Program Particulars
*Times denoted refer to web version of audio

(01:52–03:09) Music Element
"The Multiples of One" from Awakening, performed by Joseph Curiale

(02:30) Definition of Taoism
Taoism (or Daoism), translated as Teachings of the Way, is both a religion and a philosophy. A distinctively Chinese religion, Taoism has had a profound impact on Chinese thought and history over the past two millenia.

One of the basic and earliest texts is the Tao te Ching, The Classic Way and Its Virtue, based on the teachings of Lao-tzu, who some maintain was a contemporary of Confucius. It advocates preserving and restoring the Tao in the body and the cosmos.

In order to live in harmony, one should allow the Tao to determine the course of one's life. An individual lives passively. Wu wei, or inactivity, allows nature to control events and ultimately leads to harmony — a peacefulness, stillness, and oneness. In her novel Katherine, Anchee Min writes about the difference of Western and Eastern beliefs:

"That's the thinking of a typical western mind," Lion Head said. "You see, Chairman Mao ruled China by not ruling it. Mao swam in the Yangtze River in the summer, traveled around his kingdom in the autumn and spring, and wrote poems in the Forbidden City in the winter. The basic difference in our beliefs lay in our concept of the Great Void and the westerner's idea of God. They think God exists in the world by wei—making—while we believe in the power of wu-wei—not-making—which is the true creative power."

While polishing and rearranging his antiques, Lion Head continued: "In order to comprehend China, or in fact anything, Katherine must understand that things are not made of separate parts put together, like machines. The Chinese mind doesn't ask how things were made, which to Katherine must sound odd. If the universe were 'made,' there would be someone who knows how it is made—who could explain how it was put together as a technician can explain, one word at a time, how to assemble a machine. But the universe simply grows, and the shortcomings of language, for one thing, exclude the possibility of ever explaining how it grows. Katherine must understand that the universe does not operate according to plan. Katherine is misguided by her western view. She should learn how to open herself to the unknown in order to gain knowledge."

(02:32) Reference to Confucius
Confucius, a Western appellation for K'ung Tzu, was an influential Chinese thinker who was born into a noble family with little wealth in 551 BCE in an area now known as Shandong province. A civil servant a good part of his youth, Confucius became an itinerant teacher at about 50 and developed a following of disciples who recorded his sayings and continued to spread his teachings after his death in 479 BCE.

Many of these sayings are collected in the Analects. Although Confucius operated under the premise that he "understood heaven's will," he was critical of current day religion and developed a humanist philosophy:

At 15, I set my heart on learning. At 30, I became firm. At 40, I had no more doubts. At 50, I understood heaven's will. At 60, my ears were attuned. At 70, I could follow my heart's desires, without overstepping the line.

Analects 2.4

At its core, Confucian philosophy teaches the practice of people living according to their place within the social order. In this, moral values and ethical thought would form the basis of social and political life.

Two important guiding principles of Confucian thought are jen and li. The former is virtue, kindness, generosity, and being humane. The latter pertains to duties and propriety — conducting oneself according to protocol. It is the visible expression of one's inner virtues and beliefs. A key emphasis of this coupling of principles is parental devotion. Bringing honor to one's parents is of utmost importance.

(03:10) Audio Clip of Mao Zedong
The audio clip was excerpted from an opening address entitled "Strive to Build a Great Socialist Country," presented by Mao Zedong at the First Session of the First National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China on September 15, 1954. Listen to the entire speech and read the text of the English translation.

(03:22) Reference of Cultural Revolution
The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution took place from 1966–1976. Led by Mao Zedong, the movement in China sought to restore Mao's revolutionary ideals in China and dismantle the Soviet style bureaucratization that had developed after the Chinese Revolution of the 1940s.

Scores of high school and university students joined the Red Guard units. During this time, Mao closed schools and encouraged students to join these units, which persecuted Chinese teachers and intellectuals and enforced Mao's cult of personality. Government officials, teachers, and intellectuals were forced to work in the fields alongside the peasants. Min writes about her time spent at the labor camp Red Fire Farm in her memoir, Red Azalea.

In their zeal to rid China of the old ways and traditions, art, architectural treasures, and other cultural monuments associated with imperial China were deliberately destroyed. They wore scarlet bands on their arms, badges with Mao's portrait, and held the "little red books" of Mao's quotations. They exhorted their love and devotion to Mao and persecuted people who deviated from Mao's path — this oftentimes included people who adhered to religious convictions or traditional culture.

BBC News provides a site, China's Communist Revolution: A Glossary, with brief descriptions about groups, personalities, and terms commonly used. It also includes audio of eyewitnesses during this time.

