Overview

China’s Cultural Revolution ended less than fifty years ago, but already it is passing from memory. Its victims number in the millions, and yet their stories remain untold.  For over forty years, Professor Wang Youqin of Chicago University has been working to gather oral testimony on the Cultural Revolution, and has amassed the accounts of more than 600 victims. Collected here for the first time, Victims of the Cultural Revolution is a monument to the suffering of the people in one of the most brutal periods in modern China, restored to history before it is forgotten.

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Reviews

'In 1966, Wang was a schoolgirl who witnessed the hounding of Bian Zhongyun. Her response was to gather oral histories of the period, which are published . . . as Victims of the Cultural Revolution in a lucid translation by Stacy Mosher. Her book is . .  a chronicle of deaths until now untold. Her teacher’s death is described, but so are countless others, mostly far less high-profile, like the 60-year-old Li Jingpo, who worked at the elite Jingshan high school in Beijing and was killed in August 1966. But he was not a teacher or administrator: he was just the doorman. Being a bona fide proletarian didn’t save him from the students who used to call him “Uncle Li”. Wang’s account of what happened during one of China’s darkest moments is a powerful companion to [Tania] Branigan’s compelling account of why it still haunts the very different country of today.' -- Rana Mitter, Guardian ‘I find this book to have enormous historical value, and believe it will serve as a foundation for future historians carrying out research into the political, educational, and social history of this period.’ -- Yu Ying-shih, Emeritus Professor of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University ‘Wang Youqin is one of a number of Chinese-born scholars in the United States who have been undertaking the Cultural Revolution research that cannot be done in China.  In this book, Professor Wang takes a very important step in the direction of making her fellow Chinese confront their recent past.’ -- Roderick MacFarquhar, Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science and former Director of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University 'Carefully composed and captivating... May Wang Youqin’s monumental book reach beyond the narrow confines of the ivory tower and attract the many readers it so obviously deserves.' -- Frank Dikötter, TLS

'I find this book to have enormous historical value, and believe it will serve as a foundation for future historians carrying out research into the political, educational, and social history of this period.' -- Yu Ying-shih, Emeritus Professor of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University 'Wang Youqin is one of a number of Chinese-born scholars in the United States who have been undertaking the Cultural Revolution research that cannot be done in China. In this book, Professor Wang takes a very important step in the direction of making her fellow Chinese confront their recent past.' -- Roderick MacFarquhar, Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science and former Director of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University

'I find this book to have enormous historical value, and believe it will serve as a foundation for future historians carrying out research into the political, educational, and social history of this period.' -- Yu Ying-shih, Emeritus Professor of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University 'Wang Youqin is one of a number of Chinese-born scholars in the United States who have been undertaking the Cultural Revolution research that cannot be done in China. In this book, Professor Wang takes a very important step in the direction of making her fellow Chinese confront their recent past.' -- Roderick MacFaquhar, Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science and former Director of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University

'In 1966, Wang was a schoolgirl who witnessed the hounding of Bian Zhongyun. Her response was to gather oral histories of the period, which are published . . . as Victims of the Cultural Revolution in a lucid translation by Stacy Mosher. Her book is . . a chronicle of deaths until now untold. Her teacher's death is described, but so are countless others, mostly far less high-profile, like the 60-year-old Li Jingpo, who worked at the elite Jingshan high school in Beijing and was killed in August 1966. But he was not a teacher or administrator: he was just the doorman. Being a bona fide proletarian didn't save him from the students who used to call him Uncle Li . Wang's account of what happened during one of China's darkest moments is a powerful companion to [Tania] Branigan's compelling account of why it still haunts the very different country of today.' -- Rana Mitter, Guardian 'I find this book to have enormous historical value, and believe it will serve as a foundation for future historians carrying out research into the political, educational, and social history of this period.' -- Yu Ying-shih, Emeritus Professor of East Asian Studies and History at Princeton University 'Wang Youqin is one of a number of Chinese-born scholars in the United States who have been undertaking the Cultural Revolution research that cannot be done in China. In this book, Professor Wang takes a very important step in the direction of making her fellow Chinese confront their recent past.' -- Roderick MacFarquhar, Leroy B. Williams Professor of History and Political Science and former Director of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research at Harvard University

Author Information

Wang Youqin is a Senior Instructional Professor in Chinese language at the University of Chicago. She has been researching the Cultural Revolution since 2004 and maintains a memorial website for its victims.

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