Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader (11 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 38
ing near Mao.
172
To avail herself better of the opportunities presented by the Mao revival and its international curiosity value, Tang also learned enough English, Japanese, and Russian to entertain foreign diners.
173
Tang's history reflects the dizzying progress of Party policy over the years. As a young and energetic relative of Mao, she had led the local peasants to "get organized" and established the first agricultural cooperative in Xiangtan County. In all subsequent campaigns she was a tireless activist. Guilty at first about exploiting the Mao name for her own profitand she's done well out of it, as a picture of her taken in Beijing with other "outstanding model entrepreneurs" and Premier Li Peng testifiesTang gradually managed to reconcile a revolutionary past with her pecuniary present. Already in her sixties when the Mao Family Restaurant took off, Tang literally made a million out of the Chairman's legacy and, in the centenary year, she opened a branch of her restaurant in Beijing.
174
Throughout Shaoshan, other locals who ran restaurants, hotels, or stalls mostly named after Mao or members of his family displayed pictures showing them with Mao or relatives of theirs photographed with the Chairman. Every gimmick was used to exploit the image, and their range of Mao wares is discussed below in "Modern Mao Artifacts and Multi-media Mao."
Shaoshan also benefited from official largesse during the years leading to the Mao centenary. Among other things, a new highway between the provincial capital of Changsha and the town was built, as was a spacious guesthouse, presumably constructed to accommodate foreign tourists and the Chinese dignitaries who are obliged to make the pilgrimage to the birthplace, and a new "forest of stelae" (
beilin
) on Shaofeng Peak in which the leader's poems were engraved on one hundred tombstonelike stone blocks.
175
Other major construction projects in Shaoshan linked to the centenary were: the building of a 10.1-meter-tall bronze Mao statue
176
designed by Liu Kaiqu (the man responsible for the bas-reliefs on the Monument to the People's Heroes in Beijing); a Revolutionary Martyrs' Park to commemorate the 148 people from the town who died for the revolution, including six of Mao's relatives; and a Mao Zedong artifact storehouse and library. The latter was planned as the largest center for the study of and research into Mao Zedong Thought in the world.
177
The family home, gaudily repainted clan temple (see Figure 17), and the often reorganized Mao museum, which among other things features the cream-color, Soviet-built Gaz limousine Mao had used during his 1959 visit and a replica of his Zhongnanhai residence, were all open to visitors.
178
Another favorite spot on the Shaoshan tourist map was the guesthouse at Dishuidong outside the town, where Mao lived during his mid 1966 secret sojourn in the early phase of the Cultural Revolution.
179
In 1992 it was particularly memorable for the one souvenir

 

Page 39
that was sold there: reproductions of a U.S.$100 bill printed on cloth on which the image of Mao had replaced that of Franklin. At the time, nearly a year before the New Year's paintings featuring Mao and money appeared, this simple tea towel-size cloth eloquently expressed the Chairman's reformist reincarnation (see Figure 18).
Not everyone in Shaoshan, however, was willing to cash in on the Mao Cult. Mao's aged cousin, Mao Zelian, was scornful of the mercenary revival of the flagging spirits of the Leader. "Chairman Mao had no love for private business, and he would despise those who now make money from his name . . .," he said. "Chairman Mao's idea was to make the country rich, while Deng's idea is to allow a few people to get rich. It's all gone wrong."
180
In early December 1993, a reporter for
Beijing Review,
the English-language propaganda weekly produced by the Foreign Languages Press, commented dourly on the threat, not of the Mao Cult, but of the depredations of the "M-Cult," or Money Cult, that had overwhelmed the nation, including Shaoshan.
181
As the Mao Cult of the early 1990s faded and Shaoshan became just another quaint destination on the tourist map, one writer did formulate a means for keeping the spirit of Mao's politics alive in the context of China's turbulent economic upheaval. In August 1994 a journalist writing for the Hong Kong
Eastern Express
suggested a new form of "politico-tainment." It offered a spoof vision of what a "Maoland" theme park in Shaoshan would look like. Youthful park attendants, it was suggested, could dress as Red Guards and carry the
Little Red Book,
messy visitors could be struggled, and there would be a Cultural Revolution roller coaster that would hurtle passengers around as though they were experiencing a political purge. There could even be a "Haunted Politburo," featuring the ghosts of leaders airbrushed out of history.
182
Even though "Maoland'' waits to be built, real Maoist theme places already exist. One of these is Linying County in Henan, a revived socialist collective-cum-corporation that has become wealthy pursuing semi-Cultural Revolution policies.
183
Modern Mao Artifacts and Multi-Media Mao
The nature of nostalgia is that it relies on collective memories, fantasies and imagined pasts. Physical artifactsoriginals or simulacraare often the very things that elicit a nostalgic mood, a mood that can be tempered by any number of emotions, from the sublime to the ridiculous. In China objects embarrassingly derided as the by-products of a national psychosis just a few years ago were during the early 1990s recycled or remodeled for circulation to play a role in the new socialist market economy.

