Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
There are lots of memoirs – ‘I was a Red Guard’ and ‘I did this and I did that.’ What is strikingly consistent about most Red Guard memoirs is how un-guilty the authors are of any of the crimes, brutality and destructiveness that we know the Red Guards were guilty of. Ma Bo is different.
Finally, you’ve selected a memoir, Ma Bo’s Blood Red Sunset. There are lots of memoirs but you’ve chosen this particular one…
There are lots of memoirs – ‘I was a Red Guard’ and ‘I did this and I did that.’ What is strikingly consistent about most Red Guard memoirs is how un-guilty the authors are of any of the crimes, brutality and destructiveness that we know the Red Guards were guilty of. It seems that the authors were always disapprovingly looking on. There are exceptions, there is some frankness here and there, but on the whole, we’re getting an outsider’s view, rather than an insider’s view, even though the people were Red Guards. Ma Bo is different because when he was sent down to the countryside, like 12 million others, during the years from 1968 onwards, he was still a red-hot enthusiast. He was sent to the north, to Mongolia, to herding areas, and their orders were to plant grain. What is fascinating about the Ma Bo book is that it describes an ecological disaster, and he accepts guilt for it.
I like this book for several reasons. Firstly, because it’s a first-hand account. Secondly, because it’s by a writer who is a writer, and therefore it’s very good reading. Thirdly, because it admits to a disaster. Fourthly, because it shows the kind of policies that are prevalent when orders come from on high and no one has the courage to disobey them, because of the dangers to their career. There was in China, during the Cultural Revolution and just before, a famous brigade in Dazhai, which was a very poor agricultural community in northern China. And peasants, peasant leaders and local Party officials from all over the country and, indeed, foreigners made the pilgrimage to Dazhai. For the foreigners it was just sightseeing, but for the Party officials it was ‘this is the way you have to do it’. And, across China, all sorts of agricultural regimes were destroyed as a result of attempting to copy a totally different agricultural environment and its agricultural policies.
Grain was not the thing to be growing up in Mongolia, I take it?
It destroyed the natural habitats of the herds, which was the income and way of life of the herders. There are other books on the Cultural Revolution that are more widely read than the ones I’ve suggested. I’ve chosen books that ordinary readers are less likely to come across, so I thought it was useful to bring them to people’s attention.
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Roderick MacFarquhar is Harvard University’s Leroy B Williams Professor of History and Political Science and formerly Director of the John King Fairbank Center for East Asian Research. His publications include The Hundred Flowers Campaign and the Chinese Intellectuals; The Sino-Soviet Dispute; China under Mao; Sino-American Relations, 1949-1971; The Secret Speeches of Chairman Mao; the final two volumes of the Cambridge History of China (edited with the late John Fairbank); The Politics of China 2nd Ed; The Eras of Mao and Deng, and a trilogy, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution. He was the founding editor of The China Quarterly, and has been a fellow at Columbia University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Royal Institute for International Affairs. In previous personae, he has been a journalist, a TV commentator, and a Member of Parliament. His most recent, jointly-authored book on the Cultural Revolution, entitled Mao’s Last Revolution, was published by the Belknap Press of Harvard University Press in 2006.
