Morning Sun | The East is Red

The East is Red, A Song-and-Dance Epic — Flash | HTML — The East is Red became the underlying theme (and title) of a song-and-dance epic produced in 1964 that plays a key role in Morning Sun. Here you can watch the entire production, divided into scenes with the original Chinese songs and English translations. This stage production presented a creation myth, an historical vision, a belief system, and a moral landscape in which the generation of the Cultural Revolution came of age. Read a detailed description of The East is Red from the China Pictorial.

Transformation of a Love Song — Flash | HTML — The East is Red started out as a peasant love song, and here you can follow its progress to becoming a call to arms in the Anti-Japanese War, and a paean extolling Chairman Mao, the savior of the Chinese people. (Read more about how The East is Red was featured in the Long Bow film, The Gate of Heavenly Peace, on the tsquare.tv website.)

Launching a Satellite — Flash | HTML — When China launched its first satellite - the "Dong Fang Hong I" - in 1970, once more it was the song The East is Red that rang out through the heavens; here you can see documentary footage of the launching of the satellite, precursor to the October 2003 manned space-flight of Yang Liwei.

Additional Reading: Richard Curt Kraus, "The East Is Red": A Change of Anthems, from Pianos and Politics in China