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The Other Madame Mao
Jiang Qing performs Tradition and Transformation in 1974
Photo by Ke Xijie
Shadow of Politics
In 1964, a photograph of Mao rtist Jiang Qing has grown Zedong’s fourth wife Jiang Qing, accustomed to surprised a former actress, appeared in the reactions when she intromainland People’s Daily for the first duces herself. Her autobiography, time, making the face of this fortitled Memory, Bygones and the Past, merly cloistered figure known to which she began 22 years ago, has most Chinese. At the same time, only recently been approved for her namesake had begun to gain publication on the Chinese mainfame in Hong Kong and Taiwan. land. The reason? Jiang’s name. When the Cultural Revolution This sixty-seven-year-old artist broke out in 1966, Madame Mao, and impresario shares her name with the late wife of Chairman as the chairman’s wife was known in the West, began to promote “revoMao, the ringleader of the Cultural lutionary model operas,” restrictive Revolution Group, later known as By Wan Jiahuan and highly stylized socialist-realist the Gang of Four, and the scapegoat productions overseen by Jiang and for many of the worst excesses of the purged of all “questionable” content. At the same time, the movie Cultural Revolution Born in Shanghai, Jiang was raised in post-war China. She be- industries in Hong Kong and Taiwan were beginning to bloom, and gan studying classical Chinese dance at the Beijing Dance Academy the younger Jiang Qing won her first Golden Horse Award for Best (BDA) at the age of ten, before relocating to Hong Kong at age 17 Actress, the Taiwanese equivalent of an Oscar, for her performance in Many Enchanting Nights. where she went on to become a movie star in Taiwan.
For her whole life, artist Jiang Qing has had to live in the shadow of a much more famous namesake
NEWSCHINA I July 2013
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