Read Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader Online

Authors: Geremie Barme

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

Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader (9 page)

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Page 30
as Mao's activities in the early stages of the Cultural Revolution and the impact of the Lin Biao Incident on him.
129
Much of the material that appeared in both sources, however, often suffered from serious flaws in terms of use of sources, historical method, veracity, and style, and tended to add to rather than reduce the baggage of traditional Mao mythology.
130
It will take some time, and probably a new political order, before a Chinese insider availing himself or herself of archival material will be in a position to write a book such as Dmitri Volkogonov's
Lenin: A New Biography.
131
In early 1993, the flood of books on revolutionary leaders, in particular Mao, led to new regulations being promulgated by the State Press and Publication Administration in concert with the Party Department of Propaganda. Works that "distorted historical facts," it was declared, were no longer to be tolerated and henceforth political biographies had to be "accurate, serious and healthy." The new regulations were announced because, due to economic pressures, media sensationalism and the general ideological malaise numerous unapproved works had been published in 1992thirty-seven books having been produced by some twenty-seven publishing houses without official permission.
132
The illicit works included one bizarre volume,
Mao Zedong's SonMao Anlong,
a total fabrication published in Inner Mongolia in 1992. This "autobiography" was the handiwork of two writers, one of whom, Ma Jian, was notorious for his pursuit of sensational subject matter. The protagonist of the book, "Mao Anlong," claimed he was the long-lost son of Mao and Yang Kaihui (his "brothers" being Mao Anqing, who died in the Korean War, and Mao Anying, a mentally handicapped charge of the state).
133
''Anlong" tells the tale of his opposition to Mao and how he had been forced by the Chairman into a lifetime of silence and self-sacrifice. This gambit did not get him or his collaborators very far, for shortly after the book appeared "Anlong's" real brother publicly denounced him for having concocted the whole story.
Regardless of the propaganda strictures on Mao publications, the revelations in the library of sanctioned books about the Chairman's "long march to destiny," as Thomas Scharping puts it in an illuminating review of this material in 1994, make for very grim reading indeed. Scharping's tally of the casualties of Mao's irresistible rise based on a reading of twenty-eight of the books published on Mao is sobering:
. . . eight major secretaries of Mao, among whom three committed suicide, three suffered more than a decade of imprisonment, and one was forgotten for nine years; four designated successors, one dumped in a crematorium (Liu Shaoqi), one crashed in the desert (Lin Biao), one remains in prison

 

Page 31
(Wang Hongwen), and one disposed of soon after the Chairman's death (Hua Guofeng); nine other close comrades-in-arms who perished in the Cultural Revolution and dozens who were sent off for prolonged periods of labor reform; three wives divorced or sacrificed for politics, three sons meeting death in war and revolution, one son mentally deranged, one adopted son imprisoned immediately after his benefactor's death, and four daughters dead or missing. And there are other disturbing scenes: General Luo Ruiqing, whose limbs were broken during a failed suicide attempt following his purge, insists on a limping salute to the Chairman; former Party head Li Lisan praises Mao before swallowing an overdose of pills; secretary Tian Jiaying, who, after risking some frank remarks in front of Mao, breaks down before the Chairman and begs forgiveness; writer Ding Ling, banished to a Chinese Siberia, who returns after Mao's death to confirm the greatness of her persecutor. . . .
134
It is no surprise, then, that the media took advantage of the new Cult and the centenary to shed some light on the fate of Mao's remaining family members, most of whom had lived in relative obscurity since the Chairman's death.
135
Jiang Qing, Mao's widow, had been out of the media spotlight ever since her trial, and she barely featured in any official new works on Mao, except as an ambitious and scheming harpy. Her daughter, Li Na, was interviewed about her father in the press and for the twelve-part CCTV documentary "Mao Zedong" (1993), and Li's sister Li Min occasionally appeared in the media. He Zizhen, the woman Mao left for Jiang Qing, reappeared in public for a while in the early 1980s and produced a volume of memoirs before her death in 1984.
136
But it was the family of Mao Anqing, the second son of his union with Yang Kaihui, that enjoyed greatest media exposure in the 1990s. Anqing was trotted out by Shao Hua, his wife, and their son, Mao Xinyu, on various occasions.
137
This family was also credited with editing a thirty-two-volume book series
China Has Brought Forth a Mao Zedong
138
to mark the centenary, and they are said to have cashed in not only on the books, the production of which took them all over China to collect material, but also by doing product endorsements.
139
Mock-Mao and the Heritage Industry
The most interesting case of Mao imitation must certainly be that of Mao Xinyu, Mao's grandson mentioned above. As the centenary approached, the gargantuan youth born in 1970 basked for a time in the reflected glory of his parhelion grandparent, and numerous articles about him appeared in the press.
140
Xinyu had come to public attention when, in 1991, he played the role of his grandfather in a Central Beijing Opera Troupe performance of
The Butterfly Longs for the Flower
(
Dielianhua
). Based on Mao's poem

