China in Ten Words (21 page)

At the top of the letter were printed the words “Supreme Directive” and underneath was a quotation of Mao Zedong’s: “We hail from all corners of the country and have joined together for a common objective.… All people in the revolutionary ranks must care for each other, must love and help each other.” A standard form letter followed.

He was thrilled every time someone asked him for a letter of introduction. He would plop himself down on the ground, take a blank sheet out of his satchel, and rest it on his thigh. “Where is it you want to go?” he would ask, then conscientiously jot the answer down. Each time he would issue two letters, one authorizing free transportation, the other authorizing free lodging. Then he would produce from his pocket a tin of red ink paste, untie his belt, and detach his Invincible Mao Zedong Thought Publicity Team seal, dip it in the ink paste, and carefully impress it on the paper.

Later, owing to an unfortunate mishap, his life in the fast lane screamed to a halt. One day he must have been in a rush when going to the bathroom, and when he pulled down his pants a little too vigorously, his Invincible Mao Zedong Thought Publicity Team seal slipped off his waistband and tumbled into the cesspit below. As luck would have it, a Red Guard was using the bathroom too, and trouble followed. The seal was famous throughout our town, and everyone knew that the characters for “Mao Zedong Thought” were carved on it. “What, you dropped ‘Mao Zedong Thought’ in the cesspit?” the Red Guard cried, scandalized.

In a second, life’s high tide suddenly began to recede. After delivering his scolding, the Red Guard never brought the matter up again. But the guilt-stricken publicist subjected himself to endless self-reproach. His jacket was no longer tucked inside his trousers, and the satchel over his shoulders was no more to be seen. The whistle still hung from his neck, but when he gave it a halfhearted blow and passersby respectfully brought our their Little Red Books, expecting to read Mao’s quotations aloud under his supervision, he would simply burst into tears and slap himself in the face, denouncing himself as a counterrevolutionary. “I deserve to die a thousand deaths!” he cried in distress. “I dropped ‘Mao Zedong Thought’ down the toilet.”

The passersby with their outstretched Little Red Books were stunned, and it took a few moments for them to understand what had happened. Naturally they felt it incumbent on them to sternly criticize his faux pas; the fashion of the day, after all, was to advertise one’s revolutionary standpoint at the earliest opportunity, whatever the circumstances. But nobody seriously considered him a counterrevolutionary, and since everyone knew him to be a decent fellow, he was never subjected to a struggle session.

But he continued to blow his whistle and heap abuse on himself in public, to the point where passersby got quite annoyed. One day somebody reached his limit. “A counterrevolutionary like you,” he cursed. “What makes you think you’ve got the right to blow that damn whistle at us all the time?”

The whistle-blower turned pale as a sheet. “I’m so sorry,” he said, bowing his head penitently. “This won’t happen again.”

When he next appeared, a whistle no longer hung from his neck. He had changed his outfit and now was wearing a papier-mâché dunce cap on his head and clutching a broom in his hand. He would spend the whole day sweeping the streets of our little town, fearing that some awful retribution might descend on his head at any moment.

As time passed and the Cultural Revolution ended, the man reverted to his original self, passing his days in quiet obscurity, and nobody paid the slightest attention to him if they passed him in the street. With that he was completely forgotten by our little town. When I went back home a few years ago and mentioned this man to some of my childhood companions, not one of them could remember him, and when I recounted these stories that left such an impression on me, they looked so surprised it was as though this was the first time they had ever heard them. I tried to jog their memories, stressing how he would blow his whistle and orchestrate readings of Mao’s quotations. Finally it rang a bell with one of them, and he promised to make some inquiries. A couple of days later he came by to report that the man had died ten years earlier. “He’s blowing his whistle in the underworld now,” he chuckled, “leading the lost souls in a recital of Mao Zedong’s selected sayings.”

I looked baffled. “He kept his whistle lovingly all those years,” my friend explained, “and his dying wish was to have it deposited with his ashes.” In keeping with age-old conceptions of death as an extension of life, he had asked for his most cherished possession to accompany him into the next world, for use whenever needed.

