 | | But alas! Qin Shihuang and Han Wudi
Were lacking in literary grace,
And Tang Taizong and Song Taizu
Had little poetry in their souls;
And Genghis Khan,
Proud Son of Heaven for a day,
Knew only shooting eagles, bow outstretched.
All are past and gone!
For truly great men
Look to this age alone.
3
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When Mao's poem "Snow," of which this is the last stanza, was first published in late 1945, a number of observers criticized the writer for indulging in "imperial fantasies." The last lines"For truly great men/Look to this age alone"the critics averred, did not refer to "the broad masses of the proletariat,'' as Communist Party commentators claimed, but to Mao and Mao alone.
4
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The Shanghai writer Li Jie, whose critique of Mao is quoted at length in the present volume, comments on these lines: "Here was the peasant boy listing all of the major father figures of Chinese history, leaving the last and most glorious position, however, for himself" (see "The Mao Phenomenon"; references in parentheses are to material contained in this book). The poem exudes the bravado that Mao's opponents have excoriated for decades; nonetheless, it reflects the kind of self-assertiveness and egomania that continue to beguile those for whom Mao Zedong represents the abiding genius or eidolon of China.
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Even before Mao's demise on 9 September 1976, there were those who speculated that in death Mao would "become even more sacred" and be deified in ways only hinted at during his last years.
5
But with the return of Deng Xiaoping to power in the late 1970s and after the protracted negation of Mao's legacy and the Cultural Revolution culminating in 1981, for nearly a decade it seemed that the Chairman had been safely relegated to the ranks of elder revolutionaries. Although Mao had played a pivotal role in the creation of the People's Republic and its first decades, in death he no longer exercised the charismatic power he had enjoyed in life.
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From the late 1980s, however, Mainland China witnessed at first a fitful and then a nationwide revival of interest in Mao Zedong. Initially, the phenomenon was called a "search for Mao Zedong,"
6
and according to one commentator it was the fifth of its kind.
7
The official media, ever anxious to employ fashionable "buzzwords" for propagandistic purposes, soon dubbed it a "MaoCraze," the
Mao Zedong re
or simply
Maore.
In this book, the
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