The character in the article is “康正果”, and you can read quite a lot of his interviews, essays, novels, etc. using Baidu, if you know Chinese.

http://tinyurl.com/3dtcfa

June 15, 2007 @ 4:26 am | Comment

Don’t understand why Westerners are so fascinated by Mao and the Cultural Revolution.

If you really want to experience what it was like, I recommend you to check out the CR theme restaurant in Beijing. It’s called ºìÉ«¾­µä (Red Classic). I’ve never been to the place, I just read an article about it, it looks pretty interesting. I’ll definitely check it out when I am back in town.

Here are some pictures of the place, the address and phone number are on the last page (Chinese):

http://food.21cn.com/taste/qita/2006/12/28/3078967.shtml

June 15, 2007 @ 9:03 am | Comment

“Don’t understand why Westerners are so fascinated by Mao and the Cultural Revolution.”

What a miserably predictable line that is. A few days ago it was: “why are westerners obsessed with Tiananmen?”

Do you not want foreigners to take an interest in Chinese culture and history? Clearly not, if it means a discussion of topics listed in the CCP’s catelogue of denial. Utterly childish.

This thread highlights the story of one man’s experiences through some significant (and often dark) periods in China’s recent past. Such first-hand accounts are a vital record of the one truth; when ‘history’ is revised it becomes a lie.

Thanks to books like ‘Confession,’ any attempt to sweep disasters like the Cultural Revolution under the carpet are doomed to failure. By publishing these volumes the west is serving to preserve an important part of Chinese history. For this they should be thanked, because if the job was left to the beloved Party, China would lose this part of its heritage forever.

The book will be read and the CCP’s reputation will, deservedly, be tarnished a little more.

Why does the truth about CR hurt so much, AC?

June 15, 2007 @ 12:55 pm | Comment

@ xueleifeng

I think you’re are trying to say that if we really want to know about this man we must read Chinese characters and read CCP-sanctioned material on Baidu. That’s just another form of denial.

Let me ask you this: will ‘Confessions’ be on sale to the general public in the PRC? I’ll leave you to introspect on the answer to that question.

June 15, 2007 @ 1:03 pm | Comment

Imagine if I had asked why the world cares so much about the US screw-ups in Iraq or Vietnam, or Jim Crow and the American Indians. Imagine.

AC, please don’t be absurd. The CR is a big part of China’s history and has direct ramifications on China today. I know you’d like to erase it. Will you give the US the same liberty, and let us quietly hide all our sins under the carpet?

June 15, 2007 @ 1:22 pm | Comment

Personally, one reason that I’m interested int eh Cultural Revolution is cause it’s considered a secret. I donno if it’s just me but I never learned about it in school and its probly the freakiest thing in history that I can think of.

The other reason it is interesting is because China is a rising superpower and the same party is in charge of China as during the CR, so it’s important to think about who the CCP is and what they will act like if we should embrace their high status or beware.

Of course if you look at CR and all those campaigns of repressions, Tiananmen and FgAoLnUgN, for me the answer is that we ought beware.

It seems like this book will be great for seeing just how much the party controls peoples thinking and everyday actions and words.

June 15, 2007 @ 1:45 pm | Comment

Stuart,

康正果 is a scholar, first and foremost. His specialty is erotic literature in classical Chinese. His major work and academic publications are in Chinese. And to this day, if you want to read his current essays, political or non political, they are ALL IN CHINESE. (Note: He is a senior lecture at Yale; he’s not on tenure track, and he himself admitted he didn’t publish academic work in English; see this interview, again, if you ever know Chinese.

http://www.guoxue.com/www/xsxx/txt.asp?id=1074

Again, note his “Confession” is translated by Susan Wilf, according to the NYT article. )

But no, you don’t want to know Kang Zhengguo as a full person; all you care is the grabbing headline “Cultural Revolution”, “Communist Party” “Confession”, “persecution”, etc.

Pathetic.

My original post is neutral; I didn’t pose any judgment on his book or the NYT article. All I did is to provide some useful information on his background, if any reader is interested and want to read more of his works. Yet that won’t stop a jerk foaming nonsense.

I’ll leave YOU to reflect on that.

June 15, 2007 @ 1:49 pm | Comment

“My original post is neutral; I didn’t pose any judgment on his book or the NYT article. All I did is to provide some useful information on his background…”

No. What you attempted to do, at the CCP’s bidding, is derail the debate by indirectly smearing the author.

Not a professor, you say? Well then, he must be lying.

June 15, 2007 @ 3:20 pm | Comment

Thanks for the link, xueleifeng. His writing does look really interesting – there’s a book on women in classical poetry I’d love to read.

It is interesting, though, that he is definitely behind the GFW. Only a rather anodyne list of stuff comes up on Chinese searches (or at least on the first pages – I haven’t got into it yet.)

Thanks for the find, Richard. Always a pleasure to find a new writer with a sense of humour.

