Episode Notes: Tania Branigan and I discuss her excellent new book “Red Memory: The Afterlives of China's Cultural Revolution”. Tania writes editorials for the Guardian and spent seven years as its China correspondent, reporting on politics, the economy, and social changes. We overlapped in Beijing and became friends. I have also published an excerpt from the book here. You can purchase the book on bookshop.org or on Amazon. The audio edition will be available from Tantor starting 7/11/23 wherever audiobooks are sold. Links: China's Cultural Revolution remembered by artist Xu Weixin - video | The Guardian 2012 - China's Cultural Revolution: portraits of accuser and accused | The Guardian Xilin Wang: Music by a Survivor | Hamburg International Music Festival - YouTube Wang Xilin ( 王西麟 ): Yunnan Tone Poem (1963) - YouTube Transcript: [00:00:00] Bill: Welcome back to the occasional Sinocism podcast. I know I've been absent for a while, and now that I do the Weekly Sharp China podcast, I've realized I like podcasting. So we'll be recording more Sinocism episodes with guests I think are really interesting. [00:00:11] Bill: Today. We are very lucky to have Tania Branigan to talk about her excellent new book Red Memory: The After Lives of China's Cultural Revolution. As Tania writes, it is impossible to understand China today without understanding the Cultural Revolution. That is something I agree with wholeheartedly. So much so that I even wrote my grad school thesis on Mao badges. [00:00:30] Bill: I will also be running an excerpt from her book in the coming days, which is released in the UK already and will come out on May 9th in the United States. Tania writes editorials for the Guardian and spent seven years as its China correspondent reporting on politics, the economy, and social changes. [00:00:45] Bill: She lives in London. Welcome Tania, and congratulations on this great book.  [00:00:50] Tania: Thank you so much for having me on. [00:00:51] Bill: Oh, it's my pleasure. It's great to see you. It's been it's been a few years and I appreciate it. I got an advance read of the book last year and it [00:01:00] really is it really is, I think, an important book and an important contribution. [00:01:03] Bill: So can you, just for the listeners, can you just talk a bit about your background? So when you first started working in China and what you did when you were there.  [00:01:12] Tania: So I came out to China in 2008 just ahead of the Olympics, right at the start of what turned out to be an incredibly news packed year, as you may recall, right? [00:01:22] Tania: And I had never particularly wanted to be a foreign correspondent per se, but I just felt that China was the story of our time, really. Which is only proof to be truer perhaps as time has gone on. And because it's a pretty small bureau there were never more than two of us, max. And quite often there was one of me, I was covering absolutely everything. [00:01:44] Tania: So from natural disasters through to politics, through to culture, business even very occasionally when I couldn't help hit sport. But I became particularly fascinated by this topic and by [00:02:00] China's more recent history,  [00:02:02] Bill: one question on your time there. When you arrived, was it already past the Wenchuan earthquake? [00:02:07] Tania: No. And in fact that was one of the sort of formative moments, for me reporting on, yeah,  [00:02:15] Bill: it's 15 years next in two weeks. It's crazy.  [00:02:18] Tania: It's hard to believe it's gone past so fast. I still think about those parents who lost kids.  [00:02:24] Bill: And that, no, it's terrible. Terrible  [00:02:29] Bill: So what led you to this book? [00:02:33] Tania: You did actually, as I say in, as I say in the book, I probably wouldn't have written it without you. So I was obviously aware of the Cultural Revolution. I knew something about it. I'd read a little around it. But then it was just when I had that