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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how

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Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.

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Speaker 1: I'm Tracy D. Wilson and I'm Holly Frying. And this

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Speaker 1: is now the conclusion of our mini series on China

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Speaker 1: under Chairman. Now the first few years of the Cultural Revolution.

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Speaker 1: To very briefly recap our previous episode, uh, we're marked

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Speaker 1: by intense protests and unrest. So from nineteen sixty six

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Speaker 1: until nineteen sixty eight, a radical youth movement known as

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Speaker 1: the Red Guard did everything from invading people's homes to

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Speaker 1: warring against itself, all in the name of revolution. Art

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Speaker 1: artifacts and other cultural treasures were destroyed under the idea

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Speaker 1: that they were bourgeois, counter revolutionary or imperial and at

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Speaker 1: the same time, the Chinese Communist Party chairman Mao Zedong

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Speaker 1: undertook a coordinate effort to purge his adversaries and his

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Speaker 1: perceived adversaries out of the Chinese Party, Chinese Communist Party,

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Speaker 1: and the government. In nineteen sixty nine, the tone and

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Speaker 1: direction of the Cultural Revolution really shifted dramatically. All those

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Speaker 1: people who had been purged and imprisoned and sent to

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Speaker 1: the countryside to work or put into forced labor and

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Speaker 1: re education camps had really made room in the party

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Speaker 1: from Maw to replace them with his allies, and the

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Speaker 1: Red Guard themselves had also been sent to the country

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Speaker 1: getting them out of the way and quelling all of

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Speaker 1: their violent activities. With many of the existing art and

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Speaker 1: artifacts destroyed, the nation was also primed to create new work.

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Speaker 1: So for the next seven years until Mao's death, he

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Speaker 1: treated he tried to remake the government and the country

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Speaker 1: after his own vision. And we mentioned uh Mao Zedong's wife,

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Speaker 1: Xiang Ching in the previous episode, and she was from

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Speaker 1: Shanghai and before marrying Maw, she had been an actress.

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Speaker 1: She was working in the Ministry of Culture prior to

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Speaker 1: the start of the Cultural Revolution, and she was one

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Speaker 1: of the people who said the revolution should specifically address

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Speaker 1: Chinese culture. To that end, Jiang had a hand in commissioning, planning,

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Speaker 1: and producing all kinds of new theatrical, musical, and artistic projects.

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Speaker 1: These celebrated the themes of the revolution. They glorified the

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Speaker 1: the proletariat as heroes, and they portrayed intellectuals, landlords, rightists,

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Speaker 1: and capitalists as the villains. They incorporated the work of

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Speaker 1: all kinds of other artists creating costumes, promotional materials and

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Speaker 1: the like. These new works also incorporated some Western instruments

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Speaker 1: and techniques. The steeps kind of counterintuitive since the whole

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Speaker 1: focus of this was to to be authentically Chinese. But

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Speaker 1: by selecting exactly what Western influences to incorporate, and by

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Speaker 1: planning out exactly how and when those influences would be incorporated,

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Speaker 1: Jiang was able to manage the influence of Western culture

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Speaker 1: rather than having it just roll over and drown out

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Speaker 1: everything Chinese. This was also the inspiration for new theater

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Speaker 1: and art. A huge part of the cultural aspect of

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Speaker 1: the revolution were eight quote model operas, and these are

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Speaker 1: actually created during the cultural revolutions first tumultuous years, but

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Speaker 1: they really proliferated after that. Five of them were Beijing

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Speaker 1: operas that told stories that in the relatively recent past,

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Speaker 1: and these stories had revolutionary themes. This was a really

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Speaker 1: big departure from the Beijing opera tradition, which had generally

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Speaker 1: relied on morality tales based on China's dynastic history for

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Speaker 1: its subject matter. There were also two ballets and a

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Speaker 1: symphonic work. These pieces were performed all over China in

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Speaker 1: a way that was standardized down to exactly how the

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Speaker 1: costumes should be made. Often attendance was actually mandatory and

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Speaker 1: the old traditional as were banned. These were heavily documented.

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Speaker 1: There was like a giant book that was everything, not

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Speaker 1: just the script, but what the costume should look like,

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Speaker 1: and what the music should be like and how it

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Speaker 1: should be performed. One thing to note in these new

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Speaker 1: works is that gender equality was a really frequent theme.

