第77章 Public History:The Other Side of the Story(2)

Cui Yongyuan: They were my suggestions. Only personal interest makes a project sustainable. Our lead reporters were especially interested in social development, international relations and war. They even took an interest in weapons. We proceeded organically from one category to the other.

NewsChina: How did you select interviewees for My War of Resistance?

Cui Yongyuan: We had a map showing the front line and the battlefields behind enemy lines. We needed a clear idea of troop positions and who was in charge of what. Once we had the overall picture, we started the search for interviewees. Once they began to talk, they talked about everything, and from the very beginning. It couldn’t be helped. This was Oral History after all. We once had a guy who kept talking for two months. Then one interviewee might give you a whole bunch of names of people who also had stories.

NewsChina: Did you require reporters to work out an interview plan in advance?

Cui Yongyuan: There were no advance plans. What I told my lead reporters was this: just go and listen to the stories. Try hard not to interrupt. Let them speak freely. We interviewed Zhang Xueliang [a former Kuomintang general who briefly took Chiang Kai-shek prisoner in 1936] 125 times, and he did not allow any questions. This is a requirement of recording oral histories: comprehensive and unrestrained narration. We were only recording what they said.

NewsChina: Did you require your interviewers to intentionally tone down propagandizing when conducting interviews?

Cui Yongyuan: We had no need to do that. A personal narrative is an account from one perspective. Personality is branded on every individual and cannot be erased. What is war? We habitually think of cold steel, indiscriminate bombing, and assassinations. But in fact, war also means small businesses, prostitution, cabarets and scholarly pursuits. This is the ecology of war. There is little difference between the environment today and that in wartime: each day brings its own temptations and presents you with a choice. If you became a collabora-tor during the Japanese occupation, for example, and could escape assassination, your life would immediately become easier. Collaboration was tempting. We face temptations and choices in 2010, and these daily trials haven’t changed.

NewsChina: Were you ever turned down by interviewees?

Cui Yongyuan: Yes. I think some people are still scared of political campaigns. There was one person that I met twice. The first time we talked, everything was great. He promised to give accounts of important events the next time we met. But at our second meeting I saw he was in a really bad mood, sitting sullenly before saying, “just let everything go rot in my head.” I hated to do it, but I had to give up. But sometimes it was the opposite. One old man, for example, after a long bout of illness, said to me: “Just come over and I’ll tell you everything.”

It was sometimes quite difficult to get all the interviewees to embrace this project as academic. Once they saw me, or heard the name ‘Cui Yongyuan,’ their conditioned response was: it’s CCTV, it will be broadcast nationwide, it will impact negatively on me. So my fame sometimes had an adverse effect.

NewsChina: Were there any things that you didn’t want to confront when shooting Oral History?

Cui Yongyuan: There were too many. In Incheon, Korea, I went to the Korean War Museum and saw a photo that shocked me. It showed American soldiers pointing their guns at a group of Chinese Volunteer troops like this [raises his arms in a gesture of surrender]. In China, we’ve only seen American troops surrendering. But this time, it was us. A sense of humiliation grabbed me, but for only a second. That’s history.

NewsChina: How many of the interviews did you do personally?

Cui Yongyuan: Less than 40. I had two major responsibilities. First, I had to raise the money for the budget, as CCTV isn’t investing in this project. Second, I had to show up for investor meetings from time to time, because people didn’t believe that it was me doing this. After I showed my face, dinners would be held and contracts signed.

NewsChina: You have so far refused to sell your material to academic institutions and commercial TV stations. Where would you like to see Oral History exhibited?

Cui Yongyuan: Let me describe an Oral History Archive. When you first go in you see a wall of video screens, and one hundred people are talking up there. There will be touch-screen computers. When you put on earphones, you can listen to the specific person of your choice. You have a wide range of choices, the war, film, music, just click. Text, photos and videos are all there. Real relics will also be on display. For example if you want to see Red Army slogans from the Long March, or their hand grenades, or if you want to see Republican era silver coins, it’s all there.

November 2010