Tan He-cheng | The Myth of Blood – A Chronicle of the 1967 Massacre in Daoxian County, Hunan Province during the Cultural Revolution

In 1984, Hu Yaobang dispatched more than 1,300 staff members to Daoxian County, Hunan Province to investigate the massacre that occurred in 1967. The author, Tan He, went along as a media worker and obtained a large number of confidential documents and interview materials, completing a 100,000-word documentary article. However, soon after, due to changes in the political environment, the movement against bourgeois liberalization began, and Tan was told that his article could not be published. Tan decided to continue the investigation, and went to Daoxian County many times on his own to conduct interviews and supplement the original manuscript. Tan collected millions of words of materials, with nearly 400 cases alone, and interviewed almost all the key figures who agreed to be interviewed.

In 2010, he published “The Myth of Blood – A Documentary of the 1967 Daoxian Massacre in Hunan Province during the Cultural Revolution” through the Hong Kong-based Tianxingjian Publishing House. The book has a total of nine volumes, 83 chapters, and more than 500,000 words. According to Tan’s investigation, from August 13 to October 17, 1967, in the 66 days, more than 9,000 innocent villagers in the Lingling region where Daoxian County was located were killed or forced to commit suicide because they were labeled as counter-revolutionaries, including women and children. More than 14,000 people were directly involved in the killings, including 426 state cadres, 2,767 rural grassroots cadres, and 3,880 Communist Party members. Unlike the previous Cultural Revolution history published in China, which focused on the persecution of intellectuals, this book presents the systemic violence suffered by innocent people during the Cultural Revolution. The book not only contains the words and deeds and living conditions of a large number of those killed, but also the words and deeds and living conditions of a large number of those who killed and other relevant personnel, allowing ordinary readers to gain a comprehensive and multi-faceted understanding of this tragedy. Yang Jisheng (see the entry on Yang Jisheng on this site) believes that most of the information about this massacre circulating at home and abroad comes from Tan’s investigation and interviews.