 

Page 40
Flea markets and "antiques stores" in China's major cities had been selling genuine Cultural Revolution Mao knick-knacks at generally affordable, although highly inflated Reform era, prices for years (see Figure 19). However, true lovers of kitsch/camp/trash have generally been disappointed by the lack of imagination displayed in the meager array of newly manufactured Mao artifacts. This probably is because by the early 1990s the economic reforms had still failed to produce a sufficient surfeit of goods, leisure, and laxity that would allow Mainland Chinese (unlike people in Hong Kong and Taiwan) to realize John Waters' dictum on kitsch: "In order to acquire bad taste one must first have very, very good taste."
184
Nonetheless, there are those of us who regard the new Cult as a deification of Mao as Chairman Camp,
185
and we await anxiously for items such as "Mao in a snowstorm" and crystal sarcophagus soup tureens to be produced. We hanker after exhibitions of the Chairman's preserved viscera and crave the marketing of Mao shrouds in the tradition of the Turin hoax. To date, major tourist options have also been overlooked, such as the renting of Mao's suite in Zhongnanhai to the new rich of China so that billionaire entrepreneurs can entertain peasant wenches in the Dragon Bed and play at being Chairman for a night. Surely there is also a market for Holy Revolutionary Relics.
186
Before the rich possibilities of this nascent market are realized, however, it would be best if we consider the more mundane, contemporary artifacts that became available from the late 1980s:
Mao badges or buttons, those ubiquitous symbols of that bygone age, were recycled by the ton, and new badge factories went on line to satisfy increased consumer demand.
The first Mao badges appeared in Yan'an in late 1948, made by university students using old toothpaste tubes.
187
The object of passionate devotion during the Cultural Revolution, the badges were often used as a means to establish revolutionary credentials and camaraderie. Many people built up large private collections, including the sycophantic Zhou Enlai, although he was also one of the first to criticize the excesses of Mao-mania when, in March 1969, he said: "More than 700 million copies of
Quotations
are in circulation, as well as 2.2 billion Chairman Mao badges. People are indulging in feudalism and a bourgeois style. What we want is frugality."
188
Mao's own criticism of the badges came in a discussion held with student leaders in April that year when he made his famous remark "Give me back my airplanes (
huan wo feiji
). It would be far more useful," he continued, "to make airplanes to protect the nation out of the metal being expended in the production of Mao badges."
189
The renewed interest in Mao badges in the 1990s was symptomatic of the Mao Cult, and the new rate of exchange had nothing to do with revolu-

 

