Rethinking Culture in the Cultural Revolution
VIEW EVENT DETAILSAsia Society History Series
Evening Presentation
Drinks reception 6:30pm
Presentation 7:00pm
Close 8:00pm
China’s Cultural Revolution era (1966-1976) is usually portrayed as a period of chaos and destruction. A typical characterization of the period is that 800 million Chinese were watching eight plays. The reality was very different and much more diverse. Putting culture back into the Cultural Revolution reveals new perspectives. The eight so-called model performances (operas, ballets and a symphony) were products of a massive effort to modernize traditional performance forms and to innovate in all dimensions of the arts. This experimentation continued throughout the decade, with new works appearing in the 1970s to extend the range and variety of cultural activities available to the public. Beyond officially sanctioned artistic creation was a realm of unofficial creativity. These underground activities, often in the hands of a younger generation of sent-down youth, drew on a range of inspirations, including the model works. The circulation of unofficial writing and art laid the groundwork for the flourishing of further changes in the 1980s until now. This illustrated talk by Paul Clark, Professor of Chinese at the University of Auckland, makes the case for considering the Cultural Revolution in the broader context of China’s 20th century transformations. Rather than being a ghastly aberration best condemned and put aside, the Cultural Revolution decade belongs firmly in China’s modern development story.
Paul Clark is Professor of Chinese in the School of Asian Studies at the University of Auckland. He first visited China in 1973 and has been a regular visitor ever since, with a special perspective on China’s changes over five decades. Between October 1974 and July 1976, he was an exchange student in Beijing. In his second year there, he studied Chinese history at Peking University in a mixed class of Chinese worker-peasant-soldier students and foreign classmates. His current project, Recreating Beijing, examines changing leisure spaces in that city since 1949, supported by a Marsden Fund grant from the Royal Society of New Zealand. Prof. Clark is the author of numerous books including his latest, Youth Culture in China: From Red Guards to Netizens, which focuses on 1968, 1988 and 2008; The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A History and Reinventing China: A Generation and Its Films, a study of the Fifth Generation filmmakers. His Chinese Cinema: Culture and Politics since 1949 helped pioneer the international, academic study of Chinese films. Prof. Clark studied at the University of Auckland, Peking University and Harvard University.