We lived through such ugly times and that's something that should never be forgotten. ---Yang Xianhui, the author

By Peng Yining

Some 2,500 people perished in a Gansu Province labor camp named Jiabiangou between 1957 and 1960 – mostly of starvation – Yang Xianhui says.

About 500 survived, by cannibalism. They foraged for undigested potato chunks in human excrement or worked their way through the internal organs of corpses. Most dead bodies proved so skeletal as to be inedible.

The long white-haired writer lights a cigarette, sits and begins to discuss the shocking fact-based contents of Jiabiangou Stories. The novel about a Chinese labor camp was published in China in 2003 and is newly translated into English.

When writing the gruesome details, Yang says he often paused and burst into tears.

The theme of his work is Gansu, he says. He was born and lived there for 16 years. Although he has now lived in Tianjin for more than 20 years, he still has a hint of Gansu in his accent and he still likes to wash down lunch and supper with a little cup of "white spirits".

Yang traveled frequently to the northwest desert region of China between 1997 and 1999 to try to interview more than 100 survivors of the forced labor camp.

Labeled as "rightists", 3,000 were sent to Jiabiangou in 1957 to suffer "re-education" through hard labor.

"Labor camps and the anti-rightist movement were a violation of human rights, but officials at the time didn't see it that way," Yang tells the Global Times. "They thought the anti-rightist campaign was correct and expanded it."

"Actually," he says, exhaling his cigarette, "it was a sin."

Jiabiangou Stories was published as Woman from Shanghai: Tales of Survival from a Chinese Labor Camp in the US in August. It "might be called the Gulag Archipelago of China", wrote Howard W. French in a New York Times review, referring to Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's acclaimed international bestseller on the Soviet Union's own forced labor and concentration camp system.

"I wrote this book for China, not for foreign countries," Yang says. He cannot read English or even recognize the letters of the alphabet.

"I meant to criticize the labor camp system. It should be changed."

During three years' investigation into Jiabiangou, the Tianjin-based writer spent one third of his time in Gansu finding and interviewing survivors.

Among the more than 100 he found, most were civil servants or elementary and secondary schoolteachers. Fewer than 20 chose to talk about their memories of Jiabiangou.

The rightists once lived in these buildings in Jiabiangou.

Some survivors told him they read his book and wept, but when Yang came calling, they hid.

"They were once banished for their criticism or opinion of the government," Yang says. "No wonder they don't want to talk anymore. But how is having an opinion a crime?"

One survivor refused to be interviewed because he had a son who worked as a teacher, Yang says.

"He said he himself is old enough that he can face anything, but he just doesn't want his son to lose his job.

"I can understand them, but this situation needs to change. People should enjoy speaking free from the fear of being jailed just for speaking.

"A human being should be allowed to talk."

Wang Jianwu, a survivor.

Uncensored

The 63-year old historian talks slowly. He says yes, he is glad his book was translated into English, although he had never planned on getting published overseas.

He published the first of his 19 Jiabiangou stories in the Shanghai Literature magazine in 2000, releasing the collection as fiction in 2003. If he had published the stories all at the same time, he says, the book might well have been killed. It was also smarter to fictionalize the experience and avoid censorship, he admits.

After his stories began appearing in print, one of his publishers was summoned by the relevant authorities and had a great deal of explaining to do.

"But my editor insisted on publishing the remaining stories left," he smiles. "Sometimes a book needs a bold writer, editor and a little luck."

So far, so good, he says. No official has banned his book yet or summoned him for a "chat".

"The situation is better than before after all," he says. "At least I won't be arrested for writing."

Although the book is based on detailed interviews, Yang says it is all a fiction anyway.

He combined different stories from different people into a more complete and compelling narrative. He changed names and personal information to protect the interviewees' privacy.

"Most stories from interviewees were simple and broken. I had to fix them," he says. "But most of the details, like how people died or the daily life of Jiabiangou, were true."

       

Li Xiangnian before 1958 when he was sent to the labor camp and in 1976.

Escape

Only three to five people felt able to tell Yang their complete story.

Gao Jiyi was one of them.

He came to Yang after reading Yang's story and let Yang use his real name in the book.

He told Yang he was in his 70s and not afraid of anything.

"Afraid of what? Would they arrest me and take me back to Jiabiangou?" Yang quoted Gao. "I want people to know my story."

