Abstract
Abstract Chapter 8 studies the 1945 opera The White-Haired Girl as a major turning point for Communist propaganda. The chapter brings new insights to existing scholarship by engaging the opera’s gender politics in relation to Yan’an’s anti-superstition polemics in particular and the CCP discourses of religion and revolution in general. Departing from the anti-superstition theme, The White-Haired Girl invoked the cosmic redemption of female ghosts to illustrate class exploitations and national liberation. This narrative echoed the themes of female suffering and salvation in traditional religious literature to inspire a widespread “emotional community” for the revolution. The opera created a renewed ethical and cosmological rationale for Party leadership in building the New China and set the future direction for revolutionary art and literature. It marked the Party’s critical transition from moderate social reforms in the base areas to all-out war and revolution on a national scale.
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