Are you fucking kidding me? I plucked The Boxer Rebellion by Diana Preston from my bookshelf a couple of hours ago. I don't why. Because it was there. Random act. In my hand on the inside flap, "October 14, 2006": when I got the book. It is heavily underlined. I read the book, 10 1/2 years ago.
This part was not underlined, page 27. The detested Christian missionaries roamed China,
"...pushed in wheelbarrows, the conveyance of the Chinese masses."
I didn't know that.
On August 5, 1966 vice principal Bian Zhongyun was murdered by her female students at her school. She was taken across the street to the hospital, transported in a wheelbarrow, the traditional "conveyance of the Chinese masses."
That was not a random choice of conveyance by the Red Guards, it was a deeply symbolic choice. In those earliest days Cultural Revolution acts were class-based. There was a race to the bottom. One had to prove one's peasant bona fides. The role you were assigned to play at struggle sessions depended upon it. These young, violent things from elite "Red" families attending this elite school chose the wheelbarrow, what, because it was too hot out to carry Bian across the street? Because not even we could get a taxi in those days? "I forgot the number to 911"? Bian would have been dead weight (literally) on your bicycle? Mommie was using the Benz? No. They chose the wheelbarrow, the traditional transportation-of-necessity of the masses as symbolic that they were down with the masses.
Zoom! Right over my head.
And this,
"The Chinese believe that no great work can be successfully executed without a human sacrifice in some form." (page 30, quoting a letter from a missionary to George Morrison)
"...a tribute to Bian, leader of my secondary school, mother of four, and one of the first sacrifices to the Cultural Revolution."-Weili Ye, "The Death of Bian Zhongyun," The Chinese Historical Review, Fall 2006 (Same time I read The Boxer Rebellion. Funny.)
"She sacrificed herself as if she were refusing to lose her dignity."-Mr Wang Jingyao, Bian's widower, Spiegel, May 15, 2007 (After. :) )
This part was not underlined, page 27. The detested Christian missionaries roamed China,
"...pushed in wheelbarrows, the conveyance of the Chinese masses."
I didn't know that.
On August 5, 1966 vice principal Bian Zhongyun was murdered by her female students at her school. She was taken across the street to the hospital, transported in a wheelbarrow, the traditional "conveyance of the Chinese masses."
That was not a random choice of conveyance by the Red Guards, it was a deeply symbolic choice. In those earliest days Cultural Revolution acts were class-based. There was a race to the bottom. One had to prove one's peasant bona fides. The role you were assigned to play at struggle sessions depended upon it. These young, violent things from elite "Red" families attending this elite school chose the wheelbarrow, what, because it was too hot out to carry Bian across the street? Because not even we could get a taxi in those days? "I forgot the number to 911"? Bian would have been dead weight (literally) on your bicycle? Mommie was using the Benz? No. They chose the wheelbarrow, the traditional transportation-of-necessity of the masses as symbolic that they were down with the masses.
Zoom! Right over my head.
And this,
"The Chinese believe that no great work can be successfully executed without a human sacrifice in some form." (page 30, quoting a letter from a missionary to George Morrison)
"...a tribute to Bian, leader of my secondary school, mother of four, and one of the first sacrifices to the Cultural Revolution."-Weili Ye, "The Death of Bian Zhongyun," The Chinese Historical Review, Fall 2006 (Same time I read The Boxer Rebellion. Funny.)
"She sacrificed herself as if she were refusing to lose her dignity."-Mr Wang Jingyao, Bian's widower, Spiegel, May 15, 2007 (After. :) )
How could I have missed those? SO MANY of the acts of the Cultural Revolution were palimpsestic that I expressly urged "considering the behavior of Chinese during the Cultural Revolution from a consciously anthropological perspective." AnthroCR Note to self.
