The "Red Guard" appeared during the Proletarian Cultural Revolution
in China, and they were proposed to guard Chairman Mao Zedong and his red
regime in China. Mao was determined to lead this revolution, which
meant to cleanse China of its past and put it on the road to a socialist utopia.
Here, the "Red Guard" has returned to evaluate the state of affairs
of the present. Familiar to him will be the communist party -which is still
the only leading party- and socialism, which still dominates the country’s
political system. He will recognise the continued interest and retention of
the Forbidden City. Economically, however, development has taken benefit from
capitalism’s free market theory, a far cry from Mao’s utopian ideal.
The current manifestations of the new China, that of shopping malls and fast
food restaurants, offer a strange testimony to this time-travelling guardsman;
an uncanny view at what has, in fact, become of his country.
