Cultural Revolution

Gov. William Donald Schaefer says that education goals set by President Bush and the nation's governors last year can be achieved if everyone works together."

Aurand Harris, 80, the prolific and much-published playwright for children's theater best known for his 1963 classic, "Androcles and the Lion," died of cancer Monday in New York City.The play, often seen on television and in school and community theaters, has been translated into 20 languages and remains the best-seller of Mr. Harris' publisher, Anchorage Press.Mr. Harris wrote more than 50 published plays beginning in 1945 with "Once Upon a Clothesline," which broke from the fairy tales traditionally featured in children's theater and instead profiled two characters dressed in yellow jumpsuits to resemble clothespins.

Fritz and Ingeborg Kahlenberg,80, 76, respectively, a Dutch resistance couple who secretly photographed the Nazi occupation in the Netherlands during World War II, died this month within two weeks of each other in New York.He died Oct. 15 of kidney failure. She died of lung cancer Oct. 2.The couple's work is included in a Hidden Camera show, "The Illegal Camera: Photography in the Netherlands During the German Occupation 1940-1945," on display at the Jewish Museum in New York through Dec. 1.Wang Li,76, who helped Mao Tse-tung ignite the chaos of the Cultural Revolution and purge Communist Party rivals, died Monday in Beijing.

Joao Baptista Figueiredo, 81, the blunt outspoken president who oversaw Brazil's transition from military dictatorship to civilian rule, died yesterday morning from heart and respiratory failure in his Rio de Janeiro home.During his 1978-1985 presidency, Mr. Figueiredo sped up the transition to democracy begun by his predecessor, Ernesto Geisel, and granted amnesty to those accused or convicted of political crimes, allowing hundreds of exiles to return.Jiang Hua, 93, who as chief judge of China's highest court oversaw the trial of Mao Tse-tung's widow and other members of the radical "Gang of Four," died yesterday in the eastern city of Hangzhou.

AS the United States enters its second of two days of human rights talks with Chinese officials today, it is hard to fathom what frightens the old men who rule China.It ought to be the specter of depression, which the leaders have fought off with Keynesian methods their economy may not afford much longer, or anarchy at China's borders from breakdown in Russia, mad rulers in North Korea and nuclear rivalry gripping India and Pakistan.What really makes President Jiang Zemin and his colleagues nervous, however, is political dissent.

BEIJING - Forget about the space race, the gold medal chase and the almighty gross domestic product. China is finally catching up to America in a crucial category: the celebrity sex scandal. Zhao Zhongxiang, a television broadcaster for 44 years and this country's closest thing to Walter Cronkite, is embroiled in a scandal that has whet the public's appetite for unflattering celebrity gossip - in this case, allegations of an extramarital affair with his physical therapist, who is suing him. For weeks, the Chinese news media and Web sites have feasted on each development and nuance: the sex, the lies, the dirty telephone chatter caught on tape (available for downloading)

HANOI, Vietnam - The path leading to the thatched huts, gated courtyards and storage buildings that constitute Tran The Koi's rambling network of antique showrooms begins at the foot of Ngo Quynh alley, where the sweet smell of rice wine floats amid flowering tree branches. High school students weave through the tiny back street on their motorbikes, the wire baskets overflowing with bouquets. It is a Sunday afternoon and the students are celebrating "Teachers' Day," a venerable practice in Vietnam where young people visit and honor their mentors.

SHAOSHAN, China -- In one of his more famous poems, Mao Tse-tung urged his countrymen to "seize the day, seize the hour." And here in the birthplace of the Great Helmsman of China's Communist revolution, they're doing just that.But profit's what they have in mind.Mao was born in a simple, brick home in this small town in 1893. With the approach of the 100th anniversary of his birth Dec. 26, few here see any contradiction in making money from the memory of one of history's most fervent anti-capitalists.

"Xiu Xiu: The Sent-Down Girl" is the tragic story of a young girl who in 1975 is sent from her home in bustling Chung-du to live and work in China's vast Tibetan foothills.As directed by actress Joan Chen in her filmmaking debut, "Xiu Xiu" draws a startlingly frank portrait of the most abhorrent and cruel elements of China's cultural revolution, and as a doomed love story, it conveys great sweetness amid the sweep of land and history. The bathos gets a bit thick, and Chen commits some glaring continuity gaps along the way, but the portrait she draws is a vivid one.Lu Lu plays Xiu Xiu, whom we meet as an idealistic teen-ager on her way to join the Cultural Youth Revolution, in which the Chinese government sent urban youths to the countryside to work and learn new trades.

Louise Farmer Smith was in a rut. When she arrived at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, her attempt to celebrate the life of her mother in a nonfictional narrative had stalled. Her effort of two years was in jeopardy.On the first night of Smith's monthlong fellowship, Mary Curtis Ratcliff, a visual artist, solicited anecdotes involving cakes as a way of adding another dimension to her sculpture displays of fanciful, but nonedible, layer cakes.Smith volunteered to dictate an account of her 10th birthday.