On the Scene: Little Red Book for Sale

‘ALL reactionaries are paper tigers,” I read in the small brochure an elderly woman surreptitiously handed tomeata bazaar behind Peking’s International Club, about a mile from Tiananmen Square. “We should rid our ranks of all impotent thinking. All views that overestimate the strength of the enemy and underestimate the strength of the people are wrong.” These were, of course, the pearls of wisdom of Chairman Mao Tse-tung; the brochure was his infamous Little Red Book, which used to induce millions into intellectual levitation. Now, it was for sale.

“How much?” I asked the woman, portly and in worn clothes.

RS

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Radek Sikorski

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‘ALL reactionaries are paper tigers,” I read in the small brochure an elderly woman surreptitiously handed tomeata bazaar behind Peking’s International Club, about a mile from Tiananmen Square. “We should rid our ranks of all impotent thinking. All views that overestimate the strength of the enemy and underestimate the strength of the people are wrong.” These were, of course, the pearls of wisdom of Chairman Mao Tse-tung; the brochure was his infamous Little Red Book, which used to induce millions into intellectual levitation. Now, it was for sale.

“How much?” I asked the woman, portly and in worn clothes.