The Stones In China

The Rolling Stones finally make it to China, but play to an audience of only 8000. “The gig has been a long time coming and the fact that it is now possible reflects how the cultural and economic gap has closed between China and the West. When the band started in 1962, millions of Chinese were dying in the famines that followed the Great Leap Forward. In the decade that followed the only pop icon allowed to be worshipped was Mao Zedong. Even at the end of the Cultural Revolution, several attempts to arrange a Chinese concert were thwarted by financial concerns, political worries and, most recently, the outbreak of Sars.”