(04:35–05:53) Music Element
"The Idle Song Thrush" from The Hugo Masters: An Anthology of Chinese Classical Music, Vol. 3 - Wind Instruments

(04:06) Reading from Red Azalea
Min writes about the labor camps in which millions were forced into manual labor in order to cleanse and purify themselves to remove bourgeois influences. The following passage was excerpted from Min's memoir Red Azalea:

When I was seventeen, life changed to a different world. The school's vice principal had a talk with me after his talks with many others. He told me that he wanted to remind me that I was a student leader, a model to the graduates. The policy was there, as strict as math equations. He told me that I belonged to one category. The category of becoming a peasant. He said it was an unalterable decision. The policy from Beijing was a holy instruction. It was universally accepted. It was incumbent upon me to obey. He said he had sent four of his own children to work in the countryside. He was very proud of them. He said that twenty million Chinese worked on these farms. He said many words. Words of abstractions. Words like songs. He said when one challenges the earth, it brings pleasure; when one challenges one's own kind, it brings the biggest pleasure. He was reciting the poem by Mao. He said a true Communist would love to take challenges. She would take it with dignity. I was seventeen. I was inspired. I was eager to devote myself. I was looking forward to hardship.

(08:03) Mao and Vietnam War
Min says that the Chairman Mao and the Chinese Communist Party understood the traditional ways of Chinese thinking, which was basically to be good. They manipulated this basic desire to do good by using fear as a tactic. To launch the campaign against the Americans in Vietnam, Min says, Chairman Mao portrayed American soldiers as slaughtering the Vietcong and in propaganda films as scooping out Vietnamese girls' eyes. Chinese girls feared they would be next.

In a review of Michael Lind's book Vietnam: The Necessary War in the April 2000 edition of The Atlantic Monthly, John Lewis Gaddis discusses the interventionist role of Chairman Mao and China in the conflict. *subscription required

(09:57) Krista Quotes Min
When asking about her feeling of ennoblement, Krista quotes from Min's memoir Red Azalea, "Not for a day did I not feel heroic." Read an extended version of the passage:

In school Mao's books were our texts. I was the head of the class on the history of the Communist Party of China. To me, history meant how proletarians won over the reactionaries. Western history was a history of capitalist exploitation. We hung portraits of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin next to Mao in our classrooms. Each morning we bowed to them as well as bowing to Mao, praying for a long, long life for him.

My sisters copied my compositions. My compositions were collected slogans. I always began with this: "The East wind is blowing, the fighting drum is beating. Who is afraid in the world today? It is not the people who are afraid of American imperialists. It is the American imperialists who are afraid of the people." Those phrases won me prizes. Space Conqueror looked up to me as if I were a magician. For me, compositions were nothing; it was abacus competitions that were difficult. I wrote compositions for my brother and sisters, but I felt I had not much in common with the children.

I felt like an adult. I longed for challenges. I was at the school day and night promoting Communism, making revolution by painting slogans on walls and boards. I led my schoolmates in collecting pennies. We wanted to donate the pennies to the starving children in America. We were proud of what we did. We were sure that we were making red dots on the world's map. We were fighting for the final peace of the planet. Not for a day did I not feel heroic. I was the opera.

(10:52–13:30) Music Element
"Overlooking the Qin River" from The Art of the Chinese Lutes performed by Miao Xiaoyun

(11:29) Reading from Red Azalea
Min writes about the moment preceding her public denunciation of her teacher, Autumn Leaves. The following passage is an extended version from Min's memoir, Red Azalea, that was read during the show:

Autumn Leaves called my name and asked if I really believed that she was an enemy of the country. If I did not think so, could I tell her who assigned me to do the speech. She said she wanted the truth. she said Chairman Mao always liked to have children show their honesty. She asked me with the exact same tone she used when she helped me with my homework. Her eyes were demanding me to focus on them. I could not bear looking at her eyes. They had looked at me when the magic of mathematics was explained; they had looked at me when the beautiful Little Mermaid story was told. When I won the first place in the Calculation-with-Abacus Competition, they had looked at me with joy; when I was ill, they had looked at me with sympathy and love. I had not realized the true value of what all this meant to me until I lost it forever that day at the meeting.

I heard people shouting at me. My head felt like a boiling teapot. Autumn Leaves' eyes behind the thick glasses now were like gun barrels shooting at me with fire. Just be honest! her hoarse voice raised to its extreme. I turned to Secretary Chain. He nodded at me as if to say, Are you going to lose to an enemy? He was smiling scornfully. Think about the snake, he said.