For him, I realized, the whistle signified the most vital symbol of his existence. Without the Cultural Revolution, there would have been no whistle, and no ups and downs. Although his rise and fall can hardly be compared to Wang Hongwen’s, he did in his own way scale a peak, only to tumble off the other side. If on his deathbed he thought back to those glorious days when he could blow his whistle and lead everyone in a reading of Mao’s quotations, he would have felt, I’m sure, some satisfaction at a job well done.

A
s I look back over China’s sixty years under communism, I sense that Mao’s Cultural Revolution and Deng’s open-door reforms have given China’s grassroots two huge opportunities: the first to press for a redistribution of political power and the second to press for a redistribution of economic power.

*
caogen

copycat

T
he story of contemporary China can be told from many different angles, but here I want to tell it in terms of the copycat, a national myth playing itself out on a popular level.

The word here rendered as “copycat”
^*
originally denoted a mountain hamlet protected by a stockade or other fortifications; later it acquired an extended meaning as a hinterland area, home to the poor. It was also a name once given to the lairs of outlaws and bandits, and the word has continued to have connotations of freedom from official control.

In the past few years, with the increasing popularity of copycat cell phones that offer multiple functions at a low price, the word “copycat” has given the word “imitation” a new meaning, and at the same time the limits to the original sense of “imitation” have been eroded, allowing room for it to acquire additional shades of meaning: counterfeiting, infringement, deviations from the standard, mischief, and caricature. With visas such as these one can gain entry to the Land of Imitation and take up residence in Mountain Hamlet. It would not be going too far to say that “copycat” has more of an anarchist spirit than any other word in the contemporary Chinese language.

Copycat cell phones began by imitating the functions and designs of such brands as Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson; to muddy the waters further, they gave themselves names like Nokir, Samsing, and Suny Ericcsun. By plagiarizing existing brands and thereby skimping on research and development costs, they sold for a fraction of the price of established products; given their technical capabilities and trendy appearance, they soon cornered the low end of the consumer market.

With the rapid growth of the copycat industry there is now a dizzying variety of knockoff phone brands. One has recently appeared in the stores under the mantle of Harvard University. Claiming to be manufactured by “Harvard Communications,” the brand presents President Obama as its spokesman and sports a beaming Obama on its advertisements. His smile, seen everywhere these days, has to count as the most famous—and the most powerful—smile in the world, but now it’s been hijacked and made to appear in promotions for Chinese copycat cell phones. “This is my Blackberry,” Obama tells us with a grin, “the Blockberry Whirlwind 9500!”

Obama is today’s symbol of that long-running American dream, but I am pretty sure he could never have imagined such an outlandish misuse of his image, and Americans at large would no doubt be flabbergasted to see their president serving as brand ambassador for a Chinese knockoff. We Chinese take it all in our stride, for we don’t see anything wrong with copycatting Obama. After all, in China today, with the exception of the party in power and our current government leaders—plus retired but still living party and state leaders—everybody else can be copycatted and ridiculed, imitated and spoofed, at will.

Thirty-three years after his death, Mao Zedong—our erstwhile Great Leader, Great Teacher, Great Commander, and Great Helmsman—like Obama came to play the starring role in a Chinese copycat advertisement. On October 1, 2009, the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the contemporary Chinese state, a karaoke parlor in Zhejiang posted two huge red banners on either side of its door. On them Mao Zedong appeared in military uniform and cap, with microphone in hand, belting out a song; he looked nothing like the charismatic leader of the revolutionary era and much more like the kind of petty bureaucrat who haunts nightclubs at all hours of the night. In the bottom right corner were listed such patriotic anthems as “China, Today Is Your Birthday,” “My Motherland,” “China, I Love You,” and “O People of China.” “We put the poster up on October 1,” one of the staff proudly explained. “It’s our way of marking this great national celebration.”

In 2008 Mao’s home province of Hunan embarked on a campaign to select Mao look-alikes from all over the country. Lured by such tempting bait, surely plenty of tourist fish would throw themselves on the hook; visitors would flock to Hunan and line its coffers with a more ample store of legal tender. “This is an innovation in our cultural system reform,” a local official explained. “It will effectively promote the development of our cultural tourism industry.”

