Historian, Annette Wieviorka was maoste and one of the few foreigners to live with her family in Mao’s China. Stated in My Chinese Years.
Dive into the past to explain it, Annette Wieviorka knows how to do. But this time, the historian and scholar, specialist in the Shoah, is telling herself. With My Chinese years, she relives, and brings back to life, the two years when, a young maost engaged, she lived, with husband and child, Canton. It was at the end of the (terrible) Cultural Revolution. She was a teacher of French language and civilization. An experience that she says she was a cornerstone of her work as a historian. Which gives a living story, very documentary, analyzed without concession, but with a little tenderness for the idealistic young woman she was.
This experience, which she had already made a book in 1979 (Chinese squirrel, wievirka meaning squirrel in Polish) on which she relied to revive this period of her life, is a literary and personal look that I take, with hindsight, on these two years which marked my youth.
I was
a person
young
that belonged to
his time
The voice is deep, a little hoarse. During confinement, many people took the opportunity to classify photos, memories. Me, it is my memories of China that came back. And I’m an age where I realize I don’t have much time left to say. I wanted to put this pass in order.
Annette Wieviorka is 73 years old. Half a century ago she entered Maosma. The type of commitment that was mine, I have a little trouble understanding it today and I no longer adhere to it. I would say that I was a young person and slightly fanatic, and that I belonged to my time. May 1968 had made its wind of freedom blow, especially for women. We had the feeling that we were not living just for ourselves, but that we had to work for the community.
The historian picked up the thread of her memories easily. Some went up easily, my surprise. There are memories that we do not remember, but which remain inscribed.
Yes, she knew she was under Canton surveillance. Yes, she was aware of the danger. So why did you stay? We had signed a two-year contract, we had this idea of a commitment to respect. We taught, we had the feeling of a social utility. There was also this curiosity about China. Perhaps a little inertia on our part as well. We thought of going back before the end of the two years. We also thought about moving there. We also knew it would be hard to come back. We lived without a telephone, the crowd. We felt that the return to resume our life would be difficult. We didn’t want to “lose face” either, which is very Chinese., explains the writer who was right. Because his return to France was difficult …
Far from grand speeches and a Marxist-Leninist Mao version of ideology, life was very hard in China at that time. The misery version of the communist regime. I don’t think we were deceived. I think the responsibility lies with me. The real caught up with Utopia and I didn’t face it right away. This lucidity is all the more difficult as Annette Wieviorka loves China, which she continues to take an interest in, through books, films, her stays. I kept a real attachment. With humor, she says: I had wanted to be in history. I set about making history on my return. My Chinese experience has served me well. On a personal and professional level. She gave me the desire to understand. I understood what a different world was and this allowed me to understand the mechanisms of a totalitarian country.
When she was Canton, she tried to understand, to know. I can draw a parallel with the complexity of the Shoah.
There’s no hazard
in the commitment
What about today’s China? The economic boom has caused many upheavals. Has remodeled the landscapes too: I no longer recognize anything from the regions I knew. And life is easier there. But with the coming to power of Xi Jinping, we see a political backward movement, an authoritarian takeover with denied liberties, a country under surveillance and intellectuals or whistleblowers who risk prison or death.
Pour Annette Wieviorka, when you experience something, it’s hard to understand. Like our Covid, an episode that will go down in history. But we will only be able to decipher why the world is shut up, a great novelty, in several years. To go to the history, you have to wait until the period has ended.
My Chinese years, it’s a bit of China, tells through the personal experience of a future historian who keeps indulgence for the young woman [qu’elle tait]. I was stunned: I could have been anything, but something. There is no chance in engagement.
My Chinese Years is said at Stock.
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