07 Jun 2002

Yangban xi - Model Operas
CartoonWin.com, Shanghai, China
Description [by H. Lecher]: "This site contains scanned comics versions (lianhuan hua) of some of the most important model operas (yangban xi) of the Cultural Revolution. Initially there have been eight operas, but at the end of the Cultural Revolution their number had grown to 18. They "[...] are taken as paradigmatic for all there was of Cultural Revolution Culture. They are condemned as an aberration in terms of aesthetic and cultural development. [... However,] the yangbanxi are everything else but the product of an iconoclastic, and xenophobic era as which the Cultural Revolution is so often described. Instead, they are manifestations of a hybrid taste which calls for the transformation of Chinese tradition according to foreign standards, a taste which for a century has led to the creation of a Chinese culture with foreign imprint. Therefore, the model works cannot simply be considered a hideous perversion of the Maoist experiment of re-inventing a new -- Chinese but revolutionary -- culture. Instead, the yangbanxi have their rightful place in a long series of attempted syntheses of foreign and Chinese heritage that continues to the present day." (Barbara Mittler, Introduction to the workshop 'Rethinking Cultural Revolution Culture', http://www.sino.uni-heidelberg.de/conf/propaganda/intro.html)."
Site contents: [a site in Chinese] (1) Baimao nü (White-haired Girl); (2) Shajiabang (The Village Shajiabang); (3) Hong deng ji (Story of the Red Lamp); (4) Hongse niangzi jun (Red Detachment of Women); (5) Qixi Baihu tuan (Raid on the White Tiger Regiment); (6) Zhiqu Weihu shan (Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy); (7) Pingyuan zuo zhan (Battle in the Plain); (8) Longjiang song (Ode on the Dragon River); (9) Haigang (On the Dock).
URL http://www.cartoonwin.com/seecart/lookback/yangban.html
Internet Archive http://web.archive.org/web/*/www.cartoonwin.com/seecart/lookback/yangban.html
Link reported by Nico Volland, University of Heidelberg, Germany, forwarded by Hanno Lecher (Lecher@gw.sino.uni-heidelberg.de)
* Resource type [news - documents - study - corporate info. - online guide]: Documents
* Scholarly usefulness [essential - v.useful - useful - interesting - marginal]: V.Useful
* External links to the resource [over 3,000 - under 3,000 - under 1,000 - under 300 - under 100 - under 30]: under 30