The Chinese Cultural Revolution as History

"This book is co-edited by two historians at UC San Diego and the same old Andrew Walder. Joseph Esherick and Paul Pickowicz started a year-long seminar for their graduate students, which a number of us spoke at, and these graduate students were then encouraged to go off and do their own research projects. And they really are extraordinarily interesting – and very revealing. There is one, which I have assigned in one of my courses, which tells about the extent of mass violence, based on a number of provinces where this graduate student was able to get really detailed grassroots records. Another, which I’ve also assigned, is about someone who became a hero during the Cultural Revolution, because he had written to Chairman Mao. He was a poor person and he had written to Chairman Mao and got the local situation turned around as a result of his letter. But then he became a villain later on. It’s a complicated story, but it showed how, during the Cultural Revolution and, to be fair, even before in China, it was possible for someone to rise up very quickly and then, when the political wind changed, to be blown down."