The Red Sister-in-Law Remakes
The Red Sister-in-Law Remakes
Redefining the “Fish-and-Water” Relationship for the Era of Reform and Opening
Ode to Yimeng (Yingmeng Song), a major ballet production created in May 1974, was based on the short story “Red Sister-in-Law” (Hongsao). It is one of the “red classics” that deals with a revolutionary “base area,” and in essence, is about how the Communist Party won the support of the subaltern, the backbone of Chinese society at a tipping point in modern Chinese history, when CCP triumphed over the Nationalist army. The story of heroine, Sister-in-Law Ying, who saved a seriously wounded Communist soldier with her breast milk and nurtured him back to life, was once metaphoric and metonymic of the symbiotic relationships between army and the people. This chapter argues that the post-Mao remake in the format of a television drama has significantly re-defined the essence of the “fish-and-water” relationship in the spirit of traditional Chinese values and, in particular, Confucian values.
Keywords: “red classics”, Communist revolution, mass-Party relationship, Confucianism, TV drama
Hong Kong Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .
