It is an event in history that China excises from textbooks. Yet the playwright Zhang Guangtian has dared to expose it in clear view on a Beijing stage and, somehow, he has evaded the censor.
Mr Zhang’s expos√© is of the role that the Chinese played in the ruin of much of their own culture over the past 150 years, and not only the foreigners most often blamed.
It is a topic so sensitive that a prominent Chinese magazine that published an article running counter to the official version of history early this year was temporarily closed and its editors removed.
But in Yuan Ming Yuan, Mr Zhang, one of China’s most avant-garde playwrights, departs from the Communist Party view of assigning blame for history and has decided to seek answers. [Full Text]
Zhang Guangtian’s blog (in Chinese) is here.