Journalist and historian Yang Jisheng has published what many inside and outside the PRC are calling the most comprehensive and thoroughly researched account of the horrific famine that took place during the “Great Leap Forward.” The two-volume book, Tombstone 墓碑, is the result of nearly decades spent traversing China, integrating oral histories with previously unreleased Party documents, many obtained through Yang’s position as a Xinhua journalist.
Unsurprisingly, the book is banned on the mainland.
Full particulars and a well-written review can found here, but I thought I might indulge the reader with Yang’s opening:
`I call this book Tombstone. It is a tombstone for my father who died of hunger in 1959, for the 36 million Chinese who also died of hunger, for the system that caused their death, and perhaps for myself for writing this book.”
Anne Appelbaum writes in The Washington Post:
Like the communist legacy, the famine exists in a kind of limbo: undiscussed in public, unacknowledged by the state, yet a vivid part of popular memory. Because China is no longer a totalitarian country, merely an authoritarian one, a journalist like Yang could spend 10 years working on the history of the famine, openly soliciting interviews and documents. But because the Chinese Communist Party neither openly embraces nor rejects the legacy of Mao — his name was not mentioned during the Olympics’ opening ceremonies, though his picture still hangs over the entrance to the Forbidden City — there is no public discussion or debate.
The book has yet to be translated and I, here in Beijing, have yet to see a copy for sale, but from all the buzz, this is definitely a book worth searching for.
8 responses so far ↓
1 Pete // Aug 13, 2008 at 5:10 pm
How long did it take Mao: The Unknown Story to appear here? I know it was also banned, but now you can get it from any peddler on the street. They just store it binding-down.
Anyway I’ll get my of Tombstone in Taiwan in November, if not before.
2 EK // Aug 13, 2008 at 11:35 pm
It’s amazing, disturbing, shies from nothing, and so personal. Hope the translation comes out as soon as possible so the mainstream US audiences can have a chance to see it for themselves.
3 Terry Munson // Aug 14, 2008 at 1:11 am
While I’ve not seen “Tombstone”, Mao’s insane policies in the Great Leap Forward, and their results, are well known to those paying attention to China in the 50’s and 60’s. Since the number of deaths can never be substantiated, it’s entirely possible that the Cultural Revolution of the 60’s led to even more casualties than the Great Leap as Mao employed the energy and naiveté of China’s youth to resume his rampage. It seems likely, then, that on the scoreboard,Stalin should be regarded as an also-ran when it comes to homicidal achievements.
But does this give any nation the right to feel holier than Mao? Spain’s campaigns against the essentially unarmed Mayans and Incas, America’s near elimination of its native population, the Christianity-driven Inquisition and Crusades, Ghengis Khan’s pillaging, Hitler’s drive toward Aryan supremacy, Pol Pot’s genocide, the Rwandan genocide, the Viking raids, Australia’s near extermination of its aborigines, the Japanese murder of civilians in WWII (the list is endless) prove that murder on a large scale is a sport of Olympian proportions in which nearly all powerful nations engage.
Mao should never be forgiven for his unspeakable atrocities. Nor should we congratulate ourselves that we have done something particularly useful in rediscovering the vastness of his crimes. Instead, we might better spend our time exploring what it is about men’s nature that makes killing such an irresistible pastime. First diagnose. Then prescribe.
4 wu ming // Aug 14, 2008 at 12:31 pm
the rather more compelling question, IMO (and one which i hope the author of this book is able to provide some sort of insight, if not answer) is not so much in the acts of the leadership but rather why an entire nation collectively acted to starve itself.
that mao did some monstrous things is hardly news. what still boggles my mind is how people within that process sustained, intensified, and perhaps even worked to soften or ameliorate the great leap and/or the cultural revolution. the why is more fascinating (and potentially far more horrifying) to puzzle out than merely the what.
even totalitarian states depend on the consent of the governed to persist and enforce policy.
5 Jeremiah // Aug 14, 2008 at 7:43 pm
Terry,
Agreed. I think historical research shouldn’t shirk from uncovering the dark spots in our shared human existence, no matter where, by or to whom.
6 Jeremiah // Aug 14, 2008 at 7:44 pm
Pete,
Yeah, you can find a copy of the Jung Chang/Halliday book almost everywhere, even at a major cafe/bookstore here in Beijing.
Hope Yang’s book pops up sooner than later.
7 Jeremiah // Aug 14, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Wu Ming,
Very good point. Thanks for raising a complex issue…the complicity of those who remained silent when tragedy unfolds is a tough one for historians and obviously a very touchy subject for those whom such events are not very far removed.
8 zhwj // Aug 14, 2008 at 10:53 pm
I wonder how many manuscripts about that era are floating around? Maybe not as comprehensively researched as Yang’s new book, but think of how many journalists had access to government figures that they weren’t permitted to publish, or even the statisticians themselves. I read a manuscript by last year by Zhang Guangyou, who was a journalist with Xinhua at the time and later accompanied Wan Li on his inspection tours. It was half memoir - with some truly horrifying eyewitness and second-hand accounts - and half statistics, an attempt to calculate the death totals on the basis of various sources of information. There have got to be similar unpublished books sitting in at the bottom of drawers all across the country.
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