Crimson Rain: Seven Centuries of Violence in a Chinese County

by William T. Rowe

This brilliantly crafted narrative explores the roots of violence in Chinese rural society over the past seven hundred years, based on the study of a single highland county, Macheng, Hubei province, in the Great Divide Mountains separating the Yangzi valley from the North China Plain. Between the expulsion of the Mongols in the mid-fourteenth century and the invasion of the Japanese in 1938, Macheng experienced repeated, often self-inflicted waves of mass “extermination” of segments of its population. This book argues that, beyond its strategic military centrality and ingrained social tensions, cultural factors such as popular religion, folklore, collective memory, and local historical production played key roles in the continued proclivity of the county's population for massive carnage. In the process, the history of Macheng also provides a case study in the way events and trends of national significance in the history of China have been experienced at the local level.

Genres: China, History

454 pages, Hardcover

First published October 18, 2006

About the author

William T. Rowe is an historian of China, and John and Diane Cooke Professor of Chinese History, Department of History, The Johns Hopkins University.

Reviews

[Albert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Went into this with high hopes, but came out with 400 pages of narrative, and close to no analysis (throwing around the names of some Annalistes and Maurice Halbwachs DOES NOT count as analysis). The payoff was slight, and his conception of violence does not illuminate issues.

[Yousef · Rating 2 out of 5]

Quite mediocre re-narratives of Chinese written materials as recorded by government and local administrative officials and literati, who are well-known for their orthodox Confucian Han-centric narratives that disregard the intricate fabric of local cultural realities. Macheng is a mythical hometown for many Sichuan migrants, based not on real lineage but on constructed identity. This fact alone would suffice for an interesting historical book, but the author failed to unveil many of the deep layers of social processes concealed behind government administrative recordings

[Ryo · Rating 4 out of 5]

牛逼的切入，以点概面，一瞥苦难大地官逼民反腥风血雨的轮回。想起盘古一首歌：没看到暴民 只看到暴政 没看到恐怖分子 只看到恐怖政府