I'm John Batchewitt, the author Tanya Brannigan, read Memory, the afterlife of China's

Cultural Revolution.

Tanya was eight years in the People's Republic of China between the first decade and the second

decade of the 21st century and the

stories of the teenagers ranging across the country or of the young men born into peasant families

in the countryside who find the People's Liberation Army a ladder up until they run into the Cultural Revolution

and are brutalized. We now turn to a story of a man who's made himself, remade himself into a

lawyer after many years of struggle, but his memory is horror. It's 1970. His name is Zhang.

Zhang and his father live with their mother, who's an educated and sophisticated woman, who has severe doubts about Mao and what's going on.

Tanya introduces us to the woman at the center. Yu Sheng, her name is, it's Fangzma.

Fang Zhongmo. Yeah, Fang Chungmo. Who is she at the time? What is she representing about the

Cultural Revolution? Why is she speaking truth? She was another very committed member of the party,

like as I've said, so many victims of the Cultural Revolution. She'd met her husband when they were both training as medical staff working for the party. And she'd been in that sense a great believer. But she and her family had also been through immense suffering.

So at the beginning of the cultural revolution, her mother was forced to leave the family home,

essentially was forced to go back to her hometown.

Her daughter, Zhang Hong Bing's eldest sister, became a very passionate Red Guard,

was one of the many who traveled to Beijing for the rallies.

But tragically, that great movement of the young people across the country contributed to a

huge outbreak of meningitis. And Zhang Hong's Bing's sister was one of those who died shortly

after returning. So she'd lost her mother in a sense. She'd very clearly lost her daughter.

Her husband then came under suspicion and was criticised and persecuted and beaten pretty

brutally. But then she herself, despite her years of service, came under criticism as well. And so she, too,

...