Sparks, by Ian Johnson, a valuable read

A compelling book by Ian Johnson, Sparks: China’s Underground Historians and their Battle for the Future, connects to An Wei, the central character of my book, One in a Billion: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey through Modern-Day China. If you want to dig into histories that the Chinese Communist Party has buried, Johnson’s book does that. For the last three decades, he has interviewed determined citizen historians in China, watched their documenting videos (often saved on YouTube) and spent hours with them. His first investigations are of how the Party hid the horrors of their early land reform and the Anti-Rightest Campaign. 

An Wei’s life in a poor village parallels these times. When he was in high school, he and other students who loved literature deeply admired their writing teacher, who was unexpectedly accused of unknown political errors, sent off for re-education and all his writings were destroyed. This horror made An Wei change his dreams of being a writer. He decided becoming a translator would be a much safer profession. Johnson’s book delves into the world of citizen historians from those early years up through China’s lockdowns during the Covid epidemic. 

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