Red Legacies in China: Cultural Afterlives of the Communist Revolution

by Jie Li (Editor), Enhua Zhang (Editor)

Overview

What has contemporary China inherited from its revolutionary past? How do the realities and memories, aesthetics and practices of the Mao era still reverberate in the post-Mao cultural landscape? The essays in this volume propose red legacies as a new critical framework from which to examine the profusion of cultural productions and afterlives of the communist revolution in order to understand China’s continuities and transformations from socialism to postsocialism. Organized into five parts—red foundations, red icons, red classics, red bodies, and red shadows—the book’s interdisciplinary contributions focus on visual and performing arts, literature and film, language and thought, architecture, museums, and memorials. Mediating at once unfulfilled ideals and unmourned ghosts across generations, red cultural legacies suggest both inheritance and debt, and can be mobilized to support as well as to critique the status quo.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674737181
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	04/25/2016
Series:	Harvard Contemporary China Series , #18
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	424
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jie Li is Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations at Harvard University.

Enhua Zhang is Assistant Professor in the Department of Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Table of Contents

List of Plates and Figures vii

Acknowledgments xi

Introduction: Discerning Red Legacies in China Jie Li 1

Part I Red Foundations

1 Making a Revolutionary Monument: The Site of the First National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party Denise Y. Ho 25

2 Building Big, with No Regret: From Beijing's "Ten Great Buildings" in the 1950s to China's Megaprojects Today Zhu Tao 56

Part II Red Art

3 Ambiguities of Address: Cultural Revolution Posters and Their Post-Mao Appeal Harriet Evans 87

4 Socialist Visual Experience as Cultural Identity: On Wang Guangyi and Contemporary Art Xiaobing Tang 115

Part III Red Classics

5 Performing the "Red Classics": From The East Is Red to The Road to Revival Xiaomei Chen 151

6 Red Legacies in Fiction David Der-wei Wang 184

7 Post-Socialist Realism in Chinese Cinema Jason McGrath 214

Part IV Red Bodies

8 Mao's Two Bodies: On the Curious (Political) Art of Impersonating the Great Helmsman Haiyan Lee 245

9 "Human Wave Tactics": Zhang Yimou, Cinematic Ritual, and the Problems of Crowds Andy Rodekohr 271

10 Time Out of Joint: Commemoration and Commodification of Socialism in Yan Lianke's Lenin's Kisses Carlos Rojas 297

Part V Red Shadows

11 Museums and Memorials of the Mao Era: A Survey and Notes for Future Curators Jie Li 319

12 Red Allure and the Crimson Blindfold Geremie R. Barmé 355

Contributors 387

Index 391