This was the day. It's as good a candidate as any other single day for the start of the CR, for when Mao Zedong allowed Song Binbin to fasten a red guard armband onto him, and suggested that she change her name to Song Yaowu, "Be Martial," (which she did by the way) that was the Chairman's imprimatur for the violence that already had taken place, like Bian Zhongyun's murder 13 days earlier by a group under the leadership of Song, and for future violence. "Carry on, and Don't Be Calm."
This was the day for me. That photograph is the iconic photograph of the CR and when I saw it in Mao's Last Revolution I recognized it. When I read in the text and then in the endnote, that Song had immigrated to the United States and was working for the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, that lit my fire and that fire burned more or less continuously for six or seven years.
