This book excerpt reminds me of a incident from more years ago than I care
to admit, when I met members of a commercial delegation from the Peoples
Republic of China.  Among them was a young engineer who grew up during
Mao's Cultural Revolution and whom I engaged in private conversation.
When he was a child, his parents had wanted him to study the violin, an
activity that was frowned upon by the reigning  aribiters of good taste.
So he went to the basement of his apartment complex and practiced in a
dingy room where nobody would hear him.  I recall his words,  uttered in
broken but servicable English, "Very terrible, very terrible".  Our
conversation ended abruptly when an older man from the delegation
helpfully came over to join us.

In those days in China, a devotion to the music of this List was a ticket
to a hideous public exposure, an awful imprisonment, and possibly a death
sentence. This book relates a supposedly fictional account of another
aspiring fiddler during those glory days of the apex of socialist
ideology.

   http://www.bordersstores.com/features/feature.jsp?file=balzacandthe

Larry