Over the course of 66 days in 1967, more than 4,000 "class enemies"--including young children and the elderly--were murdered in Daoxian, a county in China's Hunan province. The killings spread to surrounding counties, resulting in a combined death toll of more than 9,000. Commonly known as the Daoxian massacre, the killings were one of many acts of so-called mass dictatorship and armed factional conflict that rocked China during the Cultural Revolution. However, in
spite of the scope and brutality of the killings, there are few detailed accounts of mass killings in China's countryside during the Cultural Revolution's most tumultuous years.
Years after the massacre, journalist Tan Hecheng was sent to Daoxian to report on an official investigation into the killings. Tan was prevented from publishing his findings in China, but in 2010, he published the Chinese edition of The Killing Wind in Hong Kong. Tan's first-hand investigation of the atrocities, accumulated over the course of more than 20 years, blends his research with the recollections of survivors to provide a vivid account exploring how and
why the massacre took place and describing its aftermath. Dispelling the heroic aura of class struggle, Tan reveals that most of the Daoxian massacre's victims were hard-working, peaceful members of the rural
middle class blacklisted as landlords or rich peasants. Tan also describes how political pressure and brainwashing turned ordinary people into heartless killing machines.More than a catalog of horrors, The Killing Wind is also a poignant meditation on memory, moral culpability, and the failure of the Chinese government to come to terms with the crimes of the Maoist era. By painting a detailed portrait of this massacre, Tan makes a broader argument about the
long-term consequences of the Cultural Revolution, one of the most violent political movements of the twentieth century. A compelling testament to the victims and survivors of the Daoxian massacre, The Killing Wind
is a monument to historical truth: one that fills an immense gap in our understanding of the Mao era, the Cultural Revolution, and the status of truth in contemporary China.
Over the course of 66 days in 1967, more than 4,000 "class enemies"--including young children and the elderly--were murdered in Daoxian, a county in China's Hunan province. The killings spread to surrounding counties, resulting in a combined death toll of more than 9,000. Commonly known as the Daoxian massacre, the killings were one of many acts of so-called mass dictatorship and armed factional conflict that rocked China during the Cultural Revolution. However, in
spite of the scope and brutality of the killings, there are few detailed accounts of mass killings in China's countryside during the Cultural Revolution's most tumultuous years.
Years after the massacre, journalist Tan Hecheng was sent to Daoxian to report on an official investigation into the killings. Tan was prevented from publishing his findings in China, but in 2010, he published the Chinese edition of The Killing Wind in Hong Kong. Tan's first-hand investigation of the atrocities, accumulated over the course of more than 20 years, blends his research with the recollections of survivors to provide a vivid account exploring how and
why the massacre took place and describing its aftermath. Dispelling the heroic aura of class struggle, Tan reveals that most of the Daoxian massacre's victims were hard-working, peaceful members of the rural
middle class blacklisted as landlords or rich peasants. Tan also describes how political pressure and brainwashing turned ordinary people into heartless killing machines.More than a catalog of horrors, The Killing Wind is also a poignant meditation on memory, moral culpability, and the failure of the Chinese government to come to terms with the crimes of the Maoist era. By painting a detailed portrait of this massacre, Tan makes a broader argument about the
long-term consequences of the Cultural Revolution, one of the most violent political movements of the twentieth century. A compelling testament to the victims and survivors of the Daoxian massacre, The Killing Wind
is a monument to historical truth: one that fills an immense gap in our understanding of the Mao era, the Cultural Revolution, and the status of truth in contemporary China.
