Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader (52 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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12. This is a reference to Mao's debate with the early Communist Party leader Chen Duxiu and others who doubted the speed with which a revolutionary movement could develop in China. Mao claimed that a revolutionary high tide would soon be upon them and that it was approaching, like the mast of a ship visible on the horizon of the sea, like the morning sun seen from a mountain peak, or like a baby anxious to be born. See Mao's 1930 letter, "A Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire" (
Xingxing zhi huo, keyi liao yuan
),
Mao Zedong xuanji,
p. 103.

 

Page 169
13. The "Three Red Banners" (
sanmian hongqi
) were: the General Line, the Great Leap Forward and the People's Communes propounded by Mao in 1958. The General Line initiated a mass movement urging people "to work energetically, struggle against all odds and build socialism faster, better and more economically." The Great Leap Forward attempted an overnight realization of industrialization and the People's Communes saw the reorganization of the nation's agriculture along socialist lines. These policies resulted in economic catastrophe and millions of deaths. After 1978 the Three Banners were rejected as being the result of impractical "leftist" errors on Mao's part.
14. A question asked often since 1976. For a satirical response to this question by Xiao Tong (Yau Ma Tei), a Beijing writer based in Hong Kong, see "Maosoleum," in Barmé and Minford, eds.,
Seeds of Fire,
pp. 189-92.
15. The purge of Bourgeois Liberalization referred to here was launched after the Beijing Massacre of 1989. See "Permanently on Heat" above.

 

Page 170
A Star Reflects on the Sun
Liu Xiaoqing
Liu Xiaoqing is an actress from Sichuan. Although her fame was eclipsed in the early 1990s by Gong Li, director Zhang Yimou's leading lady, Liu remained one of China's most popular performers. She was also remarkable for her brash and outspoken personalitysomething with which few of her rivals could compete, and she was denounced during the 1983 Anti-Spiritual Pollution Campaign for producing an autobiography entitled
I Did It My Way (Wode lu).
Among her numerous screen roles her portrayal of the Empress Dowager Ci Xi in Tian Zhuangzhuang's film ''Li Lianying" (1990) was, perhaps, most noteworthy.
Liu's memoir, from which this excerpt is taken, was written at the height of the Mao Cult. Its sentiment was shared by many of Liu's generation as they looked back on a youth spent in the thrall of Cultural Revolution zealotry. Regardless of the horrors of those yearsand there is no dearth of material concerning the devastation wrought by Mao's rulefor many his was an age of passion, excitement and social engagement. Maoism was suffused with religiosity and it catered to young idealists who yearned for sincerity and altruism, things unknown and unthinkable in Deng Xiaoping's China. This memoir shows that Liu's longing for a lost moment of "beauty" had grown more intense with the passage of time and stronger in the atmosphere of the cynicism that enveloped the People's Republic now that it was bereft of anything other than a faith in economic might. It also reveals a level of objectification of Mao that brings to mind the German book
Love Letters to Adolf Hitler.
1
I have only seen Mao Zedong twice. On the first occasion he was standing, the second time he was flat on his back. The first time he was on Tiananmen Gate to review the Red Guards who, like me, had traveled to Beijing to see him. The second time was at the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall where I lined up to view his body.

 

