The music is inspired by a surreal image from the third act of the future opera
Jiang Qing Madame Mao barges in unceremoniously at an official state banquet in Beijing hangs paper lanterns and begins a seductive dance. A huge 40-foot portrait of Mao Zedong on the wall comes to life the Chairman steps out of the painting to dance a foxtrot with his wife transporting them back to their youth.
Toward the end of the piece the tempo slows mimicking the stop of a gramophone. The music fades to a measured mechanical clicking rhythm of percussion using sandpaper blocks and piano leaving a sense of a ghost of the past dissolving.