Chairman Mao Zedong Badges & Ephemera

Bill Joseph recently posted a comment to this site containing some excellent links to Cultural Revolution-related material over at wellesley.edu. I thought I’d repost them here for anyone who might have missed them:

• MP3s of Cultural Revolution-era songs.
• Photos from Mr. Joseph’s 1972 trip to China.
• A collection of China-related political links.

As someone who lived in Beijing until recently, it’s a treat to see how much things have changed there in the last 22 years. While it’s still the seat of political power in China, just about everything else about the place is different; what used to be a small backwater town is now a booming (and bourgeois) metropolis. Also, don’t miss the photos of Zhou Enlai attending a meeting with Yao Wenyuan and Zhang Chunqiao, two members of the Gang of Four, a group that would lead a criticism movement aimed at Zhou in early 1974. They were ultimately arrested in October 1976 and sentenced to jail along with Jiang Qing and Wang Hongwen.

It was through Bill’s pages that I discovered Vivian Wagner’s Songs of the Red Guards: Keywords Set to Music. It’s an outstanding piece of work, and should be required reading for anyone with an interest in the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guard movement or Mao propaganda.

And finally, a personal note. I do this site for kicks, and to share the bits and pieces of Mao Ephemera that I’ve accumulated over the years with others who have an interest in post-1949 Chinese politics. Therefore, it gives me great pleasure to announce one of the items I’ve posted about here will be on display at the Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum as part of their exhibit China: The Opening of the Middle Kingdom, running October 15, 2004 through March 13, 2005. I suppose this means I’m now a “noted collector.”