Cultural production under Mao, and how artists and thinkers found autonomy in a culture of conformity In the 1950s, a French journalist joked that the Chinese were “blue ants under the red flag,” dressing identically and even moving in concert like robots. When the Cultural Revolution officially began, this uniformity seemed to extend to the mind. From the outside, China had become a monotonous world, a place of endless repetition and imitation, but a closer look reveals a range of cultural experiences, which also provided individuals with an obscure sense of freedom. In The Art of Cloning, Pang Laikwan examines this period in Chinese history when ordinary citizens read widely, traveled extensively through the country, and engaged in a range of cultural and artistic activities. The freedom they experienced, argues Pang, differs from the freedom, under Western capitalism, to express individuality through a range of consumer products. But it was far from boring and was possessed of its own kind of diversity. Reviews “A thoughtful contribution to the writing of a new and nuanced cultural history of the Cultural Revolution. Pang’s work brings a fresh optic to the question of how Chinese people lived, felt and made art in a fraught age of revolution.” – Andrew Jones, author of Yellow Music: Media Culture and Colonial Modernity in the Chinese Jazz Age “Pang Laikwan’s meticulous research draws the reader into a world in which this art of copying, of making models and of typifications framed the cultural and political realm and then spread across the social landscape to fashion life itself. Offering new and exciting insights based upon impeccable research, this is one book about the Cultural Revolution that should not be missed.” – Michael Dutton, coauthor of Beijing Time “A major intervention into a fraught field. Luminously opening new and old channels of inquiry, Pang forces a reconsideration of the processes and politics of cultural production in China’s Cultural Revolutionary decade.” – Rebecca Karl, author of Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World: A Concise History

为什么在某些国家，暗示某人跟他的骆驼有超友谊关系还不至于出麻烦，但若对人家母亲的道德水平表示鄙夷，就绝对会让你被踢出国门？一度仅限于足球场或产房的骂人话，如今已登堂入室，令若干优雅人士大为惊恐，但其他人则似乎都不堪介意。 作者路丝·韦津利以诙谐风趣的角度探究此一演变过程，解析我们语言中一些多采多姿词句的起源。韦津利不以英语划地自限，探讨“坏”字词是否也出现在其他语言，以及骂人话有哪些文化差异。 这是一本诙谐风趣、独树一格的书，探究以字词震惊、冒犯、侮辱、逗乐、夸大、发泄、传递深刻情绪的种种力量。作者鲁思·韦津利写出了历来语言学家之不敢言。对脏话研究详尽，引人入胜，笔调幽默，充满有趣的历史和好笑的轶事。