Understanding contemporary China from the trauma on Chinese people

The responses and narration from different Chinese people on their experience in Cultural Revolution highlighted how the existing China is progressing. The interpretation from psychological perspectives are inspiring and stimulating.

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Fascinating and disturbing

A wonderful book, beautifully written and clearly narrated. The stories recounted by people living through this devastating period bring its shocking reality to life. I much appreciated the authors analysis and reflections on the brutal effects of totalitarianism and the waves of trauma that it provoked in the Chinese people.

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I somehow had expected more

The topic is certainly interesting and the book is easy to consume, but somehow it fell short of expectations. I probably expected more first hand accounts than this.

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1 person found this helpful

Important book on understanding China

This remarkable book tells the stories, whilst people could still tell them, about Chinese history during the Cultural Revolution which lasted from the period between 1966-76. Ever since I read ‘wild swans’ by Jung Chang and travelled through China, I have been fascinated by China's history and how much we never have been told or taught, and when we consider the 20th century and how the first part with characterised by two great world wars that caused so much suffering and then the second half which was dominated by 2/3 of the world been by the Cold War under communist rule, and how it was all behind a curtain that no one could penetrate or know about to understand the immense suffering and pain caused to people who lived under Stalin and Mao, I've always been keen to know more.
- China is currently revisiting its history of yesterday, transforming it into a new narrative. But the Cultural Revolution, which resulted in students and the young butchering and torturing their teachers and parents with a new political indoctrination mastered by Mao. Young students were so proud of being a part of the Red Army but unlike student revolutions occurring in the West, the young were killing the old. In fact the Cultural Revolution only ended after Mao Zedong’s death. It was a savage, unrelenting and extraordinary destructive period of violence. They killed many leaders and thinkers due to the emperor's ruthless assertion of power. He destroyed opposition within the party and began an ideological crusade to drive and reshape China's hearts and souls as Mao transformed its politics and economy. It is impossible to understand China nowadays without understanding both the ‘Great Leap Forward’ and the ‘Cultural Revolution’.
- China has had a dramatic history during the 20th century. In the Taiping rebellion over 20 million people were killed. This was followed by a brutal Japanese occupation of the 1930s which would lead to 15 million deaths. Between 1958 and 61 the Great Leap Forward caused possibly 40 - 50 million or more deaths through famine brought in by China's desire to build an economy that would equal the West through its obsession with making steel. As all the farmers and everybody else embarked on this scheme, crops and farms lay waste and this resulted in mass famine and starvation.
- In the world there are many cruel and callous people everywhere and there will be no shortage of them in a country of 1.4 billion. However, Mao Zedong was a tyrant and sadistic psychopath and yet he is revered still throughout China. His corpse lies in glass in Beijing and when I saw him, there were many Chinese still marking their respects (this was in 2001). They refer to the ‘great leap forward’ as the “difficult three years”, quite an understatement when you've killed millions of your own people. And yet, four years later, he managed to come up with the Cultural Revolution, where revolutionary thought dictated by Mao to rewrite thought and reality by ordering his citizens to throw off the four olds of old thinking, old culture, old customs, and old habits. It resulted in many people's lives being left in ruin overnight and those who resisted were attacked by an army of purifiers called the red guard who went around the country making the young torture and bludgen intellectuals, teachers and parents, resulting in possibly 2 million Chinese citizens deaths. People were shamed, put on mock trials, executed and tortured. Shame permeates these people's stories as they lost or turned on loved ones and others. Even President Xi was treated poorly but learnt nothing when he came to power other than to use similar ideologies to tell a new narrative of the Chinese past and to promote an amnesia with the past. A decade later and nearly all university education was put on hold, hospitals could barely function and chaos reigned which helped Mao Zedong take back control of the Communist Party after the disaster of so many millions lost a few years earlier with the ‘great leap forward’. And the Chinese people believed it, followed it and were imprisoned and entrapped by these horrific stories.
- As the author mentions at the end of the book, “this book could not be written if it were to begin today.” People are no longer being allowed to tell these stories, the Internet is being controlled, Muslims are being put into concentration camps and re-educated. People are certainly more wealthy than they were in the past in China, but it was a low bar to start with. The Chinese government is hellbent on control, and telling the people their lives will improve but that government should be left to the people in charge. But at what price and consequences.
- The book also looks at how this can be compared to acts going on today. There is a great video of Bill Mayer (USA talk show host and comedian) who compares the new woke agenda and cancel culture occurring in the west with many of the parables of the Cultural Revolution applying to the west. It's also very funny and insightful - “...the revolutionaries get so drunk on their own purifying elixir they imagine they can reinvent the very nature of human beings. Communists thought selfishness could be cast out of human nature … the problem with communism and with some very recent ideologies here at home is that they think you can change reality by screaming at it, that you can bend human nature by holding your breath but that's the difference between reality and your mommy. … Yesterday I asked ChatGPT if there are any similarities between today's woke revolution and Chairman Mao's cultural revolution of the 1960s and it wrote back, "how long do you have?" Because in China we saw how a revolutionary thought could do a page one rewrite of humans. Mao ordered his citizens to throw off the four olds, old thinking, old culture, old customs, and old habits so your whole life went in the garbage overnight and those who resisted were attacked by an army of purifiers called the red guard who went around the country putting dunce caps on people who didn't take to being a new kind of mortal being. A lot of pointing and shaming went on resulting in about a million dead and the only way to survive was to plead insanity for the crime of being insufficiently radical and then apologise and thank the state for the chance to see what an arsehole you are and of course submit to re education or as we call it here in America freshman orientation.” Find it on YouTube by searching ‘Bill Mayer woke culture red army’ - it's worth a view.
- The author tries to bring all of these points together to also explain these things could happen anywhere, and we can see some of this with both the UK and American government, certainly with republicans and their love for Trump and their cognitive dissonance between pro-life and anti-abortion stances and their love of capital punishment and of guns that are killing their own citizens and their children.
- Many in China don't even know about Tiananmen Square, where young students were either imprisoned or lost their lives, and they certainly don't understand their own history as it is slowly being rewritten, and many who do remember are now being silenced.
- So thank you for this wonderful book which shows how easily it can be to slip into authoritarian rule and the consequences that it brings. The story certainly makes you think what would happen to you or I if these things occurred again. In Europe we are much more focused and recall the world wars or the Holocaust and try to remind ourselves to be vigilant but we often so know so little about many of the countries involved in the Cold War and the terror that occurred in the second part of the 20th century under Stalin and Mao, so it's good the books like this continue to tell that story said that we can at least remember, even if we don't do anything about it. Hopefully some knowledge has some power. This is a book I would certainly highly recommend.
- Many of the stories on here are heartbreaking but are so worth knowing. Even when people as young as children who are now in their 60s apologise for what they’ve done.
- The rather incredible thing about students was that the same youthful rebellion happened in the USA and Europe, but what is different about the Cultural Revolution was that the young turned on their own old guard and elders and began to torture and kill even their own parents. This is the story of how it's possible to manipulate and brainwash anybody in through the totalitarian regime that was communism and infect in the minds to actually kill people around you and thousands died.
- There is a story about a young man, who, along with his father, shopped his mother for being an anti-revolutionary and that when they told on her, it resulted in her execution. How and what would we do in this scenario. Stanley Milgram's experiments on obedience showed that we think we can make different choices, but don’t be so sure. It's only when you hear some of the stories that show that you really can make someone actively evil and turn against their own family in the name of some stupid ideology, which is exactly what the cultural revolution did.
- There's an interesting story, then if you have two dogs one where one dog will attack everything and the other is submissive, that under the cultural Revolution, the dog that attacks will die and the one who's submissive will survive, though what this does to people's mental health afterwards, especially when you can’t talk about all of these things must cause great trauma.
- It's interesting that now that China has a new leader called president Xi and he is also now replacing religious ideology, and they have his portraits everywhere. Almost as if he is the same cultural leader and chairman now providing stability, but also making sure that no one else has that kind of leadership quality, and he is now a leader for life. And now promotes collective amnesia and its ideology of not knowing what happened in its past, and its history is being written with a new leader, a father to the country and an ideology almost revering him as a God.
- When you now look at the current crackdown of dissent and people seeking some sort of freedom in Hong Kong, Tibet and the concentration camps for Muslims, what’s going on in the South China seas and Taiwan, it’s important to know where this can lead.
- China is writing its own narrative to re-frame the past, and it's currently that China will stand on its feet, has stood up to the world, and that its became rich, and under Xi’s presidency it has become strong.
- The book finishes with knowledge that many of the stories that are told and now being shut down and silenced as children carry pictures of president Xi who they have been told is like their grandpa who will look after them and they believe this from the early age, its like how we come to believe in religion being from a religious family and it's very difficult to get out or change they way you believe the world is.
- I used to joke that real communism exists more in our country than in China, and here hospitals and education are free. "China is the world's second largest economy but 85% of ordinary people can't afford to buy a home or get medical care or education. Officials don't treat people as the owners of the country, they treat themselves as the owners. They're corrupt. They don't care about morality or humanity. What they want is money. People call officials “boss” - it's the same as capitalism!”. ... There are oppressors and then there are people who are oppressed. In Mao's era it was totally different.” .. I judged it best not to mention the old joke - under capitalism man exploits man, under communism it's the other way round.”
- We can learn a lot from history, but in China 'no one looks back’.