Yes, the snake, I remembered. It was a story Mao told in his book. It was about a peasant who found a frozen snake lying in his path on a snowy day. The snake had the most beautiful skin the peasant had ever seen. He felt sorry for her and decided to save her life. He picked up the snake and put her into his jacket to warm her with the heat of his body. Soon the snake woke up and felt hungry. She bit her savior. The peasant died. Our Chairman's point is, Secretary Chain said as he ended the story, to our enemy, we must be absolutely cruel and merciless.

I turned to look at the wall-sized portrait of Mao. It was mounted on the back of the stage. The Chairman's eyes looked like two swinging lanterns. I was reminded of my duty. I must fight against anyone who dared to oppose Mao's teaching. The shouting of the slogans encouraged me.

(13:31–14:02) Music Element
"Boys Singing with Teacher" from China: Music from the People's Republic of China

(14:02) Reference to Eunuchs in the Forbidden City
Since the 8th century BCE, Chinese emperors had kept eunuchs, castrated males, as palace servants and as guards of their concubines. The practice ended with the republican revolution of 1912. Read more about the palace eunuchs.

The parts removed, called the precious, are prepared and kept in pint jars that are hermetically sealed and stored away. If a eunuch were to be promoted, he would have to display the precious to the chief eunuch in order to achieve his rank. To be as complete as possible upon his departure to the next world, the precious were placed in his coffin and buried with him to allow for reincarnation as a whole man.

China's last known imperial eunuch, Sun Yaoting, died in 1996 in a Beijing temple. Only months after his family had him castrated in 1911, the last ruling dynasty was overthrown. Sun continued to serve the imperial family for a decade. During the Cultural Revolution, Sun's family destroyed his precious.

(14:44–15:03) Music Element
"Great Waves Washing the Sand" from The Spirit of Nature: Chinese Classical, Folk, Court, Minority, Silk, & Bamboo Music

(20:47–21:10) Music Element
"High Mountains and Flowing Water" from The Hugo Masters: An Anthology of Chinese Classical Music, Vol. 2 - Plucked Strings

(22:03) Mention of Mao's Children
Min says that despite the tragic loss of family members experienced by Mao, he seemed to be "cold and numb and unfeeling." In October 1930, the Communists attacked the city of Changsha, where Chairman Mao's first wife, Yang Kaihui, was living with their three children. After the effort failed, the Guominding militarists interrogated her and shot her when she refused to renounce Mao, even though they were separated and he was living with his mistress, He Zizhen.

As Min says, Mao's oldest son from his first marriage, Mao Anying, was twenty-eight when he was killed by an incendiary bomb dropped on headquarters. Incidentally, Mao Anying had requested a command position in the infantry, but, concerned for the safety of Chairman Mao's son, a general reassigned him to serve as a staff officer and Russian interpreter.

Jonathan Spence writes about the event in his biography Mao Zedong:

On November 24, 1950, he was killed. At first no one dared to tell his father, and his body was buried in North Korea like any other Chinese casualty. When Mao was finally told of his son's death by [General] Peng Dehuai in person, he agreed to let the body remain in Korean soil, as an example of duty to the Chinese people. His two recorded public pronouncements on his loss were brief: "In war there must be sacrifice. Without sacrifice there will be no victory. There are no parents in the world who do not treasure their children." And again, "We understand the hows and whys of these things. There are so many common folk whose children have shed their blood and were sacrificed for the sake of the revolution."

(22:57–26:07) Music Element
"Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto" from China Girl: The Classical Album 2 performed by Vanessa Mae

(26:40–27:10) Music Element
"Memory Of Yun-Nan, Second Movement" from The Art of the Chinese Lutes performed by Miao Xiaoyun

(34:29) Reading from Red Azalea
Min writes that the teacher she denounced, Autumn Leaves, never forgave her. And, she says, her mother refused to hang the certificate she was awarded for her act of betrayal. The following passage is an extended version from Min's memoir, Red Azalea, that was read during the show:

I was never forgiven. Even after twenty-some years. After the Revolution was over. It was after my begging for forgiveness, I heard the familiar hoarse voice say, I am very sorry, I don't remember you. I don't think I ever had you as my student.

It was at that meeting I learned the meaning of the word "betrayal" as well as "punishment." Indeed, I was too young then, yet one is never too young to have vanity. When my parents learned about the meeting from Blooming, Coral and Space Conqueror, they were terrified. They talked about disowning me. My mother said, I am a teacher too. How would you like to have my student do the same to me? She shut me out of the house for six hours. She said being my mother made her ashamed.

