过外卖员，但他讲述了自己十几年来辗转全国多个城市打工的经历（“我在北京送快递”只是其中的一章）。他曾经做过便利店店员、保安、自行车店销售员，还做过服装店导购、加油站加油工、夜班拣货工人、快递员……《我在北京送快递》之所以能够登上各大畅销书榜，成为豆瓣2023年年度图书榜单第一名，并且出了英文翻译版，正是因为作者长期在社会底层打工的经历，就是亿万中国人在底层打拼的真实体验。

近年来中国经济下行，白领工作并不那么容易找到。《生存报告》在北京一所大学的校园中，采访大学生对外卖行业的观感，有的学生甚至认为外卖是“非常有前景的行业”，可以让面临“毕业即失业”的自己“至少不会失业”。这体现的不仅是年轻人对外卖行业的某种误解，也有大学生对自身就业前景的担忧。

外卖作为一种“过渡性”工作，是一小部分大学毕业生骑驴找马的选择。然而，对于大部分外卖员来说，外卖或其他形式的体力劳动是永久性工作，他们无法通过这个行业向中产跃迁，向上层流动几乎只能指望下一代，但外卖所得又很难支撑下一代所需的教育资源。正像曾经做外卖骑手的王晚所说：“底层的流动性还是比较强的。但是他一直在底层流动，干的永远是体力活。”

3. 平台经济的体面劳动，离中国还有多远？

外卖员困于平台、困于底层的现象，其实不仅限于中国，这也是“零工经济”时代下许多国家的“灵活就业”工种面临的挑战。然而，在中国，为什么单单讨论外卖员的困境，就能成为了一种禁忌？

近几年，对于中国经济，有两种截然不同的论调。一方面，中国科技发展卓越，最富裕的城市和省份人均GDP与西欧发达国家不相上下；另一方面，“躺平”、“内卷”、“卷不动了”等词汇在中国流行，再加上肉眼可见的中小企业的萧条，还有焦虑、失望的社会情绪，又反映着人们对经济状况的悲观。

在中国的人工智能和高科技企业发展叙事背后，隐藏着更多中国人的现实——即“灵活就业”者们的困境。《生存报告》的全网下架，表明了外卖员真实的生存处境，仍然是中国官方“脱贫”、经济发展乃至民族复兴等宏大叙事中，一股不和谐的存在。

乐观的态度——即经济学家凯恩斯所说的“动物精神”——也许可以在某种程度上帮助扭转中国经济的颓势，但悲观是《生存报告》的基调，这种悲观和官方主旋律先入为主的基调不同，是许许多多个劳动者，在最真实的经济生活中，自我经历、讲述并得出的结论。

《生存报告》中的一位外卖员说：“只有很勤劳的人，他才能干得下去这个外卖。”然而，中国人的勤奋、肯干，与中国所处的制度——政治制度、经济制度、社会制度——越发不匹配。一群群勤奋、实干的中国人只能永远被困在固定的系统里和固化的阶级中内卷——看不到游戏的尽头，看不到出头的希望，看不到上升的空间，但必须不断地参与到抢单的游戏中，才能不失去自己仅有的一点财富。

《生存报告》以集体性的叙事呈现出了与官方叙事的龃龉，这种龃龉因为互联网的扩音效果，引起了官方的警惕而被消灭。然而，已经有足够多中国人的切身经历，反映出了经济下滑的现实，人们甚至不需要媒体的报道，去接触到这种所谓“唱衰”中国经济的悲观态度。在中国的人工智能和高科技企业发展叙事背后，隐藏着更多中国人的现实——即“灵活就业”者们的困境。

中国劳工通讯2023年的《外卖行业研究报告》，记录了自2021年来十余起快递员、外卖员的罢工维权事件。近几个月，网络上也流传着东北的出租车司机大规模罢工，以及长沙外卖员集体示威的视频。可以看到，中国“灵活就业”的从业者们，也是对整体经济下滑最敏感的人群。

2026年6月12日，国际劳工组织通过了《2026年平台经济体面劳动公约》（第193号公约），中国代表团投下了赞成票。但正如人权观察家王松莲撰文指出，中国数以亿计的零工工作者，能否获得保障，关键不在于官方承诺，而在于他们是否有能够组织起来、表达和追责的权利。

而这个追究的对象，不仅包括平台，更包括政府。而在一个不到半小时的外卖员纪录片都会被下架的地方，这种追责的权利，看起来还遥不可及。

本期推荐档案：

三联生活实验室：《2026中国外卖员生存报告》（2026年4月）

中国劳工通讯：《中国外卖行业研究报告：政策难追平台侵权速度 官方工会仍陷形式主义》（2023年4月）

《人物》：《外卖骑手，困在系统里》

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

Running for Survival: Is Decent Work Out of Reach for China’s Delivery Riders?

By Yu Fei

In April, “Sanlian Life Lab” under Sanlian Life Weekly in China released a short documentary titled 2026 China Food Delivery Riders Survival Report that documented the condition of food delivery riders moving through Beijing’s streets and alleys. But soon after it came out, the Survival Report was censored across the Chinese internet, though backups exist both inside and outside China’s Great Firewall (including on China Unofficial Archives).

Food delivery riders are one of the most common groups in Chinese cities—what is it that has turned the documentation of such people into something taboo? On June 12, the International Labour Organization adopted the world’s first convention regarding decent work in the platform economy, and the Chinese delegation cast a vote in favor. In China, where dialogue mechanisms are lacking, will this have a positive impact on the survival conditions of Chinese delivery riders?

1. Are Chinese food delivery riders earning more money or less?

The food delivery industry is one part of China’s “new triathlon of flexible employment” (the others are courier services and ride-hailing). Some studies estimate that the number of China’s gig workers—mainly engaged in order-taking, dispatching, and platform-based labor—reached approximately 280 million in 2025 and will reach 320 million in 2026.

In recent years, China’s economic downturn has become a widely shared consensus, and the Survival Report, by focusing on employment and income conditions of food delivery workers, can be seen as a cross-sectional snapshot of China’s economic situation.

Can food delivery workers still “survive” today? The Survival Report says yes, but as one interviewee put it: “(Making money) from food delivery is still possible, as long as you are willing to exhaust your physical strength and sacrifice your health.”

In terms of monthly income, a top earner interviewed in the Survival Report earned 17,000 yuan in November 2025. Others had a maximum monthly salary of 7,000–8,000 yuan, and the lowest earned only 3,000–4,000 yuan. These figures do not appear low compared with the income of China’s overall population (former premier Li Keqiang stated in 2020 that the average monthly income of China’s “600 million low-income population” was about 1,000 yuan) and could be comparable to the average disposable income of over 7,000 yuan per month in Beijing, but the Survival Report reveals issues besides money.

First, the relatively acceptable monthly income of food delivery riders is earned through extremely long working hours and at the cost of health. The full-time riders interviewed work more than ten hours a day, and some do not take a day off each week. Although some riders mention the flexibility of gig work, for most people who rely on full-time delivery work to support their families, this flexibility is also a major cause of overwork.

Second, riders’ income almost entirely depends on risk-taking while on the road. Wang Wan, the author of Riding Food Delivery: The World of a Female Rider, said in an interview in the Survival Report: “Basically, every food delivery rider runs red lights.” In order to survive and earn a bit more, riders—“even though they know their personal safety is seriously threatened, they have no choice.”

This “no choice” scenario exists because riders appear to independently choose orders, but in reality they are controlled by the platform’s algorithms, including order assignment and delivery time, calculated down to the minute. Regarding platform algorithms, as early as 2020, China’s People magazine published an in-depth report titled “Food Delivery Riders, Trapped in the System.” That report pointed out that strict platform time limits force riders to take shortcuts, drive against traffic, and run red lights, causing many riders to suffer health damage and even lose their lives. Now, six years later, algorithmic pressure on riders has not only not been resolved but has intensified compared to a few years ago.

Riders interviewed in the Survival Report also generally pointed out that current income is lower than before. A rider with eight years of experience said that before the COVID-19 pandemic, he could earn more than ten yuan per order, while now it is often only 3–4 yuan per order. “Even if I have to die, I won’t do this next year.” Many riders said that under intense competition, orders are “hard work but not profitable.” One rider’s app showed a food order that would take one hour to deliver but only pay 6.5 yuan.

The decline in per-order prices directly leads to a decrease in riders’ income. One reason is competition in the food delivery industry—more and more people are choosing gig work. Why more people are choosing gig work requires more detailed economic analysis, but one direct conclusion is that more people are unemployed—migrant workers who used to work in factories and construction sites ten years ago, as well as university graduates who cannot find jobs after graduation, have turned to food delivery. Another less direct reason may be that, as people’s purchasing power declines, fewer people choose food delivery services.

Besides intense competition, the long-standing issue of unprotected labor rights in the food delivery industry is also contributing to the adverse working conditions of food delivery workers. These riders lack legal protection through labor contracts and have almost no channels for collective bargaining.

A 2023 report by China Labor Bulletin, “Research Report on China’s Food Delivery Industry,” discusses this issue. The report points out that platform employment models have long evolved from directly hiring riders to multi-layered outsourcing—meaning there are now several layers between riders and the platform as the actual employer. This prevents riders from proving an employment relationship with the platform in the event of workplace injury and also prevents them from receiving effective compensation.

According to the report, an informal labor leader who spoke online to advocate for riders’ rights was previously detained on suspicion of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble.” In the context of China’s highly controlled speech environment, this reflects a clear reality—riders have no bargaining power with platforms at all—there is no channel for expression, and even if they join officially established unions, there is no mechanism for collective bargaining.

2. “Mobility within the bottom”

A rider in the Survival Report said: “Even eating is a problem, why worry about life?” Food delivery riders, unable to prioritize safety and health and long trapped in the platform survival system, also reflect the social status of this group. The Survival Report shows viewers a “delivery village” located in the urban-rural fringe of Changping, Beijing—Yuxinzhuang Village. Many “Beijing drifters” gathered there are precisely the so-called “low-end population” that the Beijing government previously focused on removing. The Survival Report explicitly states that although the media often highlighted highly educated white-collar workers delivering food, the vast majority of riders are still rural migrant workers with limited education.

If in the past there was a deep divide or even an unbridgeable gap between migrant workers and urban residents, today, with the rise of the internet economy and the food delivery industry—because these jobs are closely tied to urban middle-class life—the visibility of the food delivery sector in society has actually increased. In Chinese public discourse, the survival struggles and systemic pressures faced by riders have in recent years no longer been a marginal topic—from reports by People and Sanlian, to sociological academic studies, to several well-known bestselling books such as Hu Anyan’s I Deliver Parcels in Beijing—workers in the “new triathlon of flexible employment” have become an indispensable part of urban life in China.

The 2023 book I Deliver Parcels in Beijing is a typical example of recent worker memoirs. Although the author never worked as a food delivery rider, he describes more than ten years of working experiences across multiple cities in China (“I Deliver Parcels in Beijing” is only one chapter in the book). He worked as a convenience store clerk, security guard, bicycle shop salesperson, clothing store assistant, gas station attendant, night-shift picker, courier, and more.

The reason I Deliver Parcels in Beijing became a bestseller, topping Douban’s 2023 annual book rankings and even having an English translation, is precisely because the author’s extensive experience working at the bottom of society reflects the real experience of hundreds of millions of Chinese people struggling on the margins. As China’s economy has declined in recent years, even urban middle-class people who do not need to struggle so intensely have begun to faintly see reflections of their own potential downward mobility.

The Survival Report interviewed college students on a university campus in Beijing about their perception of the food delivery industry; some even believed it was a “very promising industry” that could at least ensure they would “not be unemployed” in the face of what many Chinese people now call “graduation equals unemployment.” This reflects not only young people’s misunderstanding of the food delivery industry, but also anxiety about their own employment prospects.

Food delivery as a transitional job is a short-term option for a small number of graduates while they search for better opportunities. However, for most riders, food delivery or other forms of manual labor are permanent. They cannot move into the middle class through work, and upward mobility largely depends on their offspring. Yet income from food delivery is hardly sufficient to support the educational resources required for the next generation. As former rider Wang Wan said: “There is still quite a lot of mobility at the bottom. But it is always mobility within the bottom; what people do is always physical labor.”

3. How far is China from “decent work in the platform economy”?

The phenomenon of riders being trapped by platforms and trapped at the bottom is not unique to China; it is also a challenge faced by many countries in the era of the gig economy. However, in China, why has merely discussing the plight of food delivery riders become taboo?

In recent years, there have been two sharply contrasting narratives about China’s economy. On one hand, China’s technological development is outstanding, and the per capita GDP of the wealthiest cities and provinces is comparable to developed Western European countries, providing reasons for optimism. On the other hand, the popularity of terms such as “lying flat” and “involution”, along with visible stagnation of small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as public anxiety, disappointment, and even despair, reflect a certain pessimistic view of the economic situation. Individual living and survival conditions often serve as a reflection of broader economic conditions.

The most direct expression in the Survival Report is its title itself—the word “survival.” Only talking about “survival,” without considering “life,” is not truly “living,” yet being unable to change this reality is the true predicament of food delivery riders. The censorship of the Survival Report shows that the real living conditions of riders remain an uncomfortable contradiction within China’s official grand narratives of poverty alleviation, economic development, and national rejuvenation.

An optimistic attitude—perhaps the Keynesian “animal spirits”—may to some extent help ease China’s economic stagnation. But pessimism is the tone of the Survival Report, and this pessimism differs from the pre-set tone of official mainstream narratives; it comes from the lived experiences of many workers in real economic life, as they personally experience and articulate it.

A rider in the Survival Report said: “Only very hardworking people can keep doing food delivery.” However, the diligence and hard work of Chinese people is increasingly mismatched with China’s political, economic, and social systems. Groups of diligent Chinese workers are trapped within fixed systems and rigid class structures, endlessly caught in internal competition—unable to see hope for advancement, unable to see upward mobility, yet forced to keep participating in the game just to avoid losing what little they possess.

The Survival Report presents a collective narrative that conflicts with official narratives. This conflict, amplified by the Internet, has triggered official scrutiny and has been censored. However, enough lived experiences of Chinese people already reflect the reality of economic decline, and people do not even need media reports to encounter this so-called pessimistic narrative about China’s economy.

The 2023 report by China Labor Bulletin documents more than a dozen strikes and rights-defense incidents involving couriers and food delivery riders since 2021. In recent months, large-scale taxi driver strikes in Northeast China and collective demonstrations by food delivery riders in Changsha have also circulated online. Although the reasons for these protests differ, China’s gig workers, as the social group most sensitive and vulnerable to economic decline, have begun to question the official optimistic narrative of economic development and the broader discourse system.

On June 12, 2026, the International Labour Organization adopted the first global convention on decent work in the platform economy, with the Chinese delegation voting in favor. However, as human rights observer Maya Wang has pointed out, whether hundreds of millions of gig workers in China can receive protection does not depend on official commitments, but on whether they have the right to organize, to speak, and to hold power accountable. This accountability is not only toward platforms, but also toward the government. And in a place where even a 30-minute documentary can be taken down, such accountability still appears far out of reach.

Recommended archives:

Sanlian Life Lab: 2026 China Food Delivery Riders Survival Report (April 2026)

China Labour Bulletin: China Food Delivery Industry Research Report: Policy Lags Behind Platform Exploitation; Official Unions Still Symbolic (April 2023)

People Magazine (China): “Food Delivery Riders, Trapped in the System”

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

编者按：

无论过去还是未来，一代代年轻的生命总是渴望着新的视角，新的思想与事物。1980年代的中国，即是如此。经历了巨大的思想封闭与匮乏之后的一代年轻人，因为《走向未来》丛书而打开了眼界，更新了精神，改变了谈论中国问题与看待世界的方式。今天的中国，政治与思想再度呈现封闭的倾向，年轻世代同样面临着失落与痛苦。回望1980年代的这段历史，或许对我们有所启发。

作者：海星

在八十年代的中国，真正改变时代空气的，不只有农村改革、城市改革和对外开放，还有一批新锐出版物。四川人民出版社的《走向未来》丛书，便是其中最具象征意味的一种。它不是单纯的知识普及读物，而是一代青年知识分子试图用现代知识重新解释中国、重新连接世界、重新打开未来的精神工程。

“小白书”何以成为时代事件

《走向未来》是一套小开本丛书，由金观涛、刘青峰等人主编，1984年起由四川人民出版社陆续推出。原计划出版100种，实际出版约74种后，就因1989年天安门事件的发生而被迫中止。丛书内容，横跨自然科学、社会科学、人文思想、经济学、现代化理论等领域，既有译介，也有原创。白色封面，装帧朴素，当时的人们习惯称之“小白书”。这称呼本身就带有时代记忆：它不是藏在书斋里的学术专著，也不是高高在上的官方读本，而是可以被大学生夹在腋下、放进书包、在宿舍和走廊里传阅讨论的一套书。

这套丛书的诞生，首先与八十年代四川出版界的特殊气质有关。当时正是改革开放初期，全国仍处在“文革”之后的思想饥馑之中，书店门口排长队买书并非奇观。四川一批有胆识的出版人不再满足于出版地方性、通俗性的读物，开始面向全国组稿，积极寻找能够回应时代焦虑的新选题。

这种出版胆识并非凭空出现。八十年代的四川，并不是一个普通的内陆省份。赵紫阳从1975年10月到1980年，在这里担任省委第一书记。他主政之下，四川开启了一系列农业与经济改革，民间流传着“要吃粮，找紫阳”的赞誉，四川成了中国农村改革的一个试验场。这对地方的社会气候也有影响——既然是试验，地方不再只是中央政策的被动执行者，也可能成为新路径的发生地。四川出版社敢于突破地域限制，挺进全国思想市场，也与这种地方气质相互呼应。

但如果仅视为一次成功的出版策划，则显然低估其历史意义。《走向未来》真正引发震动，是因为它击中了八十年代中国社会最深的精神缺口。

当时的中国，经历了长期封闭与政治运动，思想极为匮乏。而经由这套书，一代青年突然置身于一个陌生的世界面前：现代科学、市场经济、工业文明，还有信息社会、系统论、控制论、现代化理论，以及宗教改革、科学史、社会结构分析……这些词语像一扇扇猛然推开的窗户，让人们窥见此前被遮蔽的世界。

青年读者争相购买这些“小白书”，并非仅仅为了获取知识，而是为了寻找一种新的解释能力：如何理解中国的过去？如何理解中国改革开放的必要？如何理解西方世界？以及如何想象中国的未来？

第二次“开眼看世界”的时刻

废墟之后的知识饥渴，并非八十年代所独有。近代中国每一次大的精神转向，几乎都发生在旧的解释体系被现实撞碎之后。若把《走向未来》丛书放进更长的历史脉络中看，很容易让人想起鸦片战争之后一代士人的“开眼看世界”。那时候，林则徐（1785-1850）组织译介夷情，魏源（1794-1857）编成《海国图志》，徐继畬（1795-1873）写下《瀛寰志略》，他们所面对的也是一个突然断裂的世界：曾经自足的天下秩序，被远来的舰炮、贸易、条约和海洋国家体系撕开缺口。中国不得不承认，自己并不位于世界中心，外部世界并非想象中的蛮夷边缘。

晚清的“开眼”，首先来自震惊。《海国图志》的意义，不只是介绍外国情形，而是重绘了一张中国人的认知地图。八十年代的《走向未来》丛书，在精神结构上，也与此相通。当然，二者所面对的危机已经不同。晚清面对的是外部冲击。八十年代面对的，是在“文革”结束后，面对贫困、封闭、制度僵化和知识荒芜，人们重新意识到中国与世界的真实距离，以及中国自身结构中的沉疴。

二者之间隔着百余年的失败、试验、革命、战争与再封闭，但共同说明了一个事实：当旧秩序无法解释新现实时，知识总会最先成为突围的工具。书籍看似柔弱，却常常承担着打开时代天窗的任务。

作为1980年代的大学生，笔者至今还记得当时读到《走向未来》丛书的惊喜心情。这套丛书的第一本是李平晔所著的《人的发现：马丁·路德与宗教改革》，“人的发现”这个主题，让笔者印象极为深刻。当时对笔者影响最大的是关于“老三论”（指系统论、控制论、信息论）和“新三论”（指耗散结构论、协同论、突变论）的著作。书名到现在还记得，如《经济控制论》、《动态经济系统的调节与变化》、《系统思想》，以及《信息革命的技术源流》、《整体的哲学：组织的起源、生长和演化》、《上帝怎样掷骰子》等。本土学者的书里面，则有金观涛所著的《在历史的表象背后：对中国封建社会超稳定结构的探索》。

这些书当时给我们这样的青年学子带来极大的冲击力，以至于“耗散结构”、“超稳定结构”等这样的词汇，成了当时大学生们的口头禅。一方面，是出于年轻人的好奇，追逐来自西方的学术时尚，另一方面，则出于对辩证唯物主义、历史唯物主义这样的官方主流意识形态的逆反，以及对那些陈词滥调的厌倦。

笔者当时醉心的译著还有《增长的极限：罗马俱乐部关于人类困境的研究报告》；森岛通夫的《日本为什么成功：西方的技术和日本的民族精神》；以及马克斯·韦伯著的《新教伦理与资本主义精神》。本土学者的书中，则有朱光磊的《以权力制约权力：西方分权论和分权制评述》等。

特别关注这些著作，是因为它们都研究现代国家制度与国家能力问题；人的主体性问题，苏联、东欧等社会主义国家的改革与中国发展问题。这些都是当时的青年学子特别聚焦的议题。

说实话，那些书我们当时未必全能读懂，很大程度上也是懵懵懂懂。但关键不在于青年学子们是否掌握了这些理论，而在于大家获得了官方话语之外的一种新的话语，并由这些新的话语打开了一扇新的认知天窗。

启蒙的光照及其脆弱

如今，经常有人提到1989年天安门运动与这套书的关系，笔者认为，如果要联系起来，《走向未来》丛书不是这场运动的直接发动机，但这套丛书作为当时的文化热现象之一，是启蒙运动中青年自我教育的一个媒介，让一代青年学子获得了一种全新的认知方式，从政治口号转向对社会的结构分析，这极大地促进了他们的思考能力。

换句话说，一代青年学子不是通过这套丛书中的某一本或某几本完成理论觉醒，而是在连续阅读、互相讨论、校园传播，以及当时的改革语境中，逐渐学会了用结构、制度、系统、科学、现代化、主体性这些词重新认识中国与世界。

其中，历史反思与文化批判尤为关键。超稳定结构、儒家文化困境、近代科学的产生、宗教改革、新教伦理等著作，都强化了一个问题：为什么中国没有自然生成现代科学、现代制度与有现代“主体性”意识的个人？这条线与整个1980年代的“新启蒙”热潮，以及电视政论片《河殇》带来的社会反思都汇流在一起，形成了一代青年面向改革年代的问题意识。

系统论和控制论在当时之所以流行，是因为这些理论让人们看到，一个社会不是靠单一命令运行的机器，而是充满层级、回路、信息、误差和调节机制的复杂整体。对刚刚经历过高度动员和意志政治的中国青年而言，这种语言具有强烈的解放感。

尤其值得注意的是，八十年代青年知识分子对“科学”的理解，已经超出了普通科普。科学不再只是公式、仪器和实验室，而是一种理解社会的方式，一种反对任意性、拒绝神秘化，重视程序、反馈和证据的理性精神。

现代经济学的进入同样具有破冰意义。市场不再只是意识形态标签，也不再只是“资本主义”的代名词，而开始被理解为一种信息处理机制，一种资源配置方式，一种社会秩序。产权、激励、价格、看不见的手，这些概念在当时的传播中难免粗糙，却第一次使许多人意识到，经济生活并不是靠道德号召和行政命令就能有效运行的。

科学史与未来学，则为这一代人提供了另一种时间感。科学史让他们看到，现代文明并非从天而降，而是在历史中逐步形成的。未来学则让他们意识到，人类社会正面对工业化之后的新阶段，世界格局将重新书写。这种历史的纵深感和未来视野，使八十年代的中国青年，不再满足于现实缝隙中的小修小补，而开始把中国的改革放在一个文明转型的过程中思考。

也因此可以说，这些书的出现，以及人们对它们的追随，改变了一代人谈论中国问题的方式，也影响到了一代人精神结构上的整体更新。

但是，这套丛书潜藏的局限同样清晰可见：科学主义的色彩太浓，宏大理论的建构太多。对中国社会复杂性的理解则显得粗疏。

另外，它带来的启蒙光芒强烈而又脆弱——中共意识形态对出版的管控一直非常严厉。当时，在新旧交替的某种制度真空中，一些青年知识分子，凭借非正式的编委会、讲座、沙龙等渠道，打造出一个带有公共性质的网络，推动了《走向未来》丛书的出版，以及相关的影响力。但是，这种短暂的繁荣，缺乏现代法治与出版制度的实质支撑，主要依赖于地方政治的气候，特定官员的胆识以及短暂的政策宽容。风向一旦转舵，通向未来的窗户便可能被随时关上，看似热烈的公共讨论，随之瞬间窒息。

今天评价《走向未来》，既不能以后见之明去苛责当时的幼稚，也不必将其神化为一个完美的黄金时代的象征。那些“小白书”曾在青年手中传递，像一扇扇临时打开的窗，让封闭已久的房间忽然涌入了风和光。但打开窗户不等于房屋的重建，光亮也不等于制度的完成——启蒙之后，如果没有制度的更新与支撑，关于未来的想象，只能一次次被打开，又一次次被迫合上。

本期推荐档案：

《走向未来》丛书（四川人民出版社）

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

“Towards the Future”: How the “Little White Books” Sparked China’s Intellectual Enlightenment of the 1980s

By Hai Xing

Editors’ Note:

Whether in the past or the future, generations of young lives have always yearned for new perspectives and new ideas. This was precisely the case in 1980s China. After experiencing a period of immense intellectual stagnation and scarcity, a generation of youth expanded their horizons and transformed the way they discussed China’s issues and viewed the world—all thanks to the “Towards the Future” book series. Today, as China’s political and intellectual landscape shows signs of closing off once again, the younger generation faces a similar sense of loss and pain. Looking back at this piece of history from the 1980s may offer us some inspiration for the present.

In 1980s China, the social atmosphere was transformed not only by rural reform, urban reform, and the opening of the country to the outside world, but also by a wave of radical new publications. Among these, the “Towards the Future” book series, published by Sichuan People’s Publishing House, was perhaps the most iconic. Rather than a mere collection of popular educational readings, it was a consequential intellectual project through which a new generation of young intellectuals sought to use modern knowledge to re-interpret China, reconnect with the world, and reshape the future.

How the “Little White Books” Became a Cultural Phenomenon

Edited by scholars like Jin Guantao and Liu Qingfeng, “Towards the Future” was a pocket-sized book series that Sichuan People’s Publishing House began rolling out in 1984. Although the original plan called for 100 titles, production was abruptly halted after roughly 74 volumes following the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. The series spanned a vast range of subjects—including the natural sciences, social sciences, humanities, economics, and modernization theory—and featured both translated works and original texts.

With their plain layout and stark white covers, readers affectionately dubbed them the “Little White Books.” This nickname itself captures a collective generational memory: these were not obscure academic monographs hidden away in libraries, nor were they official texts that were out of touch with ordinary people. Instead, they were the kinds of books college students tucked under their arms, stuffed into backpacks, and avidly debated in dorm rooms and campus hallways.

The birth of the series was directly tied to the unique, bold spirit of the Sichuan publishing world during the 1980s. In the early days of reform and opening up, the entire nation was suffering from a profound intellectual famine in the wake of the Cultural Revolution. Then, long lines outside bookstores were a common sight. No longer content with producing purely local or populist literature, a group of ambitious Sichuan publishers began soliciting manuscripts from across the country, actively seeking out provocative new topics that could speak to the anxieties of the era.

This editorial audacity did not materialize out of thin air. In the 1980s, Sichuan was far from a sleepy inland province. Zhao Ziyang had served as the provincial First Party Secretary from October 1975 to 1980, and under his leadership, Sichuan pioneered a series of sweeping agricultural and economic reforms. This earned him the popular praise, “If you want food to eat, look for Ziyang,” turning Sichuan into a vital testing ground for China’s rural restructuring. This political environment fundamentally altered the local social climate; because the province was a laboratory for change, local institutions stopped acting as passive executors of Beijing’s dictates and began serving as crucibles for new ideas. The willingness of Sichuan’s publishers to break regional boundaries and enter the national marketplace of ideas perfectly mirrored this local ethos.

Yet, to view the series merely as a highly successful commercial publishing venture is to drastically underestimate its historical significance. “Towards the Future” created a genuine sensation because it struck at the heart of the spiritual void in 1980s Chinese society.

Having endured decades of isolation and relentless political campaigns, China found itself intellectually starved. Through these books, an entire generation of young people was suddenly introduced to an unfamiliar world: modern science, market economics, industrial civilization, the information society, systems theory, cybernetics, modernization theory, the Protestant Reformation, the history of science, and structural social analysis. These concepts, like windows thrown wide open, offered people a breathtaking glimpse into a world that had long been hidden from view.

Young readers did not scramble to buy these “Little White Books” simply to accumulate facts, but rather to find a new framework for understanding: How should they interpret China’s past? How could they justify the necessity of reform and opening up? How were they to perceive the West? And how, ultimately, should they envision China’s future?

A Second “Opening of the Eyes to the World”

This desperate hunger for knowledge was by no means unique to the 1980s. Almost every major intellectual turning point in modern Chinese history has occurred after an old explanatory framework was violently shattered by reality. When viewed in a broader historical context, the “Towards the Future” series immediately evokes the generation of late-Qing scholar-officials who first “opened their eyes to see the world” after the Opium Wars. In those days, Lin Zexu (1785–1850) organized the translation of intelligence on foreign powers, Wei Yuan (1794–1857) compiled the Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms, and Xu Jiyu (1795–1873) penned the Brief Survey of the Maritime Circuit. They, too, confronted a fractured reality: a centuries-old, self-contained world order had been abruptly shattered by Western gunboats, global trade, unequal treaties, and an international system of maritime empires. China was forced to confront the harsh reality that it was not the center of the universe, and that the outside world was not the peripheral wasteland of barbarians they had long imagined.

In the late Qing, this awakening was born out of raw shock. The significance of the Illustrated Treatise on the Maritime Kingdoms lay not just in its descriptions of foreign lands, but in the way it radically redrew the cognitive map of the Chinese elite. Spiritually and structurally, the “Towards the Future” series of the 1980s shared this exact same DNA, even if the specific crises they faced had evolved. While the late Qing reeled from an external shockwave, the 1980s generation was reacting to the internal aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. Faced with poverty, isolation, institutional sclerosis, and intellectual barrenness, people were forced to confront the staggering chasm that separated China from the modern world, as well as the deep-seated maladies embedded within China’s own systemic structure.

Though separated by more than a century of failures, experiments, revolutions, wars, and periods of renewed isolation, both eras proved a fundamental truth: when an old order can no longer explain a new reality, knowledge becomes the primary tool used to break through the impasse.

As a university student during the 1980s, I still vividly remember the sheer exhilaration of discovering the “Towards the Future” series. The very first volume was Li Pingye’s The Discovery of Man: Martin Luther and the Reformation, and its core theme—the liberation of human agency—left an indelible impression on me. The volumes that shaped my thinking most profoundly, however, were those introducing the “Old Three Theories” (systems theory, cybernetics, and information theory) and the “New Three Theories” (dissipative structures, synergetics, and catastrophe theory). I can still recall their titles today: Economic Cybernetics, Regulation and Change of Dynamic Economic Systems, System Thought, The Technological Origins and Streams of the Information Revolution, The Philosophy of the Whole: The Origin, Growth, and Evolution of Organizations, and How Does God Play Dice. Among the works by domestic scholars, the most influential was Jin Guantao’s Behind the Appearance of History: An Exploration of the Ultra-Stable Structure of Chinese Feudal Society.

These books hit young scholars like me with such force that terms like “dissipative structures” and “ultra-stable structures” instantly became ubiquitous campus slang. Part of this was driven by youthful curiosity and a desire to chase Western intellectual trends, but it was also a quiet rebellion against the stale platitudes of official mainstream ideologies like dialectical and historical materialism.

Among the translated works, I was particularly fascinated with The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind, Michio Morishima’s Why Has Japan “Succeeded”?: Western Technology and the Japanese Ethos, and Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. From our domestic scholars, I closely read works like Zhu Guanglei’s Restraining Power with Power: A Review of Western Separation of Powers Theory and the Separation of Powers System.

We gravitated toward these specific texts because they directly tackled the burning questions of modern state systems, institutional capacity, individual subjectivity, and the challenges of socialist reform in the USSR, Eastern Europe, and China. These were the exact issues that our generation was desperately trying to parse.

To be perfectly honest, we did not fully comprehend everything we read; in many ways, we were stumbling through these complex ideas in a daze. Yet, whether we fully mastered the underlying theory was beside the point. What mattered was that we were acquiring a new vocabulary outside the bounds of official state discourse, and through that vocabulary, we were opening a brand-new cognitive window.

The Light of Enlightenment and Its Fragility

Today, some people attempt to draw a line between this book series and the 1989 Tiananmen Square movement. In my view, while “Towards the Future” was not the direct engine of those protests, it served as a vital vehicle for youth self-education within the broader cultural craze of the enlightenment. It gave a generation of students a completely new framework for processing reality, shifting their focus away from hollow political slogans and toward the structural analysis of society, which immeasurably sharpened their critical thinking skills.

In other words, the student body did not experience an intellectual awakening because of any single volume in the collection. Rather, it was through a continuous process of reading, intense debate, campus-wide dissemination, and the broader atmosphere of national reform that they gradually learned to re-evaluate China and the world through the lenses of structure, institution, system, science, modernization, and subjectivity.

Within this framework, historical introspection and cultural critique became paramount. Works analyzing ultra-stable structures, the historical traps of Confucian culture, the birth of modern science, the Reformation, and the Protestant ethic all forced us to confront a single, haunting question: Why had China failed to naturally generate modern science, modern institutions, and individuals possessed of a modern sense of personal agency? This line of inquiry merged seamlessly with the “New Enlightenment” movement of the 1980s and the deep social reflection sparked by the television documentary River Elegy, ultimately crystallizing into the foundational intellectual worldview of a generation entering the era of reform.

Systems theory and cybernetics enjoyed immense popularity during this period because they allowed people to see that a society is not a simplistic machine driven by top-down commands, but a complex web of hierarchies, feedback loops, information flows, errors, and self-correcting mechanisms. For a Chinese youth culture that had just emerged from an era of hyper-mobilization and radical voluntarism, this systemic language offered an intoxicating sense of liberation.

It is particularly remarkable that the 1980s intellectual understanding of “science” transcended mere popular physics or chemistry. Science was no longer viewed simply as formulas, lab equipment, and test tubes; it was embraced as a method for understanding society—a rational ethos that rejected arbitrary authority, refused mystification, and prized procedure, feedback, and empirical evidence.

The introduction of modern economics was similarly groundbreaking. The market ceased to be viewed merely as an ideological label or a dirty shorthand for capitalism. Instead, it began to be understood scientifically: as an information-processing mechanism, a method of resource allocation, and a form of social order. Though the dissemination of concepts like property rights, incentives, pricing, and the invisible hand was undeniably unrefined at the time, it marked the first time many people realized that economic life could not be run effectively through moral exhortation and administrative fiat.

Concurrently, the history of science and futurology provided this generation with an entirely new perception of time. The history of science demonstrated that modern civilization did not materialize out of thin air, but was forged incrementally through historical processes. Futurology, meanwhile, made them realize that humanity was entering a post-industrial frontier where the global balance of power was being completely rewritten. This profound sense of historical depth and future perspective meant that young Chinese thinkers were no longer content with minor, superficial fixes to the status quo; they began to view China’s domestic reforms as an epic process of civilizational transformation.

Consequently, it is fair to say that the emergence of these books, and the fervor with which they were devoured, fundamentally altered how a generation discussed China’s problems and permanently reshaped their collective intellectual architecture.

Even so, the inherent flaws of the series remain glaringly obvious in retrospect: it was deeply colored by an over-reliance on scientism, overly preoccupied with building grand theories, and frequently superficial in its grasp of the immense complexities of Chinese society.

Furthermore, the light of enlightenment it cast was as fragile as it was bright, given that the Communist Party’s ideological stranglehold on the publishing industry remained brutally strict. During that brief transitional window—a sort of institutional vacuum between the old world and the new—a handful of young intellectuals managed to leverage informal editorial boards, lectures, and salons to construct a makeshift public network, which successfully drove the publication and influence of the series. Yet this fleeting intellectual renaissance lacked any real foundation in the rule of law or a free press. It depended almost entirely on the shifting winds of local politics, the courage of select officials, and a momentary policy of state tolerance. The moment the political wind changed direction, the window to the future was slammed shut, and what had seemed like a vibrant, roaring public discourse was suffocated in an instant.

In evaluating “Towards the Future” today, we should neither use the benefit of hindsight to mock its naivete, nor should we romanticize it as a flawless symbol of a golden age. Those “Little White Books” passed from hand to hand among the youth like a series of makeshift windows, suddenly flooding a long-sealed room with fresh air and light. Yet, opening a window is not the same as rebuilding the house, and a flash of illumination is not the same as establishing an enduring system. In the absence of institutional reform and systemic safeguards, the window to the future can only be pushed open for a moment, before being forced shut once again.

Recommended archives:

The “Towards the Future” Book Series (Sichuan People’s Publishing House)

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

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作者：陈往之

By Chen Wangzhi

The English translation follows below.

在中国共产党的历史叙事中，文化大革命结束于1976年10月6日——华国锋“粉碎”了四人帮，党的领导层开始把精力投入到“拨乱反正”之中。但今天回看，针对文革的“拨乱反正”，实际上是一项彻底烂尾的政治工程——不管是中共对文革原因的反思，还是对毛泽东错误的彻底批判，更别说对文革受害者的赔偿了。

今年时值文革爆发60周年，结束50周年。关于文革的讨论，在中国的防火墙外一片热闹，但在中国国内，官方媒体上一片沉默，社交媒体上也几乎无人敢谈起——相关的独立声音很快会被删除，文革依然是中国政治生活中的敏感话题。这也从侧面证明，文革后的所谓“拨乱反正”，更多只是一个官方术语，并未在现实政治中得到落实。

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德国汉学家Daniel Leese在其德语著作《毛泽东的漫长阴影：中国对待过去的方式》Maos langer Schatten. Chinas Umgang mit der Vergangenheit 一书中，把毛泽东去世（1976年）后的十年，描述为在司法清算、平反赔偿和新一轮镇压中走钢丝。他指出，一个独裁政权正视自己的罪行是不寻常的情况，其目的可能是为了创造一个更公正的社会，但核心目标仍然是继续掌权。Leese说，1976年之后，中国共产党建立了一种文化大革命不会卷土重来的叙事，以此来确立自己的合法性，但今天，关于文革的这种（反思）叙事已很少看到，人们只关心当下的政绩和党辉煌的过去。

中国学者宋国庆曾借用“转型正义”的框架来理解文革后的拨乱反正。他将转型正义分为：追溯正义（retroactive justice）、修复正义（restorative justice）、惩罚正义（retributive justice）和历史正义（historical justice）等。追溯正义指追究前政权的非法暴行和滥权行为；修复正义主要是指对受害者实行经济、心理等诸多方面的补偿；惩罚正义指对施害者的刑事惩罚及其他惩处；历史正义是指对历史真相的挖掘和揭示。

从中国的历史事实看，中共开始“拨乱反正”后，首先处理任的任务是平反冤假错案。1977年12月，胡耀邦出任中共中央组织部部长，开始处理全国的冤假错案。根据宋任穷回忆，到了1982年，全国复查平反被立案审查的干部230万人，集团性的冤假错案2万件。但许多平反已经来得太迟，当事人已经被迫害致死。

文革造成的实际死亡人数至今未有官方记录。斯坦福大学社会学教授魏昂德（Andrew G. Walder）著有《1966-1971年中国的叛乱与镇压》一书。他系统性收集了2213个县市的地方志，

估算出1966年-1971年之间中国的非正常死亡人数有110万-160万，2200万-2300万人受到迫害。

根据中国最高法院的官方数据，文革十年，司法机关审判了40万件反革命案件，105万件普通刑事案件。最高法院承认，前者基本都是错判，后者有10%为错判。1978年，中国各级人民法院开始纠正冤假错案，与此同时，新的冤假错案也同步被制造。1977年发布的“六号文件”，提出“对攻击毛主席、华主席和以华主席为首的党中央的现行反革命分子，要坚决镇压”。在四人帮已经被逮捕的1977年-1978年，中国又判处了3.3万件反革命案件。从这个意义上讲，文革此时并没有结束。

比如江西女工李九莲，她因反革命罪在1975年被判刑15年，1977年，因“恶毒攻击英明领袖华主席”被判死刑，1977年底被枪决后抛尸荒野。1978年，为李九莲鸣冤的女教师钟海源也被处死。直到1980年底华国锋下台，这些案件才得以平反。

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随着文革冤案的平反，当时，更多政治运动的受害者写信上访、要求平反。 土改、整党、镇压反革命（毛泽东决定按千分之一的比例杀人）、三反五反、反右派、反右倾、四清运动……建国后的政治受害者不计其数。

1979年，中共中央批准中组部《关于文化大革命前一些案件处理意见》。《意见》认为文革前处理的案件绝大多数是正确的和基本正确的，与文革大量冤假错案“有原则的区别”，如果不加分析通通重新翻腾一遍，“势必造成是非不清，引起不必要的思想混乱，影响安定团结，也会脱离党内外广大干部和群众”。

中共一开始就对文革前案件的平反做出了限制。所以，尽管1957年反右运动中五十多万右派，在1978年几乎全部“摘帽”，也仍然留下了97人不予改正（包括章伯钧、罗隆基、储安平、彭文应、陈仁炳五个著名右派）。对于右派所用的词语是“改正”而非“平反”。1978年12月，邓小平表示：“1957年反右派斗争是正确的，但后来扩大化了。”法学家郭道晖颇为讽刺地评价：扩大化5759.1354倍，错划比率占99.99%。所谓“必要性”只占万分之1.736。

对于文革冤假错案的受害者，并没有系统性的国家赔偿方案。宋国庆引用中共中央党史研究室编著的《拨乱反正：中央卷》数据，显示，随着受害者的广泛申诉，中共政府后来为50多万平反干部补发了10.1亿元工资。对受迫害的“民族资产阶级（即被认定的中、小资本家）”，在经济上的退赔和补充也比较彻底，发放了被查抄、冻结的存款和工资。中共统战部的数据显示，截至1984年，退赔约300万两黄金、700万两白银、15万件金银制品和800万枚银元，按上缴银行时的牌价作价退还；退还被查抄尚存的350万件文物、字画、珠宝、玉器、工艺品和264万册私人图书。

对“民族资产阶级”的积极赔偿，也让党内外许多人感到不满。党的统战部为此特别发了文章解释：国民经济恢复发展需要私人资本主义经济的积极性，需要他们一切有用的技术专长和企业管理经验。

相对地，农民受害者，还有很多的普通受害者，几乎没有获得任何赔偿。导演徐星在纪录片《罪行摘要》中走访了14位被定为“现行反革命”的农民。当年他们被放回家后，找过当地政府，政府给出的回应是：现在国家被“四人帮”破坏得厉害，全国都这样。国家有困难，你们要体谅。等国家好了，会慢慢处理。但2010年，浙江省再次拒绝了他们的赔偿申请。

除了对受害者的平反和赔偿之外，当时所谓拨乱反正的内容还包括对施害者的惩罚。

宋国庆在文章中指出，中共用人事清查和司法审判的方式对文革施害者进行惩罚。人事清查具体指的是对“三种人”的清查，即“追随林彪、江青反革命集团造反起家的人、帮派思想严重的人、打砸抢份子”。邓小平认为这三种人不能留在党内继续担任公职。到1987年整党结束，全国（不包括广西）共清理出“三种人”5449名，犯有严重错误的43074名。广西是文革受害最严重的省份之一，也是文革期间非正常死亡人数最严重的地方，广西清理出严重违法乱纪分子27919名，犯有严重违法乱纪错误的13154名。当中25000多人被开除或清理出党，其余被纪律处分、判刑或免予处罚。

当时的司法审判，主要是两案（林彪、江青反革命集团案）的审判。两案审理的过程中，全国立案审查了48万多人，其中2万多人被判刑。经“两案”审理定为犯严重错误的有1.45万人。

总之，根据官方记录，1983年全国整党前因文革问题立案审查人员达48万人，其中受到各种处理的人员21万人（2万人被判刑）。1983至1987年整党期间，全国又处理近9万人。两项相加，总计有30万人因为文革问题受到处理。

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拨乱反正最重要的是“历史正义”的问题，即文革的历史真相是什么，谁应该为文革责任（如何评价毛泽东），文革会不会卷土重来？

在这些问题上，中共在当时就表现出了对历史和公正的回避。1980年5月，在为刘少奇平反的追悼会上，邓小平发表的悼词，特别提到“刘少奇同志在工作中也有某些缺点和错误”，这被党内不少人认为是对毛泽东错误的护短。

在准备第二份历史决议的过程中，邓小平也提出，对历史问题，要粗一点，概括一点，不要搞得太细。而之所以不愿意彻底否定毛泽东，也源自对苏联的经验的学习。1978年，邓小平说：“党中央、中国人民永远不愿意干赫鲁晓夫那样的事。”他指的是赫鲁晓夫否定斯大林的事情。

同样，在审理“两案”过程中，为了撇清毛泽东和周恩来的责任，彭真定下的方向是只审罪行，不审路线。因此，在写起诉意见书时，有13件无法和毛、周分开的事情（包括刘少奇的定案等），都没有写进起诉意见书里。

1981年通过的《第二个历史决议》，正式将文革定义为一场内乱，并承认这场历史不义的主要责任主要在中共的领导人毛泽东。但同时，这份决议更强调林彪、江青反革命集团在文革中造成的破坏，以及“复杂的社会历史原因”，也明确表示，毛泽东的历史地位和毛泽东思想作为意识形态旗帜不变。

至此，关于文化大革命的“拨乱反正”就告一段落。从前文可以看出，在文化大革命迫害了多少人，造成了多少人冤死，有多少人受到审判和惩罚等涉及历史真相的问题上，中共仍然没有开放足够完整的档案进行研究，也没有足够权威的官方报告。在历史责任的追究上，强调的是所谓向前看，对塑造集体记忆一事，如今更是避之不及。

直到2013年，习近平提出“两个不能否定”，强调不能用“后三十年否定前三十年”。2021年推出的《第三个历史决议》，对文化大革命只是轻轻带过。尽管官方文件上目前仍然是否定文革的态度，但近年来，事实上对文革的研究、报道、讨论已经成为重要禁区。与此同时，年轻世代对文化大革命的浪漫想象和向往，也成为新的潮流——这一切，其实都是互相关联的事情。

本期推荐档案：

徐星：纪录片《罪行摘要》

在线资料库：Maoist Legacy

《宋任穷回忆录（续集）》

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

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Justice Denied: “Rehabilitation” After the Cultural Revolution

By Chen Wangzhi

In the official historical narrative of the Chinese Communist Party, the Cultural Revolution ended on October 6, 1976, when Hua Guofeng “smashed” the Gang of Four and the Party leadership began shifting its energy toward restoring order. Looking back today, however, this campaign to rectify the legacy of the Cultural Revolution was an unfinished political project. This shortfall is evident whether you look at the Party’s superficial reflection on the root causes of the era, its refusal to thoroughly critique Mao Zedong’s errors, or, least of all, its failure to compensate the victims.