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Everyone says that you never forget your first love. I cannot really say that I ever had a first love, for in my childhood and youth the man I loved and admired most of all was Mao Zedong. I gave him everything I had: my purest love, as well as all my longing and hopes. He was an idol I worshipped with all my heart.
Chairman Mao, you were my first object of desire!
The first song I learned to sing was "The East Is Red." I knew what Chairman Mao looked like from the time I could recognize my parents. When I was a Red Guard I could recite all his quotations word perfect. My brain was armed with Mao Zedong Thought. During the unprecedented Cultural Revolution I used Chairman Mao's words as my weapon to fight opponents. My prodigious memory and quick tongue always meant that my "enemies" would retreat in defeat.
If I ever had any problems I would search Chairman Mao's writings for an answer. When we lost one of our chicks I looked for help in his works. When, not long after, the chick reappeared, I knew it was due to the intercession of our Great, Wise, and Correct Chairman Mao.
When, as a child, I played games with my friends, our pledge of honor was: "I swear by Chairman Mao." If someone said that, even if they prefaced it by claiming that they had just come from Mars, we would believe it without question. Naturally, no one ever took this oath lightly.
I worshipped and loved Chairman Mao so utterly that there was absolutely nothing extraneous or impure in my feelings for him. When I grew a bit older and learned the secret of how men and women made babies, I had the most shocking realization: "Could Chairman Mao possibly do that as well?" Of course, I immediately banished these sacrilegious thoughts from my head. . . .
2
Then Chairman Mao set the revolutionary blaze of the Cultural Revolution alight. It also ignited our youthful enthusiasm. We were like moths drawn to a flame, and we threw ourselves into the inferno
en masse.
We were in a frenzy and utilized every ounce of energy at our disposal.
We would have given anything to protect Chairman Mao, including our very lives. Our love for the Chairman consumed us body and soul. If anyone had dared to try and harm our beloved Chairman, we would have pounced on him, bitten his hand off, gouged out his eyes, screamed in his ears until he was deaf, spat on him until he drowned in a lake of spittle, and would have happily died in the effort just like [the revolutionary martyr] Dong Cunrui.
On 18 August 1966, Chairman Mao reviewed the Red Guards for the first time. I was too young to become a Red Guard, but I spent all my time dreaming of joining the organization that was sworn to protect Chairman Mao. After making extraordinary efforts, I was finally allowed to take part

 

Page 172
in a peripheral grouping called the "Red Brigade." They gave me a red armband too. It was like a dream come true. Although it was not the same as the Red Guards, the difference was only one word. I put on the armband so that the word "Brigade" was hidden under my arm. I stuck out my chest and, just like a real Red Guard, strutted around the school yard incredibly proud of myself.
Soon after that, Chairman Mao called on the Red Guards to travel around China on Revolutionary Link-ups. Our group of Red Brigade members decided to respond to Chairman Mao's call too. Without a penny to our names, and each carrying a yellow-green PLA knapsack that we had all done our darndest to get a hold of (including some who had dyed their own bags), we set out. I had cut off my beloved pigtails so I looked like the revolutionary Sister Jiang.
3
At the train station, we fought our way past all the people who tried to persuade us to "return to the classroom and continue the revolution there." Pushing them aside with determined urgency we boarded the train. With a great clamor the train moved out of the station. We were in very high spirits, our hearts throbbing with revolutionary ardor. Then one of my classmates asked: "Where are we going?" I was stunned and asked the others: "Where's this train headed?" We took out a map of China and put our heads together and, doing our best to put to use the elementary geography we had just learned in class, we scrutinized the map and finally worked out that we were on the Baocheng line. There would be a change of locomotive at Baoji and the train would then head for Beijing.
Beijing! The city where Chairman Mao lived! We went wild.
Over the next few days, we were so excited about going to Beijing that we did not sleep a wink. But where would Chairman Mao be? Would we be able to see him? We all stood atop the "Gold Mountain of Beijing" which we had dreamed of for so long, tormented by these questions.
We imitated the Red Guards of Beijing scrupulously, literally aping their every move. When we got on a bus we would take out
Quotations from Chairman Mao
and start reading in really loud voices. "Revolution is not a tea party. It is not like writing an essay, painting, or embroidering flowers, . . . revolution is an act of violence, it is the violent overthrow of one class by another." We did our best to make our heavily accented Sichuan voices sound as much like Beijing dialect as we could. We read one quotation after another right to the end of the trip. . . .
I will never forget 31 August 1966. On that day I joined all the Red Guards who had come from throughout China to be in Beijing to see him, to see Chairman Mao, the leader we dreamed of and thought of twenty-four hours a day.
A few days earlier we had been told by the Revolutionary Committee of

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