Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader (80 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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When you graduated university
your father sent you to the countryside to work
Those massive hands that had turned the world on its head
patted your tender and youthful shoulders
You knew you now bore the weight of true responsibility
You set off with a humble backpack filled
with the pride of the son of the revolution

 

Page 252
the deep love bestowed by a father
Like a seed planted in those vast fields of
the revolutionary holy land of Yan'an
you now sprouted roots and flowered
among the People
That year, our neighbours were in distress,
Your father sent you, just recently married,
like a common bullet
to be used on the Korean front
And that was the end of you
for you were never to return home
In your 28 years you could not
experience all that life could offer
But you shone with the glory of
a solemn paean to internationalism
When your loving father recalled
his beloved eldest son
he would hold back tears of agony
But why couldn't Mao Zedong's son die?
Indeed, why not?
His only comfort
came from the fact that as a youth who had
gone hungry, suffered illness and grown up on the march
you had now, like all the People's children
who have sacrificed themselves for the cause of justice,
gone on to eternal life
Aaah, Comrade Anying
You were New China's
"No. 1 Princeling"
who became her highest ranking young martyr
Because of this you are
a classic work in the library of the Chinese nation
Mao Zedong in the Snow
Hai Xingxing
With hands behind his back
Mao Zedong set out from a stela of poems

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