Spotlight

As a history student, I must pay attention to the disparity between written reports and oral accounts.

Rong Kong, PhD Candidate in History, received a Humanities Center grant to help fund her dissertation research on the anti-Confucius Cultural Revolution of China and pro-Confucius Cultural Renaissance Movement of Taiwian.
She is pictured here in Qufu.


Tell us briefly about your dissertation project.

This project concentrates on two simultaneous movements: the anti-Confucius Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), which was spearheaded by Mao Zedong as leader of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and the pro-Confucius Cultural Renaissance Movement launched on Taiwan in 1966 when this island was the last stronghold of Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalists. I show how the two competing parties, each of whom claimed to be moving China forward via revolutionary efforts, dealt with the relationship between Confucian virtues and modern life. I examine how state policies shaped the lives and identity formation of ordinary people, particularly those sharing the surname Kong (the last name of Confucius, who is referred to in Chinese as Kong Fuzi), in the course of pro- and anti- Confucius movements and how ordinary people, including the Kongs, reacted to and re-channeled the national campaigns. Based on official documents, family diaries, memoirs, and an oral history project with the Kong family and other local residents of Qufu (the hometown of Confucius) and Taipei, this study illustrates the dynamics of the interactions between the state and the masses and sheds light on the way ordinary people react to identity and cultural conflicts they encounter in the midst of national political movements.

What did you learn from documents that you couldn’t learn from interviews?

Oral projects(interviews) and written documents are two important methods for historians to gather information to understand what happened in the past. Written documents, often referred to as primary sources, encompass letters, journals, maps, gazetteers, diaries, and etc. During my research trip, the original records I examined included newspapers, official reports, family genealogies, periodicals, and political commentaries. Most of these primary documents were well written by contemporary intellectuals who observed the society with a scholarly view and an analytical approach. By tracing those written documents, in the long run, I will be able to understand how the two campaigns were depicted and conducted by local and national participants. Given the strict censorship on both the mainland and Taiwan in the period I am studying, these documents also indicate what types of news, reports, and stories were allowed to be published by the Communist Party and the Nationalist Party. Methodologically, I will not only “read with the grain” but also “read against the grain” by exploring what was beneath those written records. In other words, unlike interviews, the documents provide a well-recorded process of the campaigns I am studying as well as indicate the publication style and atmosphere in that period.

What did you learn from interviews that you couldn’t learn from documents?

In sharp contrast to written records, interviews reveal the personal viewpoint. The interviewees who have lived through events and periods not only reflect on what happened but also share how they experienced the events/periods. Voices from peasants and illiterate people alike are often absent in official documents mentioned above, though in some cases a writer describes peasants’ behaviors. Interviews, however, uncover stories ignored in written records. For example, some of my interviewees are peasants who are not able to read and write. But, five decades later, they have a clear memory of the campaigns and most of them are willing to talk about the thoughts they had at that moment. Their own statements, to a certain extent, justify the choices they made in the middle of the political campaigns. As a history student, I must pay attention to the disparity between written reports and oral accounts. Not surprisingly, the stories of my interviewers complicated the picture portrayed in the written documents and the voices of common people revealed the dynamics of local society.

Rong Kong
Jan. 12, 2020