This year marks both the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution and the 50th anniversary of its conclusion. While discussions on the topic are bustling outside China’s Great Firewall, they are met with total silence within the country. Official media ignores the anniversary entirely, and almost no one dares to mention it on social media. Because any independent voices are swiftly censored, the Cultural Revolution remains highly taboo in Chinese political life. This reality suggests that the post-Cultural Revolution effort to restore order was largely just official rhetoric that was never truly realized in practical politics.

1

In his book Mao’s Long Shadow: China’s Way of Dealing with the Past (Maos langer Schatten. Chinas Umgang mit der Vergangenheit), German sinologist Daniel Leese describes the decade following Mao Zedong’s death in 1976 as a tightrope walk between judicial reckonings, rehabilitation with compensation, and new waves of state suppression. He points out that it is highly unusual for an authoritarian regime to confront its own crimes; while such a move may ostensibly aim to create a fairer society, its core objective is always to maintain its grip on power. Leese notes that after 1976, the Chinese Communist Party established a narrative promising that the Cultural Revolution would never happen again, using this promise to cement its own legitimacy. Today, however, this reflective narrative has largely vanished, replaced by an exclusive focus on current political achievements and the Party’s glorious past.

Chinese scholar Song Guoqing once used the framework of transitional justice to evaluate these post-Cultural Revolution rectifications. He breaks transitional justice down into four categories: retroactive justice, restorative justice, retributive justice, and historical justice. Retroactive justice entails investigating the unlawful atrocities and abuses of power committed by a previous regime; restorative justice primarily involves providing economic, psychological, and other forms of compensation to victims; retributive justice focuses on criminal prosecution and penalties for perpetrators; and historical justice centers on unearthing and exposing historical truths.

Looking at the historical facts, the Chinese Communist Party’s top priority when it began restoring order was rehabilitating those affected by unjust, false, and wrongful convictions. In December 1977, Hu Yaobang took over as head of the Organization Department of the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee and began addressing these systemic injustices across the country. According to the recollections of official Song Renqiong, by 1982 the government had re-examined and rehabilitated 2.3 million cadres who had been placed under formal investigation, alongside 20,000 collective wrongful cases. Unfortunately, many of these rehabilitations came far too late, as the victims had already been persecuted to death.

To this day, there is no official record of the Cultural Revolution’s death toll. However, Andrew G. Walder, a professor of sociology at Stanford University and author of Rebellion and Repression in China, 1966–1971, systematically analyzed local chronicles from 2,213 counties and cities. He estimates that the number of unnatural deaths in China between 1966 and 1971 ranges from 1.1 million to 1.6 million, with an additional 22 to 23 million people suffering political persecution.

According to official data from China’s Supreme People’s Court, judicial organs tried 400,000 counter-revolutionary cases and 1.05 million ordinary criminal cases during the ten turbulent years of the Cultural Revolution. The Supreme People’s Court later admitted that virtually all of the counter-revolutionary convictions were wrongful, as were 10% of the ordinary criminal cases. In 1978, Chinese courts at all levels began overturning these wrongful verdicts.

Simultaneously, however, new wrongful convictions were still being manufactured. “Document No. 6,” issued in 1977, explicitly decreed that “active counter-revolutionaries who attack Chairman Mao, Chairman Hua, and the Party Central Committee headed by Chairman Hua must be resolutely suppressed.” Consequently, between 1977 and 1978—well after the Gang of Four had been arrested—Chinese courts handed down sentences in another 33,000 counter-revolutionary cases. In this sense, the Cultural Revolution had not truly ended.

Consider the case of Li Jiulian, a female worker from Jiangxi. She was originally sentenced to 15 years in prison for counter-revolutionary crimes in 1975. In 1977, she was sentenced to death for “viciously attacking our wise leader Chairman Hua,” executed by firing squad, and her body was abandoned in the wilderness. In 1978, Zhong Haiyuan, a schoolteacher who spoke out against the injustice done to Li, was also executed. These cases were not rehabilitated until late 1980, when Hua Guofeng fell from power.

2

As the Cultural Revolution verdicts began to be overturned, a flood of victims from earlier political movements also began writing letters and visiting government offices to petition for their own rehabilitations. Between the Land Reform, Party Rectification, the Suppression of Counter-Revolutionaries (where Mao decided to execute citizens at a quota of one per thousand), the Three-Anti and Five-Anti Campaigns, the Anti-Rightist Movement, the Anti-Right-Deviationist Campaign, and the Four Cleansings Movement, the number of political victims since the founding of the People’s Republic was incalculable.

In 1979, the Chinese Communist Party Central Committee approved a document from the Central Organization Department titled “Opinions on the Handling of Certain Cases Prior to the Cultural Revolution.” The document asserted that the vast majority of pre-Cultural Revolution cases were decided correctly or were at least fundamentally sound. It argued that these cases differed “in principle” from the widespread injustices of the Cultural Revolution. The leadership warned that blindly reopening and re-examining every past case without distinction would “inevitably blur the line between right and wrong, cause unnecessary ideological confusion, undermine stability and unity, and alienate cadres and the masses both inside and outside the Party.”

From the very beginning, the Party drew a hard line limiting the rehabilitation of pre-Cultural Revolution cases. For instance, although nearly all of the 500,000-plus individuals labeled as “rightists” during the 1957 Anti-Rightist Movement had their labels removed in 1978, the government explicitly refused to correct the verdicts of 97 people. This group included five prominent intellectuals: Zhang Bojun, Luo Longji, Chu Anping, Peng Wenying, and Chen Renbing. Furthermore, the state deliberately used the term “correction” rather than “rehabilitation” for former rightists. In December 1978, Deng Xiaoping maintained that “the anti-rightist struggle in 1957 was correct, but it was later excessively magnified.” Legal scholar Guo Daohui noted the bitter irony of this stance, pointing out that the campaign was magnified by 5,759.1354 times, meaning the error rate was 99.99%, while the so-called “historical necessity” accounted for a mere 1.736 out of 10,000 cases.

The victims of the Cultural Revolution never received a systematic, state-level compensation program. However, in response to widespread petitions, the Chinese government eventually paid out 1.01 billion yuan in back wages to more than 500,000 rehabilitated cadres. Financial restitution was also relatively thorough for the persecuted “national bourgeoisie” (designated small and medium capitalists), who recouped their confiscated or frozen bank deposits and wages. Official data reveals that by 1984, the state had returned approximately 3 million taels of gold, 7 million taels of silver, 150,000 gold and silver items, and 8 million silver dollars—all valued at the state exchange rates from when they were originally seized. The government also returned 3.5 million surviving items of confiscated property—including cultural relics, calligraphy, paintings, jewelry, jade, and handicrafts—along with 2.64 million private books.

This swift and generous compensation for the “national bourgeoisie” sparked resentment among many people both inside and outside the Party. In response, the Party’s United Front Work Department published a dedicated explanatory article, arguing that restoring and developing the national economy required the drive, technical expertise, and managerial experience of private capitalists.

By contrast, rural peasants and ordinary citizens received almost no compensation whatsoever. In his documentary Summary of Crimes, director Xu Xing interviewed 14 peasants who had been branded as “active counter-revolutionaries.” When they were finally allowed to return home, they petitioned their local governments for restitution. The standard official response they received was: “The country has been severely ruined by the Gang of Four, and the whole nation is suffering. The nation is facing hardships, and you should be understanding of this situation. Once things improve, we will deal with it slowly.” Decades later, in 2010, the Zhejiang provincial government rejected their compensation applications yet again.

Beyond rehabilitation and compensation, the campaign to restore order also encompassed punishing the perpetrators of the Cultural Revolution.

In his article, Song Guoqing points out that the Party handled these perpetrators through political purging and judicial trials. The purging process focused heavily on three types of people: those who rose to power by joining the rebellion led by the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary cliques, those with deep-seated factional mindsets, and those who engaged in violent smash-and-grab operations. Deng Xiaoping insisted that these individuals could no longer remain in the Party or hold public office. By the time the Party Rectification concluded in 1987, a total of 5,449 individuals belonging to those three categories and 43,074 others who committed serious errors had been purged nationwide (excluding Guangxi). Guangxi, which suffered some of the worst atrocities and highest rates of unnatural deaths during the Cultural Revolution, separately removed 27,919 “severe violators of law and discipline” and 13,154 individuals who “committed grave errors.” Of these, more than 25,000 were expelled from the Party, while the remainder faced disciplinary actions, prison sentences, or exemptions from punishment.

On the judicial front, efforts were concentrated on the high-profile trials of the “Two Cases” (the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary cliques). During these proceedings, over 480,000 people were investigated nationwide, resulting in more than 20,000 prison sentences. An additional 14,500 individuals were formally ruled to have committed serious errors.

In total, official records show that prior to the 1983 nationwide Party Rectification, 480,000 people were investigated for Cultural Revolution-related offenses, with 210,000 receiving some form of punishment (including the 20,000 sentenced to prison). During the subsequent rectification period from 1983 to 1987, another 90,000 individuals were penalized. Combined, roughly 300,000 people were officially held accountable for their actions during the Cultural Revolution.

3

The most critical dimension of restoring order lies in the realm of historical justice—confronting the historical truth of the Cultural Revolution, assigning accountability (specifically regarding how to evaluate Mao Zedong), and preventing its recurrence.

Yet, even in the early post-Mao years, the Chinese Communist Party consistently chose to evade historical transparency and true justice. In May 1980, during the memorial service rehabilitating Liu Shaoqi, Deng Xiaoping delivered a eulogy that pointedly noted, “Comrade Liu Shaoqi also had certain shortcomings and mistakes in his work.” Many within the Party viewed this line as a deliberate attempt to shield Mao Zedong from sole blame.

While drafting the Second Historical Resolution, Deng Xiaoping explicitly instructed that historical issues should be painted with a broad brush and kept generalized rather than overly detailed. This reluctance to completely condemn Mao was deeply informed by the Soviet experience. As Deng noted in 1978, “The Party Central Committee and the Chinese people will never do what Khrushchev did,” referring to Khrushchev’s total denunciation of Stalin.

Similarly, during the trials of the “Two Cases,” the politician Peng Zhen set a strict directive to try only specific criminal acts rather than the broader political line, aiming to insulate Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai from culpability. Consequently, when the indictment was drafted, 13 key historical events that could not be decoupled from Mao and Zhou—including the engineering of the case against Liu Shaoqi—were intentionally omitted.

When the Second Historical Resolution was passed in 1981, it formally categorized the Cultural Revolution as a period of domestic turmoil and acknowledged that the primary responsibility for this historical catastrophe lay with Mao Zedong. Crucially, however, the resolution deflected blame by focusing heavily on the havoc wrought by the Lin Biao and Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary cliques, pointing also to “complex social and historical factors.” It firmly re-established that Mao’s historical status remained monumental and that Mao Zedong Thought would endure as the Party’s foundational ideological banner.

With that resolution, the official era of rectifying the Cultural Revolution drew to a close. As the evidence shows, when it comes to the core historical truths—the exact number of people persecuted, the scale of wrongful deaths, and the identities of those tried and punished—the Chinese Communist Party has never opened its archives fully to researchers, nor has it ever published an authoritative official report. When assigning historical blame, the Party prefers to emphasize looking forward instead of backward, and today, it actively avoids shaping an independent collective memory.

This approach was reinforced in 2013 when Xi Jinping introduced the doctrine of the “Two Cannot Negates,” asserting that the 30-year history of the People’s Republic after the reform era cannot be used to negate the 30-year history that preceded it, and vice versa. By the time the Third Historical Resolution was unveiled in 2021, the Cultural Revolution was merely glossed over in passing. Although official state documents technically still maintain a negative stance on the Cultural Revolution, independent research, reporting, and public discussion on the era have effectively become strictly politically forbidden. Meanwhile, a romanticized nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution is trending among the younger generation—phenomena that are, in reality, deeply interconnected.

Recommended archives:

Xu Xing: Summary of Crimes

Online archive: Maoist Legacy

Memoirs of Song Renqiong (Sequel)

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：廖亦武

By Liao Yiwu

The English translation follows below.

编者按：

作家廖亦武所著的《刘晓波生死书》中、英、德文版，将于2027年刘晓波离世10周年时出版。本文节选自该书第七章，由作者授权民间档案馆首次发表。文中，廖亦武回顾了1989年“六四”之后，以丁子霖女士为代表的“天安门母亲”，如何年复一年地为“六四”死难者讨寻公道，以及天安门母亲们对2010年诺贝尔和平奖得主刘晓波的深刻精神影响。篇幅所限，发表时有删减和修改，读者们可以在中国民间档案馆网站上读到全文。

2005年初春，我从四川到北京，潜伏在老友忠忠的出租屋里，一个多星期不敢露面。直到三月的北京两会（全国人民代表大会和中国人民政治协商会议）结束了，定点监控由紧绷到松懈，刘晓波才赶过来，带我去仰慕已久的丁子霖和蒋培坤（他们夫妻俩是“天安门母亲”运动主要创始人）老师家。

聊了两个多小时。当然，主要是他们聊，我插不上嘴，就傻瓜似地洗耳恭听。末了，我把刘晓波（他当时是海外网刊《民主中国》的主编）刚刚发给我的4000元稿费掏出来，要捐给“六四”难属群体。丁老师不收，说，你自己都困难。我说不困难，有肉吃有酒喝还有到处乱跑的闲钱。可丁老师依旧不收，说，难属们是需要帮助，我们也不拒绝捐款，但你的作用不是捐款。

看我有些困惑，丁老师就埋头写了一张卡片递给我：“能抽空去看看这对夫妇吗？要不，打个电话也行。你们是同乡。”这卡片上写着的，是“六四”死难青年吴国锋的父母——吴定富、宋秀玲的电话和地址。

回程途中，我把稿费塞给刘晓波，央求他代转（很快，我就接到收据，丁老师已将这笔钱转给了“六四”难属杨银山和伤残者杨子明）。接下来，几经周折，我去了四川新津县探望吴国锋的父母。这次深度专访，后来收录入我的《子弹鸦片：天安门大屠杀的生与死》一书。文章首发在2005年5月19日的《民主中国》，引起了连锁反应。有多位流亡美国的人士通过各种渠道联系我，说要给因病割除了一个肾脏、生活困难的吴国锋老爸捐款。

其时，我正在阅读2002年诺贝尔文学奖得主凯尔泰斯（Imre Kertész）的代表作——《为一个未出生的孩子祈祷》。凯尔泰斯是匈牙利籍的犹太人，也是奥斯维辛集中营的幸存者。在书中，他写下自己为什么拒绝成为一个父亲。

“不！”我毫不犹豫地脱口而出，毫不犹豫，完全出自本能，是本能反抗着本能，是反本能在起作用，而不是本能本身，这一声“不！”，不是深思熟虑的，也不是一个期望中的回答，表达我的不置可否。

我的妻只是笑我，她理解我，后来她也说，她从心底知道这声“不！”来得多么艰难，尽管我的内心苦苦挣扎想使它成为一声“是！”，而我的回答——我相信我理解她，也知道她在想什么……

不——我孩提时代的经历再也不应发生在另一个孩子身上，

不——我的心中有声音在尖利地叫喊，是可能的，这个孩提时代的经历，应该发生在这个孩子——在你——在我身上。是的，是开始对我的妻讲述我的孩提时代的时候了……

我从以上文字推断，凯尔泰斯没有孩子；在妻子这次堕胎之后，他也再不会要孩子。他拿起了笔，为这个未出生的孩子祈祷，他喊了一连串的“不！”，声泪俱下，因为犹太人一生下来就没有安全感，甚至没有祖国。凯尔泰斯永远记得，一个十四岁的少年，被关入集中营等死，却突然得到一杯热牛奶，他舍不得一口灌下去，而是躲在角落里，小口小口地吮。虽然牛奶的表皮蒙了一层黑灰，这黑灰就是焚尸炉落下来的，但他忽略了这一切，全神贯注地吮吸——这是一种怎样的幸福啊，那种黑牛奶的回味令他多年后想把它写出来……

我的眼眶湿润了，而同时，录音机里，我刚刚访问过的，那个失去孩子的父亲，正在讲述这个孩子的童年。这个叫吴国锋的孩子，长大后去了北京，进了大学，燃起父母对未来的种种梦想，再后来，就是“六四”。他被戒严士兵的刺刀捅死在异乡街头，父母的梦想又成死灰。绝望无尽头。试想，如果把吴国锋的父亲换成凯尔泰斯，这个孩子会生下来吗？当他知道，生下这个孩子，21年后，这个孩子，会死在他的国家，死在士兵的刺刀之下？

再如果，把凯尔泰斯文字中的“犹太人”换成“中国人”，我们也不该生下来，以免只要思想，就会犯罪，连累亲人。可我们生下来了，和一场接一场的灾难一样，繁衍着，耻辱如冰雹一般打得人抬不起头。

“不！”，我关掉了录音机。但是——

“不！”，我还会打开它。

1

《子弹鸦片》是2012年在台湾出版的。它被称之为文学纪实，但其实它更是一本证词。书中我自己最珍视的，是对吴定富夫妇的这篇专访。叙述平淡无奇，只是一对暮年夫妇追忆他们的孩子。这个孩子，很可能是死于天安门屠杀的数千孩子中，最有想法的那一个。在物资匮乏的1980年代，中国有照相机的人还很罕见，不满21岁的吴国锋，不仅逼着父母寄钱买照相机，还拿着相机上街去记录历史——这太超前了。所以刽子手急了，要抢他的照相机，他攥紧不让。对付绝大多数人的，是子弹和坦克，唯独对他，是刺刀直来直去插了七下。他的双手握住刀锋，他倒下，却要坐起来，眼睛大睁着。他的眼睛——那是另一台照相机。

事过多年，我了解并记录了这一瞬间，我只后悔，我的文字还不够有力。

那之后我再次去北京。2005年5月26日下午，经艺术家高氏兄弟介绍，我与画家武文建结识，自此拉开长达数年的寻访所谓“六四暴徒（其实是社会底层抗暴者，政府称他们为暴徒）”和普通政治犯的序幕。

2006年岁末，在北京一家餐馆包间，“天安门母亲运动”发起人丁子霖被授予独立中文笔会第四届自由写作奖。全国各地的三十多名异议作家应邀到场，刘晓波起立鞠躬，致了长达万言的颁奖辞，中途几度哽咽：

痛失爱子的一刻，她站起来，在专制铁钳下，以遇难者家属的身份发出第一声呐喊。从此，她开始了另一种人生，百折不挠地追寻六四死难者，让那些冤魂的家属们从绝望的阴影走到阳光下，以母爱为纽带，互相扶持，互相联络，互相激励，直到十七年后的今天，形成了有一百一十多名六四难属参与进来的天安门母亲运动……

从1994年的《六四受难者名册》、1999年的《见证屠杀，寻求正义》，到最近的这本《寻访六四死难者》，她的浮雕般的文字令所有经历过那场屠杀却刻意回避的社会、历史及新闻学家蒙羞，也令所有自称“幸存者”的知识分子蒙羞，更令那些经历过逃亡、失落、回归，最终大彻大悟，懂得利用国内外、东西方的制度差异，玩弄政治、经济、文化平衡术的时代精英蒙羞。甚至在某种程度上，也令我们这类自以为做得不错的学者和作家蒙羞……

七十岁的丁子霖致答谢辞，她追述了丁氏短寿的家族史，二伯父丁文江，驰名全国的地质学家，四十九岁就去世了。她自叹已活得足够长，比家族里任何长辈都活得长。但是“心脏病越来越严重，不定哪天就长眠不起。”这次她放不下的，不再是自己被杀的孩子，而是同自己一样，年复一年为死去的孩子寻求公平正义的、逐渐老去的父母们。“在座的不少朋友还年轻，大有希望迎来民主曙光。”她说，“如果有一天我不在了，请多多关照他们。”

然后，她坐到我跟前，让我用洞箫吹奏和演唱那首《天安门母亲》。没有人想到，六年后，在法兰克福书业和平奖的颁奖典礼上，我会为近千名德国观众吹奏并演唱同一支歌曲：“人世茫茫，墓草青青，母亲啊，你的叫喊有用吗？”

2

2011年，我逃出中国后，一直在整理那些浩如烟海的资料，和丁子霖、蒋培坤老师一直邮件往来。2015年9月，蒋培坤突发心梗猝然离世，重温我们的通信，我不禁黯然。两位老师曾一道写下《送别儿子》，如今却由丁子霖独自写下这篇《送别丈夫》。

2025年，天安门母亲群体发表了“1989年六四惨案36周年祭”，再次向中共政权提出“真相、赔偿、问责”的要求——这三个词汇、六个汉字，1994年，丁子霖第一次对外公布“六四”死难者和伤残者名单时，就已提出，此后岁岁重复，直至眼下。

没有回应。

就如奥斯维辛的幸存者、匈牙利作家凯尔泰斯在《为一个未出生的孩子祈祷》中的那一声“不！”

“不——我孩提时代的经历再也不应发生在另一个孩子身上……”

“不！”

没有回应。

中共政权没有回应。西方各国政府也没有响应。如果诺贝尔和平奖得主刘晓波今天还活着，情况会不一样吗？

在这篇没有任何回响的祭文中，有这样的描述：

“天安门广场在6月4日凌晨清场后，学生们四人一排从天安门广场往西长安街方向撤离。走到西单六部口遇到部队，北京市民护住学生跪在坦克前，拦住部队，部队打出带有毒气的催泪弹,使得在场的学生、市民晕倒在地不能动弹，一排坦克从这些失去知觉的人群中轧过去，田道民也在其中，他的半个额头带一只眼睛被坦克轧掉，只剩下半个额头及另一只眼睛，身上没有伤痕，当场死亡……三十四年后，田道民的母亲黄定英也因病死亡。”

还有不止一处对死难者情况的目击者描述。

在这篇没有任何回响的祭文末尾，也有两份名单，一份是108个签署祭文的人，另一份，这些年已经陆续死去的母亲们（或其他难属）的名字，已长达79个。

这些名字，与《子弹鸦片》附录的205名死难者和49名伤残者的名单，有同等分量。尽管如此，我还是担心，它们会令自由世界的读者们因难以卒读而厌倦——虽然纽约发生过911恐怖袭击，3000多无辜生命转瞬灰飞烟灭时，每个生者都希望记住他们的名字，并希望把死者的名字永远镌刻在石壁和幕墙——类似的记忆文化，德国人更为擅长，除开纪念碑、博物馆、档案馆、书籍和各种展出，许多街道及墓地上，也有大片同一年，甚至同一天消逝的人名——可“六四”发生在遥远而陌生的中国，大多数中国人自己，都觉得那一天像没发生过一样……

我正在写“刘晓波”，将这事过境迁的名单放在有关他的章节，我想，即使他活着，也不会反对。这也可能是唯一的机会，因为除了我，其他中文作家都不会（也想不到）这样做——地球每天都有珍稀物种面临濒危，“天安门母亲群体”也正走向濒危。时间不多了。

在这个人类大脑已被互联网“碎片化”的时代，作为自诩的“时代录音机”，我不得不将这108位“六四难属”和79位已故难属的名单粘贴在此——在这本后世可能注意到的《刘晓波生死书》中——以争取再过若干年，当失忆虚空笼罩国家和民众，“查无此人”、“查无此事”成为社会常态时，至少还有一本中文、德文或英文书“可查可考”。

3

但是，刘晓波，你已经在天上，所以你的记忆始终完整，特别是关于丁子霖、蒋培坤的记忆……你第一次坐牢出来，只因为说了“没看见天安门死人”这句话，丁子霖就叫你不要再去他们家……你受刺激了之后，完全是你一厢情愿的坚持，深陷其中的忏悔，打动了他们……

在《念念六四——刘晓波诗集自序：来自坟墓的震撼》中，你写道：

丁、蒋二位老师把他们历尽磨难编成的《见证屠杀，寻找正义》送给我俩（其中有155名“六四”死伤者名单和一些遗属的证词）……一进家门，连口水都没顾得上喝，就迫不急待地翻开读起来，从读第一页开始，我的眼睛就湿了。我是在泪水中念给刘霞听的，几乎每读一小段都要因哽咽而中断，我已记不清中断了多少次，每一次中断时的沉默都有死一样的寂静，都能听到亡灵们在地下发出的冤哭，那么微弱、那么无助、那么撕心裂肺……

“六四”的历史真相究竟是什么？为什么以大学生和知识精英为主的八九运动，当惨案发生时，死的都是普通人，被判重刑的也大都是普通人？为什么付出最大的生命代价的默默无闻的人们，无权讲述历史，而那些作为幸存者的精英们却有权喋喋不休？为什么“六四”后，这些普通人的血还要被用来滋养大大小小的投机者，供一些无耻之徒角逐于所谓“民运”的名利场。什么是苦难和牺牲？什么是生命和鲜血的代价？在我们这块土地上，幸福的分配早已有天壤之别。难道苦难作为一种资源，同样的或轻重不同的受难者从中得到也注定有天壤之别吗……

我这十年多来，时时被负罪感所困扰。在秦城监狱我出卖了亡灵们的血，写了悔罪书。出狱后，我还有个不大不小的臭名，得到过多方的关怀。而那些普通的死难者呢，那些至今仍在牢狱之中的无名者呢，他们得到过什么？每每念及此，我都不敢往自己的灵魂深处望一眼，那里面有太多的懦弱、自私、谎言和无耻……

刘晓波，你对自己够狠够绝，我做不到，所以当逃兵了。我知道你在天上瞪着我，在海底瞪着我，死者不需要闭眼，甚至不需要眨眼，做死者最轻松了，只需要像个机器人奴隶主，不分昼夜监督活人干活儿就行了。

（《刘晓波生死书》一书，获得面向全球的S Fischer基金会资助——作者特此感谢。）

本期推荐档案：

《刘晓波与天安门母亲》（未删节版）（选自《刘晓波生死书》第七章）

《子弹鸦片——天安门大屠杀的生与死》

《我没有敌人：刘晓波的生平与遗产》

纪录片《天安门》

《八九民运史》

《八九天安门大事记》

《迟到的纪念：怀念两位倒在坦克履带下的同学》

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

Liu Xiaobo and the Tiananmen Mothers—An Excerpt from The Book of Liu Xiaobo’s Life and Death

By Liao Yiwu

Editors’ Note:

The Chinese, English, and German editions of The Book of Liu Xiaobo’s Life and Death, written by the author Liao Yiwu, will be published in 2027 to mark the tenth anniversary of Liu Xiaobo’s passing. This article is an excerpt from Chapter 7 of the book, published here for the first time by the China Unofficial Archives with the author’s permission. In this text, Liao Yiwu reflects on how, following the June 4 massacre of 1989, the Tiananmen Mothers—represented by Ms. Ding Zilin—sought justice year after year for the victims of the tragedy. Liao also explores the profound spiritual influence these mothers had on the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Liu Xiaobo. Due to space limitations, some cuts have been made for publication; readers can find the full text on our website.

In the early spring of 2005, I traveled from Sichuan to Beijing and went into hiding at the rented apartment of my old friend, Zhongzhong. For over a week, I didn’t dare show my face. It wasn’t until the conclusion of the “Two Sessions” (the National People’s Congress and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference) in March—when the targeted surveillance relaxed—that Liu Xiaobo rushed over. He took me to visit the home of Ms. Ding Zilin and Mr. Jiang Peikun, the husband and wife who were the principal founders of the Tiananmen Mothers movement, whom I had long admired.

We chatted for more than two hours. Of course, they did most of the talking. Unable to get a word in, I just listened respectfully like an idiot. At the end, I pulled out the 4,000 yuan in manuscript fees that Liu Xiaobo (who was then the editor-in-chief of the overseas online journal Democratic China) had just paid me, intending to donate it to the families of the June 4 victims. Ms. Ding refused to accept it, saying, “You are facing difficulties yourself.” I insisted I wasn’t, arguing that I had meat to eat, wine to drink, and plenty of spare cash to travel around. Still, Ms. Ding refused, saying, “The families do need help, and we don’t turn down donations, but your purpose is not to give money.”

Seeing my confusion, Ms. Ding lowered her head to write on a small card and handed it to me: “Can you find some time to visit this couple? Or, if not, just give them a phone call. You are from the same province.” Written on the card were the phone number and address of Wu Dingfu and Song Xiuling—the parents of Wu Guofeng, a young man killed during the June 4 crackdown.

On the return journey, I stuffed the manuscript fees into Liu Xiaobo’s hands and begged him to forward the money on my behalf. (Very soon after, I received a receipt showing that Ms. Ding had already transferred the funds to Yang Yinshan, a victim’s family member, and Yang Ziming, who had been disabled in the crackdown).

Following this, after several twists and turns, I traveled to Xinjin County in Sichuan to visit Wu Guofeng’s parents. This in-depth interview was later included in my book, Bullets and Opium: Real-Life Stories of China After the Tiananmen Square Massacre. The article was first published on May 19, 2005, in Democratic China. Several individuals exiled in the United States reached out to me through various channels, wanting to donate money to Wu Guofeng’s aging father, who had lost a kidney to illness and was struggling to make ends meet.

At the time, I was reading Kaddish for an Unborn Child, by the 2002 Nobel Laureate in Literature, Imre Kertész. Kertész, a Hungarian Jew and an Auschwitz survivor, explained in his book why he refused to become a father:

“No!” I said, and I didn’t think about it for a single moment, it came completely out of instinct, or rather, not out of instinct, but against instinct, as an anti-instinct, so to speak. This “No!” didn’t require any contemplation, it was not the product of a well-considered standpoint, and it didn’t want to represent neutrality.

My wife just laughed, she understood me, and later she also said she knew exactly how hard it was for me to say that “No!”, even though everything inside me was struggling to say “Yes!”. And I, I think I understood her, I knew what she was thinking…

No—what happened to me as a child must never happen to another child.

No—a voice inside me screamed that it could happen to this child—to your child, to my child. Yes, it was time to start telling my wife about my childhood…

From these words, I inferred that Kertész had no children, and that following his wife’s abortion, he would never want them. He picked up his pen to pray for this unborn child, crying a torrent of tears as he shouted a series of “No’s!” because a Jew has no sense of security from birth, nor even a motherland. Kertész would forever remember being a fourteen-year-old boy, imprisoned in a concentration camp and waiting for death, who suddenly received a cup of hot milk. He couldn’t bring himself to gulp it down all at once, so he hid in a corner, sipping it in tiny mouthfuls. Even though the surface of the milk was coated in a layer of black ash drifting down from the crematoriums, he ignored it entirely, focusing all his attention on savoring it. What a profound kind of happiness that must have been—the lingering aftertaste of that black milk made him want to write about it decades later.

My eyes grew moist. Simultaneously, from my tape recorder, the bereaved father I had just interviewed was recounting his own child’s youth. This child, Wu Guofeng, had grown up, gone to Beijing, and entered college, igniting all kinds of dreams for his parents’ future. Then came June 4. He was stabbed to death by the bayonets of martial law soldiers on the streets of a distant city, and his parents’ dreams turned back to ashes. Their despair was bottomless. Imagine if Wu Guofeng’s father had been Kertész—would this child have ever been born? If he had known that 21 years after giving birth to this boy, the child would die in his own country, pierced by a soldier’s bayonet?

Furthermore, if we replace the word “Jew” in Kertész’s writing with “Chinese,” then perhaps we shouldn’t be born either—lest merely having thoughts be deemed a crime that implicates our loved ones. Yet, we were born. Just like one disaster following another, we multiply, while shame beats down on us like hail, making it impossible to lift our heads.

“No!” I turned off the tape recorder. But—

“No!” I knew I would open it again.

1

Bullets and Opium was published in Taiwan in 2012. It is described as a literary documentary, but in reality, it is a collection of testimonies. What I treasure most in the book is that specific interview with Wu Dingfu and his wife. The narrative is entirely ordinary, just an elderly couple remembering their child. Yet this child was likely the most independent-minded of the thousands who died in the Tiananmen massacre. In the resource-scarce 1980s, owning a camera in China was exceedingly rare. Yet Wu Guofeng not only badgered his parents into sending money to buy one, but he actually took that camera onto the streets to document history. He was far ahead of his time. This terrified the executioners, who tried to wrench the camera from him, but he gripped it tightly and refused to let go. While the vast majority were dealt with by bullets and tanks, he was singled out to be stabbed seven times by a bayonet. He gripped the blade with his bare hands as he fell, yet he still tried to sit up, his eyes wide open. Those eyes of his—they were another camera.

Years later, I uncovered and recorded that final moment. My only regret is that my writing was not powerful enough.

After that, I returned to Beijing. On the afternoon of May 26, 2005, through an introduction by the Gao Brothers (Gao Qiang and Gao Zhen, who was detained in 2024 and put on trial in 2026), I met the painter Wu Wenjian. This marked the beginning of a years-long journey to find and interview the so-called “June 4 thugs” (who were actually working-class citizens resisting the violence, though labeled thugs by the government) and ordinary political prisoners.

At the end of 2006, in a private room of a Beijing restaurant, Ding Zilin, the founder of the Tiananmen Mothers Movement, was presented with the Independent Chinese PEN Center’s Fourth Free Writing Award. More than thirty dissident writers from across the country were invited to attend. Liu Xiaobo stood up, bowed, and delivered an acceptance speech of nearly ten thousand words, choking back tears several times along the way:

“At the devastating moment of losing her beloved son, she stood up. Beneath the iron pincers of autocracy, she uttered her first cry in the capacity of a victim’s family member. From that moment on, she embarked on a different path in life, indefatigably tracing the June 4 victims and leading the families of those wronged souls out from the shadows of despair and into the sunshine. Using maternal love as their bond, they have supported, contacted, and encouraged one another. Today, seventeen years later, this has culminated in the Tiananmen Mothers movement, which now includes more than 110 families of June 4 victims...

From the 1994 Roster of June 4 Victims and the 1999 Witnessing the Massacre, Seeking Justice, to her most recent book, Searching for the June 4 Victims, her deeply etched words put to shame all those sociologists, historians, and journalists who lived through the massacre yet deliberately looked away. Her words shame all the intellectuals who call themselves ‘survivors,’ and they shame the elites of our era who experienced exile, disillusionment, and return, only to arrive at a ‘grand awakening’ that taught them how to exploit the institutional differences between East and West to play balancing games with politics, economics, and culture. To some extent, her words even shame scholars and writers like us, who flattered ourselves into thinking we were doing quite well...”

The seventy-year-old Ding Zilin then delivered her remarks of thanks. She recalled the short-lived history of the Ding family, noting that her paternal uncle, Ding Wenjiang—a geologist famous nationwide—had passed away at the age of forty-nine. She mused that she had already lived long enough, outliving any elder in her family. “But my heart disease is worsening,” she added, “and there is no telling what day I will fall into my eternal sleep.” This time, what she couldn’t let go of was no longer her own slain child, but the aging parents who, like her, had spent year after year seeking fairness and justice for their dead children. “Many of the friends sitting here today are still young,” she said, “and you have a great chance of witnessing the dawn of democracy. If one day I am no longer here, please take good care of them.”

2

In 2011, after I left China, I kept organizing the materials and kept in touch via email with Ms. Ding and Mr. Jiang. In September 2015, Jiang Peikun passed away suddenly from a myocardial infarction. Rereading our correspondence now, I am overcome with sorrow. The two teachers had once written “Seeing Off Our Son” together; now, Ding Zilin was left to write “Seeing Off My Husband” entirely alone...

In 2025, the Tiananmen Mothers group issued their “Eulogy for the 36th Anniversary of the June 4 Tragedy of 1989,” once again demanding “truth, compensation, and accountability” from the Chinese Communist regime. These three terms—six Chinese characters—were first put forward by Ding Zilin in 1994 when she released the initial list of the dead and disabled. They have been repeated year after year, right up to this very day.

There has been no response.

It is exactly like the word “No!” shouted by the Auschwitz survivor, Hungarian writer Imre Kertész, in Kaddish for an Unborn Child:

“No—what I experienced in my childhood should never happen to another child...”

“No!”

There is no response.

The Chinese Communist regime does not respond. Western governments do not react. If the Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo were still alive today, would things be any different?

In that completely unacknowledged eulogy, the following scene is described:

“After Tiananmen Square was cleared in the early morning hours of June 4, the students retreated from the square toward West Chang’an Avenue in rows of four. When they reached Xidan Liubukou, they encountered the troops. Beijing citizens stepped forward to shield the students, kneeling before the tanks to block their advance. The troops then fired tear gas canisters containing toxic gas, causing the students and citizens on the scene to collapse to the ground, paralyzed. A row of tanks then rolled directly over the unconscious crowd. Tian Daomin was among them. Half of his forehead and one of his eyes were crushed completely off by a tank, leaving only the remaining half of his forehead and his other eye. There were no other wounds on his body; he died instantly on the spot... Thirty-four years later, Tian Daomin’s mother, Huang Dingying, also passed away from illness.”

There is more than one such eyewitness account detailing the state of the victims... At the very end of this echo-less eulogy, two lists are appended. One contains the names of the 108 individuals who signed the memorial; the other lists the mothers and other relatives who have passed away over the years—a roster that has now grown to 79 names.

These names carry the exact same weight as the list of the dead and disabled in the appendix of Bullets and Opium. Even so, I worry that readers in the free world will grow weary of them, finding them too painful to read. When the 9/11 terrorist attacks occurred in New York and more than 3,000 innocent lives vanished into ash in an instant, every survivor wanted to remember their names, engraving them permanently onto stone and monument walls. The Germans are particularly adept at this culture of remembrance; beyond monuments, museums, archives, books, and exhibitions, many of their streets and cemeteries display vast rows of names of people who perished in the same year, or even on the exact same day. Yet “June 4” took place in a distant, unfamiliar China, and most Chinese people themselves act as though that day never even occurred...

I am currently writing about Liu Xiaobo, and I intend to place this list of past tragedies in the chapters dedicated to him. I believe that even if he were alive, he would not object. This might be the only opportunity to do so, because no other Chinese-language writer would think to take this step. Every day on Earth, rare species face extinction; the Tiananmen Mothers are likewise facing extinction. Time is running out.

In an age where the human mind has been fragmented by the internet, I—as a self-appointed recorder of that era—feel compelled to paste the names of these 108 June 4 relatives and 79 deceased family members here. By embedding them within the pages of this book on the life and death of Nobel laureate Liu Xiaobo—a book likely to draw the attention of future generations—I hope to ensure that years from now, when an engineered amnesia shrouds the nation and “no such person” or “no such event” becomes the societal norm, there will be at least one book in Chinese, German, or English where the truth can still be verified.

3

But Liu Xiaobo, you are already in heaven, so your memory remains forever intact—especially your memories of Ding Zilin and Jiang Peikun... When you were released from prison the first time, simply because you stated that you “did not see anyone die in Tiananmen Square,” Ding Zilin told you never to come to their house again. You were deeply shaken by that. Afterward, it was entirely your single-minded persistence and your profound, agonizing repentance that finally moved them.

In his essay, Remembering June 4—Author’s Preface to Liu Xiaobo’s Poetry Collection: Shaking from the Grave, you wrote:

“Teacher Ding and Teacher Jiang gave the two of us a copy of Witnessing the Massacre, Seeking Justice, which they had compiled through countless hardships (it contained a list of 155 dead and wounded from June 4, along with testimonies from their surviving families)... The moment we stepped through the door, before even taking a sip of water, I urgently flipped it open and began to read. From the very first page, my eyes welled with tears. I read it aloud to Liu Xia through my weeping, forcing myself to stop every few paragraphs because I was choking up. I can no longer remember how many times I broke down. The silence during each of those pauses was as quiet as death itself; one could almost hear the wronged souls crying out from beneath the earth—so faint, so helpless, so utterly heartbreaking...

What is the historical truth of June 4? Why is it that in the 1989 movement, which was led primarily by university students and intellectual elites, it was ordinary citizens who died when the tragedy struck, and ordinary citizens who received the heaviest prison sentences? Why are the nameless people who paid the ultimate price with their lives denied the right to recount history, while the elite survivors retain the right to chatter endlessly about it? Why is it that after June 4, the blood of these ordinary people is still used to nourish opportunists big and small, providing shameless figures with capital to compete for fame and fortune in the so-called ‘democracy movement’? What is suffering and sacrifice? What is the cost of life and blood? On this land of ours, the distribution of happiness has long been separated by a chasm as vast as heaven and earth. Must suffering be treated as just another resource, where victims of equal or varying degrees of trauma are destined to receive returns that are poles apart?...

For more than a decade, I have been perpetually haunted by a sense of guilt. In Qincheng Prison, I betrayed the blood of those deceased souls and wrote a confession of repentance. After my release, I retained a certain degree of notoriety that brought me care and attention from many quarters. But what about the ordinary victims? What about the nameless individuals who remain behind bars to this day? What have they received? Whenever I think of this, I dare not look into the depths of my own soul, for inside it lies far too much cowardice, selfishness, falsehood, and shame...”

Liu Xiaobo, you were incredibly harsh and absolute with yourself. I couldn’t match that, which is why I chose to become a deserter. I know you are staring down at me from the heavens, staring up at me from the bottom of the sea. The dead have no need to close their eyes, or even to blink. Being dead must be the easiest thing of all; you get to act like a robotic slave-driver, supervising the living as they toil day and night.

(The Book of Liu Xiaobo’s Life and Death received a grant from the S. Fischer Foundation, which operates globally—the author wishes to express his sincere gratitude.)

Recommended archives:

Liu Xiaobo and the Tiananmen Mothers (full-length version in Chinese, from the upcoming book The Book of Liu Xiaobo’s Life and Death by Liao Yiwu)

Bullet in the Opium: Real-Life Stories of China After the Tiananmen Square Massacre

I Have No Enemies: The Life and Legacy of Liu Xiaobo

Documentary: The Gate of Heavenly Peace

The Democratic Movement on Tiananmen Square 1989

Chronicle of Major Events of the 1989 Tiananmen Movement

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：江雪

By Jiang Xue

The English translation follows below.

