Cultural Revolution Red Book in English

We brought back an English version of Mao's Little Red Book from China a couple of years ago and it was a hit among our friends. We ended up going back to Beijing last year and asked our friends there to see if they could find a few more of these genuine red books. Luckily one of our friends taught English in a well known Chinese University and he was able to locate a few copies for us.

Unlike lots of Chinese red books, these versions, written in English are in better condition because few people read or spoke English and so few possessed them. Even if they had such a version they rarely used it, relying instead on their Chinese version. Accrording to this English version of Red Book, the print year was October 1966 and the price for this book at that time was 60 Chinese Cents.

As is evident in the photo below, for those who can read Chinese, this concise version Red Book was compiled first in 1966 and published by Foreign Language Publishing House in Beijing. In October 1966 it was reprinted.

Totaling 312 pages, this compact but content rich Red Book contain quite a few infamous quotations that make skin crawl on many Chinese who witnessed the Cultural Revolution when read out loud. We haven't gone through them page by page, but we did find the time to thumb through the extensive photos in the front section of the red book. There are 31 photos, covering his entire career as a politician. It makes an interesting biography of Mao in itself. We have included some for your viewing, but not all of the photos are shown here.

This little red book makes a wonderful gift for someone who is interested in Cultural Revolution artifacts, but without having to break the bank. Some lines in the red book make good party jokes. As we learned ourselves, the reference to "Paper Tigers" and "Running Dogs" were truly hilarious.