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Speaker 1: Although the Cultural Revolution itself did not use the word

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Speaker 1: feminist or any other analog to the word feminist, many

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Speaker 1: of the model operas featured resourceful, empowered heroines who made

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Speaker 1: their own decisions. So these model operas continued to be

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Speaker 1: performed for years, and they were actually made into film

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Speaker 1: versions in nineteen seventy. The drive to create new art

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Speaker 1: went beyond just these model operas. People were encouraged to write, paint,

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Speaker 1: and otherwise create new works that celebrated China, Mao and

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Speaker 1: the revolution. New periodicals began to come out in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy two, and new Chinese made feature films started to

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Speaker 1: come out in nineteen seventy four. There were four national

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Speaker 1: Fine Arts exhibitions between nineteen seventy two and nineteen seventy five,

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Speaker 1: with almost eight million people attending the exhibits in Beijing.

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Speaker 1: That was really record breaking in terms of attendance at

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Speaker 1: artistic exhibitions. Because so many cultural artifacts had been destroyed

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Speaker 1: and so many influences on art and literature and and

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Speaker 1: drama had been weeded out during the nineteen sixty six

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Speaker 1: to nineteen sixty eight years. A lot of this new

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Speaker 1: work picked up an aesthetic and themes from the Cultural

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Speaker 1: Revolution itself. Costumes and fashions drew more from the Red

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Speaker 1: Guards utilitarian uniforms than on Chinese fashion trends from the

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Speaker 1: past as a general trend. Clothing and artwork took on

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Speaker 1: kind of a militarized look and feel as another general trend.

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Speaker 1: This had an overall homogenizing effect on Chinese culture. As

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Speaker 1: we mentioned at the very very top of this series,

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Speaker 1: China is home to many diverse peoples, each of their

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Speaker 1: unique cultural aspects, but the standardized, mass produced art and

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Speaker 1: entertainment of the Cultural Revolution glossed over a lot of

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Speaker 1: that and created as surface level uh an overall unified culture. Now,

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Speaker 1: although this was called the Cultural Revolution, a lot of

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Speaker 1: went on, what went on was really overtly political and

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Speaker 1: had to do with the government itself, and we will

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Speaker 1: talk about some of that after a brief word from

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Speaker 1: a sponsor. And now back to China and the Cultural Revolution.

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Speaker 1: So just like the purges had primed the population for

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Speaker 1: the cultural shifts that were to come, they had also

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Speaker 1: primed the government for a near total shift in leadership.

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Speaker 1: While the Chinese Communist Party's Ninth Congress convened in nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty nine, many of its members were newly promoted by

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Speaker 1: Mao to replace people who had been purged between nineteen

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Speaker 1: sixty six and nineteen sixty eight. The ninth Congress also

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Speaker 1: selected its new Central Committee, almost entirely remaking it with

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Speaker 1: new members. Only about thirty percent of the committee's new

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Speaker 1: members had also served on the committee. Like the party

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Speaker 1: in general, this committee was almost entirely new blood. Lynn

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Speaker 1: Biau was also named as the vice Chairman of the

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Speaker 1: Communist Party. He was to be Mao's successor. However, he

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Speaker 1: overstepped his power pretty quickly, instituting martial law and saying

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Speaker 1: it was due to clashes along the Soviet border. Mao,

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Speaker 1: threatened by what was essentially a power grab, started trying

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Speaker 1: to counter maneuver against Lynn's efforts along with Joe and Lai,

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Speaker 1: the Prime Minister. Things came to a head in nineteen

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Speaker 1: seventy one when Lynn, or possibly lower level officials who

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Speaker 1: were loyal to him, organized a coup against Mao, which

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Speaker 1: included an assassination attempt. There's some evidence that it might

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Speaker 1: really have been Lynn's son and other supporters rather than

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Speaker 1: Lynn himself who did the plotting. It all failed after

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Speaker 1: Lynn's daughter informed Show of what was going on. Regardless,

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Speaker 1: Lynn and family apparently tried to flee to the Soviet Union,

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Speaker 1: but the plane they were on crashed on September thirteenth,

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy one, and there's some speculation here too that

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Speaker 1: they were drugged and put onto the plane, which was

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Speaker 1: then crashed deliberately to get rid of them. In the

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Speaker 1: wake of the coup and Lynn's death, Mao was afraid

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Speaker 1: that the incident would rattle people's confidence in the government.

