Big-character posters (Traditional Chinese ???, Simplified Chinese ???, pinyin dàzìbào, literally "big-character journal") are handwritten, wall-mounted posters using large-sized Chinese characters, used as a means of protest, propaganda, and popular communication. They have been used in China since imperial times, but became more common when literacy rates rose after the 1911 revolution. They have also incorporated limited-circulation newspapers, excerpted press articles, and pamphlets intended for public display. A key trigger in the Cultural Revolution was the publication of a dazibao on May 25, 1966 by Nie Yuanzi (???) and others at Peking University, claiming that the university was controlled by bourgeois anti-revolutionaries. The poster came to the attention of Mao Zedong, who had it broadcast nationally and published in the People's Daily. Big-character posters were soon ubiquitous, used for everything from sophisticated debate to satir

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z # TAGS