Zheng Yi (author)

Scarlet Memorial: Tales of Cannibalism in Modern China is a book of reportage literature (baogao wenxue) by the Chinese novelist Zheng Yi (郑义; born 1947). Zheng and a group of writers under the joint pseudonym "T. P. Sym" translated and abridged it from the Chinese work 红色 纪念碑 Hongse jinianbei (Red monument; Taibei: Huashi, 1993). Zheng uses local government documents, eye-witness accounts and confessions to describe the factional violence and even cannibalism that occurred in the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region (southeast China) in 1968 during the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976).

Zheng blames the savagery and cannibalism on "class struggle" and "revolutionary revenge". The book received praise for revealing the nature of Mao's regime and also criticism for giving the impression that cannibalism was systematic and widespread.

Zheng Yi was born in Chongqing, Sichuan, in 1947, and went to Beijing to attend the middle school attached to Qinghua University, China's leading technical university, which was a center of radical student activity when the Cultural Revolution broke out in 1966. Zhang became a leader in the Rebel Faction of the Red Guards and then in 1969 volunteered to go to the countryside, the Lüliang Mountains in Shanxi. He was a student at Yucai Teachers' Training College when he returned to Beijing in 1978. After graduation, he was editor of Yellow River (Huanghe) literary magazine and embarked on a career as a writer. His short story "Maple" ("Feng"), published in 1979, was among the first to deal frankly with the violence of the Red Guards. His novel Old Well (Laojing) was a realistic portrayal of peasant struggle, and was made into a film by Wu Tianming. Zheng was arrested for his participation in the Tiananmen demonstrations and the Chinese democracy movement of 1989. He escaped and hid for several years until he was able to get to Hong Kong in March 1993. He then went to the United States.

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