Monday, May 03, 2004
The promised entry on Morning Sun didn't materialize, partly a result of overwhelming workloads and ongoing procrastination. Once I find time after school term ends, I hope to read up more on the cultural revolution. It is a period in history I am ashamed to say I know so little of, being Chinese (race, not nationality) and after near-entanglement into its ways, if my mother had not fled communism's closing doors, at age 10. Compared with knowledge of history elsewhere, I have to admit I am equipped with pathetic pieces of modern Chinese history and random vacuum in between, to say the least. I need to know how everything flows in its rightful paths - Kuomintang, Long March, Mao, Soong sisters, Nanjing massacre, Yuan Shikai - and eventually evolves into the cross-straits relations today. For now, here is the excerpt I saw on tv that got me started and a commendable Village Voice review.
From Morning Sun:
Song Binbin, the young female student who first pinned a Red Guard armband on Mao Zedong in 1966, signaling the Chairman's support for the Red Guards. In the interview granted to the makers of Morning Sun, Song recounts for the first time how the Communist media fabricated a name for her in order to whip up popular frenzy for the Cultural Revolution, and how the resulting rumors about her have affected her life ever since.
From Morning Sun:
Song Binbin, the young female student who first pinned a Red Guard armband on Mao Zedong in 1966, signaling the Chairman's support for the Red Guards. In the interview granted to the makers of Morning Sun, Song recounts for the first time how the Communist media fabricated a name for her in order to whip up popular frenzy for the Cultural Revolution, and how the resulting rumors about her have affected her life ever since.
