The Land Drenched in Tears

by Soyungul Chanisheff, Rahima Mahmut (Translator), Iskandar Ding (Editor)

The Land Drenched in Tears is a moving history of the tumultuous years of modern China under Mao's rule, witnessed, experienced, and told through the personal lens of an ethnic minority woman, who endured nearly 20 years imprisonment and surveillance regime as a result of her political activism in Xinjiang, or East Turkistan, located in the far west of China.

Writing her autobiography as an extraordinary melange of diary and memoir, which oscillates between first-hand narrative and flashback, the author, Söyüngül Chanisheff, traces her unfortunate youth from her university years, when she founded the East Turkistan People's Party as a result of her anger and frustration with communist China's devastating mishandling of the socio-economic life of the people of her native land, through her subsequent imprisonment in China's notorious labour camps as well as under the surveillance regime, to her emigration to Australia.

Chanisheff's autobiography is a rare, detailed, and authentic account of one of the most poignant and most fascinating periods of modern China. It is a microcosmic reflection of the communist regime's tragic realities presented through the suffering and hope of a young woman who tied her fate to that of her beloved homeland.

Genres: China, History

380 pages, Paperback

Published August 15, 2018

Reviews

[Minam · Rating 5 out of 5]

My grandpa is a skeptical kind of guy who gives zero weight to others' opinions and is rarely in total agreement with anyone. One day we were reading books in his living room and, as he was looking for things to read in one of his cabinets, he pulled out the Uyghur version of this book and said that what this woman had written was true, and everyone should read it. I was surprised and became very curious. When the English translation came out I was overjoyed and bought it immediately.

The book was difficult and heartbreaking to read. It's a series of journal entries written during and after the Cultural Revolution in East Turkistan (with some updates when the author finds out what happens to certain people in her life later on). She talks about the terrible things she experienced in prisons, labour camps, and as a "class traitor" in a commune under surveillance; these were things I had heard of my older relatives experiencing but had never realised - or could not imagine - just how bad it was. But like this author they were constantly talking about the positives, and saying things would get better, we just had to stand tall and believe in ourselves. I continued to read it because I knew the author is now safe and happy in Australia. The deaths and suffering she encounters however were unending... it is an extremely aptly named book.

And the worst part is that although things seemed to be changing in government after Mao's death and just before she leaves the country, everything in that book echoes the suffering we are going through now. From labour camps, to schools being turned into detention centers, to forced marriages and discrimination against non-Han Chinese people, the rampant abuse of power, the separation of families and children, the disappearances, torture, shady hospital practices, lack of a protective legal system and no way to prove innocence once accused of a "crime", destruction of religious sites... the list goes on and things are just as bad now - or perhaps worse, as China has built better infrastructure for their policing and oppression since the 60's and 70's.

I will say it's a little bit difficult to get into because it's a diary/memoir and the reader is simply taken along for a wild, structureless ride. The constant reiteration of the author's strength, beauty, and righteousness seems strange, but also like a defense mechanism to the extreme physical and psychological abuse she endures. The book is depressing but only because the (true) events are depressing, not because the author is bleak. So the 5 stars is mainly for content, and because this is probably the only book in English that talks about what was actually happening to the people suffering through the CCP's colonisation of East Turkistan. While academic books and papers are great (although there is very little in that regard as well) the stories of survivors are just as important, if not more, especially now as the people of East Turkistan relive a modern-day version of the events outlined in this book. And this book contains many, many stories.

[Yangisar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Honest, brutal. This is one of the most heart-wrenching literary journeys I embarked upon. It burns you from inside out.

[Lindsey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Terrible the suffering one group of people can inflict on another, and remarkable how people can persevere for so long. But doesn’t always make for a good book. There is very little here that is specific to Xinjiang/East Turkestan, it’s mostly labor camps and oppression which unfortunately could be from any number of communist and authoritarian regimes from the last century. There were some interesting footnotes here and there, and mini-bios from people she met in prison that shed some light on the place and times. Overall though, very few impressions of the land, the culture, the socioeconomic dynamics, or even of the author’s personality.

[Jonathan Fryer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Human rights abuses against Muslim minorities in Xinjiang have been highlighted in UK media in recent weeks, but the phenomenon is hardly new. In fact, ever since the Chinese Communist Party gained power in 1949 the government in Beijing has sought to colonise this “New Frontier” with Han Chinese and to suppress Turkic culture and Islamic beliefs. The parallels with Tibet are obvious, but whereas Tibet has received a huge amount of international attention — notably since the Dalai Lama and many of his followers fled abroad in 1959 — Xinjiang remained largely ignored. I travelled there in 1994 and again in 2013, startled and dismayed by the intensification of the sinicisation process that had occurred over the intervening two decades. But until I read Söyüngül Chanisheff’s The Land Drenched in Tears I had not realised the true horror of much of the suffering of local peoples for more than half a century. Chanisheff is Tatar, and trained in medical school where she became involved in a youthful cell campaigning for an independent “East Turkestan”. This led to her imprisonment and subsequently long years of slave labour in the countryside under a surveillance regime that deprived her of her civil rights and made her an easy target for the bullies and sadists that arise in such totalitarian situations like flies around a dung heap. Her privations were soul-destroying, especially in the extreme heat of summer and extreme cold of winter, malnourished, often beaten and even more frequently paraded before baying mobs as a “class enemy”.

When the Cultural Revolution began in 1966 things went from bad to worse. She witnessed so much cruelty and torture and many killings, as well as listening to heart-breaking testimony from others. This is all set down in the nearly 400 pages of her book (translated from Uyghur by Rahima Mahmut), the catalogue of misery and inhumanity so searing that I found I could only read a few passages at a time. The forced evacuation of Muslim residents from cities in the region so Han Chinese could move in; the desecration of mosques and burning of Korans; infanticide in maternity hospitals where nurses were instructed to kill at least one baby a day or face the consequences. This is grim but essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what has happened in that remote region of the world. Fortunately the book does have a personally happier ending for the author, as despite her “criminal record” she found a suitable man to marry and started a family, later seizing the opportunity to emigrate to Australia. The title of Söyüngül Chanisheff’s memoir may sound melodramatic, but actually it is an understatement.