四月的一天，北京昌平，地铁13号线龙泽站附近的天慧园小区。几位来访者穿过小区五号楼的一角，来看望居住在这里的朱春柳。她今年82岁，是两年前去世的艺术家严正学的遗孀。

这里是铁玫瑰园——是严正学夫妇的家，也是安放林昭和张志新——两位中国最著名的女性抗争者雕塑的地方。1968年，林昭被枪杀于上海；1975年，张志新死于文革中的沈阳——因为怕她在临刑前喊出声，当局安排的行刑者割断了她的喉咙。

两座高达2.5米的半身铜像（包括钢制的底座），经历多年的风吹雨淋，不复有2010年9月最初安放时的崭新光亮，多了一些沧桑的印痕。两名女性坚毅的目光投向远处，她们的铜像身躯上，雕刻着象征囚禁的铁链、齿轮，以及被折断的一把小提琴，还有林昭的狱中血书等意象。严正学夫妇是这两尊雕塑的创作者。

两年前的2024年5月28日，80岁的严正学在铁玫瑰园家中离世。他在2023年9月突发脑梗，引发原有的多种疾病。缠绵病榻九个多月后，他在家人的环绕中离世，没有留下遗言。即使在他病重的时候，当局也没有放松对他的监控。也因为临近“六四”这个敏感日子，被允许去参加他葬礼的人寥寥无几。

在北京，铁玫瑰园自2010年面世以来，一度是本世纪初中国维权运动的标志性地点。

2006年左右，独立导演胡杰的纪录片《寻找林昭的灵魂》面世，因《星火》案被牵连入狱、最终惨遭杀害的林昭的故事被越来越多的人知道。据一些文章介绍，林昭当年的北大挚友张元勋、甘粹等人，以及多年来一直参与祭奠林昭、网名“祭园守园人”的朱毅等人，都呼吁能有林昭和张志新的纪念雕塑，并曾发起向社会的募捐。而完成雕塑的重任，最终落在了艺术家严正学和他的妻子朱春柳身上。

最初，两尊雕塑是由纯白的玻璃钢制作，设计方案征求了众人的意见，曾几易其稿。2010年雕塑完成之后，在严正学家里举行了揭幕仪式。为了避开警方骚扰，他们特意绕开了4月29日林昭忌日这个“敏感日子”，改在2010年5月2日举行。

独立导演老虎庙的纪录片《铁玫瑰的守园人》记下了这一幕：当天，这个只有几平米的小院里，来了四五十个人。他们中有82岁的体制内改革派学者杜光（2023年去世），也有退休的北大教授钱理群，还有不少活跃的中青年学者、维权运动参与者。

那天的现场，由甘粹和王书瑶为林昭塑像揭幕。这两位耄耋老人，是林昭当年的北大校友，其中甘粹是林昭的恋人；为张志新像揭幕的，是她的妹妹，还有杜光。当幕布揭开，两尊洁白的塑像出现在人们眼前时，人们沉默了，老人们的眼睛里闪着泪光。

在2010年的北京，这仿佛是为林昭和张志新——也是为许许多多曾在毛时代的中国死去的义人们举办的一场迟到的葬礼。当时的中国，政治环境相对宽松，在北京，活跃着来自全国的维权人士，学者、律师以及记者。人们聚集在这里，缅怀曾经的民主先驱，也聚集起一个小小的基于价值观的共同体。

那次塑像面世之后，征求了大家的意见，严正学又将两座雕塑用青铜浇铸，并在当年9月又举行了一场揭幕仪式。不同于白色的玻璃钢，青铜雕塑更有一种历史的厚重感，也不怕风吹雨淋——从此，林昭和张志新，这两位被严正学比喻为铁玫瑰的女性，就“安家”在这里。

一开始，严正学夫妇和支持者们并没有打算要把两尊雕塑放在家里。他们曾设想，把它们分别送给北京大学和人民大学。这两所著名大学，也分别是林昭和张志新的母校。但计划失败了——他们甚至连这两所学校的校门都进不去。2010年春天，他们计划在北京的798艺术区公开展览，并将两尊雕塑永久安放在那里的雕塑街上，但这一计划被官方干涉叫停。最终，两座雕塑只能存放在严正学家的后院里——这也是铁玫瑰园命名的由来。

没有人有理由再驱赶他们——从那时起，铁玫瑰园不再只是严正学夫妇的家，也成了一个半公开的场所。前些年，在中国公民社会尚有存在可能的时候，在林昭和张志新的这两座雕塑下，举办过很多活动——包括纪念1989年后的流亡者刘宾雁（1925-2005），方励之（1936-2012）。

在通往铁玫瑰园的墙边，有一排黑色的钢铁装置，晚年皈依了基督教的严正学，将之命名为上帝的“窄门”。

铁玫瑰园从诞生的第一天起，就成了抗争的象征，为主人带来了荣光，也带来了厄运。严正学屡屡遭遇或明或暗的威胁。在老虎庙的纪录片中，严正学曾无奈地讲述自己的遭遇：一次，当他正在院子里工作时，有人从三楼浇下尿液，试图阻止他继续干下去。

2011年，北京茉莉花事件（指受当年阿拉伯之春影响，中国网民发起的小规模反对集会）后，铁玫瑰园里的两尊雕塑，被官方勒令用塑料布覆盖，长达整整一年。2012年，严正学将塑料布取下时，特意选了一个日子——农历惊蛰，寓意着春天以及万物复苏，和可能带来的变化。

几乎每年四月的林昭忌日前后，都有人来铁玫瑰园献花祭奠。有时，仅仅是因为来这里的访客身份敏感，就让官方如临大敌。对严正学来说，来自国保警察的警告和监控，还有莫名其妙的暴力，一直如影随形。

“中午12点在家中，突然轰隆一声巨响，以为是地震，我跑到门外，发现是一辆汽车撞了东面的墙。墙面破裂，三幅画被损坏。四点左右，才来了一个公安。”这是2013年3月2日发生在铁玫瑰园的一幕，一辆汽车撞上了严正学家位于一楼的墙壁。在场的目击者、访民徐崇阳写下了这份证言。当时，铁玫瑰园的屋子里还有二、三十个来客。幸亏外面有“窄门”的钢架，挡住了一部分汽车的撞击，否则后果不堪设想。

这次突如其来的车祸，对铁玫瑰园损坏不小，事后严正学报警，要求调查原因，并把北京交警告上法庭，最终虽然获得赔偿，但肇事原因始终没有真正查明。

或许是性格和命运使然，作为艺术家的严正学，一生似乎都在和一种看不见的东西对抗。他“出身”不好，1957年就遭遇父亲被抄家的厄运。后来他考上浙江美院附中，受到专业训练。文革爆发后，他离开家乡，流浪新疆等地，九死一生。彼时的朱春柳，从千里之外的浙江赶到新疆，与他结婚。两人从此相濡以沫，无论如何艰困，他们从未分离。

文革结束后的严正学有过一段舒畅的日子。他和同样在浙江美院附中毕业，考入中国美术学院国画系的女儿严隐鸿一起，在中国美术馆举办了“两代人”画展。严隐鸿后来成为中国颇有名气的当代艺术家，一直理解和支持着父亲。

1992年前后，北京的圆明园废墟附近，慢慢聚集起一批年轻的艺术家，他们代表着一种先锋与新锐的精神。那时候的严正学，也“北漂”到了北京。49岁的他，成了画家村年龄最大的画家，并被推举为“村长”。1994年，因为维权，他和公安对抗，不肯屈服，结果遭遇更大的牢狱之灾，被北京市公安局送往黑龙江双河农场劳教两年。

他在劳教所遭遇了电击酷刑，他的朋友以“向国际媒体曝光”要挟狱方，为他争取来了可以在劳教所里使用画具的权利。他背着管教，在这里创作了数十幅抽象派画作，并且在亲友帮助下，千方百计地把这些作品带了出来。后来，他把这段劳教经历，写成了自传《阴阳陌路》。

2006年，严正学为家乡台州的人维权，同时也因为自己的言论，被指控颠覆国家政权罪，入狱三年。出狱后不久，他就和开始和妻子酝酿创作林昭雕塑。

2018年，74岁的严正学在北京举办了一场“北大荒画展”。他在劳教所创作的几十幅大画得以面世。他使用大块水墨作画，画面诡异怪诞，充满冲击力。他给作品命名为“地火”、“与狼共舞”、“恶之花”等，表达反抗极权、追求自由的主题。因为怕被干扰，画展只能低调举行，独立导演老虎庙的纪录片里，记下了对他画展的讨论。

和他的行为以及作品给人的印象不同，在能看到的一些视频资料上，严正学看起来并不是咄咄逼人的形象。他留着灰白蓬乱的长发，经常穿一件摄影师的马夹，语调平和，神色中总有一丝悲苦。

他去世后，他的一位基督徒朋友、北京家庭教会的长老徐永海第一时间赶到，协助家人为他处理后事。但最后的告别仪式，徐被阻止前往。与此同时，一些朋友收到他家人发出的讣告，第一句话就是：“余心之所善，虽九死犹未悔。”

这句话出自战国时期楚国诗人屈原的作品《离骚》，表达的是一种为了理想而永不言悔的人生志向。他的朋友说，这“正是他一生所行的真切概括。”

如今的铁玫瑰园，朱春柳一个人平静地生活着。小院里，林昭和张志新的雕塑，还有朱正学在北大荒农场创作的那些惊世骇俗的画，陪伴着她。斯人已逝，精神不息，2026年5月28日，她和家人，将在深切的缅怀中，回望丈夫的一生——亦如那一枝永远带刺的铁玫瑰。

本期推荐档案：

中国民间档案馆线上展览：严正学画展

严正学：《阴阳陌路》

老虎庙：《铁玫瑰的守园人》

延伸阅读：

严正学、朱春柳：《铁玫瑰的中国记忆》

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

The Thorns of the Iron Rose Remain Sharp: Commemorating the Second Anniversary of Artist Yan Zhengxue’s Passing

By Jiang Xue

On an April day in Changping, Beijing, near the Longze station on Subway Line 13, lies the Tianhuiyuan residential community. A few visitors walked to a corner of Building 5 to visit Zhu Chunliu. Now 82 years old, she is the widow of the artist Yan Zhengxue, who passed away two years ago.

This is the Iron Rose Garden—the home of Yan Zhengxue and his wife, and the resting place for the sculptures of Lin Zhao and Zhang Zhixin, two of China’s most iconic female dissidents. In 1968, Lin Zhao was executed by firing squad in Shanghai. In 1975, Zhang Zhixin was killed in Shenyang during the Cultural Revolution; fearing she might shout out slogans before her execution, the authorities ordered the executioners to slit her throat.

The two bronze busts, standing 2.5 meters tall including their steel bases, have weathered years of wind and rain. They have lost the pristine gleam they had when first installed in September 2010, taking on a more weathered, historic patina. The two women gaze resolutely into the distance. Etched onto their bronze figures are symbols of imprisonment—chains, gears, a broken violin, and imagery representing the letters Lin Zhao wrote in prison using her own blood. Yan Zhengxue and Zhu Chunliu were the creators of these two sculptures.

Yan suffered a sudden stroke in September 2023. Two years ago, on May 28, 2024, the 80-year-old passed away at his home in the Iron Rose Garden, surrounded by his family and leaving no final words. Even during his severe illness, the authorities never relaxed their surveillance. Because his passing fell close to the politically sensitive anniversary of June 4, few people were permitted to attend his funeral.

Since its unveiling in 2010, the Iron Rose Garden in Beijing served for a time as a landmark site for China’s civil rights defense movement at the turn of the century.

Around 2006, independent director Hu Jie released his documentary In Search of Lin Zhao’s Soul, bringing the story of Lin Zhao—who was implicated in the Spark case, imprisoned, and ultimately executed—to a wider audience. According to contemporary articles, Lin Zhao’s close friends from her days at Peking University, such as Zhang Yuanxun and Gan Cui, alongside long-time memorial organizers like Zhu Yi (who went by the online moniker “Guardian of the Memorial Garden”), called for the creation of commemorative sculptures for Lin Zhao and Zhang Zhixin, and even launched a public fundraising campaign. The responsibility of bringing these sculptures to life ultimately fell to Yan and Zhu.

Initially, the two sculptures were crafted from pure white fiberglass. The design process was collaborative, with the drafts undergoing several revisions based on public feedback. Following their completion in 2010, an unveiling ceremony was held at Yan Zhengxue’s home. To avoid police harassment, they deliberately sidestepped the sensitive anniversary of Lin Zhao’s death on April 29, choosing instead to hold the event on May 2, 2010.

Independent director Laohu Miao (Tiger Temple) captured the moment in his documentary The Guardian of the Iron Rose Garden. On that day, forty to fifty people crowded into the tiny courtyard, which measured only a few square meters. Among them were Du Guang, an 82-year-old reformist scholar within the establishment who passed away in 2023, retired Peking University professor Qian Liqun, and numerous active younger scholars and civil rights activists.

At the ceremony, Gan Cui and Wang Shuyao unveiled Lin Zhao’s statue. These two octogenarians were Lin Zhao’s former classmates at Peking University, and Gan Cui had been her lover. Zhang Zhixin’s statue was unveiled by her younger sister alongside Du Guang. When the drapes were lifted and the two pristine white statues were revealed, the crowd fell silent, and tears welled in the eyes of the elderly guests.

In the Beijing of 2010, the event felt like a long-delayed funeral for Lin Zhao and Zhang Zhixin—and for the countless other righteous souls who perished during China’s Mao era. When the artworks were made, China’s political climate was relatively permissive. Civil rights activists, scholars, lawyers, and journalists from across the country were active in Beijing. People gathered not only to honor early pioneers of democracy but also to foster a small community bound by shared values.

Following the initial unveiling, Yan took feedback into account and recast the two sculptures in bronze, hosting a second unveiling ceremony in September of that year. Unlike the white fiberglass, the bronze statues carried a sense of historical weight and could withstand the elements. From then on, Lin Zhao and Zhang Zhixin—the two women Yan likened to iron roses—had officially made their home in the Iron Rose Garden.

Originally, Yan, Zhu, and their supporters had no intention of keeping the sculptures at their home. They had envisioned donating them to Peking University and Renmin University, the respective alma maters of Lin Zhao and Zhang Zhixin. However, the plan failed; they were barred from even entering the campus gates. In the spring of 2010, they planned to display the statues publicly at Beijing’s 798 Art Zone and permanently install them on the district’s sculpture street, but government intervention halted the project. Ultimately, the backyard of Yan Zhengxue’s home became their only sanctuary—which is how the Iron Rose Garden earned its name.

With no legal grounds left for the authorities to evict them, the Iron Rose Garden evolved from a private residence into a semi-public space. In earlier years, back when a Chinese civil society still had room to exist, many events were held beneath the sculptures of Lin Zhao and Zhang Zhixin—including memorials for post-1989 exiles like Liu Binyan (1925–2005) and Fang Lizhi (1936–2012).

Along the wall leading into the Iron Rose Garden stands a row of black iron installations. Yan Zhengxue, who embraced Christianity in his later years, named this structure God’s “Narrow Gate.”

From its inception, the Iron Rose Garden stood as a symbol of resistance, bringing its owners honor but also immense misfortune. Yan faced frequent threats, both overt and covert. In Laohu Miao’s documentary, Yan helplessly recalled an incident where someone poured urine down from a third-floor window while he was working in the courtyard, attempting to force him to stop.

In 2011, following the Beijing Jasmine Rallies (small-scale pro-democracy protests inspired by the Arab Spring), authorities ordered that the two sculptures in the Iron Rose Garden be covered in plastic sheeting. They remained hidden for an entire year. When Yan Zhengxue finally removed the plastic in 2012, he chose a highly symbolic date: Jingzhe (the Awakening of Insects) on the lunar calendar, a day signifying spring, renewal, and the promise of change.

Almost every year around the anniversary of Lin Zhao’s death in April, visitors would come to the Iron Rose Garden to lay flowers and pay their respects. Sometimes, the mere presence of high-profile or sensitive visitors would put the authorities on high alert. For Yan, warnings and surveillance from the domestic security police, alongside random acts of intimidation, followed him like a shadow.

“At 12:00 PM while at home, there was suddenly a thunderous crash. Thinking it was an earthquake, I ran outside and discovered that a car had smashed into the eastern wall. The wall cracked open, and three paintings were destroyed. A public security officer didn’t arrive until around four o’clock.”

This incident took place at the Iron Rose Garden on March 2, 2013, when a vehicle within the residential compound plowed into the first-floor wall of Yan Zhengxue’s home. Xu Chongyang, a civil rights petitioner and eyewitness, wrote down this testimony. At the time, there were roughly twenty to thirty guests inside the house. Fortunately, the steel framework of the “Narrow Gate” outside absorbed some of the vehicle’s impact; otherwise, the consequences would have been catastrophic.

The sudden crash caused significant damage to the Iron Rose Garden. Yan reported it to the police, demanded an investigation, and eventually took the Beijing traffic police to court. While he ultimately received financial compensation, the true cause of the crash was never uncovered.

Perhaps it was a matter of temperament and destiny, but as an artist, Yan spent his entire life fighting against an invisible adversary. Born into a family with a bad class background, he suffered the misfortune of seeing his father’s house ransacked in 1957. He was later admitted to the Affiliated High School of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, where he received professional training. When the Cultural Revolution broke out, he left his hometown and drifted through places like Xinjiang, narrowly surviving multiple brushes with death. Zhu Chunliu traveled thousands of miles from Zhejiang to Xinjiang to marry him. From that moment on, they shared a lifetime of hardships, never parting regardless of how bleak things became.

Following the end of the Cultural Revolution, Yan Zhengxue enjoyed a period of relative peace. Alongside his daughter, Yan Yinhong—who also graduated from the Zhejiang Academy’s affiliated high school before studying traditional Chinese painting at the China Academy of Art—he held a joint exhibition titled “Two Generations” at the National Art Museum of China. Yan Yinhong later became a well-known contemporary artist in her own right, always maintaining a deep understanding and support for her father’s work.

Around 1992, a community of young artists began to coalesce near the ruins of the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan) in Beijing, embodying a vanguard, avant-garde spirit. By then, the 49-year-old Yan Zhengxue had joined the ranks of the “Beijing drifters.” He became the oldest resident of the painters’ village and was elected its “village chief.” In 1994, his refusal to back down in a legal dispute with the public security bureau resulted in severe retaliation; he was sentenced by the Beijing Municipal Public Security Bureau to two years of reeducation-through-labor at the Shuanghe Farm in Heilongjiang.

In the labor camp, he was subjected to torture by electric shock. His friends managed to pressure the prison authorities by threatening to expose his treatment to international media, successfully securing his right to use painting materials while incarcerated. Out of sight of the guards, he managed to create dozens of abstract paintings and, with the help of family and friends, smuggled them out of the camp. He later chronicled his grueling experiences in an autobiography titled Strangers in Yin and Yang.

In 2006, Yan championed civil rights causes for residents in his hometown of Taizhou. Because of his activism and writing, he was charged with inciting subversion of state power and sentenced to three years in prison. Shortly after his release, he and his wife began planning the creation of the Lin Zhao sculpture.

In 2018, at the age of 74, Yan Zhengxue held his “Great Northern Wilderness Art Exhibition” in Beijing, finally unveiling the dozens of large-scale paintings he had secretly created in the labor camp. Utilizing heavy, sweeping strokes of Chinese ink, the paintings were eerie, grotesque, and visually arresting. He gave the pieces titles like Subterranean Fire, Dancing with Wolves, and Flowers of Evil, all reflecting themes of resisting totalitarianism and pursuing freedom. To prevent government interference, the exhibition had to be kept low-key, though the discussions surrounding it were captured in Laohu Miao’s documentary.

In contrast to the fierce impression left by his actions and artwork, historical video footage reveals a man who was far from aggressive. With his long, disheveled, graying hair and his habitual photographer’s vest, he spoke softly, his expression carrying a quiet note of sorrow and hardship.

Following his passing, one of his Christian friends, Xu Yonghai—an elder in a Beijing house church—rushed to the home to help the family manage funeral arrangements. However, Xu was barred from attending the memorial service. Meanwhile, friends who received the family’s official obituary noticed its opening line:

“What my heart praises as good, though I die nine times for it, I shall never regret.”

This line, taken from the classic poem Li Sao (The Lament) by the Warring States period poet Qu Yuan, expresses an unyielding commitment to one’s ideals. As his friends noted, the quote serves as “a precise and profound summary of the life he lived.”

Today, the Iron Rose Garden is quiet. Zhu lives there peacefully, kept company by the sculptures of Lin Zhao and Zhang Zhixin, as well as Yan’s stunning, avant-garde paintings. Though the man has passed, his spirit endures. On May 28, 2026, she and her family are looking back on her husband’s life in deep and loving memory—a life just like that iron rose, forever bearing its sharp thorns.

Recommended archives:

China Unofficial Archives online exhibit: “Yan Zhengxue Exhibition”

Yan Zhengxue: Strangers in Yin and Yang

Laohu Miao (Tiger Temple): The Guardian of the Iron Rose Garden

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：鲍朴

By Bao Pu

This article’s English translation, published for the first time here by China Unofficial Archives, follows the short introduction in Chinese below. The English translation is provided by the author.

文章中文版已刊发于新世纪网站和波士顿书评等平台。中国民间档案馆首发文章英文翻译版。翻译版由作者提供。

编辑注：

作为毛泽东的最后一位合法妻子、“文化大革命”的旗手、“批林批孔运动”的领导者，江青是文革研究绕不开的一个人物。

2026年5月，《江青年谱》一书由香港新世纪出版社（New Century Press）出版。在这本书中，多年来致力于文革历史研究的中国独立学者余汝信，详细梳理了江青的生平，如其所言，“考证、对勘和辨析相关史料”，对江青的人生以及和毛泽东、文化大革命的关系，提供了另一个研究的视角。

这本书也是新世纪出版社继《陈伯达年谱》、《康生年谱》两本书之后，出版的又一部年谱研究著作。也是该出版社为了纪念“文革六十周年”而出版的系列书籍之一。

1

新世纪出版社于2005年在香港成立，创始人是鲍朴——他的父亲鲍彤曾任前中共中央总书记赵紫阳的政治秘书。当时，纵使中国的出版审查制度还没有今天如此严厉，但与文革研究有关的书籍，一直很难在大陆出版，鲍朴带领新世纪出版社，在一度享有言论自由的香港，做了卓有成效的尝试。

2012年，哈佛大学教授、著名学者麦克法夸尔（中文名马若德）的著作《文化大革命的起源》，由新世纪出版社出版了三卷中文版。此书是中国之外研究文革的重要著作，对文革研究者、关心中国当代历史真相的中文读者来说，意义重大。

与此同时及其后，新世纪出版社又接连出版多部与文革有关的著作，包括被打成“林彪集团”的黄永胜、吴法宪、李作鹏、邱会作等关键人物的回忆录。这些回忆录，从亲历者的角度，为研究文革以及共产党历史提供了重要资料。

《江青年谱》一书的作者余汝信，出生于广东梅州，据他自述，青少年时期的他在广州亲身经历文革，由此埋下了未来研究文革的想法与兴趣，并一直留意资料的收集。本世纪初他脱离体制后，开始了独立研究。目前已出版的有文革有关的著作包括：《香港1967》，《红卫兵兴衰录》（编注）、《“九一三”回望》等。2016年，他的《风暴历程——文革中的中国人民解放军》一书由新世纪出版社出版。

2

1938年，24岁的江青在延安与毛泽东结婚，从此命运与毛泽东绑在了一起。文革结束之后，江青更成了一个符号与象征的人物。1981年1月25日，江青被判处死缓，剥夺政治权利终身。1991年5月14日，她在秦城监狱中服安眠药自杀。

如鲍朴所言：江青成为“文革旗手”绝非偶然，当然离不开毛的授权。江青也确曾尽其所能，忠实执行文革精神。她所推动的几部样板戏，尤其是《红色娘子军》，一方面展示了“阶级斗争女权”及其造就的结果，更重要的是，展示了从苏联输入的极端意识形态与文艺形式，在中国文化环境中被推向极端后的状态。

作为文革的符号与象征人物，江青早年的经历如何？和所谓“四人帮”之一的康生是否在年轻时就相识？她在上海的婚姻状况如何？她和毛在结婚前是否有传言中的“约法三章”？谁参加了江青和毛泽东的婚礼？在中国，因为官方对文革历史一直讳莫若深，人们对真实的江青其实知之甚少，一些被民间窥探和长久以来流传的说法，并不符合事实。在作为《江青年谱》序言的《江青史料十辨》一文中，余汝信做了一些解答。

本书出版后，鲍朴于2026年5月发表《中国传统史观下的文革历史——江青年谱出版杂记》一文。该文中文版刊发于新世纪网站和波士顿书评上。读者可以通过链接查看。民间档案馆编发其英文版，以飨英文读者。

在这篇文章中，鲍朴回顾了人物年谱的价值。他写道：“人物年谱是中国传统史学中一种颇具特色的著述形式，其早期形态至少可追溯至北宋时期的《杜工部年谱》，即杜甫年谱。年谱将相关史料依时间先后逐条编排。”

鲍朴认为，文革研究至今，分为三部分，包括官方叙事（以十一届六中全会《关于建国以来党的若干历史问题的决议》为代表），其二是民间社会研究，其三是海外华人与西方学术研究。前者与后两者，往往发生冲突。

鲍朴在这篇文章中也写道：

1980年，在审判庭上，江青自辩道：“你们逮捕审判我，这是丑化毛泽东主席。审判我就是丑化亿万人民，丑化亿万人民参加的无产阶级文化大革命。”殊不知，当年追随其后、投入文革的所谓“亿万人民”，在毛死之后竟会顷刻间消失得无影无踪……

正如资深记者高瑜评论鲍朴的文章时所说：文革结束后，江青作为“反革命集团成员”，和“林彪反革命集团”一起，承担了本来应该由具有无上权力的毛泽东承担的文革罪责。而“这是中共执政77年的历史中说不通，也不符合历史真实的荒唐之处。”

对鲍朴来说，今年是文革爆发六十周年，适逢《江青年谱》出版，而他的这篇出版杂记，也正如“再思历史的一篇祭文”一般。而余汝信所撰的这本《江青年谱》也正可视为文革研究中一种另辟蹊径的探索。

Editors’ Note:

Jiang Qing Chronology is a new book by Hong Kong’s New Century Press. Jiang Qing, as Mao Zedong’s wife and one of the most prominent proponents of the Cultural Revolution, is a critical figure in the history of the People’s Republic of China. Bao Pu, the head of New Century Press, penned the following notes on the publication of Jiang Qing Chronology. The original Chinese version has appeared on multiple Chinese-language websites. The China Unofficial Archives is publishing the English version, provided by Mr. Bao Pu, for the first time.

The Cultural Revolution from the View of Traditional Chinese Historiography

—Notes on the Publication of Jiang Qing Chronology

By Bao Pu

The publication of Jiang Qing Chronology coincides with the 60th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution that was launched in mainland China in 1966. Consider this a eulogy, and a reflection on history. Since its founding, New Century Press of Hong Kong has published several works on the Cultural Revolution. In our most recent years, we have focused on publishing biographical chronicles such as Kang Sheng Chronology and Chen Boda Chronology. Jiang Qing Chronology is the final work in this series.

What is a Chinese “Chronology” (年譜)?

Chinese biographical chronicles or chronologies are a distinctive form of writing in traditional Chinese historiography, with their early forms traceable at least to the “Biographical Chronicle of Du Fu” (《杜工部年谱》), written during the Northern Song Dynasty. Unlike contemporary historical narratives, which prioritize ease of reading, biographical chronicles arrange relevant historical materials chronologically. However, they are not merely compilations of historical data, nor are they simply “spreadsheets”.

Like other traditional historical genres, biographical chronicles involve both deconstruction and construction, reflecting the historian’s selection, judgment, and organization of materials, representing a unique perspective. The Biographical Chronicle of Liu Xiang and Liu Xin (《刘向父子歸年谱》), published in 1930, is a significant 20th-century example. The author, Qian Mu, wrote this book directly to address the famous reformer Kang Youwei’s 1900 Study of the Forged Classics of the New Learning (《新学作伪经考》), reflecting a specific historical context. In his book, Kang Youwei alleged that Liu Xin of the Western Han Dynasty forged ancient books to assist Wang Mang in compiling the Outline of National Reconstruction for his usurpation of the throne. This claim, presenting ancient books as “material evidence” and identifying an imperial “motive” seemed to be the solving of a cold case. Its impact at the time was significant. Kang’s claim cast suspicion on all the ancient classics. Classics of Poetry《詩經》, Zuo Zhuan《左傳》, and The Rites of Zhou 《周禮》 should be considered “forgeries”. Even the Records of the Grand Historian《史記》 and The Songs of Chu《楚辭》should be suspected of having been “altered”.

However, Qian Mu, then a school teacher, traced the evolution of various schools of classical studies over the approximately 120 years from the Western to the Eastern Han Dynasty, to prove that Kang’s claim was fundamentally untenable. Qian Mu’s work can be seen as a saviour of classical studies at a time of an existential threat, and Qian Mu himself a pillar of traditional Chinese historiography against the tide of the times.

The Incomprehensibility of Cultural Revolution History

Yu Ruxin, author of the series “Biographical Chronologies of the Cultural Revolution,” hails from Meixian, Guangdong, and comes from an overseas Chinese family. His father returned to China during World War Two to study and participated in the resistance against Japanese invasions in northern Vietnam. He devoted his life to the study of pre-Qin history and taught related subjects at universities. During the Cultural Revolution, Yu remembers his father comparing articles written on the same topic by different authors to tease out the truth. This method of historical research left a deep impression on the young Yu Ruxin, and eventually formed the basic principles of his research on the history of the Cultural Revolution.

The existing research on the history of the Cultural Revolution can be broadly divided into three main lines: the official narrative, also known as “official history”; the memoirs of ordinary people; and the analyses of overseas Chinese and Western academics.

The official narrative was largely set by 1981, defining the Cultural Revolution as “an internal turmoil wrongly initiated by leaders, exploited by counter-revolutionary groups, and bringing serious disasters to the Party, the country, and all ethnic groups.” At the time, Deng Xiaoping instructed that research on the Cultural Revolution should be “broad rather than detailed.” However, “the devil is in the details” (a German idiom), or “God is in the details” (Flaubert’s Madame Bovary); that is, without details, there is no way to judge the ultimate nature. As a result of this policy, the details provided by social memory and overseas scholarship could not align with the official characterization. Instead, they gradually diverged, forming differing frameworks of understanding, such as traumatic memory, nostalgic narratives, reflective narratives, and academic reinterpretations. Yu Ruxin’s biographical chronology is an exploration and attempt at a different approach.

The current division between theory and practice in the study of Cultural Revolution history is temporarily irreversible. This is because official history, personal memories, and overseas and Western scholarship each has its own inconsistencies in historical understanding. By “consistency”, I refer to the “understanding of the changes of ancient and modern times” as described by grand historian Sima Qian, meaning that there must be a reasonable explanation for events preceding and following them.

First, let’s discuss official history. Jin Chongji, an expert on the history of the CCP and modern China, once said, “Most people think the ten years of the Cultural Revolution are difficult to write about, but actually, the most difficult to write about are the ten years before that.” This statement reveals at least two things. First, it indicates that the origins of the Cultural Revolution should be traced back to a series of historical events in the ten years prior, from 1956 to 1966. Second, regarding why the Cultural Revolution occurred, it is still difficult to offer a sufficiently clear and coherent explanation. The official characterization of the Cultural Revolution is: “ten years of internal turmoil.” However, if, excluding direct external intervention, even official historians struggle to explain the causes of such a major “internal turmoil,” then the fundamental nature of this nationwide political movement is naturally difficult to define. This will inevitably lead to a series of intractable problems.

Next, let’s revisit the social memory of the people. In the early 1980s, many victims of the Cultural Revolution were gradually rehabilitated. Simultaneously, social memories of the Cultural Revolution were released, primarily in the forms of “scar literature” and “youth education literature.” Subsequently, memoirs of former high-ranking Party and military figures who had been victimized during the Cultural Revolution were published, such as those of Huang Yongsheng, Wu Faxian, Li Zuopeng, and Qiu Huizuo, the top generals of the so-called “Lin Biao Group.” Yu Ruxin, author of the “Biographical Chronologies of the Cultural Revolution Series,” participated in the publication of Qiu Huizuo’s memoirs as an “editor by special invitation,” thus establishing his first connection with our publishing house.

Several fundamental questions of right and wrong in the Cultural Revolution remain unanswered to this day. For example, how could these people, who devoted their lives to the Party with absolute loyalty, be labelled an “anti-Party group” overnight? After the 2000s, with the advent of the internet age, discussions in this field of memory expanded significantly. However, its expansion has always sought to limit itself to the confines of existing official characterizations. The initial mainstream of grassroots social memory primarily consisted of narratives of grievances from the victims and their families. However, as the saying goes, “every wrong has its perpetrator, every debt its debtor.” The most difficult to reconcile in such narratives is the fact that while the victims are made visible, the perpetrators are often difficult to identify. More importantly, the victims spanned a wide range of social groups, from the highest levels of the Party and the State to ordinary citizens, and this complexity made the motive and “intent to harm” increasingly elusive.

Subsequently, social memory further diverged, presenting a situation of multiple conflicting voices. Victims’ families demanded deeper accountability, while liberal intellectuals attempted to push for a more thorough political reflection; a very small number of former Red Guards and eyewitnesses attempted to publicly “apologize,” but because no one was willing to accept the ethical responsibility associated with such apologies, it only reignited controversy. Meanwhile, some “Neo-Leftists” harbor nostalgia for the egalitarian demands, anti-bureaucratic passion, and mass political participation of the Cultural Revolution, and attempt to downplay the violence, some even hoping for an overturning of the official characterization.

As for research by overseas Chinese and Western academia, a definitive conclusion on the fundamental nature of the Cultural Revolution has yet to be reached. In 2012, our publishing house published a complete Chinese translation of Roderick MacFarquhar’s three-volume The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. This work provides a meticulous and thorough analysis of the causes and consequences of the Cultural Revolution, tracing its political roots back to 1956. This chronological assessment corroborates the assertion by official historian Jin Chongji that the decade before the Cultural Revolution was “even more difficult to write.” One of the book’s significant contributions lies in the author’s assertion that throughout the Cultural Revolution, while none of the CCP’s top leaders—from Peng Dehuai, Liu Shaoqi, and Lin Biao to Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai—willingly participated in the Cultural Revolution, none openly showed disloyalty to Mao Zedong. On the contrary, each did his utmost to faithfully carry out Mao’s will. Nonetheless, all these henchmen of Mao were to suffer tragic fates, to varying degrees. Of course, there are differing opinions in overseas academia regarding MacFarquhar’s work, such as the criticism that the author overemphasizes the impact of high-level relationships over institutional factors.

In a broader academic context, the center of Western Sinology had shifted from Europe to the United States earlier in the 20th century. During the process of social science development, this gradually led to the formation of the Harvard school, represented by John King Fairbank, and other research directions. A fundamental viewpoint of this academic approach is that a comprehensive understanding of modern China cannot be achieved solely through existing Western ideologies and terminology. MacFarquhar was a key figure in the Harvard school. In the epigraph of his book The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, he quotes from the Ming Dynasty novel Water Margins by Song Jiang (aka. All Men Are Brothers in Pearl Buck’s English translation): “Our names are writ upon the Heavens, nor may the men of Earth despise us. In this day we unite our purpose, and until we die we will not be divided in it…” Yet, the tension is contained in the following ominous warning to those who “begin well” but “ends ill”: “let the Spirit of Heaven search among us and the Demons of the Earth encompass us, for surely this one will die by sword or arrow or thunder will fall upon him to destroy him. Then let him lie forever in Hell, that in ten thousand cycles of life he may not come to life again.”

As for other overseas and Western scholarship, it largely follows the development of “modernization theory” and the subsequent rise of “postmodernism.” The former often presupposes a certain “universality” of Western culture, while placing Chinese culture in a position of “particularity”; the latter can be seen as a reflection on and deconstruction of various previous “orthodox ideologies.” In the field of China studies, Jonathan D. Spence is a representative figure. His writings combine the remnants of Hegelian historical philosophy with the tradition of empiricism, skilfully using historical materials and details to tell highly readable narratives about China. Hsu Cho-yun’s bragged about Spence to promote his book: “Give him a phone book, and he can write up stories from the first page of names to the last person.” This is certainly high praise of his narrative talent, but also makes one wonder: is such a narrative history or fiction?

While Spence has no specific works on the Cultural Revolution, he has a fairly clear assessment of Mao Zedong, the initiator of the Cultural Revolution, namely, his “monstrous and ridiculous” nature. In his view, Mao was just one among a string of rulers, “in China’s long tradition of formidable rulers who wielded extraordinary powers neither wisely nor well,” ruling only by the “force of their own character”. This judgment is satisfying to the anti-tradition modern reader, including many Chinese, but it fails to explain how Mao Zedong was able to change China faster and more powerfully than any ruler in history, his influence even surpassing that of the First Emperor, Qin Shi Huang. Jonathan Spence’s assessment is perhaps limited by his following of Hegel’s assertion that Chinese history was shaped by the emperor acting as a “high magician”. In Hegel’s assessment, China does not truly have any history, at least not the kind of real human history he defines as driven by the Zeitgeist.

To return to the main point, let’s go back to the Cultural Revolution. According to the official narrative, the Cultural Revolution was undoubtedly a failure, hence the later need to “correct past mistakes.” The problem lies here: Mao Zedong ruled for only 27 years, yet he spent ten of those years paving the way for the “unprecedented internal turmoil” of the next ten years. Doesn’t this confirm Jonathan Spence’s view of a horrific absurdity? Within the historical context of the People’s Republic of China, which is less than eighty years old, both the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong are still difficult to define; how should they be judged as seen in their place within the millennia of Chinese history?

These unresolved historical questions are the starting point for the exploration of the “Biographical Chronologies of Cultural Revolution Series.”

Firstly, it can be seen that in writing the chronological series, official history, grassroots social memory, and overseas and Western academic research are all indispensable. While official history certainly has many gaps, its information remains essential. Jin Chongji said, “Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius: why connect Lin Biao and Confucius? When we were writing about how Chairman Mao criticized Confucius, (Hu) Qiaomu asked us to understand that the Chairman fell into a contradiction in the process of exploring and moving forward, especially in his later years.” However, official historians have provided no further explanation as to what contradiction Mao fell into.

Chinese historiography has a tradition of “profound meaning in concise words.” Even the smallest remarks of official historians can possess profound historical implications. The so-called “Cultural Revolution,” in its name and its intention, was indeed a revolution against the very essence of Chinese cultural tradition. This accounts for the “coherence” and the “incompatibility” of the Cultural Revolution, Mao Zedong, and even the history of the People’s Republic of China within the grand narrative of Chinese history, which is ultimately related to Confucius. A breakthrough is urgently needed on this important issue for our understanding of the progression of Chinese civilization.

Secondly, in the preface to Jiang Qing Chronology, author Yu Ruxin uses concrete examples to illustrate that “all historical materials included in this chronology have been repeatedly verified, compared, and analyzed by the editor using common sense and logical reasoning.” This statement is based on specific reasons. As the first work in the “Chronology Series of Cultural Revolution Figures,” Kang Sheng Chronology: The Life of a Chinese Communist was published in 2023. Upon its release, some argued that the book was an attempt to “rehabilitate” Kang Sheng. The so-called “reversal of verdict” refers to the accusation that the chronology “deliberately” avoids mentioning Kang Sheng as “evil”. The criticism was that Kang Sheng was closely involved in numerous wrongful convictions and miscarriages of justice during the Cultural Revolution; therefore, from the perspective of the victims and their families, and indeed all those who resent the consequences of the Cultural Revolution, such a portrayal is clearly unacceptable.

Subsequently, “Another Edition” of Kang Sheng’s chronology was published in response by a critic who proclaimed Kang Sheng as “both a treacherous and vicious villain and a highly talented scholar well-versed in traditional Chinese culture,” which is “the basic assessment of Kang by Chinese academia.” It also fully affirms the official conclusions of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection’s “Report on the Investigation of Kang Sheng,” describing Kang Sheng, in the author’s words, as “a truly wicked person who harmed countless people and committed numerous murders.” This effort by Kang Sheng Chronology: Another Edition is actually rather revealing: its intention is to suppress any attempt to exonerate Kang Sheng, the accepted “bad guy”, to “reverse” the “reversal of the verdict.” In other words, it returns to the official historical characterization of Kang Sheng (blamed post-mortem for the Cultural Revolution) and also stays within the limits by officialdom to shift all blame to those labelled as the “counter-revolutionary group.” This inevitably calls to mind the saying: “daring only to attack the dead tiger.” If Jiang Qing Chronology were to elicit a response similar to Kang Sheng Chronicle: Another Edition, the outcome is predictable.

This leads to a more historically interesting question: terms used in China such as “struggling against”, “friends versus foes”, or “good versus evil” — born out of class-struggle dialectical materialism, full of absolutist judgments, all products of the Cultural Revolution. Now deeply ingrained in the minds of modern Chinese people, they run counter to the “middle way” valued in traditional Chinese culture. Another Edition falls into the logic of the Cultural Revolution. The “modern way of thinking” of its authors is widespread and prevalent today, shared among even those who see each other as political opposites. Given this, should the Cultural Revolution be considered a success for Mao Zedong, both self-proclaimed and acknowledged as its initiator? To some extent, this scenario demonstrates the continued consequences of the disconnect between official narratives and historical accounts.

Why do official histories, grassroots social memories, and overseas and Western scholarship all present inconsistencies regarding the Cultural Revolution? What is the crux of the problem? The answer lies in the historical narrative style familiar and admired by contemporary Chinese people, which can only record the “changes” in history, essentially losing the ability to identify the “constants” of traditional Chinese history. Western social science-based historiography lacks this tradition of distinguishing between “constants” and “changes.” But this is beyond the scope of this article.

There is a Chinese proverb describing towns on the banks of an ever-shifting Yellow River: “Thirty years east of the river, thirty years west of the river.” Sixty years after the Cultural Revolution, is China on the east or west side of the river? Faced with this question, contemporary Chinese people find that they don’t actually understand the history of the Cultural Revolution very well. All they can be certain of is that the times have indeed changed. Therefore, their understanding of the Cultural Revolution likely remains in a state of “ten people, ten interpretations; a hundred people, a hundred interpretations”.

Perhaps we could take Jiang Qing Chronology on an exploratory trip, by examining it in the spirit of the ancients.

First, both Mao Zedong and Jiang Qing are deceased. According to Chinese tradition, once gone, they do not transform into “Satan”, nor can they continue to be treated as “human.” The First Emperor of China, Mao Zedong, and Jiang Qing are all, in essence, simply “ancestors.” And towards ancestors, Chinese tradition advocates the attitude of jing (敬, respect/honor), considered a primary virtue. (At this point, many Chinese will be cursing me, but that’s alright). Let’s first examine the meaning of jing in the spiritual world of the ancients. jing does not in any way mean what is now meant by the term “worship”. Instead, jing is a cultivated personal virtue, manifested in inner focus, caution, and clarity. It can be said that jing is a concentrated expression of the fundamental seriousness and responsibility the ancient Chinese felt towards the world, and the starting point for all cognition and understanding. Cursing can satisfyingly vent emotions, but cultivating jing allows one to begin to comprehend the world and one’s place in it.

Early Practices of Feminism

Jiang Qing, originally named Li Yunhe, was born in 1914. Just three years before her birth, the end of the imperial system in 1911 had already altered the course of Chinese history. Her life’s starting point naturally fell within the torrent of the modern revolution, making her one of the earlier generations of “modern Chinese” who had effectively severed ties with traditional Chinese culture.

The May Fourth Movement erupted in 1919, with women’s liberation one of its core issues. Like many intellectual women of her time, Li Yunhe’s early pursuits were naturally women’s liberation and gender equality. However, due to her unique circumstances, the path she took was exceptionally tortuous.

During her performing career in Shanghai, Li Yunhe used the stage name “Lan Ping” and was chosen to play Nora in Henrik Ibsen’s A Doll’s House. Nora appears as an innocent and cheerful wife, but in her husband’s eyes, she is not an equal, but rather an appendage with decorative and malleable value. In the end, Nora leaves her husband and even her own children, an act that shocked many audiences in Europe at the time. The play not only pioneered a critique of the marriage system and gender roles in European society at the time, becoming a significant milestone in women’s liberation, but was also a forerunner of realist drama. Both of these aspects had a profound impact on Li Yunhe’s life.

A Doll’s House premiered in Europe in 1879 and debuted in Shanghai in 1935, a span of 56 years. Half a century may seem a long time, but placed within the context of the thousands of years of change in gender relations and institutions in Europe and China, until then mostly developed separately, these 56 years are strikingly short. During Lan Ping’s active period in Shanghai, the character of Nora was no longer merely a foreign figure on a stage; it acquired a tangible significance in Li Yunhe’s real life.

Behind this, however, was more than just one dramatic personal experience, but the rapid transformation of China’s urban elite culture. This change was not a natural evolution of China’s own gender order, but rather the transplantation of an entire set of women’s liberation issues grafted from Western historical experience onto Chinese society within a very short period. This issue touches upon not only the personal fates of Lan Ping or Li Yunhe, but also on how the entire modern Chinese spiritual world is being restructured and rewritten, which goes far beyond the scope of this article.

Lan Ping was a stage figure of women’s liberation, while Li Yunhe was a practitioner of women’s liberation in real life. Faced with hostile rumors in the newspapers, she stated, “I am absolutely not like Ruan Lingyu, who committed suicide or retreated because of ’the fear of gossip’,” thus demonstrating her distinctively strong will. Furthermore, as she said, “I began to love other people. Under these circumstances (the breakup with Tang Na), what does it have to do with him that I loved someone else?” (Chronology, 1-2 June 1937). This further shows that while pursuing women’s liberation, she had a clear understanding of what kind of man she wanted, or more accurately, what kind of man she didn’t want. The gossip was about nothing more than a few romantic relationships. In 1930s China, it was not uncommon for men to have multiple wives and concubines; therefore, even if her rumored lovers were ten or a hundred times more numerous, from the perspective of “gender equality,” it was not entirely unreasonable.

Li Yunhe’s understanding of women’s liberation clearly goes beyond simply leaving the traditional family. “If Nora leaves the family, will she no longer be manipulated? Could she become a real person?” she asks in her “Actor’s Monologue” (Chronology, 27 June 1935). From her conversations with American historian Roxane Witke, it’s clear that her true ideal of womanhood was the figure in the 1933 Hollywood film “Queen Christina”. Historically, Queen Christina of Sweden ascended the throne at the age of six in 1632 and reigned for twenty-two years. She was a lifelong reader, educated like a man per her father’s instructions, and deeply interested in religion, philosophy, and the arts, attempting to build Stockholm into a “Northern Athens.” However, even more symbolic than these achievements was her rejection of traditional female roles: she often dressed as a man, and refused arranged political marriages, thus shocking her countrymen and all of Europe. The film concocts a secret affair as the reason for her abdication of the throne, choosing instead to live free with a man beneath her station. If Nora represented a departure from the traditional family order, then Christina symbolized a rebellion against the entire gendered social order. Li Yunhe’s aspirations are perhaps closer to the latter.

It is precisely under this spiritual orientation that Li Yunhe’s life path could not remain confined to the urban cultural sphere, but inevitably shifted towards a broader and more intense political arena. Before the Xi’an Incident in 1936, ordinary Chinese people saw the CCP, at best, as a bunch of heroic outlaws, gathered in rebellion. After the Xi’an Incident, its political status underwent a fundamental change; they were seen as entering the halls of power and recognized as part of China’s orthodox and legitimate structure. The large-scale migration of left-wing intellectuals to Yan’an began under these historical conditions, and Li Yunhe was among them.

Jiang Qing’s Relationship with Mao Zedong

In the summer of 1937, Li Yunhe arrived in Yan’an. During her time in Yan’an, she changed her name from “Lan Ping” (blue apple) to “Jiang Qing,” (river qing, a light green-blue associated with the finest jade, or the sky) implying that she had surpassed her former self, marking a new and higher stage in her life. The following year, at the age of 24, Jiang Qing married Mao Zedong. It should be noted that at that time, Mao Zedong was still 11 years away from finally seizing power, and in the historical context of 1938, almost no one could have foreseen his future rise to power. Jiang Qing chose Mao Zedong the man, rather than for his nascent power. When rumors of Lan Ping’s affairs in Shanghai were reported to Mao by those within the Party who opposed their marriage, he “became furious and tore up the letter on the spot” (Chronology, November 1938). Mao’s character is self-evident.

The relationship between Jiang Qing and Mao Zedong is extremely difficult to summarize simply. Given Mao Zedong’s absolute power, he was undoubtedly in a dominant position in their relationship and could not have been “used” by Jiang Qing. To the historian Roxane Witke, Jiang Qing openly reveals her admiration for Mao: “I worshipped him.” Before 1949, Jiang Qing was undoubtedly Mao’s soulmate. However, in 1966, with the issuance of the “May 16th Circular” and the official launch of the Cultural Revolution, when even Mao Zedong had to pause to consider the moment, he wrote a candid heartfelt letter to Jiang Qing. It was a rare occurrence and the letter is considered one of the most important historical documents for understanding Mao Zedong’s inner world (Chronology, 8 July 1966).

