Virgil

Publius Vergilius Maro (70 BC – 19 BC), known as Virgil was an ancient Roman poet. Born near Mantua, he lived through the fall of the Republic and into the Augustan period. He was or perhaps is the most popular Latin poet in Western literature, thus a guiding light and eventually a major influence. Of him, Dante in his Divine Comedy seeks guidance to navigate the circles of Hell.

Virgil composed Eclogues, Georgics and the epic, Aeneid. Aeneid, his finest work is regarded as a foundational classic of Western literature. His works revolutionized Latin poetry and became standard educational text, part of school curricula which eventually all Latin-educated students were familiar with. The works have been referred over and over in multiple works of multiple artists thus still living a life of their own. Both as an inspiration and reference, Virgil has been an ever-giving fountain for Western literature.

To contextualise him and place him in time amidst the other classical luminaries – Ovid (Metamorphoses) and Horace were his contemporaries of Augustan period. Homer, the Greek poet who is said to have composed the Iliad and the Odyssey lived in 8th century BC. Virgil would have encountered him in education as Greek poets were regarded as core education for a Roman then. Amongst the philosophers, Plato lived in Greece in the 5th and 4th century BC and Aristotle in the fourth century BC. Both are regarded as foundational philosophers in the Western tradition. These too Virgil would have encountered in his education, at least Plato. Plato and Aristotle would have encountered Homer. "Plato argues with Homer in the Republic, and Aristotle’s Poetics treats Homer as the model." As ages went by, the legacy literature has expanded, and each new generation encounters them afresh, yet these are the shining lights amidst an ever growing universe of literature and philosophy.

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As to the period he lived in, Roman republic collapsed then and eventually Augustan period began. To get a better flavor of the age, perhaps think of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra, although they dealt with leaders and not with the rest of the farmlands and rural areas where people were displaced and farms were confiscated.

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I like to think of young Virgil, a poet writing his Eclogues (pastoral), his Georgics (rural, field work, following the idea of Hesiod's 'Works and Days'), and eventually as a poet, who has grown up on Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, he too wishes to write a poem of epic proportions. He begins on the ambitious work of sitting beside Homer, picking up a singular character, and a singular backdrop and composes the Aeneid. The beautiful thing about historical/mythical/poetic works is that they already exist deeply in public memory and each new artist, if equal to it, stokes that simmering fire into a bright blaze with his work.

Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch, known for his iconic painting, The Scream, was a Norwegian painter who lived from 1863 to 1944.

Born in the village of Adalsbruk in Loten, Norway, he had one older and three younger siblings. The family moved to Oslo when Edvard Munch was one. He spent most of his formative years in Oslo, where his mother died in 1868 and later his older sister too at the young age of 15. He himself was ill often and kept out of school, tutored by schoolmates, aunt and his father, who was temperamentally nervous. There was a strain of mental illness in the family, which is said to have created fears in Munch about his own sanity. Later in his life he was diagnosed with bipolar disorder and depression according to some biographers.

When he was born, Norway was becoming more industrialized, and in 1860s, large scale migration to North America was taking place. In 1865, Norway had ~1.7 million people. During his lifetime, in 1880s, the king appointed a prime minister establishing parliamentarism in Norway and the union with Sweden was dissolved in 1905, leading to complete independence. Although primarily neutral during the first world war, by the time Munch died, Germany had occupied Norway. Today’s Norway is known as one of the world’s richest countries, Munch lived much before that age of oil.

Edvard Munch had a remarkable talent for drawing from an early age but received minimal artistic training. By his teens, art dominated his interests, and he began to have exposure to other artists as well. He copied paintings to learn from them. Although he initially enrolled in a technical college to become an engineer, he soon quit (to his father’s disappointment) to become a painter. His goal, per his diary: “In my art I attempt to explain life and its meaning to myself.”

In Norwegian art, Johan Christian Dahl (1788-1857) was regarded as the father of Norwegian landscape painting. Munch would have perhaps seen his works. Others included Johannes Flintoe and Adolph Tidemand. During his growing up period, and his painting period, the impressionists and neo-romanticists were gaining ground in Norway. He enrolled in an art school in Kristiania in 1881, much inspired by Impressionism. By the time of his visit to Paris (1889), just before his father passed away, and then Berlin (1892), Munch started painting in his own original style, finding that “Impressionist idiom did not allow sufficient expression”.  He painted many versions of the Scream between 1893 and 1895. He lived in Berlin for four years, and then moved to Paris in 1896, returning to Kristiania in 1897.  

