Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader (87 page)

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Authors: Geremie Barme

Tags: #History, #Asia, #China, #Literary Criticism, #Asian, #Chinese, #Political Science, #Political Ideologies, #Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, #World, #General, #test

BOOK: Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader
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Page 268
8.
Haohao xuexi, tiantian xiang shang,
also rakishly translated as "good good study study, day day up." This "Mao quote" was and is regularly written up at entrances to primary and middle schools. It is, in fact, a combination of two inscriptions by Mao. "
Haohao xuexi
" was penned in Beijing for the inaugural issue of
Zhongguo ertong
(China's Children) magazine that appeared in September 1949, while "
tiantian xiang shang
" was written nearly a decade earlier in Yan'an to commemorate Children's Day, then celebrated on 4 April, and published in
Xin Zhonghua bao,
12 April 1940. Despite the disparity in calligraphic styles, the two lines were later combined into one "Mao quote.'' See
Mao zhuxi shoushu xuanji,
pp. 188 and 279.
9.
Wei renmin fuwu.
This line comes from "Serve the People," a speech Mao made at a memorial ceremony for Zhang Side on 8 September 1944 and one of the "Three Standard Articles." See
Mao Zedong xuanji, yijuanben,
pp. 905-7.

 

Page 269
Chairman Mao Graffiti
Zhang Chengzhi
At the inception of the Cultural Revolution, Zhang Chengzhi was a student at Qinghua Middle School in Beijing. He was an activist and the first to call himself a "Red Guard" (
hongweibing
) when writing his own "small character posters." The term was subsequently adopted by his schoolmates and then by the Cultural Revolution student movement.
1
Like many of his generation Zhang was a fervent disciple of Mao and Mao Thought. Pictures of him studying Mao's works can be found in the pages of official propaganda publications of the time.
In the 1980s, Zhang became a prominent writer of "minority fiction" centered in Inner Mongolia,
2
where he had been sent as a youth after Mao terminated the Red Guard movement. In the early 1990s Zhang achieved fame as a proto-nationalist and was noted for his anti-Western stance. Other prominent ex-Red Guards enjoyed different career paths. Su Xiaokang and Zheng Yi, both writers, went into exile after 4 June 1989, while the four surviving "Five Great Leaders" of the Red Guard Movement had reportedly gone into business.
3
As a popular saying originating among former Red Guards put it: ''Chairman Mao let us take control; Deng Xiaoping lets us make a bankroll."
4
This following article, published in the Japanese journal
Sekai,
consists of a series of loosely connected notes, or graffiti, as Zhang chooses to call them. It is one of the most interesting contributions a Mainland-based former Red Guard has made to discussions of the 1990s' Mao Cult.
5
In writing about Mao it is virtually impossible to avoid either praising or condemning him. When you think of those people who were sacrificed in that great wave of history you are overwhelmed by a premonition that by breaking this taboo I will be committing an historical crime.
There is no subject harder to deal with than this. But thinking Chinese are destined to suffer this fate. Faced with the harsh realities of China's

 

Page 270
future, especially as a Chinese author confronted with the injustices created by the New World Order of the Anglo-Saxons, it is a topic that for reasons of conscience and self-respect I am loathe to ignore.
The year 1993 marked the centenary of Mao Zedong's birth. One hundred years is too short a time in which to be able to say anything definitive about him. However, in order to express some views common among Chinese thinkers, and also to be released from an excessive personal responsibility in writing about Mao, I have decided to pen what I chose to call "Mao grafitti."
He was born on 26 December. Everyone referred to his birthday simply as 12.26. I vividly recall two different incidents that occurred on Mao's birthday in my youth.
The first was in 1966. Red Guards in Beijing middle schools announced they had formed a "United Action Committee" and they launched an attack on the Ministry of Public Security. It was the sixth time we'd attacked. It was the middle of winter and we marched in ranks along Chang'an Avenue wearing ridiculously large Red Guard armbands and faded PLA uniforms. In our excitement we kept looking around. We were too young to have any sense of fear. Confusion reigned and no troops or policemen were to be seen anywhere, but still our attack failed. The only thing we could do was mess around a bit. Our group was eventually dispersed by a mass demonstration on Chang'an. It had been a complete failure.
Only now it occurs to me: what were all those people doing on Chang'an in the dead of night? Were we really all there to celebrate the Chairman's birthday?
The other occasion was during the snow storms of the winter of 1971 when I was in Inner Mongolia. It was the only "white disaster," as the Mongolians call it, that I ever experienced. Everything came to a standstill. The plains on which the horses usually galloped were now lost in a deep sea of snow. Even the camels occasionally sunk into the snow drifts, crying mournfully as they struggled. And then the livestock, starting with the cows, the sheep and the Mongolian sheep, unable to get at the grass with their hooves, began to starve. Having run out of their supplies of tea and staple grains the lives of the nomads all but collapsed. I'll never forget the grim faces of everyone as they sat down to eat the same black mutton day after day. That's the first time I knew what it was like to be on the brink of death.
The PLA began airlifting flour and feed for the livestock by helicopter along the mountain ridges which weren't too deep in snow. The first time when people emptied the grain into their containers back in their yurts they placed them in front of a portrait of Mao with the words "grain of good fortune" written on them.
On the evening of 26 December, everyone enjoyed the first meal made

