"Professor Xu / Madame Bovary / Sparrow War." I imagined
Professor Xu but Chairman Mao's "Sparrow War" in 1956
was real. Scenes from that war are included in the BBC
documentary Chairman Mao: The Last Emperor.  During
the Cultural Revolution "No Name Lake," Weiming Hu  in
Chinese, "was awash with lifeless, bloated bodies"--
victims, directly or indirectly, of the Red Guard. See Anne
F. Thurston, Enemies of the People, page 133. "Language...
a cracked kettle" is, of course, from Flaubert, his Madame
Bovary.

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Professor Xu / Madame Bovary / Sparrow War