Stuck in the Middle Kingdom with You

Welcome to Stuck in the Middle Kingdom with You, the podcast about teaching English and learning about China. We go back 700 years in this one, to meet Changshu's most well-known painter, Huang Gongwan. A bus stop in Suzhou The first section, called "The Remaining Mountain", now in Hangzhou The rest, now in Taipei - too big to fit on a webpage! Changshu's Little Great Wall heading up Yushan Mountain

On today's podcast, a day in the life of an international school. And the symbols of modern China – flag and anthem – and Mao's tricky Hundred Flowers Campaign. Tian Han, the man who wrote the words for the national anthem Nie Er, the man who wrote the national anthem's music   "Let a hundred flowers bloom in a blaze of color" - 1961

Hi thanks for listening to Stuck in the Middle Kingdom with You, the show about teaching in China and Chinese history. Last time, we touched on the Cultural Revolution in relation to one of its victims, Deng Xiaoping, who would later claw his way back into power and remake China. This time, I found myself in the village of Shajiabang, which was the setting of one of the Cultural Revolution's model operas. So that means, we're going back to the 60s, for peak crazy, China-style. See some Shajiabang opera  here on YouTube !  Peng and Mao – a little tension in the air perhaps? Song Binbin pinning a Red Guard armband on Chairman Mao in 1966. Song had led the group of Red Guards who killed Bian Zhongyun, a female educator in Beijing. Bian was the first victim of the Red Guards. Doing the "loyalty dance" during the Cultural Revolution. Mao looks on approvingly from his portrait "To the villages we go, to the borders we go, to places in the fatherland where we are neede...

Hi, thank you for tuning in to the SMKY podcast. Today we look at the fall of Deng Xiaoping and Liu Shaoqi, and then the rise of Deng Xiaoping and capitalism in China. This covers some of the Cultural Revolution, a topic that we'll come back to next time. Doesn't matter if it's a black cat or a white cat – if it catches mice it's a good cat Red Guards in Beijing, each with a Little Red Book Deng Xiaoping's son, Deng Pufang, who was paralysed after being attacked by Red Guards Liu Shaoqi, Wang Guangmei and their children, 1948 Liu Shaoqi, the old comrade and president of China, being berated by Red Guards Liu Shaoqi's wife, Wang Guangmei, during the Cultural Revolution. She was dressed up for ridicule Deng Xiaoping meets Margaret Thatcher, 1984 Bing Maps if you're in China. Note the dashes which show the entirety of the South China Sea as part of China, and how Taiwan island is safely inside the dash line. The so-called 9 Dash Line isn't new. This map go...