China: Lurid Tales from Canton

What makes China so inscrutable these days is not the mystery of events so much as their exaggeration. Rhetoric and hyperbole are built into Chinese grammar, and the Chinese by nature are prone to overstatement. None practice verbal inflation with greater verve than the South Chinese, whose largest city, Canton, has for the past two months been the main arena of struggle between those promoting Mao Tse-tung's Cultural Revolution and those opposing it. Cantonese wall posters and the tales of travelers coming out to nearby Hong Kong have painted a lurid portrait of...

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