Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution: The Politics and Poetics of Collective Memories in Reform China
Edited by Ching Kwan Lee and Guobin Yang
Copub.: Stanford University Press

Re-envisioning the Chinese Revolution is the first comprehensive study of contemporary memories of China’s revolutionary epoch, from the time of Japanese imperialism through the Cultural Revolution. Path-breaking in its scope, the research in this volume carefully examines the memories of a wide range of social groups, including disenfranchised workers and rural women, who have often been neglected in scholarship. Looking at a variety of embodiments of memories—interviews, films, photo exhibits, museums, and websites—the authors, ranging from anthropologists to film studies specialists, present original research on the idea of “memories as a cultural and political phenomenon.” The result is an unprecedented and illuminating reexamination of the memory of, and occasionally nostalgia for, the Chinese Revolution.

Contributors include: Anita Chan, Robert Chi, David J. Davies, Kirk A. Denton, Gail Hershatter, Ching Kwan Lee, Kimberley Ens Manning, Erik Mueggler, Paul G. Pickowicz, Jonathan Unger, Ban Wang, and Guobin Yang.

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Ching Kwan Lee is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan; her research has focused on labor and social problems in China today.

Guobin Yang is Associate Professor in the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures at Barnard College, Columbia University; his recent publications have focused on nostalgia among the Red Guard generation, China’s environmental NGOs, and the Internet and Chinese civil society. Both were Fellows at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in 2003-4.

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List of Figures

Acknowledgments

1 Introduction: Memory, Power, and Culture, by Ching Kwan Lee and Guobin Yang

2 Rural Protest Letters: Local Perspectives on the State’s Revolutionary War on Tillers, 1960–1990, by Paul G. Pickowicz

3 Spectral Chains: Remembering the Great Leap Forward Famine in a Yi Community, by Erik Mueggler

4 Forget Remembering: Rural Women’s Narratives of China’s Collective Past, by Gail Hershatter

5 Communes, Canteens, and Crèches: The Gendered Politics of Remembering the Great Leap Forward, by Kimberley Ens Manning

6 Memories and the Moral Economy of a State-Owned Enterprise, by Jonathan Unger and Anita Chan

7 What Was Socialism to Chinese Workers? Collective? Memories and Labor Politics, by Ching Kwan Lee

8 Visible Zhiqing: The Visual Culture of Nostalgia among China’s Zhiqing Generation, by David J. Davies

9 Epic Narrative, Authenticity, and the Memory of Realism: Reflections on Jia Zhangke’s Platform, by Ban Wang

10 “The March of the Volunteers”: From Movie Theme Song to National Anthem, by Robert Chi

11 Horror and Atrocity: Memory of Japanese Imperialism in Chinese Museums, by Kirk A. Denton

12 “A Portrait of Martyr Jiang Qing”: The Cultural Revolution on the Internet, by Guobin Yang

Contributors

Index