History by the people, in magazine form

National History, September 2007

This is the launch issue of National History (时代教育·先锋国家历史), a new biweekly magazine published out of Chengdu.

The editors’ statement invokes Sima Qian and Liang Qichao to describe their aim of writing a people’s history rather than an official history. They point out that this goal is more attainable today than it has ever been:

Social progress has made history written by the people a possibility. With the evolution of recording and broadcasting technology, everyone has been given the tools to write history. In this age, those who have a monopoly on power and information no longer have a monopoly on history.

We use not only pen and paper but cameras, videocameras, computers, internet forums, and blogs….We can record the present and revive the past, and we can continue lost traditions by recording family histories and restoring family records. History, as we define it, is anything that has happened that should not be forgotten. What we are writing is history; it may not be a grand narrative, but bits and pieces of facts when combined together make up true History.

So, let us write history together.

How is this mission carried out? Under the “Living History” section, the magazine contains a piece by Ding Yujuan about her father Ding Weifen, a legislator in the early Republican period. And the “Family” section looks at the history of Yuanjiagou, a remote village in Shaanxi Provice that produced more than its share of provincial leaders.

The stories promoted on the cover are not quite so initimate. The teaser for the cover story on Che, titled “Sick Man Guevara,” reads “He was a sick man. He is a sickness.” Articles in the feature look at the man behind the myth as well as how Che-chic has played out in China. Other articles: an interview with “Taiwan’s Yu Dan” Fu Pei-rong, who has appeared on Shandong TV to discuss Confucius; the dismissal of the East German army; and how Brezhnev’s funeral broke the ice between the PRC and the USSR.

National History has gotten a number of well-known commentators to write columns. In this issue, Yuan Weishi uses the recent publication of a Chinese edition of Yomiuri Shimbun’s Who Was Responsible as a starting point for an investigation into the causes of China’s trials in the 19th and 20th Centuries. Zhang Ming, who seems to have a column in every major publication, writes about the Yunnan Military Academy. Xiao Shu wonders why China doesn’t have a Mother Teresa. And Fu Guoyong writes about three individuals born in 1893 – industrialist Lu Zuofu, educator James Yen, and Confucian scholar Liang Shuming – and their endeavors in different parts of China.

The Xian Feng China (成都先锋文化传媒有限公司), an arm of the Chengdu Media Group, is the force behind National History. Xian Feng runs a number of pricey specialty titles like Golf Tattler, Bang (“Rankings produce viewpoints”), and Pinglun, a monthly commentary publication that sells for the absurd price of 38 yuan an issue.

So for just 10 yuan, National History seems like a pretty good deal. The first issue comes with a free gift, too: a tin of Zhuyeqing green tea from Sichuan.