Page 41
tionary credentials and everything to do with commerce. Prior to the Mao revival, the Shaoshan Mao Badge Factory had been churning out a line of undistinguished and nonrevolutionary chotchky; then, in the early 1990s, it was retooled and converted back to badge production. And there was, for example, "Mao Badge City," which I visited in Wuhan in May 1992. A few rooms in a ramshackle building near the chinoiserie-cement Huanghe Pavilion housed a collection of Cultural Revolution-period Mao trash carelessly arranged on the walls and in display cases for the diversion of tourists on their way to or from the pavilion. Fairy lights and badges arranged in heart shapes added to the attraction,
190
and hopeful shop assistants masquerading as museum guides attempted to hawk pieces of the tawdry collection.
A number of semicommercial Mao badge exhibitions were also held in 1992-93 in Beijing, Shaoshan (in the Mao clan temple), and cities such as Wuhan. One display of 10,000 badges was put on in Beijing in mid 1993, while major permanent collections of badges were established in Sichuan, Guangdong, and Xi'an. At last, after years of rejection, obsessive collectors finally had a chance to display their massive hoardings (some number in the tens of thousands) and "badge experts" like Zhou Jihou from Guizhou were able to publish books such as
The Ninth Wonder of the World: The Mystery of the Mao Badge,
191
which tells the history of the badges and discusses the new fad for them. A Mao Badge Research Society and a magazine titled
Research Papers on Collecting
[Mao badges] were also founded and, for a time, badges were a viable currency once more (see "CultRev Relics").
The calendar boom that developed in China from the 1980s also served as a popular medium for a revival of Mao's image. Whereas movie and song stars, foreign beauties and beaux, girls in a state of semiundress or striking poses with the accouterments of modernization (mobile phones, motorcycles, cars, and so on) generally featured in the annual rash of calendars, during the Mao boom from 1992 to 1994 the Chairman's calligraphy or picture decorated many of the new calendars. A few even featured Mao badge collections with each month devoted to a different display of badges made váriously from metal, porcelain, plastic, or bamboo (see Figures 20a, 20b). Then, in 1994, cellophane traditional-style New Year's paintings (
nianhua
) appeared bearing images of Mao (see Figure 21), or Mao and his cohorts (Zhou, Liu, and Zhu) as they appear on the 100
yuan
Chinese bank note, surrounded by time-honored symbols of longevity (pine trees and herons [Figure 22]) or good fortune (money, gold bullion, fat babies, fish, and the like [Figure 23]). These were the most gaudy mass-produced (dare we say "kitsch"?) items of the new cult.
At the ill-kempt temple stalls that choked the exit at the south end of the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in Tiananmen visitors who had been herded

 

Page 42
by the remains could also pick up such items as "Lucky cigarettes" (
Jili xiangyan
), the packet of which featured a picture of the Mao-as-Abe-Lincoln statue inside the hall. Also available were Mao cigarette lighters that noisily chimed "The East Is Red" (see Figure 24) or "Jingle Bells," imitation ivory Mao Memorial Hall chopsticks, tacky shopping bags, cuff links, barometers, glow-in-the-dark busts, Mao lighters, diamond-studded Mao watches, pocket watches with Mao holograms and a plethora of Mao-inspired postage stamps (see Figure 25).
In Shaoshan, Mao brooches, tie clips, watches, badges, and pendants with spectral holograms of the leader's head could be purchased (see Figures 26, 27), while in various parts of the country shoppers could pick up numerous other novelty items, such as Mao yo-yos containing a computer chip that enabled it to chortle the words of "The East Is Red," and T-shirts with fawning slogans such as "I Love Chairman Mao" or "I Like to Study His Books Most" (see Figures 28, 29); or slightly more ironical statements such as "A spark can start a prairie fire'' (
xingxing zhi huo keyi liao yuan
), or clever and pointed distortions of famous Mao quotes such as "I don't fear hardship, I'm not scared of dying, nor am I afraid of you" (
yi bupa ku, er bupa si, ye bupa ni
),
192
and even a type of shirt with a caricature of Mao held up by a worker-peasant-soldier trinity bearing the logo "assures safety and exorcises evil" (
baoan pixie
).
193
In late 1993 fashionable purveyors of wannabe po-mo (postmodern) culture in Beijing even produced a pastiche calender for 1994-95 featuring both Mao and Deng in cut-up collage
194
(see Figures 30a, 30b, 30c). Those with more traditional tastes in representations of the Great Leader, however, could obtain a series of Cultural Revolution-style Mao matchbox covers (
huochaihe
) at the Baihua Bookstore in Beijing, opposite the China Art Gallery between Wangfujing and Shatan'r, which specializes in art books
195
(see Figure 31).
Through books, comics, films, television and music the Older Generation of Revolutionary Leaders, as Mao and his coevals are known, have become part of the audiovisual repertoire of mass pop culture. In the early 1990s, a popular interlude at any major celebration held by a wealthy work unit in the capital or on television would be to welcome some of the actors who play the Older Revolutionaries to do a turn.
196
As I have written elsewhere, "Doing their patter in heavy local accents and done up in a modern version of opera masks (
lianpu
)Mao with his brush-backed hair and mole, Lin bald and myopic, Zhou bushy-browed and face drawnthey act as comics or compères, talking heads who add a touch of class to an evening's entertainment."
197
At least these dead leaders have a status to live up to and the stature to appear in

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