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Witness: A Testimony of Conscience during the Chinese Cultural Revolution is author Kuang Xiaolin's recollection of the Chinese Cultural Revolution as a worker at the Ninth Textile Factory in the city of Jiujiang, capital of China's Jiangxi Province. The book is praised by readers as China's answer to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's The Gulag Archipelago. It is a personal account of the madness and chaos experienced by ordinary Chinese citizens during one of their country's worst social disasters.
The book is of an autobiographical nature, documenting the author's thoughts, emotions and actions as a participant observer of the political upheavals of his time. His involvement -- first as a revolutionary leader and then as a victim -- in numerous political campaigns before and during the Cultural Revolution enabled him to witness both sides of the story. This unique background allowed him to collect large amounts of original material -- pamphlets, posters, official announcements, internal communications, lists of "bad elements", proceedings of investigations, transcripts of interrogations and "confessions", etc -- which are used in this book to help recreate the political and social horror of life at the grassroots. Particularly valuable are photographs and personal testimonies of those who had suffered at the hands of their co-workers who, overnight, became their accusers, torturers and even executioners.
When the world suddenly and violently turned upside down and all moral guidance was lost, one could only rely on one's conscience as compass. It remains the author's hope that Witness as a memoir and historical record of the Chinese Cultural Revolution will enable the future generations to understand how their forefathers once lived, loved and feared for their lives.
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