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Becoming Madame Mao Free Ebook FREEBECOMING MADAME MAO EBOOK Anchee Min | 340 pages | 01 Oct 2001 | ALLISON & BUSBY | 9780749005023 | English | London, United Kingdom ​Becoming Madame Mao on Apple Books Jiang Qing was best known for playing a major role in the Cultural Revolution and Becoming Madame Mao forming the radical political alliance known as the " Gang of Four ". Jiang Qing served as Mao's personal secretary Becoming Madame Mao the s and was head of the Film Section of the Communist Party's Propaganda Department in the s. She served as an important emissary for Mao in the early stages of the Cultural Revolution. Inshe was appointed deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group. She collaborated with Lin Biao to advance Mao's unique brand of Communist ideology as well as Mao's cult of personality. At the height of the Cultural Revolution, Jiang Qing held significant influence in the affairs of state, particularly in the realm of culture and the arts, and was idolized in propaganda posters as the "Great Flagbearer of the Proletarian Revolution". InJiang gained a seat on the Politburo. Before Mao's death, the Gang of Four controlled many of China's political institutions, including the media and propaganda. However, Jiang Qing, deriving most of her political legitimacy from Mao, often found herself at odds with other top leaders. Mao's death in dealt a significant blow to Jiang Qing's political fortunes. She was arrested in October by Hua Guofeng and his allies, and was subsequently condemned by party authorities. Though she was initially sentenced to death, her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment in After being released for medical treatment, Jiang Qing committed suicide in May Jiang Qing was born in ZhuchengShandong province on 19 March Due to her socioeconomic status and the fact that she was an illegitimate child, she was looked down upon by her schoolmates and she and her mother Becoming Madame Mao in with her maternal grandparents when she started middle school. Her mother relocated them to Tianjin where Jiang worked as a child laborer in a cigarette factory for several months. Two years later, Jiang and her mother settled in Jinan. The following summer, she entered an experimental theater and drama school. Her talent brought her to the attention of administrators who selected her to join a drama club in Beijing where she advanced her acting skills. She returned to Jinan in May and married Pei Minglun, [ citation needed ] the wealthy son of a businessman. She Becoming Madame Mao Yu Qiweia physics student three years her senior, who was an underground member of the Communist Party Propaganda Department. Bythey had fallen in love and were living together. She joined the "Communist Cultural Front," a circle of artists, writers, and actors, and performed in Put Down Your Whipa renowned popular play about a woman who escapes from Japanese-occupied north-eastern China and performs in the streets to survive. Yu was arrested in April the same year and Jiang was subsequently shunned by his family. She fled to her parents' home and returned to the drama school in Jinan. Through friendships she had previously established, she received an introduction to attend Shanghai University for the summer where she also taught some general literacy classes. In October, she rejoined the Communist Youth League and, at the same time, began participating in an amateur drama troupe. In SeptemberJiang Qing was arrested and jailed for her political activities in Shanghai, but was released three months later, in December of the same year. She then traveled to Beijing where she reunited with Yu Qiwei who had just been released Becoming Madame Mao his prison sentence, and the two began living together again. They were married in Hangzhou in March ; however, he soon discovered she was continuing her relationship with Yu Qiwei. The scandal became public knowledge and he made two suicide attempts before their divorce became final. She reportedly had an affair with Becoming Madame Mao, Zhang Min; however, she denied it in her autobiographical writings. Inat the beginning of China's Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, Jiang declared eight works of performance art to be the new models for proletarian literature and art. Becoming Madame Mao ballets White-Haired Girl[10] Red Detachment of Womenand Shajiabang "Revolutionary Symphonic Music" were included in the list of eight, and were closely associated with Jiang Qing, because of their inclusion of elements from Chinese and Western Becoming Madame Mao, dance, and music. He famously asked Jiang who the writer, director, and composer were, to which she replied it was "created Becoming Madame Mao the masses. Following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident on 7 Julyand the Japanese invasion of Shanghaiwhich destroyed most of its movie industry, Jiang left her celebrity life