The East Is Red (song and dance epic)
동방홍 (가무 서사시)
A large-scale song and dance epic that opened in the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on 2 October 1964. With Zhou Enlai as chief director and a cast of over 3,000, it told the party's history from the May Fourth Movement to the founding of the People's Republic. It was filmed in 1965. Its title comes from the song praising Mao.
In depth
What happens on stage?
After an overture of sunflowers turning to the sun, history unfolds scene by scene without a plot: years of suffering, the Autumn Harvest Uprising and Jinggangshan, the Long March, the war against Japan, the burial of Chiang's dynasty, and in 1949 "the Chinese people have stood up". More than thirty revolutionary songs and twenty dances are joined by choruses, solos and recitation, with a Chinese and a Western orchestra together. The chorus alone numbered over a thousand, the scene changed thirty-seven times, and it ends with the whole hall singing the Internationale.
Why so huge a show?
It began in North Korea. In 1960 the air force commander Liu Yalou, visiting Pyongyang, was struck by the People's Army show Three Thousand Li of Rivers and Mountains and ordered a performance to teach young people who had not known war. That led to the air force troupe's revolutionary-song show. In 1964 Shanghai's artists staged Advancing Under Mao Zedong's Banner; on Chen Yi's recommendation Zhou Enlai saw it and decided in July to enlarge it for the fifteenth National Day, leaving little over two months. After the triumph Zhou summed it up as "the influence of Korea, the foundation of Shanghai, the strength of the whole country".
In line with the slogan of learning from the People's Liberation Army, the cast centred on army troupes. Hu Jintao, then a Tsinghua student, took part in rehearsals, and his impressions appeared in the People's Daily that October.
Why did Mao cut the ending?
It originally had eight scenes, with "The Motherland Marches On" and "The World Marches On" on socialist construction at the end. These two were removed on Mao's view, so the work stopped at 1949. That came back to haunt it. The film (directed by Wang Ping and Li Enjie), released on 1 October 1965, was banned during the Cultural Revolution, the political reason being that it left out socialist society. It returned to cinemas only in 1977.
Where did the song come from?
The tune of "The East Is Red", which opens the work, comes from the loess-plateau folk song "Sesame Oil" and passed through the northern Shaanxi love song "The White Horse Tune". The peasant Li Youyuan is the popular candidate for the first lyrics, though authorship is disputed. When Tian Han, the lyricist of the anthem "March of the Volunteers", was toppled in the Cultural Revolution, "The East Is Red" in effect took the anthem's place, and many radio stations opened the day with it.