"The Red Detachment of Women” | 红色娘子军 Hóngsè Niángzi Jūn

 

Xue Jianhua as Wu Qinghua. Online here

When I went to the Peking Languages Institute in 1976, one of the first films they showed us students, at fresher week orientation, was this filmed Opera. We all thought it rather wonderful. 

The story of how it went to the Venice Biennale in 1971:

Snip:

The Red Detachment of Women was one of the eight “model operas” that came to prominence during the Cultural Revolution and remains arguably the most famous Chinese dance work today. 

It is a rather melodramatic story of how a Hainan Island peasant girl, Wu Qinghua, escapes the abusive clutches of a capitalist landlord, Nan Batian (“Tyrant of the South”).

She subsequently becomes a Red Army soldier, kills the evil Nan Batian and then devotes herself to furthering the aims of the revolution as leader of a women’s militia. [More]

It’s worth noting: this ballet glorifies the mass killing, the genocide, of peasant landlords. In the same way that Stalin mass-killed the kulaks in Ukraine in holodomor of the 1930s. Genocide is genocide. No matter how nicely danced. 

In the end, it’s a ballet of murder and mediocrity. Murder as that’s what they did -- murder the capitalists. And mediocrity as that’s what the fought for -- against the likes of a Nan Batian, the alleged “Tyrant of the South”, whose only “crime” was to have some get up and go. Some capitalist spirit. Which was to be praised just eight years later, by China’s greatest modern leader, Deng Xiaoping.