As official records and personal recollections become increasingly accessible, new perspectives are opening for the study of China's Cultural Revolution. Beyond political and textual analysis, there are new possibilities for us to understand the sensory experience of the Cultural Revolution and its impact on subject formation. Focusing on music and opera, and encompassing the inner and outer worlds of individuals and/or their collective affairs, this symposium will be the first of its kind in analyzing the audio dimension of the Cultural Revolution. Speakers will investigate the tensions and interactions between politics and aesthetics, between the center and the periphery, and those between subjectivity and sensuality, in order to explore how the revolution was experienced by the people, and how the sensory was re-translated into political actions or indifferences. We believe this approach is important for us to understand how "culture" plays an essential part in this Cultural Revolution.