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Speaker 1: I mean, at this point he had purged all of

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Speaker 1: his detractors. This guy was like the next in line

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Speaker 1: under him, essentially, and people were very curious about what

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Speaker 1: in the world had happened for somebody that seen here

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Speaker 1: to go rogue that way. Mao canceled a National Days

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Speaker 1: celebration and parade that were to take place that October,

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Speaker 1: and then he, along with Joe, purged Len's allies and

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Speaker 1: advisors all out of the government. Authorities tried to come

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Speaker 1: up with good explanations for why Lynn, who had been

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Speaker 1: Mao's close confident in the central part of the government,

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Speaker 1: would have betrayed him. But this whole process was really secretive,

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Speaker 1: with the people at large waiting for answers and gradually

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Speaker 1: becoming this enchanted with the way things were happening as

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Speaker 1: they did while he was still in favor with the party.

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Speaker 1: Lynn's calligraphy had been part of statues of Mau, so

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Speaker 1: there would be a statue of Mao with this calligraphy

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Speaker 1: that was in Lynn's calligraphy writing that just had statements

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Speaker 1: about what a great leader Mao was. Once Lynn had

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Speaker 1: died and this whole scandal had come to life, these

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Speaker 1: inscriptions were stripped away from all of the statues, all

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Speaker 1: part of the purging uh. The Tenth Party Congress convened

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Speaker 1: in nineteen seventy three, and unlike the ninth Congress, which

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Speaker 1: had replaced about seventy of the surviving Eighth Party Congress,

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Speaker 1: members with new members. The tenth Congress had included a

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Speaker 1: lot of previous members who had been quote rehabilitated in

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Speaker 1: work camps. About forty of the new Central Committee members

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Speaker 1: fit this description. So these are people who had been

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Speaker 1: purged since it work camps, and now we're allowed back

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Speaker 1: in to the fold because they had been rehabilitated. One

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Speaker 1: of these quote rehabilitated officials was Dong Xiaoping, who had

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Speaker 1: been exiled during the earlier years of the revolution. He

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Speaker 1: was named Vice Prime Minister and was tasked with working

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Speaker 1: with Prime Minister Joe and Leigh on a modernization program.

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Speaker 1: And at this point it was clear to both Mao

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Speaker 1: and Joe that they were getting older and needed someone

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Speaker 1: with experience to lead China after they were gone. By

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Speaker 1: this point, Mao had experienced a stroke and Joe had cancer.

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Speaker 1: In spite of his past, Dang seemed like the best candidate.

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Speaker 1: Joe was actually more moderate than Mao. He had been

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Speaker 1: one of the people who had protected some of China's

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Speaker 1: cultural artifacts that were at risk earlier in the revolution,

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Speaker 1: and he had also been campaigning for pretty reasonable modernizations

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Speaker 1: in agriculture, industry, science and technology, as well as national defense.

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Speaker 1: So it looked like things, you know, had a pretty

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Speaker 1: strong chance of returning to relative normalcy after all the

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Speaker 1: years of chaos. But Mao's wife, Jiang Ching had really

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Speaker 1: become a lot more radical than he was. She and

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Speaker 1: three of her biggest supporters became known as the Gang

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Speaker 1: of Four, and they worked against Joe, especially as it

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Speaker 1: became clear that he was not well. The balance of

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Speaker 1: power really teetered between Joe's pretty reasonable, moderate way of

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Speaker 1: doing things and Jiang's very more aggressive, revolutionary radical way,

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Speaker 1: and this went on until Joe died in January of

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventies six. In the protests that followed, let in

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Speaker 1: part by Jiang in the Gang of Four, Dang was

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Speaker 1: purged once again a few months later in September of

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Speaker 1: nineteen seventy six, Mao died as well, and Jiang and

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Speaker 1: the Gang of Four really made a power grab. Soon thereafter,

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Speaker 1: a coalition that included the military, the police, and political

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Speaker 1: figures rounded up and purged the Gang of Four. Dean

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Speaker 1: returned from his exile and took the reins of the

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Speaker 1: Chinese government, and he actually remained in power until nineteen

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Speaker 1: ninety two, and he died in nineteen ninety seven. In

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Speaker 1: nineteen eighty one. The Gang of Four, as well as

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Speaker 1: Lindiau's top generals were all put on trial and blamed

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Speaker 1: for everything that had gone wrong. The trial was televised

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Speaker 1: and it was very public. The charges included persecuting seven

