One of the most remarkable people I have ever met is Youqin Wang, a professor of Chinese in the United States. She has dedicated her life to researching and documenting the Cultural Revolution: that spasm of violence that took place in China during the last ten years of Mao Zedong’s life: 1966 to 1976. Many people, including victims, want to sweep this period under the rug. It is too painful, too awful, to think about. It is painful and awful for Youqin Wang, too — but she regards the documenting of the Cultural Revolution as necessary, and she made it her life’s work.

For one thing, she thinks that victims ought to be remembered.

This month, a new book by Youqin Wang appears: Victims of the Cultural Revolution: Testimonies of China’s Tragedy. Over the years, she has interviewed approximately 1,000 people.

In 2001, I wrote about Youqin Wang and her work for The Weekly Standard: here. In recent days, I have talked with her again — by e-mail and phone.

Asked about her beginnings, she says,

I was born in 1952 in Suzhou, a 2,500-year-old city near Shanghai. I grew up in Beijing. In 1965, at the age of 13, I got into the tenth grade of a famous high school: the girls’ school attached to Beijing Teachers’ University. The school is one mile from Tiananmen Square and the headquarters of the Party. I got into the school through exams.

It was a bad period to be in school. That is an understatement in the extreme. Says Youqin Wang,

My high-school life was horrible and bloody. On August 5, 1966, the Red Guard students beat to death our principal, a 50-year-old woman named “Bian.” They beat her to death on campus. . . .

In 1968, four teachers committed suicide after they were insulted and tortured.

Youqin Wang further says,

On August 18, 1966, Mao met 1 million Red Guards in Tiananmen Square. Song Binbin, the head of the Red Guards at my high school, presented to Mao the Red Guard armband. Her father was Song Renqiong, a leading official in the Party.

The violence escalated and spread to the whole country. In the summer of 1966, thousands of people in Beijing alone were killed by the Red Guards.

Youqin Wang herself was labeled a “white expert student.” She was “expert” because she had skipped grades and was younger than others in her class. As for “white,” it did not refer to skin color. It meant “counterrevolutionary.” “Red” referred to that which was properly Communist and good.

Both of Youqin’s parents were professors at a small engineering college. Her father taught mechanical engineering, and her mother taught physics. They had three daughters. Youqin is the oldest. Her two sisters are now engineering professors in the United States.

“My parents were attacked by their students,” says Youqin. “They cut off my father’s hair and came to our home to destroy books and music records.” In 1970, the girls’ father was sentenced to nine years in prison as a “counterrevolutionary.”

“At that time,” says Youqin Wang, “I started to study mathematics. Only in this way could I get calm for my mind. I learned calculus.”

Soon, however, Youqin was sent to the countryside for physical labor, as was done to a great many Chinese. Youqin was sent to a farm 3,000 miles from Beijing. She and her fellow laborers cut down tropical forest and planted rubber trees. Youqin did labor of this sort for six years.

Mao at last died in 1976. His successor, Deng Xiaoping, loosened the government’s grip around the country’s neck.

Says Youqin Wang,

Deng Xiaoping restored the college entrance exams that had been abolished eleven years before. Thanks to the exams, I won admission to Beijing University. Because I got the highest scores, my name and picture were on the front pages of newspapers.

In 1979, her father was released from prison — two weeks before his nine-year sentence was up.

Two of the biggest figures in Youqin Wang’s life were Anne Frank and Alexander Solzhenitsyn. I will now quote from the piece I wrote in 2001:

Dr. Wang first felt her “calling” — no other word seems as appropriate — years ago, when she was a teenager. Even as the Cultural Revolution was in progress, she read The Diary of Anne Frank, a book that inspired her to record what was happening around her. It was impermissible to speak of the daily horrors; so she confided what she saw and heard to a diary, addressing it as “Kitty,” as Anne had. But unlike Anne, she destroyed her pages shortly after she had written them. You could be killed for what you said in your diary; many were.

And the Russian author?

While a student at Beijing University, Youqin Wang found Solzhenitsyn, a discovery that set the course of her life. She read Cancer Ward, a book that seemed to be speaking directly to her, telling the story of her own country. Even the smallest details seemed right. She was so excited that she could not sleep. Then she managed to get a hold of The Gulag Archipelago, of which there were very few copies in China. Hers came from a contact in the English department. When she read it, she realized she was bound to do something similar.

“I had the idea that I shouldn’t waste my life,” she says. “I had to make it useful.”

From Beijing University, Youqin Wang earned a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree. From the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, she earned a Ph.D. All of these degrees are in Chinese — the language and the literature. Youqin Wang has taught Chinese for many years. But the work of her heart, you could say, has been as chronicler of the Cultural Revolution.

It was in 1988 that she came to America. She taught at Stanford University and the University of Chicago. She published a great deal about the Cultural Revolution. In 2001, she wrote an article titled “Student Attacks Against Teachers: The Revolution of 1966.” The facts are stark.

As I’ve noted, Youqin Wang has interviewed a thousand people. Some people — many — are reluctant to talk to her. They want to suppress the whole thing. Alternatively, they fear reprisals.

“They are scared,” says Youqin Wang. Recently, a woman in Beijing, age 72, agreed to talk to her. The woman’s father was killed in the Cultural Revolution. She hesitated for a month, says Youqin Wang, and then backed out. The woman told a mutual friend, “I will never talk with Youqin Wang, ever.” She was simply scared.

Others are bolder, and help Youqin Wang with her work — help her with money (which she sorely needs), logistics, etc. They also give her moral support. Chinese people, says Youqin Wang, were encouraged by the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize, which went to three recipients, one of which was the Memorial society, in Russia.

The Kremlin has banned Memorial. The purpose of the society was two-fold: to discover and tell the truth about the past — the bloody, murderous past — and to promote democracy in the present. Youqin Wang and her supporters have an obvious kinship with Memorial.

Needless to say, Youqin Wang is banned in China. But her books and articles are circulated in secret. As there was samizdat literature (underground literature) in the Soviet Union, so there is in China.

Does Youqin Wang ever get depressed in her work? Yes. “But,” she says, “I know that if I don’t do the work, I will be more depressed.” She is a brave and tenacious lady, performing a service to individuals, to her native country, and to history.