The history of the 20th century will record the two tragedies of mankind with the heaviest pen and ink: the atrocities of fascism and the catastrophe of the "Cultural Revolution".Those who have personally experienced these two catastrophes are trying to forget it, but they cannot forget it.Writers and historians have different recording methods: historians focus on the historical facts of disasters; writers focus on the hearts of victims.The author of this book tries to present the truth of that unprecedented catastrophe with the authentic records of the spiritual journey of a hundred ordinary Chinese in the center of the "Cultural Revolution".

In the endless historical time, ten years is but a blink of an eye.But for a generation of Chinese people, it is like a whole century.Today, there is hardly a person over the age of thirty whose fate is not dominated by its viciousness.During these ten years, the rich ancient civilization miraculously disappeared, and the human world staged mutual killings in the primitive savage age; the good and the beautiful went underground, and the ugliness and evil vented wantonly; Life is swallowed.No matter who is under the violent wave or who stirs it, they are all its victims.Even the most mature characters are subjected to its mandatory reshaping.The strong turn into timidity, the honest turn into deceit, the quiet turn into madness, and the cheerful turn into gloomy.Human nature, humanity, human rights, human dignity, human value, all the most noble elements of human beings are the contents that it tramples on openly.Although this is not a war of great violence, no matter how tragic a war is, it is difficult to achieve such cruelty-the massacre of souls.If Fascist atrocities left countless bloody corpses, what the "Cultural Revolution" catastrophe left behind are countless invisible, traumatized souls.

Although the disaster is over, who is responsible for these innocent victims?Regardless of the living or the dead, the best way to repay them is to delve into the root cause of this disaster and eradicate the soil that cultivated the disaster.A generation that paid such a heavy price deserves a real guarantee that the same mistakes will not be repeated.This guarantee comes first from a thorough understanding.No matter how absurd and frenzied Cai Dai once fell into, once he wakes up, it is a big step forward.Each generation lives and dies for the next generation.If the people of future generations are thus vigilant and never repeat the suffering of our generation, we will be the most valuable generation to live in spite of great misfortune.

I have often felt sadly that our people are too forgetful. The "Cultural Revolution" was only ten years old, and it is rarely mentioned again.Where are those shadows that once hung over everyone's faces now?Perhaps due to the high pressure of feudal politics for thousands of years, ordinary people are used to dealing with suffering by erasing their memories.However, such optimism may not necessarily be a nation's strengths, it may be a kind of lovely ignorance.The fault of history was originally a rare wealth, and if you lose this wealth, you will fall into a new blindness.

In writing this book, I have made new discoveries. Those who told me about their experience of the "Cultural Revolution" were all strangers to me.They heard that I wanted to record the experience of the "Cultural Revolution" for them, and eagerly tried to find me.This sense of urgency kept hitting me violently.There is only one request I have recorded, which is to be willing to reveal the secret in my heart to me.It is not easy for me to realize this idea.Based on my life experience, everyone has a world in his heart that is absolutely his own and will never be shown to others; deeper pain can only be buried deeper.But when these people confided to me the secrets that were pressed in their hearts through tears, I realized that the heaviest thing in the world is the human heart.But they can't hold back the pain and are eager to tear down the fence of their hearts. They can't be silent forever, and they won't be silent forever.This is to seek a kind of escape, a kind of comfort, a kind of vent, a kind of revenge, and even a real understanding.After losing mutual trust in that mutual murder, I am very pleased to have such unguarded and unreserved trust.

In order to protect the privacy of these people and to keep them from being entangled in possible troubles, this book has to hide all the names of places and people involved.But record their dictation truthfully, without any imitation or fiction.I just want to let readers know that some people in the world have survived the "Cultural Revolution" in one way or another until today;They are not characters created by novelists, but real people created by the life of the "Cultural Revolution". I have always wondered, where did the perpetrators hide after that disaster?Many perpetrators in the fascist chaos, Germans or Japanese, committed suicide because they couldn't resist the guilt from the bottom of their hearts after the incident.Could it be that the perpetrators of the "Cultural Revolution" lived as if nothing had happened, without a revived conscience to torture them?The nerves of our nation are so hardened that it makes me feel cold.But this time, I was fortunate enough to hear some unease of conscience, the heavy regret I had been waiting for.This is the voiceless sound of the ice of evil turning into the spring water of good.I learned from it that the tragedy of the "Cultural Revolution" was not only caused by distant historical culture and direct social politics.The weaknesses of human nature, such as jealousy, cowardice, ego, vanity, and even the advantages of human nature, such as bravery, loyalty, and sincerity, are all mobilized and become a terrible driving force.It made me more sure that once politics leaves humanity, the recurrence of social tragedies is inevitable.

The "Cultural Revolution" is the general outbreak of our political, cultural, and national madness. It will not happen overnight; and the era is not cut off because of the end of a certain event. Everything still needs courage and more time, and perhaps only future generations can complete it.Therefore, this book does not extravagantly hope to draw any clever conclusions for the readers, but only wants to let these real facts speak for itself, which will arouse deeper thinking when reviewing the pictures of the minds of those who experienced the "Cultural Revolution".One cannot get close to the truthful answer without a layer of deeper and deeper thinking.History without answers is never peaceful.

Although I try to use the different experiences of a hundred people to reflect as much as possible the extremely complex panorama of the catastrophe of the whole society after ten years, it is actually difficult to do so; The generalization of it is beyond the reach of any individual.What I try to do is to make a unique selection of spiritual experience among the people I can get in touch with.As for the uniqueness of the experience itself, I don't need to look for it.In the face of extremely powerful social destructive power, all kinds of miracles of fate will appear, and even the boldest imagination will pale in comparison.But I don't want to collect all kinds of spectacle of suffering, I just want to seek the truth of the hearts of the victims.I intend to record the experience of ordinary people, because only the reality of the bottom-level people is the reality of the essence of life.Only by cherishing every nameless grass and every green life can we tightly embrace the entire grassland and deeply feel its spiritual temperament, its amazing endurance, its desire to survive, and its unremitting pursuit of beauty. Pursuit, its deep worries, and its sincerity towards the earth that never doubts, akin to a fool.

I believe that the victims of the "Cultural Revolution" can feel this kind of thing from this book to gain peace of mind; the creators of the "Cultural Revolution" will be reminded of human conscience and cause lifelong anxiety.I am forever grateful to the strangers who once again felt the pain of their souls by pouring out their hearts to me for this book.They are with me in this sacred work of remembering the past and revealing the future. written in 1986