Me and Mao: How Xinran got China talking about the Cultural Revolution
A year ago the Chinese journalist and historian Xinran returned to China. She was there to research her latest oral history, China Witness, a collection of interviews given by grandparents and great-grandparents. She took the opportunity to visit her mother, from whom she was separated at the age of seven during the Cultural Revolution. The visit offered the opportunity to talk about what had happened 40 years ago and its effect on both mother and child.
"I spent four hours sitting with my mother." Xinran's voice cracks. "Both of us were in tears. I believe both of us wanted to talk, that we had both dreamed of this moment and had been waiting to speak. I think she really wanted to know what happened to me during the Cultural Revolution and I really wanted her to know how I grew up without her."
She pauses; the memory remains painful. "But we couldn't speak a word. We were too frightened of hurting each other."
Xinran was more aware than most of the torment hidden beneath her mother's dignified silence, because she has spent 20 years mining the memories of men and women whose personal suffering remains taboo. The younger generation, she says, is thirsty for modernity and not interested in the old stories; the older generation feels shame, a powerful force within Chinese culture.
"The older generation became unsure about whether to tell their children all they had been through, because they needed to be respected by their children," she explains. In the past 20 years, China has changed beyond recognition and much of the younger generation have become detached from their poverty-stricken roots. As a result, a silence has descended on the old....
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"I spent four hours sitting with my mother." Xinran's voice cracks. "Both of us were in tears. I believe both of us wanted to talk, that we had both dreamed of this moment and had been waiting to speak. I think she really wanted to know what happened to me during the Cultural Revolution and I really wanted her to know how I grew up without her."
She pauses; the memory remains painful. "But we couldn't speak a word. We were too frightened of hurting each other."
Xinran was more aware than most of the torment hidden beneath her mother's dignified silence, because she has spent 20 years mining the memories of men and women whose personal suffering remains taboo. The younger generation, she says, is thirsty for modernity and not interested in the old stories; the older generation feels shame, a powerful force within Chinese culture.
"The older generation became unsure about whether to tell their children all they had been through, because they needed to be respected by their children," she explains. In the past 20 years, China has changed beyond recognition and much of the younger generation have become detached from their poverty-stricken roots. As a result, a silence has descended on the old....