tears and suffering, and their happiness which is different from ours.
Chen Linfei, Beijing research team leader: These witnesses have put up with such immense hardship and yet still stand miraculously tall…
Li Yi, London MBL office and media assistant: These people and their lives are both very distant and very close to us. I discovered a very simple fact: China is very big. They truly have testified to this most ordinary and yet most important fact about China.
Yang Ji, China Witness media assistant and cameraman: I never thought about what my parents' and grandparents' generation had lived through before this.
Xuan Xuan, China Witness media assistant: Ordinary people emit a very uncommon strength. Our self-restraint cannot conceal this expression of our national self-respect.
Panpan Xue, China Witness media assistant: The stories were different but the witnesses all felt relieved that someone was there to listen to them, to comfort them. I hope that people reading this book will reach a new level of understanding and be educated in the same way as I was.
Jiang Wei, China Witness media assistant: This project has awakened my interest in discovering the untold story of my own family.
Li Xu, China Witness media assistant: Now, wherever I am, I can say with complete confidence: 'I am proud of my country and her people!'
Li Yuan, China Witness media assistant: I feel I have grown up by working on these stories about the kind of lives which I had never encountered in my life before…
Xu Ke, China Witness TV assistant: I had never been so moved as when I listened to those old people tell of the joys and sorrows of their lives. Now the whole world will listen to these hidden voices.
Kenny Renhu, China Witness research support: I gave my parents traditional respect, but I didn't learn about their history or try to understand them. My mother told me that she would not allow me to suffer the way she did.
Pan Zhigang, China Witness assistant manager, Nanjing
Shen Wei, China Witness assistant manager, Beijing
Cheng Lu, China Witness research assistant, Beijing
Xiao Shenshen, China Witness research assistant, Beijing
Yan Yan, China Witness research supporter, Beijing
Tea, China Witness research supporter, Nanjing
Xin Meng, China Witness research supporter, Nanjing
Liang Qin, China Witness research supporter, Henan
Wu Suiping, China Witness research supporter, Henan
Yi Zhang, China Witness research supporter, Xinjiang
Lin Xue & Ping, China Witness research supporter, Sichuan
Zhang Yongmin, China Witness research supporter, Shanghai
Zhong Jane, China Witness research supporter, Shanghai
Liu Tong, China Witness research supporter, Gansu
Zha Xi Liu & Pu er Min, China Witness research supporters, Anhui
Xi Fenglan, China Witness research supporters, Guizhou
Li Lin, China Witness research supporter, Shandong
Gao Feng, China Witness research supporter, Shanxi
Hu Feibao, China Witness research supporter, Silk Road
Wu Fan, China Witness research supporter, Guangdong
Kate Shortt, China Witness photographer
What we have done together with Xinran is so that Chinese history will not be forgotten, and so that our history will be known and remembered throughout the world.