June 15, 2007 @ 3:46 pm | Comment

“”Don’t understand why Westerners are so fascinated by Mao and the Cultural Revolution.””

China was beginning to recover from the “other” Mao disaster known as the Great Leap Forward.

Between the GLF and the CR, China had developed domestically designed and built cars and had built its own satellites and rockets, then all of those academics were labled “evil” and sent to break rocks, till farmland, etc. China is still paying the price in all facets of economy and social development. Any foreigner interested in the CR and GLF should also be interested in the Boxer Rebellion (my favorite), the Taiping Rebellion and the rise and fall of Sun Zhong Shan’s Republic of China (before warlordism took over again under Chiang and Mao).

June 15, 2007 @ 3:54 pm | Comment

Hopefully we’ll see a day when Mao’s ugly face is taken off the walls and thrown into a funeral pyre, symbolic of some odd decades he’s been roasting in hellfire.

June 15, 2007 @ 4:33 pm | Comment

Personally, I’m interested in the CR because my first time in China was 1979, and the entire country was reeling from it.

Reading accounts of the CR is extremely instructional, both for the specifics of Chinese history and culture and the generalities of how politics can work and people work out their frustrations and grievances on each other. It’s a fascinating, grim study of human behavior.

June 15, 2007 @ 5:07 pm | Comment

“Reading accounts of the CR is extremely instructional, both for the specifics of Chinese history and culture and the generalities of how politics can work and people work out their frustrations and grievances on each other. It’s a fascinating, grim study of human behavior.”

Precisely. A part of Chinese history that will not and must not be whitewashed. Accounts like those of Kang Zhengguo are vital to the preservation of truth and for the prevention of such mass psychosis in the future.

June 15, 2007 @ 6:08 pm | Comment

While living in today’s China, over 1000 people, mostly young children, have been forced to work as slaves in a brutal human trafficking ring in China. It’s a developing story, but from what I can gather Wang Dongji, Communist party secretary of the Caosheng Village of Hongtong County is involved. http://tinyurl.com/2afy9d

June 15, 2007 @ 10:05 pm | Comment

@Lisa,
YEah education is great, but I ahve to mitpick one thing,

I just don’t agree that a study of the CR is a study of human behaviour. I mean yes, of course, but also no, cause the CCP came up with some ideologies that were not from the people. The ideologies were implanted. CCP people went travellign all around the country spreading propaganda like crazy to incite allegience to the party, promoting the CCP as a sortof god and saviour…

So when the people did things like beating teachers to death, beating parents to death, public eating of dissidents and so on, I just think that thats not exactly what I would call human behaviour. I would classify it more as insanity. The regular people of China were spun by the party, they put all their faith into the preachings of Mao. They thought that if Mao said it, then it was the greatest truth, so they totally abandoned their human thinking and gave themselves to the party body and soul.

It was an act of human behaviour because they were weak, they wanted to believe, but it was unhuman since what they were led to believe was what anyone would consider psychopathy.

June 16, 2007 @ 12:31 am | Comment

famine, warfare, etc makes stupid people extremely vulnerable to brainwashing and psychopathic, genocidal behavior.

June 16, 2007 @ 2:43 am | Comment

Thanks for the link, Richard. I wasn’t aware of this guy.

As for the link that xueleifeng posted – hey, that Kang Zhengguo can write trauma lit AND so-called yellow lit with equal verve only makes me respect him more. 😉

June 16, 2007 @ 12:51 pm | Comment

nausicaa,

Kang Zhengguo DID NOT write yellow literature.

HE IS A SCHOLAR SPECIALIZING IN EROTIC LITERATURE IN CLASSICAL CHINESE TEXT.

Now what part of the above statement you don’t understand?

June 17, 2007 @ 9:04 am | Comment

Hence, “so-called”, because apparently it’s a common misconception.

Take a chill pill, dude. You are not the only one who can read Chinese.

June 17, 2007 @ 2:22 pm | Comment

Wonderful to see you here, Nausicaa, as always.

June 17, 2007 @ 2:52 pm | Comment

“Take a chill pill, dude. You are not the only one who can read Chinese.”

I like that.

Sadly, the chip-on-shoulder party apologists have a natural immunity to the chill pill. This is why ‘diplomats’ regularly fly off the handle at the merest hint of criticism or deviation from the party line.

Perhaps we should commission Sinochem to develop a new chill pill specifically for xueleifeng and pals. If they’re not sure about its side effects they can always put a few in a tube of toothpaste and ship it halfway round the globe.

June 18, 2007 @ 12:56 am | Comment

Going to AC’s post, why on earth would anyone want to go to a restuarant glorifying the cultural revolution…. What do they do they beat people up for entertainment?

June 20, 2007 @ 5:04 pm | Comment

Yeah and the waiter gives you a little red book and tells you to kill people and if you refuse they serve you to the other customers who are better revolutionaries for having killed more.

Someone needs to check their history facts outside China, either that or go to jail.

June 22, 2007 @ 11:37 am | Comment