Read Online Shades of Mao: The Posthumous Cult of the Great Leader by Geremie Barme - Free Book Online
Authors: Geremie Barme
Tags: General, Asia, History, Literary Criticism, Political Science, Political Ideologies, china, Communism; Post-Communism & Socialism, World, Asian, Chinese, test
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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
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
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