Little Red Reference

An interesting New York Sun piece on an exhibit of Chinese books caught my attention with this reference. My handful of long-time readers will note the irony:

"My generation has a very awkward relationship with words and books," one of the best-known contemporary Chinese artists, Xu Bing, said in a recent interview. His parents worked at Beijing University, and he spent considerable time in the library: Before he could read, he was already very familiar with books as desirable objects. "By the time of the Cultural Revolution, I could read, but there weren't any books available. The entire country read only one book: Mao's ‘Little Red Book.' We read and memorized that book all day. At the end of the Cultural Revolution, I returned from the countryside to Beijing to study. Because I was starving for culture and was in the midst of a general cultural fever at the time, I read many different types of books."

(Emphasis added-DD)