The Chinese Cultural Revolution began in 1966 and led to a ten-year-long reign of Maoist terror
throughout China in which millions died or were sent to labor camps in the country or
subjected to other forms of extreme discipline and humiliation. Ji Xianlin was one of them. The
Cowshed is Ji s harrowing account of his imprisonment in 1968 on the campus of Peking
University and his subsequent disillusionment with the cult of Mao. As the campus spirals into
a political frenzy Ji a professor of Eastern languages is persecuted by lecturers and
students from his own department. His home is raided his most treasured possessions are
destroyed and Ji himself must endure hours of humiliation at brutal struggle sessions. He is
forced to construct a cowshed (a makeshift prison for intellectuals who were labeled class
enemies) in which he is then housed with other former colleagues. His eyewitness account of
this excruciating experience is full of sharp irony empathy and remarkable insights into a
central event in Chinese history. In contemporary China the Cultural Revolution remains a
delicate topic little discussed but if a Chinese citizen has read one book on the subject it
is likely to be Ji s memoir. When The Cowshed was published in China in 1998 it quickly became
a bestseller. The Cultural Revolution had nearly disappeared from the collective memory.
Prominent intellectuals rarely spoke openly about the revolution and books on the subject were
almost nonexistent. By the time of Ji s death in 2009 little had changed and despite its
popularity The Cowshed remains one of the only testimonies of its kind. As Zha Jianying writes
in the introduction The book has sold well and stayed in print. But authorities also quietly
took steps to restrict public discussion of the memoir as its subject continues to be treated
as sensitive. The present English edition skillfully translated by Chenxin Jiang is hence a
welcome valuable addition to the small body of work in this genre. It makes an important
contribution to our understanding of that period.
