Look and See

HARRY Wu is a glorious pain, forever reminding the world of an awful fact: the existence of the “Laogai” system in China, or the Chinese Gulag. Wu knows a little about this. He spent 19 years in that system, having voiced criticism of Communist practices. He got out in 1979, and six years later came to America, where he went to work as a geology professor. But he could not, of course, forget Laogai and the people in it. In time, he chucked the teaching and dedicated himself to the task of reminding, reminding, always reminding.

He is now doing it with a little exhibit in Washington, D.C. It is called “Images of Laogai,” and it includes photos that Wu himself took, secretly, during visits back to China. (He was finally caught in 1995, and held for 66 days, before being released to the U.S. authorities.) You’ll find the exhibit in the Russell Senate Office Building. No matter how steeped you are in Laogai, or in anti-PRC matters in general, there is something about pictures—hardly an original thought, to be sure, but true. It’s one thing to read about Laogai (or about Armenia, or Dachau, or Cambodia), another to see it.

About the Author

Jay Nordlinger

Jay Nordlinger was a senior editor of National Review and a book fellow at National Review Institute.

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

HARRY Wu is a glorious pain, forever reminding the world of an awful fact: the existence of the “Laogai” system in China, or the Chinese Gulag. Wu knows a little about this. He spent 19 years in that system, having voiced criticism of Communist practices. He got out in 1979, and six years later came to America, where he went to work as a geology professor. But he could not, of course, forget Laogai and the people in it. In time, he chucked the teaching and dedicated himself to the task of reminding, reminding, always reminding.

He is now doing it with a little exhibit in Washington, D.C. It is called “Images of Laogai,” and it includes photos that Wu himself took, secretly, during visits back to China. (He was finally caught in 1995, and held for 66 days, before being released to the U.S. authorities.) You’ll find the exhibit in the Russell Senate Office Building. No matter how steeped you are in Laogai, or in anti-PRC matters in general, there is something about pictures—hardly an original thought, to be sure, but true. It’s one thing to read about Laogai (or about Armenia, or Dachau, or Cambodia), another to see it.