For me, this story was powerful for deeply personal reasons. Elements of the story, for me (at least), brought back images of the Cultural Revolution in Communist China when anyone with ties to the west, religion, chinese feudal traditions, or just had the bad luck of being on someone's shit list, could be rounded up, beat up, publicly humiliated, tortured, killed, or sent to a labor camp for decades. Anyone that was intellectual, a dissident, an english speaker, an artist, a monk, a homosexual, a christian, came from a bad political background, visited a foreign country, had money, had political enemies, or just didn't raise their little red books fast enough was rounded up. Perhaps people in more developed worlds can hide behind Starbuck's Lattes and snarky attitudes, and construct some abstract treatise on how "enlightened" or non-religious people could/would never do this sort of thing. I happen to know from first-hand accounts that this is not only plausible, but it can happen, and it has happened many times.
My grandmother was a target of political struggle because, as a widowed mother in a male-dominated confucian society, the only job she could get was teaching Japanese during the Manchurian occupation. My father was under suspicion of being a western spy because he liked to tinker with amateur radios. My mother was sent down to the countryside, away from her family at 13 to work in the fields for no good reason than Mao said so. I could go on and go. My father happens to be good friends with a traditional chinese artist, Jinqing Cao (who's work is famous in China and Japan) who was barred from painting for 14 years because one of his paintings (of an owl) was interpreted by the politburo as being politically subversive. If you walk through any city in China and talk to people in the age 55 to 75 demographic, they'll tell you a million stories like this. There are a few movies that address this uncomfortable time in chinese history: To Live, The Blue Kite, Farewell My Concubine, etc, but I fear most of modern China has cast that memory aside in favor of making money as fast as humanly possible.
For my 2 cents, Prineas was spot on with her stories. The destruction of bookshops, smashing of windows, and exculpating of pictures from books was something the Red Guards did on a regular basis. And the final scene of Rafe painting a dragon with his own blood... using his life as a last gesture of rebellion... Wow!!! That part just made my speechless. In the chinese literary tradition to write something in blood was a powerful statement and oath, of sincerity so pure that you were literally sacrificing your own life to make it.
Gorgeous and poignant story, all in all, and definitely my all time favorite Podcastle to date.