“In Paris, he learned much from Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, especially their use of colour. In Berlin, he met the Swedish dramatist August Strindberg, whom he painted, as he embarked on his major canon The Frieze of Life, depicting a series of deeply-felt themes such as love, anxiety, jealousy and betrayal, steeped in atmosphere.”(Google Arts & Culture)

He was a multifaceted artist, working in water colours to oil, etching to painting, symbolism to expressionism. He painted many portraits, self-portraits, landscapes and studies. He never married, and eventually, for the last 20 years of his life, lived in solitude on his estate in Oslo painting to the very end of his life. He left behind a large collection of paintings, of which, The Scream (1895) changed hands at US$ 120 million in 2012. It is 15^th most expensive artwork ever sold at an auction, the most expensive being Leonardo Da Vinci’s Salvator Mundi (sold for US$450 million in 2017).

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This brief profile (drawn primarily from Wikipedia) is partly an exercise and part preparation of reading Karl Ove Knausgaard’s ‘So Much Longing in So Little Space’, where I wish to understand that the path that Munch set for himself, that of understanding life and himself through painting, how far could he travel on the same.

Some art

Modern German History

The history of the modern German region is complicated, detailed, richly documented and has many interesting nodes for any explorer. This piece is a very high-level simplification of marking the years with names of the leaders and the type of organisation that existed in the region. I have relied on Wikipedia for facts and opinions are my own.


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“modern German history, opening with Bismarck’s founding of the Wilhelmine empire in 1871, and concluding with the downfall of the Third Reich.”

Otto von Bismarck oversaw the unification of Germany through “blood and iron” and served as its first Chancellor from 1871 to 1890.

Before its unification, Central Europe was a fragmented collection of over 300 entities that evolved into a loose confederation of independent states. These states, German speaking lands existed under the Holy Roman Empire for centuries until its dissolution in 1806 under pressure from Napolean who believed that the ancient empire was an outdated political relic. (This period from c. 800/ 962 AD to 1806 is also referred to as the First Reich or the First Empire). In 1815, after the Napoleonic Wars, the Congress of Vienna was established, a loose union consisting of 37 principalities and 4 free cities, dominated primarily by the rivalry between its largest two powers, Kingdom of Prussia and Austria Empire. This lasted until 1866 when Prussia won over Austria in Seven Weeks’ War and the old confederation was dissolved, while forming a North Germany Confederation.

Eventually Bismarck championed a “Lesser Germany” solution unifying under Prussian dominance without the multi-ethnic Austria. There were rapid unification wars, and on January 18, 1871, following the defeat of France, German Empire was officially proclaimed in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles.

As an aside, this time of hundreds of states would have been a rich ground and setting for weaving tales of political intrigue, drama and alliances. There must have been a range of princes and kings, and royals and political players. A little bit of War & Peace alludes to it, because of the Napoleonic Wars. But I think of all the tales of royal dramas, both fantastic and real. And then the strife was not just amongst the states, but between the old order and the rising ideas and ideals of democracy.

Perhaps it was the time, the increasing complexity of economic, linguistic, cultural and legal tradition. Increasing travel, business, mixing, transport and the idea of European liberalism “offered an intellectual basis for unification by challenging dynastic and absolutist models of social and political organization;”

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So on January 18, 1871, Bismarck read the proclamation, and King Wilhelm I of Prussia was crowned the first German Emperor (Kaiser). Perhaps the wonder here is after unification, why still have royal authority? He did not abolish the monarchy because German unification was a conservative, "top-down" process led by the Prussian state and its King, rather than a democratic revolution.

“The new German Empire was not a unitary republic, but a federation of 25 states. This structure allowed existing kings, dukes, and princes (such as those of Bavaria, Saxony, and Württemberg) to keep their local crowns and internal autonomy in exchange for swearing allegiance to the Prussian-led federal framework. Bismarck despised liberalism, socialism, and parliamentary democracy. He used the prestige and authority of the King of Prussia to balance against the newly formed, elected national parliament (the Reichstag), ensuring the executive branch answered to the Crown rather than a democratic majority”

This period which begins on January 18, 1871 is also known as the beginning of Second Reich or the Second empire. The collapse of the Second Reich happened in November Revolution of 1918 when Germany became a republic.

