1. This essay was written for the painting’s second New York exhibition, that was held at the Asia Society in 2008. It was first translated by Valerie C. Doran and published in Melissa Chiu and Zheng Shengtian, Art and China’s Revolution (New York: Asia Society, 2008); for the present publication some small editorial amendments have been made.

2. Zheng Shengtian 郑胜天 (b. 1938, Henan) was an artist, curator, critic, and professor based at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (ZAFA) in Hangzhou until 1989, and after that in Vancouver. He established the digitalized archive Shengtian Collection and is currently managing editor of Yishu: Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art, the first English-language magazine on contemporary Chinese art.

3. Zhang Yongsheng 张永生 (b. 1940, Hunan) was an art teacher of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, who from 1966 was leader of the Red Guards at the Academy, and later chief of Zhejiang Province Red Guards, 1968–1975. After the Cultural Revolution, Zhang was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1979 and is today a freelance artist.

4. Wang Chengyi 汪诚仪 (b. 1930, Anhui) was an artist, professor of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts. Wang studied oil painting in Maksimov’s classes in the 1950s.

5. Konstantin Maksimov 康斯但丁 马克西莫夫 (1913–1993) was a Soviet Russian artist, professor and advisor at CAFA in Beijing, 1955–1957, and had a huge influence on Chinese oil painting development in the 1950s.

6. Hu Yuelong 胡曰龙 (b. 1935, Shanghai) was an artist and professor. A graduate of the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts, Hu worked in Jiaxing as art designer, 1971–1985, taught in Shanghai Art College in the 1990s, and is now a freelance artist in Shanghai.

7. By 1971 authorized CPC information about the Lin Biao affair was being widely circulated.

8. Wu Shanming 吴山明 (b. 1941, Zhejiang).

9. Hao Boyi 郝伯义 (b. 1938, Shandong) was an artist, art teacher and director of the Art Class of the Heilongjiang Production and Construction Corps, who from the 1970s into the 2000s was director of the Bureau of Reclamation Farms in Jiamusi.