I've been brushing up on the ideologies swirling through Mao Zedong's life at the time of the Cultural Revolution in China - 1966-1976.
Life was miserable, nasty and cheap for millions in all stratas of the Chinese life during the years. At one stage all staff members, more than 2,000 people, were sent to the provinces of Jiangxi or Hunan for remoulding their cultural ideology. Or when you had the Premier and Vice Premier of the State labelled as "revisionist" and they needed to publicly apologise for they did not understand the intricacies of cultural revolution. These moves paralysed China's foreign affairs and embassies abroad.
It made for a decade of unwholesome public madness that enveloped entire communities, villages and towns. To also understand the times, you could look at Red Scarf Girl by Ji-Li Jiang. It's an interesting look at how people who go through extraordinary communal madness adjust to life after the subsidence.
Today I discovered a Marxist writer, Michael Hardt. He quotes Herman Melville, Frances Bacon, and Joseph Conrad in his tale of Empire. And Coetzee. He's also a fine and easily read writer. Very rare in philosophers on Marxism and national identity and empire.
Today's image is from the garden joining the old campus in hong Kong's Baptist University and the basketball courts.
No comments:
Post a Comment