During its 47 years of existence, the German Empire became an industrial, technological, and scientific power in Europe, and by 1913, Germany was the largest economy in continental Europe and the third largest in the world (British being the top economic powers, followed by United States).

The period of the second Reich or the German Empire began with a period of peace works and a stability, a period of alliances until the more ambitious Wilhelm II ascended the throne in 1888. So far Bismarck was getting used to exercising authority by being accountable only to Wilhelm I rather than an elected democratic council, but once Wilhelm II took over the throne, the idea of being a nominal figurehead did not appeal to him, and he overthrew Bismarck. Kind of undoing some of the work on the peace front.

That led Germany to a more volatile, militaristic path. That period, from 1888 to 1918 is also called the Wilhelmine era, the reign of Kaiser Wilhelm II over the German empire. The era was marked by a massive naval buildup (sparking an arms race with Great Britain), Germany rapidly surpassed Great Britain in steel production, chemical manufacturing, and heavy industry, becoming the dominant economic and military power on the European continent. It also saw aggressive colonial expansion, and a foreign policy (Weltpolitik) that aimed to establish Germany as a global superpower.

In 1914, following the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand in 1914, Germany offered a "blank check" of unconditional support to its main ally, Austria-Hungary, leading to eventual war in Europe. By 1916, there was military dictatorship in Germany. And in late 1918, exhausted by war and economic collapse, German naval sailors mutinied, followed by widespread domestic revolution. Kaiser Wilhelm II abdicated the throne and fled to Netherlands.

“A provisional government led by the Social Democratic Party declared a republic and signed the Armistice on November 11, 1918, ending the war. The German Empire was officially replaced by the democratic Weimar Republic, soon to face the heavy penalties of the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.”

This drew the curtain on the Second Reich.

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The Weimar Republic, was the democratic government of Germany from 1919 to 1933, established after the collapse of the German Empire (Second Reich) in World War I and named after the city of Weimar where its national assembly wrote the constitution. Germany became a constitutional republic for the first time in history. People still knew it as Germany, though Hitler popularized the term Weimar Republic in 1930s.

The years 1919 to 1933 began with drained economy after the war and Treaty of Versailles. There was a period of hyperinflation, and a new currency was introduced. Then came the Golden Years of 1924-29 of economic recovery, stabilized foreign relations. But the depression of 1929, caused mass unemployment and political polarization.

There was an Article 48 in the constitution which allowed the president to pass emergency decrees and suspend civil liberties without parliament's consent. The Chancellors increasingly began to resort to Article 48, and eventually when Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933, he dismantled the democracy and the republic fell to dictatorship.

It is said that “The fall of the Weimar Republic (1918–1933) was caused by a combination of severe economic depression, structural weaknesses in the Weimar Republic constitution, political polarization, and the manoeuvres of conservative elites who miscalculated Adolf Hitler. Once in office, Hitler used the Reichstag Fire Decree and the Enabling Act of 1933 to suspend civil liberties, ban opposition parties, and convert the democracy into a totalitarian dictatorship”


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So then comes the dark times of the Third Reich. A totalitarian German state ruled by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party from January 30, 1933 to May 8, 1945. They named it so, because they wished to establish the empire for 1000 years claiming it as a successor to the previous two Reich. “By August 1934, following the death of President Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler abolished the presidency and declared himself Führer (leader). All political parties except the Nazi Party were banned, and society was brought under strict state control ("coordination").”

Further: 

“Guided by racial ideology and anti-Semitism, the regime stripped Jewish people of citizenship (such as through the 1935 Nuremberg Laws) and orchestrated the Holocaust, the systematic mass murder of 6 million European Jews as well as millions of others, including Roma, people with disabilities, and political dissidents. Hitler’s aggressive expansion led to the invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939, triggering World War II in Europe. At its territorial peak, the regime controlled a vast portion of Europe.”

The regime ended in May 1945 once Allied forces invaded Berlin. Germany suffered total military defeat. Hitler died by suicide on April 30, 1945.

That marks the conclusion, the downfall of the Third Reich.