Yang wrote Gao's story in "Escape" and "The Potato Feast", two chapters in Woman from Shanghai.

Gao, who ran a flower market stall in Lanzhou, capital of Gansu, died of gastric cancer in 2004, one year after Yang published his story.

Gao told Yang how he had wolfed down a potato after a long period of starving. The subsequent vomiting and diarrhea almost killed him. And it was Gao who first shocked Yang by recalling someone picking undigested potato from his vomit and excrement and eating it.

"He was carefully sifting through the undigested fingertip-size potato chunks and stuffing them into his mouth," Yang wrote in his book.

Most such details originated with true stories. Gao's escape was perhaps the greatest true story of all.

Gao had wanted to carry his starving friend on his back, but his friend begged Gao to go on without him. At least one of them might live.

A weeping Gao wrapped his coat around his friend and left him lying on the frosty ground to take his chances with the harsh Gansu desert winter. For years afterwards, Gao wondered about his friend's fate and why he was lucky enough never to be captured.

Wolves ate his friend, Gao was told. And when the search party examined the bloodstained coat, it still had Gao's name sewn into it. And so the sacrifice Gao made in trying to save his friend in fact saved his own life.

This is among the happiest of the stories he heard from Jiabiangou, Yang says. But Gao never forgave himself for abandoning his friend and burst into tears recalling their desperate getaway attempt.

"The story is harsher than fiction," Yang says. "It's real. It was their life."

Truth

Yang is not the first to write about the anti-rightist movement and forced labor camps. But previous Chinese mainland works were not direct or powerful enough, he believes.

Parts of the book are unthinkably ugly, Yang admits, like death by sudden overeating or chewing on carcass organs and fecal seconds. "Avoiding harsh stories would dilute the power of the book," he says. "I don't want to do that. Besides, they are based on fact."

Yang consciously avoided self-censorship. "If I wrote, I wrote it all down, regardless of whether it was sensitive or not," he says.

"I didn't care if it would be banned because I didn't want to regret giving up on the materials I collected. Gulag Archipelago inspired me. It inspired me to write tough, powerful stories to present history and influenced my writing style."

Yang shakes his head and smiles upon being told the New York Times compared his work to the Gulag Archipelago and Gabriel García Márquez. "I only wrote a small fragment of history, but Gulag Archipelago is a great epic."

Bitterness

Gansu had three labor camps for rightists, but Jiabiangou was the worst. Built to hold 400-500 the 3,000 Jiabiangou inmates tried to feed themselves by farming in a desert. Technically as they were not proper prisoners, they did not qualify to receive any grain at all from the state when China had a centrally planned economy.

What Chinese officials call the "Three Years of Natural Disasters" only made matters worse, Yang says. Much worse.

Jiabiangou labor camp was closed in 1961. Still labeled "rightists", those 500 survivors were sent back to their hometown to live on in shame as "criminals".

Most would never return to any semblance of their former normal lives, according to Yang. "When I started my interviews, there were about 200 survivors still alive. Now at most there are 100," Yang says. "The youngest inmate now is in his 70s. He was 18 when he went to Jiabiangou."

Most of the leaders or officials labeled rightist regained their original positions and salaries after the anti-rightist movement, Yang says, but ordinary survivors of Jiabiangou continue to lead a poor life today.

Most refused to cooperate. It took many visits to gain their trust and most interviewees broke down and cried before admitting they had eaten human flesh to stay alive.

Yang shows pictures he took in Jiabiangou in 1997: the dead rest in chains in the Gansu desert, where the winds have already blown the tops off their shallow graves. Their corpses lie partly exposed. Polished by shifting sands, white skulls glint in the desolate sunlight. Jiabiangou is a tree farm today, Yang says. Nothing remains to remind anyone of what happened there.

Yang knows the Gansu desert. In 1965, he left his home in Lanzhou and went to a farm 200 kilometers from Jiabiangou.

An idealistic volunteer for the Down to the Countryside Movement, the 19-year-old Yang sound found out how harsh life was in the arid region. Then he heard about something even scarier over the next 16 years he spent at the farm: the Jiabiangou stories.

"I was not a rightist, but I worked and lived in the same region where they worked and died."

His desert experience informed the book and helped to gain the trust of survivors. "When I first heard the Jiabiangou stories I decided to write them down," Yang says, "but only with more and better time so I could write without reserve."

"We lived through such ugly times and that's something that should never be forgotten."