Jiang Qing may not have been politically astute, but she certainly understood theatre, and Mao Zedong knew this. Literature and performing arts were the most concrete and actionable aspects of the Cultural Revolution, so Jiang Qing’s rise to “standard-bearer” of the Cultural Revolution was no accident. Her rise was by Mao’s authorization, and she faithfully implemented the spirit of the Cultural Revolution to the best of her ability. The “model operas” she promoted, especially “The Red Detachment of Women”, showcased the final de-gendering of class-struggle feminism. Furthermore, they manifested Western ideologies and artistic forms imported from the Soviet Union and pushed them to an extreme within a Chinese cultural environment. There has never been anything like it, before or since.

In July 1973, Mao Zedong, in conversations with Zhang Chunqiao, Wang Hongwen, and others, further distanced himself from Zhou Enlai (Chronology, 4 July 1973). Zhou was perhaps the last remaining confidante among his former “brothers,” all the others having fallen foul of Mao before him, one by one. In August of the same year, Mao launched his last political movement, the “Criticize Confucius” campaign. By then, the isolated Mao had only Jiang Qing left to rely on, and she remained relentlessly zealous. (Chronology, 5 August 1973) It seems plausible that if Mao were asked who was closest to him and who he most trusted throughout his life, he would choose Jiang Qing. Therefore, the official narrative attributing the main responsibility for the Cultural Revolution’s internal turmoil to the so-called “Jiang Qing counter-revolutionary clique” is historically illogical. If Jiang Qing was “anti-Party,” it would be more accurate to say that Mao Zedong was “anti-Party”. In the actual initiation and operation of the Cultural Revolution, the two were inseparable, two sides of the same coin.

If we acknowledge that the Cultural Revolution was a dramatic upheaval in Chinese history, then the historically significant question is: what “changed” and what remained “unchanged”? The Cultural Revolution is described as “unprecedented”; if we consider its most shocking aspect, what truly makes it “unprecedented” lies in the unprecedented extremes of Chinese criticism and negation of Confucius during this period. Reaching any historical “ultimate” point is never easy; and the answer to how the Cultural Revolution achieved this can actually be partly found in the life experiences of Jiang Qing.

Jiang Qing was born in 1914, and Mao Zedong was born in 1893, a difference of 21 years. But these 21 years were more like a lifetime than a generation, for during that time, China experienced the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895, the abolition of the imperial examination system in 1905, and the revolution of 1911 that ended thousands of years of imperial rule and gave birth to the Republic of China.

Jiang Qing’s earliest spiritual leader was the author Lu Xun, and the founding ideas of her life grew out of the anti-traditional, anti-Confucius May Fourth Movement of 1919. Born 21 years earlier, Mao Zedong was educated in the traditional culture, and clearly revered Confucius during his youth and even in his prime. His four-character poem “Sacrifice at the Mausoleum of the Yellow Emperor,” written in 1937, is evidence of this. Phrases such as “illustrious ancestor, founder of our Chinese civilization,” “establishing this great undertaking, standing tall in the East” and “truly witnessing Heaven and Earth,” all demonstrate that his spiritual world had not deviated from traditional Chinese culture.

Why Mao Zedong increasingly turned against Confucius in his later years is a complex historical trail that takes us far beyond the scope of this article. In Chinese history, anti-Confucianism is not uncommon, starting in Confucius’ own day. But none wielding great power could push it to such an extreme. The overwhelming momentum of the anti-Confucian movement during the Cultural Revolution was undoubtedly due to Mao Zedong’s unprecedented personal power with the unwavering commitment of Jiang Qing as the “standard-bearer.” The combination of these two factors resulted in a force so great that it forced Feng Youlan, the most revered living Confucian scholar, into becoming an advisor to the “Liang Xiao” group (a “mass criticism group” at Peking and Tsinghua Universities). In the “Liang Xiao” reports, Confucius was denounced as “a restorationist fanatic turning back the clock of history; a hypocritical and cunning political swindler; a vicious and brutal tyrant; an ignorant parasite; and a stray dog ​​constantly running into obstacles.” Such anti-Confucian rhetoric and the momentum it generated was truly unprecedented in the millenia of Chinese civilization.

Lu Xun was Jiang Qing’s first spiritual mentor

“A three-foot layer of ice is not formed in a single day.” As mentioned earlier, while MacFarquhar successfully traced the political origins of the Cultural Revolution to 1956, he ultimately failed to place it within the broader context of Chinese history by further exploring its ideological origins. In fact, anti-Confucianism had extremely deep ideological roots in the 20th century, and many of its concepts are now common knowledge among Chinese people in the 21st century. However, this is another vast issue, so we will only briefly mention one aspect to illustrate its point.

Professor Qin Hui, the author of the preface to Jiang Qing Chronology, points out that attributing Mao Zedong’s historical problems to Jiang Qing, using the so-called “female calamity” argument, is utterly absurd. On the other hand, he also believes that Jiang Qing’s feminism, as represented by “The Red Detachment of Women”, was unsuccessful.

This so-called “female calamity theory” attributes political failures to women. It was Lu Xun, Jiang Qing’s spiritual mentor, who is responsible for misleading contemporary Chinese intellectuals to believe that this attitude originates from traditional Chinese historical narratives. The most frequently cited example is the story of “the illustrious Zhou dynasty, destroyed by Bao Si”. The legend has the King of Zhou putting out a warning of an enemy attack at the Great Wall, triggering a surge by the military guards, but there is no attack, just a joke meant to bring a smile to the face of his beautiful concubine Bao Si; it is seen as the beginning of the end of the King’s legitimacy leading to the fall of the Zhou Dynasty. Even the Chinese saying “beautiful woman leads to disaster” has subtly changed its meaning over time: originally, “beautiful woman” simply referred to Bao Si, and “disaster” referred to dragon saliva. In later interpretations, it has gradually been interpreted as “beautiful woman” is synonymous with “disaster.”

There is a parallel that can be found in the story of Adam and Eve in the bible. In the story of Genesis, Eve was tempted by the serpent to eat the forbidden fruit, thus triggering the so-called “original sin”; she took a bite of the apple first, then shared it with Adam, ultimately leading to their expulsion from the Garden of Eden. Western traditional interpretations often understand this as female weakness and rebellion. However, the crux of the problem lies precisely here: in the idea of “temptation.”

It is here that Lu Xun infused the late 19th-century Western interpretation of Genesis into Chinese history, creating a new spin on Chinese legends. In February 1936, in his essay “A Jin,” he rejects the depictions of the most famous women of Chinese legend: “I have never believed that Wang Zhaojun’s departure to the border would bring peace to the Han Dynasty, or that Mulan’s joining the army would protect the Sui Dynasty; nor do I believe the old tales of Daji destroying the Yin Dynasty, Xi Shi ruining the Wu Dynasty, or Yang Guifei causing chaos in the Tang Dynasty. I believe that in a patriarchal society, women could never possess such great power, and the responsibility for rise and fall should be borne by men. But male authors throughout history have generally placed the blame for defeat and ruin on women; these were truly worthless and spineless men.”

However, a careful reading of traditional Chinese historical records reveals that the attributions of responsibility are actually quite clear: it is the men who are the subject of temptation; it is the men who make the decisions and suffer loss of reason, and ultimately, it is the men who lose power. In other words, the true bearer of historical responsibility was the monarch, not the woman. Attributing the downfall of a nation to Bao Si is absurd, yet this was how Lu Xun interpreted the legends. Following this logic, it seems that God should have cast out of Paradise the apple and the serpent, rather than Adam and Eve. The problem lies precisely in the fact that while such arguments satisfied the edgy contemporary postures critical of the past, it also misled and oversimplified the deeper lessons of historical responsibility, temptation, and decision-making.

In Lu Xun’s view, in all the pages of Chinese history, there is nothing but “cannibalism” and the so-called “female calamity” is merely another excuse for men to shirk responsibility in the face of historical defeat. Ironically, it was precisely Jiang Qing, the “standard-bearer of the Cultural Revolution,” who spearheaded the “Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius” campaign, that reintroduced the term “cannibalism” into the mouths of the proletariat, transforming it into an accusation against Confucius: “Confucius’s ’benevolence’ was ’cannibalism’.”

Confucius was not Aunt Zhao

During the “Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius” campaign, the deep-seated and radical anti-traditional thought accumulated since the 20th century erupted in a concentrated burst; the resulting nationwide participation echoed the proverb “ the wall falls when everyone pushes together”. In Dream of the Red Chamber, Ping’er defends Aunt Zhao: “Good ladies, ’the wall falls when everyone pushes together’! Aunt Zhao is confused and acting irrationally, but it’s because she is always blamed for anything that goes wrong.” During the Cultural Revolution, almost everything in Confucian tradition appeared to be swept away; the “wall” of Chinese tradition was undoubtedly torn down, and even every brick examined.

However, half a century later, history shows that Confucius is not like the fragile Aunt Zhao. The traditions established by Confucius are not like a crumbling wall that can be permanently abandoned once it is torn down. Violence cannot truly destroy it, nor can words truly eradicate it. Confucius said, “Those who understand me will only know me through the Spring and Autumn Annals (his rare and seminal work)! Those who condemn me will only know me through the Spring and Autumn Annals!” Mao Zedong and Jiang Qing, from Confucius’s perspective, are merely another “condemnation.” Such figures are not unprecedented in Chinese history; their rise, their influence, and their fates all have their own legitimate place among the ancestors of past dynasties.

According to the official histories, written in the tradition established by Confucius, the great legalist statesman Shang Yang successfully reformed the state of Qin, eventually leading to their conquest of all other states in China and unification under one ruler, the First Emperor. However, his overly strict enforcements and harsh methods incurred resentment. When the former crown prince ascended the throne, the once powerful reformer became a wanted man. Fleeing overnight, he was ultimately undone and executed thanks to a strict law he himself had enacted—thus, the saying: “the law brings ruin upon oneself.”

After Mao Zedong’s death, Jiang Qing was immediately arrested and inexplicably became identified as the leader of the so-called “anti-Party clique.” At that time, the vast majority of Chinese who had previously participated in the “Criticize Lin Biao and Confucius” campaign, were, after Mao’s death, still shouting “Inherit Chairman Mao’s legacy!” while simultaneously cheering the “crushing” of the “Gang of Four” which included Mao’s widow. Such an absurd scenario is rare even in history. The Chinese people, who had once upheld their values through historical lessons, seemed to have completely lost their ability to distinguish right from wrong.

In 1980, in court, Jiang Qing defended herself, saying, “Your arrest and trial of me is a defamation of Chairman Mao Zedong. Trying me is a defamation of hundreds of millions of people, a defamation of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in which hundreds of millions of people participated.” Little did she know that these “hundreds of millions of people” who had followed Mao to participate in the Cultural Revolution had vanished without a trace the instant after Mao died. She continued, “I’ve been married to Chairman Mao for 38 years. How could I oppose him?... My feelings for Chairman Mao are proven by history. During the war years, when we evacuated Yan’an, I was the only female comrade who stayed on the front lines to follow Chairman Mao. Where were you all hiding then?!” The only response she received was a burst of frivolous and mocking laughter from the back of the courtroom. Thus, her painstakingly crafted “women’s liberation” narrative, reminiscent of the “Red Detachment of Women” centered on class struggle, was utterly destroyed. Jiang Qing’s fate, somehow, once again proved the historical inevitability of “bringing ruin upon oneself.”

Mao Zedong himself concerned himself with the history of Xiang Yu, the King of Chu (the stage subject of the movie “Farewell, My Concubine”). In his 1962 speech at the Seven Thousand Cadres Conference, he said, “ Xiang Yu, the Hegemon-King of Western Chu, disliked listening to differing opinions… If these comrades never change, they will inevitably have to ’bid farewell to their concubines’ one day.” Even more famous are two lines from a poem by Mao: “We should pursue the fleeing enemy with our remaining strength, not seek fame like the Hegemon-King.” Xiang Yu was actually depicted as a tragic hero in history, with “the strength to uproot mountains and the spirit to overshadow the world,” and his loyal concubine who chooses suicide rather than leave his side at his downfall, is an important part of this historic image. Mao, well-versed in Chinese history could not have been unaware of this, yet in Mao’s writing, Xiang Yu was reinterpreted as someone who sought fame and fortune, ultimately leading to his downfall. This reinterpretation of traditional history has undoubtedly had a profound impact on the psychology of modern Chinese people.

In terms of contemporary politics, Mao Zedong is certainly more like the cruel First Emperor of China. And like the First Emperor whose first Chinese empire lasted only 15 years, Mao, no matter how violently he applied the Cultural Revolution, ultimately had no control over the history that followed him. After Mao’s death, Jiang Qing sent a wreath, simply signed “Your student and comrade-in-arms”; and on 14 May 1991, she ultimately chose suicide, just seven months after the fall of the Soviet Union. Looking back over the vast expanse of history, does the fate of Jiang Qing not mirror the concubine of Xiang Yu?

Ultimately, lessons of the mandate of heaven from traditional Chinese belief continue to ring through history, surviving even the Cultural Revolution. The spiritual world of Chinese civilization far exceeds the scope that modern Chinese people can comprehend today; and such a spiritual world cannot be fully explored by mere rationality.

May 6, 2026, Hong Kong

Recommended archive:

Jiang Qing Chronology

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：董郁玉

By Dong Yuyu

The English translation follows below.

编者按：

近日，据媒体报道，已身陷囹圄四年多的中国记者董郁玉被检查出心律失常，肺部发现肿瘤。他的家人呼吁当局实行人道主义，让董郁玉取保送医，以接受更好的治疗。

董郁玉1987年毕业于北京大学，1989年因参与天安门抗议，被下放劳动一年，后回到《光明日报》工作，曾任评论部副主任。2022年2月董郁玉在北京失去自由，2024年被以“间谍罪”判刑7年，尽管官方未能提供定罪证据。董郁玉是中国资深的记者和评论作家，同时也是一位学养丰富的政治学研究者，在1998年就与人合著出版《政治中国——面向新体制选择的时代》一书，呼吁宪政民主与民主。

2013年，董郁玉曾在《炎黄春秋》刊文评论哈佛大学教授麦克法夸尔的三卷本著作《文化大革命的起源》，对这本书的价值，以及如何看待毛泽东与文革的关系做了深入分析。今年正值文革爆发六十周年，本站精简此文，重新刊发，并在此呼吁全球知识界关注董郁玉的案件以及他的处境，希望这位因言获罪的知识分子能得到人道主义的对待。

哈佛大学教授罗德里克·麦克法夸尔著的三卷本《文化大革命的起源》（以下简称《起源》）的中译本，于2012年由香港新世纪出版社出齐。该书的第一卷和第二卷，在1980年代和1990年，曾由中国内地的出版社删节后出版。

这部专述文化大革命起源的通史，从文革前10年的1956年写起，到1966年文革爆发时止，分成《人民内部矛盾1956—1957年》、《大跃进1958—1960年》和《浩劫的来临1961—1966年》三卷，共计1430多页，实可谓皇皇大著。《起源》对来自官方与民间的海量历史资料，条分缕析，多方考证；细致甄别，贯通因果。以至句句有根，事事有据，旁征博引之全面，在中外文革研究领域中，尚不见出其右者。

对于中文读者来说，更重要的则在于，《起源》以文革起源为全书叙事的脉络，其成书的逻辑却迥异于中共党史的逻辑。整部书都是在中共官方党史、或者说是联共（布）党史的话语体系之外，从国家政治的角度，契入构成文革起源的国家政治运作，使读者既能身临其境去体味文革的种种细枝末节，又能与文革拉开必要的观察距离，而不至深陷文革起源历史的具体是非中，而不可自拔。

1. 谁的文革？

在传统的中共党史话语体系中，党即是国，国即是党；党史就是国史，国史就是党史。于是，各种官定的中国国家现代史乃至近代史，其叙事结构与内容，与中共党史的历史唯物主义叙事结构及其内容毫无二致，雌雄不辨。这种国史党史同为一体的叙事结构，几无政治权力来源、国家权力合法性、政治责任和政治道德的位置，而尽是革命、路线、领袖和阶级的范式。

正是在这种范式的阐释中，在国史混同于党史的情况下，“无产阶级文化大革命”不是以中国的国家政治灾难和社会灾难被叙事，而是被当成了一个党在革命征途上的一次挫折被叙事。并且，这个挫折被有选择、有限制地展开叙事，以证明党因为战胜了挫折、纠正了造成挫折的错误，而变得比以前更加强大。

当然，人们不能“对事实发火”（西方格言——编者注）。从《起源》一书中，读者可见，在1949年以后的国家政治架构和社会结构中，所谓“无产阶级文化大革命”，确实把中国国家历史和中国共产党党史从某种角度上重叠在了一起。而同样的事实，如果放置于不同的叙事结构当中，得出的结论可能是大相径庭的。

以国家历史为叙事框架，中国共产党是一个掌握全部国家政治权力的政治组织，文化大革命则是这个政治组织为国家制定政策并实施的结果。

而以中共党史为叙事框架，国家、社会、公民就很难在其中找到厕身之处。中国共产党则在不同的执政阶段中，被分割成了代表不同路线的“左、中、右”派别；这些派别又被划分成“好人”与“坏人”的不同群体。如是，在面对其对国家负有的政治责任方面，中国共产党就不再是一个掌握了国家全部的政治权力，从而应对国家负有全部政治责任的政治组织，而是由其中的四人帮、或所谓改革派、保守派代表整个党，并承担某个阶段的政治责任——这样，文化大革命不再是这个政党的政策输出和权力运行的结果，而是四人帮、林彪等“坏人”当道、“好人”受难的结果，是右派不识时务、左派错整右派、“中间派没有觉悟”等一堆党内事务。

这种叙事框架，把文化大革命当作中共党内事务，实则掏空了执政党对国家的政治责任。或者说把执政党对国家的政治责任，变成了厘清并公布谁是党内的“好人”、谁是党内的“坏人”，谁是党内的“七分好人、三分坏人”，谁是党内的不折不扣、彻彻底底的“坏人”，谁又是党内的胸怀“好心”却不得不办了错事、坏事的好人等党内是非。

如此一来，党内“好人”的受难，便可替换国家的政治灾难；党内“坏人”的罪错或某个派别对党负有的党内责任，亦可顶替整个党对国家负有的全部政治责任。在这样的叙事逻辑中，依党内是非而划定的“好人”与“坏人”，不是构成党的整体的不同部分，而是“好人”代表党，“坏人”——通过把他们开除出党——则似乎成了与党组织无关的一部分人，由此便可摆脱这些“坏人”施政而带来的整个政党对国家应负的政治责任。也因此，党内的“坏人”不仅仅是党的敌人，也被用来充当国家的“公敌”。

麦克法夸尔《起源》的最大叙事特点，就是没有在中共党内划分出“好人”与“坏人”，进而诠释他们所主张政策的好、坏。没有“好人”“坏人”，当然也就没有国家政治责任的党内替罪者。中共党史叙事中的“好人”与“坏人”，在麦克法夸尔的《起源》中，都是中共党的一分子；就大的政治目标而言，他们都是为中共党的执政利益而怀相同的政治理想、存相同的政治动机、有相同政治目的的同志。这种不分“好”“坏”的客观叙事，最大限度地还原了文化大革命起源的历史过程。

2. 谁的政策？

对国家政治而言，一项公共政策，在实际中发生的效果，总是会强化或削弱政策制定者与实施者的政治威信，从而强化或削弱他们的政治地位和党内政治权力。这是党内政治斗争的动力所在，也是所有权力斗争发生的重要因由（参见《浩劫的来临1961—1966年》第449—451页）。因此，政策的制定与实施，正是麦克法夸尔契入文革起源之处。

《起源》一书把文革缘起的研究范围扩展至1956年，也正是因为中共在这个时期的政策，开始引发一些灾难性的后果，并由于党内权力结构和政治制度的限制而难以被纠正，以此为文革的爆发累积了政治能量。麦克法夸尔注意到，“1956年发生了两个关键性的事件——中国合作化的完成和苏共二十大的召开——它们随后引发了一连串的事件，最终明显地，也许是不可避免地，导致了文化大革命的发生”（《人民内部矛盾1956—1957年》第15页）。

毛泽东在1955年7月31日的一个报告中，对那些在农村合作化运动中持谨慎态度的官员进行了嘲笑，说他们“像一个小脚女人，东摇西摆地在那里走路”。当然，可能连毛泽东自己都没有想到，压指标、下命令的军事指挥方式在和平时期会产生什么样的效果：农业合作化只用了4个月的时间就完成了。这个速度，让毛泽东自己规定的14个月的时间都相形显得过分保守了。几亿农民世代延续的生产方式，在短短4个月的时间里被彻底改变。正是这个“伟大的成就”，空前膨胀了毛泽东的意志。也正是在1956年底，他信心满满地宣布：“这一年过去，社会主义的胜利就有很大的把握了。（本段引文均见《人民内部矛盾1956—1957年》第21页）”

但是，一项公共政策的实施，不似一项军事命令的执行那样可以迅速见分晓。农业合作化在4个月之内被迅速完成了。然而，这个政策的实施速度，加倍放大了其原本存在的问题。而这些问题，又不能像打扫战场那样，在短时间内被打扫干净。为此，具体实施政策的人，必须采取补救措施来为这个政策善后，并由此产生分歧——这也是党内政治权力斗争的起源。

当然，在毛泽东一言九鼎的中共党内权力格局中，身处“一线”的政策实施者，与置身“二线”的政策设计者毛泽东的分歧，只能以前者向毛泽东低头检讨而消弭。然而，所有政策的参与者都清楚，此时，失去更多政治威望的不是检讨者，而恰是毛泽东本人。而毛泽东由此产生的对失去政治权力的焦虑，和堆积于胸的块垒，直至10年后的1966年，才被毛泽东一吐为快（参见《浩劫的来临1961—1966年》第452—453页）。

《起源》一书，以中共党的政策制定和实施为经，以党内权力斗争为纬，为文革起源串通起了因果链条。并且，《起源》也常常以寥寥数笔来交代中共在其历史上党内权力斗争的脉络，为读者建立起相关的阅读背景。

毛泽东亲自发动的“无产阶级文化大革命”的最重要目的之一，无疑就是要铲除“以刘少奇为首的资产阶级司令部”，除掉那个在政策制定与实施上有自己的一套，并总是以检讨的姿态来蚕食自己政治地位的刘少奇（参见《浩劫的来临1961—1966年》第453页）。不过，正如《起源》所述，从中共党内权力派系的渊源上讲，刘少奇应为毛泽东最亲密的战友之一。刘少奇堪称是毛泽东在中共党内如日中天地位的最力建造者。如果没有刘少奇在延安整风时不遗余力的帮衬，没有刘少奇在中共七大政治报告中提出“毛泽东思想”这一具有超越性的意识形态主导思想，以及其他无数任劳任怨、鞍前马后的铺路和善后，毛泽东在党内说一不二的威望，就不会在曾经“山头”林立的中共党内如此快和如此牢固地建立起来。

3. 谁的责任？

共产党在进行内部的权力斗争时，虽然没有公开的、制度化的既定政治程序，但并不等于说，共产党内部的权力斗争毫无遵循。从各国共产党内部权力斗争的历史看，在党内权力斗争中的胜出者，无不是其意识形态的忠实体现者。

而正是意识形态的至高无上性，为那些残酷的党内权力斗争方式，提供了合理性以及正当性的支持。权力斗争的胜者，一定要申明其拥护、遵循和代表那个支撑党的意识形态；权力斗争的失败者，也一定被冠以反对、违背和篡改了党的意识形态。

1945年，刘少奇在中共七大政治报告中提出了“毛泽东思想”以后，共产党内部的实体性政治权力与共产党意识形态的结合，就具备了现实的基础——把党的意识形态附体于个人，某种程度而言，也就等于把这个人化身为了党的意识形态。事实上，马克思和列宁都没有经历过这样的“待遇”（参见《浩劫的来临1961—1966年》第314—322页，第448—449页）。

正是这样的“附体”，让毛泽东在党内的政治地位具有了“神性”。这个“神性”就体现在毛泽东的言说、政策设计、权力与党的意识形态的紧密结合上。而1945年之后中共所取得的一系列革命成就，都成了这个“神性”的证明。

问题也正在这里。如果共产党的事业一帆风顺，那么，不会有人去怀疑这个神祗的灵性。但是，当党的最高领导人设计、制定的政策在实际中遭遇失败时，让其去承担因此而产生的政治责任，这就不啻让那个丧失了保佑灵性的神祗去担当凡间的具体罪错。在这样的政治架构中，反对毛泽东制定的政策，反对毛泽东，反对毛泽东思想，反对党的指导思想，反对党的意识形态，反对党，反革命……就都成了一回事情。由此，在党内政治权力斗争中，“战无不胜的毛泽东思想”为毛泽东奠定了不败的基础（参见《大跃进1958—1960年》第299—302页，《浩劫的来临1961—1966年》第171—181页）。

历史的吊诡之处在于，正是提出“毛泽东思想”的刘少奇，成了其所打造的这个政治神祗的最大祭品。这也正是麦克法夸尔的不解之处：“刘几乎肯定从未想到过任何政变，但他却未作任何抵抗，这确实是很奇特的。相反地，他1966年5月顺从地主持了打倒他的主要政治盟友的会议。”（《浩劫的来临1961—1966年》第451页）

当然，在这样的政治架构中，对毛泽东那些在国家政治实践中已然遭遇到多重失败的种种政策感到无能为力的，还不止是刘少奇。在党的意识形态附于毛泽东之身时，那些曾亲眼见证过神祗灵性的同志们，看着“这位带领他们从漫长的革命征途走向胜利的人，现在又以某种捷径，带领他们向乌托邦发起了冲刺”的时候，“谁会去提醒作为神的毛说，大自然可以驯服，却不可被践踏；人们可以移山，却不能创造奇迹；政治革命可以在十年或者甚至一天里成功，但思想革命却需要几个世纪”？（《大跃进1958—1960年》第314页）

也正是这样的“人神”一体，使毛泽东具有了党内其他任何人所不可能具有的政治优势。这种政治优势，是毛泽东发动文化大革命的政治本钱——毛泽东是“毛泽东思想”的化身，“毛泽东思想”是中共党的指导思想，因此，毛泽东也是中国共产党的化身。这个现实，正是毛泽东发动的文化大革命几近彻底颠覆了党的组织结构，却能给除他自己以外的所有人扣上“分裂党”的帽子，他本人则凌驾全党之上的根本原因。

这样的现实，也是中共在日后整理文革瓦砾之时，颇有投鼠忌器之感，难以将毛泽东与作为中共指导思想的“毛泽东思想”彻底剥离，并且要“确立毛泽东同志的历史地位”，“坚持和发展毛泽东思想”，以及对过去的事情“宜粗不宜细”（引文均见《关于建国以来党的若干历史问题的决议》）的根源。

中共执政地位的确保，需要作为其指导思想的“毛泽东思想”；而“毛泽东思想”的存续，又需要确保毛泽东的历史地位；要确立毛泽东的历史地位，就必须对过去的事情“宜粗不宜细”；“宜粗不宜细”，才有当下中国大陆文革历史研究的冷清局面……然而，也正是在这样环环相扣的制约和限制中，党对国家应负的政治责任，文化大革命给国家造成的灾难，都始终没有得到细致言说的机会。也正因此，今日中国，在相当多的人的想象中，文革竟然有了玫瑰色调的魔幻色彩，由此，也才会公然出现“重庆模式”（指薄熙来主政重庆期间推行的一系列政策）的政治实践。

至今，“毛泽东思想”让毛泽东仍旧站在中共历史的制高点上。这，也许正应了天安门上毛像仍在神坛般位置的事实——“毛主席万岁！” 以文化大革命爆发为止点的《起源》一书，也正是用“毛主席万岁”这句耐人寻味的“最高指示”，结束了这三部探讨文革发生起源的皇皇大著（《浩劫的来临1961—1966年》第454页）。

本期档案推荐：

《政治中国：面向新体制选择的时代》

《文化大革命的起源》

《炎黄春秋》

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

Whose Cultural Revolution? Whose Responsibility? — Dong Yuyu’s Review of The Origins of the Cultural Revolution

By Dong Yuyu

Editors’ Note:

According to recent media reports, Chinese journalist Dong Yuyu, who has been imprisoned for more than four years, has recently been diagnosed with arrhythmia and a lung tumor. His family is now calling upon the authorities to exercise humanitarianism by granting him medical parole, allowing for better treatment.

Dong graduated from Peking University in 1987. In 1989, he was sent down for a year of hard labor due to his participation in the Tiananmen protests. He later returned to work at Guangming Daily, eventually serving as the deputy director of the commentary department. Dong was detained in Beijing in February 2022 and was sentenced to seven years in prison on charges of espionage in 2024, even though prosecutors provided no evidence of the crime. A veteran journalist and columnist, Dong is also an accomplished political commentator. As early as 1998, he co-edited Political China: Towards an Era of Choices for a New System, in which he advocated for constitutionalism and democracy.

In 2013, Dong published a review in the historical magazine Yanhuang Chunqiu regarding the late Harvard Professor Roderick MacFarquhar’s three-volume work, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. In it, Dong provided an in-depth analysis of the book’s value and the relationship between Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution.

As this year marks the 60th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution’s outbreak, the China Unofficial Archives has condensed and republished his article. We join in calling for the global community to pay attention to Dong Yuyu’s case and his current plight, in the hope that he—criminalized for his speech—will receive humanitarian treatment.

The Chinese translation of the three-volume work The Origins of the Cultural Revolution (hereafter Origins), by Harvard Professor Roderick MacFarquhar, was fully published by the Hong Kong New Century Press in 2012. Abridged versions of the first and second volumes had previously been published by mainland Chinese presses during the 1980s and 1990s.

This general history of the Cultural Revolution’s origins begins in 1956—ten years prior to the event—and concludes with the outbreak in 1966. Divided into three volumes—Contradictions Among the People 1956–1957, The Great Leap Forward 1958–1960, and The Coming of the Cataclysm 1961–1966—the work totals over 1,430 pages and is a truly monumental achievement.

Origins meticulously analyzes and cross-references a massive corpus of historical data from both official and private sources. Through rigorous differentiation and the integration of cause and effect, the work ensures that every sentence is rooted in fact and every incident is supported by evidence. Its exhaustive citations remain unparalleled in the field of Cultural Revolution studies, both in China and abroad.

For Chinese readers, it is especially significant that Origins adopts the genesis of the Cultural Revolution as its narrative thread while following a logic entirely distinct from that of official Chinese Communist Party history. The entire work exists outside the discourse of official Party history—or rather, the historiographical framework of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Bolshevik). By approaching the Chinese state’s political operations that birthed the Cultural Revolution from a political science perspective, the book allows readers to experience the minute details of the era while maintaining the observational distance necessary to avoid becoming hopelessly entangled in the specific historical polemics of the time.

1. Whose Cultural Revolution?

In the traditional discourse of Chinese Communist Party history, the Party is the state and the state is the Party; thus, Party history and national history are synonymous. Consequently, the narrative structure and content of various official modern Chinese histories are indistinguishable from the historical materialist framework of the Party itself. This integrated structure leaves almost no room for discussions of the source of political power, the legitimacy of state authority, political responsibility, or political morality; instead, it is defined entirely by the paradigms of revolution, political lines, supreme leaders, and social class.

Within this interpretive framework, where national history is conflated with Party history, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution is not narrated as a political and social catastrophe for the Chinese nation. Instead, it is depicted as a mere setback encountered by the Party on its revolutionary path. Furthermore, this setback is narrated selectively and with limitations to prove that the Party became stronger by overcoming the obstacle and correcting the errors that caused it.

However, one cannot get angry at facts. Origins demonstrates that within the post-1949 political and social architecture, the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution did indeed cause national and Party history to overlap from a certain perspective. However, when these same facts are placed within different narrative structures, the resulting conclusions can be diametrically opposed.

Within a national history framework, the Chinese Communist Party is a political organization wielding total state power, and the Cultural Revolution is the result of policies formulated and implemented by that organization.

Conversely, it is difficult for the state, society, or the individual citizen to find a place within the Party history framework. The Chinese Communist Party is instead fragmented into “Left, Center, and Right” factions representing different political lines during various stages of governance; these factions are then subdivided into “good” and “bad” actors. Consequently, regarding its political responsibility to the nation, the Party is no longer viewed as a unified organization holding total power—and thus total responsibility. Instead, specific groups—such as the Gang of Four, the Reformers, or the Conservatives—are made to represent the Party and bear the responsibility for specific periods. In this view, the Cultural Revolution was not the result of the Party’s policy output and exercise of power, but rather the result of “bad people” like the Gang of Four and Lin Biao holding sway while “good people” suffered. It becomes a matter of internal Party business: the Rightists being out of step with the times, the Leftists wrongly purging them, and the “Middle-roaders” lacking sufficient consciousness.

This framework treats the Cultural Revolution as an internal Party affair, effectively absolving the ruling party of its political responsibility to the state. Responsibility is reduced to the task of identifying and announcing who within the Party was “good” or “bad,” who was “70% good and 30% bad,” who was thoroughly “bad,” and who was a “good person” with “good intentions” who nonetheless committed errors.

In such a logic, the suffering of “good” Party members replaces the political catastrophe of the nation. The crimes of “bad” actors—or the internal responsibility a faction owes the Party—supplant the total political responsibility the entire organization owes the state. By defining “good” and “bad” actors based on internal Party standards, the “good” represent the Party while the “bad”—by virtue of their eventual expulsion—become an external group. This allows the organization to distance itself from the political responsibility arising from the “bad” actors’ governance. Thus, these internal villains are framed not only as enemies of the Party but as public enemies of the state.

The defining characteristic of MacFarquhar’s Origins is its refusal to categorize Chinese Communist Party actors as “good” or “bad” in order to justify or condemn their policies. Without these moral categories, there are no internal scapegoats to carry the burden of the state’s political responsibility. In MacFarquhar’s narrative, those labeled as “good” or “bad” in official accounts are all simply members of the Chinese Communist Party. Regarding their broader political objectives, they are comrades sharing the same political ideals, motives, and goals for the benefit of the Party’s rule. This objective, non-judgmental narrative restores the historical process of the Cultural Revolution’s origins to its fullest extent.

2. Whose Policy?

In national politics, the practical effects of a public policy will always either bolster or diminish the political prestige of its creators and implementers, thereby affecting their standing and intra-Party power. This is the engine of internal political struggle and a primary cause of power contests (cf. The Coming of the Cataclysm 1961–1966, pp. 449–451). MacFarquhar thus enters the history of the Cultural Revolution’s origins through the lens of policy formulation and implementation.

Origins extends its scope back to 1956 because the Party’s policies during that period began to yield disastrous consequences that could not be corrected due to the constraints of the power structure and political system. This accumulated the political energy that eventually fueled the Cultural Revolution. MacFarquhar observes that two pivotal events in 1956—the completion of agricultural cooperativization and the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union—triggered a chain of events that led “clearly, and perhaps inevitably,” to the Cultural Revolution (Contradictions Among the People 1956–1957, p. 15).

In a July 1955 report, Mao Zedong mocked officials who were cautious regarding the rural cooperativization movement, comparing them to “a woman with bound feet, swaying as she walks.” Likely even Mao did not anticipate the effect his military-style command—based on quotas and orders—would have in a time of peace: agricultural cooperativization was completed in just four months. This speed made even Mao’s original fourteen-month timeline appear excessively conservative. The production methods of hundreds of millions of peasants, sustained for generations, were overturned in a mere four months. This “great achievement” led to an unprecedented inflation of Mao’s personal will. By the end of 1956, he confidently declared, “Now that this year has passed, the victory of socialism is largely assured” (Contradictions Among the People 1956–1957, p. 21).

However, the implementation of public policy does not yield immediate results like a military command. While the policy was executed rapidly, its speed magnified inherent flaws. These problems could not be cleared away as quickly as a battlefield. Consequently, those implementing the policy had to adopt remedial measures, leading to the internal disagreements that serve as the root of political power struggles.

In a power structure dominated by Mao’s absolute authority, disagreements between those on the “first line” of implementation and Mao—the designer on the “second line”—could only be resolved by the former offering self-criticisms. Yet all participants understood that, in such moments, the one losing the most political prestige was not the one offering the critique, but Mao himself. Mao’s resulting anxiety over his waning power and his deep-seated grievances would not find release until ten years later, in 1966 (cf. The Coming of the Cataclysm 1961–1966, pp. 452–453).

Origins weaves a causal chain by using policy formulation as its longitude and power struggle as its latitude. Furthermore, the work frequently provides concise context regarding the history of internal Party struggles to provide necessary background for the reader.

One of the primary goals of the “Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution” was undoubtedly to dismantle the “Bourgeois Headquarters headed by Liu Shaoqi.” Mao sought to eliminate a man who possessed his own approach to policy and who systematically eroded Mao’s status through the very act of offering self-criticisms (cf. The Coming of the Cataclysm 1961–1966, p. 453). Yet, as Origins notes, Liu Shaoqi was historically one of Mao’s closest comrades and the primary architect of Mao’s absolute authority within the Party. Without Liu’s tireless support during the Yan’an Rectification and his introduction of “Mao Zedong Thought” as a transcendent ideology during the 7th National Congress, Mao’s undisputed prestige would not have been established so firmly or so quickly within a party previously defined by competing factions.

3. Whose Responsibility?

While internal power struggles within the Communist Party lack public or institutionalized procedures, they are not without a specific logic. History shows that the victors in these struggles are invariably those who present themselves as the most faithful embodiments of the Party’s ideology.

This ideological supremacy provides the necessary rationality and legitimacy for the brutal methods employed in these struggles. The victor must claim to represent and follow the ideology that sustains the Party, while the loser is branded as one who has opposed or distorted it.

Following Liu Shaoqi’s elevation of “Mao Zedong Thought” in 1945, the union of substantive political power and ideology found a concrete foundation. By attaching the Party’s ideology to a specific person, that individual became the personification of the ideology itself—a status that even Marx and Lenin never enjoyed (cf. The Coming of the Cataclysm 1961–1966, pp. 314–322, 448–449).

This incarnation endowed Mao’s status with a divine quality, manifested in the total fusion of his rhetoric, policy designs, and power with the Party’s core ideology. The revolutionary successes following 1945 served as the empirical proof of this divinity.

This is the crux of the problem. As long as the Party’s cause prospered, the deity’s efficacy remained unquestioned. However, when the supreme leader’s policies failed in practice, holding him accountable was equivalent to charging a god with mortal sins. In such a system, opposing Mao’s policies became synonymous with opposing Mao himself, his Thought, the Party’s guiding principles, the ideology, the Party, and the Revolution itself. Thus, in the arena of internal struggle, the “invincible Mao Zedong Thought” provided Mao with an unassailable foundation (cf. The Great Leap Forward 1958–1960, pp. 299–302; The Coming of the Cataclysm 1961–1966, pp. 171–181).

It is a historical irony that Liu Shaoqi, the man who codified “Mao Zedong Thought,” became the primary sacrifice to the political deity he helped create. MacFarquhar finds this compliance perplexing: “Liu almost certainly never contemplated a coup, yet his lack of resistance is truly singular. Instead, in May 1966, he submissively presided over the very meetings that struck down his primary political allies” (The Coming of the Cataclysm 1961–1966, p. 451).

In this political architecture, Liu was not the only one rendered powerless against Mao’s failing policies. Once Mao became the personification of the ideology, his comrades—who had witnessed his earlier “miracles”—found themselves watching as the man who led them to victory now led them on a reckless sprint toward utopia. MacFarquhar asks: “Who would dare remind Mao-as-god that nature may be tamed but not trampled; that men can move mountains but cannot perform miracles; and that while a political revolution can succeed in a decade or a day, an ideological revolution requires centuries?” (The Great Leap Forward 1958–1960, p. 314).

This “man-god” fusion gave Mao a political advantage unmatched by any other figure. This advantage was the political capital that allowed him to launch the Cultural Revolution. Because Mao was the embodiment of both the Party’s Thought and the Party itself, he was able to launch a movement that nearly destroyed the Party’s organizational structure while simultaneously accusing everyone else of splitting the Party. He alone stood above the organization.

This reality also explains why the Chinese Communist Party, when sifting through the wreckage of the Cultural Revolution, felt restricted by the fear of “breaking the vase while aiming at the rat.” It was nearly impossible to fully detach Mao from the ideology that guides the Party. Consequently, the Party insisted on “establishing Comrade Mao Zedong’s historical position,” “persisting in and developing Mao Zedong Thought,” and the principle of being “broad rather than detailed” regarding the past (cf. “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China”).

The preservation of the Party’s ruling status requires the survival of “Mao Zedong Thought,” which in turn requires the preservation of Mao’s historical standing. This necessitates the “broad rather than detailed” approach to history, which accounts for the current stagnation of Cultural Revolution research in mainland China. Within this cycle of constraints, the Party’s political responsibility to the nation and the catastrophe inflicted upon the state have never been fully articulated. As a result, in the imagination of many today, the Cultural Revolution has acquired a rose-colored, magical quality, allowing for the emergence of political practices like the “Chongqing Model,” which the now-disgraced politician Bo Xilai implemented while he was the mayor of Chongqing.

To this day, “Mao Zedong Thought” ensures that Mao remains at the commanding heights of Chinese Communist Party history. This is perhaps best exemplified by his portrait on the Tiananmen Gate that confirms his position on the altar: “Long Live Chairman Mao!” MacFarquhar’s Origins, a monumental study of the factors leading to the catastrophe, appropriately concludes with this same poignant “supreme instruction”: “Long Live Chairman Mao!” (The Coming of the Cataclysm 1961–1966, p. 454).

Recommended archives:

Political China: Towards an Era of Choices for a New System

The Origins of the Cultural Revolution

Yanhuang Chunqiu (China Through the Ages)

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：舒衡哲

By Vera Schwarcz

The English original follows below.

