7

RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

Can the Past Serve the Present?

perhaps the greatest contrast between war memory in Maoist

China and the “new remembering” of the war has been the increased
emphasis on Japanese atrocities in China such as the “Rape of Nanjing.”
The war of resistance against Japan produced an enormous literature of
both war reportage and editorial writing during the conflict. Journal-
ists often mentioned the suffering of the Chinese people at the hands of
the Japanese invaders. The cruel nature of aerial attacks on civilian pop-
ulations and the general lack of regard for noncombatants were the most
frequent topics. Despite this, reporting on Japanese atrocities was rela-
tively constrained, particularly when contrasted with discussion of the
war in today’s China. For those writing in the midst of war, a conflict
China was losing, there seemed to be a special responsibility. Reporters
and editorial writers felt a strong need to boost morale among Chinese.
As a consequence, they did not want to overstress the helplessness of Chi-
nese victims in the face of the Japanese military.
In Maoist China, the government privileged a narrative of revolution
over remembrance of the war against Japan. When the war was celebrated,
Beijing “remembered” the leadership of Chairman Mao, the Eighth Route
Army, and the New Fourth Army, not resistance by Guomindang forces.
Mao preferred to downplay atrocities suffered by Chinese. Resistance,
not victimization, was the dominant narrative. As noted early, the rare
164 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

exceptions when war atrocities were mentioned were usually tied to spe-
cific diplomatic goals. The truncated trials of Japanese POWs in 1956, for
instance, were designed to open a diplomatic channel to Japan. Testi-
mony at the trials was not released publicly so as not to stir up domestic
opinion.1 A survey of Renmin ribao (People’s daily) between 1946 and
1982 found that only fifteen articles included “Nanjing Massacre” as a
key phrase and none had it in the title or dealt with it as the key theme.
Schools textbooks did not include any coverage of the massacre until
1979.2 As He Yinan noted in her study, during the Maoist era, “Textbooks
rarely mentioned Japanese atrocities and, when they did, blamed the
failure of the KMT [GMD] defense strategy just as bitterly as their con-
demnation of Japanese barbarism.”3
Academic research on Japa nese atrocities was also discouraged,
according to He. The history department at Nanjing University had
compiled a comprehensive study of the Rape of Nanjing in the early
1960s but this was not published until 1979 and then only for internal
circulation. Movies on the war, she notes, “conspicuously avoided
showing Japanese atrocities and the tremendous suffering of the Chinese
people because otherwise they would be disseminating sentimen-
talism and capitalist humanitarianism that would ‘dilute hatred of
imperialism.’ ” 4
Mao’s reluctance to highlight Chinese victimization was much closer
to wartime accounts than the current approach in China is. Ironically,
it has only been in recent times when China has emerged as a global power
with a vibrant economy, an expanding military, and a successful space
program that the memory of Chinese victimhood is publicly celebrated.
What accounts for this new focus on war atrocities? Beijing’s stress on
nationalism as an ideological prop for one-party rule is the key factor.
As Yongnian Zheng has noted, the Chinese leadership encourages Chi-
nese Nationalism, “because a new ideology is necessary as faith in
Marxism and Maoism declines, and nationalism, if handled properly,
can justify the potential legitimacy of the leadership.”5 The elevation of
Nationalism among Chinese intellectuals increased during the 1990s. As
Zheng commented, “It was not until after the Tiananmen Incident, es-
pecially after Jiang Zemin took power in 1992, that nationalism became
a dominant discourse among Chinese intellectuals.” 6
 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR 165

At the foundation of China’s new Nationalism is an emphasis on the

victimization that China suffered at the hands of imperialists in the nine-
teenth and twentieth centuries, with Japan being the focus. Peter Gries
has written, “The Maoist ‘victor narrative’ about heroic Chinese victo-
ries over Western and Japanese imperialism, dominant from the 1950s
until the 1980s, has been challenged since the mid-1990s by a new ‘victim
narrative’ about China’s suffering during the ‘century of humiliation.’
The traumatic re-encounter with long suppressed suffering has under-
standably generated anger—an anger that has been directed primarily
at Japan.” 7 The atrocities committed during the Sino-Japanese War have
become a key component for the new nationalist identity in today’s China.
The sense of victimhood seems central to contemporary ideas about
Nationalism in China. As Suisheng Zhao has argued, “The communist
state created a sense of being besieged in order to exalt the voice of
patriotism. . . . As an integral part of patriotic education, the state cited
numerous examples of interference in China’s domestic affairs by hostile
foreign forces.” 8 The image presented is a Chinese nation besieged. A
strong, authoritarian government is an absolute necessity to keep China
strong. The Chinese people, writes Zhao, “were asked to bear in mind
that weakness, disunity, and disorder at home would invite foreign ag-
gression and result in loss of Chinese identity, as China’s century-long
humiliation and suffering before 1949 demonstrated.” 9
Jing Tsu shares this conception of Chinese Nationalism. “At the core
of nationalism lies a perpetually incitable sense of injury. Nationalism
does not rely on just any kind of emotion. Rather than pride, feelings of
injury provide the most versatile and undying desire for ambition.”10
While the legacy of wartime journalism provides ample material on he-
roic resistance, it fits less comfortably into today’s narrative on victim-
hood. Reprinting the works of Fan Changjiang, Zou Taofen, or Zhang
Naiqi will simply not provide material for the new narrative. Past mem-
ories are simply not a perfect fit to serve the present.
China was a victim of Japanese aggression, and today’s Chinese must
not forget! That theme runs through much of the new remembering. Even
works that might seem to be purely academic publications are often pack-
aged within this framework, such as the 1999 Fudan collection discussed
earlier. It carries the series title Buying wangque de lishi (The history that
166 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

must not be forgotten), and chapters are organized around themes that
emphasize patriotic resistance and Japanese aggression.11
The Beijing government has had a direct hand in encouraging the de-
velopment of Nationalist sentiment, one tied to a victimization narra-
tive. As Rana Mitter has noted on the discussion about the war, “Much
of it is still tied to an explicitly political rather than historical agenda:
signs outside of the museums in Nanjing and Beijing proclaim proudly
and honestly that they are ‘sites for the encouragement of patriotic edu-
cation.’ This approach has meant that the changes in historical narra-
tive still, sixty years on, look monolithic rather than nuanced.” 12 Deng
Xiaoping himself promoted the commemoration of the Rape of Nanjing
when he authorized the construction of the memorial for the event with
the explicit purpose of providing patriotic education to China’s youth.
Deng personally contributed calligraphy for the inscription of the me-
morial, which opened in 1985.13
The current “remembering” of Japan’s actions in China thus privileges
a narrative of victimization. Chinese writing on the war has become a
virtual “numbers game” in which the emphasis of historical writing is
to maximize the sheer number of victims, as the set figure of three hun-
dred thousand for the Rape of Nanjing.14 The contrast between the writing
on atrocities done during the war, when intellectuals and journalists pre-
ferred to emphasize resistance rather than victimhood, and the current
narrative is striking.

