Chinese archives during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution

"During the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), foreigners imagined that archival work had been fatally disrupted, with possibly the archives destroyed. Nevertheless, we later learned that after a short exile during the Cultural Revolution’s most intense years, some staff members had been able to carry on in make-shift offices. In 1974 when I was touring the Beijing palace for the first time, in a moment of excessive boldness I walked up to the great wood doors of the old Qing Hall of Chinese Culture and peeked inside. There I glimpsed people carrying papers and scurrying to and fro, checking documents at a central desk. Years later I learned that I had indeed stumbled on the very site where archival work was going on. When finally able to carry out research in Beijing I checked the Qing Grand Council inventories to ascertain possible Cultural Revolution damage but found no evidence that the Red Guards or “Four Olds” campaign had harmed the collection. The Grand Council inventories showed that the few missing items had already disappeared by the nineteenth century. Some Chinese scholars dealt with the Cultural Revolution imaginatively. One told me that the Cultural Revolution forced him to think up safe cover for research that interested him. After concocting descriptions acceptable to the authorities, he pursued his own interests in the archives but postponed publication.