Hao Hao ReportThe best China news and blog posts

Hundreds of thousands of Shanghai teenagers are sent to Xinjiang in the early 1960's. A few years later, they're fueling the chaos and violence of the Cultural Revolution. (With archive articles from the NY Times.)

The This Is China! blog has a good post discussing the loss of faith in life that China's younger generation is facing today.

The point is well illustrated when a young lady comments that she envies the generation that grew up in the Cultural Revolution - maybe what they believed was wrong, but at least they had something to believe in.

The overall subject was how democracy was faring in the region and how that related (or not) to the lack of democracy. Larry Diamond from the Hoover Institution favored the more Modernization Theory approach and Big Bang aspect of turning around a country’s economy by quickly embracing democracy whereas Kishore Mahbubani noted that in fact what matters more is the role of good governance.

A tall story about a Thai woman who as a child, was sent to live with Zhou Enlai during the 1950s, only to experience the Cultural Revolution as a teenager.

Violinist Alec Hou was concertmaster for the Shanghai Conservatory when Mao's Cultural Revolution ended his classical musical career. Imprisoned and forced into labour camps, he fled to Canada. Now, more than 25 years later, he's returning to Shanghai, to face the demons of his past in China, but also to perform the music he loves.

A great interview with the award-winning author Xujun about her new book "Apologies Forthcoming". The conversation offers some great conversation and thought about the intricacies of the Cultural Revolution and the roles people aren't always willing to admit they played in it.

Sun Yat-sen led the historic revolution of 1911 that saw the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) thus ending China's autocratic monarchial system of 2,000 years.

The seeds for the idea of revolution were believed to have been implanted in Sun's thinking during the 9 years he spent in ...

Li Yinhe, China's first female sociologist on sex issues, was born in Beijing in 1952.

She was once listed as one of China's 50 Most Influential People by Asian Weekly. Summarizing her research in the past decade, Li says that a sexual revolution is silently going on in China.

Richard gives his detailed review of LiJia Zhang's book - Socialism Is Great, the story of a woman who was sent to work in a missile factory in post-Cultural Revolution China. Despite the hardships of the work, Zhang taught herself English and rebelled against the unfair practices of the factory. Not only does she pull herself out of the factory - but she goes on to be a writer and commentator on BBC and NPR. As Richard puts it - it trumps "just about every conceivable Cinderella story."