Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know.

My name's Linda Davies and I Commission Podcasts for BBC Sounds.

As you'd expect, at the BBC we make podcasts of the very highest quality featuring the most knowledgeable experts and genuinely engaging voices.

What you may not know is that the BBC makes podcasts about all kinds of things like pop stars,

poltergeist, cricket, and conspiracy theories and that's just a few examples.

If you'd like to discover something a little bit unexpected, find your next podcast from the BBC World Service. I'm Monica Whitlock and today

we're going back to the 1960s in China. Millions of young people are rallying in the capital Beijing, cheering their leader

their communist idol, Mao Zedung. It's the start of the Cultural Revolution,

when Mao urged the masses to rise up and follow him alone.

In that ocean of excited faces there's a British boy. It's Kim Gordon just 10 years old.

Kim was witness to the revolution as it played out in the street, in his school and later as its prisoner.

Kim's family had left behind their London basement flat in 1965 and set off to live and work in Beijing or and

set off to live and work in Beijing or Peking as many people said then.

His parents, Eric and Marie Gordon,

were sincere communists and wanted to understand Mao's China from the inside.

It was definitely amazing adventure, but the whole thing was a total adventure into this strange universe.

China in the 1960s was one of the poorest countries in the world.

We would see Donkeys going past the main gate of the hostel and also camels.

The camels were coming in from the goby desert with their wares.

Eric, a journalist, worked as a copy editor at the Foreign Languages Press and Marie taught English.

Kim attended a Chinese primary school, strict, dull, but he learned Chinese fast.

It was May 1966 when Chairman Mao called for young people to denounce traditional values

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