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Speaker 1: hundred and twenty seven thousand, four hundred twenty people and

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Speaker 1: killing thirty four thousand, two hundred seventy four. There were

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Speaker 1: ten total defendants. Jiang Chang was sentenced to death, although

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Speaker 1: this was later changed to a life in prison. Jane

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Speaker 1: committed suicide in surprisingly, considering all that had gone on

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Speaker 1: three years of purges, and also very reasonably, Dang did

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Speaker 1: exactly what Mao had feared before the revolution started. He

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Speaker 1: incorporated elements of a free market, free enterprise, capitalist economy

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Speaker 1: into Anda's very planned economy. UH. And before we talk

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Speaker 1: about a couple of things. One is there were some

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Speaker 1: actual positive developments during the Cultural Revolution, and the other

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Speaker 1: is the aftermath of what happened afterwards. Before we talk

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Speaker 1: about that, let's have a brief word from another sponsor.

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Speaker 1: And now let's keep talking about Chinese history. Let's get

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Speaker 1: back to a few of actual, legitimately positive things that

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Speaker 1: did happen during the Cultural Revolution. UH. Some people interpret

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Speaker 1: all of this is that uh Dan came in after

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Speaker 1: Mao had died, had really started modernizing China, and for

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Speaker 1: a long time this was even the official account from

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Speaker 1: it was extremely uh poor form to comment on him

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Speaker 1: in a positive way at all. But really a lot

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Speaker 1: of the seeds of China's future growth were planted during

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Speaker 1: the Cultural Revolution, as destructive and chaotic as it was.

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Speaker 1: During the Revolution, people were guaranteed food, clothing, and education, fuel,

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Speaker 1: also expanded its healthcare system and made healthcare much more

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Speaker 1: affordable to a lot of people. About two million peasants

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Speaker 1: were given basic medical medical training, and they became known

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Speaker 1: as barefoot doctors. They were sort of like E. M.

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Speaker 1: T s. More hospitals were built out in the country,

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Speaker 1: and by the end of the Cultural Revolution, two thirds

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Speaker 1: It also expanded school programs for young people in rural areas,

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Speaker 1: and unfortunately Dang did roll back a lot of these

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Speaker 1: reforms after the Cultural Revolution was over, and the Cultural

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Speaker 1: Revolution was also a time where a great deal of

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Speaker 1: research work was taking place. Medical research during these years

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Speaker 1: led to the disc every of artemi isn't in. This

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Speaker 1: is a plant derived medicine that had been used in

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Speaker 1: other forms in China for a thousand years, but this

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Speaker 1: research led to it being refined significantly into an effective

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Speaker 1: treatment for malaria. Literacy really improved in rural areas where

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Speaker 1: illiteracy had been just completely rampant, and the number of libraries, museums,

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Speaker 1: cultural clubs, and cinemas grew. Life expectancy at birth also grew.

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Speaker 1: It had been thirty five years in nineteen forty nine,

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Speaker 1: and that was sixty five by nineteen eighty. Many of

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Speaker 1: the officials who had been purged were eventually returned to

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Speaker 1: offices and sometimes given preferential treatment or preferential treatment for

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Speaker 1: their children as a make good on what had happened

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Speaker 1: to them. Much of the confiscated property was returned as well,

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Speaker 1: with more than thirty thousand unclaimed works of art being

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Speaker 1: put on display in the hope of finding their owners. However,

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Speaker 1: but pretty much every historian looked ing at the the

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Speaker 1: Cultural Revolution is a big picture puts it into the

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Speaker 1: not a good experience for China category. Writing for The Guardian,

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Speaker 1: Tanya Brannigan called it quote a lost decade of tragedy

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Speaker 1: and waste. In nine one, the CCP called the Cultural

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Speaker 1: Revolution quote the most severe setback and the heaviest losses

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Speaker 1: suffered by the Party, the state and the people since

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Speaker 1: the founding of the People's Republic. And they also put

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Speaker 1: the blame squarely on Mao Zedong. That's another thing that

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Speaker 1: a lot of times the West gets wrong about it.

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Speaker 1: There's sort of this perception that there has been a

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Speaker 1: constant and unending deification of Mao Zodong and that China

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Speaker 1: has never really acknowledged what happened, which is absolutely the

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Speaker 1: opposite of what we just said. You could not be

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Speaker 1: further from the right. At the end of the revolution,

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Speaker 1: China was still very, very poor, but since it had

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Speaker 1: eliminated a whole class of more wealthy people, this is

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Speaker 1: one of those blessing and a curse kind of things.

