Old photos provide a new look at turbulent Chinese history
Among the many once-familiar historical photographs that you won't see in China's official histories are any showing Chairman Mao with his one-time No. 2 man and presumed successor, Lin Biao, the military commander who died in a plane crash in 1971 after an apparent attempt at a coup.
In fact, China is a strangely inconsistent place. You'll find Lin's image on flea market plates, cups and posters, the newly manufactured "relics" of the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976. This kind of camp representation of Lin is now allowed, but within a year or two of his coup attempt - and after a ferocious propaganda campaign against him - Lin was dropped down Orwell's memory hole, all those pictures of him with Mao were expunged from the official record.
But now you can be reminded of Lin's importance and a great deal more of the drama of recent Chinese history in photographs reproduced in a remarkable book being published this month by Taschen. It is "China: Portrait of a Country," edited by Liu Heung Shing, a former Time magazine and Associated Press photographer who has been living off and on (mostly on) in the country for the last 30 years.
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In fact, China is a strangely inconsistent place. You'll find Lin's image on flea market plates, cups and posters, the newly manufactured "relics" of the Cultural Revolution of 1966 to 1976. This kind of camp representation of Lin is now allowed, but within a year or two of his coup attempt - and after a ferocious propaganda campaign against him - Lin was dropped down Orwell's memory hole, all those pictures of him with Mao were expunged from the official record.
But now you can be reminded of Lin's importance and a great deal more of the drama of recent Chinese history in photographs reproduced in a remarkable book being published this month by Taschen. It is "China: Portrait of a Country," edited by Liu Heung Shing, a former Time magazine and Associated Press photographer who has been living off and on (mostly on) in the country for the last 30 years.