Word: qing
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...notorious Gang of Four and six other high-ranking "evildoers." The carefully orchestrated courtroom drama, which is expected to last for several weeks, is the most important show trial to take place in the 31 years that the Communist Party has ruled China. The most celebrated defendant is Jiang Qing, 67, the widow of Mao Tse-tung, who, along with her allies in the Gang of Four,* led Mao's reckless and violent Cultural Revolution from 1966 to 1976. They were arrested four years ago, shortly after Mao's death in 1976. Also on trial are a group...
...defendants had not been seen publicly since their arrest. Jiang Qing, a onetime film actress, seemed almost defiant as the trial opened. Her jet-black hair was pulled severely back behind her ears; she marched into the courtroom with her head regally erect and then alternately smirked and yawned during the reading of the indictment, apparently to show contempt for the proceedings. Still, there were some reports that at one point she broke down and cried. Other defendants seemed tired and worn from their long imprisonment. Two members of the Gang, Zhang Chunqiao and Wang Hongwen, had shaved heads...
...indictment describes two plots by the "Jiang Qing-Lin Biao counterrevolutionary clique" to seize power. Lin Biao's effort to have Mao assassinated in 1971, for example, was known as "Project 571." The indictment alleges that Lin, who was then Mao's official heir, plotted to kill the Great Helmsman while he was on an inspection tour of southern China. The plan was to attack Mao's special train "with flame throwers and bazookas, to dynamite the railway bridge [over which the train was to pass], bomb the train from the air, blow up the oil depot...
...Jiang Qing is not accused of conspiring with Lin Biao, or with other members of the Gang of Four who allegedly planned an armed rebellion to "usurp power" in 1976, when Mao was close to death. Instead, the charges against her focus on her systematic persecution of creative artists during the Cultural Revolution. Among other things, she is accused of hiring 40 people in Shanghai to disguise themselves as Red Guards and ransack the homes of writers and performers. The apparent purpose: to find and destroy letters, photos and other potentially damaging materials on Jiang Qing's early career...
True, Jiang Qing, Mao's widow, makes a convincing villain: she all but destroyed the Peking Opera and the theater by permitting only dull, politically correct works. (Nowadays at theatrical performances, foreigners sometimes find themselves clapping more than the Chinese present; the guide explains that during the Cultural Revolution, when attendance was compulsory but the programs awful, the Chinese withheld applause as a form of retaliation, and are only now beginning to clap again.) Everybody knows that many of the bureaucrats who waged the Cultural Revolution still occupy high places. But the government's propaganda campaign lets writers...