Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader

The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader

Geremie Barme

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN:
  9781563246784
• eBook ISBN:
  9781315285757
• Topic: Geschichte
• Subtopic: Ethnische Studien

"Essays, poems, songs, folkloric anecdotes and photographs celebrating the myth of Mao. ... The editor supplies an insightful, and cohesing introduction". -- Reference & Research Book News "(A) highly entertaining and informative collection of translations of official, admiring, tacky, but sometimes also highly critical writings, and illustrations of objects, all featuring Mao. ... A must-have book for everybody interested in contemporary China, Mao, and his legacy now and in the future". -- China Information

A Note on the Translations

• Most of the translations are excerpts from longer articles, books or texts. The titles are, generally, my own formulations and the arrangement is roughly chronological.

• Most selections are prefaced by an editorial comment in italics.

• The annotations are my own and are aimed at elucidating some of the more important, as well as the arcane, expressions of late-socialist Chinese prose.

• Sources are given at the end of the book.

• Mainland Chinese typographical conventions, especially the irksome habits of Communist typesetting, are not necessarily adhered to in the translations. For example, in Mainland texts the expression the Cultural Revolution is invariably isolated within the embrace of inverted commas, an indication of official disdain. This is also true in the case of such unhappy expressions as the Gang of Four and in the use of other buzz words like "craze" (re), "phenomenon" (xianxiang) and so on, when a somewhat negative gloss is being implied. Whereas Mao will always be referred to as Chairman Mao, Comrade Mao Zedong or Mao Zedong in the Mainland texts, the translations may use these terms or, for the sake of brevity, simply the unadorned surname Mao.

• Capital letters are used in the case of some expressions (Great Leader, etc.) not only for emphasis but to convey something of the awkwardness and mild absurdity of such dated formulations in contemporary Mainland prose. Capitals are also employed occasionally in the case of the third person singular pronoun (He, Him, His) when the pseudo-religious tone of the original calls for it.

• Except for a few passages quoted from Chinese propaganda-in-translation sources like Beijing Review, all translations are my own or, in a few cases, a collaborative effort as indicated in the Sources. The style of translation depends very much on the original text. When a piece is littered with officialese—MaoSpeak (or Xinhua wenti, New China NewSpeak, as it is called in Chinese), the translation attempts to convey this both in spirit and letter. If a work is somewhat more ambitious and fluent in style, the translation attempts to reflect that. If the original is patently absurd, an effort is made to maintain a concomitant flavor of the surreal in English.

Mao on Mao

Mao Zedong

In 1972, U.S. President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were received by Mao Zedong at the Chairman's residence in Zhongnanhai, Central Beijing.¹

Kissinger remarked that he had assigned Mao's writings to his classes at Harvard. Indulging in characteristic self-deprecation, Mao said, "These writings of mine aren't anything. There is nothing instructive in what I wrote." I said, "The Chairman's writings moved a nation and have changed the world." Mao, however, replied, "I haven't been able to change it. I've only been able to change a few places in the vicinity of Peking."

Notes

1. See He Di, "The Most Respected Enemy: Mao Zedong's Perception of the United States," pp. 144-45 and n. 3.

The Mysterious Circle of Mao Zedong

Liu Yazhou

The following passage concludes the book The Square—Altar for an Idol by Liu Yazhou, which was published in Hong Kong in early 1990. The then 3 7-year-old novelist was the son-in-law of Li Xiannian, China's former State President and Chairman of the National People's Political Consultative Conference.

Another popular explanation for the "mysterious circle of Mao Zedong" mentioned below is that the dying Chairman was trying to tell those around him to work together, and not purge each other after he was gone. As was the case for most of Mao's sanguine admonitions, it was assiduously ignored.

An ideal antidote to this sanctimonious writing is the gruesomely comic description of Mao's death and the battle to preserve his "biological structure, " as the Soviets called the corpses of socialist potentates, given by Zhisui Li in The Private Life of Chairman Mao.¹

It was three days before his death and Mao Zedong could no longer talk. He put his thumb and forefinger together to form a circle, and showed the doctors and nurses. Then, afraid they hadn't understood, he lifted his arm with great effort and traced a circle in the air.

But what did it mean? Was this some mysterious cipher? A prophesy? In the last days of his life, he bequeathed a riddle in the shape of a circle to his empire.

The doctors panicked. Hua Guofeng, Wang Dongxing, and the rest rushed to his bedside. They tried to work out what he meant, like children playing a guessing game. Jiang Qing came as well, but not even she knew what her husband's gesture signified....

I don't understand what he meant either. No one will ever know for sure. But if you ask me, I'd say that he was describing his own history.

History is circular.

Everything is circular.

Isn't that so?

He began in Tiananmen Square and that's where he ended up. He had traveled in a big circle.

He returned to Tiananmen Square, never to leave again. He became the Square's resident in perpetuity, its only resident....

The largest tomb in the modern world was erected on Tiananmen Square. But it's not really a tomb. It's a spacious and resplendent villa. It has a white marble armchair inside. You can see it when you enter the main hall. There's a bed, too, and that's where you'll find him. The place is air-conditioned, and has an elevator too. In the morning, the elevator takes him up to the hall where he works, and at night it lowers him to the depths where he sleeps.