 

Page 271
with white flour in the yurts that were scattered in the darkness of the snow-covered plains. There was joyful singing and everyone got drunk on veterinarian alcohol used for the livestock, diluted with water.
It's been over ten years since he was repressed. I was completely untouched by the criticisms made of Mao by Chinese intellectualsthe most faddish group in the worldand those so-called "China experts" overseas. That's because those people are completely out of touch with the sentiments of China's broad masses.
However, the MaoCraze that started three years ago came as a complete shock. Calendars featuring Chairman Mao suddenly became all the rage while those with girlie pictures fell out of fashion. Books about him flooded the market, as did cassettes of songs from the Mao era making, in one case, 5 million
yuan
for the producer. China's a hard place to get moving. But just what it means when it does move is something I'd like to but still don't understand.
No matter how you look at it Mao remains an outstanding individual, a man with great charisma, as everyone says. And for reasons that no one really understands, the new MaoCraze began three years ago and has continued.
I don't care if people deride me for being the last Red Guard. I just never want to forget the principle Mao pursued in dealing with Red Guards and students. In 1966, before the student movement became violent, he issued a warning to high-level cadres in the Party. Quoting from memory it went something like this:
No one who crushes a student movement will come to a good end. The northern warlords repressed the students and look what happened to them. So did the reactionaries of the KMT and you know it was useless. I advise you all: don't crush the student movement. No good will come of it. Heed my words.
6
I don't know what people think today when they re-read this passage. It still moves me deeply. He may have been a hopeless politician, but he took students seriously and respected their demands as a matter of principle.
Mao spent his student days in his homeland of Hunan, an area that has a strong and ancient spiritual tradition. Those student years left a lasting impression on him and turned him into an eternal student. Youthful impulsiveness is a privilege students enjoy and it is something that became a basic political principle for Mao. Mao didn't repress students and this is proof that no one can deny his youthfulness, and those who do

 

Page 272
only prove that they have lost the edge of youth themselves.
His relationship with intellectuals was also significant. There is no denying the fact that under his rule Chinese intellectuals were in a difficult position. But nor can we avoid asking just what type of role Chinese intellectuals (or as Lu Xun sarcastically called them, "the learned classes") played in Chinese history after the Sino-Japanese War, in particular during the first half of this century?
During a recent stay in Japan I've felt ashamed as I watched television reports on the lawsuit being pursued by former comfort women from Korea. A handful of courageous old Korean ladies began legal proceedings in Shimonoseki against the Japanese government for crimes committed throughout Asia during the War. Shimonoseki is the place where the Japanese government forced Chinathe mother of Japanese cultureto sign a humiliating treaty initiating a process that led to a disastrous war. This is where it all began. I have to admit that compared to these old Korean women the Chinese intellectuals living in Japan have only made the weakest, dare I say, indulgent statements about this country.
The chorus of denunciations of Mao Zedong that was heard from the late 1970s was accompanied by equally loud praise for the bureaucratic system of China. Although it is not without some fear that I say this, especially as I will shortly be returning to China, but if only that praise for the system hadn't been so clamorous then perhaps the finger that pulled the trigger four years ago [on 4 June 1989] would have been more hesitant.
But now we are in the 1990s. Following the collapse of the Socialist Bloc, and during the Gulf War the international powers led by America and England set out to destroy the Islamic world which they perceived as being a potential enemy. The infamous Monroe Doctrine, formulated to deal with the forces of self-determination in Latin America, is an old weapon in the U.S. arsenal. The most recent example of its application was the Panama invasion. Next time it will be China's turn. China, not Communist China, but the massive cultural entity of China, is next on the hit list of the New World Order. Although we are confronted by this international situation Chinese intellectuals (and here I include the majority of Chinese studying overseas) are still unashamedly pro-American.
Of course, these are only the personal opinions of one Chinese writer. But perhaps Mao Zedong was particularly aware of the defects of modern Chinese intellectuals. Another person with a similar distaste for the Chinese intelligentsia was Lu Xun. Why did both of these men choose a life that cut themselves off from the intellectuals? Mao even went so far as to exile them

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