 

Page 32
about his long-dead second wife Yang Kaihui (Mao Xinyu's grandmother), the opera was staged to commemorate the seventieth anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party. To aid the masquerade, the troupe's makeup artist shaved Xinyu's forehead and made a mole for his chin. "After considerable effort everyone felt the effects were praiseworthy," it was reported. "A special performance of the opera was put on for Party and state leaders at the Great Hall of the People."
141
According to published accounts, Xinyu was also one of the leading consumers of Mao Cult publications and supporters of the Mao mystique, and he added to his grandfather's Cult by reporting on the frugal personal habits of Mao in a widely acclaimed essay based on a visit to Mao's one-time residence in Fengzeyuan, Zhongnanhai.
142
He also featured prominently in the TV documentary "Mao Zedong," discussing, in one episode, his grandfather's reading habits with the staff of Beijing Library.
143
The media depictions of Xinyu concentrated on how the revolutionary progeny of the Mao clan was carrying on the family tradition. Xinyu was consistently shown as being the embodiment of modest revolutionary succession. As Mao was supposedly frugal and plain-living, so his grandson is spartan and down-to-earth. In December 1993, on the eve of the Mao centenary, Mao Xinyu was inducted into the Communist Party. Shortly thereafter, Party General Secretary Jiang Zemin met him in Shaoshan on 20 December at a ceremony organized to mark the unveiling of a massive new bronze statue of Mao. When Jiang congratulated him on joining the Party, Xinyu replied: "I will continue to grow under the leadership of the General Secretary."
144
Back in 1989 he had already showed his steadfast support for the Party when his fellow students at the People's University reportedly attempted to get him to lead a group of hunger strikers during the 1989 demonstrations. As he said himself: "I resolutely refused. I'd approve if it was in support of Chairman Mao, but I'd never agree to anything that negates socialism and promotes bourgeois liberalism." He spent 4 June at home studying and learning how to use a Chinese typewriter.
145
As a student of Chinese history, and of the history of his grandfather, he claimed his "heroes" were Qin Shihuang, Genghis Khan, Zhu Yuanzhang (the founder of the Ming dynasty), and, of course, Mao Zedong.
146
In other ways the exaggerated form of Mao Xinyu is a grotesque incarnation of the Maoist past and the Reformist present. In July 1994, although by then a graduate student in the Party History Department of the Central Party School, Xinyu undertook a traineeship at the Shangri-la Hotel in the north-west of Beijing. After a period working in hotel management he commented perspicaciously: "Granddad was right, theory must be united with practice!" In relation to his investigation of the stock market he remarked:

 

Page 33
"Economics is much harder than studying Party history." While he pursued the task of coming to grips with contemporary Chinese realities, however, he also devoted time to writing a history of the Qing dynasty, a project supported by his father, who hoped his son would make a name for himself. The fleshy emanation of Mao's spirit, Xinyu did not fail to keep in touch with the shade of his ancestor. On 1 October, National Day, 1994, he said he was going to Tiananmen "To ask Granddad to give me the strength to meet the challenges of modern society."
147
In mid 1995, Xinyu announced that he would be recording an album of songs in memory of his grandfather to be released in October that year.
148
As a number of authors in this volume point out, imitating the Mao style has been common in China from the time of the Cultural Revolution, a period during which Mao was the role model for the youth of the nation. Maoist diction and posturing are still evident in China among official hacks, intellectuals who write advice papers for the authorities and even within the business world. High dudgeon is a favorite mode of expression, and it usually takes the form of Maoist diatribes.
149
When the Chinese government expresses outrage in international forums, for example, it generally does so in what could be termed MaoSpeak (see "MaoSpeak"). Some exiled writers and academics realize the abiding influence of this style of language and have made preliminary attempts to analyze it.
150
One of the first post-1976 examples of the ironical exploitation of the Mao mystique, however, used the language of another, more ancient Chinese orthodoxy. In the early 1980s, the Committee for Cultural Relics Administration in Qufu, Confucius' birthplace in Shandong, produced a new version of
The Analects
(Lunyu), the classical collection of sayings attributed to the Master. The book was designed in the same shape and size as
Quotations from Chairman Mao.
It had a red plastic cover, with the title printed in gold lettering, in imitation of the mini-Maoist bible. The format of the printed text followed that of a traditional Chinese book, but simplified characters were used (see Figure 10). At the time such clever emulations were still rare.
In the 1990s, it was not only Mao's
Little Red Book
that was being copied. During the Cultural Revolution, lines from Mao's poems, or the poems in their entirety, had been carved on every conceivable surface; they were etched onto the minute to the monstrous, from grains of rice to mountain crags and rock faces
151
(see Figure 11). Since then, the calligraphic commemoration of Mao has continued. In 1992 it was reported that Mao's own handwritten version of a portion of the Tang poet Bo Juyi's "Song of Everlasting Sorrow" had been carved onto a massive stone stela and erected
BOOK: Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader
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