Walk through Jingshan Park in Beijing on a Sunday morning and it is as if the Mao era never ended.
All across the park, which sits just north of the Forbidden City, informal choirs belt out red songs, the stirring tunes that celebrate the Communist Party and the revolutionary spirit, and which from 1949 to the late 1970s were the mainland's sole soundtrack.
Apart from their shared repertoire of songs, the singing groups all have one thing in common: almost every member of them is middle-aged.
Qu Ming is one of the singers. Still out of breath from leading one choir of a hundred or so people in loud, enthusiastic renditions of I am a Soldier, My Country and Come on China, the 57-year-old retired editor in a state-run publishing house says her group can perform 233 red songs. 'I've been singing these songs since I was a young girl and I still get very emotional when I hear them. It's the same for everyone in the choir. Every song has meaning for us, it's our history. For me, pop songs have a short life but these songs will live forever.'
The choirs have become part of a nationwide campaign by the Communist Party to revive red culture. Singing red songs is no longer just a nostalgia trip for mostly retired people but, in some cities, a near-compulsory expression of patriotism and loyalty to the party that spans all ages.
In Tianjin on June 19, thousands of students from primary schools to universities gathered for 'Ode to the Communist Party', a singing contest whose participants paraded in mass formations while dressed in old-style PLA uniforms and waved red stars and flags.