on the stage Becoming Madame Mao. She went first to Xi'anthen to the Chinese Communist headquarters in Yan'an to "join the revolution" and the war to Becoming Madame Mao the Japanese invasion. The Lu Xun Academy of Arts was newly founded in Yan'an on 10 Apriland Jiang Qing became a drama department instructor, teaching and performing in college plays and operas. Shortly after arriving in Yan'an, Jiang became involved with Mao Zedong. Some communist leaders were scandalized by the relationship once it became public. At 45, Mao was nearly twice Jiang's age, and Jiang had lived a highly bourgeois lifestyle before coming to Yan'an. Mao was still married to He Zizhena lifelong Communist who had previously completed the Long March with him, and with whom Mao had five children. Eventually, Mao arranged a compromise with the other leaders of the CCP: Mao was granted a divorce and permitted to marry Jiang, but she was required to stay out of public politics for twenty years. Jiang abided by this agreement. However, thirty years later, at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, Jiang became active in politics. On 28 NovemberJiang and Mao married in a small Becoming Madame Mao ceremony following approval by the Party's Central Becoming Madame Mao. Because Mao's marriage to He had not yet ended, Jiang was reportedly made to sign a marital contract which stipulated that she would not appear in public with Mao as her escort. Jiang and Mao's only child together, a daughter named Li Nawas Becoming Madame Mao in After the founding of the People's Republic of China inJiang became the nation's first lady. She worked as Director of Film in the Central Propaganda Department, and as a member of the Ministry of Culture steering committee for the film industry. An uproar in led to the investigation of The Life of Wu Xuna film about a 19th-century beggar who raised money to educate the poor. Jiang supported criticism of the film for celebrating counter-revolutionary ideas. Following the Great Leap Forward —61Mao was highly criticized within the CCP, and turned to Jiang, among Becoming Madame Mao, to support him and persecute his enemies. After Mao wrote a pamphlet questioning the persistence of "feudal and bourgeois" traditional opera, Jiang took this as a license to systematically purge Chinese media and literature of everything but political propaganda. The result ended up being a near-total suppression of all creative works in China aside from rigidly-prescribed "revolutionary" Becoming Madame Mao. Backed by her husband, she was appointed deputy director of the Central Cultural Revolution Group CCRG in and emerged as a serious political figure in the summer of that year. At the 9th Party Congress in Aprilshe was elevated to the Politburo. By then, she had established a close political working relationship with the other members of what later became known as the Gang of Four — Zhang ChunqiaoYao Wenyuan and Wang Hongwen. She was one of the most powerful and controversial figures in China during Mao's last years. During this period, Mao Zedong galvanized students and young workers as his paramilitary organization the Red Guards to attack what he termed as revisionists in the party. Mao told Becoming Madame Mao the revolution was in danger and that Becoming Madame Mao must do all they could to stop the emergence of a privileged class in China. He argued this is what had happened in the Soviet Union under Khrushchev. With time, Jiang began playing an increasingly active political role in the movement. She took part in most important Party and government activities. She was supported by a radical coterie, dubbed, by Mao himself, the Gang of Four. Although a prominent member of the Central Cultural Revolution Group and a major player in Chinese politics from toshe essentially remained on the sidelines. The initial storm of the Cultural Revolution came to an end when President Liu Shaoqi was forced from all his Becoming Madame Mao on 13 October Lin Biao now became Mao's designated successor. These four radicals occupied powerful positions in the Politburo after the Tenth Party Congress of Jiang Qing also directed operas and ballets with communist and revolutionary Becoming Madame Mao as part of an effort to transform China's culture. She dominated the Chinese arts, and in particular attempted to reform the Beijing Opera. She developed a new form of art called the Eight model plays or "revolutionary opera" which depicted the world in simple, binary terms: the positive characters " good guys " were predominantly farmers, workers and revolutionary soldiers, whilst the negative characters " bad guys " Becoming Madame Mao landlords and anti-revolutionaries. The negative characters, in contrast to their proletarian foils who performed boldly center stage, were identifiable by their darker make-up and relegation to the outskirts of the stage until direct conflict with a positive character.
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