Explore the collection

On New Year's Day 2018, Beihang University graduate Luo Xixi took the lead in breaking China's silence on the issue of sexual harassment when she publicly reported on social media that Beihang professor Chen Xiaowu had sexually harassed her. This was the first major event in China’s #Metoo movement, which has since spread from colleges and universities to other fields. #Metoo provoked an unprecedented discussion in China, and the issues of feminism and sexual harassment attracted a rare and widespread attention, with a variety of complaints, comments, studies, and advocacy articles springing up all over the internet. <i>#MeToo in China Archives 2018.1-2019.7</i> is a compilation of sexual harassment-related articles written between January 2018 and July 2019. This archive is massive, totaling more than 2,500 pages, and is divided into three main volumes: “#Metoo in Higher Education”, “#Metoo in other fields”, and “#Metoo discussions’. Volume I and Volume II consist of individual #Metoo cases, arranged in chronological order. Articles in volume 3 can be broadly categorized into general reviews, investigative reports, personal stories, advocacy and activism, tools and resources,etc. During the #Metoo movement, many liberal public intellectuals questioned the movement, likening it to big-character posters during the Hundred Flowers campaign, and arguing that it might lead to the proliferation of wrongful convictions. It triggered heated debates, and this archive also contains a number of related articles. The process of compiling this archive itself became an act of resistance, given the severe repression on freedom of expression and social movements. The editorial team faced tremendous challenges in collecting articles that had been deleted or published as images to bypass online censorship. It spent a great deal of time and personnel piecing together scraps of information and transcribing words in images. Reading traumatic personal stories - including those about the hardships in seeking remedies - caused psychological trauma for the editors themselves. Nevertheless, #Metoo has also a process of collective healing, in which women with shared experiences saw each other, realized the structural problems behind sexual violence, and gained the strength to move on and push for change. Finally, during the compilation process, the editorial team also benefited from archiving efforts made by other websites and individuals, demonstrating that the rescue and preservation of people’s history is a collective and collaborative task. This archive is published on https://chinesefeminism.org/.

The “300,000-Character Letter,” formally titled “Report on the Practice of Literature and Art Since Liberation,” was a lengthy article submitted by Hu Feng to the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party in 1954. This report, approximately 300,000 characters long, thus earned its popular name. It collectively reflected Hu Feng’s views and dissatisfactions regarding the cultural and artistic policies and the state of literature and art since 1949. The core of the report was Hu Feng’s critique of the prevailing problems in the literary and art circles at the time, such as dogmatism, sectarianism, and formulaic, conceptual approaches. He believed these issues stifled the vitality and creativity of literature and art, hindering their healthy development. In the document, Hu Feng proposed that literary and art workers should have greater creative freedom, emphasizing the subjectivity and authenticity of artistic creation, and arguing that art should not simply be reduced to a tool for political propaganda. He particularly opposed the then-prevalent rigid understanding that “art is subordinate to politics,” advocating that literature and art have their own inherent laws and independent value. The submission of the “300,000-Character Letter” did not receive a positive response from the Central Committee; instead, it was seen as a challenge to the Party’s literary and artistic line. In 1955, Mao Zedong deemed it to be in opposition to his “Talks at the Yan’an Forum on Literature and Art,” leading to the infamous case of the “Hu Feng Counter-Revolutionary Clique,” where he, along with thousands of others, was accused of forming an “anti-Party clique” and subjected to decades of political persecution. It was not until 1980 that Hu Feng was rehabilitated.

The Memoirs of Hu Feng is a work based on the oral accounts of the literary theorist and poet Hu Feng (1902-1985) in his later years, compiled and edited by others. This memoir primarily chronicles Hu Feng’s eventful life, from his early experiences and studies in Japan to his involvement in the left-wing literary movement and his interactions with cultural figures like Lu Xun. It also covers his entanglement in the “Hu Feng Incident” in 1955 and his subsequent decades of political persecution. The memoir, from a first-person perspective, offers a detailed review of the significant historical events and ideological journey throughout Hu Feng’s life. It not only showcases his dedicated exploration of literary theory and his steadfast adherence to ideas like the “subjective fighting spirit” but also includes a wealth of first-hand materials, such as his correspondence with friends and comrades, and his evaluations of the prevailing literary trends and figures of the time. The book also provides readers with a valuable perspective for understanding the “Hu Feng Incident.”