RAISED ON BITTERNESS AND FEARS: 3/8: Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution by Tania Branigan (Author)

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John Batchelor

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🗓️ 12 May 2025

⏱️ 12 minutes

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Summary

RAISED ON BITTERNESS AND FEARS: 3/8: Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution by Tania Branigan (Author)

https://www.amazon.com/Red-Memory-Afterlives-Cultural-Revolution/dp/1324051957

Red Memory uncovers forty years of silence through the stories of individuals who lived through the madness. Deftly exploring how this era defined a generation and continues to impact China today, Branigan asks: What happens to a society when you can no longer trust those closest to you? What happens to the present when the past is buried, exploited, or redrawn? And how do you live with yourself when the worst is over?

1968 RED GUARDS

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0:00.0	This is CBSI in the world. I'm John Batchel with the author of the new book, Red Memory,
0:11.0	the afterlifes of China's Cultural Revolution, Tanya Brannigan. And we go to a moment, August of
0:18.0	1966, Red August it's called, and the memories of a 13-year-old, many decades later in her 60s and 70s, about how she got caught up in events that she could not understand and still is haunted, cursed by the memories of what she saw between August of 66 and her birthday,
0:41.6	December 26, 1966. Her name is Yu Cheng Zhang. Tanya, Yu was 13 years old, and she's remembering
0:50.5	now these many decades later. She was part of the rally. I believe the date is
0:56.2	3 a.m. August 18th, we were called to Chenaman Square. Why? What happened that moment?
1:03.7	So this was the first of the mass rallies that Chairman Mao held for teenagers, for Red Guards, really giving his seal of approval to the Red Guard movement.
1:15.3	Because, of course, the Cultural Revolution was not a grassroots uprising.
1:19.5	Although the first Red Guard groups formed spontaneously, it was within a context where it was becoming clear that Mao wanted upheaval. And Mao, of course,
1:31.3	was a figure that they revered as a god, really. And so Mao had summoned them. His aim was to turn
1:38.9	to the masses, particularly young people, to wipe out political opposition to him within the party. But he really
1:46.9	called upon these young people and it was a great sort of grand ideological overhaul in which he
1:54.1	said that the revolution had failed or fallen short in a sense that the people within the party were either actively
2:03.5	working with people to try and turn it back or had simply become too complacent and had been
2:09.2	seduced by power and so forth. And so he called upon young people to remake the world.
2:17.1	And through these rallies, he put his seal of approval upon the Red Guards,
2:21.6	but also through the words of the leaders there,
2:25.9	they were encouraged to go out and destroy the four olds, as they put it,
2:30.0	to smash the old world, to get rid of the old culture and ways of doing things, and to create
2:37.0	this newer, ideologically purer world. And this involved not only destroying artworks or
2:47.5	bourgeois property, but also turning on people themselves.
2:52.4	Some of the most revered figures in China from the very top leaders
	...

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