A D D I N G AT R O C I T I E S

As noted earlier, in seeking to recover the memory of the war after the
Maoist years, Chinese publishers often turned to the writings of the war
years themselves, particularly those of the leftist press. Since most of the
Salvationist writers did not want to overstress the issue of Japanese atroc-
ities during the conflict, quite often these writings do not neatly fit the
current approach to war memory. The five-volume collection published
by Fudan University was largely a reprint of wartime writings. This ap-
proach worked well for the first portion of the collection, which stressed
heroic resistance, but was problematic for the second (the painful his-
tory of the occupation), which dealt with victimization.
 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR 167

Many selections in the latter portion are reprints of accounts by re-

porters who had fled the occupied zone or of letters that had been smug-
gled out. Most emphasized the destruction of war and the suffering of
ordinary Chinese people, especially refugees.15 The Nanjing Massacre
looms especially large in the Fudan collection, as one would expect.
Graphic pictures are included, among them the photo of the kneeling
Chinese about to be beheaded that appeared in the Kangzhan sanri kan
in 1938 and in Iris Chang’s The Rape of Nanking (among many other pub-
lications). Stories of the atrocities in Nanjing, originally published in
Hankou and Guangzhou in 1938, are filled with accounts of death, rape,
and brutality.16
Yet a glance at the Fudan collection also reveals ways in which the
“new remembering” differs from the wartime approach of the Salvationist
writers. Wartime writers certainly covered Japanese atrocities, in part
to discourage collaboration and to gain international sympathy for China.
Yet as noted earlier in this work, the Salvationists were reluctant to over-
emphasize this theme for fear of undercutting Chinese morale. As a con-
sequence, today’s editors have to go beyond reprints in order to add more
coverage of atrocities. It has thus become a “numbers games” in which
great emphasis is placed on the sheer quantity of victims.17 Reprinting
wartime accounts from the Chinese press simply does not provide suf-
ficient data.
Contemporary publications dealing with war time atrocities com-
mitted by the Japanese often include material that would not have been
available to Chinese newspaper readers of the day. Translations from
Western writers are a major new source that figure prominently in this
literature collection. Before Pearl Harbor, Western reporters often had
better access to the battlefield and enjoyed some protection as nationals
of neutral nations. Indeed, translations of newspaper accounts by Western
reporters, selections from the transcripts of the Tokyo Trials, as well as
memoirs and diaries by Westerners have virtually all been translated into
Chinese and published as part of the new “remembering” of the war. The
diary of John Rabe, “the good Nazi,” made famous by Iris Chang, is now
available in Chinese, as is that of Minnie Vautrin, “the American god-
dess.”18 An English-language biography of Vautrin by Hua-ling Hu car-
ries the title American Goddess at the Rape of Nanking: The Courage of
Minnie Vautrin and includes a foreword by U.S. Senator Paul Simon.19
168 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

The new remembering of the war thus includes a substantial body of ma-
terial that would not have been available to a Chinese audience during
the war years itself.

THE NUMBERS GAME

Coverage of Japa nese atrocities, particularly the Rape of Nanjing,

now often resembles a “numbers game,” in which the goal seems to be
to maximize the number of victims, in contrast to the Maoist years
when Chinese suffering was de-emphasized. As Peter Gries observed:
“After it came to power in 1949, the Chinese Communist Party de-
clared that 9.32 million Chinese had been killed [in the war]. That figure
stood for many years, reflecting the Maoist suppression of victim-speak
in favor of heroic narrative. In 1995, however, Jiang Zemin raised the
casualty estimate to 35 million, the current official Chinese figure.”20
Chinese historians are faced with the task of corroborating these
figures.
Indeed Chinese leader Jiang Zemin raised all of the figures in the
“numbers game.” In a speech on September 3, 1995, celebrating the fif-
tieth anniversary of victory, Jiang noted: “According to incomplete es-
timates, under the butcher’s knife of the Japanese invasion, the number
of Chinese killed or injured was thirty-five million. In the Nanjing Mas-
sacre itself more than 300,000 died. From south of the Great Wall, more
than two million were lured into exploitative labor in the northeast and
died. Beyond this there are still people today finding evidence of chem-
ical and biological warfare. According to estimates Japan’s invasion
caused a direct economic loss to the Chinese people of US$100 billion.
Indirect economic losses were US$500 billion. The crime of the Japanese
attack on the Chinese people is one of history’s most savage, most cruel
pages.”21 Jiang himself sets the “numbers” at very high levels, leaving it
to Chinese scholars to produce the evidence.
Jiang Zemin made the legacy of the war part of his political agenda.
Mostly famously in his November 1998 visit to Tokyo, Jiang made a Japa-
nese apology for wartime actions a centerpiece of his trip, suggesting that
Japan’s distortion of the historical record on the war had impeded prog-
 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR 169

ress on Sino-Japanese relations. Jiang urged Japan, according to the Xin-

hua News Agency, “to squarely face history and acknowledge it.” His
failure to gain a written statement was considered a major defeat and
damaged Sino-Japanese relations.22
Jiang Zemin’s focus on war atrocities stimulated a torrent of publica-
tions, often multivolume, attempting to document the magnitude of the
Japanese actions. Indeed, this type of publication began appearing al-
most as soon as the war resurfaced as an issue in the mid-1980s. While
the sheer volume of this material prohibits a detailed discussion, exam-
ples of this type of work include Riben diguo zhuyi qinhua dang’an ziliao
xuanbian (A selection of archival materials on the invasion of China by
Japanese imperialism), a seventeen-volume collection compiled by the
Central Archives, the Number Two Historical Archives in Nanjing, and
the Academy of Social Sciences for Jilin Province. The archives of Lia-
oning Province produced a fifteen-volume set of documents in facsimile
form entitled Riben qinhua zuixing dang’an xinji (A new archival col-
lection of Japan’s crimes in invading China). The Number Two Histor-
ical Archives and the Nanjing City Archives combined to produce
Qinhua Rijun Nanjing da tusha dang’an (Archives on the Japan’s military’s
Nanjing Massacre in its invasion of China).23 The effort is aimed at pro-
ducing a large quantity of archival material to counter claims by those
Japanese who seek to minimize wartime atrocities. These academic pub-
lications have been joined by a vast quantity of popular treatments, often
including lurid photographs and sometimes even cartoons.
While the “Rape of Nanjing” has produced the greatest volume of this
material, archives throughout China have been active, particularly in Si-
chuan, Beijing, Nanjing, and the northeast. An example of this type of
publication is a two-volume work issued in 1995 by the Beijing City Ar-
chives that reproduces their holdings of court records of war crimes reg-
istered with the High Court of Hebei Province and other courts in the
Beijing area from early 1945 to early 1946, entitled Riben qinhua zuixing
shizheng—Hebei, Pingjin diqu diren zuixing diaocha dang’an xuanji (The
true record of Japan’s crimes in invading China—a selection from the
archives of crimes by the enemy in the Hebei, Beiping, Tianjin area). Most
are brief legal documents meant to convey by sheer force of number the
magnitude of Japanese war crimes.
170 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