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Over the different Reich, Germany was different. There was no Germany during the First Reich, just German speaking people and countless states. There was one Germany during the Second Reich, its years of progress and aggression, but still an empire under a Kaiser. And then came a period of democracy, a brief interlude before Hitler came to power and took Germany back to a new state of unified dictatorship. There are questions about the chaotic world (multiple states) and the ambition of leaders. What perhaps is intriguing is that though democracy as an idea was thriving in the world by then, it took its time to reach Germany. Perhaps it is cultural, perhaps it is a societal aspect.

To that question about democratic thought, I found this answer: “Germany did have a major opportunity to embrace liberal democracy earlier during the 1848 Revolutions. Middle-class intellectuals and liberals gathered at the Frankfurt Parliament to draft a democratic constitution and offer a unified German crown to the Prussian King, Frederick William IV. However, the king rejected the crown, famously calling it a "crown from the gutter," and monarchical military forces successfully crushed the movement. This failure deeply demoralized German liberalism and accustomed the population to accepting authoritarian efficiency over democratic debate”



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Further to above, my questions, wonder and contemplation is around what lessons do we carry forward from this little piece of history? The era of early to mid twentieth century is marked by a pursuit of power, by leaders and nations, which inevitably led to wars and revolutions, followed by an eventual rise of democracy around the world after the wars dissolved the old empire-led world.

There is a different kind of empires today, more led by impersonal, rather dispassionate corporates, with no clear owner except a very clear profit motive, a market economy. In such times, it is important to have a healthy role of state, to ensure that those that are left behind because of the profit pursuit, are somehow taken in the fold of state and are provided for. Given the changes in the world beginning this decade with the advent of AI and the structural shifts it brings to the fundamentals of several industries, if any, this is perhaps the best time to argue for a universal basic income. I didn’t realise I would say so even until a few years ago. But the impending shifts, the market based empire building, and yet the aware democratic citizens – if the world is to live in peace, and not unrest, not disgruntled unemployed restless energy, then perhaps an argument in the greater role of state for the welfare of its citizens is needed.

This is a brief sketch of what I seem to see as of today, from where I am. It may change as I read more, it may change as I learn more. But we are heading into a period of further squeezing out of many pockets to fill a few pockets, and that doesn’t bode well for the world. It is not about unrest, but it is about the peaceful, healthy existence of the many. There are many more poor people in the world than rich. And the coming changes might increase or make it further more lopsided. We need the state to have powers enough to try to restore balance. An appreciation of what the backward most line is brought forward to. Rising entry barriers to enterprise, increasing institutional ownership of enterprise is not a healthy world.

The unrest happens when there are a few who control a lot – there is imbalance in the world, and something is needed to restore balance.

On beginning Japanese - some notes to self

Today while waiting it out for a volunteer duty at the library, I happened upon a book on learning languages. It sold me on various benefits of learning a new language, from the entertainment value to the cognitive function, to the challenge itself. I mentally ran through different languages I encounter through my day or if I slightly expand my day. Some of them are: Japanese (a trip, some shows), Spanish (shows, I think of Marquez, also its proximity to English), French (in so many books), Italian (just to understand the contexts of Eliot, and perhaps Dante). Big dreams and aspirations. Anyhow, these were the languages that immediately flashed through. 

One of the things that the book mentions is that it is ok to be imperfect. It quotes: "Language is the only thing worth knowing poorly." - Kato Lomb. That further inspired me.

I quickly read a chapter or two of the book and then found myself in the language aisle looking through easy Japanese. The book I borrowed is called 'Japanese Kanji and Kana'.



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Back home, I have been browsing through the many online resources, flash cards, podcasts, videos. It is day 0, when I plan the next few weeks of immersion, learning, lessons and work. This note to explain to myself how the language is organised. Further there are some questions and wonders about the language itself, call them beginner observations.

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After a few hours of trying to understand the different aspects of written and spoken language, this is what I would like to leave as notes to self:

1. First focus on the spoken Japanese. Understand the meanings, vocabulary, the grammatical structure (Subject-Object-Verb instead of the English Subject-Verb-Object), pronunciations. This can be done through vocabulary books, podcasts, and a general immersion in shows/music. Words can be wago (original Japanese words), kango (Chinese -Japanese words) and gairaigo (Foreign loan words)
2. Next, if you are still interested learn what they teach the children – Hiragana (the cursive set of 46 phonetic letters for grammar), Katakana (angular set of 46 phonetic characters, for showing emphasis or for foreign words), and kanji (characters of ancient Chinese origin that represent ideas and sounds, and are used mostly for nouns, verbs and other ‘content’ words. There are 2,136 commonly used Kanji taught to children. But beyond that apparently thousands and thousands for those interested deeper). A usual written sentence in Japanese has a mix of Hiragana, Katakana and Kanji characters.
3. Further to it, if you still have it in you, learn to write Japanese – the Hiragana, the Katakana and Kanji.