编者按：1983年春天，年轻的美国学者舒衡哲（Vera Schwarcz）在北京与哲学家梁漱溟多次见面，此文中她追忆了当时的情景。彼时的中国，文革过去未久，经历浩劫的知识分子们惊魂未定——梁漱溟也曾在文革中被红卫兵逼迫亲手毁坏父亲梁济的墓园。在舒衡哲的记忆中，被外界称之为“最后一个儒家”的梁漱溟，并未被摧毁精神。幸存于文革浩劫之后，已年届九旬的他，依然是那个精神与真理的求索者，言行打动人心。今日的读者，也可从此文窥见1980年代早期中国知识分子的部分境况。

那一年的北大校园，美丽的春天如期而至。我也回到了自己的母校，并与知识界的同道们重逢。我在1980年的夏天，离开了这里，那时，我作为文革结束后首批赴北京大学的美国交换学者之一，刚刚完成了一年半的学习。当时，我就知道自己还会回来——因为我在撰写一部关于张申府（原名张崧年，哲学家，中共早期创始人。北大哲学教授张岱年之兄——编者注）的著作。然而，出乎我的意料，这次回来，我采访到了梁漱溟，并被他深深地打动——梁和张申府早在1911年辛亥革命前的顺天学堂时期，就已是老友。

与梁漱溟的会面，对我的人生产生了持久的影响。这是一位真正的求索者——终其一生，他都在深刻的精神层面追寻着真理。他的追寻，已远远超越了张申府（以及我在中国与西方所认识的许多学者）生命中充溢的政治与哲学困境。不过，如果不是因为我彼时正在做张申府的口述史研究，我或许会永远错过梁漱溟，也不会在1983年4月29日的那个春日，敲开他北京寓所的门。

在我们会面之前，我的同事Guy Alitto（美国汉学家艾恺，其著作《The Last Confucian》，也即《最后的儒家：梁漱溟与中国现代化的困境》一书于1986年出版——编者注），曾写信给梁漱溟，介绍我做的关于五四运动的研究。随后，我也给梁写了信，请教他关于和张申府漫长友谊的一些问题。4月29日早晨，我在北大校园里接到电话：梁先生已准备好，并急切地希望在当天下午两点半见到我。

我叫了一辆出租车，来到北京城中心一栋略显破旧的公寓楼。登上九楼，开门的是一位帮佣的女工，她身后，梁漱溟正等着与我握手——一位已九旬高龄，却依然极为清醒敏锐的老先生。

那天晚上，我在日记中这样写道：“能遇见这位贤者，是何等的福分。他令人印象深刻。固然体弱，但却如此谦逊、敏锐、细致而体贴。他的品德中没有一丝虚假。他对道德的执着闪耀其间。这与张申府那种自信而仓促的叙述形成了鲜明对比。”

在我见到梁漱溟之时，我已采访张申府将近两年时间。在我面前，张早先的清晰，以及乐于详述自己思想与经历的热情，已逐渐减退。到了1983年5月，我和他的许多谈话都围绕一个主题：张如何将自己视为二十世纪中国最重要的哲学家——而我已学会对他宏大的自我评价有所保留。但与梁漱溟的相遇，为我打开了一条全新的思考路径：在梁身上，我得以见证一种超越哲学的生命。

梁漱溟让我窥见了一位饱经折磨之人的内在世界——他始终在苦难之上寻求一条精神之路，并试图抵达某种可以疗愈历史创伤的持久真理。

我后来又三次拜访了梁漱溟。分别是同年5月的6日、14日、17日。我们于5月27日告别。每一次见面，我们似乎都更为亲近，更为坦诚。我不再急于提问关于顺天学堂的问题，也不急于比较他与张申府对罗素的不同看法。我只是慢慢啜饮茶水，注视着他瘦削的面庞，在寂静无言之中，体会他内心的宁静。

这多次的见面，让我对梁漱溟与张申府的旧日情谊渐次了解，也同时有幸听到他关于自身精神探索的片段——尽管这些内容与张的哲学探究之间，并无直接关联。

5月14日，我们进行了最长的一次谈话——整整三个小时。梁漱溟一如既往地热情迎接我。他穿着旧旧的中山装，光头上戴着一顶毛线帽。他看起来不苟言笑，事实上，他始终是一位严肃的求索者，对世界如此，对自己亦然。他那深陷的双眼直视着我，我们坐下来，开始交谈：

“无论别人如何称呼我——比如你那位美国同事阿利托称我为‘最后的儒家’——我首先是一个佛教徒。我一直不吃肉。我也一直在试图理解苦难的根源，并努力在自己和他人的生命中，将其拔除。”

说完这番话，他的声音渐渐低沉，仿佛放置在我们之间的那株盛开的红色仙人掌，吸走了他的声音。我第一次走进他家时，就注意到了这株仙人掌——在整齐排列的书籍之间，它格外醒目。那次我拍照时，他没有戴帽子。我隐约觉得，那株生机勃勃的仙人掌正映照着这位老人的性格——在中国二十世纪翻天覆地般的动荡岁月中，他始终葆有那一份被细心培植的顽强精神以及道德上的独立。

张申府与梁漱溟都以思想独立为傲。张以其独特的才智探索西方哲学，而梁则不断探究他所称的“民族心理的基础”。谈及两人的差异时，梁始终称他为“张先生”——这种礼貌出自长期修养的谦逊与对他人的尊重：

“张申府先生，比我更了解西方。他亲自见过、读过的都更多。我不会读外文，虽然学过多年英语，但久未使用，几乎已经忘记了。张先生在这方面帮了我很多。他懂多种外语，而且掌握得很好。我常常依赖他借书、讨论那些被翻译成中文却并不可靠的西方著作。我们当时在北大的兴趣就不同。我研究佛教认识论，张先生研究数理逻辑。至于他的哲学……”

说到这里，梁的声音渐渐消散。他显得疲惫。我告辞时，他又邀请我再来。显然，这些谈话对他而言，其意义不仅只是为我提供一些参究的资料。

三天后再访，他愿意进入更为个人化的话题。我们谈到他与张申府在对罗素的看法上的差异。与我口述史的主角张申府不同，梁对罗素“理性主义可以解决一切人生问题”的主张持批评态度。他曾一度对Henri Bergson（即亨利·柏格森，法国哲学家——编注）感兴趣，但后来通过融合中西思想，形成了自己的精神道路。

梁并不直接批评张的观点，但通过谈话，他让我逐渐看清，是哪些经验塑造了他自己独特的世界观。张申府曾加入又退出共产党，而梁则努力保持在政治纷争之外。1936年，张申府因学生运动被短暂监禁时，梁曾前往北平探望；1957年张被划为右派时，梁与他的友谊也没有断绝，并曾去探望困境中的张。同样，在文化大革命期间，张申府也尽力与梁保持着联络。

在我真正见到梁漱溟之前的两年，张申府曾动情地对我讲述梁在1960年代的遭遇：

“我的老朋友梁漱溟，被一再殴打。红卫兵闯入他家，逼他下跪，用鞭子抽打，还烧了他的书。我尽可能地去看他。他当时真是一个被摧毁的人。”

然而，1983年夏天坐在我面前的这位老人，精神是如此完整，看不出破碎的迹象。他对自身尊严有清晰的意识。事实上，他始终葆有某种深层的信念核心，才得以穿越最黑暗的年代。

在一次次交谈中，我逐渐将话题引向梁在文化大革命中的经历。此前，我从其他学者那里得知，红卫兵曾强迫梁漱溟拆毁其父梁济（清末著名学者，1918年于北京积水潭投水自尽——编者注）之墓。但直到他亲口讲述，我才真正想象出那种屈辱：他被拖到北京郊外，被迫举起铁锤，砸毁父亲的坟墓。说到此处时，他的眼中再次泛起泪水。更令人震惊的是，在毁墓之后，红卫兵还向他索要费用——因为他体力不支未能完成毁墓工作，对方“代劳”，而他必须为此付费。

回到我们见面的这一时刻。尽管1983年的梁漱溟仍承受着沉重的悲伤，但他的目光清澈，声音柔和而坚定。让我深受鼓舞的，正是他的“气节”——一种西方词汇难以完全表达的灵魂正直。

正是这种气节，使1983年的这次相遇如此深刻——即使在同一个月里，我还采访了周扬（中共文艺理论家，曾领导左翼文艺运动——编者注）与许德珩（曾是五四运动学生领袖，“九三学社”创始人——编者注）两位，并几乎每日与张申府会面。在这些幸存的老一代人中，唯有梁漱溟，以一种精神力量之光闪耀其间。

虽然我们未谈及我自己的犹太传统，但他感受到我对他的理解，他似乎认为我拥有一种能够超越语言表层、把握其意义的世界观。

5月27日告别那天，我们谈话不多。我们都明白，这很可能是此生最后一次相见。梁的语速比平时更慢。他幽默地讲起，金岳霖曾对胡适说过：“你少说了一句‘我是哲学的外行’。”（据一些文章记载，西南联大时期，胡适曾发表关于哲学定义的文章，金岳霖看完后对胡适说：“文章很好，可惜你少说了一句话。”胡适问是哪句，金岳霖以此作答。——编者注）

在门口，他握住我的手，沉默地握了几分钟，低着头，不与我对视。那晚我在日记中写道：“多么体贴而充满敬意的告别！我感受到他的情意，也感到他在这种缓慢流逝的时间中教给我某种重要的东西。”

如今，43年过去了，我仍在试图理解梁漱溟在1983年春天教给我的东西。他给我提供的关于张申府的资料，对我后来撰写《Time for Telling Truth is Running Out》（耶鲁大学出版社1992年出版。中文版译名为《张申府访谈录》）确有帮助。但我们的会面，远不止于信息的交流，而是有更深沉的内在精神意义。

我有幸与一位在二十世纪最艰难的岁月中，始终追随内心之声的人相处。这种“内在的音乐”，至今仍在激励我——每当我看到那张老人与红色仙人掌的照片时，它仿佛在低语：“忠于你对真理的理解，相信它会引导你前行，无论群体的教条多么喧嚣、诱人。”

编者补注：

梁漱溟：1893年（光绪年间）出生于京师（即后来的北京），1988年辞世。是20世纪中国著名的思想家、教育家、社会改造运动者。原名焕鼎，字寿铭，后以漱溟行世。1917年入北京大学任教，七年后投身农村，从事乡村建设运动。抗战胜利后曾参与国共和谈，参与创建民盟。1949年后任全国政协委员、常委及宪法修改委员会委员等，曾遭毛泽东点名批判。著作有《东西文化及其哲学》、《印度哲学概论》、《乡村建设理论》、《中国文化要义》与《人心与人生》等。

舒衡哲：Vera Schwarcz，著名的犹太裔美国汉学家，也是诗人和作家。美国卫斯理安大学东亚研究中心荣休教授。她是1979年中美建交后首批官方交换学者，于1979-1980年在北京大学中文系进修，长期致力于中国现代史研究，尤其在五四运动、口述史领域成果显著。代表作有《中国启蒙运动——知识分子与五四遗产》《张申府访谈录》、《漫漫回家路：一部中国日志》等。关于她更多的写作与出版，请读者参见她的个人网站：

https://betweentwowalls.com/。

本期推荐档案：

舒衡哲：《中国启蒙运动：知识分子与五四遗产》

舒衡哲：《张申府访谈录》

梁漱溟：《乡村建设理论》

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

A Spiritual Seeker: Conversations with Liang Shuming, May 1983

By Vera Schwarcz

The spring of that year blossomed with familiar beauty on the campus of Beida (Peking University). I had returned to my 母校 (alma mater) with many connections to the intellectuals’ world. When I left in the summer of 1980 (after a year and half of study as one of the first American exchange scholars at Peking University) I knew that I would come back to work on a book about one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party, the philosopher Zhang Shenfu. I did not, however, anticipate how deeply moving it would be to interview one of his old friends, Liang Shuming. Meeting Liang Shuming left an enduring impact upon my life.

Here was a Chinese seeker for deep spiritual truths that went far beyond the politics and philosophical dilemmas that filled the life of Zhang Shenfu (and many other academics I know in China and in the West). Even today, I look back at my time with Liang and see the enduring wisdom that he offered me.

If I had not been working on an oral history of Zhang I would never have found my way to the door of Liang Shuming’s apartment on April 28th, 1983. My colleague Guy Alitto, who had published his book The Last Confucian: Liang Shu-ming and the Chinese Dilemma of Modernity in 1986 had written to Liang about my work. I then followed up with a letter with questions about his long-standing friendship with Zhang Shenfu. On April 29th in the morning I got the call at Beida: Liang Shuming was ready and eager to see me at 2:30 the same day. I took a taxi and made my way up to the 9th floor of a modern, but shabby apartment building in central Beijing. A housekeeper opened the door. Behind her, Liang was waiting to shake my hand—a 90 year old and very alert gentleman.

In my journal that evening after our two-hour conversation I wrote: “What a blessing to have met this sage. He was most impressive. Frail, to be sure. But so, so humble, alert. So careful and caring. Not a false note in his 品德 (moral character). His ethical stubbornness shines through. So different from the arrogant confidence and hasty tales of Zhang Shenfu.”

By the summer of 1983, I had been interviewing Zhang Shenfu for two years. His early lucidity and eagerness to share complex details about his life and thought had diminished. Many of our conversations during that May revolved around a single theme: How Zhang considered himself the most important philosopher in 20th century China. I had learned to discount some of these grandiose claims. But meeting Liang Shuming opened an entirely new avenue for reflection: Here I was invited to witness a life that went beyond philosophy. Liang allowed me to glimpse the inner landscape of a much-tortured man who kept seeking a spiritual path beyond grief to some enduring truth that might heal the wounds of history.

I returned to Liang Shuming’s apartment three more times: On May 6th, May 14th, May 17th and finally to say goodbye on May 27th 1983. Each time, I felt we became closer, more open with each other. I did not have to rush through my questions about the Shuntian Academy, where he had studied with Zhang before the 1911 Revolution, about how his views of Bertrand Russell differed from those of Zhang. I sipped my tea more slowly, allowed my gaze to linger on Liang’s thin face without words, and took in the wisdom of his inner quiet. Over the course of these visits, I was allowed into the circle of Liang Shuming’s old affection for Zhang Shenfu, while at the same time I was privileged to hear bits about his own spiritual quest that had nothing to do with Zhang’s philosophical explorations.

On May 14th we had our longest talk—three hours. As usual, Liang Shuming greeted me warmly, standing up in his worn Mao jacket, a woolen cap on his bald head. His thin face does not break into a smile easily. He is a seeker who is serious. Even severe with the world. And with himself. His deep set eyes remain fixed on mine as we sit down to talk:

“I am a Buddhist first and foremost, no matter if some—like your American colleague Guy Alitto—would call me “the last Confucian.” I still eat no meat. I still seek to understand the cause of suffering and try to root it out in my life and in the lives of those around me.”

After making this strong statement, Liang’s voice fades away, as if sucked up by the thirsty red cactus blooming between us. I had noticed the plant the first day I walked into Liang’s apartment. It stood out starkly among the well-ordered books. Liang wore no cap in the photograph that I took during that visit. The vigorous cactus, I sensed, mirrored the old sage’s stubborn character, his fierce sense of ethical independence nurtured with care over the traumatic decades of the Chinese revolution.

Zhang Shenfu and Liang Shuming were two friends who prided themselves in their independence of mind. Zhang had used his quirky intelligence to explore Western philosophy while Liang Shuming kept probing what he called “the foundations of our national psychology.” Speaking to me about their differences in outlook, Liang was careful to always refer to “Mr. Zhang”—a genuine politeness that came from his well practiced humility and respect for others:

“Mr. Zhang Shenfu, you see, knows far more about the West than I. He has seen and read more about it first hand. I can’t read foreign languages, though I have studied English for years. I haven’t used it for so long that I have quite forgotten how to read it. Mr. Zhang helped me a great deal with this. He knew many foreign languages and he knew them well. So I could rely on him to lend me books and talk about authors who were translated, but translated unreliably into Chinese. We were interested in different things, even back then at Beida. I was working on Buddhist epistemology, Mr. Zhang on mathematical logic. As for Mr. Zhang’s philosophy…”

Liang Shuming’s voice trailed off, tired. I could see that he was weary, his words growing vague. As I took my leave he invited me back again. Clearly, our conversations were important to him, not just a source of information for me.

And indeed, when I came back three days later, my aged host was willing to venture into more personal terrain. We spoke about the important differences between his views about Bertrand Russell and Zhang’s uncritical admiration of the British eccentric. Unlike the subject of my oral history, Liang Shuming was critical of Russell’s claims that rationalism can solve all of life’s problems. He retained for a while his interest in Henri Bergson, but then fashioned his own spiritual path by engaging both Western and Asian modes of thought. Liang Shuming never criticized Zhang’s views directly, but he allowed me to see more and more what experiences had made his own worldview unique.

Whereas Zhang Shenfu joined and later left the Communist Party, Liang Shuming tried to stay above the fray of politics. When Zhang Shenfu was jailed briefly in 1936 for his role in the student movement, Liang came to visit him in Peiping. When he was labeled a rightist in 1957, Liang Shuming remained Zhang’s friend and made a point of visiting him in times of distress. Similarly, Zhang Shenfu went out of his way to stay in touch with Liang Shuming during the Cultural Revolution. In one of our interviews, two years before I actually met Liang, Zhang Shenfu spoke movingly about Liang’s troubles in the 1960s:

“My old friend Liang Shuming was beaten over and over again. Red Guards came to his house, forced him to kneel, and whipped him. They burned his books. I tried to visit him whenever possible. He was such a broken man.”

Yet the man who sat facing me in the summer of 1983 was anything but broken in spirit. He had a clear sense of his own dignity. He had managed to hold on to some deep core of belief that had carried him through the darkest times.

Slowly, over the course of our visit, I inched my way to the subject of his experiences during the Cultural Revolution. I knew from other scholars how Liang Shuming had been forced by the Red Guards to demolish the grave of his own father, Liang Ji. But I had no sense of how humiliating it had been to be dragged by these youths to the outskirts of Beijing. Until our conversations, I had not pictured in my mind’s eye, the aged sage forced to pick up a hammer to smash Liang Ji’s grave. I had not seen the tears in his eyes, which came up again as he told me that the Red Guards sent a bill to his house after the horrific outing. Since Liang Shuming had no strength to finish the demolition, they did it for him and Liang was forced to pay for the destroyers’ time.

Despite the heavy sorrows that Liang Shuming still shouldered in 1983, his gaze was clear, his voice soft but firm in telling me what he had gone through. Each time we parted I left more inspired by his 氣節 (moral spirit)—a kind of soulful integrity that no Western lexicon can convey. This made our meeting so impactful in 1983—even in a month in which I was also privileged to also interview Zhou Yang and Xu Deheng in addition to my daily meetings with Zhang Shenfu. Among all these aged survivors, Liang Shuming sparkled with the light of spiritual strength. Although we did not speak about my own Jewish traditions, he felt appreciated by me and sensed that I had a worldview that helped me to grasp the meaning of his words beyond the sounds they made between us.

On May 27th, when I went to his apartment to say goodbye, we said rather little. We both knew that this was likely to be our last meeting in this life. Liang Shuming spoke slower than usual. He told me with humor how Jin Yuelin once said to Hu Shih: “Too bad you did not acknowledge that you were an outsider (外行) to philosophy.” At the door of his apartment, Liang Shuming took hold of my hand and held it for a few minutes without words. His head was bowed, eyes not meeting mine. As I wrote in my journal that night: “What a caring and respectful goodbye! I felt his affection and that he was teaching me something important in this slowing down of time between us.”

Now, forty-three years later, I am still trying to decode what Liang Shuming taught me in the spring of 1983. The information about Zhang Shenfu was useful as I wrote my book: Time for Telling Truth is Running Out (Yale University Press, 1992). But there was much more than information in our meetings. I had been privileged to be in company of a man who had followed the inner music of his soul during the toughest decades of 20th century history. That music inspires me to this day whenever I look at the photograph of the aged sage and the red cactus. It seems to whisper: “Stay true to your own vision of truth, trust that it will carry you no matter how loud or tempting the dogmas of the mob.”

Recommended archives:

Vera Schwarcz: The Chinese Enlightenment: Intellectuals and the Legacy of the May Fourth Movement of 1919 (University of California Press, 1986)

Vera Schwarcz: Time for Telling Truth is Running Out: Conversations with Zhang Shenfu (Yale University Press, 1992)

Liang Shuming: Theory of Rural Reconstruction (1937)

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：何义

By He Yi

The English translation follows below.

编者按语：

1962年9月的苏州，林昭与27岁的黄政相遇。通过深入的交流，两人确认彼此志同道合，以林昭为主，他们共同拟定了《中国自由青年战斗联盟纲领》等三份文件，提出八条主张，认为中国应该实行“总统制、军队国家化、发展民主、引进外资”等……这些观点，可谓石破天惊。1962年11月林昭被收监，1963年10月黄政被捕，林昭于1968年4月29日遇害。黄政熬过15年的刑期，再经历6年多的申诉，直至1985年底，才获得平反。

2025年9月29日，黄政在苏州溘然长逝。2026年清明，艾晓明教授编辑了《黄政纪念集》，纪念这位远非如林昭那样知名的同案难友。中国民间档案馆独家刊载这份档案，同时刊发何义所写的评论文章，作为林昭罹难58周年纪念。

1962年3月，因《星火》案牵连而被捕的林昭，得到保外就医的机会。夏秋之交，她在苏州逗留期间，认识了劳教农场释放回来的青年黄政。他们有过20多天的深度交流，两人共同策划成立“中国自由青年战斗联盟”，并制定了纲领和行动计划。同年11月，林昭被再次关押，黄政保存了她的手稿。1963年10月2日，黄政起草并刻印了《给统治者的一封公开信》，以及《告人民大众书》。由于公安机关早已安插线人，黄政次日被抓捕，并先于林昭被判处15年徒刑。

今天，林昭已成为中国人反抗极权、为自由献身的代表人物，而她的同案难友黄政的名字却很少被人知晓。很多关心中国当代政治反抗史的读者，也不熟悉黄政与林昭在苏州的这段案情。2025年9月29日，黄政在苏州离世，享年90岁。感谢艾晓明教授先后发出讣告、访谈和纪念文章，由此我才知道黄先生仙逝和他的独特经历。

黄政，出生于1935年，比林昭小三岁，祖籍安徽砀山，1950年考入华东军政大学，随后参军入伍，到朝鲜参战，1955年回国。他的父亲黄尔恒曾任汪伪时期的地方警务官员，在肃反前夕被捕，羁押数年后瘐死。黄政因父亲问题受到影响，在部队中曾被隔离审查。1957年反右期间，黄政被打成极右分子，1958年送苏北农场劳教，在随后的大饥荒中死里逃生。1961年底他被释放后，曾回砀山老家，目睹了大跃进、大饥荒给安徽农村带来的惨烈后果。1962年8月底，他经由友人朱红介绍而认识了林昭，两人在思想上产生了强烈共鸣，并开始策划联络同道，成立组织。在“星火”案同人全部系狱后，他与林昭开始了薪火相传的行动。

《黄政纪念集》的封面和封底，呈现了林昭的长诗《海鸥——不自由毋宁死》的意境。诗中的勇士挣脱镣铐，投身大海，最终化身为冲出水面的海鸥，它是林昭所讴歌的自由战士的象征。

纪念集分为三辑，分别为回忆、访谈与研究：第一辑收入了黄政生前回忆林昭的和讲述其冤案经历的两篇文章；第二辑为黄政在世纪之初和十多年前接受胡杰、艾晓明访问的实录；第三辑为艾晓明撰写的两篇研究文章，针对这个案子的特殊性和人物的独特经历，一篇讨论黄政冤案中所呈现的线人政治，第二篇为黄政家事寻踪，后者通过黄政的亲人以及家庭的历史，探讨了1950年代初期的政治运动对家庭的冲击。通过蒙冤者与其子女的命运，作者剖析了出身论的缘起及其荒谬性。

1. 林昭二次入狱前，在苏州发生了什么？

有关林昭1960年第一次入狱，中国民间档案馆2025年8月曾刊出的顾雁长文《“她走上了夏瑜的道路”——我与林昭》（上、下）里，讲的已比较清楚：林昭与《星火》案的主要人物有思想共鸣，但对涉及“纲领”、“组织”和“行动”时，她保持了一定的距离。也是因为这个原因，顾雁将1962年林昭在保外就医期间的政治活动，称之为“另起炉灶”。那么，林昭在这段时间，为什么会有这样一个看似激进的转向呢？从黄政写的纪念文章里，可以得到部分答案。

据黄政回忆，1962年8月间，他经难友朱红介绍，认识了在苏州居家养病的林昭。这时的黄政不止是反右的受害者，也是苏北劳教农场大饥馑劫难的幸存者；而林昭从狱中出来已有半年多。他们都经历了反右以后的现实苦难，也几乎同时成为失去父亲的儿女——林昭的父亲彭国彦1960年在女儿被捕后绝望自尽；黄政的父亲黄尔恒经过在1961年死于不明不白的长期羁押。

林昭与黄政都曾是献身共产革命的热血青年：黄政从军干校毕业后，即赴朝鲜参战；林昭原本是共产党的新闻教育培养出来的大学生。现实的打击令他们清醒，并自觉选择了反对者的立场。1962年9月7日以后，在大约二十天的时间里，以林昭为主，他们共同拟定了《中国自由青年战斗联盟纲领》、《行动计划》、《初期组织形式》三份文件。

《中国自由青年战斗联盟纲领》里，包括八项政治主张：

1. 国家应实行地方自治联邦制

2. 国家应实行总统负责制

3. 国家应实行军队国家化

4. 国家政治生活实行民主化

5. 国家实行耕者有其田制度

6. 国家允许私人开业，个体经营工商业

7. 国家应对负有民愤者实行惩治

8. 应当争取和接受一切友好国家援助

这些主张可谓切中时弊，文革结束后，有关市场开放、允许个体经营的主张已经得到尝试；而涉及民主政治的目标，即使在今天的中国，有些也仍然难以企及。由此可见，它在当时是具有强烈的预见性和挑战性的。比起林昭来，黄政与张春元一样上过战场，而他在农场和农村的亲身经历，更是林昭所没有的。在那样深重的劫难中幸存下来，黄政与林昭互相激励，他们亲自抄写了那几份文件，并且交换保存，以示同心协力，患难与共。

回到前面的问题：林昭何以从入狱前的思想者，在此时转变为政治反抗团体的发起人，成为直接行动者？阅读黄政的回忆和访谈记录，我认为，她是自觉地承担了《星火》同仁入狱前未尽之事。也可以说，她并不是如顾雁所说的另起炉灶，而是直面险境，前赴后继。正如艾晓明所说：“她的《星火》难友希望：既然释放了你，你要活下去。但对她来说，活下去却不是首要考虑；而证明独裁者错了，彻底错了，才具有最大的迫切性。这个迫切性超越了生存本身，因此，她不要苟活，她要解决当局不能这么做（错下去）的问题。”

上述八项主张中的一部分，也延续了《星火》同仁的观点。例如，张春元1962年在狱中的一份交待材料里，就曾写下他的观点：“按人重新分配土地，以田定产，以产定税，收入归己，废除统购，贸易自由。”同时，“对商业，我们主张在现有条件下……放宽一些商业经营的限制，主要是商贩和民用商业的限制，藉以繁荣市场和补助国营商业的不足。”很可能，他入狱前与林昭数次见面时，已经谈到这些观点。林昭虽然还没有决定加入《星火》的行动，但她完全赞同他们的观点。在《星火》同人的远见卓识被封禁扑灭时，她决定继承这份责任，使之抵达公众。

黄政的回忆，让我们得知林昭1962年保外候审期间的勇敢的思考。她在苏州时期的手稿和言行，成为新的“罪证”，使她在1965年被重判20年，黄政也以15年的生命时光为之服刑。晚年的黄政一直审慎地保存着对这些思想结晶的记忆，并在访谈中进行了阐述。艾晓明在她的访谈记录之前，加上了研究性的札记，她梳理了林昭-黄政冤案的形成过程；而胡杰的访谈更为深入，其中尤其重要的是黄政谈他入狱后的经历以及争取平反的艰难。两篇访谈在黄政生前从未发表，为的是使黄政晚年能享有基本的安宁，不至于再因为言论而被治罪。

2. 极权统治下的线人政治

在林昭与黄政的冤案中，有一位引人注目的人物，他就是朱红。朱红是一位诗人，1980年代因诗作的发表而声名鹊起；现在是知名的苏州地方志专家。在文革中，他曾被当作林-黄冤案中的“漏网之鱼”而受到迫害；但在黄政的回忆中，朱红是他的患难之交，也是亲自把他引入陷阱的人。

艾晓明《线人政治与诗人往事》这篇文章，对这场冤案中“三人行”展开了分析。她让我们看到极权政治中更为险恶和影响长久的悲剧：友情的蜕变和人性的耗损。难友利用友情来协从作恶，不仅颠覆了人伦常态，也给双方留下终生的阴影。通过对朱红的经历、诗作和当年政治环境的分析，作者呈现了底层右派小人物精神上的变形记。不同于一般曝光卧底者的文章，艾晓明将朱红表现出的这种屈服，归之于制度性后果，它是政治高压下的人格变异，也是政治迫害带来的创伤后遗症。

从《黄政纪念集》中，可以看出艾晓明研究当代社会史个案的方法特点。她注重收集史料，包括口述访谈、未曾发表的回忆录以及来自民间收藏的故纸。她因此能够以新颖的史料梳理出一个小人物的生命轨迹，让读者看到，一个时代的暴力如何将其扭曲。

朱红原本是黄政和林昭的好友，他与林昭有过诗的交流，他们写诗的风格不同，但彼此间也有读书人的惺惺相惜。因为朱红的回忆，我们才得以读到林昭的另一首长诗《美呵》。

艾晓明没有将线人的面貌脸谱化，她将侧重点放在国家机器摆布线人的机制运作上，她分析了控制线人的话语策略以及线人在制造冤案过程中所起的作用。从中可见，在“以阶级斗争为纲”的年代，“特情”是必不可少的办案工具，由各级线人织就的思想监控网络，给当事人和整个社会带来严重的后果：“线人利用师生、亲友关系，将人与人之间的珍贵连接转化为监控和政治迫害的形式，从而瓦解了人性的根基，败坏了道德操守。意识到线人的存在，人们必须互相防范，因此加剧了存在的孤立和原子化。而随着人际关系的恶化，原本脆弱的受害者再难找到心灵的庇护所，因而也更容易沦为牺牲。”

在这样的背景下，再来看朱红的诗作，诗人与社会、诗歌与政治的关系也就呈现出复杂交错的意义。艾晓明讲述了朱红的生活经历与其早年地下写作的风格，并将他的作品与林昭的诗作进行比较，从而说明，他们本来的关系是诗友和难友，至少也是同路人。但由于生存压力和制度性的操控，朱红当年做出了违背良心的选择。这使人们在重读他平反以后的诗作时，也有复杂的感受。一方面，朱红纪念林昭的诗篇，呈现了时代的变化和新的感悟；另一方面，联系到诗人当年的作为和林昭被枪杀的命运，也令人扼腕叹息诗人的道德失守，并反省文字的自我美化功能。这一切，并不是要对朱红本人进行道德审判，相反，作者肯定了朱红在回忆中自我解剖的文字；她更希望人们思考的是那些制度性的原因，在这个脉络下，我们才有可能提出，作为诗人，应该怎样坚守道德来应对政治的逼迫。

3. 寻回失落的亲情

1985年12月14日，经过漫长且几乎无望的申诉，黄政终于获得了无罪判决。之后，他同淑玉女士喜结连理，共同走过了后半生四十载岁月。婚后不久，他对妻子说：“我还有几个弟弟妹妹呢，我要找到他们。”经过十年寻访，1995年，他与失散的手足们终于在老家砀山团圆。此时，距离黄政的父亲黄尓恒含冤去世，已过去了三十多年。

从黄政与林昭的冤案出发，艾晓明对黄政经历的研究，延展到其家族成员的历史，她在《历史的伤口与弥合——黄政家事寻踪》一文的按语里写道：

“为什么在访谈冤案之后，还要去寻访家史？通常，人们会认为这些是私人生活，没有那么重要……我的出发点是这样：黄政的厄运，是从他父亲黄尔恒在肃反前被审查开始的。父亲的过往，仿佛是一种原罪，他因此被抛出生活常轨，被开除团籍，被划右派……他对现实的疑问由此开始……那么，他父亲究竟是个什么样的人？他的死对他产生了什么样的影响？如果说那个时代的家庭出身是原罪，那这种“罪”是怎样设定的？”

1935年，黄政出生于中国乡村一个旧式家庭，他的父亲黄尔恒（1906-1961）先后有四房妻妾，除黄政的生母早逝，其余三位，一位一直居住在农村，一位在离婚后漂泊到西北，最后远至新疆；还有一位是新四军女战士，早年参加革命，因为被捕而屈为黄妻，终于在他入狱后得以离婚，但依然受到牵连。在黄政去世后，艾晓明通过口述访谈、书信残片、老照片，以及黄政留下的手迹等家庭史料，力图再现黄家的四房女人、子女与其原生家庭和领养家庭的人生坎坷。

每个家庭的历史，都有自己独特的复杂性以及疑难点。在3万多字长文里，艾晓明聚焦于1950年代政治变迁冲击下旧家庭的解体，重点描述了“唯成分论”所造成的家庭悲剧，并深刻剖析了这种观念的荒谬。

从黄家故事里，我们能看到，有大量普通的中国人，在土改、镇反、肃反这些早期的政治运动中遭受迫害，相比于右派知识人群体，他们留下的证言要少得多。

而从黄政寻亲这个聚散离合的复杂故事里，又可以看到，寻找失散的亲人，重写家史和回归亲情，这种努力具有修复历史创伤、重塑人伦关系的深意。其实，如果对中国基层社会有所观察和研究，不难发现，近几十年来，续修家史、族谱，宗亲联谊、聚会，包括形成固定的宗亲社团……已经是一个较为普遍的社会现象。可以说，这是对传统社会宗亲观念的回归，其中也不乏在竞争社会里聚力互惠的考虑；但就认识长辈历史，凝聚亲情这一点而言，它对极权政治具有不可低估的抵抗意义。

在这篇文章中，我们也能看到一位思想斗士的仁爱情怀。黄政从他的牺牲里，没有得到名望、地位或任何物质利益的补偿，年过半百才成家，但他得到了妻子的理解和终生不渝的爱。这与当年《牧马人》带来的社会轰动与舆论共识有关，但在私人生活中得到持久的敬重，则是来自黄政自身的人格魅力。他以高度自律、无私的人品和家庭责任感，赢得了同父异母众多弟妹和亲属的敬重。他对亏欠了子女们的父亲，也做出了身为长子的交待：他将飘零离散了四十多年的弟弟妹妹们一一找回——尽到了他所称之为的“做人的本分”。

由此，艾晓明肯定了寻亲与纪念行为的社会价值：“被整死、关死的人不能复生，但生者依然可以做些什么……这个寻亲故事发生在家庭内部，却有着在最小的社会细胞上修复人性的意义……即使社会的正义迟迟未到，个人、家庭仍可以努力在先，去抚平创伤，重建记忆。这是他弥合历史伤口的努力，也是他留给亲人的精神遗产。”如同这部纪念集，也是在表明这样一种对待历史的态度，让每一个人的生命得到记录，让记忆可以流传：“每一个蒙难者，都值得一份人生档案。”

今年的4月29日，是林昭殉难58周年。重读黄政的故事，对于纪念林昭与她那时代的勇士们，有着特别的意义。勇者的生命虽然饱经磨难，但其思想的冲击力势必超越生命本身，并将长久地滋养后来的人们。

本期档案推荐：

艾晓明：《黄政纪念集》

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

Lin Zhao’s Co-Defendant Huang Zheng: An Unknown Yet Courageous Thinker

By He Yi

Editors’ Note:

During a period of about 20 days in Suzhou in September 1962, Lin Zhao, one of the best-known figures of resistance during the Cultural Revolution, engaged in a consequential exchange of ideas with Huang Zheng, a young man from Suzhou. As kindred spirits, they drafted three documents, including the “Program of the China Free Youth Combat Alliance,” proposing that China should implement “a presidential system, the nationalization of the military, the development of democracy, and the introduction of foreign capital.”.. Although Lin Zhao gained great fame as a poet, an activist, and a Christian martyr, Huang Zheng passed away quietly in September 2025, largely unknown to the public. To commemorate Huang, Professor Ai Xiaoming has edited a book of recollections about Huang, titled Huang Zheng: A Memorial Volume. China Unofficial Archives is the first platform to share a digital copy of this book on the 58th anniversary of the execution of Lin Zhao.

In March 1962, following her first arrest as a co-defendant in the case of the underground journal Spark, Lin Zhao was released on medical parole. That September, she spent 20 days in Suzhou in deep communication with a local 27-year-old named Huang Zheng. Together, they planned the establishment of the “China Free Youth Combat Alliance” and formulated its program and action plan. In November 1962, Lin Zhao was detained again, but Huang preserved her manuscripts, which became evidence for his prosecution. On October 2, 1963, Huang drafted and printed two essays called “An Open Letter to the Rulers” and “A Message to the Masses.” Because the police had already planted informants, Huang was quickly arrested and sentenced to 15 years in prison, preceding Lin Zhao’s sentencing.

Today, Lin Zhao has become a symbolic figure for Chinese people resisting totalitarianism and sacrificing their lives for freedom, yet the name of her co-defendant, Huang Zheng, is rarely known. Many readers interested in the history of contemporary Chinese political resistance are unfamiliar with the details of the case involving Huang Zheng and Lin Zhao in Suzhou. Huang passed away in Suzhou on September 29, 2025, at the age of 90. I only recently learned of his passing through the Huang Zheng: A Memorial Volume.

Huang Zheng was born in 1935, three years later than Lin Zhao. Originally from Dangshan, Anhui Province, he was admitted to the East China Military and Political University in 1950 and enlisted in the army. He later served in the Korean War before returning to China in 1955. His father, Huang Erheng, had served as a local police official during the Nationalist era; he was later arrested during the Suppression of Counter-revolutionaries campaign and died in custody. This had a direct impact on Huang Zheng, who was singled out for investigation while still in the military.

In 1957, during the Anti-Rightist Campaign, Huang Zheng—who had by then returned to Suzhou for work—was labeled an “ultra-Rightist.” He was sent to a labor farm in Northern Jiangsu for re-education, where he narrowly survived the Great Famine. Following his release at the end of 1961, he returned to his hometown in Anhui and witnessed the devastating toll the Great Leap Forward and the famine had taken on the countryside. By early 1962, after returning to Suzhou, he met Lin Zhao. The two found a profound intellectual resonance with one another. Alongside Lin Zhao and the Spark case group, Huang Zheng stands as yet another courageous thinker of that era. The front and back covers of Huang Zheng: A Memorial Volume feature imagery of the sea and seagulls, a reference to Lin Zhao’s long poem “The Seagull—Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death.” The warrior in the poem, who breaks free from shackles to plunge into the sea and eventually transforms into a seagull, serves as a symbol for the freedom fighters of Lin Zhao’s era.

The memorial collection is divided into three volumes: Reminiscences, Interviews, and Research. It includes two articles by Huang reflecting on Lin Zhao, as well as transcripts of interviews he gave to Hu Jie and Ai Xiaoming. Those two in-depth interviews were never publicly released during his lifetime. The third volume consists of two articles by Ai Xiaoming: the first examines the informant politics revealed by Huang’s wrongful conviction, while the second traces Huang Zheng’s family history. Through his family’s story, she presents the fates of the victims of injustice and their children during the political campaigns of the early 1950s, focusing on the origins and absurdity of the theory of class origin.

1. What happened in Suzhou before Lin Zhao’s second imprisonment?

Lin Zhao’s first imprisonment in 1960 was thoroughly recounted in Gu Yan’s long article, “‘She Chose a Martyr’s Path’: Lin Zhao and Me” (Parts 1 and 2), first published by the China Unofficial Archives in August 2025. While Lin Zhao shared an ideological resonance with the main figures of the Spark case, she maintained some distance from their formal programs and organizational actions. For this reason, Gu described Lin Zhao’s political activities during her 1962 medical parole as “starting a new stove,” meaning Lin Zhao began organizing a new program of her own. Why, then, did Lin Zhao turn toward radical actions like forming an organization and drafting a program during this period? Partial answers can be found in Huang Zheng: A Memorial Volume.

According to Huang, he was introduced to Lin Zhao in August 1962 by their friend Zhu Hong while Lin Zhao was recuperating at home in Suzhou. At the time, Huang was not only a victim of the Anti-Rightist Campaign but also a survivor of the Great Famine in the labor reform farms of Northern Jiangsu. Lin Zhao had been out of prison for over six months, and reality had dealt them both painful lessons. Crucially, both had recently lost their fathers: Lin Zhao’s father, Peng Guoyan, committed suicide in despair in 1960 after her arrest; Huang’s father, Huang Erheng, died in 1961 after a long-term detention.

Lin Zhao and Huang Zheng were originally passionate youths dedicated to the Communist revolution: Huang had fought in Korea immediately after graduating from a military cadre school, and Lin Zhao was a college student trained in the Communist Party’s journalism system. It was the heavy blows of reality that pushed them toward resistance. Over roughly twenty days in September 1962, with Lin Zhao taking the lead, they exchanged dissenting views and, as kindred spirits, drafted three documents: the “Program of the China Free Youth Combat Alliance,” an “Action Plan,” and a “Form of Initial Organizational.”

The Alliance’s program included eight political propositions: the Chinese state should implement a federal system and local autonomy; it should adopt a presidential system; the military should be nationalized and not controlled by the Communist Party; the political system should be democratized; land should belong to the tillers and not the state; private industry and commerce should be developed; the country should accept unconditional aid from friendly nations and introduce foreign capital; and those responsible for the Great Famine and previous political campaigns should be punished.

These propositions targeted the core issues of the time; even in today’s China, they remain largely unattainable goals. This shows that even during those catastrophic years, there were clear-headed and profound thinkers among Chinese intellectuals; however, their foresight was suppressed from the start, never reaching the public.

To return to the earlier question: Why did Lin Zhao shift from being a thinker to a direct political actor and organizer? Through the Huang Zheng: A Memorial Volume, we can learn that she was consciously fulfilling the unfinished business of her Spark colleagues, such as establishing an organization, drafting a program, and connecting with fellow dissenters. She was facing danger head-on, continuing the work of those who had fallen. Ai Xiaoming noted: “Survival was not her priority; proving the dictator completely wrong was the most urgent task—one that transcended survival itself. She refused to live an ignoble life; she wanted to address the fact that the authorities could not be allowed to continue their wrongdoing.”

Some of these eight propositions were continuations of the views held by the Spark group. For example, in a 1962 confession written in prison, Zhang Chunyuan, a key organizer of the underground journal Spark, stated: “Land should be redistributed according to the population, with income belonging to the individual, the abolition of unified procurement, and free trade.” He also advocated “relaxing restrictions on commercial operations to allow markets to prosper and supplement the deficiencies of state-owned commerce.” It is likely that Zhang and Lin Zhao discussed these ideas, though she had not yet decided to join their actions at that time.

Huang’s reminiscences provide insight into Lin Zhao’s deep reflections following her release. Her manuscripts from her time in Suzhou became evidence used against her, and Huang sacrificed 15 years of his life in prison for them. In his later years, Huang carefully and persistently preserved the memory of these intellectual achievements. Ai’s research notes, which accompany the interview records, trace the development of this unjust case. Hu Jie’s interview is even more thorough, specifically covering Huang’s experiences in prison and his difficult struggle for legal rehabilitation. These interviews remained unpublished during his lifetime to ensure he could live out his final years in peace, free from further persecution. With his passing, they have finally been released to honor this pioneer.

2. Informant Politics Under Totalitarian Rule

A striking figure in the wrongful convictions of Lin Zhao and Huang Zheng is Zhu Hong, the person who introduced them. Zhu later rose to fame in the 1980s as a poet and is now an expert on Suzhou local history. Zhu was also persecuted during the Cultural Revolution as a “fish that escaped the net” in the Lin-Huang case. However, Huang’s recollections reveal that Zhu was actually a key public security informant in the case.

Ai Xiaoming’s article, “Informant Politics and a Poet’s Past,” explores the erosion of friendship under extreme political pressure. When a close friend becomes an informant, it subverts ethics and leaves lifelong scars on everyone involved. Through an analysis of Zhu’s life, poetry, and political surroundings, Ai Xiaoming presents a different kind of tragedy—that of the low-level “Rightist.” Unlike typical exposés, she attributes Zhu’s fear-based compliance to systemic forces, viewing it as a form of post-traumatic stress caused by political persecution.

Ai Xiaoming’s research methodology is evident in the Huang Zheng: A Memorial Volume. She focuses on gathering historical evidence—oral interviews, unpublished memoirs, and discarded documents from private collections—to reconstruct the life of an ordinary person and show how the violence of the era distorted it.

This evidence includes Zhu’s own accounts. Originally a friend to both Huang Zheng and Lin Zhao, he expressed his remembrance of Lin Zhao in poems written after the case was rehabilitated in the 1980s. It was also through him that another of Lin Zhao’s long poems, “How Beautiful,” was preserved.

Ai Xiaoming avoids caricaturing the informant. She does not deny the literary merit of Zhu’s poetry, but she uses case details to argue that his work is “self-beautifying,” or as she puts it, “Having weighed the costs of prison against survival, he chose to align with the government.”

Ai Xiaoming’s primary goal is to illustrate how the informant system is used to manufacture counter-revolutionary cases and to analyze the authorities’ strategies for controlling these individuals. Throughout various political campaigns, the authorities have used special agents to “solve” cases, with devastating effects on the individuals involved and society as a whole. Through her analysis of the Lin-Huang case and others, Ai concludes: “Informants exploit relationships between teachers and students, friends and relatives, turning precious human connections into tools of surveillance and persecution. This destroys the foundations of humanity and corrupts moral integrity. Because the presence of informants forces people to be wary of one another, it increases social isolation and atomization. As interpersonal relationships collapse, fragile victims lose their last sanctuary and become easier targets for sacrifice.”

Ai Xiaoming’s work also explains how this system of special agents functions and how its traps are set, pondering whether it is possible for an individual to choose conscience over compliance when faced with the overwhelming power of the state.

3. Reclaiming Lost Family Ties

On December 14, 1985, after years of nearly hopeless appeals, Huang Zheng was finally declared innocent. He later married Shu Yu, and they spent forty years together. Early in their marriage, he told her, “I still have siblings, and I want to find them.” After a decade of searching, he was finally reunited with his long-lost siblings in their ancestral hometown of Dangshan, Anhui Province, in 1995—more than thirty years after their father, Huang Erheng, had died in detention.

Expanding her research from the Spark case, Ai Xiaoming explored the history of Huang’s family. In the article’s introduction, she writes:

Why investigate family history after researching a wrongful conviction? Usually, people consider these to be private matters of little importance... My perspective is different: Huang Zheng’s misfortunes began when his father, Huang Erheng, was investigated prior to the Campaign to Suppress Counter-revolutionaries. His father’s past was treated as a kind of original sin that derailed Huang Zheng’s life—he was expelled from the Youth League and labeled a Rightist。 This is where his questioning of reality began. What kind of man was his father? How did his death affect Huang Zheng? If family background was considered an original sin in that era, how was that guilt constructed?

Huang Zheng was born in 1935 into a traditional, polygamous household. His father, Huang Erheng (1906–1961), had four wives and concubines. Huang Zheng’s biological mother died young, and the others led difficult lives: one remained in the countryside, another drifted to the Northwest and eventually Xinjiang after a divorce, and a third—a former New Fourth Army soldier—was forced into the marriage after her arrest because of Huang Erheng’s status as an official. She remained stigmatized even after divorcing Huang Erheng after he was imprisoned. Using oral histories, fragments from letters, old photographs, and Huang Zheng’s own notes, Ai Xiaoming attempts to reconstruct the hardships faced by these four women and their children.

Every family history has its own complexities. In her 30,000-character essay, “The Wounds and Healing of History—Tracing Huang Zheng’s Family Story,” Ai Xiaoming examines the collapse of traditional families under the political shifts of the 1950s. She focuses on the tragedies caused by “class-status determinism” and critiques the absurdity of that ideology.

The story of the Huang family reveals that a vast number of ordinary Chinese people were persecuted during early political campaigns like Land Reform and the Suppression of Counter-revolutionaries. Unlike the intellectual Rightists, these people left behind far fewer testimonies.

Furthermore, Huang Zheng’s complex journey to find his siblings shows that the effort to reclaim lost family and rewrite family history serves to heal historical trauma and restore human relationships. This trend of compiling family histories and genealogies, or holding clan reunions, has become a common social phenomenon in recent decades. While this represents a return to traditional values or a way to build networks in a competitive society, the act of understanding one’s elders and reclaiming family ties also serves as a form of resistance against totalitarian politics.

This family history also reveals the compassionate nature of a political fighter. Huang Zheng gained no fame, status, or wealth from his sacrifices, but he earned the lifelong love of his wife and the deep respect of his siblings. He also fulfilled his duty as the eldest son to a father who had been unable to care for his children by reuniting the siblings who had been scattered by political upheaval—fulfilling what he called “the basic duty of being human.”

Ai Xiaoming concludes by highlighting the social value of these efforts: “Those who were killed or died in prison cannot be brought back, but the living can still take action. This story of seeking to reunite with relatives took place within a family, but it represents the healing of humanity at its most basic level. Even if social justice is delayed, individuals and families can work to heal wounds and reconstruct memory. This was his effort to close the wounds of history and the spiritual legacy he left to his family.” Professor Ai Xiaoming’s work reaffirms a vital stance toward historical truth: “Every victim deserves an archive of their life.”

April 29, 2026, marks the 58th anniversary of Lin Zhao’s martyrdom. Rereading Huang Zheng’s story provides a unique way to honor Lin Zhao and the brave people of her time. Though their lives were marked by suffering, the power of their ideas transcends their physical existence and will continue to inspire those who follow.

Recommended archive:

Ai Xiaoming: Huang Zheng: A Memorial Volume

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

The English translation follows below.

