Jonathan Mirsky obituary theguardian.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from theguardian.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
mao, high level tone) is a near homonym for the name of the Great Leader (
mao, rising tone), and a tip to the police from an eavesdropper who misheard one for the other and took you to be disrespectful could ruin your life.
1 Such things no longer happen. The importance of the Chinese government in the daily lives of ordinary Chinese people has receded markedly over the last quarter-century. The space in which unofficial life takes place has expanded, and informal speech is much freer than before. Although there are still no barbed political cartoons in newspapers, sarcasm no less biting is rampant in jokes and rhythmical ditties on oral networks throughout the country. Some of these sayings flatly blame the Communist Party (“If we don’t root out corruption, the country will perish; if we do root out corruption, the Party will perish”). Others dare to satirize Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, and other top leaders by name.
edited by Jeremy Brown and Matthew D. Johnson
Harvard University Press, 468 pp.
“Bianyuanren” Jishi [A Record of “Marginal People”]
by Yang Kuisong
Secret Archives of the Cultural Revolution in Guangxi
edited by Yongyi Song et al Mirror Media Group, 36-volume e-book
Other Materials Consulted
by Guo Jian, Yongyi Song, and Yuan Zhou
Rowman and Littlefield, second edition, 542 pp.
The Chinese Cultural Revolution Database
edited by Yongyi Song and others
Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, third edition, CD–ROM
The Cultural Revolution at the Margins: Chinese Socialism in Crisis
by Wu Yiching
1.
For decades, Beijing’s Beihai Park has been one of the city’s most beloved retreats a strip of green around a grand lake to the north of the Communist Party’s leadership compound, its waters crowded with electric rental boats shaped like ducks and lotus flowers. A former imperial garden, Beihai is home to stone screens, temples, and steles from as far back as the