Case 141, for instance, is the killing of Wang San. The victim is listed
as male, sixty sui of the Dongguan village, occupation, farmer. The date
of the killing was September 17, 1937. Japanese troops came to the vil-
lage, grabbed Wang San, and bayoneted him to death. Verification came
from Zhang Shuting, male, age thirty-eight sui of Dongguan village. The
investigator was a policeman from the Dongguan village police. The re-
port was filed on March 11, 1946. Case 142 lists the victim as Ma Wen,
age twenty-seven sui, occupation, rice merchant. The crime occurred on
September 20, 1937; the victim was selling rice when seized by Japanese
troops. Seeing that he was young (that is, of military age), they had him
shot. Witness, his father, Ma Kefang, age seventy-two sui, farmer. The
investigator was a policeman from Beiguan. The report was filed in 1946,
but no date is given.24
These cases are only two of hundreds in this publication. Yet they also
reveal one feature of the new remembering, the rather impersonal na-
ture of much of the “numbers game.” While vast quantities of victims
are detailed, little of the human element is given. One can guess at the
personal tragedies, yet there is no diary of Anne Frank in these collec-
tions. China’s new remembering of the war has privileged such issues
as war atrocities and battle histories but left other areas—such as the
human element—surprisingly underdeveloped.
More recent scholarship has focused on new areas of atrocities. The
“comfort women” issue has emerged with great publicity in recent years.
Periodic denials and gaffes by Japanese political figures have kept this
issue in the news. The question of the use of chemical weapons is an-
other recurring topic. An incident in northeast China involving inju-
ries suffered from a buried canister with poison gas placed renewed at-
tention on this issue. In 2008 a new study chronicled eighteen hundred
examples of the use of chemical weapons during the war.25 Research
topics have now even expanded to include the issue of post-traumatic
stress syndrome (chuangshang hou yingji zhangde) suffered by victims.26
The emphasis on war atrocities also appeared in school textbook cov-
erage of the war.27 A recent high-school-level text specifically mentions
the three hundred thousand victims of the Nanjing Massacre, the chem-
ical and biological experiments of Unit 731, and the use of live Chinese
POWs for target practice. The text mentions fairly gruesome atrocities,
 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR 171

including the rape and murder of pregnant women and the dissection
of a live twelve-year-old boy by Unit 731 in an effort to harvest organs.
Study questions in the text include:

The right-wing force in Japan has denied that the Nanjing Mas-
sacre occurred during the Japanese invasion of China. What do
you think of this?

Concerning the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731, describe the

crimes the Japanese committed during their invasion of China.

The text also detailed incidents when Chinese have been injured when
they have accidentally unearthed poison gas canisters left by the Japa-
nese. A homework assignment in the high school text is to “collect facts
about chemical weapons left by the Japanese invaders and the impact
they had on the Chinese people from the Internet, magazines, papers,
and interviews of victims.”28
When Beijing sought to “re-remember” the war of resistance, Chinese
historians and writers had to re-create a public memory of this war. One
simple way to do so was to tap into the enormous body of wartime writing
by Salvationist journalists. Much of this emphasized a narrative of he-
roic resistance that fit into today’s needs. However, current constructions
of Nationalism in China also place a strong emphasis on victimhood and
here the wartime writing was less useful. Even with repackaging, war-
time publication did not often fit the needs of the present. But examining
the way in which war memory has been shaped can perhaps tell us more
about the uses of history and the history itself.

C O N F E S S I O N A L M E M O I R L I T E R AT U R E

One additional way to recapture the “lost” memory of the war is through
memoir literature. In most other countries involved in World War II,
publication of wartime memoirs has been commonplace. In China,
however, only a few memoirs and some fictional writing about Com-
munist base areas appeared in the 1950s.29 Those who had supported the
172 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

Guomindang, not to mention the puppet governments, were silenced

by the anti-rightist campaigns or left the mainland. Moreover, in the
mid-1960s, at the very time one would have expected a flood of mem-
oirs, the Cultural Revolution halted virtually all such publishing. In-
deed almost all intellectual and academic activity came to a stop.
That great upheaval interrupted the nationwide effort to produce
memoirs of “old China,” the Wenshi ziliao materials (literary and his-
torical materials) project. Prior to the Cultural Revolution, an effort had
begun to compile detailed personal histories from pre-1949 China. Major
figures in the Republican era wrote accounts of their life before libera-
tion, while ordinary individuals, such as workers, were interviewed. Pub-
lication of this material had begun on a limited basis before the Cultural
Revolution, when the process was suspended. This effort later resumed
with hundreds of volumes of material being published at the national,
provincial, and local levels.
At fi rst glance this material appears to be memoir writing, with
extensive selections dealing with the war era. In reality, most of this
was self-criticism written under duress during various anti-rightist
campaigns, particularly selections by those who had worked with the
Guomindang government. The basic facts of these life histories are un-
doubtedly accurate, for if someone misrepresented information that could
be checked, this was a serious matter. Yet people writing life histories
under intense threat were perhaps not able to recount accurately their
personal feelings during the war.
Jiangsu Province’s Wenshi ziliao, for instance, had published only a
couple of issues in the early 1960s when it was suspended by the Cul-
tural Revolution. In 1981 the series resumed, reprinting earlier issues and
then continuing. Many of the new articles were actually based on the
interviews or personal histories done earlier. Huang Duowu wrote
“Kangri zhanzheng zhong Huanghe juekou qinli ji” (A personal account
of the breaking of the dikes on the Yellow River during the war of resis-
tance), which dealt with the decision by Chiang Kai-shek in 1938 to break
the dikes in hopes of slowing the Japanese advance. As the waters poured
over the countryside, perhaps half a million Chinese drowned and some
5 million became refugees and suffered from disease and starvation. The
author, who was chief of staff for the Guomindang’s Thirty-Ninth Army,
 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR 173

confessed, “I personally participated in the crime of breaking the dikes.”

Moreover, the author suggests Chiang Kai-shek’s real motive was not to
stop the Japanese but to block the Communists. The guerrilla fighters
led by the CCP in north China had begun to attack the Japanese forces
and tie them down, he notes, and Chiang was most eager to limit their
actions.30
Huang’s account reflects the “formula” for understanding the war in
the early 1960s. At that time Chiang Kai-shek was alive and ruling Taiwan
under martial law. The People’s Republic and Taiwan had virtually come
to blows over Quemoy and Matsu. Therefore, Huang cannot “remember”
any possible patriotic motives by Chiang. In more recent years, however,
mainland scholars have been more nuanced in examining Chiang’s
motives, suggesting it was a valid strategy to slow down the Japanese
forces, even though it resulted in serious losses.31
In the same issue of the Jiangsu journal, Chen Qibo discussed the his-
tory of the Liang Hongzhi “reform regime,” a puppet-type of government
established early in the war. The author admitted to being an associate
of Liang and was able to detail his actions. Liang was executed for treason
in November 1946.32 Tian Shoucheng wrote of the role Chu Minyi played
in the client regime created by the Japanese in Nanjing under Wang Jin-
gwei. Tian confessed to having been Chu’s secretary and talking daily
with him. Chu had been executed in August 1946.33 These articles are
thus closer to self-criticisms and confessions than what might be con-
sidered memoir literature.
Another contribution was by Jiang Nanchun, who wrote of the grain
procurement system established under the puppet Ministry of Industry
and Commerce. Headed by Mei Siping, this was established to provide
grain for the Japanese military by extracting the harvest in China. Jiang
served as a secretary in the ministry.34 These articles appeared to be mem-
oirs but were in fact confessions by individuals who were clearly con-
sidered “enemies of the people” in the Maoist era and must be evaluated
in that light.
The Hunan Province Wenshi ziliao xuanji series published a few is-
sues in the early 1960s as well and then reprinted them in 1981 when it
began anew. Issue number three, originally published in 1962, contains
an article by Liu Gongwu, who was the Hunan-Hubei-Jiangxi border
174 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

