9. The Red Guards are Coming

Cultural decay can breakdown and lead to cultural revolution. Some might celebrate cultural revolution, but in this episode Jeff Rich speaks of his own forebodings while watching the cultural ferment of today that we may be reliving a prequel to the Chinese Cultural Revolution. This episode tells the story of that ferment, chaos and frenzy of cultural destruction and loss. With stories of the Summer Palace in Beijing and the great film, Farewell My Concubine, this episode asks: are the Red Guards coming for us again?

Credits:

* The wonderful Kimiko Ishizaka and the Open Goldberg project, for the public domain recording of the Aria from J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations https://opengoldbergvariations.org/

* brief audio clip from Chain Kaige (Dir), Farewell my Concubine (1993)

* BBC news clips of the Cultural Revolution (1967)

* Stephen Platt, Autumn in the Heavenly Kingdom: China, the West and the epic story of the Taiping Civil War (2012)

* Frank Dikotter, Cultural Revolution: A People's History, 1962-1976 (2017)

Read more of my writing at www.theburningarchive.com or buy my new book - Gathering Flowers of the Mind: Collected Poems 1996-2020 in print and e-book editions at major online retailers.

Check out me reading poems from the book at The Burning Archive Youtube channel