The Memory Project / Chinese Memory Project
Reviewed by: Connie Cordon
Review date: March 05, 2025
Site Link:
Archive Link:
- https://archive.ph/rd6YV (The Memory Project Oral History Collection)
- https://archive.ph/L3zJH (The Memory Project Digital Collections Duke Digital Repository)
Keywords: Asian Studies, History, Digital Libraries, Ethnographic Analysis
Data Sources:
- Oral histories collected individually by different filmmakers
- Digital video recordings
- Written reflections by the filmmakers
- Chinese and English transcripts
- Records of interviews that include name, date, village, province, and filmmaker.
Processes:
- Oral histories were transcribed and made digitally accessible on Microsoft Word.
- Interviews are conducted in the regional dialect of the provinces to avoid miscommunication and transcribed as so.
- English translation may differ slightly from original Chinese speech.
- English translation may differ slightly from original Chinese speech.
- The filmmakers edited some of the transcripts to focus the topics of discussion, summarize topics not related to the interview, and correct factual mistakes post-production.
- Data about the oral histories were standardized into variables such as village, province, year, topic of discussion, and interviewer.
Presentation:
The Memory Project Duke Digital Collection, hosted by Duke University, is a web-based video archive featuring 739 oral history recordings from survivors of the Great Famine in rural China (1958–1961). The landing page showcases a banner of black-and-white headshots of the survivors with an introduction of the project details. Below is a display of thumbnails of each video interview. . The interview pages themselves also include the date, interviewer, location, subject matter, and more. Links to download the transcripts are provided as well. Unfortunately, not all videos are accompanied with English translated transcripts, leaving room for any scholar who feels so inclined to translate. Due to the extensive dataset, users can filter videos by year span, specific discussion topics (e.g., Great Famine, Great Leap Forward, Cultural Revolution, Land Reform, People’s Commune), province, and interviewer. However, the language filter includes only Chinese, suggesting that videos with English transcriptions cannot be specifically filtered.
The site contains several links to the website Chinese Memory Project, a digital collection showcasing curated oral history interviews from 11 selected filmmakers out of the 150 who participated in the project. This site notes that additional interviews “will be published incrementally as each filmmaker’s material is arranged and described,” indicating that the project remains an ongoing collaborative effort.
Included is an interactive map visualizing the number of interviews conducted for the Memory Project in January 2022. The number of interviews corresponds with the size of the circle placed on the villages where the interview took place. The information for each village includes both traditional Chinese and pinyin for village name, filmmaker, province, subject matter discussed, and number of different interviews. Additionally, there is an interactive timeline beginning on October 1, 1949 (in which the People’s Republic of China was founded by Mao at Tiananmen Square in Beijing), to November 24, 1987 (the last day of The Land Reform Law) to provide historical context.
Digital Tools Used:
- TimelineJS
- Esri/ArcGIS
- WordPress
- Duke Repository
Languages:
- Chinese
- English (reviewed in English)
Review
The Memory Project: Duke Repository is an open-access oral history project launched in 2010 by documentary filmmaker Wu Wenguang, who specializes in modern Chinese independent film. This is a long-term, open-access project, in which filmmakers based in Wu’s film studio in Caochangdi, Beijing China, are open to participate in collecting oral histories. This is a collaborative effort in which 150 different filmmakers independently visit their own rural hometown and establish rapport with survivors, forging intergenerational relationships with their elders, with some even moving back long-term. Wu’s aim was to collect oral histories from those who survived the Great Famine in rural China, allowing the survivors to share their personal experiences of hard labor and starvation in hopes that they will bring light to what is being ‘taught’ in formal academic settings and what is being concealed. The videos are dated from 2009 to 2016. The Memory Project Oral History collection was donated to the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book Manuscript Library between 2013-2017. Chinese Memory Project features interviews from 11 filmmakers out of 150. It also includes a timeline of the formation of the People’s Republic of China to provide historical context for viewers, and an interactive map to provide geographic information of the interviewees.
The oral histories can be described as an effort to construct a collective memory for survivors of the Great Famine, who couldn’t speak of their experiences openly and were censored under authoritative rule. The timeline provides context for how the Great Famine started and the geopolitical issues the People’s Republic of China attempted to address through reforms, many of which led to civilian deaths. The documentary filmmaker Wu started this experimental project as a means of opening up dialogue that couldn’t be spoken about until the early 21st century. By offering an open-access digital platform, filmmakers are able to share their elders' experiences to a wider audience, surpassing restrictions such as language, province, and time. These interviews are not structured formally, rather, the filmmaker is left to their own devices to approach these subjects of trauma to elders they haven’t seen in decades. Some transcripts gave me the impression that the interviewee tried shifting the topic of conversation to the filmmaker themselves, indicating they are not as keen to discuss traumatic topics, or perhaps they simply could not recall. The interviews that did not provide extensive data were still published, acknowledging the declining health and memory of survivors while upholding the commitment to transparency.
Despite the large scope of data, there isn’t a clear indication which interviews are translated in English, instead relying on the user to click through each video to find out. For those fluent in Chinese this is not a problem, but it does limit the accessibility for those who can’t read or understand Chinese.
This project proved to be successful to those interested in the impact the People’s Republic of China had in its formative years on the working class. By shifting the focus from statistical data to personal narratives, audiences get a sense of the victims upbringing, their personal struggles, how they coped during the Great Famine, and their retrospective interpretations of the past. Through this process, filmmakers got in touch with their elders and formed stronger bonds that perhaps could not have formed if it weren’t for Wu Wenguang’s initiative of a large-scale, long-term historical project.
How are the collaborative aspects reflected in the project and are there elements that work particularly well?
A significant collaborative aspect exists between the filmmakers themselves and the interviewees: locating the village, travelling to the village, and reaching out to the survivors. By allowing survivors to tell their stories on their own terms to a trusted member in their community, there is no external political agenda hovering in the background that may censor the experiences or exploit their suffering. Wu’s film studio operates as headquarters called “Work Station” in Beijing and allows filmmakers to bring their work to a final resting place after travelling across the country, and the database allows other filmmakers to see the work their colleagues completed. The entire collection was donated to David M. Rubenstein Rare Book Manuscript Library as a gift between 2013 through 2017.
Do you see an opportunity for collaboration that would be helpful to the project?
A scholar who specializes in translating Cantonese/Mandarin to English would help expand access to the interviews.