Introduction

Abstract

This incident was recorded by a young professor born in 1980, who was perplexed by the robust “cultural remembrance” of his seniors when compared to the complete nihilism of his generation in China, which has no history and believes in nothing. Getting lost in a highway system caught perpetually in the postindustrial infrastructural loops and darkness, these two senior professors quickly resorted to their common musical memories to form a common bond and provide an emotional anchor. The author reflects that although the members of this Cultural Revolution generation were deprived in their own ways, their cultural and communal adherence is the envy of the younger generation. We must admit that this sturdy cultural embeddedness is foreign not only to the younger generation in China but also to most people in Western liberal societies. This sense of assurance— that there are people around them sharing the same aesthetic bonds and cultural memories—cannot be replicated easily in today’s consumer society.

After an academic conference in December 2010, Chen Fumin of the Academy of Social Science, critic Meng Fanhua, and I drove back to the city from a Beijing suburb. It was already midnight, and we were lost, caught in the freeway heading nowhere. In the middle of finding our way home, I was surprised to hear Chen and Meng suddenly sing the famous arias from [the model opera] Shajiabang: “In the beginning there were only seven or eight guns in our military unit just established.” “Ai, this woman is not a simple one.” I was not surprised by two old guys trying to act young, but rather by their extremely strong “cultural memory”—so natural that these memories had become part of their language and behavior.¹