More absurdly, there were Richard Nixon and his wife Pat at the ballet watching The Red Detachment of Women—a Cultural Revolution special produced by Mao’s wife Chiang Ch’ing, in which a despotic landlord beats a peasant woman, who runs off to join the communist revolution. Then, having won battle after battle, she returns with her comrades to slay the landlord. At the end everyone marches off “into the red sun with swords flashing, machine guns chattering, grenades exploding and, certainly blood all over.”
