1/8 The Vanishing Museum of the Cultural Revolution — Tanya Branigan — Branigan's book Red Memory opens with the Pagoda Museum in Shantou, the sole institutional site documenting Cultural Revolution history and memory. Built by official Peng Qi'an to preserve this era, the museum unflinchingly documents the period's widespread violence, social chaos, and estimated two million deaths. Official Chinese historiography minimizes the CR as merely "setbacks" and historical aberrations. The museum site, subject to constant surveillance by state security operatives, was eventually closed to public access and systematically obscured from historical memory.
1966