commander for Chiang Kai-shek. When Chinese forces withdrew from

Wuhan in 1938, retreating to Chongqing, Chiang established this mili-
tary command. The author, who served as chief of the political bureau
of the command for a time, stated that the announced purpose of the
new unit was to operate behind Japanese lines and disrupt enemy forces.
In reality, wrote Liu, the goal was to block CCP forces, especially the New
Fourth Army.35 An article in the same issue by Yang Siyi discusses a
meeting in February 1945 in which commanders of Chiang Kai-shek
forces met with puppet forces to plan ways of blocking the CCP. Yang
attended the conference.36 Both writers thus contribute to the “correct”
view of the war at the time—that Chiang Kai-shek was far more inter-
ested in fighting the CCP than the Japanese.
All the above articles contain valuable information about the war era.
All contain testimony by participants in wartime events. Yet as personal
statements, all must be viewed in the context in which they were written,
whether as a self-composed life history or through interviews. All the
participants are describing behavior that would make them “enemies
of the people” in Mao’s China and probably led many into difficulty
during the Cultural Revolution, had they not already encountered re-
pression. The role of the articles as personal narratives should be seen in
that light. In more recent years as conditions have changed the Wenshi
ziliao contain a much wider range of topics and are much less CCP fo-
cused. Many of the articles in today’s Wenshi ziliao series, however, are
accounts written as history by younger scholars rather than the personal
memoirs of the early issues of the series.

A P P E A R A N C E O F M E M O I R L I T E R AT U R E

With the “new remembering” of the war, true memoir literature, as op-
posed to confessions and self-criticisms, began finally to appear in the
1980s. As a source of historical “truth,” memoir literature is always prob-
lematic. Human memory is fickle; in wartime situations people remember
their bravery more than their cowardice. Associations with people who
later became famous are often remembered and retold; those with the
obscure or disgraced are forgotten. In France, for instance, people tend
 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR 175

to remember their own heroic support for the resistance more than col-
laboration with the Vichy regime. Henry Rousso has discussed the great
difficulties the French have faced in dealing with the memory of the war
in The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944. The
bitterness and division of the war’s legacy has lasted for decades.37
In China, these problems are compounded. Anyone old enough to
have lived through the war years and literate enough to have been a writer
would also have lived through the traumas of the Maoist era. Earlier re-
memberings might well have included self-criticisms and struggle ses-
sions. In reading the memoir literature of the war period that has emerged
in the reform era, one always has to bear in mind the life experiences of
those involved. As the writer Lu Wenfu, who was born in 1928, told fellow
writers in a 1981 talk: “Many comrades here have been through the Sino-
Japanese War, the War of Liberation, the Three Great Transformations
[collectivization of agriculture, handicrafts, and industry and commerce],
the Antirightist campaign, the Great Leap Forward, the Three Years of
Adjustment, the Cultural Revolution, the fall of the Gang of Four—a
complete history of modern China is stored in our minds. You can’t say
our lives have been impoverished.”38 In trying to “remember” the war
against Japan, writers of memoirs are looking through the prism of many
later-life experiences. Perhaps because of these later experiences, mem-
oirs about the war era were slow to appear. Even with the “new remem-
bering” of the war in the 1980s, production of academic works outpaced
memoir literature.
Memoirs by veterans of the Red Army were perhaps least problem-
atic and among the first to appear. The revival of interest in the war oc-
curred just as many war veterans realized that time was running out if
they wished to write memoirs, a phenomenon in other countries as well.
One of the first such publications was a memoir by an Eighth Route Army
veteran, Yang Guofu, published in Shandong in 1985. Yang had penned
the memoirs shortly before his death in 1982, which was before acknow-
ledgment of Guomindang contributions had been approved. They bear
the imprint of the earlier political line—Chiang Kai-shek’s weak policy
led to the rapid fall of north China, so the CCP had to lead the resis-
tance. In Yang’s view, the Guomindang stopped fighting the Japanese
and started fighting the Communists. Yang’s description of the end of
176 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

the war begins with the Soviet entry on August 8, 1945, and then he cryp-
tically mentions that “also at the same time the American increased at-
tacks on Japanese in the Pacific War.” In other words the work reflects
the accepted view of the war of the early 1980s.39
The fortieth anniversary of the end of the war in 1985 provided
a pretext for publications of collected memoirs. In a volume entitled
Huaxia zhuangge (A robust song of China) a wide range of Communist
Party officials wrote two- to three-page vignettes about their war expe-
riences, a type of writing common in the West and Japan but unusual
in China at that point.40 The same anniversary inspired memoirs by
nine authors who had served in the fi ft h division of the New Fourth
Army.41
The last and most problematic memoirs to appear in the People’s Re-
public of China were those by writers, journalists, and intellectuals, al-
most all of whom had been victims of the Cultural Revolution, which
included many of the writers associated with the National Salvation
Movement. One of the early collections of this type of wartime reflec-
tions was Kangzhan jishi (Memoranda on the war of resistance) published
in Beijing in 1989. This work consisted of very brief accounts (two to three
pages each) by eighty or so intellectuals, including the famous writers
Ba Jin and Bing Xin, as well as several wartime reporters. Many of the
selections had recently appeared in the Beijing journal Qunyan (Popular
tribune). A similar volume published in the United States or Britain would
have seemed unremarkable, yet even in the late 1980s it was part of a new
movement in China.
The compilers make clear that their goal was to inspire the young
people of today’s China. “In the war of resistance, our country’s intel-
lectuals were on the front lines, behind enemy lines, and heading up war
activities in the rear. These essays . . . have great historic value . . . and
will help today’s youth understand the history of the Chinese revolu-
tion.” 42 At the same time, most of the contributors to the collection had
suffered during the Cultural Revolution. By highlighting the contribu-
tions of these intellectuals to the war, the work was part of the rehabili-
tation of this group.
A typical selection is a brief vignette by wartime journalist Feng Yingzi,
describing the bombing of Chongqing on May 3–4, 1939. Although the
 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR 177

