Morning of Wednesday, October 8th, 2008

There is a struggle with my consicousness as I am typing up the revision sheet to the EDB for our history textbook. I don't agree with some of the changes in content we are making. Some are alright, but some are rather contraversial and are highly debatable. Yes, a scholar, a very well-respected scholar who is considered to be an "authority" on the subject matter made those common, but I have to question (1) if we are making the correct revision in response to his comments and suggestions and (2) is his viewpoint absolute? There are "authorities" in the history field but different scholars don't agree with one another. To be accurate, we need to get the view points of most respected scholar and make a decision.

High school history textbook is a very generalized version of history. It is not suppose to be very detailed, that's for university and graduate school level. High school history is suppose to help students to have a notion of history.

We have our text reviewed by a Prof. Wang who is an authority of Chinese political history and lived through the Cultural Revolution so he is viewed by many as an authority of the CR. However, in term of scholarship, his CR work is actually not yet on a par with the best. I think he is somewhat overrated because he is one of the rare sources of CR. But from his work on CR, he only gives a very narrowed view on CR, which is through his view at the village level. He never mentioned anything about whole picture or the political aspects. His point is actually quite naive. If he was in a more competitive field of history, such as the American Civil War, or Soviet History, then his work would just be totally ignored. One of the main thing about him is that he is "connected", he can get sources that other from outside can't.

說新民主主義文化“亦須包涵社會主義的內容”恐引起誤解，因為毛澤東明確說，新民主主義文化在整體上不是社會主義的。

I think Chinese have to stop lying to themselves about what they believe in. Is the Communist Party of China really practicing communism, socialims or marxism? No.

有誤導性。當時被逮捕的地主是地主中很少一部分，他們是“惡霸地主”；被處決的是更小一部分，他們是“罪大惡極”的、“有血債”的“惡霸地主”。

That is sooo subjective. How do you define “有血債”的“惡霸地主”?