2026年，是文革爆发60周年与结束50周年。与往年不同，从2025年底延续至今，由于在中国互联网平台哔哩哔哩（B站）上，一系列对电影《芳华》的解读视频突然走红，竟意外地在年轻人中掀起了一股怀念文革和毛泽东的风潮。

电影《芳华》（改编自严歌苓同名小说）于2017年公开上映。其时代背景是文革末期、1979年中国对越战争以及1980年代初，讲述的是一群解放军文艺兵的故事，有青春怀旧的意味。严歌苓在接受季风书园访谈时，曾谈及，她的创作初衷，是反映文革浩劫对一代中国人造成的心理扭曲和持续的社会影响。不过电影后来为了能上映，剧组做了很多审查处理。吊诡的是，时隔八年，当B站主播以中国Z世代熟悉的穿越风格，将《芳华》二次解读，称“毛泽东发动文革，是为了代表人民反对特权官僚阶级”时，却得到了中国年轻世代的巨大共鸣。

在当下的中国社会，这样的情绪其来有自——一方面，年轻人面临巨大的就业压力和种种社会不公，看不到出路；另一方面，在严苛的信息审查下，他们的情绪没有宣泄的出口，也难以理解文革的真相。此时，通过所谓主流的文艺作品和叙事，怀念曾赞美年轻人是“八九点钟太阳”的毛泽东，将毛发动的文化大革命理解成一场“伟大的反特权运动”，反而成了他们几乎唯一可以拥有的言论空间了。

这种误读背后，真实的文革到底面目几何，似乎没有那么重要了——《芳华》的解读视频，在爆火之后遭到下架，国内视频网站上此前允许存在的关于文革的内容——大多为正面评价文革的，也开始搜索不到。如此一来，文革变得更加神秘，“肯定文革”，反而又成了另外一种政治异议——一种被压迫的叙事。

至此，文革结束50年来，无数人试图挖掘和保存的真相，再次面临被埋入历史更深处的命运。然而，也有许多的亲历者、幸存者和研究者，拒绝沉默，也拒绝用捕风捉影、牵强附会来搪塞厚重的历史。中国民间档案馆网站上，已收纳的与文革有关的档案，上百个书籍、文章、期刊和影像，正是这些有心人持续努力的成果。

充满暴力与死亡的历史证言

2002年，由宋永毅担任主编的《中国文化大革命文库》光碟由香港中文大学中国研究服务中心制作出版。收录了近3000万字的文献，内容包括了文革前后的中共中央文件、指示、公报、领袖首长讲话、重要报刊社论，以及重要的大字报、小报、传单等等。这是全球第一个大型、专业化的文革数据库，背后蕴藏了许许多多参与者的心血。这一文库后来也经历了持续的修订与扩充。民间档案馆设立了相关条目予以介绍。

民间档案馆收集的关于文革的档案，有一些是系统性的学术研究著作，如《文化大革命的起源》，《“砸烂旧世界”——文化大革命的动乱与浩劫》，《文化大革命十年史》，分析毛泽东在文革中作用的《毛泽东和文化大革命：政治心理与文化基因的新阐释》等等。更有文革亲历者、中国作家杨继绳的《天地翻覆——中国文化大革命史》这样的深度记录与研究。还有《历史的代价:文革死亡档案》，对文革中的暴力与死亡事实予以记录。以及《极端年代的公民政治》等书籍，还有中国官方出版社早期曾出版的《四清运动实录》、《广西文革大事年表》等资料。不过目前馆藏中数量最多的，还是亲历者从个体角度对文革的回忆与追述。

这些讲述者中，有从劳改营中死里逃生的幸存者，如《梦断苗溪：一个劳改幸存者的回忆》，以及巫宁坤的《一滴泪》；有历经狂热后痛苦反思的红卫兵，如《1966：我们那一代的回忆》，以及《红卫兵兴衰录：清华附中老红卫兵手记》；也有揭露鲜为人知的文革内情的体制内高官，如《我所亲历的政治运动》，《劫后长忆——十年动乱纪事》；还有文革中因勇于发声而身陷囹圄的反抗者，如《反文革第一人及其同案犯》和《牛鬼蛇神录——文革囚禁中的精灵》。经由这些亲历者的讲述，文革不再是抽象的符号，而是有血有肉的个体被裹挟于政治运动、并被革命蹂躏和绞杀的历史证言。

革命的边缘地带

在中国长期严苛的言论钳制之下，非官方的历史叙事已属边缘。但像大多数此类叙事一样，在边缘之外往往还有一个更加边缘的地带。民间档案馆收录了十余个关于文革中边缘群体的档案，试图回答：文革期间的妇女、农民、非汉族人，他们在哪里，又经历了什么？

《妇女与中国革命》介绍了妇女在文革中继承“妇女能顶半边天”的组织逻辑，获得摆脱家庭和学校控制的自由，但同时面对当局对性别差异的选择性否定，有时不得不用比男性更加激烈的行为来表达政治热忱，以及忍受各种性别不平等状况的复杂处境。1986年出版的《上海生死劫》，被认为是中国第一部以笔述实录方式反思文革的独立回忆录，作者郑念记述了她从文革开始到八十年代初出国这段时间的个人经历，展现女性在暴政之下如何维持尊严、坚持抗争。纪录片《还卜琴父以美丽》和《我的母亲王佩英》则通过影像追述文革中站出来表达反对的女性的生命故事，呈现个体命运在当时制度与政治环境中的波折。而新近出版的《画说我的一生》，则以漫画的方式，试图还原一个亲历文革的女性的思想历程。

在以汉族人为主体的地理中心之外，政治暴力也并未收敛。《杀劫：镜头下的西藏文革》，《长城外的造反派：汉族青年眼中的内蒙古文革与民族屠杀》，以及纪录片《麦地冲的歌声》，通过亲历者口述和影像记录，呈现出文革在不同地域与民族、文化、信仰、定居殖民主义交叠而产生的更加复杂的图景。

过去一年来，民间档案馆和维吾尔研究者合作，收录了不少关于东突厥斯坦（新疆）的档案，其中多个档案涉及维吾尔知识分子对于文革的个人回忆。虽然大部分档案仅有维语版本，但我们对档案本身和作者个人都提供了较为详细的中英文介绍，以方便读者了解这些鲜为人知的历史人物及其经历。

文革中另一个常被忽略的群体是农民。《血的神话：1967年湖南道县文革大屠杀纪实》，通过大量机密文件和访谈资料，呈现农民在文革期间遭受的系统性暴力。《文革时期中国农村的集体杀戮》则对此做了深入的学术研究。专题摄影作品《大地留痕》，捕捉了道县这片血染的土地上至今未褪的历史痕迹。纪录片《罪行摘要》中，导演依循22份泛黄的浙江省衢州市十里丰农场“犯人登记表”的复印件，走访了14位在文革中被判为“现行反革命”的浙江农民，用镜头记录下他们对自己获罪、服刑、以及出狱后几十年人生的讲述。

文革影像：官方美学掩盖下的个人苦难

民间档案馆目前收录了20多个文革影像档案，大部分是纪录片。这些纪录片同样以文革中的个体生命故事为主，其中有知识分子、前文工团成员、清洁工，也有武斗受害者的后人、农民、知青，还有信仰基督教的苗族人……从普通个人的视角，展现这段惊涛骇浪的历史。同时，我们也收录了《为革命画画》、《红色美术》两部纪录片，以及图片展《文化大革命的文化：毛泽东时代中国的个人崇拜与红色印记》，呈现文革期间的政治宣传和领袖崇拜如何渗入、影响，甚至重塑普通人的生活。

通过这些影像档案，我们能看到，面目模糊的狂热政治宣传与个人苦难如何形成强烈对比，却仿佛平行世界，而一直到今天，极权政治下的荒诞不经，依然未得到正视与清理。也正因如此，放大个人形貌、声音和讲述的纪录影像，也成为民间社会抵抗官方宏大历史叙事的重要方法。

中国民间档案馆收集的文革档案，可以通过专题网页浏览。您也可以通过档案馆的“全部馆藏”页面，点击搜索框右侧的“更多筛选条件”，在“主题”下选择“文化大革命”，来浏览所有相关档案。目前馆藏还在进一步充实之中，谢谢您的关注。也欢迎通过邮件订阅民间档案馆的简报，看到更多关于档案的内容。

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

Editors’ Note: Archival Recommendations on the 60th Anniversary of the Cultural Revolution

The year 2026 marks the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution and the 50th anniversary of its conclusion. A trend in China that began in late 2025 has persisted: a series of videos interpreting the film Youth went viral on the Chinese video platform Bilibili, unexpectedly sparking a wave of nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution and Mao Zedong among the younger generation.

The film Youth, adapted from Yan Geling’s novel of the same name, was released in 2017. Set against the backdrop of the late Cultural Revolution, the 1979 Sino-Vietnamese War, and the early 1980s, it tells the story of a group of soldiers in a People’s Liberation Army performing arts troupe, imbued with a sense of youthful nostalgia. In an interview with Jifeng Bookstore in Washington, DC, Yan Geling noted that her original intention was to reflect the psychological distortions and lasting social impact the catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution inflicted on a generation of Chinese people. However, to ensure the film adaptation could be screened, the production team subjected it to significant censorship. Paradoxically, eight years later, when Bilibili creators re-interpreted Youth using a time-travel narrative style familiar to Gen Z, they claimed that “Mao Zedong launched the Cultural Revolution to represent the people against a privileged bureaucratic class.” This interpretation has resonated deeply with China’s youth.

In contemporary Chinese society, these sentiments are not without cause. On one hand, young people face immense employment pressure and various social injustices, seeing no clear path forward. On the other hand, under strict information censorship, they have no outlet for their frustrations and struggle to understand the actual truth about the Cultural Revolution. Consequently, reminiscing about Mao Zedong—who once famously called the youth “the rising sun at eight or nine o’clock in the morning”—and framing his Cultural Revolution as a “great anti-privilege movement” has become one of the few remaining avenues for public expression.

In the wake of this interpretation, the actual reality of the Cultural Revolution seems to have lost its importance. After the Youth commentary videos exploded in popularity, they were removed from the Chinese Internet. Furthermore, previously permitted content regarding the Cultural Revolution on domestic video sites—mostly material that viewed the era positively—has also become unsearchable. As a result, the Cultural Revolution has become even more mysterious; affirming the Cultural Revolution has evolved into a new form of political dissent—a suppressed narrative.

Thus, fifty years after the Cultural Revolution ended, the truths that countless individuals have worked to uncover and preserve are once again at risk of being buried deep in history. However, many witnesses, survivors, and researchers refuse to allow this history to be glossed over with groundless rumors and forced associations. The China Unofficial Archives website has collected over a hundred books, articles, journals, and videos related to the Cultural Revolution—the results of these dedicated individuals’ efforts.

Historical Testimonies of Violence and Death

In 2002, the Chinese Cultural Revolution Database, edited by Song Yongyi, was launched by the now-defunct Universities Service Centre for China Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong and other institutions. It contains over 30 million Chinese characters of documentation, including Chinese Communist Party Central Committee files, directives, communiqués, and speeches by high-ranking leaders before and after the era, as well as important newspaper editorials, big-character posters, flyers, and more. This represents the world’s first large-scale, professional database on the Cultural Revolution, built upon the painstaking work of many contributors. The China Unofficial Archives has established dedicated entries to introduce this collection.

The Cultural Revolution materials gathered by the China Unofficial Archives include systematic academic works such as The Origins of the Cultural Revolution, “Smashing the Old World”: Havoc of the Chinese Cultural Revolution (1966-1968), and The Ten-Year History of the Cultural Revolution. It also includes works analyzing Mao Zedong’s role, such as Mao Zedong and the Cultural Revolution: A New Interpretation from Perspectives of Political Psychology and Cultural Gene. Notable in-depth records include the three-volume The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution by writer and witness Yang Jisheng, as well as The Price of History: The Cultural Revolution Death Files, which documents the era’s violence and fatalities. Other titles include Citizen Politics in Extreme Times: A Mass History of the Cultural Revolution and early official materials like A Chronicle of the Four Cleanups Movement and the Chronology of Major Events During the Cultural Revolution in Guangxi Province. However, the majority of the current collection consists of personal memoirs and firsthand accounts from those who lived through the era.

These narrators include survivors who escaped labor camps, as seen in Broken Dreams at Miaoxi: Recollections of a Laogai Survivor and Wu Ningkun’s A Single Tear. They include former Red Guards who moved from fanaticism to painful reflection, such as 1966: Memories of Our Generation and The Rise and Fall of the Red Guards: A Handbook of the Old Red Guards at Tsinghua High School. There are also high-ranking officials within the system who exposed clandestine details, such as Personal Experiences of Political Campaigns and Long Memories after the Havoc: A Chronicle of Ten Years of Turmoil. Finally, there are the stories of rebels imprisoned for speaking out, such as The First Man against the Cultural Revolution and His Co-Conspirators and Captive Spirits: Prisoners of the Cultural Revolution. Through these accounts, the Cultural Revolution ceases to be an abstract symbol and becomes a historical testimony of flesh-and-blood individuals caught in a political movement, ravaged and destroyed by revolution.

The Margins of the Revolution

Under China’s long-standing and severe censorship, unofficial historical narratives are already marginalized. The China Unofficial Archives has collected over a dozen files on marginalized groups during the Cultural Revolution, seeking to answer: where were the women, peasants, and non-Han ethnic groups, and what did they endure?

Women and China’s Revolutions describes how women adopted the organizational logic that “women hold up half the sky” to gain freedom from family and school control. Yet, they simultaneously faced a selective denial of gender differences by the authorities, sometimes feeling compelled to act more aggressively than men to prove their political fervor while enduring complex gender inequalities. Life and Death in Shanghai, published in 1986, is considered the first independent memoir of the Cultural Revolution written as a factual record. Author Zheng Nian recounts her life from the start of the revolution to her departure from China in the early 1980s, illustrating how a woman maintained her dignity and resisted under tyranny. The documentaries To Justify Bu Qinfu and My Mother Wang Peiying use film to recount the lives of women who stood up in opposition, showing how individual fates were twisted by the political environment. More recently, Liu Haiou’s My Forty Years in China uses comic strips to reconstruct the intellectual journey of a woman who lived through the era.

Political violence was even more unrestrained outside the Han-centric geographic heartland. Forbidden Memory: Tibet During the Cultural Revolution, A Chinese Rebel beyond the Great Wall: The Cultural Revolution and Ethnic Pogrom in Inner Mongolia, and the documentary Songs from Maidichong use oral histories and visual records to present a more complex picture. These works show how the Cultural Revolution intersected with ethnicity, culture, faith, and settler colonialism.

Over the past year, the China Unofficial Archives has collaborated with Uyghur researchers to include numerous files regarding East Turkestan (Xinjiang), including personal memories from Uyghur intellectuals. Although most of these files are in Uyghur, we provide detailed Chinese and English introductions to the authors and the content to help readers understand these little-known historical figures.

Peasants are another group frequently overlooked. The Killing Wind: A Chinese County’s Descent into Madness during the Cultural Revolution utilizes confidential documents and interviews to reveal the systematic violence peasants faced. Collective Killings in Rural China during the Cultural Revolution provides an in-depth academic study of this phenomenon. The photography series Traces in the Land captures the lingering historical marks on the land of Dao County. In the documentary Summary of Crimes, the director follows photocopies of 22 yellowed “Prisoner Registration Forms” from a farm in Quzhou, Zhejiang, interviewing 14 peasants who were labeled “active counter-revolutionaries.” The film records their stories of conviction, imprisonment, and the decades following their release.

Cultural Revolution Visuals: Individual Suffering Masked by Official Aesthetics

The China Unofficial Archives currently holds over 20 visual archives, mostly documentaries. These films also focus on individual stories, featuring intellectuals, former performing arts troupe members, cleaners, descendants of victims, peasants, and Christian Miao people. From these personal perspectives, they reveal a turbulent history. We have also included the documentaries Painting for the Revolution and Red Art, along with the photo exhibition The Culture of the Cultural Revolution: Personality Cult and Political Design in Mao Zedong’s China. These demonstrate how political propaganda and leader worship penetrated and reshaped ordinary lives.

Through these visual records, we see the stark contrast between fanatical political propaganda and individual suffering—two seemingly parallel worlds. Even today, the absurdities of totalitarian politics have not been fully addressed or reconciled. For this reason, documentary images that amplify individual voices and faces have become a vital tool for civil society to resist grand official narratives.

You can browse the Cultural Revolution archives through our special topic page. Alternatively, visit the “Works” page, click “more filters” next to the search box, and select “Cultural Revolution” under “Theme.” As our collection is continuously growing, we thank you for your support. We also invite you to subscribe to our newsletter via email for further updates.

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

作者：舒凡

By Shu Fan

The English translation follows below.

一年前，我还不知道刘海鸥是谁。作为“95”后的我，出生在文革结束近20年之后，读过一些关于文革的作品，但对那一代人——尤其是女性，如何度过文革十年，以及她们一生因此所受的影响，并不能通过自身去理解。对“红卫兵”、“造反派”、“思想改造”的理解，也仅是文字层面的。

我最初是被她的自传体“文革连环画”《画说我的一生》一书吸引，逐渐了解到，她也是家族自传《半壁家园：刘辽逸家事百年》的作者。她的作品，曾被中国民间杂志《记忆》连载和选登。她的父亲是著名翻译家刘辽逸，1951年起长期在人民出版社工作，介绍苏俄文学，是《战争与和平》的译者。刘辽逸早年追随共产党，不惜与家族决裂——她的祖父带领大家族去了台湾，只有父亲这一支留在了大陆。新政权下，刘海鸥的父母作为知识分子，并不受待见——文革时期，他们都被下放牛棚。刘海鸥出生于1947年，算是“生在红旗下，长在新中国”。她在大连出生，在北京度过童年和青少年，成长期经历了文革，曾去新疆等地串联，文革结束后在北大读哲学研究生，1980年代开始任教。后来，她在强大的计划生育压力下生了二胎，最终离开了中国。

和其它关于文革的回忆录不同，刘海鸥出版于2023年的这本自传，每一节叙事都配上了中国人熟悉的连环画。她清醒而明确地向世人袒露自己的经历，自己的思考，自己的发现：她曾经非常“左”，在文革刚开始的时候，她竭力改造思想，希望成为真正的“革命者”，但最终发现：革命原来是一种特权，她是造反派的“革命对象”。

在一章一章阅读她的人生时，我屡次被她的文字逗笑，有时候她的语气好像我钟情的女性脱口秀演员，机灵、快速、敏捷，而且犀利、迅猛，直击要害。用现在的网络语言来说，好像一个段子手，用夹杂着幽默的叙述口吻，并保持着写作者的独立与抽离态度。我认为，这在文革时期成长起来的人的写作中尤为罕见——那不是一个鼓励人，更不是一个鼓励女性拥有独立视角的时代。在一个消灭人的个体性，要求人全然泯入整体的时代，她始终没有完全泯灭掉自己的个体性，而且把这一切都写和画了下来：

例如，在她小时候的认知里，长头发的是女性，短头发的是男性，所以当她看到毛泽东的照片时，她对毛的性别曾陷入深深困惑——因为毛主席的头发不长也不短，以至于她在坐黄包车的时候，不由自主地问司机，毛主席是不是不男不女；在爱的表达被禁止的时代，她偷瞄长相英俊、气质忧郁的男同学（后来这位男同学因精神问题进了医院）；在文革中武斗激烈的兰州和新疆，她和同伴们在炮火中一起打扑克牌。

她也写和画下来：出生于知识分子家庭的她，怎么进行自我改造——她曾站在火车轨道上，想象自己是舍身救人的“革命英雄”欧阳海，但却发现自己很恐惧，不能无私地为他人献身，而对自己的“阶级改造不彻底”感到愤懑；她热烈加入革命队伍，满怀热情地贴大字报，却因为体型，被红卫兵嘲笑叫刘企鹅，还被铁锨毒打，满身伤痕地回家，却从未向家人诉说过；她目睹自己所在学校的老师，被红卫兵折磨至死的过程……

《画说我的一生》一书中，有640幅连环画。文字和画面的结合，让作者在叙述文革中的经历时，能有效地呈现出个人与时代交织、冲撞、矛盾的画面。例如其中的一幅画，一个青少年女性一面背诵阶级斗争的语录，满脸正义感，但一面，脑海里缭绕出莫扎特的音乐旋律，于是她举枪对准了这个脑海里出现的莫扎特——这个画面对我——作者的诉说对象、一个后辈来说，冲击力是不同寻常的，我既觉得新鲜、欣喜，又觉得同情——为看到一个活生生的人而欣喜，而能感其所感。

就像文革是一个高度集体化的运动一样，其实，后来对文革的叙述也常常是集体化的，例如1980年代，一场对文革记述与反思的文学运动，也曾被概括为“伤痕文学”。对文革这样一段复杂的历史，因为很多事情过于沉重、暴力与荒诞，也很容易被奇观化和浪漫化，让后代的阅读者难以相信——究竟发生了什么？

所以，当我看到B站（指中国青年网络平台 Bilibili)上青年们对文革怀旧，对毛的虔诚与热爱重返时，几乎可以理解，并觉得那是一种诱人的情绪——我们最终可以实现人人平等，人人都可以过上幸福而不受苦的生活——这也许跟当时积极参加自我改造的刘海鸥的感情动力并无差别，但是文革究竟是什么？为什么今天的人会轻易陷入对文革的怀旧中？

进而我们也可以追问，为什么文革中的标语对现在的年轻人来说都是诱人的？——再把现在的我们和50年前的青年联系在一起，为什么个体可以在一场运动中丧失人性，被话语和权力统治，肆无忌惮地伤害权力所针对的对象？而与之相对的，是什么，让个体在一场席卷所有人、破坏人性的运动中，仍能保留人性的完整？

在书中，刘海鸥也曾多次反思自己，在文革中为何那么“糊涂”，以及为何这场运动可以迅速、强势地裹挟每一个个体。在读研究生时，她的题目也是“中国人为什么会这样”，研究文革中的群众究竟是怎样参与其中的。她认为，中国的文化传统和思维模式中对权威的顶礼膜拜；“随大流”的集体思维习惯；以及非黑即白的思维，还有生存至上的实践理性哲学，都在极端的高压环境之下，成为了文革的推手。

1990年代，刘海鸥生了一场大病，那时她曾感慨，人为什么不能活得轻松一点呢,不再关心那些沉重的命题呢?可事实上，她这一代人的生命，始终跟政治直接地、暴力地交织在一起，她难以做到不再关心——所以，从那时起，她开始书写自己的经历，最后形成这部画传。她说，选择用连环画的形式来表达，是她发现年轻人对那段历史兴趣不大。她的女儿7岁時跟着她到了澳洲，不会读中文，她的初衷，就为了让自己的孩子能理解这段历史，把自己的真实经历，“留给孩子、留给后代。”

（以下访谈内容经过整理。）

舒凡：《画说我的一生》的记录从童年开始，前几章的画作基调是温暖、明亮的，到了文革前夕这样的调子被切断了，画面直接重现了文革中非常沉重、暴力的经历，比如你自己被殴打，以及目睹老师被殴打，其中一位被学生殴打致死等。对你来说，重现这段经历是这个创作中最沉重、最痛苦的吗？

刘海鸥：其实到了我这个年龄，很多事情已经看开了。在创作时，我并没有特别强烈的痛苦感，因为我已经把当下的自己和过去的经历分开来看，是以一种“旁观”的状态在回忆。

不过文革中有一件事，对我打击最大，是我被打的那一段，我40年来没有对任何人说过，连父母都不知道，因为当时觉得非常羞耻。起因是我把（毛主席）“万寿无疆”误写成“无寿无疆”，被当作“反动”问题，后来在学校被造反派殴打。当时家里人并不清楚情况，我父亲也没有问我。直到他去世后，我和姐姐争执，她误以为是我带红卫兵抄家，说我是多么多么左，爸爸对这件事多么不满意，我才意识到这件事一直没有向家人解释清楚。后来我把事情告诉了母亲，一边说一边哭，这是我第一次在她面前哭。后来我又给姐姐写了很长一封信，解释前因后果，她看后向我道歉。把这件事说出来之后，我才真正放下了。

舒凡：为什么当时觉得不能告诉父母呢？

刘海鸥：当年没有告诉家人，一方面是觉得羞耻，因为觉得这是我的错，另一方面也是不想让父母难过，被打得那么惨嘛。直到跟姐姐吵架的时候，我才意识到家里人一直有这样的误解，我爸爸就是带着这样的误解走的。我告诉母亲的当晚，她把脸转过去一晚上一句话也没说，我知道她很难过，但她没有说什么，只是整晚沉默。

舒凡：你在这里提到羞耻感，让我想到你在文革初期想要彻底“改造自己”，去第一个贴大字报，却遭到红卫兵羞辱，他们给你起了“刘企鹅”的外号。，你也在提到文革中遭受的羞辱几乎都与“胖”有关。还有其他女性，像喻瑞芬老师，最后被折磨致死，她单独被揪出来，也跟她胖有直接关系。我很好奇，为什么“胖”会成为一种被羞辱甚至被针对的原因，尤其是对女性而言？

刘海鸥：这种羞辱其实从小就存在。当时，电影、小说和绘画中地主资本家都以大腹便便的形象出现，所以很多人把“胖”与剥削阶级联系在一起，认为胖是因为吃得好、家庭条件好，所以看到胖的人，就容易把这个人归为“有问题”的阶级。当然，当时社会整体都很贫困，大多数人都很瘦，而我因为家庭条件较好，从小吃得好一些，就显得稍微胖一点，因此经常被骂、被起外号，也从小缺乏自信。我小时候在学校就有小孩追在身后骂我，甚至后来当老师后，也一直被羞辱，被人叫缩脖坛子。

在文革中，这种偏见被放大，变成一种带有阶级意味的攻击。对女性来说，除了政治上的打击，还会叠加对外表的羞辱，显得更强烈。另外，当时男性胖子本来就很少见，所以这种针对更多落在女性身上。总体来说，这是阶级观念和社会偏见共同作用的结果。

舒凡：这样的经历会让您对自己的女性身份有不一样的感受吗？会不会觉得如果不是女性，就不会受到这样的对待？

刘海鸥：我觉得没有。当时我并不觉得是因为性别才被针对，而是因为“胖”被当作阶级问题的象征。那时的逻辑主要是按阶级来区分，而不是按性别。整体社会的阶级观念非常强烈，这个盖过了所有别的标准。

舒凡：你在文革中一方面努力进行自我改造，甚至否定自我，但另一方面又始终保留着对音乐、艺术、自然的感动，在这样一场近乎癫狂的运动中，你没有参与对他人的伤害。在那样一个破坏人性的环境中，是什么让你保留了人的完整性？

刘海鸥：从小的家庭环境和本性来看，我其实是一个天性自由的人，这一点一直没有真正改变，只是被压抑，或者不断压缩了。六十年代初文艺界有过一次解放，引进外国音乐电影，跟我的天性是合拍的。另外，我父母都属于自由知识分子，家里的大量外国经典文学和家庭环境推崇的自由思想，也塑造了我比较强的个体意识。

后来在不断的政治运动中，我一方面努力按照“阶级观念”改造自己，打磨自己，另一方面内心始终有疑问，也保留着对自由和美的感受，这种内在冲突一直存在。当时我在学习那些英雄事迹，比如欧阳海，也努力按照那种标准要求自己，但有一次听到莫扎特的音乐，我一下子晕了，那种被压抑已久的情感一下子释放出来，可紧接着，我又会觉得这种感受“不对”，认为这是不符合当时思想要求的，需要压制。这种自我否定越来越强，也与当时整个社会愈发“左”的氛围是一致的。

不过，在心里，我对自由的感受并没有消失，同时也一直存在疑问，并非完全接受那些观念。只是整体上，还是跟随当时的社会和政治方向走。

等到文革结束、被全面否定时，我突然意识到，过去十几年的信念和自我改造几乎全部被推翻，这对我是一次巨大的打击，相当于自我被彻底否定。

舒凡：您提到过，这种否定之否定给您带来了巨大的痛苦，现在的您会怎么分析这种痛苦呢？

刘海鸥：十一届三中全会对文革的全面否定，相当于把我这一代人好不容易建立起来的信仰一下子击垮了，这让我非常困惑和痛苦。不过这种痛苦没有持续太久。随着改革开放，文学、电影、音乐等重新出现，这些被压抑已久的东西一下子与我产生共鸣，迅速被重新唤醒。

可以说，我原本的天性只是被压抑，一旦环境放开，就很快恢复、生长。后来我考入北大哲学系读研究生，这对我的思想启蒙作用很大，导师们思想开放，他们讲的东西一下子就打开了思路。我接触到的西方古典哲学，就是讲人类的认知之路，也对我很有启发，也促使我对过去的信念进行了再一次的反思与否定，也进一步重建了自己的认知。

舒凡：您觉得文革对人性破坏最严重的方面是什么？比如告密、失去信任，还是羞辱与折磨他人？

刘海鸥：我觉得最大的破坏是对人性的整体摧毁，包括良知和道德的崩塌。那种“打倒一切、怀疑一切”的氛围，使很多人失去了基本的价值标准。这种影响不仅发生在当时，还会延续到下一代，形成长期的后果。不过也不能一概而论，我的看法可能有偏颇，也需要谨慎看待。

舒凡：我在阅读有关您的经历时，发现您笔下的新疆那一段的串联经历可能层次最为丰富，在激烈的武斗中，有独立成长的女孩、新婚女性的家庭、等待团聚的人，以及兵团中的上海女性。一面是武斗的炮火，一面是人们的日常生活、街头飘扬的维族音乐，这和我们常见的文革叙述（如《牛棚杂忆》）很不一样。新疆是否可以说是您在文革中感受到人性最丰富的地方？

刘海鸥：当时并没有“人性”这样的自觉概念，因为在那个年代，“人性”甚至被视为负面的词汇。我的感受更多是来自日常经验，而不是抽象思考。其实不只是新疆，文革中的任何地方都同时存在“两种世界”：一部分人积极投入运动，另一部分人大多数仍在过自己的日常生活。新疆也是如此——一方面武斗非常激烈，甚至有枪炮声；另一方面，小贩照常做生意，人们照样生活。

所以文革并没有对所有人产生同样的冲击。有些人是受害者，尤其是知识分子；但也有一些人并未受到根本影响，甚至在某种程度上成为“受益者”。比如有人从混乱中获取资源，或对既有秩序的破坏中获利。因此，他们对文革并不强烈反感。

就我个人而言，这种体验并不限于新疆。在贵阳，我会在破旧街巷中听到小提琴声，看到居民窗帘的非常美丽的图案和色彩。但与此同时，又会被革命歌曲激发出强烈的激情。所以这种状态是一种持续的摇摆：一方面是对美、音乐与日常生活的感受，另一方面是被时代情绪裹挟的热血与激动。这两种力量始终并存。

舒凡：那您觉得新疆、贵阳这些城市和政治运动的中心北京有什么不同？比如在北京，人们是否更统一、更全面地投入运动？

刘海鸥：文革初期（1966年夏到秋），北京的“红色恐怖”非常强烈，气氛高度紧张，稍有不慎就可能遭遇严重后果。但到后来，随着红卫兵外出串联，北京反而出现短暂的缓和，人们逐渐恢复一些日常生活。我自己在1967年基本都在外地，没有长期待在北京。

总体来说，各地情况相似：一方面是激烈的派性斗争和暴力冲突，另一方面仍然存在普通人的日常生活。这种“两种世界并存”的状态，是文革时期的普遍现象，而不仅限于某一个地方。

舒凡：除了文革中的获益者之外，我也从我的爷爷奶奶辈观察到，有一些人——很多是知识分子，自身经历了文革的折磨，也没有动摇过对党的信念，仍然相信党始终是伟光正的。您提到自己是在生二胎（1986年左右）时——你把那段时间描述为人生中最残酷、最无人性的遭遇，“伟光正”的光环在您心中完全黯然失色。可以理解为，二胎时期的经历最终导致了这种信念完全的崩塌吗？

刘海鸥：对于我而言，这种信念的崩塌和生二胎经历是有直接关系。那时，我必须向党组织报告并获得许可——20天内，他们试图干预、甚至剥夺我肚子里的小生命。我那时已经临近预产期了，但党组织却千方百计地要我流掉孩子。他们多次开会、谈话，使用各种手段，目的只有一个。这是我第一次直接面对一个系统性威胁生命的情况：这个系统不是来保护你、让你活下去的，而是要让你的孩子死。这种直接、面对面的生命威胁，让我绝不能退缩。我只能硬着头皮顶住，坚决捍卫孩子的生命——这是我必须硬扛、绝不退步的时刻。

相比之下，文革时期针对个人的压力主要是红卫兵、派系斗争，而不是系统直接针对一个生命。在二胎的经历中，我必须硬扛、坚持到底才能保护孩子。这种系统直接对生命的剥夺，是我经历过最残酷、最无人性的事情。

舒凡：您生完二胎几年后，移居澳洲，写到海鸥南飞，终于感受到自由。这种自由的感受对当时的您来说是什么样的？

刘海鸥：就是可以按照自己的意愿生活和表达思想。不用在表达的时候，同时想着表达的后果，可以没有顾忌地，写自己想写的东西，表达自己的想法，能够放心做自己想做的事，不需要自己主动去想，我这样表达了会被别人怎么理解。

舒凡：您在书里提到，当您被人羞辱，叫刘企鹅的时候，女儿看到这里说，“企鹅很可爱”啊，您感慨，要怎么让没有经历过这个时代的人，能认识到一个没有人性的社会对人的伤害呢。有时候我也觉得对于文革，还有中国历史上其他的政治暴力，因为参与者对暴力的参与程度之深、之骇人，再加上审查和压制，本身缺少探索真实的渠道和资源，后人更愿意选择不相信，觉得这些暴力是虚构的。您觉得，作为亲历者，怎样把这种真实传递给后代呢？

刘海鸥：我觉得其实没有特别有效的办法。即使我写出来，也有人不相信，甚至怀疑经历是编造的。我无法证明这些事情。但像大饥荒时期的惨状——饿死、吃人——在我家乡是真实发生过的，而且有很多例子。只是现在亲历者和见证者几乎都去世了，知道的人越来越少，很多只能靠二手讲述。

这些历史本来就被掩盖，比如当年的死亡数据曾被下令销毁。我们只能从零散的记录、家族记忆中拼凑，比如人口突然减少、逃荒被阻拦、亲人饿死在途中等。这些如果不被记录，后人就更难相信。

我能做的只是写下来、出版，让更多人看到，哪怕只是少数人。当作一种历史档案保存下去。我自己印书、送人，也希望他们看完后能放到图书馆传播。例如我女儿看完后，就开始感兴趣，也想从自己的角度记录这些历史。

推荐档案：

刘海鸥：《半壁家园》

刘海鸥：《画说我的一生》

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

【采访者与受访者的观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

On the Cultural Revolution, Human Nature, and Being a Woman: An Interview with Liu Haiou

By Shu Fan

A year ago, I didn’t know who Liu Haiou was. As a “post-95er,” I was born nearly 20 years after the Cultural Revolution ended. While I had read some works on the era, I couldn’t grasp how that generation—especially women—endured those ten years, or how their lives were shaped by the aftermath. Concepts like “Red Guards,” “Rebel Factions,” and “Ideological Remolding” remained purely academic to me.

I was first drawn to her graphic autobiography, My Forty Years in China. There, I learned she was also the author of the family memoir Broken Line. Her work has been serialized and featured in the independent Chinese magazine Remembrance. Her father was the renowned translator Liu Liaoyi, who translated War and Peace into Chinese. In his youth, Liu Liaoyi followed the Communist Party, even at the cost of breaking with his family; while her grandfather led the rest of the clan to Taiwan, only her father’s branch remained on the mainland. However, her parents were soon sent to makeshift prisons called “cow sheds” during the Cultural Revolution.

Liu Haiou was born in Dalian in 1947, spent her youth in Beijing, experienced the Cultural Revolution, and traveled to Xinjiang for “revolutionary networking,” which involved traveling the country by rail to meet other young “revolutionaries.” After the revolution, she became a philosophy graduate student at Peking University and began teaching in the 1980s. Later, under the intense pressure of the One-Child Policy, she had a second child and eventually left China.

Unlike other memoirs of the era, Liu’s 2023 autobiography pairs every narrative segment with the kind of comic strips familiar to the Chinese public. She soberly and explicitly exposes her experiences, thoughts, and discoveries. At the start of the Cultural Revolution, she strove to reform her thinking to become a true revolutionary, only to discover that revolution was a privilege—and that she was the target of the rebels’ revolution.

Reading her life chapter by chapter, I was frequently moved to laughter. At times, her tone resembles the female stand-up comedians I admire: witty, sharp, hitting the mark with lightning speed. She employs a humorous narrative voice while maintaining the independent, detached perspective of a writer. I find this quality exceptionally rare among those who grew up in the Cultural Revolution—an era that did not encourage anyone, least of all women, to maintain an independent viewpoint. In an age that demanded the total erasure of individuality in favor of the collective, she never fully lost herself, and she has captured that struggle in both words and drawings.

For instance, as a child, she believed that women all had long hair and men all had short hair. Consequently, she was deeply confused by Mao Zedong’s appearance; because his hair was neither long nor short, she once found herself asking a rickshaw puller if Chairman Mao was neither male nor female. In an era where expressions of love were forbidden, she stole glances at a handsome, melancholic classmate (who was later committed to a psychiatric hospital). In Lanzhou and Xinjiang, amid the fierce fighting of the Cultural Revolution, she and her companions played poker while artillery shells fell around them.

She also documented her attempts at self-reform as the child of intellectuals. She once stood on train tracks, imagining herself as the revolutionary hero Ouyang Hai sacrificing himself to save others, only to realize with resentment that she was too terrified to be truly selfless—a sign, she felt, of her “incomplete class transformation.” She joined the revolutionary ranks with fervor, pasting big-character posters, yet her peers mocked her as “Liu the Penguin” because of her build. She was once beaten with a shovel and returned home covered in bruises, yet she never told her family. She also witnessed her school teachers being tortured to death by Red Guards.

My Forty Years in China contains 640 comic strips. This combination of text and imagery allows her to vividly depict the collision between the individual and the era. In one drawing, a teenage girl recites quotes on class struggle with a face full of self-righteousness, while the melodies of Mozart linger in her mind. In response, she aims a gun at the Mozart in her head. For a member of the younger generation like me, this image is incredibly striking. I felt a mix of freshness and deep sympathy—delighted to see a living, breathing human being, yet able to feel her internal pain.

Just as the Cultural Revolution was a collective movement, subsequent narratives have often been collectivized—such as the “Scar Literature” of the 1980s that portrayed the trauma and suffering of the Cultural Revolution. Because the history is so heavy, violent, and absurd, it is easily sensationalized or romanticized, making it hard for later generations to believe what actually happened.

Therefore, when I see the youth of Bilibili expressing nostalgia for the Cultural Revolution—with a return to piety and love for Mao—it is almost understandable. I sense that it is an alluring emotion: the belief that we can finally achieve equality for all and that everyone can lead a happy life free from suffering. This emotional drive is perhaps no different from what motivated Liu Haiou when she actively participated in self-reform back then. But what exactly was the Cultural Revolution? What did Mao Zedong’s charismatic words actually do to the human soul? Why do people fall so easily into nostalgia for that era?

And why are the slogans of the Cultural Revolution so seductive to China’s youth today? Connecting our present selves with the youth of fifty years ago, how can individuals lose their humanity during a movement, allowing themselves to be dominated by discourse and power while harming those targeted by that power? What is it that allows a person to preserve their integrity in a movement that sweeps up everyone and destroys human nature?

In her book, Liu Haiou reflects many times on why she was so lost during the Cultural Revolution, and how the movement could engulf every individual so rapidly and forcefully. As a graduate student, her research topic explored why the masses actually participated in the Cultural Revolution. She believes that Chinese cultural traditions and thought patterns—the blind worship of authority, the collective habit of following others, black-and-white moral judgments, and a philosophy of practical rationality that prioritizes survival above all—acted as the catalysts for the Cultural Revolution.

After falling ill in the 1990s, she once lamented in an article: why can’t people live more lightly and simply care about nothing? Yet her life, like the lives of her entire generation, has always been directly and violently intertwined with politics. In reality, she found it impossible to stop caring. Since the 1990s, she has been writing about her experiences, a process that eventually culminated in this graphic memoir. She chose the format of a comic book because she noticed that young people had little interest in that period of history. Her daughter, who was seven when the family moved to Australia and cannot read Chinese, was also a primary motivation; Liu used drawings to ensure her child could understand this history. As she puts it: “My original intention was simply to leave the truth of this history to my child and to future generations.”

The following interview content has been edited for conciseness and clarity.

Shu Fan: My Forty Years in China begins with your birth and childhood. The tone of the early drawings is warm and bright, but this shifts abruptly on the eve of the Cultural Revolution. Your art recreates heavy, violent experiences—being beaten yourself, witnessing your teachers being attacked, and seeing one teacher beaten to death. Was recreating these moments the most painful part of the creative process?

Liu Haiou: At my age, I’ve moved past many things. I didn’t feel an intense sense of pain while drawing because I’ve learned to separate my current self from my past. I revisit those memories as a bystander.

However, the incident that hit me hardest was my own beating. I didn’t speak of it to anyone for forty years; even my parents didn’t know it because I felt such deep shame. It started because I once wrote the phrase “Long Life With No End” [in praise of Mao Zedong] in a slogan but accidentally wrote “No Life” instead of “Long Life.” It was treated as a reactionary act, and I was beaten by students. My family didn’t know the details, and my father never asked. It wasn’t until after he passed away, during a dispute with my sister, that I realized the extent of the misunderstanding. She thought I had been a radical who led Red Guards to raid our own home, and that our father had been deeply disappointed in me. I realized then that the truth had never been explained. I finally told my mother, crying the whole time—it was the first time I ever cried in front of her. Later, I wrote a long letter to my sister explaining everything, and she apologized. Only after speaking out was I truly able to let go.

Shu: Why did you feel you couldn’t tell your parents at the time?

Liu: Part of it was shame; I felt it was my fault. Another part was protection—I had been beaten so badly that I didn’t want them to suffer by seeing my pain. I didn’t realize until that argument with my sister that they had lived with that misunderstanding, and that my father passed away believing it. The night I told my mother, she turned her face away and remained silent all night. I knew she was grieving, but she didn’t say a word.

Shu: That sense of shame reminds me of when you were mocked as “Liu the Penguin.” You mentioned that many instances of humiliation during the Cultural Revolution were linked to being “fat.” You noted that even though many people had more serious political issues than Teacher Yu Ruifen, she was singled out and tortured to death specifically because of her weight. Why did “fatness” become a target for humiliation, especially for women?

Liu: That humiliation started in childhood. Back then, many capitalists were portrayed as fat in films, fiction, and drawings, so being “fat” was associated with the exploiting classes; the logic was that you were only fat because you ate too well or came from a privileged background. In a society of widespread poverty where most were thin, my relatively comfortable upbringing made me look “fat” by comparison. I was mocked and nicknamed from a young age, which destroyed my self-confidence. This continued even when I became a teacher.

During the Cultural Revolution, this prejudice was weaponized as a class-based attack. For women, political persecution was often layered with body-shaming, making the experience even more intense. Furthermore, “fat” men were very rare at the time, so this specific type of targeting fell primarily on women. It was a confluence of class ideology and social prejudice.

Shu: Did these experiences change how you viewed your identity as a woman? Did you ever feel you were treated this way specifically because you were female?

Liu: I didn’t feel that way at the time. I didn’t think I was being targeted for my gender, but rather because my weight was seen as a symbol of class status. Back then, the logic was defined almost entirely by class rather than gender. Class identity overrode every other standard.

Shu: During the Revolution, you tried to remold yourself and even practiced self-negation, yet you maintained a connection to music, art, and nature. In such a frenzied movement, you never participated in harming others. How did you preserve your humanity in such a destructive environment?

Liu: By nature, I have always been a person who values freedom. That core never changed; it was just suppressed. There was a brief cultural liberalization in the early 1960s where foreign music and films were introduced, which resonated with my natural inclinations. Additionally, both my parents were liberal intellectuals. Our home was filled with foreign classics and a spirit of free thought, which gave me a strong sense of individual consciousness.

During the political movements, I tried to polish myself according to “class ideals,” but I always harbored internal doubts and a love for beauty. This conflict was constant. I would try to emulate heroes like Ouyang Hai, but the moment I heard Mozart, I was overwhelmed. My suppressed emotions would come out like a flood, only for me to immediately feel wrong for having them, as they didn’t align with the ideological requirements of the time. This self-negation grew stronger as the society turned further to the left.

Deep down, however, my sense of freedom never died. I wasn’t entirely sold on those concepts; I was just drifting with the social and political currents. When the Cultural Revolution ended and was officially denounced, it was a massive shock. Realizing that the beliefs I had spent a decade building were false felt like a total negation of my existence.

Shu: You’ve said that this “negation of the negation” was incredibly painful. How do you view that pain today?

Liu: When the Communist Party officially denounced the Cultural Revolution, the faith I had painstakingly built collapsed instantly. It was agonizing. But that pain didn’t last. As Reform and Opening Up began, literature, film, and music returned. Those suppressed parts of me were reawakened almost immediately.

My true nature had only been dormant; once the environment allowed it, it grew back quickly. Getting into the philosophy department at Peking University was also crucial for my enlightenment. My professors were open-minded, and Western classical philosophy—studying the history of human thought—helped me reflect on my past beliefs and rebuild my understanding of the world.

Shu: What do you consider the most destructive aspect of the Cultural Revolution?

Liu: I think the greatest damage was the wholesale destruction of morality and conscience. The atmosphere of “overthrowing everything and suspecting everyone” stripped people of their basic values. This impact didn’t end with that generation; it persists as a long-term consequence.

Shu: In your writing, the sections on Xinjiang seem the most vivid. Amidst the violence, you describe independent girls, newlywed families, and people waiting to be reunited. You contrast the sounds of artillery with daily life and Uyghur music. This feels very different from traditional “cow shed” memoirs of the Cultural Revolution. Was Xinjiang where you found human nature to be at its most vibrant?

Liu: At the time, I didn’t have a conscious concept of “human nature,” as the term was actually viewed negatively back then. My observations came from daily experience. In truth, every part of China during the Cultural Revolution existed in two worlds. Some were fully immersed in the movement, but the majority were just trying to live their lives. Even in Xinjiang, you could hear gunfire on one street while vendors sold goods on the next.

The Revolution didn’t affect everyone the same way. While intellectuals were victims, others were essentially unaffected or even beneficiaries who gained resources or power from the chaos. Those people don’t harbor a strong resentment toward the era.

For me, this duality wasn’t unique to Xinjiang. In Guiyang, I could hear a violin playing in a dilapidated alley or see beautiful patterns on someone’s curtains. At the same time, I would feel the surge of passion from a revolutionary song. I was in a constant state of oscillation between a love for beauty and the feverish emotions of the era. Those two forces always coexisted.

Shu: Was there a difference between places like Xinjiang or Guiyang and the political center of Beijing?