One hundred and thirty Mao Zedong look-alikes traveled from all corners of the country, braving every hardship to arrive at their destination. After several elimination rounds thirteen finalists entered the last stage of the competition. At the news conference they sat in a row on the stage, each with a fake mole stuck on his chin. Some struck the classic pose of the historical Mao Zedong, a cigarette between their curled fingers and an ankle resting on their knee. The real Mao Zedong spoke with a genuine Xiangtan accent; copycat Xiangtan accents spilled from the mouths of the copycat Maos. Most were dressed in Mao jackets of gray or green; one wore a replica of the octagonal cap in which Mao was photographed during the Long March; the others had their hair styled in the backward sweep that Mao favored. All at different stages in life, they declared that they represented Mao Zedong at varying stages in his career: the Jinggang Mountains version, the Long March version, the 1949 founding ceremony version.… One was so confident in his appearance that he refused to put on makeup; another put on makeup but claimed to be “the most physically unaltered.” A third mock Mao, facing the packed audience below, improvised as giddily as a pop singer. “I’m a hundred and fifteen this year,” he declared, clutching the microphone tightly, “but it gives me such a lift to be here, I feel just as young as you see me!”

Yet another Mao Zedong look-alike imitated Mao’s speech at the founding ceremony: “Greetings, comrades!” His phony Xiangtan accent enlivened the atmosphere, and the audience cried happily in return, “Greetings, Chairman Mao!”

“Long live the people!” he continued.

“Long live Chairman Mao!” the crowd roared.

These past few years Mao Zedong has been copycatted constantly. In the most bizarre instance, a female Mao impersonator appeared in southwest China, making such an immediate impact that she was hailed by the Chinese media as “sweeping aloft in majesty,” a literary expression over which Mao once claimed exclusive rights. When this fifty-one-year-old woman made herself up as Mao Zedong and walked along the street, waving to the crowds that gathered, she looked uncannily like the Mao who waved to the parading masses from Tiananmen, and the crowds pressed toward her, rushing to be the first to shake her hand. In a moment the street was a dense throng of humanity, and it took her more than half an hour to walk just a few hundred yards.

Everybody felt that this female copycat was even more like Mao than the male impersonators they had seen. Of course, the cost to her personally and financially was far higher, for she had to invest enormous effort to master Mao’s accent and mannerisms to the point where she could resemble him so closely in every way. Each time she made herself up to look like Mao it took her four hours and cost her 2,000 yuan in cosmetic expenses. To conceal her deficiencies in the stature department, she wore the highest possible elevator shoes. The real Mao was six feet tall, and she was not quite five foot six. After careful viewing of newsreel footage and endless hours perfecting the simulation of Mao’s accustomed gait, this female copycat Mao Zedong managed to walk with her thickened insoles in such a way that people who saw her thought she looked just like Mao strolling along in his flat cotton shoes.

O
nce copycat cell phones had taken China by storm, copycat digital cameras, copycat MP3 players, copycat game consoles, and other such pirated and knockoff products came pouring forth. Copycat brands have rapidly expanded to include instant noodles, sodas, milk, medications, laundry detergent, and sports shoes, and so the word “copycat” has penetrated deep into every aspect of Chinese people’s lives. Copycat stars, TV programs, advertisements, pop songs, Spring Festival galas, Shenzhou 7 space capsules, and Bird’s Nest national stadiums have all made a splash on the Internet, each revealing their own special flavor and gaining instant popularity.

Copycat stars appear in imitation shows, just like the ersatz Mao Zedongs. The difference is that sham Maos require a physical likeness, whereas the copycat stars aspire merely to a similarity in spirit. However different their looks, so long as they can capture a star’s voice and expression, they can achieve their goal and create some buzz. As their reputation soars, some copycat stars chafe at their limited resemblance to their models and end up wanting to look like them, too; so they go to enormous expense and suffer the discomfort of surgery to have themselves cosmetically reshaped, looking forward to the day when they and the stars they are imitating will look like twins. Fired with feverish ambition, they long to elevate themselves from copycat status to genuine article and to downgrade the original to a wannabe.