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Speaker 1: There was a lot less class division and a lot

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Speaker 1: less wealth disparity. The Great Leap forward and the consequent

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Speaker 1: famine had been hardest on China's laborers, particularly rural laborers

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Speaker 1: working on farms. The Cultural level Revolution, though, was hardest

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Speaker 1: on the affluent, so the educated who were sent to

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Speaker 1: the countryside to work and learn from common people, and

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Speaker 1: the people who had the money and the means to

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Speaker 1: become targets of the Red Guard were also significantly impacted.

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Speaker 1: So while the Great Leap Forward had killed millions of people,

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Speaker 1: had most who had mostly been on a more or

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Speaker 1: less subsistence level existence. The Cultural Revolution killed people who

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Speaker 1: otherwise become suspects. So like the first tragedy had had

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Speaker 1: killed poor farmers and the second one killed intellectuals and

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Speaker 1: teachers and people who had money. People who were between

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Speaker 1: the ages of fifteen and twenty five during the Cultural

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Speaker 1: Revolution really missed out on having an education. High schools

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Speaker 1: came back by nineteen sixty seven, but universities did not

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Speaker 1: begin admitting people again until nineteen seventy. There was also

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Speaker 1: a really extreme and negative impact on minorities, both in

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Speaker 1: terms of being targeted by the Red Guard and the

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Speaker 1: Purgas and by having their cultural or artifacts destroyed. Previously

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Speaker 1: popular artists and musicians gave up their work rather than

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Speaker 1: being forced into propaganda for the new regime. And then

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Speaker 1: at a more basic social level, family members turned on

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Speaker 1: each other and began turning in their family members, their neighbors,

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Speaker 1: you know, people they had previously trusted for criticizing Maw,

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Speaker 1: sometimes not even because that had happened, but in an

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Speaker 1: effort to protect their own appearance as someone who supported Now,

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Speaker 1: about one point five million people died during the Cultural Revolution,

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Speaker 1: many many more went to prison or were tortured or beaten,

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Speaker 1: Some had their property seased. As we mentioned, thirty six

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Speaker 1: million were harassed or persecuted in some way. Even so,

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Speaker 1: even with those numbers, which are really pretty astronomical, there

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Speaker 1: were not a lot of specifics known about the Cultural

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Speaker 1: Revolution until more recently. People who grew up during the Revolution,

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Speaker 1: and we're members of the Red Guard, are now in

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Speaker 1: their sixties or seventies, and many of them have started

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Speaker 1: to talk more openly about what happened, so that the

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Speaker 1: history of it is not lost. So we're sort of

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Speaker 1: seeing the same kind of thing as people who lived

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Speaker 1: through the famine, you know, ten or fifteen years ago,

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Speaker 1: wanting to tell the story of the famine so that

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Speaker 1: the uh, the history of it would not be lost

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Speaker 1: to the world forever. And in some cases, there are

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Speaker 1: people that want to atone for their actions during the

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Speaker 1: Cultural Revolution, so as they're nearing end of life and

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Speaker 1: they're taking stock, they're trying to make good on what

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Speaker 1: they feel you've done wrong in their lives. Yeah. I

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Speaker 1: read just some really heartbreaking stories that are basically boiled

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Speaker 1: down to I was fifteen years old and I turned

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Speaker 1: in my mother. Like so, there are just a whole

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Speaker 1: lot of stories of people who have carried around this

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Speaker 1: um remorse and regret, sometimes having caused the deaths of

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Speaker 1: their family members for decades after this was over. Um.

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Speaker 1: It's horribly sad story. It is a yeah. Well, and

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Speaker 1: what's weird to me? The Cultural Revolution has been on

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Speaker 1: my list of things that I wanted to talk about

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Speaker 1: pretty much since coming on the podcast. It is a

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Speaker 1: thing that I knew very little actual detail about beforehand.

