China's Cultural Revolution Dredges Up Chilling History of Killings

To many Chinese, today's date marks the anniversary of the official start of the Cultural Revolution, more than a half-century ago. In 1966, the government of Mao Zedong issued a document to the Chinese people known as the "May 16th Notification"; it was a summary of what would become the ideological justification for the peasant revolution that would last years and claim millions of lives.

Of the many stories of the Revolution's long narrative, there is one from the southeast corner of Hunan Province, less than 200 miles from Mao's hometown. More than 4,500 people in Dao County, many of them children and the elderly, were killed in the fall of 1967. As with many episodes of violence and brutality in the Chinese countryside during this period, there are few detailed accounts and very little public knowledge of the Daoxian massacre.

But 19 years later, Chinese journalist Tan Hecheng visited the area as a researcher for a magazine, interviewing residents in order to get to the truth of that bloody season. The magazine never published his article, but Tan was eventually able to publish a book of the accounts. Banned in China, it was published in Hong Kong.

That book is called "The Killing Wind: A Chinese County's Descent into Madness during the Cultural Revolution," and Beijing-based journalist and author Ian Johnson spoke to Tan about his reporting.