war had already lasted two years when the bombing occurred, Feng noted,
Chongqing itself had remained relatively peaceful—hence the great shock
of the attacks. The author described the scene of the bombings and the
mutilated bodies of the victims, but perhaps his strongest memory was
looking down on the huge fire that swept the city into a “sea of flames,”
as he remembered: “Most of the residential buildings in Chongqing were
made of wood and quickly became engulfed. . . . It has been half a cen-
tury since these events occurred. In recent years I have been twice to
Chongqing. It has grown rapidly; the buildings are new; the city district
has continued to expand. . . . As for the wartime destruction, of course
no trace remains. But up to this day I can see every detail before my eyes
of the May 3 and May 4th bombings.” 43 For all of the problems with
memoir literature it can still convey vivid feelings.
The selection of authors was not, of course, random. Most were in-
volved with the Chinese Communist Party or united front organizations
during the war. The memoirs therefore combine the ideas of patriotic
resistance against Japan and working for the party. One contributor, CCP
member Zhang Youyu, describes his underground work. Early in the war,
Zhang wrote for the Shishi xinbao (China times) in Chongqing, a
pro-Guomindang publication associated with Kong Xiangxi, then head
of the Executive Yuan. Zhang left for Hong Kong following the New
Fourth Army Incident when it became too dangerous to remain in the
Nationalist areas. He had refused to write a column supporting the
Guomindang view of the incident. In Hong Kong he joined many other
leftists in working at the Huashang bao. After the Japanese took Hong
Kong, however, Zhang returned to Guilin and eventually worked for Xin-
hua ribao (New China daily) in Chongqing. In the late war years, this
newspaper was the only CCP journal permitted in the GMD areas and
it was rigidly censored. After the war, Zhang remained in Chongqing
until March 1947 when the staff left for Yan’an as the civil war widened.44
It should not seem surprising that someone such as Zhang would wish
to stress his ser vice to the party as well as the nation. However, many
writers, especially those who served in “white areas” during the war, came
under severe attack during the Cultural Revolution. Stressing one’s ser-
vice to the party was perhaps a response to accusations leveled at that
time.
178 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

In the memoir by Lu Huinian, a leader in the women’s movement

during the war, the months spent in Wuhan were recalled as a type of
golden age of national unity when the united front still held. The head-
quarters for this patriotic women’s work, Lu wrote, was the YWCA in
Wuhan, which was headed by a progressive general manager. Editors of
the Funu shenghuo (Life of women) and Kangzhan funu (Women in the
war of resistance) relocated and collaborated with a women’s leader from
the Guomindang. Because of the united front arrangements, Zhou Enlai
was able to establish an office in Wuhan and two public female mem-
bers of the CCP were able to operate openly as well. The author writes
of the many famous people who spoke at the YWCA during those months.
Shi Liang, one of the “Seven Gentlemen” of the National Salvation Move-
ment spoke, as did the writer Guo Moruo.
Perhaps the height of the united front approach was in May 1938 when
Song Meiling (Madame Chiang Kai-shek), convened a women’s confer-
ence at Lushan that was designed to broaden the women’s group estab-
lished by Nanjing at the time of the New Life Movement. Representa-
tives of the Guomindang, CCP, Salvation groups, and other factions
attended. The group had little time as the Japanese closed in on Wuhan,
forcing another retreat. Lu remembers getting out of the city only one
day before the Japanese arrived. “Fift y years have passed by and still I
often think of that tumultuous period of my life.” 45
Qian Jiaju, a key leader of the National Salvation Movement in the
1930s, had escaped arrest in 1936 when Chiang Kai-shek had the Seven
Gentleman incarcerated, taking a position at Guangxi University. His
memoir is entitled “Wenhua cheng Guilin” (Guilin, the culture city). Be-
cause the Guangxi clique retained a political distance from Chiang Kai-
shek, intellectuals in Guilin were permitted greater freedoms than in
Chongqing (at least in regard to criticizing the Guomindang government).
It was that autonomy that had attracted Qian to the city in the first in-
stance. With the outbreak of the war, a number of intellectuals began to
travel to Guilin, some on their way to Chongqing. The latter group in-
cluded Guo Moruo, Zou Taofen, Shi Liang, and Tao Xingzhi. Those who
stayed in Guilin included Li Siguang and Hu Yuzhi. The Salvationist
paper Jiuwang ribao (Salvation daily) moved to Guilin after Guangzhou
fell to the Japanese. Qian also edited a “progressive publication” Zhongguo
 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR 179

nongcun (Chinese village) and worked with Hu Yuzhi on other left ist
journals. It was a busy time, Qian wrote. Qian, it will be recalled, fled to
Hong Kong after the New Fourth Army Incident, but returned to Guilin
after the British colony was seized by Japan. He remained there until he
had to flee the Japanese advance in 1944.46
The brief memoirs in Kangzhan jishi are at first glance unremarkable
for one familiar with such literature on other combatant nations. Mem-
ories of heroic escapes, of traumatic bombing, of contributions to the
war effort, and of danger and excitement are universal in war memo-
ries. Yet their appearance in China in the late 1980s after years of the
Maoist line and the persecution of the Cultural Revolution is remark-
able. Many suggest that the united front brought genuine cooperation
between the CCP and the Guomindang, at least early in the war. This
type of “remembering” was rare before the 1980s.

M E M O I R S B Y WA R T I M E R E P O R T E R S

In 1995, on the fiftieth anniversary of victory over Japan, the People’s Daily
Press (Renmin ribao chuban she) published a collection of brief mem-
oirs by sixty-two reporters who had covered the war entitled Jizhe bixia
de kangri zhanzheng (The writing of reporters in the war of resistance).
As is often the case in publications on the war, the editors specifically
mentioned the value of the collection for the patriotic education of
younger Chinese who had not experienced the sacrifices of the war years.
The memoirs, they noted, would be a valuable lesson and increase love
for the fatherland.47
A quick perusal of the memoirs also reveals the universal human
trait—to remember the famous and forget the obscure. In China, how-
ever, this is exacerbated by the many traumas experienced by intellec-
tuals during the Maoist era. One near obsession of memoir writers has
been to stress their connections with “correct” political figures, partic-
ularly Zhou Enlai, ignoring those who had lost favor or been purged in
the subsequent decades.
One brief memoir in this volume is by Zhang Pei, who joined the CCP
in 1938 and eventually traveled to Yan’an, where he studied at Kangda
180 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

(Resistance University) and wrote for Jiefang ribao (Liberation daily).

Zhang vividly recalls his time in Wuhan in the months before the city
fell to the Japanese. Although he mentions the bombing of the city by
the enemy, his strongest memory he chooses to recall is “the first time I
saw Zhou Enlai.”48 Similarly, Li Tingying, who spent the war in Chongqing
writing for Xinmin bao, recounts in great detail each of his encounters
with Zhou, one of which occurred in the aftermath of the May 3–4, 1939,
bombing of the city. In his remembering the firebombing takes second
place to his recollections of time with Zhou.49 Lu Huinian, a Salvationist
writer and activist who worked in the women’s movement in Wuhan,
wrote of her leaving the city only one day before the Japanese arrived.
Yet she also stressed her ties to Song Qingling (Madame Sun Yat-sen),
and recalled working in Wuhan with Deng Yingchao, widow of Zhou
Enlai.50
Yet sometimes individuals are forgotten as well as remembered. The
collection is opened by the venerable Lu Yi, born in 1911. He was already
well known as a reporter when the war erupted, having covered the Jan-
uary 28 Incident in Shanghai in 1932 for Xinwen bao. Through the in-
troduction of Fan Changjiang, Lu began reporting on the war for the
Dagong bao in October 1937; although he later joined Xinhua ribao. In
1938, he published Huoxian shang de wulu jun (The Fift h Zone Army on
the firing line), a collection of his columns covering this unit and its fa-
mous commanders Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi, leading up to the vic-
tory at Taierzhuang.51 His Qianxian xunli (A visit to the front line) pub-
lished in Hankou in 1938 included coverage of a trip to Yan’an. Lu wrote
detailed stories of interviews with three key Communist leaders: Mao
Zedong, Peng Dehuai, and Zhou Enlai. He then recalled meeting three
others: Zhang Guotao (soon to defect); Xiang Ying (who would be killed
in the New Fourth Army Incident in 1941 and blamed for the debacle);
and Li Fuqun (who survived to become an economic planner in the
PRC).52
In the 1995 memoir Lu recounts vividly his meetings with Mao, Zhou
Enlai, and Zhu De, noting that Mao personally told him not to be dis-
couraged by recent defeats. Missing from his memories are Zhang Guotao,
Xiang Ying, and Li Fuqun, but Lu dwells on his contact with Deng
Xiaoping, who was political commissar of the 129th division of the Eighth
 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR 181