Map
Blood Awakening
Deconstructing the Mythos of Mao Zedong's Peasant Revolution
Translator's Note
Chronology of the Cultural Revolution Killings in Daoxian
Introduction
Part One: The Origin of the Massacre
Chapter 1: The River of Death
Chapter 2: My Destiny with Daoxian
Chapter 3: Daoxian on the Eve of the Massacre
Chapter 4: The Random Killings Begin
Part Two: Assembling the Machinery of Slaughter
Chapter 5: The Killing Wind Spreads through Administrative
Lines
Chapter 6: Qingtang District and the Rise of the Peasant Supreme
Courts
Chapter 7: The Red Alliance Role in the Killing Wind
Part Three: Chetou and Shangguan Districts - Murder as
Spectacle
Chapter 8: Chetou District's Model Killings
Chapter 9: Shangguan District - In the Eye of the Storm
Chapter 10: Other Communes in Shangguan District
Part Four: Gongba District, the County's Top Killer
Chapter 11: A Dubious Honor
Chapter 12: The Killings at Daoxian's Deadliest Commune
Chapter 13: Some Who Got Away
Chapter 14: Death before Marriage
Chapter 15: High-level Participation in Qingxi District
Chapter 16: When the Pebble Rises from the Water
Part Six: Xianglinpu District's Militia Push
Chapter 17: The Shangdu Militia Headquarters
Chapter 18: Even Heaven Wept
Chapter 19: Two Classic Cases
Chapter 20: The Banality of Evil
Part Seven: Deadly Politics
Chapter 21: A Little Education Is a Dangerous Thing
Chapter 22: The Price of Truth
Chapter 23: The Scapegoated Landlord Class
Part Eight: The Killers
Chapter 24: Beyond the Pale
Chapter 25: Brainwashed
Part Nine: The Outliers
Chapter 26: The Anomalous Xianzijiao District
Chapter 27: The Zhenggangtou Phenomenon
Chapter 28: The Miracle of Life
Chapter 29: The Story of an Execution Ground Survivor
Part Ten: The Crackdown
Chapter 30: The 6950 Unit Arrives in Daoxian
Chapter 31: No Regrets
Chapter 32: The Petitioners
Chapter 33: Change of Plans
Chapter 34: Killings in the Counties and Cities Surrounding
Daoxian
Part Eleven: The End of the Killing Wind
Chapter 35: Huang Yida and the Fall of the Red Alliance
Chapter 36: Reversals
Afterword: Living for Truth
Appendix I: Basic Statistics on the Victims of the Daoxian Cultural
Revolution Killings
Appendix II: Official Culpability in Daoxian's Killing Wind
Tan Hecheng is a retired author and editor for the Chinese government.
"The author's documentation of the recollections culminates in a
powerful chapter of interviews with surviving perpetrators many
years later, who carry little to no remorse for the crimes." -- A.
Cho, CHOICE
"The author's documentation of the recollections culminates in a
powerful chapter of interviews with surviving perpetrators many
years later, who carry little to no remorse for the crimes."--A.
Cho, CHOICE
"The Killing Wind documents one of the most shocking atrocities
during the Cultural Revolution. Tan Hecheng, a brave Chinese
journalist, has risked his life to tell the world the truth about
this crime against humanity perpetrated by a brutal totalitarian
regime. This is a book those who want to preserve China's
collective memory must read."--Minxin Pei, Tom and Margot Pritzker
'72 Professor of Government, Claremont McKenna College; author
of
China's Trapped Transition
"Politics can cause wars-we know that. But can politics also lead
to mass murder? It did in the Holocaust, Pol Pot's killing fields,
the Rwandan genocide. Where else? One case, from China in the late
1960s, is very hard to read about, and for two quite different
reasons: for one, the Chinese government has done what it can to
keep the story away from you; and second, once in your hands, you
may find parts of it extremely difficult to get
through."--Perry
Link, University of California, Riverside
"The Killing Wind represents an important study and new
scholarship. The analysis of the massacre at Daoxian, including its
sociological and political dimensions, reveals the devastating
human toll on ordinary people that has for too long been ignored
about the Cultural Revolution and the making of the modern Chinese
state."--Joyce Apsel, President of the Institute for Study of
Genocide; Clinical Assistant Professor of Liberal Studies, New
York
University
"That we know the truth about Dao County is due to one person: a
garrulous, stubborn, and emotional editor who stumbled over the
story thirty years ago and decided that it was his fate to tell it.
His name is Tan Hecheng...[The Killing Wind] is masterfully
translated by the team of Stacy Mosher and Guo Jian."--The New York
Review of Books
"It is hard to exaggerate the force of Chinese journalist Tan
Hecheng's The Killing Wind... A truly remarkable testament to the
ways in which Chinese historians, working within China, have been
able, despite all the restrictions and restraints there, to write
some of the most amazing, powerful material."--South China Morning
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