When it comes to the popular science series “100,000 Whys,” many Chinese people are familiar with it, as many read parts or all of it during their childhood. Just how popular was it? According to mainland media reports, the series, published by China Children’s Press, has sold over 100 million copies.
Furthermore, from its debut in 1959 through April 1964, “100,000 Whys” had sold 5.84 million copies (730,000 sets), including 20,000 sets supplied to overseas Chinese in Indonesia. In 1964, the population with an elementary school education or higher (including those with only an elementary school education) numbered 240 million, meaning that for every 40 literate Chinese people, there was one copy of “100,000 Whys.” The sales of several individual volumes even exceeded those of “Selected Works of Mao Zedong.”
The China Children’s Press first began planning the publication of “100,000 Whys” in 1959. At the time, while conducting surveys in schools, the editors discovered that students loved to ask “why” questions, so they decided to compile a large-scale, question-and-answer series on natural sciences. However, the title “100,000 Whys” was not originally conceived by the Children’s Publishing House; rather, it was borrowed from a book by the renowned Soviet popular science writer Ilyin (whose real name was Ilya Yakovlevich Marshak).
From April to October 1961, five volumes of “100,000 Whys” were published covering physics, chemistry, astronomy and meteorology, agriculture, and physiology and hygiene, and they sparked a buying frenzy as soon as they hit the market. In 1962, three more volumes were published: geology and minerals, animals, and mathematics. The eight volumes collectively contained 1,484 questions, totaling 1 million Chinese characters.
From 1964 to 1965, based on questions raised in letters from readers, the editorial office conducted a comprehensive revision of the series, resulting in the publication of the second edition of “100,000 Whys.” Reviewers included Li Siguang, Zhu Kezhen, Hua Luogeng, Mao Yisheng, Qian Chongshu, Su Buqing, and others.
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After the Cultural Revolution erupted in 1966, “100,000 Whys” was denounced as a “poisonous weed.” One pamphlet attacked the series for receiving the “endorsement” and “praise” of senior officials associated with Liu Shaoqi, declaring:
“[The series] won the ‘endorsement’ and ‘praise’ of key figures in Liu’s Black Command Headquarters, the counterrevolutionary revisionists Yang Shangkun, Hu Qiaomu, Hu Yaobang, and others… Hu Yaobang, brimming with confidence, went out of his way to praise 100,000 Whys… Jiefang Daily published an editorial titled ‘Cultivating Children’s Love for Science’ on its front page. As is well known, the only other occasion on which an editorial was published for a book was the release of Volume 4 of Selected Works of Mao Zedong in 1960; yet 100,000 Whys was actually placed on par with it and with even greater fanfare… If this can be tolerated, what cannot be tolerated!?”
“100,000 Why’s” was forced to undergo a revision, resulting in a third edition. The original plan was to publish 23 volumes, but due to the end of the Cultural Revolution, the final two were never released. During those years of extreme book scarcity, the “Cultural Revolution edition” of “100,000 Why’s” still managed to sell 37 million copies. The revised third edition was completely rewritten to analyze everything under the guidance of “class struggle” and “struggle over political lines.” It added volumes on topics such as military affairs and sports that aligned with the political demands of the time, and every answer to a question had to begin with a quotation from Mao’s quotations or the works of Marx and Engels. Furthermore, the yellow covers featured workers, peasants, and soldiers holding aloft the “Little Red Book” at the top, with the volume title written below.
According to Ye Yonglie, the writer who contributed the most entries to the book, the reasons why “100,000 Whys” was classified as “poisonous weeds” were utterly absurd. For example, the question of why the sun has sunspots was interpreted at the time as an allusion to the “Sun of Mao,” and how could the “Sun of Mao” possibly have sunspots? Wasn’t this a blatant curse?
For instance, in the film “The White-Haired Girl,” fabricated by the Chinese Communist Party, Yang Bailao commits suicide by drinking brine, and Ye Yonglie used this as a lead-in in his book, but during the Cultural Revolution, Yang Bailao was transformed into the “revolutionary Yang Bailao,” so he could no longer drink brine. Consequently, “100,000 Whys” was accused of slandering the poor peasants and lower-middle peasants…
The ordeal of the editors of ‘100,000 Whys’
Ye Yonglie’s connection with “100,000 Whys” began when he was a sophomore at Peking University. At the time, both his father and older brother had been labeled “rightists.” To complete his studies and ease the burden on his parents, he used his free time to write popular science essays to earn money. Since he was only 20 at the time and had been a reader of the Soviet edition of “100,000 Whys” since childhood, his articles, written in a lively style, won the favor of the editors. As a result, Ye Yonglie not only authored the chemistry volume but also contributed to volumes on astronomy and meteorology, physiology, and public health. Of the 947 “Why?” questions published across five volumes in 1961, Ye Yonglie wrote 326. This earned him a substantial income of over 1,600 yuan.
Not only that, but Ye Yonglie also made the leap from an ordinary college student to a science popularizer. In 1962, Ye Yonglie met Yang Huifen, a young Russian language teacher. It is said that when he went to her family’s home to ask for her hand in marriage, the gift he brought was a set of “100,000 Whys.” The Yang family was quite impressed by this gesture. A year later, the two were married.
However, what made him rise also led to his downfall. During the Cultural Revolution, after “100,000 Whys” was branded a “great poisonous weed,” Ye Yonglie also suffered the consequences. At that time, dozens of rebel groups in Shanghai formed the “Coordination Station for Criticizing “100,000 Whys,” and Ye Yonglie, as the “author of the great poisonous weed” and a “black element in literature and art,” was the first to bear the brunt of the attacks, facing constant criticism. The radical faction at his workplace posted a big-character poster titled: “100,001 Whys: An Interrogation of Ye Yonglie.” In 1967, the Red Guards raided his home, seizing a large number of his photographs, letters, and manuscripts. After spending three years at the “May 7th Cadre School,” he was sent down to “dig deep holes”, constructing air-raid shelters and making cinder bricks. He later returned to work at the Shanghai Film Studio. It was not until the end of the Cultural Revolution that Ye Yonglie’s life returned to normal. He later embarked on a career in non-fiction writing, becoming a “Cultural Revolution writer.”
Wang Guozhong, the chief editor of the “100,000 Whys” series, along with the vast majority of the staff, were also sent down to labor camps. In October 1970, Zhang Chunqiao, then Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee, ordered the merger of 14 Shanghai publishing houses into a single entity, and the Children’s Publishing House was among those merged.
Just as Ye Yonglie’s life underwent a complete transformation after the Cultural Revolution, “100,000 Whys” was reissued in a fourth edition that repudiated the “Cultural Revolution” version. In 1999, the fifth edition was released, featuring an index and supplementary materials.
Absurd stories
Absurd stories similar to the criticism leveled against “100,000 Whys” were not uncommon during the Cultural Revolution. There is another story about Yang Yi, a Nanjing-based translator known for her work on classics such as “Wuthering Heights.” In 1959, she had written children’s songs to accompany a set of illustrated book proofs published by the Shanghai Children’s Publishing House, which promoted the values of diligence and independence from a young age. As a result, during the Cultural Revolution, she was accused of “vicious attacks on the Red Sun, the reddest of the red in our hearts” and subjected to public criticism. It turned out that in one of the nursery rhymes, she had written: “I’ll race the sun to see who gets up faster; I grab my clothes and put them on, I get up faster than the sun!” To dare compare oneself to the “Red Sun”, wasn’t that the height of audacity?
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