Michael Schoenhals' Archival Collection Donated to Lund University Library

tuffy05

16 NOVEMBER, 2015
Memories of a cultural revolution

For many years, Professor of Chinese Michael Schoenhals compiled a substantial archive containing material from the Cultural Revolution in China. He is now donating this unique collection to the Lund University Library.



Michael Schoenhals


The Cultural Revolution took place from 1966 to 1976 – a period about which not much has been said for a long time in China. Michael Schoenhals began studying Chinese in 1972 and came to China as a student in 1975, that is, when the Cultural Revolution was still active.

“I didn’t go to China because I was interested in politics – at the time I was more interested in classical Chinese subjects such as philosophy and poetry. But one year at Fudan University in Shanghai made an impression on me”, says Michael Schoenhals.

His interest continued, and when he was about to begin his doctoral studies in the mid-80s, he decided to focus on the Cultural Revolution, and began to study the subject more closely and gather materials. Although the thesis ended up being about the disastrous so-called Great Leap Forward, it was partially based on material from the Cultural Revolution. He continued his career with postdoctoral positions at Berkeley and Harvard.

“At Harvard I got to know a group of researchers who intended to specifically study the Cultural Revolution, and in 1991 I was invited to participate in a major project funded by the Henry Luce Foundation. At the same time, China began to open up to the West, and the economy became more market-oriented with consequences that were not necessarily possible to comprehend or predict”, says Michael Schoenhals.

In 1992, flea markets were no longer banned in China, and people were permitted to start selling things like old publications, without interference from the censorship authorities.

“People would often simply classify the items as ‘artefacts’ rather than texts and, in doing so, they were given the green light, so to speak. And what did people own that they no longer wanted? Material from the Cultural Revolution”, says Michael Schoenhals, who at this point began to visit flea markets and second hand stores to collect material.

It could be anything from stencilled writings from revolutionary student groups, material from Red Guard groups, diaries, flyers, pamphlets from rallies, posters, to notes from public trials, and a whole lot of photos. Together they constitute a valuable material for research on the Cultural Revolution and, over the years, Michael Schoenhals continued purchasing materials until he had a unique collection.

“The purpose of gathering the material was to write good history”, says Michael Schoenhals, who along with his colleague at Harvard has written the standard work Mao’s Last Revolution which has been translated into Chinese, Japanese, French and Spanish.

Over the last few years, however, his interest has somewhat fizzled, and when Michael Schoenhals thought about what to do with his collection, he contacted the Lund University Library, which turned out to be interested in taking over the archive. The library is now applying for funding to be able to employ an archivist proficient in Chinese who can catalogue the archive so that it becomes available to researchers and other interested parties.

“There is no collection as extensive as this one outside China. A lot of the material, such as diaries and some photos, consists of a single copy. As for other materials, such as stencils, there are probably no other preserved copies”, says Michael Schoenhals, who says that the material will be much more accessible to the research community than the material that can be found in China.

The more rare materials include public apologies, which became common during the political upheavals of the Cultural Revolution. Michael Schoenhals tells about a woman whose handwritten confessions of well over a thousand pages is one long rejection of herself and everything she has done; how she misinterpreted the great leader’s message – for Mao was of course always right.

Today the Cultural Revolution remains a controversial period in Chinese history. In recent years, however, history departments at some of China’s top universities have started to offer freestanding courses on the subject, including Fudan University in Shanghai and Tsinghua University in Beijing, with which LU has been in close contact for a long time.

“There are many junior researchers who are interested in the ‘everyday history’ of the Cultural Revolution, focusing on how ordinary people lived in and experienced the period”, says Michael Schoenhals.



Text and photo: Jonas Andersson

http://www.lum.lu.se/english/memories-of-a-cultural-revolution/