Memory and Commemoration: the Chinese Search for a Livable Past

History has been wrenched out of the past throughout twentieth-century China. To compensate for the stifling of personal memory, China has gone through a period of loud, official commemorations and spectacles. Historical memory did riot fare well in the midst of mass action and dramatic commemorations. On May 12, 1989, the vision of historic commemoration was explicitly proclaimed at a "democracy salon" held on the campus of Beijing University. Young and middle-aged intellectuals alike faced a grim reality disrobed of illusions about the power of historic commemorations. At the Sleeping Buddha Temple conference, especially, there was a noticeable effort to take a longer view of the problem of Chinese intellectuals. Many more had suffered when intellectuals became labeled members of the "stinking ninth" category during the Cultural Revolution. The question about the Cultural Revolution was not the only one to be met with silence around the conference table. Another concerned the intellectuals' historical memory more directly.