I happened on this museum six years ago and wrote a short piece about it in a Sydney Chinese newspaper. Since then, reading various reports about the authority’ s refusal to let people remember the CR, I have often wondered how long this remote museum – the only one I know of – will be able to survive. Now I have my answer.

From this report, it seems that the museum has not been destroyed but covered up. I wonder if there may come a time when it may open again?

Lily Lee <l.lee@sydney.edu.au>

Source: NYT (10/3/16)
The Cultural Revolution in Tibet: A Photographic Record
By LUO SILING

Tsering Woeser’s father, an officer in the People’s Liberation Army in Lhasa when the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966, photographed many public attacks on Tibet’s old ruling class and religious leaders. Here, a Buddhist nun wears a sign labeling her as a counterrevolutionary. CreditTsering Dorje

In 1999, the Tibetan writer Tsering Woeser came across Wang Lixiong’s book “Sky Burial: The Fate of Tibet.” On finishing it, she sent Mr. Wang photographs taken by her father, who was with the People’s Liberation Army when it entered Tibet in the 1950s and documented the early years of the Cultural Revolution in Lhasa in the 1960s. Mr. Wang wrote back, saying, “It’s not for me, as a non-Tibetan, to use these photos to reveal history. That task can only be yours.” Continue reading CR in Tibet →

Source: NYT (10/2/16)
Fate Catches Up to a Cultural Revolution Museum in China
By DIDI KIRSTEN TATLOW

Visitors at the Cultural Revolution Museum in Shantou, China, in August. The museum was covered up in the spring, a few weeks before the 50th anniversary of the start of the Cultural Revolution. CreditLam Yik Fei for The New York Times

SHANTOU, China — The idea to build China’s first museum dedicated to the Cultural Revolution — the political campaign begun by Mao Zedong that killed more than a million people — was always risky.

Yet Peng Qi’an, a former local Communist Party official and the museum’s founder, spent two decades scraping together donations from private individuals and local government departments to create the Cultural Revolution Museum, which opened in the rolling hills of the Chenghai Pagoda Scenic Area in 2005. Continue reading Fate catches up to Shantou CR museum →

Thanks very much to Magnus Fiskesjö and to Louisa Lim, who wrote this very informative and revealing article. 1989 is an important reminder to a reality behind a day-to-day day dream, for people in China and in many other places. When I read about conscious efforts by LinkedIn and other media to censor voices from China and elsewhere talking about 1989, I thought of how the June 4th massacre in Beijing had been remembered or not remembered in Austria this year. The national channel ORF brought a film about the difficulties of making and selling Carinthian and Viennese cooked beef in China. On June 4th. Nothing else about China on the radio or on TV. We have a small email list that grew out of Vienna University’s Chinese Studies department. It has been rather dormant for a while, except for Confucius Institute announcements. There were heated discussions after Liu Xiaobo was awarded the Nobel Peace prize in 2010. On June 4th, 2016, there was an announcement for the TV program on Austrian boiled beef in China. I reacted saying that perhaps such an announcement, as well as the boiled beef documentary, was inappropriate. Especially if there was nothing else on the list or on TV etc. from China on that day and indeed for a while. The person who made the announcement said I was right. But there were several people who got very angry about my suggestion. Politics invading, disturbing the peace. Oh my. Continue reading Silencing the echoes of Tiananmen (1) →