Red Sun in the Sky

The story

"Red Sun in the Sky" is a Chinese Communist revolutionary song in honour of Mao Zedong. Its words were written by Xu Wenjing and its music by Song Yang, who adapted it from "Ballad of Picking Tea", a folk song of Jiangxi belonging to the wider tradition of tea-picking operas. The image of Mao as a radiant "red sun" guiding the nation was a prominent metaphor in songs and propaganda of the time, part of the cult of personality around him; red songs of this kind were meant to strengthen his image as the core figure of the Communist Party and the saviour of the Chinese nation. The song is often confused or used interchangeably with "The East Is Red", which draws on the same imagery.

After the Chinese Civil War, at the time of the peaceful takeover of Hunan in 1949, Song Yang and another musician, Yi Yang, arranged the song for four-part harmony in Changsha; by then it was already widely sung. It was included in the third volume of the album New Songs from the Battlefield, released in May 1974, and the English article dates the song itself to that year and associates it with the Cultural Revolution.

The song was later included on "The Red Sun: Odes to Mao Zedong", a 1991 collection of songs in praise of Mao, and the singer Tiger Hu (formerly known as Anson Hu) recorded it for his 2009 release Red Song. From 2021 it became an internet meme, as remixes sung by AI imitations of Donald Trump and SpongeBob SquarePants spread on YouTube and TikTok.

What it says

A song in praise of Mao Zedong, presenting him as a red sun over the nation; bright and celebratory.

The words

The words of this song are still in copyright, so they are not printed here. “What it says” above gives their theme in our own words, and the performance below lets you hear them.