 

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Now for the various thoughts and questions that this exploration leads to:

• There are no spaces in a Japanese written sentence. One gleans meaning and information given the presence of Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana.

• It is fascinating that people remember these 2,136 characters and the phonetic characters of Hiragana and Katakana. It is similar to teaching ‘sight words’ to children to be able to absorb information faster/ read fast. And 2,136 is a beginner’s vocabulary. Many thousands more!

• There are different levels – being simple conversant, being a reader, being able to write, and then really being able to write! It must be challenging to be a writer in that language, or to have written conversation. Just a different system of memory of words through characters. And the writers in Japanese have a vast canvas to work with. I am thinking of writers using exotic kanji, obscure kanji, along with everyday kanji and hiragana and katakana. A writer first needs prowess in spoken Japanese, then reading Japanese and then being able to write all those characters!

• A lot of historical context and characters always carried around with you.

• Is the reading speed quicker in Japanese generally? Given the way sight words work?

• Can new Kanji be created? Or only combination of existing Kanji? Howsoever did they spread the ideas of Kanji?

• Where English needs the 26 alphabets and rules of Grammar and you can have a Shakespeare creating new words, Japanese is more about reaching to the depths of Chinese characters to introduce obscure ideas, or relatively 'new' words? Maybe?

• Another wonder is how is the typing organised? Is there a way to organise the characters into some basic shapes?

• Some or perhaps many Japanese books (traditional), are read from what is usually back of the book for English speakers, top to bottom, right to left.

Each language has its own fascinations and unique elements. One’s familiarity with a language might dim the fascination which a newbie might approach with, or observe or see.

My main fascination is with the different way the language is organised.  I am fluent in Hindi and English, and both are different from how Japanese is organised. It requires a linguistic felicity at different level to be able to perhaps some day produce a Haiku in it. 

Also, the system of Kanji implies a basic learning of vocabulary, concepts by everyone who is taught Kanji. It is slightly different in other languages where you proceed from alphabets, words and grammar. And the limits of your linguistic world is the limits of your language. But isn’t it slightly different for a native speaker/writer in Japanese where the linguistic world (written) is already represented even before or as you encounter it in the world? 

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Overall - It is still day 0. The idea is to explore the language, learn the simple conversational Japanese, learn the pronunciations by listening to podcasts/ shows. And see where this takes me.

 

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Here is an interesting resource:

https://www.irodori-online.jpf.go.jp/

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This resource too: https://thejapanschool.com/top-1000-japanese-words-you-need-to-know/

Cultural Revolution (China)

(Facts drawn from Wikipedia. Opinions my own.)

Launched in 1966 in China, the Cultural Revolution continued until 1976 when Mao Zedong died. Mao Zedong (born 1893) who founded the People’s Republic of China in 1949 and served as its leader until his death, led China and its political-social thought for 27 years in the post-war twentieth century. His political social thought was dominated by the spread of communism across China. Originally inspired by Marxist-Leninist thought, under his leadership Mao Zedong sought to make China a communist country through efforts directed around agriculture, land redistribution and industrialization. A whole society was taken to bits and pieces and redrawn per his thought process.

Central amongst these thought proliferations was Cultural Revolution. Where other ideas were about spread of Chinese communism, Cultural Revolution was about actively purging the capitalist and traditional elements from Chinese society.

There are ideas which are absorbed by a society and a society begins to shift and align itself according to these new ways of thinking. Generally speaking, ideas of capitalism, about interest of the enterprise and the entrepreneur, about interest of land, labour, capital and enterprise is an idea borrowed from natural movement of things – about pursuit of self interest and the solutions found in market economy. It does not need force, it needs good institutions and then it spreads of its own accord. On the other hand, ideas which restructure society forcefully always need force to keep it in its unnatural shape of sameness of a kind. Communism is one such idea. Where things because they tend to defy the basic tenet of nature of self-interest, flow against the grain of nature, and hence always require an artificial way of maintaining balance. Some such rebalancing effort was visible during Cultural Revolution, where a lot of the institutions were violently broken down and rebelled against.

