Chinese Cultural Revolution Medley – (伟大的无产阶级文化大革命混合曲)

This medley consists of four songs from the Cultural Revolution, but the fourth one originated during the Great Leap Forward.

0:00 Sailing the Seas Depends on the Helmsman (大海航行靠舵手)
1:22 The Walls of the New Thatched House are as White as Snow (新苫的房雪白的墙 )
2:45 Our Leader, Mao Zedong (咱们的领袖毛泽东)
3:40 Chairman Mao has come to our Village (毛主席来到咱农庄)

This video commemorates the 58th anniversary of the Cultural Revolution.

The 16 May Notification (or Circular of May 16) was the initial political declaration on the 16th of May, 1966, announcing the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. This was originally an inner-party document but was declassified the next day and published in the People's Daily, the official newspaper of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC). This is when many historians consider the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution to have officially begun.

The Cultural Revolution itself was a major event in modern Chinese history, and many groups have different perspectives on the same. The CPC in its modern form condemns the Cultural Revolution, and following Mao Zedong's death, the Gang of Four (key figures during the GPCR), which included Mao Zedong's widow, would be arrested. Mao's widow, Jiang Qing, would commit suicide while in the hospital. She left a suicide note which stated:
"Today the revolution has been stolen by the revisionist clique of Deng, Peng Zhen, and Yang Shangkun. Chairman Mao exterminated Liu Shaoqi, but not Deng, and the result of this omission is that unending evils have been unleashed on the Chinese people and nation. Chairman, your student and fighter is coming to see you!"

The Cultural Revolution saw attacks on groups like intellectuals and teachers, and also historic landmarks, such as the Cemetery of Confucius and the Temple of Heaven, among others. One of China's most important missile scientists, Yao Tongbin, was beaten to death by a mob in Beijing. Despite all this, many Chinese people cherish the Cultural Revolution, especially the working class.

During Deng Xiaoping's ascendancy, the government arrested and imprisoned figures who took a strongly pro-Cultural Revolution stance. For instance, in 1985, a young shoe-factory worker put up a poster at a factory in Xianyang, Shaanxi, which declared that "The Cultural Revolution was Good" and led to achievements such as "the building of the Nanjing Yangtze River Bridge, the creation of hybrid rice crops and the rise of people's consciousness." The worker was eventually sentenced to ten years in prison, where he died soon after "without any apparent cause".

Since the late 1980s, China has experienced "at first a fitful and then a nationwide revival in Mao Zedong", including aspects of the Cultural Revolution. One of the student leaders of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, Shen Tong, author of Almost a Revolution, has a positive view of some aspects of the GPCR. According to Shen, the trigger for the Tiananmen hunger-strikes was a big-character poster, a form of public political discussion that gained prominence during the Cultural Revolution. Shen remarked that the travel of students from across the country to Beijing on trains and the hospitality they received from residents was reminiscent of the experiences of Red Guards.

Public discussion is still limited. The Chinese government continues to prohibit news organizations from mentioning details, and online discussions and books about the topic are subject to official scrutiny. Textbooks abide by the "official view" (negative view) of the events. Many government documents from the 1960s onward remain classified. The Cultural Revolution is barely mentioned in historical exhibits at the National Museum of China in Beijing. Despite inroads by prominent sinologists, independent scholarly research is discouraged.

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Tags: #china #peoplesrepublicofchina #mao #maozedong #chairmanmao #maozhuxi #culturalrevolution #1966 #greatproletarianculturalrevolution #maoism #maoist #redguard #communist #communistpartyofchina