I wrote what my mother asked of me a thousand times. It was an old teaching passed down since Confucius. It said, Do not treat others how you yourself would not like to be treated. My mother demanded I copy it on the paper using ink and a brush pen. She said, I want to carve this phrase in your mind. You are not my child if you ever disobey this teaching.

(35:17) Min's Mother and Christianity
Christian missionaries have been involved in the conversion of Chinese for several centuries now. During the Cultural Revolution from 1966–1976, all buildings and mosques were closed by Mao's Red Guards. As had happened during early Christian times, informal meetings were convened within these communities and took root. In 1979, the Chinese government relaxed these rules and some churches were allowed to open their doors.

Read a December 22, 2003 interview with journalist David Aikman in the National Review in which he discusses the state and influence of Christianity in contemporary China.

(38:26–38:48) Music Element
"Great Waves Washing the Sand" from The Spirit of Nature: Chinese Classical, Folk, Court, Minority, Silk, & Bamboo Music

(39:27–41:01) Music Element
"Butterfly Lovers Violin Concerto" from China Girl: The Classical Album 2 performed by Vanessa Mae

(39:58) Reading from Katherine
In her 1995 novel Katherine, Min describes the mindset of her character after the cessation of Mao's Cultural Revolution. The following passage is an extended version the excerpt read during the show:

A Chinese saying goes, "If the father is a rat, the son will only know how to dig holes."

We discovered that we were brought up to be double-dealers and we couldn't deny such truths any longer. We learned the art of survival by fighting the war. We learned to distrust; we acted like heartless robots, our souls wrapped in darkness—we asked no questions. We convinced ourselves that tears were only the pee of naughty monkeys.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution was pronounced officially "ended" in 1980. I was now a former revolutionary, a status shared by millions.

Chairman Mao had described himself as a servant of the people, but he was just another emperor. For twenty-seven years he played with our minds. Our heads were jars of Maoist pork marinating in five-thousand-year-old feudalist soy sauce. The spoiled mixture produced generations of smelly rotten thoughts. The thoughts multiplied like bacteria.

Since 1976 we had been singing an elegy for Chairman Mao; now we were singing for our own vanished souls. White elegiac couplets were fluttering in the east wind, covering the entire sky of the Middle Kingdom. The tears of sad ghosts rained down and salted the land, desiccating the roots of spring.

It was at this moment in history, one day in April 1982, that the pink peonies opened their tender lips to kiss the night dew, that grass-green leaves stretched their little hands to touch the soft spring breeze, that she came to us from America.

(43:15–43:41) Music Element
"The Idle Song Thrush" from The Hugo Masters: An Anthology of Chinese Classical Music, Vol. 3 - Wind Instruments

(45:57–48:10) Music Element
"Ancient Melody from the Zhongan Mountain" from The Art of the Chinese Lutes performed by Miao Xiaoyun

(46:03) Reading from Empress Orchid
Min's title character Empress Orchid describes her departure from her family and entrance into the Forbidden City. The following passage is an extended version from Min's novel, Empress Orchid, that was read during the show:

Outside the gate the horses had begun to move. Bannerman carried dragon flags and yellow umbrellas. Among them were lady riders dressed in sixteenth-century Manchu warrior costumes. Hanging from the sides of their mounts were yellow ribbons tied to cooking ware.

Behind the ladies was a flock of animals dyed red. It seemed like a rolling river of blood. When I looked again, I saw sheep and geese. It was said that these animals symbolized fortune well kept, and the red the passion for life.

I let down the curtain to hide my tears. I was preparing myself to not see my family for a long time. This was what Mother wanted, I convinced myself. A poem she read to me when I was little came to mind:

Like a singing river
You break out to flow freely
I am the mountain behind
Happily I watch you
Memory of us
Full and sweet

My memories were full and sweet indeed. They were all I had, and I was taking them with me. As soon as I felt that the palanquin was moving steadily, I opened a slit in the back curtain and looked out.

My family was no longer in sight. Dust and ceremonial guards blocked my view.

Suddenly I saw Kuei Hsiang. He was still on all fours with his head glued to the ground.

My heart betrayed me and I cracked like a Chinese lute broken in the middle of its happy playing.

(48:24–48:55) Music Element
"Spring Morning in Suzhou" from The Hugo Masters: An Anthology of Chinese Classical Music, Vol. 1 - Bowed Strings

(49:22–49:59) Music Element
"My Motherland" performed by Anchee Min

(50:00–52:41) Music Element
"My Motherland" from Classical Chinese Folk Songs & Opera performed by Wei Li and the Far Eastern Music