"China's Cultural Revolution: 50th anniversary unmarked by state media"-BBC
Hi Ben,
It is 5/16/2016. Half a century ago today could be considered the darkest day in China's history because 5/16/1966 is popularly accepted as the beginning of the havoc of Cultural Revolution. The Communist Party of China was issuing the 5/16 notification that day.
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"Those representatives of the bourgeoisie who have sneaked into the Party, the government, the army, and various spheres of culture are a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionists. Once conditions are ripe, they will seize political power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. Some of them we have already seen through; others we have not. Some are still trusted by us and are being trained as our successors, persons like Khrushchev for example, who are still nestling beside us."
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Yeah, it was. That's the CR in a paragraph right there.
I think so much like you. So much of what I think about China is credit to you.
Like you, China 1966 has been in the forefront of my thoughts this year. I have noted important events on important days. Whatever forerunners of the Cultural Revolution, 1966 was the year of action. The beginning of the nightmare.
When I was last in Beijing Carmen snapped a photograph of me at Beida. I'm walking, hands in suit jacket pockets, head down, just thinking. Just now, coming out of my apartment, I was walking to the elevator and realized I again was walking head down, hands in pockets, thinking of China 1966.
Thank you, Ben, for speaking so highly of me.
I remember well the photo you mentioned which Carmen took in Beijing. Possibly I saw it either in yours or some Chinese dissident's blog with an article about you. The image so authentically embodies the bafflement of someone from outside China who went there to passionately offer his help but was immediately surrounded by the unfathomable darkness of the black hole and the fears and doubts of the helpless.
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You are absolutely correct that that photograph captures the authentic bafflement that I felt being on scenes of surreality. Like at Beida, "It all began at Beida;" like at the Middle School for Girls, actually getting onto the campus, meeting the assistant principal, walking at will around those grounds-scenes of complete normalcy now which made them all the more surreal.
In my mind I have often placed myself in various positions at that time. One is as an American foreign service officer. I am trying desperately to get information on what is going on in Beijing.
The other is a humorous fantasy about "the darkest day." I am as I am now, knowing what I know now, beamed like on Star Trek back to that time, say to Liu Shaoqi's "arrest" by Red Guards: "Hi. Could you tell me what the HELL you are doing?"