Mao Zedong presides over Tiananmen Square. He is forever observing his people; and the people forever watch him, ever mindful of his Thought. No matter how you look at it, he is immutable.

Mao Zedong, male, from Xiangtan County, Hunan Province, 1.78 meters tall, born of a rich peasant family.

Notes

1. See Zhisui Li, The Private Life of Chairman Mao, pp. 3—30.

Deng Xiaoping: Mao in Short

Deng Xiaoping

When the leaders of the Communist Party were deliberating the official appraisal of the Mao years in 1980, Deng Xiaoping made a number of gnomic pronouncements which determined the tenor of the final Central Committee document on Mao's "errors " and post-1949 Chinese history.¹

The banner of Mao Zedong Thought can never be discarded. To throw it away would be nothing less than to negate the glorious history of our Party It would be iil-advised to say too much about Comrade Mao Zedong's errors. To say too much would be to blacken Comrade Mao, and that would blacken the country itself. That would go against history.

25 October 1980

Notes

1. See also Gong Yuzhi, "Deng Xiaoping lun Mao Zedong."

The Party on Mao

Central Committee of the Communist Party of China

This extract is taken from the official 1981 Party ruling on post-1949 Chinese history and Mao's role in it. The formulations in this document— drafted by Hu Qiaomu under the aegis of Deng Xiaoping—remain the Party's last word on the Chairman. The following passages are taken from the official Chinese translation.

All the successes in these ten years [1956-1966] were achieved under the collective leadership of the Central Committee of the Party headed by Comrade Mao Zedong. Likewise, responsibility for the errors committed in the work of this period rested with the same collective leadership. Although Comrade Mao Zedong must be held chiefly responsible, we cannot lay the blame on him alone for all those errors. During this period, his theoretical and practical mistakes concerning class struggle in a socialist society became increasingly serious, his personal arbitrariness gradually undermined democratic centralism in Party life and the personality cult grew graver and graver. The Central Committee of the Party failed to rectify these mistakes in good time. Careerists like Lin Biao, Jiang Qing, and Kang Sheng, harboring ulterior motives, made use of these errors and inflated them. This led to the inauguration of the Cultural Revolution....

Chief responsibility for the grave Left error of the Cultural Revolution, an error comprehensive in magnitude and protracted in duration, does indeed lie with Comrade Mao Zedong. But after all it was the error of a great proletarian revolutionary. Comrade Mao Zedong paid constant attention to overcoming shortcomings in the life of the Party and state. In his later years, however, far from making a correct analysis of many problems, he confused right and wrong and the people with the enemy during the Cultural Revolution. While making serious mistakes, he repeatedly urged the whole Party to study the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin conscientiously and imagined that his theory and practice were Marxist and that they were essential for the consolidation of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Herein lies his tragedy....

Comrade Mao Zedong's prestige reached a peak and he began to get arrogant at the very time when the Party was confronted with the new task of shifting the focus of its work to socialist construction, a task for which the utmost caution was required. He gradually divorced himself from practice and from the masses, acted more and more arbitrarily and subjectively, and increasingly put himself above the Central Committee of the Party. The result was a steady weakening and even undermining of the principle of collective leadership and democratic centralism in the political life of the Party and the country. This state of affairs took shape only gradually and the Central Committee of the Party should be held partly responsible. From the Marxist viewpoint, this complex phenomenon was the product of given historical conditions. Blaming this on only one person or on only a handful of people will not provide a deep lesson for the whole Party or enable it to find practical ways to change the situation

Comrade Mao Zedong was a great Marxist and a great proletarian revolutionary, strategist, and theorist. It is true that he made gross mistakes during the Cultural Revolution, but if we judge his activities as a whole, his contributions to the Chinese revolution far outweigh his mistakes. His merits are primary and his errors secondary. He rendered indelible meritorious service in founding and building up our Party and the Chinese People's Liberation Army, in winning victory for the cause of liberation of the Chinese people, in founding the People's Republic of China, and in advancing our socialist cause. He made major contributions to the liberation of the oppressed nations of the world and to the progress of mankind.

A Specter Prowls Our Land

Sun Jingxuan

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, during the nationwide reaction against Mao's rule and the Cultural Revolution, a number of powerful attacks were made on the Mao cult. These included the following poem by Sun Jingxuan.

Begun in 1979, Sun published this poem in early 1981. After the Party launched a purge of the arts, he was obliged to write a self-criticism in which he said: "In exposing and criticizing feudalism [a code word for Mao, the personality cult and autocracy in general], my viewpoint was totally incompatible with the ideology of the proletariat. Although I sought in this poem to oppose feudalism, I was in fact promulgating and advocating bourgeois liberalism and human rights. ..."

Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it.

—George Santayana¹

Oh my brothers! Have you seen
The specter prowling our land?

Brothers! Do not call
Our land fair, our skies bright,
While this specter,
like a gust of wind,
like a wisp of smoke,
Prowls unencumbered o'er our land;
Swaggers into peasant's hut,
Struts into herdsman's yurt;
Issues orders, revels in pride,
Like Great Caesar of Ancient Rome,
Grasps the destiny of us all;
And any thing we have is granted by its spectral whim.

Brothers! Have...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• The Irresistible Fall and Rise of Mao Zedong
• Illustrations
• A Note on the Translations
• Sources
• Glossary of Chinese Terms
• Bibliography
• Index