Route Army. Indeed, his encounters with Deng are portrayed as having
been especially warm. Lu even mentions meeting Deng’s wife, Zhuo Lin,
who kept a very low profi le in later years. Lu closes his twenty-two-page
memoir with recollections of his coverage of Taierzhuang and his en-
counters with Generals Li Zongren and Bai Chongxi. Finally he recalls
traveling with fellow journalist and friend Fan Changjiang.53 Lu’s memoir
reveals several features common to such literature. Lu “remembers” his
association with the winners—Zhou Enlai, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping.
Others, especially the disgraced, are forgotten.
Much as in France, people who lived under enemy occupation tended
to remember heroic acts of resistance rather than day-to-day collabora-
tion. In China, those who stayed in the “solitary island” of Shanghai felt
pressure to emphasize their heroic resistance since they did not leave for
the interior. Gu Xueyong was one of the reporters who stayed in Shanghai
until after Pearl Harbor. He described the bombings and assassinations
of pro-resistance activists by the special ser vices of the Wang Jingwei
regime and the Japanese. Gu remembered that reporters affiliated with
the Guomindang sought to avoid difficulties and would not cover con-
ditions in the occupied zone, so he decided to take on the task. Gu trav-
eled to Hongkou, the Japanese portion of the International Settlement,
which Japanese forces directly controlled. He painted a bleak picture of
life there under the shadow of the Japanese army with the local popula-
tion lacking adequate food and clothing. Following this, he visited oc-
cupied Suzhou, Wuxi, and Changzhou, publishing newspaper articles
about the grim conditions and providing the information to the inter-
national press. Gu’s brief memoir therefore suggested that he faced great
personal danger in his effort to expose the cruelty of Japanese occupa-
tion policies. In four years of the gudao period in Shanghai, nearly thirty
newspaper workers gave their lives heroically, he concluded.54
For all the emphasis in today’s China on Japanese atrocities, particu-
larly the “Rape of Nanjing,” little on this appears in the volume because
of the age and political profiles of the writers. Because half a century had
passed between the time of the Nanjing incident and the appearance of
most memoir collections in China, few of the journalists who had cov-
ered it remained alive. The section of the memoirs labeled “Nanwang
xuezhai” (A debt of blood difficult to forget) is relatively thin with only
182 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

three selections. In a memoir that specifically addresses the Nanjing Mas-

sacre, Jin Guangqun, who graduated from Fudan University with a spe-
cialty in journalism and became a well-known writer after 1949, provided
an extensive summary of the Nanjing Massacre, and stated that there
were three hundred thousand victims. Yet Jin’s account is not based on
firsthand coverage of 1937–1938, but rather on the war crimes trials in
the postwar period. In 1946, he covered the trials in Nanjing and men-
tions interviewing witnesses.55 Yu Zhenji worked in Shanghai as a re-
porter in the “solitary island” era (1938–1941) before leaving for Chongqing
after Pearl Harbor. He too covered the postwar trials of Chinese trai-
tors. Qian Xinbo was in middle school in Jiading (now part of Shanghai)
when war erupted. He was a reporter at the trials in Nanjing and the
trial of Chen Gongbo, which was held in Suzhou.56 The volume there-
fore lacks the eyewitness accounts by reporters who had actually been
in Nanjing when the massacre occurred.
Some of the writers incorporate the new approach to the war in their
“memoir” even though this was not something they would have actu-
ally have known during the conflict itself. Feng Yingzi, who contributed
a much longer piece than in the selection in the 1989 Kangzhan jishi cited
above, described his vivid memory of the bombing of Chongqing. Yet
Feng’s 1995 memoir also included the current “numbers game” approach
that has come to dominate so much of the current writing on the war.
He noted specifically that Japan bombed Chongqing 218 times, dropping
21,593 bombs, and wounding and killing 25,889 people.57 The memoir thus
incorporates the current approach to war memory followed in China.

I M PAC T O F T H E C U LT U R A L R E V O L U T I O N O N WA R M E M O R Y

The Cultural Revolution was particularly traumatic for intellectuals and

writers, including many who wrote for People’s Daily volume. Ding Yilan
was a native of Fuzhou who was studying in Tianjin at the time of De-
cember 9th Movement. Motivated to join the Communist resistance, she
left for Yan’an, where she studied for a year before traveling to the Jin-
Cha-Ji base area. In her brief memoir, she particularly recalls covering
the vicious Japanese “mopping up” campaign of 1942. Yet that was also
 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR 183

the year of her marriage to Deng Tuo, who went on to become a promi-
nent journalist and intellectual in the People’s Republic and one of the
most famous victims of the Cultural Revolution. Deng Tuo would commit
suicide on May 17, 1966, just a few days after being denounced in the press
by Jiang Qing (Madame Mao) and Yao Wenyuan. He would be posthu-
mously rehabilitated in 1979.58
Each selection in this collection opens with a brief biography of the
participant, but little reference is made to problems he or she encountered
during the Cultural Revolution. Yet for someone such as Ding Yilan, she
can recount her marriage to Deng, fully aware that her fellow contribu-
tors and readers know well what fate had in store for him. The experi-
ences of the Cultural Revolution provided a framework in which Ding
Yilan and others remember their war experience.
Several contributors also refer to Fan Changjiang, who had been con-
sidered China’s most famous war correspondent. Indeed one of the con-
tributors (Fang Meng) authored a biography of him. Fan had worked for
some of the most prominent newspapers in China before the war, in-
cluding the Chen bao in Beiping and Dagong bao in Tianjin. After he
left the Dagong bao, he and Hu Yuzhi, a prominent member of the Sal-
vationist movement and CCP member, established the Guoji xinwen she
(the International News Agency) in Changsha in October 1938. They re-
located to Guilin in 1939. Many of the journalists contributing memoirs
to the 1995 volume had worked with Fan in Guilin, often beginning their
careers there. The journey from the Dagong bao to the International News
Agency was also a journey toward the Communist Party, which Fan
joined in May 1939 in Chongqing. After the New Fourth Army Incident
in early 1941, an order for Fan’s arrest was issued by the Guomindang,
so he fled to Hong Kong, and after Pearl Harbor to Communist base
areas. Following the Communist Revolution, he was a key leader in both
the Jiefang ribao and the Renmin ribao. He was also the son-in-law of
Shen Junru, one of the major figures in the National Salvation Movement.
Because of these connections, many younger writers and journalists
had very strong personal connections with Fan.59
Fan, of course, became a prominent victim of the Cultural Revolution,
committing suicide on October 23, 1970, following his denunciation as
a “capitalist roader.” For many of Fan’s protégés who survived, their
184 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

