Trigger warning: This episode briefly mentions suicide at 01:15 and 15:45.
This week host Lijia Zhang speaks to Tania Branigan, current Foreign Leader Writer and former China Correspondent at The Guardian. In this episode, they discuss her new book Red Memory, about the Cultural Revolution, and more importantly about the suppression of memories, and how a society comes to terms with a tragedy deeply rooted in its psyche.
In the course of writing the book, Tania spoke to people who were affected by this tumultuous decade in various ways. People like Zhang Hongbin, a man who denounced his own mother at the age of seventeen and is reckoning with this fact decades later, trying to make amends for what he has done.
Tania points out that Xi has begun dismantling the protections that were put in place after the Cultural Revolution and the parallels between that period and Xi’s rising cult of personality.
This is a riveting conversation about memory, intergeneraional trauma, betrayal, mob mentality, and a deep look into what we are all capable of as human beings.
(Red Memory was released in the UK on February 2nd, 2023. The US edition's release date is May 9th, 2023.)
About Tania Branigan:
Tania is the Foreign Leader Writer and former China Correspondent at The Guardian. Her writing has also appeared in The Australian and The Washington Post. Red Memory is her first book.