339. Chairman Mao: China's Communist Uprising (Ep 2)

Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnand. And me, William Drymple. Now, last time we left Mount Zedong in 1920, an angry school teacher from Changsha who had made his way to Beijing, where he was dabbling in the beginnings of anarchism and communism. Today we enter a period when his ideas turn towards violent revolution.

This episode covers the fifteen years of chaos, civil war and survival that forged the great helmsman. Once again we are joined by the brilliant Rana Mitta, leading expert on China. His books include Forgotten Ally, China's World War II and Modern China, a very short introduction. So let's pick up now from 1920. Officially, China's a modern republic, but in reality, what does it feel like to live in this new republic?

In reality, Anita, living in the early Chinese Republic is a period of immense uncertainty and unpredictability, possibility punctuated by violence. What do I mean by that? On the one hand, if you were younger, if you were, you know, reasonably educated, not necessarily a high level intellectual, but someone with some level of education, and if you were urban, then a whole variety of possibilities opened up for you in the Republic that simply wouldn't have existed before. You know, just one example, the possibility for young men and women to kind of meet in urban spaces and uh undertake what was then known as a lo mantiqueur relationship, as in romantic, because of course i this would not have been in that form, something that young men and women

We already have this episode, so unlocking it is cheap and permanent: the full transcript (50 minutes, 9,646 words), segment and word-level timestamps, and .txt, .srt, .vtt and word-level JSON downloads, as many times as you like, forever.

No account needed, we create one from your checkout email. With credits it is 1 credit; packs start at 10 episodes for $5, and monthly plans are cheaper still.