Word: ch
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Since you are eager to know about my past, I can tell you briefly," she began. "I grew up in the old society and had a miserable childhood. Li Chin was the first of several names she would use before taking Chiang Ch'ing [meaning Azure River, because of her fondness for rivers and because azure "excels blue," a color she loved] her name in the community of Communism. She had numerous brothers and sisters-how many she would not say-the youngest of them at least a dozen years older than she was. Her father [a wheelwright...
While Chiang Ch'ing was still a young girl, her mother left her father and went to work as a servant. Of the many nights her mother left her alone at home, Chiang
Apparently under Chiang Ch'ing's influence, Mao had proclaimed that all plays portraying "ghosts" or "emperors and princes, generals and ministers, gifted scholars and beauties" should be banned. Instead, there should be idealization of the proletariat. Thus Chiang Ch'ing had started during the Cultural Revolution to build a new "proletarian " art from scratch. One of her successes was the showy Red Detachment of Women-performed for President Nixon in Peking in 1972. She recounts the difficulties she had in staging this theatrical extravaganza...
...Chiang Ch'ing explained to me how, when she undertook this ballet in the early 1960s, there was absolutely no precedent for using ballet to show military history, and almost no one would support her intent to establish it. In search of approval from among the leaders, she invited Premier Chou to attend a rehearsal of an early version, which he did. The weak spots that he pointed out they changed. To educate her dancers in the ways of the military, she decided to send them down to live with a PLA unit for some months...
...Chiang Ch'ing kept an eye on her favorite ballet and theater troupes, issuing the most detailed instructions. One performer recalled that when a play called for her to burst into tears, she would sit down and cover her face with her hands. Chiang Ch'ing protested: "Working class people don't sit down or bury their heads when they cry. They cry standing...