Tania Branigan

Red Memory: Living, Remembering and Forgetting China’s Cultural Revolution

Starts at: Friday 03 November 4:30 PM
Finishes at: Friday 03 November 5:30 PM

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Over half a century on, the scar of China’s Cultural Revolution still runs through the country’s heart, and the souls of its citizens. While working in Beijing for the Guardian, Tania Branigan came to realise that almost every subject she covered led her back to that brutal and turbulent decade.  Although Mao’s ‘reign’ lasted just ten years, the effects of that time  - when some 2 million people were killed and another 36 million hounded - continue to shape China to this day.

Red Memory explores the stories of those who, despite official suppression, are driven to confront that decade, some fearing its return, others nostalgic for the era. What happens to the present when the past is buried, exploited or redrawn?

So many bones from those days lay jumbled in the soil. How were the villagers supposed to identify them?