memory of the war and their recounting of their ties to Fan are made
through the lens of those later troubles. Strong memories of Fan, for
instance, emerge particularly in the memoir of Yu You, who worked
with the International News Agency.60 A close reading of their accounts
shows use of the language of rehabilitation that became standard for re-
membering victims of the Maoist era whose earlier political verdicts had
been reversed.
Yu You was also close to Hu Yuzhi and published a biography of Hu
in 1993. In a brief memoir of his own, Yu You describes their flight from
Guomindang areas following the New Fourth Army Incident. While Fan
left for Hong Kong, Hu left for Singapore, where he spent most of the
war. During the Cultural Revolution, Hu was targeted by the Red Guards
and forced to write a long self-criticism. Unlike Fan Changjiang, how-
ever, he survived and resumed a public career in 1972. He was part of
the group that received President Richard Nixon. But Hu Yuzhi passed
away in 1986, so his memoir is not included in the 1989 compilation.61
Similarly, Jin Zhonghua, the Salvationist writer whose war coverage led
off most issues of Kangzhan sanri kan, is also missing from the volume.
He died on April 3, 1968, a victim of persecution during the Cultural Rev-
olution. But, as with Hu, many of the reporters in this volume had gotten
their start working with these senior journalists.62
The ghosts of Fan and Jin, like those of Deng Tuo and others, hang
over the memoirs of the old war time reporters, although the editors
seldom detail the sufferings of the participants. One exception was Wang
Fuqing, a 1944 graduate in economics from Chongqing University, who
switched to journalism following his graduation. Wang was invited to
Beijing by Fan Changjiang in 1950, where he worked in the “Resist
America, Aid Korea,” campaign. In May 1958 Wang was sent down for
reform at a labor camp and not rehabilitated for twenty years. Finally in
1978, his case was reversed and he returned to Beijing. Wang’s memoir
primarily deals with the American aviation effort in China, but his per-
secution and connections with Fan are made clear.63
Although the Jizhe bixia de kangri zhanzheng volume is a collection
of memoirs about the war of resistance against Japan, in many ways it
could be viewed instead as part of the literature of rehabilitation of the
victims of the Cultural Revolution. Li Zhuang, a well-known journalist
 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR 185

who began his career as a reporter in 1938 and joined the CCP in 1940,
is listed as the adviser to the project. And Li contributes a brief memoir
primarily recalling his reportage on the Eighth Route Army. But Li
Zhuang had been mentored by Deng Tuo and Fan Changjiang at the
Renmin ribao (People’s daily) in the 1950s and later served as editor. So
his prominence in the collection is a sign of both his rehabilitation and
that of Deng and Fan.64

R E D V E R S U S W H I T E ZO N E S

Most Chinese writers and intellectuals were victimized by the Cultural

Revolution, so in one sense all were survivors. Yet here again, history
was selective. Those who had served in “white” areas during the war,
working under grave danger as CCP operatives, often suffered more
harshly during the Cultural Revolution than those who spent the entire
period in the base areas did. The Red Guards often assumed that those
who were in “white” areas were really spies or collaborators, particularly
if their patron, such as Fan Changjiang, had already been targeted.65
Association with Allied forces, particularly the United States, was even
worse. One contributor, Deng Shusheng, served as an interpreter with
Chinese forces in northern Burma and worked closely with the Amer-
ican military. His biography mentions that he was attacked as a rightist
in 1957, but it does not state specifically why. In a collection of essays pub-
lished in 1993, Deng wrote that his career as a journalist, translator, and
editor spanned nearly fift y years, beginning with his first report on the
Burma campaign published in August 1944. Of that time, however, he
noted that more than ten years were spent in agriculture doing reform
through labor, three after being labeled as a rightist in 1957, and seven
because of the Cultural Revolution. In the reform era, he was able to re-
sume a very active publishing career as a specialist on the United States.66
Journalists who spent the war entirely in the “red” areas perhaps had
an easier time during the Cultural Revolution years, yet their war legacy
faces a new threat. In the reform era, when the “new remembering” of
the war now celebrates the achievements of Guomindang forces, their
“redness” is being devaluated. The collection of memoirs reveals that
186 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

many do not accept the new line. One such case is Tian Fang, a Zhe-
jiang native who went to Yan’an, joined the CCP in 1942, wrote for Jie-
fang ribao, and continued as a writer after the Communist Revolution.
Tian opens his memoir with the New Fourth Army Incident and includes
a long diatribe against Guomindang treachery.67 Tian Fang and Fang
Meng were among the coeditors of another volume published to cele-
brate a fiftieth anniversary; this was the anniversary of Mao’s talk of May
23, 1942, at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art. A collection pri-
marily of reprints from articles published in Yan’an, this volume might
be read as a critique of contemporary policy in China.68
In sum, memoirs by wartime reporters that have appeared in recent
years are burdened with the baggage of the Maoist and reform eras. They
perhaps reveal as much about the anti-rightist campaigns, the Cultural
Revolution, or reform policies as about events of the war itself.

REPRINTS OF DIA SPOR A WRITINGS

Not all wartime reporters and writers stayed in mainland China after
1949. Many left for Taiwan, Hong Kong, or overseas. Freed from the re-
straints of Maoist China, many of these writers published memoirs about
the war years. Without the later traumas associated with mainland mem-
oirs, many of these works offer a vivid account of the war experience. A
number of these selections have now been reprinted in China as part of
the “new remembering” of the war.69
One of the most prolific writers was Xie Bingying, who was born in
1906 and became well known both as a woman writer and active par-
ticipant in revolutionary activity in the late 1920s. Among numerous
books and articles she published were two volumes of autobiography. The
first, published in Shanghai in 1936, detailed her life through the Northern
Expedition. The second published in Hankou in 1946, carried the story
through the opening of the war against Japan.70
Xie herself left the mainland for Taiwan in 1948, where the two vol-
umes appeared in a slightly abridged version as Nubing zizhuan (A woman
soldier’s own story). In 1974 she moved to San Francisco, where she died
in 2000. An English version of this work appeared in 2001, published
 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR 187

