Word: mao
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...opening up). The Soviets refer to perestroika (restructuring) and glasnost (openness). What the new slogans herald is the most far-ranging shift in course since Dictator Joseph Stalin drove the Soviet Union onto the path of forced collectivization and heavy industrialization in the 1930s and Beijing's Great Helmsman, Mao Zedong, launched the Cultural Revolution in 1966. Indeed, questions about the limits of the new reforms will be on the minds of the Kremlin's leaders as they mark the 70th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution this week, just as the issue was discussed by those gathered in Beijing...
...Beijing's Tiananmen Square, long queues of Chinese pilgrims enter the imposing mausoleum of Chairman Mao for a fleeting glimpse of the flag-draped body. The scars of the Maoist era are still too fresh for the Chinese to emulate completely the Soviet Union's new view of history. But Deng's new society has found its own way of demythologizing the past. Visitors leaving the monument mob souvenir stands to buy cartons of cigarettes or candy boxes embossed with a golden silhouette of the mausoleum...
...dramatic successes in the countryside. The roads of Sichuan province, the rice bowl of China, teem with bicycles and mini-tractors hauling everything from geese and green beans to bricks and black vinyl sofas. In Guanghan county, one of the first two regions in the country to abolish the Mao-inspired communes and lease land back to farmers % under the family contract system, the per capita income of agricultural workers is 646 yuan ($174), almost four times as high as it was before the reforms...
...most eagerly anticipated, and potentially incendiary, musical premiere of the year: an opera about Richard Nixon's landmark visit to the People's Republic of China that also includes Pat Nixon, Henry Kissinger, Mao Tse-tung and Chou En-lai among its cast of characters. Although it is sure to provoke strong emotions and conflicting opinions, Nixon in China, currently on display at the Houston Grand Opera, is the most important new opera since Philip Glass gave voice to Mohandas Gandhi in Satyagraha seven years...
...Adams' music -- the 1981 Harmonium was a vivid choral setting of poetry by John Donne and Emily Dickinson -- and in Nixon its dramatic qualities have flowered. The figures are sharply characterized: Nixon (James Maddalena), for example, is a gruff baritone whose music is often stiff and halting, while Chairman Mao (John Duykers) is cast as a heldentenor. His body may be weak, but his mind and voice are as vigorous as Siegfried...