Cultural Revolution Vigilantes

[Randy W]

from the New York Times

 

Cultural Revolution Vigilantes

 

Three decades later, there is almost no one in China willing to delve into the Cultural Revolution. The Chinese government does not exactly encourage discussion of the subject. It remains a deeply painful subject to those who lived through it.

 

. . .

 

Fu’s mistake — if you can call it that — was to include in her memoir scenes of growing up during the Cultural Revolution . . .

 

. . .

 

A daughter of privilege, she was taken from her family in Shanghai when she was 8 and sent to live in a dormitory far away. She was raped by Red Guards when she was 10, she writes. She worked in factories and had to raise her younger sister. Although she says that she saw atrocities, she also writes about kindnesses that were afforded her.

 

. . .

 

In China, a blogger named Fang Zhouzi, well known for his Internet denunciation campaigns, decided to attack her. Quickly, Amazon was flooded with one-star reviews denouncing her as a liar. Her critics, most of them Chinese immigrants, picked apart her story, and, though they found a few real errors, most of their criticism was highly speculative. Yes, they seemed to be saying, bad things happened during the Cultural Revolution, but they couldn’t have happened to Ping Fu.

 

“School was interrupted a bit, but there was still school,” sniffed Cindy Hao, in attempting to refute Fu’s claim that she had worked in a factory. Hao, a Chinese-born journalist who lives in Seattle, has become one of Fu’s most vociferous critics. “Ping Fu made up her whole story,” she told me.

 

(Note: Hao, a freelance translator whom the Beijing bureau of The New York Times uses on occasion, helped report an article by Didi Kirsten Tatlow. She says that she became a critic only after that article was published. She is no longer permitted to do reporting for the bureau.)

 

Edited June 29, 2013 by Randy W (see edit history)

[warpedbored]

My wife was in her mid teens when she was pulled out of high school and sent to work on a farm in the countryside. The conditions were harsh, dirty and not enough to eat. Without the help of her bigger stronger best friend who was sent with her she might not have survived. For almost 3 years she endured. There was no school for her to go to to finish her high schooling. Despite all of this she managed to complete her schooling after it was over and go on to earn a law degree from Guangxi University. My wife is a survivor. Like my parent's generation who grew up in the great depression she knows hardship. She knows what it's like to go hungry. As a girl on the very few occasions they had meat to eat she would give hers to her younger brothers and gnaw on the bones herself.

 

For good reason she calls it "the 10 years China went crazy". The government can try to sweep it under the rug but by many estimates millions died as a result. The Red Guard struck fear into the hearts of the populace. Irreplaceable national treasures were destroyed with their scatter the old world build the new mentality. The Cultural Revolution and The Great Leap Forward nearly destroyed the nation. Deng Xiaoping saved China and led it into it's current prosperity.

 

http://chineseposters.net/images/d29-184.jpg

[Randy W]

It's kind of interesting that the government also discourages talking favorably ("red nostalgia") about the Cultural Revolution.

[warpedbored]

It's kind of interesting that the government also discourages talking favorably ("red nostalgia") about the Cultural Revolution.

Sounds like an "ignore it and it will go away" approach.

[Fu Lai]

http://bhoffert.faculty.noctrl.edu/HST265/ChairmanMao.RevolutionaryLine.png

[Dennis143]

My wife was in her mid teens when she was pulled out of high school and sent to work on a farm in the countryside. The conditions were harsh, dirty and not enough to eat. Without the help of her bigger stronger best friend who was sent with her she might not have survived. For almost 3 years she endured. There was no school for her to go to to finish her high schooling. Despite all of this she managed to complete her schooling after it was over and go on to earn a law degree from Guangxi University. My wife is a survivor. Like my parent's generation who grew up in the great depression she knows hardship. She knows what it's like to go hungry. As a girl on the very few occasions they had meat to eat she would give hers to her younger brothers and gnaw on the bones herself.

 

For good reason she calls it "the 10 years China went crazy". The government can try to sweep it under the rug but by many estimates millions died as a result. The Red Guard struck fear into the hearts of the populace. Irreplaceable national treasures were destroyed with their scatter the old world build the new mentality. The Cultural Revolution and The Great Leap Forward nearly destroyed the nation. Deng Xiaoping saved China and led it into it's current prosperity.

 

http://chineseposters.net/images/d29-184.jpg

My Leiqin tells a similar story. So many that I know tend to just decide to bury this time in their memory and simply look forward. Their strength of character is something that most of us will never comprehend.