Do look at Marcel Proust’s comment on the previous entry, and then review the information about Jung Chang here. Her account of the Red Guard period in Mao: the Unknown Story is all the more poignant given the fact that she was herself a Red Guard. I really believe that Mao: the Unknown Story is much better than 50% accurate and reliable, despite my “even if” in the previous entry. What she demonstrates very well in the course of this book is that the Cultural Revolution was no mere “mistake” but an emanation of Mao himself as he had been ever since the 1920s.
Daily Archives: January 24, 2006
On China and Chinese History
Two years already
Two whole years
Seven hundred thirty days
Seven hundred thirty nights
Little by little
Have erased the memory
Like raindrops
One by one
Washed clean
The blood-stained Square
From “The Dead Do Not Forget: In commemoration of the second anniversary of the Tiananmen massacre” by Wu Ningkun. His A Single Tear, A Family’s Persecution, Suffering, Love and Endurance, Atlantic Monthly Press, New York, 1993; Hodder & Stoughton, London, 1993, is not as well-known as Jung Chang’s Wild Swans, but is in my opinion a better book really. Here is an interview.
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Floating Life 