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6 people found this helpful

Excellent, thought provoking, vital.

Understanding what happened, asking why it did and why it’s important to ask. An intelligent and informed exploration of human behaviour, memory and mass-scale group trauma. Underpinned by specific understanding of the cultural, political and geographical location. Skilfully and carefully written without generalising, looking away or simplifying.

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A compelling exploration of a difficult subject

Tania Brannigan has a voice I personally can listen to; with the clarity I hear sincerity; her reading of her book is all the more effective as the researcher and collector of so many painful memories. One example is the story of Bian Zhongyun. The author’s effective descriptive writing was evocative and achieved much for me in capturing mood, people and her surroundings and their effect upon her.
The accounts are moving (often chilling) and sensitively recounted. One feels grateful for not being able to relate to the suffering of the period’s victims. A dark period where one is as confounded about the ‘how’ as it is about how to right the wrongs - one man replaces the library books he regrets destroying but for others it’s far more complex. Survivors bear the weight of memory, loss and injustice with apparently no opportunity for open discussion, expression of grief and obtaining answers or closure in the present day.
I find myself having to overcome the impulse to be judgemental. The ‘general will’ of the 18C French revolutionary period which I’m reminded of as I’ve listened, is a chilling concept - mass consensus can justify anything however morally wrong (wrong as opposed to morally questionable) as can devotion to a leader one feels compelled to please. China is a giant and the Cultural Revolution period is no inconsiderable stone in its shoe. We all have something to learn from this.

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