Liu: In the early stages in 1966, Beijing was gripped by Red Terror. The atmosphere was incredibly tense. But as the Red Guards left for “networking,” [traveling the country by rail to meet other young people and exchange experiences] the city actually experienced a brief lull. I spent most of 1967 traveling, so I wasn’t in Beijing for long. Generally, though, this coexistence of two worlds was a universal phenomenon across the country.

Shu: I’ve noticed that some in my grandparents’ generation—even intellectuals who were tortured—never wavered in their belief that the Party is “great, glorious, and correct.” You mentioned that it was during your second pregnancy in 1986—which you described as the most inhumane experience of your life—that this halo finally vanished. Did that experience cause your faith to collapse?

Liu: Yes, the collapse of my faith was directly linked to that pregnancy. I had to report my pregnancy to the Community Party organization and seek permission. For twenty days, they tried to intervene and essentially rob me of the life in my womb. I was near my due date, yet they used every possible tactic to force an abortion. It was the first time I faced a system that was a direct threat to life—a system that wasn’t there to protect you, but to kill your child. I couldn’t retreat. I had to stand my ground and defend my child’s life.

During the Cultural Revolution, the pressure came from Red Guards or factions, but this was the system itself systematically targeting a life. That direct attempt to deprive someone of life was the most cruel and inhumane experience I have ever had.

Shu: To end on a lighter note—a few years after that, you moved to Australia. You wrote that the “Seagull” (the meaning of Haiou in Chinese) flew south and finally found freedom. What did that freedom feel like?

Liu: It was the ability to live and speak according to my own will. I no longer had to weigh the consequences of every word I spoke or wrote. I could express myself without worrying about how I would be interpreted or scrutinized. I could finally just be myself.

Shu: You noted that when your daughter read about you being called a “penguin,” she just thought penguins were cute. You wondered how to explain the harm of an inhumane society to someone who never lived through it. Sometimes I feel that because the violence was so deep and the censorship so strong, the younger generation finds it easier to believe these stories are fictional. As someone who lived it, how do you pass this truth on?

Liu: Honestly, I don’t think there is a perfect way. Even when I write it down, people will doubt it or claim I fabricated it. I can’t prove it in a scientific sense. For example, the cannibalism and starvation during the Great Famine were real events in my hometown, but as the witnesses die off, these truths fade into second-hand stories.

Much of this history was intentionally suppressed—even death records were destroyed. We have to piece the truth together from family memories and scattered records, such as a sharp decrease in population, being prevented from leaving famished areas, and witnessing family members die due to starvation. If we don’t record them, they will vanish.

My only option is to write and publish, even if only for just a few people. I treat my work as a historical archive. I print my own books and give them away, hoping they find their way into libraries. My daughter is now very interested and wants to record this history from her own perspective.

Recommended archives:

Liu Haiou: Broken Line

Liu Haiou: My Forty Years in China

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：Adam

By Adam

The English translation follows below.

1975年8月初，先后在台湾花莲与福建晋江两度登陆的7503号台风，并没有在这两地造成巨大损失。没人想到，几天后，它会在内陆中原引发罕见强降雨，62座位于河南境内的水库溃坝，决堤而出的洪水冲过原野和城市，加上瘟疫，夺走数万生命，成为人类历史上惨痛的一页。

这是一场当时没有任何报道的灾难。1975年正值中国文革，“阶级斗争”为纲，政治运动挂帅，对灾难的应急响应十分迟滞，救援物资也极度匮乏。部分官方史料称死亡人数超过8万人，但一些民间研究认为，死亡人数远超这个数字，相当多的人死于灾后蔓延的疾疫之中。

河南驻马店是这场大洪水中的重灾区，也是我的家乡。童年时的我，常听父亲说，当年洪水来临的时候，他只有10岁，因正值暑假，去了新乡他的外婆家，才躲过了这场劫难。而我的舅老爷一家，新建的房子半夜被大水冲走，全家人因邻居大声喊叫惊醒，才逃到距离不远、地势稍高的马路上，得以幸存。而另一户人家，则没有那么幸运，四个孩子中，有两个被洪水冲走……如今，51年过去了，这些记忆，存在于家乡父老的偶尔闲谈中，但极少被官方历史提及。2020年起，我回到故乡，寻访亲友，也通过有限的文史资料，试图去了解自己家乡这段惨痛的历史。

罕见大雨中，62座水坝相继垮塌

大洪水发生的原因之一，是极端的暴雨天气，但溃坝导致的数万人死亡，却难逃人祸的影子。

根据当时的气象记载，7503号台风在晋江登陆之后，气流逐步转向北方。与所有深入内陆的台风一样，它的强度逐渐减弱。到8月6日凌晨，它抵达此次的最西点——湖南常德境内。但由于南半球的寒潮活动导致跨赤道气流等特殊气象，7503号台风的低压系统，在陆地上罕见维持了足足百余小时。空前巨量的水汽由千里之外的大海长驱直入，从5号到8号，在河南南部造成了三轮灾难性的强降雨。

根据作家钱钢在《世界最大的水库垮坝惨案——1975年驻马店大水》一文中记录，这场暴雨，“降水强度极强，在暴雨中心——位于板桥水库的林庄，最大6小时雨量为830毫米，超过了当时世界最高记录（美国宾洲密士港，1942年）的782毫米；最大24小时雨量为1060毫米，也创造了我国同类指标的最高记录。”

暴雨肆虐之时，河南境内的板桥、石漫滩两座大型水库，以及竹沟、田岗两座中型水库，还有58座小型水库，在短短数小时内相继垮坝溃决。驻马店、许昌（含1986年后独立出来的漯河市）、周口、南阳和舞阳工区（今平顶山代管的舞钢市），以及河南这5个地区的30个县市，还有毗邻的安徽阜阳临泉县都遭受了洪灾。

根据《河南省驻马店地区75·8抗洪志》（驻马店地区水利局组织编撰，1998年由黄河水利出版社出版）记载，溃坝发生在午夜时分，当时人们正在睡梦中。石漫滩水库的溃坝是1975年8月8日零时，十分钟后，板桥水库相继垮塌。

事实上，在这两座大型水库垮塌之前，8月7日晚上21时之前，在确山、泌阳两地已有7座小型水库溃坝；22时，中型水库竹沟水库溃坝。此时，遂平县城内水深已齐腰。板桥水库垮坝后，距水库最近的沙河店镇首先被大水吞噬，全镇6000余人中至少有827人遇难。而与沙河店镇一河之隔的文城公社，因为听不到河对岸在比划什么，也错过了自救的机会，伤亡惨重。

据记载，板桥水库的垮坝涌波，以平均约每秒6米的流速顺流而下，在溃坝后三个小时左右已漫流到遂平县，水流扩宽至10公里。遂平县城附近的平地水深在4．5米左右，京广铁路线遂平车站的铁轨水深就约3米。

从一些记载中能看到，当大水已吞噬村庄，进入城市时，有效的救援还没开始。时任副总理纪登奎的儿子纪坡民，曾在《我所了解的“1975年河南水灾”》一文中写道：

“8月8日晚，我父亲和刘建勋（时任河南省第一书记）还在洛阳（解决大企业文革派性斗争问题），省委副书记、省革委生产指挥部指挥长王维群突然打来电话报告，驻马店地区板桥水库出事了！因通信中断，具体情况还不清楚。我父亲和刘建勋当即连夜返回郑州，听取汇报，了解情况，安排布置抗洪救灾，向中央报告，要求派军队支援。”

可见，大雨持续了数天，河南省委既没有预见到灾难性降雨溃坝的可能，还在洛阳忙文革派性斗争问题，得知板桥水库溃坝时，已过了整整将近一整天，且具体情况还不清楚。

据钱钢记述，1975年8月9日8时，驻马店地委曾发出特急电报——“我区5日至8日连降特大暴雨，平均降雨量800毫米，平均积水2米左右，一片汪洋，板桥水库8日0时40分垮坝，遂平县城被淹没，有许多人死亡。由于暴雨洪水造成严重灾害，300多万人被洪水包围，有的被困在房顶、树上已有两、三天，万分危急！”

除了大洪灾的凶猛，钱钢从驻马店地区的档案资料中查到一部分残缺不全的电话记录、情况通报。这些原始记录，披露了水库垮坝后，驻马店人于水深火热中的悲惨景况：

“8月13日——新蔡、平舆东部水仍上涨，1小时2公分，全区200万人在水中；汝南：10万人被淹(指尚飘浮在水中)，已救4万，还有6万人困在树上，要求急救；全县20万人脸肿腿肿，拉肚子，无药……一直到8月16日，全地区120万人还在水里。洪水过后，发病率迅速上升，次生灾难严重，除了疾病，也没有食物，有的地方仍在堤上吃小虫吃树叶……”

“社会主义高潮”中兴建的水库

其实，这场旷世灾难，早在1957年大跃进期间就埋下了影子。据钱钢文章记述，1950年代初，河南曾加固板桥、石漫滩两座水库。在这两所水库扩建后，大跃进开始了，“中原地区的水库建设蜂拥而上，一发而不可止。”“仅1957-1959年，驻马店地区就修建水库100多座。一大批新水库的催生婆，是正轰鸣于中国大地的‘社会主义高潮’”。

据记述，在大跃进中的1958年，河南总结了漭河流域兴建山区水利的经验。当时的国务院副总理谭震林来河南视察时，将其归纳为“以蓄为主，以小型为主，以社队自办为主”，并说：“现在山区问题解决了，要把漭河经验向平原推广。”水利专家陈惺曾当即指出：在平原地区以蓄为主，重蓄轻排，会对水域环境造成严重破坏等等。但这位专家的忠告无人理会，还被打成右倾分子下放。“以蓄为主”的经验后来被大范围推广到安徽，丘陵地区涌现大批小水库，造成淮河流域后来数十年间致命的“肠梗阻”症。

陈惺后来曾在《治水无止境》一书中总结，河南洪灾的主要原因之一，是1949年之后水利建设规划决策的失误。包括：重蓄轻排导致设计的排水闸不足，以及1950年代后大跃进式的水利建设，大量存在质量隐患，没有及时排除。事实上，大跃进时期，大量中小型水库水坝本身，就是政治产物，从设计到质量都缺乏严谨的规划与施工。

文革背景之下，尴尬的防汛

今天回望能看到，文革中，河南和全国各省一样，干部们忙于应对各种政治运动，在防汛方面，完全缺少避险意识和物资准备。

举一个例子——根据于为民、叶树鑫《75.8浩劫内幕纪实》（1990年由黄河文艺出版社出版）披露，8月6日，驻马店地区革命委员会的生产指挥部指挥长刘培诚，前往板桥视察，曾召集水库管理局、板桥公社和驻军负责人联席会议，部署抗洪抢险：有的主张加高大堤，有的主张炸开副坝泄洪，减轻对大坝的压力。各种意见相持不下，会议延续了一个多小时，直到最后，人们才突然发现，有关抗洪抢险的一切方案都无法实施。水库革委会副主任尴尬地告诉大家：防汛仓库里没有铁锹、草袋，更没有一两炸药，只有几根小木棍和几只民兵训练用的木柄手榴弹。

事实上，这场巨大的灾难并非没有防范的可能。根据谌旭彬《中国当代最惨溃坝事故，当年媒体无只字报道》文中介绍，8月6日23时，板桥水库的水位已经高达122.91米，而设计规定的最高蓄水位只有110.88米，主溢洪道闸门抬高出水面，输水道也于7日凌晨1时全部打开泄洪，但水位仍在急剧上涨。当时有人建议全部开闸泄洪，甚至扒开口子泻洪，但根本无人愿意承担责任，给出决策。

事实上，1975年的驻马店，深陷在文革的浩劫之中，山头林立，各派力量忙于内斗，防汛事务早被抛到了九霄云外。

消失于报端的“75·8”大洪水：不能让毛主席周总理受刺激

如此巨大的灾难，1975年的中国媒体没有半个字的报道。多年之后，新华社记者张广友在《炎黄春秋》发文披露了其中的部分内幕：

慰问团长、国务院副总理纪登奎，我们过去就认识。他平易近人，很关心记者，关心宣传报道。在慰问团到达灾区之后，他曾经几次同我交谈。他说：“这次中央慰问团既是慰问团，又是‘工作团’。在做好慰问工作的同时，要尽可能地协助地方政府做些工作，解决抗洪抢险和救灾工作中的一些实际问题。”

我问纪登奎：这次水灾如何报道？他说：“中央领导已经决定这次水灾不作公开报道，不发消息，特别是灾情不仅不作公开报道，而且还要保密。”我对此不理解，当即反问：为什么？这么大范围的大水灾能保住密吗？他说：“这是中央领导的决定，已经告诉你们总社领导了，但这不是说你们就没有什么事儿了。你们的任务，不仅是同慰问团一道去灾区现场进行慰问；而且还要搞些内参，宣传抗洪抢救中的先进人物、先进事迹，如：舍己为人，舍小家顾大家，一方遇灾，八方支援的共产主义风格等；特别是要抓住一些重要问题深人实际，做些调查研究……”

80年代初，纪登奎从中央领导岗位下来之后，到国务院农村发展研究中心工作，我们经常见面。有一次在闲谈中我们说起那次水灾不让公开报道和那份调查报告的事儿，他说：不叫公开报道是怕产生副作用，影响稳定；那个时候正是毛主席和周总理重病期间，不让公开报道，也是怕他们受刺激，内部报道也只能选择极少量给他们看，这种内部报道不会给他们看的；至于那份调查报告我看到了，是一份很有说服力的好材料，但是，已经顾不上了……”

——（张广友，《目睹1975年淮河大水灾》，载《炎黄春秋》）

原来，当时官方对这场大灾难不仅不公开，反而要求保密的一个重要原因，是怕“影响稳定”，尤其是因为毛主席和周总理病重，“不能让他们受刺激”。

到底死了多少人？本地记忆与独立的历史记录匮乏

2005年，美国《探索频道》把这场大洪灾称为世界“十大人为技术灾难”之一。但在中国，因为长期的人为屏蔽，知道这场灾难的人一直寥寥。

大洪灾过去14年之后，1989年7月，由前中国水利部部长钱正英作序的《中国历史大洪水（上）》一书，以“内部发行版”的形式出版，书中首次从官方角度披露了部分灾情。

该书披露，在“75·8”大洪灾中，河南省有29个县市、1700万亩农田被淹，其中1100万亩农田受到毁灭性的灾害，1100万人受灾，26000多人死难，致使纵贯中国大陆北京至广州的铁路(京广线)冲毁102公里，中断行车18天，影响运输48天，直接经济损失近百亿元。

1990年3月，河南日报记者于为民，叶树鑫出版了报告文学《75·8劫难纪实》，作为公开出版物，较为完整的呈现了灾情，成为第一本关于“75·8”洪水的专著。

近年来，带着对那一段历史的好奇，我在河南当地搜寻关于这场大洪灾的记录。发现与之有关的著作很少。其中官方编著的书，除了前述由驻马店地区水利局编著的《“75·8”抗洪志》；还有中央党史研究室，中央档案馆2002年编著的《1975年淮河大水灾亲历记》（《中共党史资料第84辑》）；以及河南水利厅2005年7月编《河南“75·8”特大洪水灾害》。

在地方上，豫南各市县政协整理的《文史资料》，如《驻马店文史资料》，在第四、第八和第九辑上，有“75·8”洪水专题，主要是曾在政府部门工作的救灾参与者的回忆征集。

在周口市项城的档案馆，有县委卷宗记录了这次“抗洪”，还有一套项城县抗洪救灾指挥部编印的《抗洪救灾报》。这份报纸是项城唯一一套关于“抗洪救灾”的地方报纸。2010年，项城市政协资料编辑部根据这些资料，和当年抗洪救灾亲历者的回忆，编辑整理出了一本《项城75·8抗洪救灾资料集》（张甫堂刘雅君，周口日报）。

这些由水利部门主持编纂的档案，更多是围绕气象水文如何影响工程，导致灾难，以及最终如何恢复水利工程，也涉及如何组织救灾和恢复生产，但都是从国家角度。是国家权力意志的叙述，而少见对灾难深层原因的反思。

2010年前后，中国媒体曾有较为短暂的一个宽松时期，当时有南方周末、南方都市报、炎黄春秋等媒体，通过报道提供了一些丰富的细节，尤其是在2010年大洪灾发生35周年之时。

自媒体兴起后，逐渐有了一些以普通人为主体，第一人称视角的回忆。一些参与救灾的老兵，例如来自武汉军区舟桥部队的老兵，也有一些是医护人员的回忆，但更多来自本地亲历者的记忆依然十分稀缺。

2021年7月，河南再次发生严重水灾，据报道，有13座水库告急。我痛心地看到，在我的家乡，曾经历过“758”惨痛水灾的河南人，依然缺乏准备与避险意识。从应急响应到未能及时通报泄洪，瞒报遇难数字等等，似乎又在重复46年前的“75·8”洪水暴露出的问题（参见《河南郑州“7·20”特大暴雨灾害调查报告》）。

这场文革中发生的旷世洪灾到底死了多少人？至今，还是一个谜。

根据《纪登奎、乌兰夫慰问驻马店水灾》一文（刊登于驻马店《文史资料》第二辑，作者魏世昌）记载，8月15日，中央慰问团在当地影剧院召开慰问大会，时任副总理纪登奎出席这次大会。其间，纪登奎将地委书记苏华和地委副书记魏世昌叫去，询问这次洪灾可能死了多少人，两人报告说“可能死十多万人。”——这也是有据可查的汇报给中央的第一个死亡统计数字。

8月20日，也即溃坝后12天，根据河南省委初步统计的数字，全省死亡85600多人，连同外地在灾区死亡的人数在内，最多不超过10万人。当时河南省委认为这个数字比较准确。中央慰问团在写给中央的关于河南、安徽灾情报告中，引用了这个数字。

但前述新华社记者张广友曾随中央慰问团第一时间深入灾区采访，他认为原先报的85000人的数字多了，最多不超过4万人，这个数字和官方数字接近。而在《河南省驻马店地区75·8抗洪志》一书第83页，当地水利局给出的数据是，在驻马店地区，“淹死22564人，病死1633人，受伤92096人”。

2005年美国《探索》频道的节目，以及一些民间的说法，则认为死亡人数超过20万。这个数字，不仅包括垮坝当晚熟睡中的直接受难者，也包括几天后爆破泄洪、分洪的受难者，还有灾后瘟疫蔓延，以及饥饿等死去的人。

51年过去了，可以确定的一件事情是，直到今天，因为中国的相关信息并不公开透明，这场大洪灾中真正的死亡人数，依然成谜。

推荐档案：

《中国历史大洪水》（上）

《河南省驻马店地区75.8抗洪志》

《项城75.8抗洪救灾资料集》

《75.8浩劫内幕纪实》

延伸阅读：

钱钢：世界最大的水库垮坝惨案——1975年驻马店大水

江华、喻尘：水墓：河南“1975.8”特大洪水祭（2010年南方都市报）

腾讯历史：中国当代最惨溃坝事故，当年媒体无只字报道

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

The “75·8” Flood in Henan— A Disaster Masked Amidst the Chaos of the Cultural Revolution

By Adam

In early August 1975, Typhoon No. 7503, which made landfall twice in Hualien, Taiwan, and Jinjiang, Fujian, did not cause significant losses at first. No one imagined that, a few days later, it would trigger a rare and torrential downpour in China’s inland central plains. Sixty-two dams located within Henan Province breached; the floodwaters that burst through the dikes swept across fields and cities.

This disaster, known in the west as the Banqiao Dam failure, received no media coverage at the time. 1975 was during China’s Cultural Revolution, where class struggle was the guiding principle and political movements took command. The emergency response to the disaster was sluggish, and relief supplies were desperately scarce. Some official sources put the death toll at over 80,000, but unofficial investigations have shown that the death toll may far exceed this figure, as many perished from diseases as a result of the flood.

Zhumadian, Henan Province, was the hardest-hit area in this great flood and is also my hometown. As a child, I often heard my father say that when the flood arrived that year, he was only 10 years old. Because it was summer vacation, he had gone to his grandmother’s house in Xinxiang and thus escaped the catastrophe. However, the newly built house of my great-uncle’s family was swept away by the flood in the middle of the night. The whole family woke up because a neighbor shouted loudly, allowing them to escape to a road not far away on slightly higher ground and survive. Another family was not so lucky; of their four children, two were swept away by the flood. Today, 51 years have passed, and these memories exist in the occasional small talk of the village elders back home, but are rarely mentioned in official history. Starting in 2020, I returned to my hometown, visiting relatives and friends, and also attempted to understand this tragic history of my hometown through limited literary and historical materials.

62 Dams Collapsed One After Another Amid Torrential Rain

One cause of the great flood was the rainstorm and the unusual meteorological conditions that enabled it to penetrate so deep inland. But the deaths of tens of thousands, especially due to the dam breaches, were caused by humans.

According to meteorological records at the time, after Typhoon No. 7503 landed in Jinjiang, the airflow gradually turned north. Like all typhoons that penetrate deep inland, its intensity gradually weakened. By the early morning of August 6, it reached its westernmost point—the vicinity of Changde, Hunan. However, due to special meteorological conditions such as cross-equatorial airflow caused by cold wave activity in the Southern Hemisphere, the low-pressure system was able to remain at typhoon-level winds on land for a full hundred-plus hours. An unprecedented and massive amount of water vapor drove straight in from the sea thousands of miles away, causing three rounds of catastrophic torrential rain in southern Henan from the 5th to the 8th.

According to records in the article “The World’s Largest Reservoir Dam Breach Tragedy — The 1975 Zhumadian Flood” by the writer Qian Gang, this rainstorm’s “precipitation intensity was extremely strong. At the center of the storm — Linzhuang, located at the Banqiao Reservoir — the maximum 6-hour rainfall was 830 mm, exceeding the world record at the time (782 mm in Smethport, Pennsylvania, USA in 1942); the maximum 24-hour rainfall was 1060 mm, which also created the highest record for similar indicators in our country.”

While the rainstorm raged, two large reservoirs in Henan, Banqiao and Shimantan, as well as two medium-sized reservoirs, Zhugou and Tiangang, plus 58 small reservoirs, breached and collapsed within a few hours. Zhumadian, Xuchang (including Luohe, which became an independent municipality after 1986), Zhoukou, Nanyang, and the Wuyang Industrial Zone (now Wugang City, administered by Pingdingshan), as well as 30 counties and cities across these five regions of Henan, along with the adjacent Linquan County in Fuyang, Anhui, all suffered from the floods.

According to the “Records of the ‘75·8’ Flood Fighting in Zhumadian Region, Henan Province” (compiled by the Zhumadian Regional Water Resources Bureau and published by the Yellow River Water Conservancy Press in 1998), the dam breaches occurred around midnight while people were asleep. The breach of the Shimantan Reservoir was at 00:00 on August 8, 1975; ten minutes later, the Banqiao Reservoir collapsed.

In fact, before these two large reservoirs collapsed, by 21:00 on the night of August 7, seven small reservoirs had already breached in Queshan and Biyang; at 22:00, the medium-sized Zhugou Reservoir breached. At this time, the water in Suiping County town was already waist-deep. After the Banqiao Reservoir breached, Shahedian Town, closest to the reservoir, was the first to be swallowed by the water. At least 827 people died out of a total population of over 6,000. Wencheng Commune, separated from Shahedian Town by a river, missed the opportunity for self-rescue because they could not hear what was being signaled from the other side of the river, resulting in heavy casualties.

The surge from the Banqiao Reservoir breach flowed downstream at an average speed of about 6 meters per second, and roughly three hours after the breach, it had spread to Suiping County, with the flow widening to 10 kilometers. The water depth on the flat ground near Suiping County town was about 4.5 meters, and the water depth on the tracks at Suiping Station on the Beijing-Guangzhou Railway line was about 3 meters.

It can be seen from some records that when the water had already swallowed villages and entered cities, effective rescue had not yet begun. Ji Pomin, son of then-Vice Premier Ji Dengkui, wrote in the article “What I Know About the ‘1975 Henan Flood’”:

On the evening of August 8, my father and Liu Jianxun (then First Secretary of Henan Province) were still in Luoyang (solving the problem of Cultural Revolution factional struggles in large enterprises). Wang Weiqun, Deputy Secretary of the Provincial Party Committee and Commander of the Production Command Post of the Provincial Revolutionary Committee, suddenly called to report that something had happened at the Banqiao Reservoir in the Zhumadian area! Due to the interruption of communications, the specific situation was not yet clear. My father and Liu Jianxun immediately returned to Zhengzhou overnight to listen to reports, understand the situation, arrange flood control and disaster relief, report to the Central Committee, and request military support.

It is evident that although the heavy rain lasted for several days, the Henan Provincial Party Committee neither foresaw the possibility of catastrophic rainfall leading to dam breaches, nor were they focused on it, as they were busy with Cultural Revolution factional struggle issues in Luoyang. By the time they learned of the Banqiao Reservoir breach, nearly a whole day had passed, and the specific details were still unclear.

According to Qian Gang’s account, at 08:00 on August 9, 1975, the Zhumadian Regional Party Committee sent an urgent telegram — “Our region experienced extraordinary rainstorms from the 5th to the 8th, with an average rainfall of 800 mm and average water accumulation of about 2 meters. It is a vast ocean. The Banqiao Reservoir breached at 0:40 on the 8th, Suiping County town was submerged, and many people died. Due to the serious disaster caused by the rainstorm and flood, more than 3 million people are surrounded by floodwaters, some have been trapped on rooftops or in trees for two or three days, and the situation is extremely critical!”

In addition to the ferocity of the flood, Qian Gang found some incomplete telephone records and status reports from the archives of the Zhumadian region. These original records disclosed the tragic conditions of the people of Zhumadian in their dire straits after the dam breaches:

August 13 — the water in eastern Xincai and Pingyu is still rising, 2 cm per hour, 2 million people across the region are in the water; Runan: 100,000 people submerged (referring to those still floating in the water), 40,000 rescued, 60,000 still trapped in trees, requesting emergency rescue; 200,000 people in the county have swollen faces and legs, diarrhea, no medicine… Until August 16, 1.2 million people in the entire region were still in the water. After the flood, the incidence of disease rose rapidly, and secondary disasters were severe. Besides disease, there was no food; in some places, people were still on the dikes eating insects and tree leaves…

Reservoirs Built During the “Socialist Upsurge”

In fact, the shadow of this unprecedented disaster was planted as early as the Great Leap Forward in 1957. According to Qian Gang’s article, in the early 1950s, Henan reinforced the Banqiao and Shimantan reservoirs. After the expansion of these two reservoirs, the Great Leap Forward began, and “reservoir construction in the Central Plains surged forward and could not be stopped.” “From 1957 to 1959 alone, more than 100 reservoirs were built in the Zhumadian region. The midwife for a large batch of new reservoirs was the ‘Socialist Upsurge’ then roaring across the land of China.”

According to accounts, during the Great Leap Forward in 1958, Henan summarized the experience of building mountainous water conservancy in the Manghe River basin. When then-Vice Premier Tan Zhenlin came to Henan for inspection, he summarized it as “focusing on storage, focusing on small-scale projects, and focusing on self-management by communes and brigades,” and said: “Now that the problem of mountainous areas is solved, the Manghe experience should be promoted to the plains.” Water conservancy expert Chen Xing immediately pointed out: focusing on storage in the plains while neglecting drainage would cause serious damage to the water environment, and so on. But the expert’s advice was ignored, and he was labeled a right-deviationist and sent down. The “storage-focused” experience was later widely promoted to Anhui, and a large number of small reservoirs emerged in hilly areas, causing a fatal “intestinal obstruction” in the Huai River basin for decades to come.

Chen Xing later summarized in the book “Water Management Has No End” that one of the main reasons for the Henan flood was the failure of water conservancy construction planning and decision-making after 1949. This included: emphasizing storage over drainage leading to insufficient designed drainage sluices, and the Great Leap Forward-style water conservancy construction after the 1950s, where many quality hazards existed and were not eliminated in time. In fact, during the Great Leap Forward, a large number of small and medium-sized reservoirs and dams themselves were political products, lacking rigorous planning and construction from design to quality.

Embarrassing Flood Prevention Under the Backdrop of the Cultural Revolution

Looking back today, it is clear that during the Cultural Revolution, like other provinces across the country, cadres in Henan were busy dealing with various political movements. In terms of flood prevention, there was a complete lack of risk-awareness and material preparation.

To give an example — according to Yu Weimin and Ye Shuxin’s Account of the Inside Story of the 75·8 Catastrophe (published by Yellow River Literature and Art Press in 1990), on August 6, Liu Peicheng, Commander of the Production Command Post of the Zhumadian Regional Revolutionary Committee, went to Banqiao for an inspection and convened a joint meeting of the Reservoir Management Bureau, Banqiao Commune, and military leaders to deploy flood fighting and rescue efforts: some advocated raising the dikes, while others advocated blowing up the auxiliary dam to discharge the flood and reduce pressure on the main dam. Various opinions were deadlocked, and the meeting lasted for more than an hour. Until the very end, people suddenly discovered that none of the plans for flood fighting and rescue could be implemented. The Vice Chairman of the Reservoir Revolutionary Committee told everyone embarrassedly: there were no shovels or straw bags in the flood prevention warehouse, let alone an ounce of explosives—only a few small wooden sticks and some wooden-handled grenades used for militia training.

In fact, this disaster was not impossible to prevent. According to Chen Xunbie’s article “The Most Tragic Dam Breach Accident in Contemporary China, Not a Word Reported by the Media at the Time,” at 23:00 on August 6, the water level of the Banqiao Reservoir had already reached 122.91 meters, while the highest designed storage water level was only 110.88 meters. The main spillway gate was raised above the water surface, and the water transport channels were all opened for discharge at 01:00 on the 7th, yet the water level was still rising sharply. At that time, some suggested opening all gates for discharge or even digging openings to release the water, but absolutely no one was willing to take responsibility and provide a decision.

The “75·8” Great Flood That Vanished From the Press: Cannot Let Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou Be Provoked

Even though it was such a huge disaster, the Chinese media in 1975 did not report a single word. Many years later, Xinhua News Agency reporter Zhang Guangyou revealed some of the inside story in an article in the now-defunct independent history journal Yanhuang Chunqiu:

I already knew the head of the condolence delegation and Vice Premier of the State Council, Ji Dengkui. He was approachable and cared much about reporters and publicity reports. After the delegation arrived in the disaster area, he spoke with me several times. He said: ‘This Central Condolence Delegation is both a condolence group and a “working group.” While doing a good job in condolence work, we should assist the local government as much as possible to do some work and solve some practical problems in flood fighting, rescue, and disaster relief.’

I asked Ji Dengkui: How should this flood be reported? He said: ‘The central leadership has already decided that this flood will not be reported publicly; no news will be released. Especially the disaster situation itself—not only will it not be reported publicly, but it must also be kept secret.’ I didn’t understand this and immediately asked back: Why? Can a flood of such a large scale be kept secret? He said: ‘This is the decision of the central leadership, and your general office leaders have already been informed. But this doesn’t mean you have nothing to do. Your task is not only to go to the disaster sites with the condolence delegation; you should also create some internal references (neican) to promote advanced figures and deeds in the flood rescue, such as: sacrificing oneself for others, sacrificing the small family for the big family, and the communist style of “one place in trouble, eight places support”; especially, you need to grasp some important issues, go deep into reality, and conduct some investigations and research.’

In the early 80s, after Ji Dengkui stepped down from his central leadership position and went to work at the State Council’s Rural Development Research Center, we met often. Once, in casual conversation, we spoke about the fact that the flood was not allowed to be reported publicly and that investigation report. He said: Not allowing public reporting was for fear of creating side effects and affecting stability; at that time, Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou were seriously ill, and not allowing public reporting was also for fear that they would be provoked (upset). Internal reports could only have a very small amount selected for them to see, and this kind of internal report wouldn’t be shown to them; as for that investigation report, I saw it, it was a very persuasive piece of material, but by then, it could no longer be attended to…’

— (Zhang Guangyou, “Witnessing the 1975 Huai River Great Flood,” published in Yanhuang Chunqiu)

It turns out that one important reason the official side not only kept this huge disaster private but also demanded secrecy was for fear of “affecting stability,” especially because Chairman Mao and Premier Zhou were seriously ill and “could not be provoked.”

How Many People Actually Died? Local Memories and the Scarcity of Historical Records

In 2005, the American “Discovery Channel” called this great flood one of the world’s “Top 10 Man-Made Technological Disasters.” But in China, because of long-term artificial blocking, very few people know about this disaster.

Fourteen years after the great flood, in July 1989, the book “Great Floods in Chinese History (Part 1),” with a preface by former Chinese Minister of Water Resources Qian Zhengying, was published in the form of an “internal distribution edition.” The book disclosed part of the disaster situation from an official perspective for the first time.

The book revealed that in the “75·8” Great Flood, 29 counties and cities and 17 million mu (15 mu = 1 hectare) of farmland in Henan Province were flooded, of which 11 million mu of farmland suffered devastating damage. 11 million people were affected, and more than 26,000 died. This resulted in 102 kilometers of the railway (Beijing-Guangzhou Line) that runs through mainland China from Beijing to Guangzhou being washed out, interrupting traffic for 18 days and affecting transportation for 48 days, with direct economic losses of nearly 10 billion yuan.

In March 1990, Henan Daily reporters Yu Weimin and Ye Shuxin published the reportage “Account of the 75·8 Catastrophe.” As a public publication, it presented the disaster situation relatively completely and became the first monograph on the “75·8” flood.

In recent years, carrying curiosity about that period of history, I have searched for records of this great flood in Henan. I found that there are very few books related to it. Among the officially compiled books, besides the aforementioned “Records of the ‘75·8’ Flood Fighting” compiled by the Zhumadian Regional Water Resources Bureau, there is also “Experiences of the 1975 Huai River Great Flood” (Chinese Communist Party History Materials Vol. 84) compiled by the Central Party History Research Office and the Central Archives in 2002; as well as “The ‘75·8’ Extraordinary Flood Disaster in Henan” compiled by the Henan Water Resources Department in July 2005.

These archives, compiled under the auspices of water conservancy departments, focus more on how meteorology and hydrology affected the engineering projects, leading to the disaster, and how to eventually restore the water conservancy projects. They also involve how to organize disaster relief and restore production, but all from the perspective of the state.

Locally, the “Literary and Historical Materials” organized by the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) of various cities and counties in southern Henan, such as “Zhumadian Literary and Historical Materials,” have specials on the “758” flood in the fourth, eighth, and ninth volumes, mainly consisting of collections of memories from relief participants who once worked in government departments.

In the archives of Xiangcheng, Zhoukou City, there are county committee files recording this “flood fighting,” as well as a set of “Flood Fighting and Disaster Relief Newspaper” printed by the Xiangcheng County Flood Fighting and Disaster Relief Command Post. This newspaper is the only set of local newspapers in Xiangcheng regarding “flood fighting and disaster relief.” In 2010, the Xiangcheng CPPCC Materials Editorial Department edited and compiled a “Collection of Materials on the 75·8 Flood Fighting and Disaster Relief in Xiangcheng” (Zhang Futang, Liu Yajun, Zhoukou Daily) based on these materials and the memories of those who experienced the flood fighting and relief at the time.

Around 2010, Chinese media was in the midst of a relatively brief period of relaxation. At that time, media such as Southern Weekly, Southern Metropolis Daily, and Yanhuang Chunqiu provided some rich details through reporting, especially on the 35th anniversary of the great flood in 2010.

After the rise of self-media, memories with ordinary people as the subject and from a first-person perspective gradually appeared. There are accounts from some veterans who participated in the rescue, such as veterans from the Wuhan Military Region Bridge-building Units, and also some from medical personnel, but accounts by local eyewitnesses remain scarce.

In July 2021, severe flooding occurred in Henan again. According to reports, 13 reservoirs faced an emergency. I saw with heartache that in my hometown, Henan people who had experienced the tragic “75·8” flood still lacked preparation and risk-awareness. From the emergency response to the failure to promptly report flood discharges, the concealment of casualty figures, etc., it seems that the problems exposed by the “75·8” flood 46 years ago are being repeated (see “Investigation Report on the ‘7·20’ Extraordinary Rainstorm Disaster in Zhengzhou, Henan”).

How many people actually died in this unprecedented flood that occurred during the Cultural Revolution? To this day, it remains a mystery.

According to the article “Ji Dengkui and Ulanhu Condole the Zhumadian Flood” (published in Zhumadian “Literary and Historical Materials” Vol. 2, author Wei Shichang), on August 15, the Central Condolence Delegation held a condolence meeting at the local theater, attended by then-Vice Premier Ji Dengkui. During the period, Ji Dengkui called over Regional Party Secretary Su Hua and Regional Party Deputy Secretary Wei Shichang to ask how many people might have died in this flood. The two reported, “It’s possible more than 100,000 people died.” — This is also the first death statistic reported to the Central Committee that can be traced.

On August 20, 12 days after the dam breaches, according to preliminary statistics from the Henan Provincial Party Committee, more than 85,600 people died in the whole province; including those from elsewhere who died in the disaster area, the total would not exceed 100,000 at most. At that time, the Henan Provincial Party Committee believed this figure was relatively accurate. The Central Condolence Delegation cited this figure in the report on the disaster situation in Henan and Anhui written for the Central Committee.

However, the aforementioned Xinhua reporter Zhang Guangyou, who went deep into the disaster area for interviews with the Central Condolence Delegation at the first opportunity, believed that the originally reported figure of 85,000 was too high and that it was no more than 40,000 at most. This figure is close to the official figure. On page 83 of the book Records of the 75·8 Flood Fighting in Zhumadian, the data provided by the local Water Resources Bureau is that, in the Zhumadian region, “22,564 people drowned, 1,633 died of disease, and 92,096 were injured.”

In 2025, the Discovery Channel program and some unofficial figures put the death toll at 200,000. This figure includes not only the direct victims while sleeping on the night of the dam breaches but also the victims of the explosion-assisted flood discharges and diversions a few days later, as well as those who died from the spread of plague and hunger after the disaster.

Fifty-one years have passed, and to this day, because the information is not open and transparent, the true death toll of this great flood in fact remains a mystery.

Recommended Archives:

Great Floods in Chinese History (Part 1)

Chronicles of the August 1975 Flood Control in Zhumadian Prefecture, Henan Province

Collection of Materials on Flood Control and Disaster Relief in Xiangcheng, August 1975

Inside Account of the 75.8 Catastrophe

Extended Reading:

Qian Gang: The World’s Largest Reservoir Dam Breach Tragedy — The 1975 Zhumadian Flood

Jiang Hua, Yu Chen: Water Tomb: Commemorating the Henan “1975.8” Extraordinary Flood (2010 Southern Metropolis Daily)

Tencent History: The Most Tragic Dam Breach Accident in Contemporary China, Not a Word Reported by the Media at the Time

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：海伦

By Hai Lun

本文原文为英文。

The English original follows below.

1951年，30岁的巫宁坤正在芝加哥大学英美文学系攻读博士。他收到一份来自北京的电报，邀请他回国。两年前刚刚成立的中华人民共和国，此时正需要人才，号召像他这样的海外学子归国，为建设“新中国”贡献所长。作为一名曾在二战期间担任美国“飞虎队”翻译的爱国青年，巫宁坤欣然接受了邀请。然而，随之而来的，是他在毛泽东时代的中国所遭遇的，长达近三十年、几乎从未间断的迫害与艰辛。巫宁坤在他1993年出版的回忆录《一滴泪》（A Single Tear）中详述了这段往事，并将其总结为：“我归来，我受难，我幸存。”

作为翻译家的巫宁坤，将这部最初用英文写就的回忆录又译成中文，并于2002年在台湾出版。至今，20多年过去了，该书始终未在大陆正式出版，但其扫描版则一直在互联网上流传，供那些在中国可以翻墙，也想追寻“毛时代”社会真相的人阅读。随着时间推移，这本书也积累了大量的读者，成为反映毛泽东时代知识分子苦难的著名回忆录之一。在中国，巫宁坤书中记述的许多内容，尤其是文化大革命，至今仍无法被自由讨论。今年是文革爆发60周年，以及文革结束50周年的纪念年份，重新审视这本书，有着重要的意义。

即使以那个时代的标准衡量，巫宁坤遭受的苦难也远超常人。事实上，从美国归来不久，他就在1950年代中国频繁的政治运动中成为斗争对象，只因为他曾在西方接受教育，并曾经和国民党军队有联系（主要与他曾任“飞虎队”随军翻译有关）。回国后，他一开始在燕京大学（后北京大学）任教，1951年11月任教于南开大学，1956年调任北京外事干部学校（后来的北京国际关系学院）。1957年中共发动的“反右运动”中，他响应党的号召，发表了一些批评意见，旋即被划为“极右分子”。此后的三年里，他被迫远离妻儿，去接受劳动改造。一开始他被押送去了臭名昭著的东北兴凯湖农场，后来，又被转往北京附近的一所监狱。正值大饥荒期间，在那里他几近饿死。

1961年获释后，巫宁坤被送往他妻子任职的安徽大学，终于和家人短暂团聚。好景不长，文革爆发，此时他的“右派”身份再次成为梦魇，他被关进了改造阶级敌人的“牛棚”。“牛棚”的日子同样难熬，在严密的监管之下，他不得不进行无休止的自我批评。与此同时，他的家庭也几乎分崩离析。他的女儿巫一毛，文革开始时才是个8岁的孩子，父母的遭遇让她失去了一切庇护。一直到中年之后，她写下自己的回忆录《暴风雨中一羽毛》，并在其中提及惨痛的往事：1966年，无人照顾的她，在看完病独自回家的途中，遭到一名解放军强奸。时隔一年之后，她再度遭到强奸，这次施暴者是他父亲的一名老同事。

后来，巫宁坤与全家一同被下放到农村。直到1979年，巫宁坤的“极右”帽子才被摘掉。此时的他，已年近六旬，戴着“阶级敌人”的帽子生活了22年。在饱受摧残的岁月里，巫宁坤觉得自己就像“一根会思想的芦苇，听任社会主义政治风云的摆布”。作为接受了西方教育的学者，巫宁坤对中国共产党的那套政治运作一窍不通。从始至终，他既没有通过给自己编造罪名来取悦审讯者的天赋，也不擅长为了保护自己而假装忏悔。

他回忆，每当他被迫交待罪行时，总会在心中默诵那些西方文学经典中的名句。对他而言，批斗会上歇斯底里、无比狂热的群众，正如莎士比亚所言，“充满了喧哗与骚动，却毫无意义”。他拒绝承认强加在他头上的反革命指控，因为他信奉林肯的教诲：“当该抗议时却保持缄默，这种罪行足以让人变成懦夫。”

当巫宁坤被送往劳改农场，背着木柴蹒跚走过冰原时，他曾想象莎士比亚戏剧《麦克白》中的场景：“从伯南森林来的移动丛林，向被围困在邓西嫩‘紫禁城’里的麦克白推进”。

这些文学典故，在西方读者看来或许有些脱离语境，如同在掉书袋，但正是他早年的英美文学训练，那些经典文学，让巫宁坤得以在精神上和正在遭遇的惨痛处境保持距离。这种保持自我的能力——无论这个自我与环境多么格格不入——是一个人能在毛泽东时代残酷的政治运动中存活下来的关键。正是凭借这种能力，巫宁坤才没有像他的许多同侪那样陷入愤怒与绝望。他的书中，就记录了许多这样的悲剧：著名学者赵萝蕤（也正是她请当时的燕京大学校长写信请巫宁坤回国），在丈夫陈梦家被划为右派后精神失常；巫宁坤安徽大学一名同事的妻子江楠，在乡下被强奸，因为当地医生拒绝为她实施堕胎手术，她自缢身亡。

巫宁坤最终幸免于难，但后来的人生中，他始终在艰难地尝试与自己的痛苦达成和解。那些中共的老革命们，经常宣称自己将苦难视为对信仰的考验——但巫宁坤不是虔诚的共产主义信徒，他无法接受这种说法，他深知自己的心在别处——当在“反右运动”中遭受数轮围攻之时，他得知妻子怀上了他们的第二个孩子。

“我毕竟是一个有妻儿老小的凡人， 我没有当殉道者的准备。”他在心里想，“我的血肉之躯是软弱的。” 也正是这样的心路经历，让巫宁坤最终转向了写作。他在序言中写道，自己记录下这一切，只是为了回答一个问题：“我的受难与幸存是否徒劳？”

为了回答这个问题，巫宁坤细致追忆半个世纪前的往事。他在描述1950年代至1970年代间自己反复遭受迫害的场景时，指名道姓，并大段引用当时的对话，读来宛如直接取自日记。

和其他毛时代的知识分子回忆录——如杨绛的《干校六记》或高尔泰的《寻找家园》——相比，《一滴泪》似乎并没有致力于升华那些痛苦的记忆，而更倾向于史实式的记录。巫宁坤写下了他能记住的一切：他对自己所遭遇苦难背后的权力结构，或者那些施暴者身份背景的信息描述并不多——或许是因为长期身处排斥与孤立中，让他难以洞察这些内幕。但他不遗余力地记录下所见所闻，如清河监狱的饿殍，或红卫兵对安徽大学同事的暴行——这些个体生命的故事，若不是他的记录，早已湮没于历史。

巫宁坤笔下的经历也不全是纯粹的残暴。文革期间，他在农村合作社劳动时，惊喜地发现，负责监视他的贫下中农学生竟然热爱阅读。两人在深夜畅谈鲁迅和《红楼梦》，并因此结下了友谊。然而，这很快给那名学生带来了灾难——也成了攻击目标，巫宁坤被迫参加了一场针对这名学生的恶毒的批斗会。

后来，监管人员换成了另一个贫下中农学生——一个心软的孤儿。这个学生从来不对被监管的人大声呵斥。他向巫宁坤说，当村民们奉命“挖资本主义墙角”，而砍掉他心爱的桃树时，他哭了。就在那时，他知道自己“永远成不了一个好的革命者”。因缺乏革命精神，这名学生被送回了生产队，而他那些更积极革命的同学，则被提拔并进了城。

巫宁坤的妻子李怡楷是他生命中持久的慰藉与支柱。书中有几章内容正是基于她的叙述。她在南开大学是巫宁坤的学生，1954年毕业后和他成婚。不止一次，是李怡楷的机智与坚毅将巫宁坤从深渊中救起。三年大饥荒期间，当巫宁坤在劳改农场因营养不良濒死时，李怡楷不懈地奔走，最终帮助争取到了保外就医。1973年，当巫宁坤在农村“接受再教育”时，李怡楷跨省奔波，为丈夫争取更好的待遇。正是这些努力，最终促成了巫宁坤被调回城市，重返教职。

当1951年回到中国时，巫宁坤曾以为等待他的，将是在燕京大学的课堂上，为学生讲授乔叟和莎士比亚的教学生涯，然而，命运为他准备的却是革命与流放。他被发配到东北的冰原和安徽的穷乡僻壤，被工人欺辱，也被农民算计——这的确是一种“再教育”，他几乎因此丧命。

但巫宁坤并没有沉溺于“如果当年……”的假设。书中写道，在他刚从作为右派被劳改三年释放后的一天，妻子曾问他是否后悔回国。

巫宁坤说：“我不可能作出其它选择。我的这个决定，是我的一生，我的梦与幻想，我的长处和短处，以及一切因缘际会的结果。”

话虽如此，1979年，巫宁坤摘掉右派帽子后，在北京与一位美国老友重逢的场景，仍然让人唏嘘。那位朋友正是诺贝尔奖得主李政道。两人曾是芝加哥大学的同窗，1951年巫宁坤回国时，李政道到港口为他送行，当时李政道直言自己不打算回国，因为“不想被洗脑”。

28年后，在北京一家宾馆里，巫宁坤看着坐在桌子对面的李政道，感到这一切太过讽刺：对方“在‘美帝国主义的堡垒’安居乐业，回到共产中国荣膺‘爱国主义者’的桂冠……我响应号召回到祖国，却被划为人民公敌，受尽无产阶级专政下劳动改造和牛棚的煎熬，几乎成为饿莩，葬身一抔黄土。”

1993年，当《一滴泪》在美国出版时，内容激怒了北京当局，其中包括当时将巫宁坤划为右派的北京国际关系学院的退休干部。校方随即停发了巫宁坤夫妇的退休金，并收回了他的住房，令这对老夫妇一度无家可归。漂泊两年后，他们最终定居在美国弗吉尼亚州莱斯顿的一家老年公寓里。在那里，巫宁坤似乎终于找到了平静。在2014年的一份自述中，他写道：“一间简单的卧室就是我们的天堂，一个远离世俗纷扰的避风港。”晚年的他，享受着老友以及前学生时期同事的造访，其中还包括来登门致歉的当年的施暴者。

2019年巫宁坤去世时，他的故事在大陆鲜为人知。人们了解他多是通过他翻译的西方名著，其中包括《了不起的盖茨比》。当年在燕京大学，这本书曾是他被批斗的“罪证”，激进的学生指责他用这本书“毒害新中国青年的思想”。

几十年后，随着中国国门开启、经济腾飞，人们正是通过巫宁坤精妙的译笔，才了解了不受约束的资本主义带来的可能性和危险性。巫宁坤翻译此书也有个人寄托——他在译后记中写道，菲茨杰拉德深陷于他的时代，却能冷静地描绘出那个时代的冷酷与沉沦。在这本书的作者和他一起被划为“阶级敌人”后，巫宁坤觉得他欠这位爵士乐时代的记录者一个公道，因此要“为他平反，还他公正”。

一次，在陪妻子去马里兰州罗克维尔参加弥撒时，巫宁坤偶遇了菲茨杰拉德的墓地。那是一个毫不起眼的合葬墓，墓碑上刻着菲茨杰拉德和妻子泽尔达的名字，紧邻着车水马龙的街道。墓碑前的石板上刻着《了不起的盖茨比》那句著名的结尾。巫宁坤与妻子在墓前徘徊。他指着那行字，妻子轻声读了出来：

“于是我们奋力向前，逆水行舟，被浪潮不断地推向过去。”

本期推荐档案：

巫宁坤：《一滴泪》

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I came, I suffered, I survived: A Single Tear and Chinese Intellectuals under Mao

By Hai Lun

Wu Ningkun was 30 years old and a third-year PhD student in American and English literature at the University of Chicago in 1951 when he received a cable from Beijing inviting him to return home. The People’s Republic of China, founded two years earlier, was calling for overseas Chinese like Wu to contribute their expertise to building the New China. A patriot who served as a translator for the American Flying Tigers during the Second World War, Wu happily accepted the invitation. What followed was close to three decades of near-unremitting persecution and hardship in Mao’s China, which he recounted in his 1993 memoir A Single Tear and summed up as “I came, I suffered, I survived.”