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Speaker 1: I feel like most of my knowledge of the Cultural

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Speaker 1: Revolution was in UH, some college courses that talked about

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Speaker 1: Mao's Little Red Book, right, which is a tiny piece

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Speaker 1: of it, um, and then the Chinese language movie Farewell,

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Speaker 1: My Concubine. There's not a lot to go on, and

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Speaker 1: I had the sense that it was just heartbreaking and

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Speaker 1: disruptive and upsetting and uh at the same time, as

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Speaker 1: as it grew into this mini series, which is the

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Speaker 1: first time that I have tried to tackle something that

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Speaker 1: ambitious in the podcast. At the further I got into it,

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Speaker 1: the more I was like, why did I do this? Um? So,

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Speaker 1: I really hope that those of you who are listening

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Speaker 1: have gotten something out of this, this four part now series,

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Speaker 1: um because wow, it was a lot to tackle. I

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Speaker 1: am not going to do another four part series for

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Speaker 1: a long while because you're crazy. Uh. Do you have

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Speaker 1: some fun listener mail to offset the sadness of the day.

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Speaker 1: It is much more fun. I'm not going to read

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Speaker 1: all of it, but it is from Faith who wrote

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Speaker 1: to us about our History of Colors episode, which is

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Speaker 1: I did to break up like the extremely distressing topics

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Speaker 1: I had been researching for a while. Uh So, Faith says,

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Speaker 1: longtime listener, but this is the first time I've really

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Speaker 1: felt compelled to write in thank you so much for

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Speaker 1: the excellent episode on the history of color. There are

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Speaker 1: as I'm sure you now know, whole libraries of material

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Speaker 1: on various aspects of color and on individual shades that

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Speaker 1: can draw you down any number of research paths, like

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Speaker 1: good as Beef with Newton, or the history and influence

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Speaker 1: of Owen Jones's Grammar of ornament, not to mention public

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Speaker 1: health and ecology see Dan Figgin's Toms River, and of

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Speaker 1: course colonialization in global trade as a brief aside, I

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Speaker 1: actually originally in the introduction had this whole thing about

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Speaker 1: what Newton thought color was and what all of these

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Speaker 1: other people afterward thought color was. And it became number

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Speaker 1: one really long and number two not really Germaine to

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Speaker 1: the direction that episode really end up going, which was

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Speaker 1: about more pigments and dies than the theory of color. Um.

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Speaker 1: Another fun fact to return to the letter about the

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Speaker 1: development of synthetic dies is how it intersected with that

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Speaker 1: of artificial lighting in the larger context of the Industrial Revolution.

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Speaker 1: In effect, the industrialization of light enabled and responded to

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Speaker 1: the industrialization of color. That is a fascinating observation that

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Speaker 1: we had not thought about, or I had not thought

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Speaker 1: about at all. Yeah, and then faith says just one

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Speaker 1: more analin dies also proved useful for staining sales on

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Speaker 1: microscope slides, thereby aiding the bacteriological revolution. That was the

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Speaker 1: thing that I thought that I had mentioned in the episode,

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Speaker 1: but I think maybe I did not. So thank you

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Speaker 1: Faith for writing into us with all of this. If

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Speaker 1: you would like to write to us, we were a

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00:23:51,320 --> 00:23:53,399
Speaker 1: history podcast that how Stuff Works dot com. You can

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Speaker 1: write to us about this or any of our other episodes.

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Speaker 1: You can send suggestions. Please do not suggest another four

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Speaker 1: part series because it was really hard. Um. We're on

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Speaker 1: Facebook at Facebook dot com, slash missed in History and

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00:24:05,080 --> 00:24:07,680
Speaker 1: on Twitter at miss in History. Are tumbler is miss

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Speaker 1: in History dot tumbler dot com, and we are on Interest.

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Speaker 1: We have a new store where you can buy shirts

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Speaker 1: and iPhone cases and stuff like that, and that is

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00:24:17,680 --> 00:24:20,920
Speaker 1: at missing history dot spreadshirt dot com. You can come

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00:24:20,960 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 1: to our parent company's website, which is how stuff Works

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00:24:23,520 --> 00:24:25,679
Speaker 1: dot com, and you can search the word Mau in

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Speaker 1: the search bar and you will find a really interesting

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Speaker 1: article called why is there an underground city beneath Beijing? Uh?

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00:24:31,760 --> 00:24:36,080
Speaker 1: That underground city was started while Mao was in office.

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Speaker 1: And you can come to our website which is missing

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Speaker 1: history dot com and you can find show notes, all

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Speaker 1: of the episodes and archive of everything we have ever

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Speaker 1: done so, come and visit us at miss in history

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Speaker 1: dot com or how stuff Works dot com for more

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Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Stuff works dot

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