From Boston Globe:
Li Qingyou vividly recalls the hot summer day 40 years ago in Tiananmen Square. He was among the 1 million members of the new cadre of radical students called Red Guards who stood at rapt attention and waved their Little Red Books as Mao Zedong exhorted them to destroy China’s “four olds” — old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits.
The historic mass rally was the first launched under the Cultural Revolution, Mao’s effort to rid the country of its feudal past and create an agrarian utopia that, over 10 years, led to the deaths of hundreds of thousands and scarred China’s national psyche.
But it is an anniversary that the government would rather Li, a 55-year-old retired factory manager, and other Chinese forgot. [Full Text]
See also Chinese youth leave cities to taste country life by Reuters.