A Chinese version of A Single Tear, which Wu translated from English himself, came out in Taiwan in 2002. Although the book has never been published in Mainland China, scanned versions of it have circulated on the Internet, available to people interested in learning about the Mao era and equipped with the technology to circumvent the Great Firewall. Over time it acquired a sizable readership and became one of the best-known memoirs on intellectuals’ sufferings under Mao. Much of what Wu wrote about, chief among them the Cultural Revolution, still cannot be freely discussed in China. As the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of the event arrives this year, it is worth revisiting the book.

Even by the standards of the time, Wu suffered more than most. Because of his Western education and links to the Nationalist Army, Wu became a target for attack soon after his return. After brief stints teaching English in universities in Beijing and Tianjin, he was labeled an “ultra-rightist” during the Hundred Flowers campaign for the criticisms of the party he had been coaxed into giving by school authorities. He spent the next three years doing hard labor, away from his wife and small children, first in the notorious Xingkai Lake prison farm in the northeast, then in a prison near Beijing, where he nearly starved to death.

Upon his release in 1961, Wu was sent to Anhui University, where his wife was working at the time. Family life resumed, only briefly. Wu’s rightist label came back to haunt him when the Cultural Revolution broke out, condemning him to the “cow shed” — a term for makeshift holding cells for those the party deemed class enemies, where he was monitored constantly and forced to go through repeated self-criticisms. The family was scattered. His daughter, Emily Yimao Wu, who was eight years old when the Cultural Revolution started, later revealed in her memoir Feather in the Storm that she was raped twice in 1966 and 1967, once by a People’s Liberation Army soldier and once by a former colleague of her father’s.

Later sent down to the countryside with the rest of his family, Wu was not cleared of his ultra-rightist charge until 1979, after the end of the Cultural Revolution. By then nearly 60, Wu had lived as a class enemy for 22 years. Throughout his years of persecution, Wu felt himself “a thinking reed at the mercy of the whim of the socialist political wind.” A West-trained academic unacquainted with the ways of the Chinese Communist Party, Wu had no talent of drumming up past sins to satisfy his interrogators, nor was he good at performing contrition on demand.

When he was under pressure to confess, Wu had a way of recalling to himself lines from famous works of Western literature. To him, the mass hysteria at a struggle session was “full of sound of fury, signifying nothing,” as Shakespeare put it. He refused to acquiesce to the counterrevolutionary accusations leveled against him, for he stood by Lincoln’s words “To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards out of men.”

Later, Wu was sent away to a labor farm, where, trudging across icy plains with a bundle of chopped wood on his back, he fancied himself “part of the moving grove from Birnam wood advancing upon Macbeth besieged in his ‘Forbidden City’ of Dunsinane.”

Those literary references may strike western readers as pedantic and out of context, but they were crucial in helping Wu to mentally distance himself from his harrowing experiences. The ability to preserve an inner self, however at odds with its surroundings, proved critical to surviving Mao’s brutal campaigns. Thanks to it, Wu was able to resist succumbing to the anger and hopelessness that consumed many of his peers, whose tragic stories littered the book: Lucy Chao, a famous literary scholar and Wu’s colleague at Yenching University, developed schizophrenia after her husband, the archeologist Cheng Mengjia, was labeled a rightist. Jiang Nan, the wife of one of Wu’s colleagues at Anhui University, hanged herself after she was raped by workers in the countryside and refused abortion by local doctors.

Wu survived in the end, but he struggled to come to terms with his sufferings. Unlike the diehard revolutionaries who saw their tribulations under Mao as tests to their faiths, Wu, never a devout Communist, could not bring himself to that view. He knew his heart lay elsewhere. In the aftermath of the Hundred Flowers campaign, during which Wu suffered numerous rounds of attacks, he discovered his wife was pregnant with his second child.

“I was a family man now and I was not prepared to be made a martyr,” Wu thought to himself, “for my flesh was very weak.” In the end, Wu turned to writing. He wrote in the book’s prologue that documenting his experiences was his attempt to answer the question: “Have I suffered and survived in vain?”

This purpose shows in the meticulousness with which Wu recounted events dating back as long as half a century ago. His descriptions of repeated victimization between the 1950s and the 1970s, crowded with names and extended dialogues in direct quotes, could have been lifted directly out of his diary.

Compared to other noted memoirs of the period, such as Six Chapters from My Life ‘Downunder’ by Yang Jiang or In Search of My Homeland by Gao Ertai, A Single Tear seems less interested in sublimating painful memories than in historic record keeping. Wu wrote down all he could remember: He provided little contextual information, like the power dynamics in his workplaces or the backgrounds of his torturers, perhaps because the ostracism and isolation he faced meant he had little insight into those questions. But he took pains to record what he saw, like the deaths by starvation at Qinghe Prison or the Red Guards’ violence towards his colleagues at Anhui University, individual stories that would otherwise have been lost to history.

Wu showed that there was more to his experience than sheer brutality, though those respites tended to be fleeting. When Wu lived in an agricultural commune during the Cultural Revolution, he was delighted to discover that the peasant student assigned to watch him had a love for reading. The two bonded over late-night conversations about Lu Xun and The Dream of the Red Chamber. That soon made the student a target of attack himself, in a vitriolic struggle session Wu was forced to attend.

The handler was soon replaced by another peasant student, a soft-hearted orphan who never raised his voice at his charges. The orphan knew he “would never make a good revolutionary,” he confessed to Wu, when he teared up at the deaths of his favorite peach trees in the hands of villagers ordered to “dig up roots of capitalism.” Deemed lacking revolutionary spirit, the student was sent back to his rural commune while his more zealous classmates won promotions to urban work units.

A lasting source of solace and support in Wu’s life was his wife Li Yikai, whose narration of her own experience forms the basis of several chapters of the book. She met Wu when she took his class at Nankai University and married him after her graduation in 1954. More than once, it was Li’s resourcefulness and resolve that saved Wu from the abyss. During the Great Famine, when Wu was dying of malnutrition in state prison, Li tirelessly lobbied Wu’s former work unit to intervene on Wu’s behalf, eventually helping to secure his release. In 1973, when Wu was confined to the countryside during Mao’s initiative to have intellectuals “receive reeducation from peasants,” Li travelled across provinces to plead and wrangle with party bureaucrats for better treatments for her husband. Those efforts led to Wu’s return to the city and reinstatement to the ranks of university faculty.

Wu had come back to China expecting a career teaching Chaucer and Shakespeare in the ivory tower of Yenching University. Instead, revolutions and exiles took him to the frozen plains of Manchuria and the rural hamlets of eastern Anhui. They put him under the mercy of bullying workers and scheming peasants. It was a reeducation of a kind, and it nearly cost Wu his life.

But Wu knew better than to indulge in counterfactuals. Once, having just been released from a three-year imprisonment following the Hundred Flowers campaign, Wu was asked by his wife whether he regretted returning to China.

“I could have made no other choice than the one I did,” he said. “My decision was a natural outcome of my life, my dreams and illusions, my virtues and failings, and the chance of circumstance.”

Yet one cannot help but feel for Wu when, soon after shedding his rightist label in 1979, he had the chance to reunite with a friend from America who was visiting Beijing. The friend was Tsung-Dao Lee, a Chinese-American physicist who won the Nobel Prize in 1957. A native of Shanghai and contemporary of Wu’s at University of Chicago, Lee saw Wu off when he boarded the China-bound ship in 1951, saying that he personally would not consider returning home because he “did not want to have his brain washed.”

Twenty-eight years later, as Wu sat across the table from Lee in his Beijing hotel, the irony was hard swallow: Lee, “secure in the ‘imperialist fortress of America,’ was hailed as a patriot in Communist China” on his visit and “an honored guest of the state,” Wu thought to himself. Whereas he, “recalled to serve the motherland, was denounced as an enemy of the people and had survived labor camps, starvation, and proletarian dictatorship.”

When the book was published in the United States in 1993, its revelations angered authorities in Beijing, among them retired cadres at the University of International Relations, where Wu was labeled an ultra-rightist in 1957. The school suspended pensions for Wu and his wife and confiscated their apartment, rendering the elderly couple homeless. After two years of drifting, the couple permanently settled in a senior living facility in Reston, Virginia. There Wu seemed to finally find peace. “A simple one-bedroom was our paradise, a place to escape demoralizing worldly affairs,” he wrote in a self-published memoir in 2014. In retirement, he enjoyed visits from friends, former students and colleagues, and on several occasions, attackers from the past who came to apologize for their offenses.

When Wu passed away in 2019, his life story was little known inside Mainland China. Instead, he was best remembered as a translator of Western fiction, most notably The Great Gatsby. The book had been a piece of incriminating evidence in one of Wu’s earliest sessions, in which activist students at Yenching University accused him of using it to “corrupt the young minds of the New China.”

Decades later, when China opened up and its economy began to soar, it was to Wu’s masterful translation of the book that people turned to understand the possibilities and perils of untrammeled capitalism. Wu had his personal reasons for translating the book: Fitzgerald was deeply embedded in his time, Wu wrote in its epilogue, and yet he was able to coolly depict it in all its amorality. Having together been condemned to the ranks of class enemies, Wu felt he owed it to the chronicler of the Jazz Age to “rehabilitate him and give him back justice.”

Once, while accompanying his wife to a mass in Rockville, Maryland, Wu chanced upon F. Scott Fitzgerald’s grave. An unassuming headstone inscribed with the names of Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda stood on a small plot next to a street where cars zipped by. In front of it lay a ledger stone that bore the famous last line of The Great Gatsby. Wu lingered at the grave with his wife. He pointed at the sentence, and his wife spoke the words softly:

“So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.”

Recommended archive:

Wu Ningkun: A Single Tear

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：王不骧

By Wang Buxiang

The English translation follows below.

2025年末，中国社交媒体上意外出现了一股“反清复明”的潮流。满清王朝在灭亡了100多年后，再度招来汉人主体民族的忿恨。以抖音用户“吃瓜蒙主”为代表的意见领袖，在短视频平台上传播了一整套备受欢迎的历史叙事——被称为“1644史观”。

概括而言，这套叙事分为两部分，第一部分是历数清朝的无恶不作：1、满清政权不认为自己是中国；2、满清政权实行了大量针对汉人的歧视性政策（比如设立专供满人居住的满城、屠杀汉人、大兴文字狱）；3、清朝毁灭了大量明朝留下的重要典籍，让明朝积累的先进科技成果毁于一旦，使得中国在近代快速衰落，否则今天的中国应该是世界第一强国，中国人民应该过上了“上四休三”的幸福生活，中国的衰落应该从1644年满清入关开始算起；4、清朝签订了大量丧权辱国的条约。

第二部分是怀念明朝的种种伟大之处，其中当然有许多穿凿附会或阴谋论的内容：1、明朝有开明、接纳批评的政治环境；2、明朝女性地位高（证据是有女将军、女官，女性平民出嫁时可以穿皇室的衣服）；3、明朝有先进的科技成果，许多西方的发明（蒸汽机、微积分）都是抄袭自明朝的《永乐大典》，这一部分和早已流行的“西方伪史论”循环论证，在抖音、小红书等社交媒体开启了病毒式传播。

皇汉、新清史与官方话语：谁在解构中国的历史合法性

短视频博主“吃瓜蒙主”是这股风潮中的核心人物，她的抖音粉丝在一个月内涨到500万。有网民表达自己的情感受到了冲击，“崩溃了，每天起来都时不时流泪哭泣，悼汉人之荣光，恐满妖之残忍……”而这并非孤例，有网民说自己跟同事讲满清之恶但同事都不愿意听，有人接话“好多人都麻木了”。在受“吃瓜蒙主”影响的人眼中，“悼明”、揭露清朝的罪恶是一种觉醒、一种启蒙。

“吃瓜蒙主”是一个典型的爱国博主，她所发的短视频，涵盖了主流意识形态喜闻乐见的内容。有仇日的、批判LGBTQ的、攻击“境外势力”的，嘲讽美国、印度的。即便如此，她还是被全网封禁了，自11月后不再更新视频。

在“悼明”的话题引发巨大讨论后，2025年12月底，浙江省委宣传部在其官方账号“浙江宣传”上发表文章，批评1644史观“与境外某些旨在解构中国历史连续性的叙事形成了呼应，为那些试图否定中国统一多民族国家历史合法性的论述提供口实”。浙江宣传点名美国的新清史学派，认为其强调清朝的“满洲特性”，是为分裂论调提供依据。

2013年，中国中央办公厅印发了一份内部文件《关于当前意识形态领域的通报》，提出在意识形态领域有七大危险。包括西方宪政民主、普世价值、公民社会、新自由主义、西方新闻观、历史虚无主义、质疑改革开放。

当时官方忌惮的历史虚无主义，主要是针对中共党史、中华人民共和国史的非官方解读，比如否定毛泽东、肯定国民党抗日战争中的“正面战场”。直到2024年中国社科院的清史研究中心成立，才开始有阵地、旗帜鲜明地把新清史当成历史虚无主义的靶子来反对。

如果要做一个极其粗糙的概括，可以说，中国官方认可的清史研究，是主张清朝统治者成功地进行了“汉化”，所以清朝并非一个异族政权；而新清史研究认为清朝保留了大量满洲性，这种满洲性是清朝得以成功统治的原因。

在中国官方的视角里，2025年底的民间民粹力量（“皇汉”群体）仇视满清、鼓吹反清复明，和西方历史学家研究清朝的满洲性、内亚性，本质上都是在动摇中共统治下的中国的合法性——如果清朝的统治是异族入侵中国，继承了清朝国土版图的中华人民共和国也变得十分尴尬，而且西藏、新疆等非汉人族群地区的独立主张也变得合乎逻辑。

尽管新清史学派的代表学者之一欧立德（Mark C. Elliott），在他于2016年台湾中央研究院史语所的一个演讲中曾回应：“据我所知，无论是我，柯娇燕、罗友枝还是濮德培，没有人这么说（清朝不等于中国），恐怕这是一种误解。”——他提及的这几位学者，被认为是美国第一代新清史研究的代表。不过这不妨碍去学术脉络化的新清史的研究，在中国官方眼中成为一种有分裂中国立场的学术生产。

从“入关学”到“悼明”：赢的时候是满清，输的时候怪满清

有意思的是，民间的观念是如何再度燃起“反清”的意识的？

在中国互联网上，“反清复明”的潮流已经不是第一回，甚至是一再出现。2008年，研究清史和满学的历史学家阎崇年在签售会上被掌掴。掌掴者随后以“大汉之风”为笔名，在天涯论坛发表了《我为什么掌掴阎崇年》一文，指控阎崇年常常站在满清统治者角度讲话，发表“辱汉言论”，“当满洲人杀汉人时则兴高采烈”，是一个“清遗”。

“大汉之风”在文章中引用人民网做的一次投票，认为阎崇年该打占91.9%。他从拘留所出来后，受到“汉网”网友的热烈欢迎。从天涯到百度贴吧，再到微信公众号，现在在短视频平台，“满清不是中国”、“满清残害汉人“一类的叙事从不缺讨论的土壤。

官方平台“浙江宣传”称之为“狭隘的汉族中心主义”，“浙江宣传”避而不谈的是，这种汉族中心主义，和中国政府持之以恒地对西藏、新疆、乃至内蒙古的非汉族族群的打压和污名化有强烈关系。对这些地区的语言的剥夺、宗教的限制、习俗的损毁，所依赖的不仅有体制的暴力，还有对民粹力量的持续召唤。最近通过的所谓“民族团结进步促进法”，正是官方体制加持汉族中心主义的明证。

今天偶尔在社交媒体上，会有年轻网民像发现新大陆一样，惊呼原来新疆人在外地很难租房、住酒店警察一定会上来检查，后面跟着的评论必定会认为这是必要的防范，这是他们“咎由自取”。

这种长期构建的“我者”（汉族）和“他者”（少数民族）的区别，和欧立德在《满洲之道》中分析的满清统治者依赖八旗制度维持满汉族群边界，可以说是异曲同工。

若借用民间舆论在否定女权主义时常用的句式——“不是性别问题，而是阶级问题”，我们也可以说，今天的“汉族中心主义”、“反清复明”潮流，实际上并不是民族问题，而是阶级问题，其社会心理仍然在于年轻网民在为自己的“不顺利”寻找一个替罪羊。

比如说，在畅想明朝科技领先，但被清朝打断、被西方窃取的叙事时，舆论一再指向如果不是清朝，今天年轻人过的就是欧美水平的生活——上四休三，工作轻松，收入不少。

“清朝”成为经济下行时期年轻人处境不佳的最大凶手。这个逻辑看起来十分荒谬，因为经济好的时候，传播的叙事是中国用40年的时间完成了欧美200年的进步。经济不好的时候，干脆直接往前跳了几百年去找原因。

这种流行叙事有明显的悲观色彩。前几年，舆论场曾经流行的“入关学”，是一种完全相反的高歌猛进叙事。“入关学”讲的是，美国就像气色已尽的明朝，中国就像兵强马壮的满清，中国终将入关，取而代之。至于正统性的问题怎么解决，入关学说，“自有大儒为我辩经”，意思是学者会用“汉化”的理论来论证满清也是中国。

可以看到，“入关学”和今天的“悼明”，是完完全全相反的两套叙事，前者是赢了再说，后者则是充满防御性的“为什么输了”。比起“分裂”倾向，可能中国执政者更应该警惕这种流行叙事里的隐藏的中国年轻人对当下处境的深深失望。

本期推荐档案：

欧立德：《满洲之道——八旗制度与清代的民族认同》

Mark C. Elliott: The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford University Press)

延伸阅读：

关于“新清史”的几个问题

评介《满洲之道》

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

Mourning the Ming: When China’s Young People Seek Scapegoats in History

By Wang Buxiang

At the end of 2025, a surprising “oppose the Qing, restore the Ming” trend appeared on Chinese social media. Over a century after the fall of the Qing dynasty, which was run by a northern people, the Manchus, Han Chinese once again expressed outrage toward it. Opinion leaders such as Douyin user “Chigua Mengzhu” spread a widely popular historical narrative in short videos, referred to as the “1644 historical view” (1644 was the year the Qing dynasty was established).

This narrative has two parts. The first catalogs what these writers see as the Qing dynasty’s evils: (1) it did not consider itself Chinese; (2) it enacted numerous discriminatory policies against Han Chinese (e.g., establishing Manchu-only settlements, massacring Han people, and launching literary inquisitions); (3) the Qing destroyed large quantities of important Ming texts, causing the loss of advanced technological knowledge accumulated under the Ming. As a result, China declined rapidly in the modern era. Otherwise, today China would be the world’s strongest nation, its people enjoying a happy life of “four days on, three days off” every week. The decline of China should therefore be counted from the Qing entry in 1644; and (4) the Qing signed numerous humiliating treaties that compromised national sovereignty.

The second part glorifies the Ming dynasty, though it includes many speculative or conspiratorial claims: (1) the Ming offered a liberal political environment open to criticism; (2) women held high status (e.g., female generals and officials, and common women could wear royal-style clothing at weddings); (3) the Ming achieved advanced technological knowledge, with many Western inventions (steam engines, calculus) allegedly derived from the Yongle Encyclopedia. This argument overlaps with the long-circulating “Western Pseudohistory Theory,” a fringe theory that questions the authenticity and reliability of Western history. On platforms like Douyin and Xiaohongshu, it went viral.

Imperial Han, New Qing History, and Official Discourse: Who Is Deconstructing China’s Historical Legitimacy?

The short-video blogger “Chigua Mengzhu” became central to this trend, gaining five million Douyin followers in one month. Some users reported emotional impact: “I’ve broken down, waking up every day crying intermittently, mourning Han glory and fearing the cruelty of the Manchu demon…” This was not isolated. Some said colleagues refused to listen when they spoke of Qing atrocities, replying, “many people have become numb.” For those influenced by “Chigua Mengzhu,” “mourning the Ming” and exposing Qing crimes represented awakening and enlightenment.

“Chigua Mengzhu” is a typical patriotic influencer, posting content aligned with mainstream ideological tastes: anti-Japanese, anti-LGBTQ, attacking “foreign forces,” mocking the U.S. and India. Yet she was banned from the platform and stopped posting videos after November 2025.

Following the heated discussion around “mourning the Ming,” at the end of December 2025, the Zhejiang Provincial Propaganda Department published an article on its official account “Zhejiang Propaganda,” criticizing the “1644 historical view” for “echoing certain foreign narratives aimed at deconstructing China’s historical continuity, providing justification for those who seek to deny the historical legitimacy of a unified, multi-ethnic China.” Zhejiang Propaganda specifically mentioned the U.S.-based “New Qing History” school, claiming that emphasizing the Qing’s “Manchu characteristics” could support separatist arguments.

In 2013, China’s General Office issued an internal document, Notification on the Current Ideological Sphere, identifying seven major ideological risks: Western constitutional democracy, universal values, civil society, neoliberalism, Western journalistic perspectives, historical nihilism, and questioning reform and opening up.

At the time, the official concern with “historical nihilism” mainly targeted unofficial interpretations of Communist Party history and the PRC, such as denying Mao Zedong’s achievements or emphasizing the “positive front” of the Kuomintang’s anti-Japanese war. Only after the 2024 establishment of the Qing History Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences did New Qing History become a clear target for official criticism as historical nihilism.

In a rough summary: official Chinese Qing studies argue that Qing rulers successfully “Sinicized,” so the Qing were not a foreign regime. By contrast, New Qing History scholars emphasize that the Qing retained significant Manchu characteristics, which enabled their rule.

From the perspective of Chinese authorities, the late-2025 populist forces (Imperial Han groups) that hated the Qing and promoted restoring the Ming, and Western historians who study Qing Manchu or Inner Asian characteristics, are both undermining the legitimacy of China under Communist Party rule. If the Qing were a foreign invader, then the People’s Republic’s territorial inheritance becomes awkward, and separatist claims in Tibet, Xinjiang, and other non-Han areas gain logic.

Even though Mark C. Elliott, a leading New Qing History scholar, publicly stated in a 2016 lecture in Taiwan, “As far as I know, Pamela Kyle Crossley, Evelyn Rawski, Peter C. Perdue, and I never claimed [the Qing was not China], which is likely a misunderstanding,” this did not prevent the decontextualized New Qing History from being labeled by Chinese authorities as academically supporting the division of China.

From “Entering the Pass” Studies to “Mourning the Ming”

The interesting question is: how did popular sentiment reignite anti-Qing consciousness?

On the Chinese Internet, “oppose the Qing, restore the Ming” trends have occurred repeatedly. In 2008, Qing historian Yan Chongnian was slapped at a book signing. The attacker, under the pseudonym “Great Han Wind,” posted on Tianya Forum Why I Slapped Yan Chongnian, accusing him of siding with Qing rulers, making “statements that insulted the Han,” and celebrating Manchu killings of Han people. After being released from detention, he was celebrated by Han online commentators. From Tianya Forum to Baidu Tieba to WeChat official accounts and now short-video platforms, narratives like “the Qing was not China” or “the Qing harmed Han people” have always found a receptive audience.

Official media, like Zhejiang Propaganda, labeled this “narrow Han-centric nationalism,” avoiding the fact that such Han-centric sentiment is closely related to persistent government suppression and stigmatization of non-Han groups in Tibet, Xinjiang, and Inner Mongolia. Restrictions on language, religion, and customs rely not only on institutional power but also on continual calls to populist forces. The recently passed law on controlling ethnic minorities, which the Chinese government ironically calls the “Law on the Promotion of Ethnic Unity and Progress,” reflects the strength of this trend.

Occasionally on social media, young commentators are shocked to discover conditions in Xinjiang: renting an apartment or staying in a hotel triggers police checks. The comments often rationalize this as necessary prevention—a “they brought it on themselves” mentality.

This long-term construction of “self” (Han) versus “other” (minorities) parallels Elliott’s analysis in The Manchu Way, showing how Qing rulers relied on the Eight Banners, the Manchu structure of social organization, to maintain ethnic boundaries between Manchu and Han.

Using a common phrase from anti-feminist discourse—“It’s not a gender issue, it’s a class issue”—we could similarly say today’s Han-centric “oppose the Qing, restore the Ming” trend is not truly an ethnic issue, but a class issue. Psychologically, it reflects young netizens seeking a scapegoat for their own difficulties.

For instance, narratives imagining Ming technological superiority interrupted by the Qing and stolen by the West repeatedly imply that if not for the Qing, young people today would live Western-level lifestyles. The Qing has become the chief culprit for young people’s struggles during economic downturns. The logic is absurd: when the economy is good, the narrative celebrates China’s 40 years of progress surpassing Western nations; when bad, blame leaps back centuries.

This popular narrative is distinctly pessimistic. A few years ago, the “Entering the Pass” narrative—also known online as Ruguanism, which refers to the Qing entering the Shanhaiguan pass (the easternmost pass of the Great Wall) from northeastern China to central China and conquering the Ming—prevailed, celebrating historical progress: the U.S. resembled a waning Ming, China a strong Qing, destined to “enter the pass” and replace it. Legitimacy issues were handled by scholars claiming “Sinicization” proved the Qing were Chinese.

Clearly, “Entering the Pass” and today’s “Mourning the Ming” are completely opposite narratives: one celebrates victory, the other defensively asks, “Why did we lose?” Compared with separatist tendencies, authorities may be more concerned with the deep disappointment of Chinese youth toward their current circumstances expressed in these trends.

Recommended archive:

Mark C. Elliott, The Manchu Way: The Eight Banners and Ethnic Identity in Late Imperial China (Stanford University Press)

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]

作者：欧伦

By Ou Lun

The English translation follows below.

提到中国20世纪初的女权活动家，很多人会首先想到女权主义者、革命家秋瑾。这位“鉴湖女侠”不屑封建礼法、主张男女同权、反抗满清专制，为追求民主自由献出年轻的生命，成为后世广为人知的民族英雄和中国女权活动的先驱。

1907年7月15日，时年31岁的秋瑾在绍兴轩亭口被清廷以谋乱通匪的罪名处决。在她就义后不久，日本的中国活动人士为秋瑾和其他烈士举办了追悼会，在东京创刊的《天义》报更是连续数期刊登纪念秋瑾的文章。这些悼念活动背后的组织者，是与秋瑾同时代的何殷震。她早在20世纪初就高屋建瓴地提出立足于本土的性别理论，指出“男女有别”系“习惯使然，教育使然”，比提出性别建构理论的波伏娃早了近半个世纪。这样一位女权理论家，以及社会主义、无政府主义思想家和活动家，其生平与思想却鲜为人知。

1886年，何殷震出生于扬州一个地方官员家庭，原名何班。她的丈夫是被称为国学大师的经学家、无政府主义思想家刘师培。1904年二人婚后即前往上海，在那里加入光复会，投身革命。何殷震还进入光复会创始人之一蔡元培主持的上海爱国女学就读，期间接触到新式女学。1907年，何氏夫妇东赴日本，加入流亡东京的中国革命者，也是从那时开始接触到国际上各种激进思潮。受无政府主义及社会主义思想影响，以及斯宾塞《女权篇》的启发，何殷震开始积极提倡男女平等。在爱国女学就读期间改名为何震的她主张“生当今时者，当并从父母得姓”，遂在名字里加上母亲的姓氏殷，于是有了何殷震这个名字。

在日期间，何殷震积极参与和组织社会活动，包括参与社会主义讲习会、共同创办以反帝为宗旨的亚洲和亲会，以及女子复权会等，并于1907年6月在刘师培的协助下创办、主编《天义》报，作为女子复权会的机关刊物。因日本政府加强镇压无政府主义活动，《天义》报在发行19期后，于1908年初被迫停刊。

此后，何殷震夫妇又筹措资金创办了无政府主义刊物《衡报》，因此被日本警察确认为革命党人，活动受到监视，《衡报》也遭到日本警方查封，两人返回中国。在此期间，何殷震夫妇与章太炎和其他革命党人交恶，并随着清政府立宪运动的发展投靠满清高官端方门下。此后，何殷震的身影逐渐消失于历史舞台，只是作为刘师培的跟随者出现。1919年刘师培病逝后，关于何殷震只剩下零散流言，但实情不得而知。

《天义》报早期宗旨为“破坏固有之社会，实行人类之平等”，“于提倡女界革命外兼提倡种族政治经济诸革命”；自八、九、十卷合册起，改宗旨为“破除国界种界实行世界主义；抵抗世界一切之强权；颠覆一切现近之人治；实行共产制度；实行男女绝对之平等”。该报倡导女子解放、介绍女权主义、社会主义、马克思主义，和无政府主义等激进学说， 被认为是中国最早的无政府主义女权刊物，也是最早将《共产党宣言》部分翻译成中文并发表的刊物。《天义》报发行后受到一些国际关注，美国无政府主义者艾玛·古德曼（Emma Goldman）曾提及注意到日本出版的这本刊物，其内容亦被日本其他激进杂志转载。

何殷震现存的文章，最初几乎都发表在《天义》报上。这些文章中，充满当时少有的对于政治经济、资本主义、现代国家以及父权制的女权主义批判分析，并提出完全不同于当时占主导地位的男性女权倡导者的思想理论。刘禾、瑞贝卡·卡尔和高彦颐在《中国女权主义的诞生》（The Birth of Chinese Feminism）一书中指出，历史学家往往将1903年男性教育家兼政治活动家金天翮的《女界钟》作为中国女权主义的开端，其中将女子教育作为民族自强和重振中国男性权威的手段。包括秋瑾在内的晚清女权主义者也大多认可民族解放势必伴随妇女解放的观点。而何殷震的无政府女权主义则与这种国家主义观点截然不同，她虽然支持民族革命，但并不认为民族革命能够带来妇女解放。她对欧美社会基于自由主义的有限性别平等感到怀疑，并在此基础上发展出对资本主义私有财产制度，以及为其提供保护的国家制度的严厉批判，将妇女解放从国族话语中独立出来。

何殷震的旧学功底和她对国际激进思潮的了解为她提供了超越传统与现代、东方与西方简单对立的分析视角。《天义》报创刊号扉页刊登了何殷震画的女娲像，并题有诗词，强调女娲“断鳌足，杀黑龙”之救世功绩，应与黄帝、伏羲并隆，彰显其从中国传统文化中寻找女权主义资源之意图。她在《女子解放问题》等文章中批判儒家思想中的“男女有别”概念，被《中国女权主义的诞生》一书的编者们认为是比西方后来出现的性别、性、交叉性等理论更具有包容性的分析框架，可以用来描述父权制之下所有不平等的社会关系。

不仅如此，何殷震更是将妇女解放与对私有财产制和资本主义的批判紧密结合。她在《女子劳动问题》中指出，当时中国社会存在的蓄婢和卖淫问题的根源在于私有财产制度造成的财富分配不均，来自贫困家庭的妇女因为没有田地或其他财产而缺乏生计，只能出卖身体和劳力给富人。面对欧美国家妇女可以自由选择在工厂做工谋生的观点，她尖锐反驳：由于资本家已经通过掠夺与积累偷走人们的生活和生产资料，妇女除在工厂做工以外并无其他生计机会，只能屈从于资本家的剥削。不同于当时女权思潮普遍把参政作为目标，《天义》报最早提出性别与阶级问题，将底层妇女纳入“女界”范畴和公共讨论。

这样一个思想超前而深刻的理论家，其身影却完全淹没于历史之中，有很长一段时间学术界甚至误认为《天义》报的主编是她的丈夫刘师培。关于何殷震生平留下的资料极少，在互联网上她大多是以刘师培妻子的身份出现，且大部分文章和视频都将她刻画为一个爱挑拨事端、为丈夫带来厄运的美艳悍妇。历史上女性的命运如此相似，无论多么杰出，被允许留下的却总是流言与污名。

一百多年后的今天，我们在历史中寻访何殷震，是为了一睹那个思潮激荡的年代里，这位中国女权主义思想先驱的真实风采，期待她的思想与洞见能为当下社会和妇女的处境带来新的启发与反思。需要注意的是，简单化的历史叙事倾向于把某个领域的发展归因到具体个人——大多是男性——的思想，仿佛他们的思想完全是个人天才独创，而忽视任何思想的背后都有着无数的对话与争论，以及为这些思想提供智识资源和物质基础、却被抹杀和压迫的边缘存在，何殷震的思想当然也不例外。这种个人英雄主义叙事往往会进一步巩固力量至上和男性中心的观念。因此，让女性思想家显身于历史只是一个起点，而让边缘回到中心，使简单个人叙事让位于复杂历史情景和社群的相互依存关系，才能真正打破父权制的魔咒。

本期推荐档案：

《天义》报

延伸阅读：

刘禾、瑞贝卡·卡尔和高彦颐：《中国女权主义的诞生》（The Birth of Chinese Feminism）（英文），哥伦比亚大学出版社，2013年。该书导言部分的中文翻译刊于澎湃新闻网站：

何殷震与安那其女权主义（上）：对跨国女权主义理论的贡献

何殷震与安那其女性主义（下）：20世纪早期中国女性主义的多重世界

【本文为中国民间档案馆首发，转载时请务必在正文之前注明“本文首发于中国民间档案馆”，并加上原文在中国民间档案馆网站或者中国民间档案馆Substack的链接。】

【作者观点不代表中国民间档案馆立场。】

He-Yin Zhen and the Journal Tien Yee: A Pioneer of Chinese Feminist Thought a Century Ago

By Ou Lun

When thinking about Chinese women’s rights activists of the early 20th-century, many people first think of the feminist and revolutionary Qiu Jin. She was a charismatic figure who held feudal rites and laws in contempt, advocated for equal rights between men and women, and resisted the Qing autocracy, ultimately giving her life in the pursuit of democracy and freedom. Qiu is a widely known national hero and a pioneer of Chinese feminism for future generations.

Qiu Jin’s life, however, was so dramatic that it overshadowed a generation of equally important and inspiring figures who deserve at least as much attention as Qiu. On July 15, 1907, the 31-year-old Qiu was executed on charges of plotting rebellion and consorting with bandits. Soon after, Chinese activists in Japan held memorial services for Qiu and other martyrs; the Tokyo-founded journal Tien Yee also published articles commemorating Qiu for several consecutive issues.

The organizer behind these memorial activities was He-Yin Zhen, a contemporary of Qiu Jin. As early as the beginning of the 20th century, she proposed a sophisticated, locally-grounded gender theory, pointing out that “the distinction between men and women” is “the result of habit and the result of education”—ideas that predate by half a century western feminists, such as Simone de Beauvoir, who proposed a similar theory of gender construction. Despite being such a path-breaking feminist theorist, as well as a socialist and anarchist thinker and activist, He-Yin Zhen’s life and ideas remain little known.

He-Yin Zhen, originally named He Ban, was born in 1886 to a local official’s family in Yangzhou. Her husband was Liu Shipei, a scholar known as a master of Chinese classics and an anarchist thinker. After their marriage in 1904, the couple went to Shanghai, where they joined the Restoration Society and committed themselves to the revolution.

He-Yin Zhen also enrolled in the Shanghai Patriotic Women’s School, presided over by Cai Yuanpei, one of the founders of the Restoration Society, where she came into contact with modern women’s education. In 1907, the He-Liu couple traveled to Japan to join Chinese revolutionaries in exile in Tokyo, and it was from that time that they began to encounter various radical international trends of thought.

Influenced by anarchist and socialist ideas, and inspired by “The Rights of Women” chapter in Herbert Spencer’s work, He-Yin Zhen began to actively advocate for equality between men and women. Having changed her name to He Zhen while studying at the Patriotic Women’s School, she argued that “those born in the present age should take surnames from both parents,” subsequently adding her mother’s surname, Yin, to her name, thus becoming He-Yin Zhen.

During her time in Japan, He-Yin Zhen actively participated in and organized social activities, including taking part in socialist study groups and co-founding the Asia Solidarity Association—whose purpose was anti-imperialism—as well as the Women’s Rights Recovery Association. In June 1907, with the assistance of Liu Shipei, she founded and edited the journal Tien Yee as the official publication of the Women’s Rights Recovery Association. Due to the Japanese government’s intensified suppression of anarchist activities, Tien Yee was forced to cease publication in early 1908 after issuing 19 numbers.

Subsequently, the couple raised funds to found the anarchist publication Hengbao (Equity); as a result, they were identified as revolutionaries by the Japanese police and their activities were monitored. After Hengbao was shut down by the Japanese police, the two returned to China. During this period, He-Yin Zhen and her husband fell out with Zhang Taiyan and other revolutionaries, and as the Qing government’s constitutional movement developed, they sought patronage under the high-ranking Manchu official Duanfang.

From then on, He-Yin Zhen gradually vanished from the historical stage, appearing only in relation to Liu Shipei. After Liu died of illness in 1919, only scattered rumors remained regarding He-Yin Zhen, but scholars agree that the actual facts are unknown. Her ideas, however, live on in Tien Yee and are worth exploring.

The early mission of Tien Yee was to “destroy the existing society and implement equality for humankind,” and “to advocate for racial, political, and economic revolutions in addition to advocating for a women’s revolution.” Starting from the combined volume of issues eight, nine, and ten, the mission was changed to: “abolish national and racial boundaries to implement cosmopolitanism; resist all world powers; subvert all modern human governance; implement a communist system; and implement absolute equality between men and women.”

The journal advocated for women’s liberation and introduced radical doctrines such as feminism, socialism, Marxism, and anarchism; it is considered China’s earliest anarchist-feminist publication and was also the first to translate and publish portions of the Communist Manifesto in Chinese. After its release, Tien Yee received some international attention; the American anarchist Emma Goldman once mentioned having noticed this publication from Japan, and its content was also reprinted by other radical Japanese magazines.

Almost all of He-Yin Zhen’s extant articles were originally published in Tien Yee. These articles are filled with feminist critical analyses of political economy, capitalism, the modern state, and patriarchy—analyses that were rare at the time. They also proposed ideas and theories completely different from those of the dominant male advocates of women’s rights. In the book The Birth of Chinese Feminism, Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl, and Dorothy Ko point out that historians often cite the 1903 work The Women’s Bell (Nüjie Zhong) by male educator and political activist Jin Tianhe as the beginning of Chinese feminism, which framed women’s education as a means for national strengthening and the revitalization of Chinese male authority.

Most late-Qing feminists, including Qiu Jin, also accepted the view that national liberation would inevitably be accompanied by women’s liberation. He-Yin Zhen’s anarcho-feminism, however, was starkly different from this nationalist perspective; while she supported national revolution, she did not believe that it would naturally bring about women’s liberation. She was skeptical of the limited gender equality based on liberalism in European and American societies, and on this basis, she developed a harsh critique of the capitalist private property system and the state system that protects it, making women’s liberation independent from nationalistic discourse.

He-Yin Zhen’s foundation in classical learning and her understanding of international radical trends provided her with an analytical perspective that transcended the simple opposition between tradition and modernity, or East and West. The inside cover of the inaugural issue of Tien Yee featured an image of Nüwa painted by He-Yin Zhen, accompanied by a poem emphasizing Nüwa’s world-saving achievements of “breaking the legs of the giant turtle and killing the black dragon,” asserting that she should be as celebrated as the Yellow Emperor and Fuxi. This highlighted her intention to find feminist resources within traditional Chinese culture.

In articles such as “The Problem of Women’s Liberation,” she critiqued the Confucian concept of “the distinction between men and women.” This was regarded as an analytical framework more inclusive than later Western theories of gender, sexuality, and intersectionality, which can be used to describe all unequal social relations under patriarchy.

He-Yin Zhen also closely integrated women’s liberation with a critique of the private property system and capitalism. In “The Problem of Women’s Labor,” she pointed out that the root of the problems of domestic servitude and prostitution in Chinese society at the time lay in the unequal distribution of wealth caused by the private property system; women from poor families, lacking land or other property, had no means of livelihood and could only sell their bodies and labor to the rich.

Confronted with the view that women in European and American countries could freely choose to work in factories for a living, she countered sharply: since capitalists had already stolen people’s means of living and production through plunder and accumulation, women had no other livelihood opportunities besides working in factories and could only submit to capitalist exploitation. Unlike the prevailing feminist trends that set political participation as the goal, Tien Yee was the first to raise the issues of gender and class, bringing grassroots women into the scope of womanhood and public discussion.

The figure of such a forward-thinking and profound theorist, however, has been completely submerged in history. For a long time, the academic community even mistakenly believed that the editor-in-chief of Tien Yee was her husband, Liu Shipei. Very little data remains regarding He-Yin Zhen’s life; on the Internet, she mostly appears as “Liu Shipei’s wife,” and most articles and videos portray her as a beautiful but fierce woman who loved to stir up trouble and brought misfortune to her husband. The fate of women in history is so similar: no matter how outstanding they are, what is allowed to remain is always rumor and stigma.

Today, more than a hundred years later, we search for He-Yin Zhen in history to catch a glimpse of the true grace of this pioneer of Chinese feminist thought in that era of emerging ideas, hoping that her thoughts and insights can bring new inspiration and reflection to the current situation facing society and women.

Simplified historical narratives tend to attribute the development of a field to the ideas of specific individuals—mostly men—as if their ideas were entirely the original creations of personal genius, while ignoring that behind any idea lie countless dialogues and debates, as well as marginalized existences that provided the intellectual resources and material foundations for these ideas but were erased and oppressed.

He-Yin Zhen’s ideas are no exception. This narrative of individual heroism often further consolidates the concepts of power-supremacy and male-centrism. Therefore, allowing female thinkers to become visible in history is only a starting point; only by bringing the margins back to the center and allowing simple individual narratives to give way to complex historical contexts and community interdependence can the spell of patriarchy truly be broken.

Recommended archive:

Tien Yee (Natural Justice)

Extended Reading:

Lydia H. Liu, Rebecca E. Karl, and Dorothy Ko, eds.: The Birth of Chinese Feminism, Columbia University Press, 2013.

[This article first appeared in China Unofficial Archives. When reposting, please ensure that the following is included at the beginning of the reposted text: “This article was first published by the China Unofficial Archives,” accompanied by a link to the original article on the China Unofficial Archives website or Substack.]

[The views expressed by the author of this article do not necessarily reflect the position of the China Unofficial Archives.]