The stunning reproach to China's Communist system begins quietly enough, as our car chugs up a concrete road through the dark green hills 40 minutes' drive from Shantou, in coastal Guangdong province. Here and there we glimpse old-fashioned, round graves from the road, masked by brush so thick it's doubtful relatives tend them any more. The air is fresh and we wind down the windows, relieved to be out of the city pollution. Occasionally a bird calls, or swoops past the car. People walk along the road, mostly holidaymakers in floppy hats who have come to admire the scenery at Tashan fengjing qu, or the Pagoda Mountain scenic area, named after a pagoda that dominates the car park we are headed for. Stretching out on a hazy plain below us is Chenghai, a suburb of Shantou.
But there's much more to Pagoda Mountain than clean air, a multi-tiered building and a great view of the city. In January, this spot became one of the most controversial sites on the mainland when retired local official Peng Qi'an finally realised a dream that began here in 1996. While out walking with his grandson nine years ago, Peng came across mass graves of people killed during the 1966-76 Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The graves are still there today, buried deep in the undergrowth below the main pagoda. One contains the bodies of 24 people. In another, 20 lie buried. Peng, who was the deputy executive mayor of Shantou from 1983 to 1993 and was himself persecuted during the Cultural Revolution, was shaken. He vowed to erect a memorial to the dead. He consulted a number of people on the topic, including Feng Jicai, deputy chairman of the Chinese Writer's Association, who urged him to open a museum dedicated to the Cultural Revolution, the
10 years of grotesque violence that traumatised a generation of Chinese and destroyed, perhaps forever, many of the ties that bound the mainland to its rich artistic and cultural past after Mao Zedong ordered China's youth to destroy the Four Olds: old ideas, old culture, old customs and old habits.
Many prominent victims of the Cultural Revolution are still haunted by those years and are seeking closure. Feng is one. The tall, thin 63-year-old is a well-known figure in China's 'scar literature' movement, a group of writers who began publishing in the 1980s and who wrote mostly fictional accounts of the time. He wears dark green sunglasses, even as he talks in his office in the Feng Jicai Arts Institute at Tianjin University. Feng has never published an account of his personal experiences during the Cultural Revolution, even though he hints they were painful. Like many who suffered, Feng says the fact the subject is still taboo in the corridors of power means the victims haven't been able to move on and heal. He thinks Peng's museum, and the many more he hopes will be built, may begin that process. 'Opening a museum will help us to put to rest that time of history ... help us finally to finish the Cultural Revolution and eventually put it in its grave.'
On May 16, 1966, Mao, crazed with power and increasingly senile, declared a state of permanent revolution. Chinese turned upon Chinese; students stoned teachers to death; radicals smashed artworks and temples and shredded libraries; 'political enemies' were executed, their jaws broken to stop them crying out in defiance. According to Wang Youqin, who runs the China Holocaust Memorial website out of the University of Chicago, between August 20 and September 30, 1966, 1,700 people were beaten to death in Beijing alone and more than 85,000 residents forced to leave the city.
Bands of Red Guards devised '100 methods of torture' and fought armed battles with each other, as well as the army. On July 28, 1969, scores died in one such battle in Chenghai alone. Cannibalism broke out among political enemies in remote Guangxi province. No one knows how many died across the country because government records are still sealed, but estimates range from 400,000 to seven million. Despite that, in 1980 prosecutors charged the Gang