by Columbia University Press.71 Yet because of restrictions on publica-

tion in China, Xie’s works were largely unknown in the People’s Republic
until the relaxation of the 1980s. An edition of Nubing zizhuan was pub-
lished in Chengdu in 1985 and in Beijing in 1994. Collections of essays
and others of her writings have now been widely published in China.
As such Xie’s writings are now part of the “recovered memory” of the
war in China.72
Someone reading A Woman Soldier’s Own Story in China in the late
1980s would find it jarringly at odds with most of the literature published
on the war. Xie was an accomplished writer, sympathetic to the oppressed,
especially women, and capable of revealing intense nationalistic feeling.
Her first military activity occurred when she fought as a young radical
during the Northern Expedition. Later, during the 1932 fighting at
Shanghai, she worked to help Cai Tingkai and the Nineteenth Route
Army. Most of her fellow writers, intellectuals of the era who shared sim-
ilar experiences, went on to become active supporters of the CCP. Xie,
by her own admission, was too much of a free spirit, a personal rebel, to
accept the discipline of the CCP (or Guomindang for that matter). In-
deed her story begins with her escaping from an arranged marriage and
fleeing to Shanghai to begin a bohemian lifestyle. Although Xie is some-
what vague, it seems clear from the manuscript that she broke with her
leftist comrades, hence her life in exile in Taiwan and America. Yet in
1937 she enlisted as a military nurse working on the front lines—a pa-
triot without the party. Most PRC literature on the war had the party as
the core of the resistance.
A second unusual feature of A Woman Soldier’s Own Story is her re-
lationship with the Japa nese. Although involved in firsthand fighting
with the Japanese in 1932 and 1937, she also made two extended trips to
Japan in the 1930s to study Japa nese language and Western literature
(which was more widely translated into Japanese than Chinese). Her first
trip brought her to Japan just as the Japanese seized Manchuria. She de-
scribes vividly the humiliation she and her fellow students felt. Her second
trip in 1935 ended disastrously when she was arrested by the Japanese
for being unwilling to honor a visit by Puyi, the “emperor” of Manchukuo.
She later turned the experience into a successful book. Yet Xie never
sees the Japanese as simply “the enemy.” Her desire to learn the Japanese
188 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

language in Japan is evidence enough for that. For instance, she de-
scribes the kindness of her literature professor at Waseda and his wife,
noting that he treated Chinese students with special courtesy.
Xie’s view of the Japanese and Japan was simply too complex, too at
odds with the “patriotic Nationalist narrative” to be acceptable to many.
Indeed she noted that on returning to Shanghai after being released in
Japan, she had to leave the city quickly. “But Shanghai at that time was
not a place I could stay long. A group of people there did not sympa-
thize with my mishap [of being arrested in Japan], did not understand
that I was in jail for my patriotism and looked at me as if I were an enemy
on the same level as the Japanese militarists.”73 There is a complexity in
her story that is simply missing in contemporary memoir literature pub-
lished in China where the good–evil, Chinese–Japanese, patriot–collab-
orator lines are drawn so rigidly.
Xie’s memoirs give us a dramatic picture of life in wartime. She de-
scribes mobilizing other women to form a Hunan Women’s War Ser-
vice Corps and heading to Jiading, near Shanghai, to assist as nurses in
treating the wounded. Her picture of the war, with everything soaked
in blood (food, shoes, clothing) while Japanese bombs rained down, is
harrowing. There are other surprises. As noted earlier, Xie was shocked
at how poorly informed Chinese peasants were about the war and the
nation. “Civilians in the war zone had not organized themselves to re-
sist. Some of them on the ridge outside the city even asked us, ‘What
country are you from?’ Perhaps they had simply never received any in-
formation from the outside world. They knew nothing about the war
or resistance or why we were fighting the Japanese.”74 Xie’s description
of the retreat from Jiading and eventual reorga nization in Wuhan is
revealing. Xie’s memoirs are everything that so many Chinese publica-
tions on the war are not—vivid, nuanced, personal—politics is not in
command.
Xie authored many daily reports during the war published in essay,
article, and book form. In 1981 some of these were gathered and pub-
lished in Taiwan as Kangzhan riji (A diary of the war of resistance). This
volume was an amalgamation of several sources, including reports pub-
lished by the author in Hankou (Wuhan) in 1938. She had actually lost all
copies of this work when a friend found them in the Hoover Institution
 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR 189

Library at Stanford University. The work also contained her reporting

on the Chinese victory at Taierzhuang and a diary from the later part
of the war. This source has been partially reprinted in some of the edi-
tions of collected works in China, enabling PRC readers to learn from it
as well.75
The first section of the reprint covered some of the same ground as A
Woman Soldier’s Own Story, the daily reports from September 14 to
November 30, 1937. It opens as she and her fellow women volunteers
depart Changsha for the front near Shanghai to aid the troops. The feel
of this work is different, however. Although works published during
the war had to be careful regarding military matters, the Kangzhan riji
selections have a more immediate, intense impact on the reader. When
published in July 1938, the outcome of the confl ict was still in doubt;
Xie is attempting to rally Chinese to resistance. A Woman Soldier’s
Own Story, of course, was originally published in 1946, when victory
had been won.
Interesting as Xie’s accounts are, it should be remembered that when
the war erupted she was already an accomplished and popular writer,
one who had turned dramatic wartime accounts from earlier battles into
best-selling publications. As Charles Laughlin noted in his study of Chi-
nese reportage, “The image of the war correspondent as a sometimes ro-
manticized icon somewhere between the civilian and the soldier” was
popularized in China with “Xie Bingying’s widely read account of her
experiences as a soldier in the Northern Expedition.” 76 Chang-tai Hung,
in his study War and Popular Culture, refers to Xie as a “modern-day
Hua Mulan.” 77
Xie’s memoirs also raise another issue. In China, anyone, such as Xie,
literate enough to write a wartime diary considered himself or herself
to be and was seen by others as an “intellectual” (zhishi fenzi). Indeed,
in Mao’s China, such individuals were given that class label. As such they
did not see themselves as “ordinary people” but as those with both spe-
cial opportunity and a special obligation to the nation. Even leftist in-
tellectuals inherited the Confucian ideal that intellectuals had a great
moral responsibility. Hence, the common term used for leftist intellec-
tual movement to resist Japan was “national salvation” (jiuguo). Overall,
Xie’s works were designed to foster resistance. Although more nuanced
190 RECOVERING THE MEMORY OF THE WAR

than most Chinese publications on the war, Xie’s works still largely fit
the “patriotic nationalist narrative,” hence their new success in China.
As China draws on the legacy of the war to promote contemporary
Nationalism, some elements are more useful than others. Much of the
wartime reporting that stressed “heroic resistance” fits into the current
Nationalist narrative. Memoir literature has played a much smaller role.
The long delay between the end of the war and the appearance of mem-
oirs, particularly by intellectuals, meant that many did not survive to
record their thoughts.
Many voices have also been silenced by time and political restraints.
Yet Rana Mitter has pointed to one of the reasons why memoir litera-
ture does not serve present needs. “The Sino-Japanese War has the ad-
vantage of being the war, and more widely the trauma, that was most
indisputably, among the many that China endured in the twentieth cen-
tury, not the fault of Chinese.” 78 Yet when journalists who wrote during
the war “remember” the war today, they do so through the lens of those
later traumas—the anti-rightist campaigns and especially the Cultural
Revolution—all a product of Chinese actions. Today, it is difficult to read
the war reportage of Fan Changjiang, the many columns penned by Jin
Zhonghua, or wartime works by Zhang Naiqi, among others, without
recalling the later traumas they suffered at the hands of their fellow coun-
trymen. A study of the uses of the historical legacy of wartime journal-
ists reveals the limits of using the past to serve the present.