
... 1966, following the 1st meeting in 4 years of the Central Committee of its Communist Party, China announced plans for what it called a "new leap forward" -- a program of anticapitalist purges and Maoist reindoctrination that came to be known as the Cultural Revolution. Among those targeted were teachers and scholars; a wonderful novel on how two young students coped is Dai Sijie's Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress (Ina Rilke translator).