The Age of Revolution

Survey the three great revolutions that gave birth to today’s China. Wood visits wild mountain villages; describes the fall of the empire; visits Jazz Age Shanghai; and stays in the last communist commune—before a celebration on Chinese New Year.

Michael Wood visits the monument to Qiu Jin in Shaoxing. This feminist poet and political activist founded a radical journal for women's voices and campaigned for the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty and the founding of a republic. She was executed in the middle of her home town. Local women in the street enthusiastically and movingly explain to Michael why she is still a hero today.

Michael Wood visits the room in Shanghai where the first meeting of the Chinese Communist Party took place in 1921. Among the twelve delegates (from only fifty-seven members!) was the young Mao Zedong, the future Chairman Mao. Meanwhile, outside in Shanghai. the Jazz Age was in full swing. Michael takes tea in the fabulous Peninsula Hotel, one of the centers of Westernization in 1920's China.

The age of communism is over now in today's free market China, even though the Communist Party still runs the country as a one party state. Now there's just one place which is still communist in a sea of capitalism. Michael visits this strange throwback in rural Henan, where they still sing, "The East is Red" before work, and where pictures of Mao, Stalin, and Lenin still adorn the town square!