Memories from the Margins

Abstract

This article is engaged with the transmission of Maoist memories in the Jianchuan Museum Complex (JMC) ½¨´¨²©Îï¹Ý¾ÛÂä, one of the country's largest and most high-profile non-state (minjian Ãñ¼ä) museum projects. Described as the “Red Age” (Hongse Niandai ºìÉ«Äê´ú), the Maoist period (1949–1976) is one of the four main themes that the Jianchuan Museum Complex commemorates, together with the War of Resistance against Japan (1931–1945), the Wenchuan earthquake (2008), and Chinese folk culture. Through a historicized account of the construction of these museums, this article examines the JMC's rendering of the Maoist period by analyzing the display methods and curatorial rationales in three of the Red Age museums. I show how Fan's curatorial approach changes, increasingly defined by his accommodation of the state's definition of what can be remembered and how.