‘We, and our own children, need the truth’
◆ To give voice to some of the family stories and history that the Cultural Revolution swept away, author Xinran interviewed hundreds of people since 1997. Her new work, The Book of Secrets, is based on an extraordinary archive of letters and tapes from a former Communist Party member and intelligence officer, chronicling a litany of disastrous episodes in China’s recent history
People say “every family has a secret”, so it is in China. But it is almost impossible for Chinese to trace and search their hidden family history because of the censorship and political fear in modern China, even more so since most of the historical records and evidence have been destroyed by the Cultural Revolution. Therefore oral history and people’s stories have become so valuable for the new generations. I realised this when I began hosting a radio show in China in 1989: Words on the Night Breeze. I was soon struck by the mail we received from listeners, along with other interviews I conducted at the time.
Growing up in the capital Beijing
I’d wanted for nothing, unaware that in the surrounding villages hunger and hardship were rife. My “comprehensive education”, which included a grounding in Marxism, had taught me nothing about China’s recent past or the experiences of my parents’ generation. I’d been raised on and nourished by classical literary works from both China and the West, blind to the fact that 70 per cent of my peers in rural areas could not recognise even the simplest of characters. The vast majority of them would never have heard of Chinese intellectuals like Gu Hongming and Liang Sicheng, let alone Western historical figures like William Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln. Most Chinese wouldn’t have known Beethoven or the Rolling Stones. And while I’d been made aware from an early age that my parents were dedicated disciples of both the Party and the nation, and my mother was a talented scholar who worked for the state, I had no idea that much of the countryside still upheld the thousand-year-old tradition of treating men as superior to women. Many baby girls were not even extended the right to live.
Aware of how much I still had to re-educate myself , I set out to record – from the work of academics, the voices of ordinary folk, the stories of forgotten villages – the truth of the previous century in China, and a full picture of modern society. It was already clear to me that there was a strange silence about its people, and this was a way of asking why.
In 1997 I moved to the UK, but every year since I have returned to China to
My motherland has, as if under a spell, entered an era of ‘collective amnesia’
conduct new research and continued my interviews to keep abreast of the country’s extraordinary transformation. From face-to-face interviews with more than 300 Chinese women over the past 35 years, I have seen how deeply these times have affected Chinese families – the undeniable influence of Western culture on their children, the great many technological changes and a general improvement in the quality of life, which have left older Chinese people both pleasantly surprised and confused.
As a daughter, however, like so many children of China, I still find myself anxiously pacing the floor outside the closed door of my own family’s history. But while we Chinese are afraid of what we might find behind that door – the buried stories of ancestors who lived through war and political killings in silence – we, and our own children, need the truth. We need it in order to validate ourselves. We need it to chisel away at the cracks between the secrets and the lies and let the light shine on history, to deliver the truth out of the darkness, and to allow our future to thrive in the light and air of freedom. We need to extend to our silent forebears the opportunity to reclaim their lives.
More than 30 years of careful listening, along with further exploration and excavation, have led me to realise that my motherland has, as if under a spell, entered an era of ‘collective amnesia’ created by its politicians. The Chinese often say that the past vanishes like smoke, but I know very well that the past stays with us all.
In 2018, at the home of an old family friend, I met Snow.
When Snow heard that I was ‘digging’ for the hidden stories and silent voices of Chinese families, she seemed surprised. “Is there anything left to dig for?” she asked. “Over the past three generations all Chinese families have accumulated these sorts of stories – but we’ve found it easier to forget.” She talked of the regret of older generations hanging like a dark cloud over the blue sky of their children and grandchildren. And she spoke of how these days the politicians reckon they don’t need to worry about people questioning the past constructed for them in their history textbooks, or passing on to future generations evidence of what really happened. “If no one speaks up,” said Snow, “China’s history will be nothing.”
These words really resonated with me. Countries all over the world have gaps in their history. But because China’s national archives were completely obliterated during the chaos of nearly 50 years of civil war and the Cultural Revolution, the previous century of Chinese history contains so many gaps that it has come to resemble one giant black hole.
I didn’t hear from Snow again until I was preparing to leave China and return to London. In her Wechat message, Snow asked if I would like to hear a series of recordings relating to one such family history. Yes, please, I said. Within days, I received a package from her containing two USB sticks and a long letter: an extraordinary archive which she and her mother uncovered after her father’s death in 2017. This came to form the basis for my latest book, The Book of Secrets. The letters and tapes a were a revelation to Snow. She had grown up in China knowing little of her parents’ lives: both Communist Party members working in military intelligence, Jie and his wife Moon could not talk openly to their children nor to each other. Forced to choose between lies and silence, they chose silence.
But Jie poured out his feelings in secret. Among the messages Jie had recorded onto the hard disks there were secret letters of various length addressed to his wife. These began with passionate declarations of love, moved through various stages of grief and despair, and ended with his final confession and appeal for redemption. None of them were ever actually sent – which is how Jie came to have them in his possession at the time of his death. Some he wrote with the intention of showing Moon in person when the opportunity arose, but the later, more painful messages appear to have been written more for himself than his wife. There were also many letters that spoke of his love of Western culture, in particular his appreciation of its philosophy, music and poetry.
Much of what Jie spoke of he had experienced personally: he chronicled first-hand a litany of disastrous episodes in China’s recent history, several of which I hadn’t heard of. He also addressed the implausible emotional entanglement between him and his wife, and how their relationship was played out against the backdrop of political turmoil.
I can’t imagine the countless times throughout his life this Chinese man stole away stealthily into some quiet corner, armed with pen, ink and paper, to release his caged emotions and pent-up frustrations, and then, with great care, climbed that ladder to hide his heartfelt, weighted words. It was a secret, a heavy burden, that he bore until his dying breath.
By telling one story, a family story of love and betrayal that spans the long arc of the 20th century – China’s century – I hope to reclaim the history of my country and the people who have had to suffer to survive it, and also to tell my own mother: I want to be her daughter and share her life story with my children!
The Book of Secrets: A personal story of Betrayal in Red China by Xinran is out now, published by Bloomsbury priced £25 hardback
Xinran will be in conversation with Caroline Eden at Topping’s Edinburgh, tomorrow, 7 February, at 7:30pm, toppingbooks.co.uk