logo
episode-header-image
Mar 2024
10m 13s

Surviving re-education in China’s Cultur...

Bbc World Service
About this episode

In 1968, Jingyu Li and her parents were among hundreds of thousands of Chinese people sent to labour camps during Mao Zedong’s so-called cultural revolution.

The aim was to re-educate those not thought to be committed to Chairman’s Mao drive to preserve and purify communism in China.

Jingyu’s parents – both college professors - were put to work among the rice and cattle fields, and made to study the works of Chairman Mao. Fearful for their daughter’s safety, they disguised six-year-old Jingyu as a boy.

Over the next six years, the family were sent to four different camps. Not everyone could cope, as Jingyu tells Jane Wilkinson.

(Photo: Reading Mao's little red book in 1968. Credit: Pictures from History/Getty Images)

Up next
Today
The creation of the International Criminal Court
In 1998, at a conference organised by the United Nations, a blueprint was devised for what would be the world's first permanent International Criminal Court.Judge Phillipe Kirsch chaired the Rome conference that led to the formation of the court. He tells Gill Kearsley about the ... Show More
10m 23s
Aug 22
Geneva Conventions
In 1859, Swiss businessman Henry Dunant witnessed the Battle of Solferino, in Italy. He couldn’t believe the lack of aid for the wounded soldiers and came up with two ideas – a voluntary aid organisation and an international treaty to protect those injured in wartime. They went o ... Show More
10m 2s
Aug 21
The rise and fall of BlackBerry
In the early 2000s, BlackBerry was the phone that ruled the world. But within a decade, it collapsed, overtaken by the touch screen revolution.Sam Gruet speaks to former co-CEO Jim Balsillie about BlackBerry’s meteoric rise, its battle against Apple, and the moment he knew it was ... Show More
9m 50s
Recommended Episodes
Dec 2020
The Cultural Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Chairman Mao and the revolt he led within his own party from 1966, setting communists against each other, to renew the revolution that he feared had become too bourgeois and to remove his enemies and rivals. Universities closed and the students for ... Show More
48m 9s
Dec 2020
The Cultural Revolution
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss Chairman Mao and the revolt he led within his own party from 1966, setting communists against each other, to renew the revolution that he feared had become too bourgeois and to remove his enemies and rivals. Universities closed and the students for ... Show More
48m 9s
Mar 2024
Chinese history
Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.To mark 50 years since the discovery of the Terracotta Army, we're exploring modern Chinese history.We hear from the man who helped to modernise the Chinese language by creating a ... Show More
52m 5s
Nov 2019
Lian Xi, "Blood Letters: The Untold Story of Lin Zhao, a Martyr in Mao's China" (Basic Books, 2018)
In 1960, a poet and journalist named Lin Zhao was arrested by the Communist Party of China and sent to prison for re-education. Years before, she had –at approximately the same time– converted to both Christianity and to Maoism. In prison she lost the second faith but clung to th ... Show More
1h 18m
Mar 2023
The Chinese Cultural Revolution
By the early 1960s, Chairman Mao Zedong's campaign to modernise Communist China had ended in disaster. Known as the Great Leap Forward, it resulted in turmoil on such a scale that many had begun to question Mao's authority. In response, he set out to claim absolute political supr ... Show More
32m 54s
May 2014
Jailed for Speaking his Mind in China
In 1957 the Chinese Communist leader Chairman Mao made a speech encouraging criticism of his Communist system saying 'Let a hundred flowers bloom; let a hundred schools of thought contend'. We hear from Harry Wu, who made his views known and ended up in prison for nearly twenty y ... Show More
9m 3s
Feb 2020
Chairman Mao's Little Red Book
In 1966, the collected thoughts of China's communist leader became an unexpected best-seller around the world. A compendium of pithy advice and political instructions from Mao Zedong, it was soon to be found on student bookshelves everywhere.(Photo: Front cover of Mao's Little Re ... Show More
8m 58s
Jul 2019
Little Red Book, Big Red Ideas: Part 2 of A Global History of Maoism
This week, in part 2 of a special two-part edition of ChinaEconTalk, Jordan interviews Professor Julia Lovell, author of the recently published book on Mao’s international legacy entitled Maoism: A Global History. In this episode, Lovell recounts the ways in which Maoism truly st ... Show More
1h 4m
Aug 2019
Martin T. Fromm, "Borderland Memories: Searching for Historical Identity in Post-Mao China" (Cambridge UP, 2019)
With China’s northwestern and southern edges justifiably being sources of global attention at present, Martin Fromm’s Borderland Memories: Searching for Historical Identity in Post-Mao China (Cambridge University Press, 2019) has much light to shed on how the country’s ruling Com ... Show More
1h 10m
May 2016
Brian James DeMare, “Mao’s Cultural Army: Drama Troupes in Chinas Rural Revolution” (Cambridge UP, 2015)
The Chinese Revolution was a profoundly theatrical event. Brian James DeMare’s new book explores the relationship between drama and political action in China, from the earliest era of communist Red Drama to the establishment of Mao’s cultural army and beyond. Mao’s Cultural Army: ... Show More
1h 1m