Physical proximity to Chairman Mao became a mark of privilege. It was the greatest good fortune to have been born in China in the age of revolutionary socialism; yet it was a greater boon still to live in Beijing, the capital of world revolution, and home to Mao himself.

In this clip, Dr. Xiang says that she is warmed and nurtured by being "next to Chairman Mao," that is, living in the same city and breathing the same air as the Great Helmsman. In fact, more often than not, Mao did not reside in Beijing, much of his time being spent shuttling by train between the villas that had been built for him around the southern provinces of the country. Freed from the constraints of the imperial compound of Zhongnanhai (a former Qing Dynasty pleasure garden in the center of the city), he followed national political developments and kept a close eye on the military and civilian rulers outside the capital.

Many leaders had learned the dangers of being too close to the Chairman. The arch-villain of the Cultural Revolution era, Liu Shaoqi, formerly president of China, was even denounced as a "time-bomb sleeping next to Chairman Mao" — that is, he was a disaster waiting to happen. Soon after the era depicted in this film, Lin Biao, Mao's 'close comrade-in-arms' and chosen successor, himself would come to no good end. Little wonder then that Dr. Xiang felt 'the warmth' of living in Beijing by the side of Mao; others had paid dearly for their proximity to his parhelic presence.

In a final irony, the film ends with the two female protagonists pledging their 'youth' (this despite the fact that Dr. Xiang has a decidedly middle-aged appearance) to the 'grand cause of communism.' Shortly after the film's completion, the decade of the Cultural Revolution would be declared null and void, and the Red Guard generation would be asking how they would ever make up for the wasted years of their youth, years spent in an impotent pursuit of communist ideals.

A few years after the non-appearance of this film, the Beijing writer Chen Rong would publish a satirical story, "Ten Years Deducted" (Jianqu shisui), in which the central government declares that people who suffered the decade of the Cultural Revolution will have ten years deducted from their ages to make up for the loss. The result is comically calamitous. (See Chen Rong, "Ten Years Deducted," translated by Gladys Yang in Chen, At Middle Age, Beijing: Panda Books, 1987, pp. 343-64.)