There were four olds (old ideas, old culture, old customs, and old habits), five black categories (landlords, rich farmers, counter-revolutionaries, bad elements, right-wingers), and intellectuals. It is as if some evil force descends on a country and led it against the wisdom of ages, wisdom of people, and the wisdom of learning. It is not about going against ideas of yore or categories of capitalism, as long as there is an open free argument, but it is the going against everything and breaking it to an end which is not clear, to resort to violence and low means that itself takes away from whatever cause the cultural revolution was pursuing.

Over the course of Cultural Revolution, it is said that 1-2 million people died, tens of millions were persecuted and a lot of damage and destruction was done to historical sites and artifacts.

Time and again the portions of the world have fiddled with the root idea of communism in its different forms, and time and again the world has come to realise the weakness of a system which is against the very grain of nature. The system can work along with self-interest or apply an inordinate amount of force to go against self-interest by choking it in levels and levels of committees and bureaucracies, by tying the free individual into a random cage of mass interest. What gets forgotten is that people are still the same, the underlying is still self-interest driven being. The being in power is still the being in power. The spirit of community of common property, of general progress that communism at its pure root signifies gets smothered in practice because it is human managed.

It is not to deny the underlying problem of inequality and oppression. But communism or socialism is not the answer. It has to be state institutions letting market economy operate freely but with a very clear focus and effort towards continuously lifting up the median line, towards welfare. Violence and breaking things down is not the answer. It leads to no good ends.

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What happened after? Eventually with the death of Mao Zedong, the revolution came to an end. In 1978, Deng Xiaoping became the leader and initiated reform and opening up of the country.

In 1981, the CCP publicly acknowledged failures of the Cultural Revolution, declaring it "responsible for the most severe setback and the heaviest losses suffered by the people, the country, and the party since the founding of the People's Republic."

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Stepping further out. The country was in huge flux, in waves and waves of unsettled history, new ideas of communism and socialism taking roots in a poor China allowing people like Mao Zedong to exercise thought control over masses and masses of people. Cultural Revolution is just one aspect. Before that, the Great Leap Forward led to the death of 15-55 million people in what was perhaps the largest famine in human history.

The moment self interest is asked to be sacrificed, one stops treating people with dignity and instead think of them as featureless resource to be used, it leads to massive individual pain and dissonance which is largely unaccounted for amongst all these calculations of deaths and injuries. The heartburn that people carry is yet to be reckoned with.

The true power of a political leader is perhaps measured in their patience with dissent. The moment the powerful try to turn down or throw dissenters away violently, one knows that the power is held by shreds. Or the person in power is just a mediocre human being hungry and greedy for power, not a great leader.


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Later: following from NYRB - see how the world around one becomes absurd:

"The words had already been overtaken by events, for it was in the afternoon of August 5 that we have the first recorded details of the death of a teacher at the hands of students. The students were girls at a prestigious middle school not far from Party headquarters at Zhongnanhai, who had formed their own Red Guard organization to “answer the call” of Chairman Mao. The teacher they beat to death was named Bian Zhongyun. Bian was a fifty-year-old mother of four (three girls and a boy), who had been at the school ever since the Communists took over the country in 1949, and had risen steadily to her current position as assistant principal. She had joined the Communist Party secretly in Sichuan province back in 1941, and in the job at her school had encountered a wide range of elite pupils including the daughters of Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, and Deng Xiaoping.

From June 1966 onward Red Guard units composed of female students began to accuse Bian of a battery of crimes, many of which were written out on big character posters. They charged her with engaging in counterrevolutionary activities while serving on the Beijing municipal Party committee, planning to foment a military coup, working against the class lines laid down by the Party, and lacking due respect for Mao Zedong. (This last charge arose from an incident in March 1966, when Bian briefed her students on earthquake drill, and emphasized the importance of leaving the school buildings as quickly as possible. When one of the students asked if it were not equally important to save the portrait of Mao that hung in the schoolroom, Bian apparently failed to answer with the correct level of enthusiasm.)"