40 years on, the Cultural Revolution comes full circle – Clifford Coonan
From The Independent (link): Red Flag-waving Chinese soldiers, muscle-bound peasants, nudes, dancing girls and women soldiers, and scores of Mao Zedong pictures, sculptures and photographs. Whatever...
View ArticleThe Life and Times of Book Idiot Zhou – John Pomfret
The following is adapted from John Pomfret’s book Chinese Lessons, which will be published next month. From the Washington Post: On a beastly summer day in 1966, in the country-side of northern...
View ArticleEx-Red Guard recalls China’s Cultural Revolution – Jehangir S. Pocha
From Boston Globe: Li Qingyou vividly recalls the hot summer day 40 years ago in Tiananmen Square. He was among the 1 million members of the new cadre of radical students called Red Guards who stood...
View ArticleVideo: The First Casualty of Cultural Revolution – Letters from China
From Letters from China: Just before the Yunnan Multi Culture Visual Festival, the Organising Committee suddenly issued a notice on 26 March saying the film festival was ordered to suspend and the...
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Red Guards in the Arts – Tian Taiquan and Zhang Dazhong
Wudou (武斗), or Armed Struggle, was the most destructive episode of the Cultural Revolution. Hundreds of thousands young Red Guards and ordinary people died in factional armed struggles across the...
View ArticleOn Mao’s 114th Birthday, Past Catches Up to Former Red Guard Leader – Xujun...
From The New America Media: A long forgotten photo of a young woman strapping a Red Guard arm band on the communist leader has resurfaced on the Internet and brought new infamy to Song Binbin, now a...
View ArticleLiu Jin: A Personal History of the Beginning of the Red Guards
Anton Lee Wishik II translated an article from the latest Yanhuang Chunqiu (炎黄春秋）magazine, posted on translator’s mei-zhong blog: The Red Guards first originated at the affiliated middle school of...
View ArticleJeffrey Wasserstrom: Tiananmen at Twenty
From the Nation: In April and May of 1989, people around the world were inspired by the protests in Tiananmen Square, then horrified when the June 4 massacre turned Beijing streets into urban killing...
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No More Politics, Get Back to Studying
In the aftermath of the Shifang protests, Party mouthpiece Global Times published an editorial on July 6 exhorting adults not to “encourage students to demonstrate.” The paper reminded readers that...
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Drawing the News: So Long, Sparta
The new Politburo Standing Committee has been elected, Xi Jinping has taken the helm–now all that remains of the 18th Party Congress are lingering inconveniences for Beijingers, and memories. Artist:...
View ArticleContemporary Chinese Art: Young and Restless
At The Economist’s Analects blog, Alec Ash discusses ON / OFF: China’s Young Artists in Concept and Practice. The exhibition at Beijing’s Ullens Center includes the Foxconn-focused Consumption by Li...
View ArticlePing Fu Defends Memoir After Chinese Netizens Attack
Ping Fu, CEO of 3D software developer Geomagic and innovation adviser to President Obama, released her English-language memoir Bend, Not Break on December 31. The book traces her journey from oppressed...
View ArticleNobel Laureate Mo Yan: “I Am Guilty”
In his first interview since receiving the Nobel Prize for Literature in December, Mo Yan talks to Der Spiegel’s Bernhard Zand about his work, his political views, and his critics. SPIEGEL: Unspeakable...
View ArticleFormer Red Guard Atones For Past
A 61-year-old man from Shandong Province, Liu Boqin, paid a magazine to publish a letter expressing remorse over violent acts he committed during the Cultural Revolution as a teen. According to Chang...
View ArticleMy Grandfather the Red Guard
Shawn Lei at Tea Leaf Nation shares his grandfather’s memories of the Cultural Revolution: There were carrots as well as sticks; those who joined the campaign could get gong fen, points which...
View ArticleRestaurants Serve Cultural Revolution Nostalgia
Adam Century at The Atlantic looks at Chongqing’s red restaurant phenomenon in which eateries take on Cultural Revolution-era themes to attract customers. The walls of Old Base (laojidi), a bustling...
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Drawing the News: Apology Not Accepted
A roundup of online political cartoons from the past week. Click any image to launch the slideshow view. Check out more cartoons from CDT Chinese. © Anne.Henochowicz for China Digital Times (CDT),...
View ArticleRed Guards Apologize, Reopening A Dark Chapter
NPR reports on recent public apologies by former Red Guards for violence, including murder, committed during the Cultural Revolution. While many people welcome the apologies as a first step toward a...
View ArticleRed Guard Reunion
April Rabkin at Slate shares her experience of traveling to Yutian, east of Beijing, for the 46th-year class reunion of former Red Guards who never graduated due to the turmoil of the Cultural...
View ArticleChaos of Cultural Revolution Echoes 50 Years Later
This May marks the 50th anniversary of the start of China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution–a decade-long mass political movement that led to widespread social upheaval and factional violence....
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