The Great Wall of Confinement: The Chinese Prison Camp Through Contemporary Fiction and Reportage"China is so big and so diverse that, as in the proverbial blind man touching an elephant, contemporary descriptions that vary dramatically can all be true. Few visitors to glittering Shanghai of Shenzhen, for example, will get any impression of the gaping gray maw of the government's prison camp system that Philip Williams and Yenna Wu, basing themselves on a vast range of Chinese sources, illuminate in erudite detail. The authors look at every facet of the camps, place them within China's historical tradition, and compare them with modern analogues. Throughout, literary and autobiographical sources give the 'feel' for the deadening world of the camps."—Perry Link, author of The Uses of Literature: Life in the Socialist Chinese Literary System "The Great Wall of Confinement deals with issues ranging from the legal grounding—or the lack of any—of the Chinese concentration camp system, to its technical implementation, its discursive manifestation, and its physical as well as psychological impact. A book like this is long overdue. With this work, Williams and Wu have made an important contribution to the fields of Chinese legal and literary studies."—David Der-wei Wang, author of The Monster That Is History "The Great Wall of Confinement is an excellent book. It synthesizes an already significant corpus of writings on Chinese prisons and labor camps, marshals an array of literary sources as essential historical source materials, and compares the literature of Chinese incarceration with its Soviet and European counterparts. The value of this important study stems equally from its tone—a rare combination of a level-headed quality with a very fine sensitivity to the human tragedy recounted in this literature."—Jean-Luc Domenach, author of Où va la Chine? (Where does China Go?) "The Great Wall of Confinement has attempted to lift part of the veil on China's long lasting tragedy: the use of imprisonment, torture, forced labor against its citizens, whether criminals, feeble minded or simply political opponents. The angle is new; the question is to find out how Chinese have written on this subject, whether in fiction or reportage, the way they went about telling their stories, how much they said, or withheld. Through Philip Willams and Yenna Wu's thought-provoking analysis of such writings, of the cultural origins of forced labor and imprisonment in imperial and Communist China, one comes closer to this sinister reality, which remains to this day one of the best kept secrets of our planet."—Marie Holzman, President of the Association Solidarité Chine |
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Common terms and phrases
authorities Bao & Chelminski Beijing Bo Yang brigade cadres and guards camp cadres camp inmates cell chengfa China Chinese prisoners chubanshe Communist Cong Weixi convicts Counterrevolutionaries criminal death Deng Deng-Jiang detention fellow inmates fiction forced labor Gao Xin government’s Harry Wu Hong Kong Hong qiang Hong sha Huang hui qiang Ibid imprisonment Jiang Jiangxi Soviet jiuye labor camp laodong gaizao laogai camp laojiao Liu Binyan Liu Qing Mao Zedong Mao’s memoirs novel Old Ghosts one’s party-state Peng Yinhan People’s political prisoners PRC prison camp PRC’s Press Prisoner of Mao prisoner’s protagonist Public Security punishment Puyi qiang reeducation through labor remolding renmin sentence Seymour & Anderson Shanghai Shangrao ſº Song Shan struggle session Taipei term torture trans transit prison Univ Wang wenxue Wode Putishu writing Wu & Wakeman Wumingshi xiang hundun sanbuqu Xinjiang York Zhang Xianliang Zhongguo Zhou Zou xiang hundun