Copycat pop songs and copycat TV programs are even more varied, combining imitation with parody. Lyrics are altered at will so that the solemn becomes comical and the refined becomes crude, and the songs are deliberately performed out of tune. Copycat TV programs, released as videos on the Internet, tend to be send-ups of official TV programs, and China Central Television’s
Network News
at seven o’clock each evening, notorious for its rigidity and dogmatism, has become a perennial target of mockery. In one spoof, two completely unfamiliar anchors appeared on our monitors in a skit inspired by the 2008 milk-powder scare. In the ponderous tones of
Network News
they announced that the regular anchors had been poisoned by contaminated milk and rushed off to intensive care; they had been brought in at the last minute to deliver that evening’s broadcast.

Some versions of
Copycat News
have been quite incisive in confronting sensitive social issues. When official media outlets hem and haw,
Copycat News
gets straight to the point, telling things as they are and adding liberal doses of derision and sarcasm. After the tainted-milk scandal was exposed, it became clear that it was not just the Sanlu Group in Shijiazhuang whose infant formulas had astronomical levels of melamine; many other producers’ infant formula exceeded the limits to varying degrees. China’s entire milk industry suffered a major blow. Nobody would buy domestically produced milk powder, and many people stopped drinking milk.
Copycat News
had plenty to say about this. It poked fun at Sanlu and the other milk producers, who were said to register their dissatisfaction with Sanlu in the following terms: “We put melamine in our milk powder, but you guys put milk powder in your melamine. Damn it, you’re even more shameless than we are!”

In August 2008, after the success of the opening ceremony at the Beijing Olympics, the official Chinese media sang its praises to the skies, proudly declaring that such a glorious opening ceremony had no parallel in the past and would never be matched in the future.
Copycat News
said the same thing, but cynically. Its commentary went like this: “Such a glorious opening ceremony has never happened before and will never happen again. Why so? Because other nations with so many people do not have so much money, and other nations with so much money do not have so many people, and other nations with so much money and so many people do not have so much power.”

China Central Television’s annual Spring Festival gala provides the best possible chance for budding entertainers to make their name overnight. A decent female singer normally earns only about a thousand yuan for a day’s work; but after she makes an appearance at the Spring Festival gala, she can ask a much higher fee—ten or twenty thousand yuan for a single song. The result is that to get a place on the gala program becomes a life-or-death struggle for many performers. They pull out all the stops, begging businessmen to underwrite them, imploring leaders to intercede on their behalf; sex is traded for money, or power. The gala keeps growing and growing, giving the director endless headaches: space needs to be found for more and more items on the program; there are fewer solos and many more ensembles.

A few years ago the following joke made the rounds: One of the top brass at CCTV decides that it is high time the gala was pared down. In order to ensure its artistic quality, he thinks to himself, they are just going to have to step on a few toes. He pulls out the drawer in which he has been keeping all the instructions, requests, and pleas he has received, dumps them all on the top of his desk, and studies them carefully one by one, scanning the signatures of the various bigwigs who have thrown their weight behind one or another performer. No, this one he can’t afford to offend, nor that one either. In the end he is left with just three messages he can get away with ignoring—for they are all notes he himself has written to the director. He removes these three pieces of paper from the pile but then has second thoughts. “Why give myself a hard time?” he asks, and tosses them right back in.

It is against this backdrop that copycat variety shows are broadcast on the last evening of the traditional Chinese year, the same time as the official CCTV gala. In 2009 more than a dozen such copycat events were broadcast on the Internet. As Spring Festival approached, their organizers unleashed a flood of copycat advertising, sending vehicles out into the streets to publicize their events, conducting news conferences in city squares, marching through downtown holding aloft wastepaper baskets emblazoned with promotional quips. Advertising slogans for the copycat galas took multiple forms; one, borrowing Mao Zedong’s calligraphy, had the line: “The People’s Gala—for the people and by the people.” Viewers who are fed up with the CCTV gala—young people in particular—turn off their televisions on the last night of the year and flick on their computers. As they eat and drink, they can relish on the Internet the copycat galas produced by the grassroots.