PEKING: Crowds of teen-agers yesterday [Aug 21] virtually took control of Peking’s shopping streets ordering shopkeepers, restaurant managers, and even hairdressers to rid themselves of their Western ways.

In the latest development of the great “cultural revolution” sweeping China, the teen-agers told shopkeepers to stop selling such items as curios and cosmetics and clothes cut in Western styles.

Hairdressers were told to stop immediately giving “Hong Kong-style” trims.

Restaurants were told to serve cheaper, simpler meals suitable for workers and peasants. In some cases management and staff were threatened.

The teen-agers — organised as the Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution — were clearly acting with the approval of Communist authorities.

The “red guards”, who this week-end have torn down neon signs and big Chinese characters outside scores of Peking’s large shops and re-named some of the Capital’s avenues, yesterday gave managements time limits ranging from 48 hours to one week to rid their establishments of “bourgeois tendencies”.

They made their demands public in big coloured posters on walls and windows of the shops and restaurants. All Peking’s shops and restaurants are State-controlled.

This is the latest development in China’s three-month old political and cultural upheaval and involves a larger part of the public here than previous sackings of senior Communist Party officials and intellectuals.

The week-end demonstrations were apparently following literally the advice of editorials and revolution manifestoes to sweep away all traditional things.

As happened yesterday, the teen-agers read quotations from Mao Tse Tung’s writings in unison at the tops of their voices as their leaders demolished neon or wooden signboards of shops with old-fashioned or traditional names.

While some “Red Guards” directed traffic and [watched] crowds, the shops were given new revolutionary names such as “East Wind store” and “Workers Peasants Soldiers Department store.”

Published in Dawn, August 23rd, 2016