Yang Ban Xi: The 8 Model Works

Hard though it may be for media-saturated Westerners to imagine, during much of Mao's 1967-77 Cultural Revolution there was nothing playing in China's cinemas and theaters but a handful of revolutionary model operas known as Yang Ban Xi. Traditional ballets, plays and classical musical-theater pieces that had formed an essential part of Chinese culture for centuries were branded as counterrevolutionary and banned, and countless playwrights, performers and directors were persecuted. In their place, Mao's wife Jiang Qing, who has shouldered much of the blame for the worst of the Cultural Revolution's excesses, insisted on the production of five so-called "model plays,"...