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Book: Out of Mao's Shadow: The Struggle for the Soul of a New China by Philip P. Pan
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Authors: Philip P. Pan
Tags: General, Social Science, Asia, History, Political Science, Anthropology, Cultural, china, International Relations
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affixed it to a wall outside the main student cafeteria. “It Is Time!” they declared, urging their classmates to answer the party’s call for criticism and advice.
It is time, young people, to free our throats and sing,
To write of both our pain and love on paper.
Do not suffer in private, do not be indignant in private, do not grieve in private,
Reveal the joys and sorrows inside our hearts, expose them to the daylight,
For even if criticism and censure fall upon our heads like a sudden and heavy rain,
Fresh sprouts have never feared the light of the sun.
“At the time, this was very shocking speech,” Zhang told Hu. “In our China, no one said anything like this. We all said the same thing, that the Communist Party was good. Good, good, good. Yes, yes, yes. Then suddenly this other sound came out, so it got people’s attention.”
News of the poster spread quickly and a crowd of students soon gathered around, reading it by flashlight. Some copied the poem into their notebooks, and others snapped photos of it. Zhang noticed more lamps burning in the dormitories than usual that evening, as students gathered in small groups, debating the party’s shortcomings late into the night. When he returned to the cafeteria the next morning, his poster was surrounded by dozens of others. Over the following week, thousands more went up on the “Democracy Wall,” and on buildings across campus. One of the first posters criticized the party’s interference in university affairs, and urged party officials to withdraw from campus and allow Beida to be run more democratically. Many of the posters complained that opportunities to study abroad, teaching posts, and the best jobs after graduation were given to party members or other students deemed “ideologically reliable” rather than to those with the best grades. Several ridiculed the Soviet teaching materials used on campus, including texts in literature classes that ignored Western authors and science books that claimed all major discoveries were made by Russians. Others demanded that the party’s secret personnel files on students be destroyed, and an end to the tedious, mandatory lessons in political ideology. But students didn’t limit their criticism to education issues. Echoing opinions expressed by intellectuals across the country, they also attacked the arrogance of party officials and the privileges they enjoyed, and called for democratic reforms and sweeping guarantees of freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association. There were also calls for a review of the abuses committed by the party and its security forces during earlier political campaigns, and at least one student questioned Mao’s cult of personality. Even Khrushchev’s secret speech exposing Stalin’s crimes was translated from a text in an English-language newspaper and distributed, undercutting the party’s version of Soviet history and, by extension, raising questions about Mao’s fallibility.
For every poster that found fault with the Communists, though, there were others that voiced support for the party and attacked its critics. As the debate gained intensity, students began delivering speeches in a plaza on campus near their dormitories, often addressing crowds of thousands and engaging in debate with audience members. Standing on a dais erected there, a young woman from nearby People’s University who called herself Lin Xiling gained national attention by condemning socialism in China as a sham because it was undemocratic. Students held secret meetings and established new organizations, and they began making connections with their compatriots at other universities across the country. Zhang joined one particularly outspoken group at Beida, the Hundred Flowers Society, and was elected chief editor of its magazine, Public Square. Shen Zeyi, his friend and poster coauthor, was named deputy editor.
Lin Zhao knew both men well from the literary magazine. In fact, they had both been
It is time, young people, to free our throats and sing,
To write of both our pain and love on paper.
Do not suffer in private, do not be indignant in private, do not grieve in private,
Reveal the joys and sorrows inside our hearts, expose them to the daylight,
For even if criticism and censure fall upon our heads like a sudden and heavy rain,
Fresh sprouts have never feared the light of the sun.
“At the time, this was very shocking speech,” Zhang told Hu. “In our China, no one said anything like this. We all said the same thing, that the Communist Party was good. Good, good, good. Yes, yes, yes. Then suddenly this other sound came out, so it got people’s attention.”
News of the poster spread quickly and a crowd of students soon gathered around, reading it by flashlight. Some copied the poem into their notebooks, and others snapped photos of it. Zhang noticed more lamps burning in the dormitories than usual that evening, as students gathered in small groups, debating the party’s shortcomings late into the night. When he returned to the cafeteria the next morning, his poster was surrounded by dozens of others. Over the following week, thousands more went up on the “Democracy Wall,” and on buildings across campus. One of the first posters criticized the party’s interference in university affairs, and urged party officials to withdraw from campus and allow Beida to be run more democratically. Many of the posters complained that opportunities to study abroad, teaching posts, and the best jobs after graduation were given to party members or other students deemed “ideologically reliable” rather than to those with the best grades. Several ridiculed the Soviet teaching materials used on campus, including texts in literature classes that ignored Western authors and science books that claimed all major discoveries were made by Russians. Others demanded that the party’s secret personnel files on students be destroyed, and an end to the tedious, mandatory lessons in political ideology. But students didn’t limit their criticism to education issues. Echoing opinions expressed by intellectuals across the country, they also attacked the arrogance of party officials and the privileges they enjoyed, and called for democratic reforms and sweeping guarantees of freedom of speech, press, assembly, and association. There were also calls for a review of the abuses committed by the party and its security forces during earlier political campaigns, and at least one student questioned Mao’s cult of personality. Even Khrushchev’s secret speech exposing Stalin’s crimes was translated from a text in an English-language newspaper and distributed, undercutting the party’s version of Soviet history and, by extension, raising questions about Mao’s fallibility.
For every poster that found fault with the Communists, though, there were others that voiced support for the party and attacked its critics. As the debate gained intensity, students began delivering speeches in a plaza on campus near their dormitories, often addressing crowds of thousands and engaging in debate with audience members. Standing on a dais erected there, a young woman from nearby People’s University who called herself Lin Xiling gained national attention by condemning socialism in China as a sham because it was undemocratic. Students held secret meetings and established new organizations, and they began making connections with their compatriots at other universities across the country. Zhang joined one particularly outspoken group at Beida, the Hundred Flowers Society, and was elected chief editor of its magazine, Public Square. Shen Zeyi, his friend and poster coauthor, was named deputy editor.
Lin Zhao knew both men well from the literary magazine. In fact, they had both been
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