Mao’s Last Swimmer - Chairman Mao's swim anniversary Nanning China
Mao’s Last Swimmer - Chairman Mao's swim anniversary Nanning China
In the middle of winter, 7th Jan 1958, while visiting Nanning, Mao swam across the Yujiang River. Nanning is Xiaosui's home city.
From that time, in the first week of January, people swim across the river to celebrate the swim.
After Mao’s death, the swim became an annual event. However, over time, it was not so much a celebration of Mao’s swim but more a family outing by the brave and hardy. Not to mention partially frozen. It was largely a local affair with few people.
This year, 2010, saw a substantial change. People came from all over the region: young, old, middle-aged, rich, poor, students, workers. Significantly, as they were swimming across the river they held aloft placards of Mao. The placards were all saying thank you to Mao for making the new China.
We asked our friends why? They said that the placards were the people acknowledging that without the strong central government forged by Mao, China would not have fared so well from the Global Financial Crisis (GFC).
Interestingly, many of the swimmers holding aloft the placards where university students. They are the only children of the late 80’s who have surfed the wave of China’s growing prosperity. For them the Cultural Revolution is a footnote. They do not relate to it. Our son,who is not a natural historian I have to tell you, just rolls his eyes when his mother talks about those times. I suppose, just like many of my generation who rolled their eyes when their parents or grandparents talked about the Great Depression. Perhaps one day he will read Kaixin and discover his mother’s personal story. So, this new found interest by the university students in Mao is significant.
Gossip from the Forest, that is, Xiaosui talking to her friends in Nanning, goes that since China started to open up in 1979, people have come to enjoy the universal pastime of government bashing. They like to sit around drinking cha, pi jiu and bai jiu (tea, beer and white liquor, dragon’s breath I call it, great stuff), complain about the government and bag the politicians. In China that tradition was briefly halted during the Mao era. It was taken up again with gusto after 1979. Democracy was one of the topics of conversation, as they wanted a greater say in the government.
However, our friends inform us, they all took a double take when they saw China host the Olympics. Saw how strong China had become at the 60th Anniversary Celebrations. Saw the way the government handled the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) and its aftermath. China sailed through the GFC while the ‘west’ crashed onto the rocks.
Would a babble of voices from the street have been of any real benefit, they asked themselves?
So, maybe, they came to think, the new China and the Communist Party weren’t so bad after all. Talk of democracy was now on the back-burner. This has been re-enforced as the central government listens more and more to the people. Democracy is something for the future, something to evolve over time.
Mao was not a hot topic of conversation for a long time in China. He did not even take centre stage at the 60th Anniversary celebrations in 2009. As Xiaosui pointed out, that was given to Sun Yat Sen. It was his portrait that was held aloft in the parade. Sun Yat Sen is often referred to as the father of the nation. The order was not an accident.
The people swimming the river have revised their opinion of Mao. Instead of criticising Mao for his mistakes, they instead thanked Mao for making the new China. A China they are proud of.
The people we know and speak to regularly grew up during the Cultural Revolution. They are all middle-aged and mostly quite prosperous. They have seen the worst of China. However they now see it in perspective and embrace the new China. A China that they believe has evolved to a rich and prosperous country due to Mao laying a strong foundation. A foundation that provided the springboard for Deng Xiaoping’s economic, social and educational reforms.
In Xiaosui's words, “The placards show the west, very clear, we don’t want to change we are happy with the communist party.”
I had the privilege of chatting with two retired generals from the PLA who had both been on the Great March. I asked them about this new China, which seems to be embracing capitalism. They replied that without Mao making the new China in 1949 and creating the foundation, Deng could not have achieved his reforms. I am sure that all can be debated, but it is the view from people who actually made the new China. They then went on to say that when China has created enough wealth, it would then use it to fulfil the socialist ideals of the revolution.
One of the generals had been the Governor of a regional city for over 20 years. There is not much he doesn’t know about China during Mao and Deng Xiaoping.
“Why did you join Mao”, I asked them. They replied that it was a way to get a feed. Ideology came later. Neither could read or write when they joined. Both taught themselves on the Long March using sticks in the dust. If they had stayed with their families in the Old China they certainly would not have learned to read or write and there was a high probability they would have died before adulthood. So, in effect, they were risking little by being in the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA).
Xiaosui often comments on the bravery and self-sacrifice of the soldiers in the PLA. She wonders what inspired such determination. We believe it was because for many, there was no home to go back to. For themselves and for their children, the only option was to go forward, to make a new China. And, Mao offered a new China and was obviously a brilliant leader.
After talking to the two generals, I was intrigued to find the full quote by Deng Xiaoping, ''Poverty is not socialism. To be rich is glorious''. Deng did not embrace capitalism as a capitulation of socialism. Rather, he would use capitalism to create wealth to achieve socialist goals.
Xiaosui took her son to visit Mao’s home town, Shao Shan. They visited a cave where Mao used to go to think over problems. She said there was a definite aura in the cave, a definite powerful presence. Xiaosui was not a fan of Mao, as her story of growing up during the Cultural Revolution shows. As they left, her son, who was four, said “silly Mao”. Xiaosui said that it was as if an invisible hand had shoved her son in the back. He sprawled on the ground, breaking his arm and hurting himself quite badly.
I recall the story of the time when Deng’s reforms weren’t going so well. He went to see Mao in the mausoleum and asked Mao what he should do. Mao sat up and said to Deng, “You get in here, I’ll get out there and show you.”
Many taxi’s and cars in China have a medallion of Mao hanging from the rear-view mirror or on the dashboard. Mao is seen as a god in China and it is for good luck. That does not mean they want to go back to the bad times under Mao, but they do acknowledge Mao’s undoubted strong presence in the Chinese psyche.
The sons of the leaders who prospered under Mao are now assuming power in China. Xiaosui and I believe they do not want to go back to pre-Deng economic times but they are concerned that China is losing its socialist values to capitalism. Thus China is in danger of betraying the hard-won gains of the Revolution. Gains their fathers or grandfathers risked their lives to achieve. There will be a tussle for power in China over the next decade between the reformers following Deng Xiaoping’s model and the traditionalists following Mao’s socialist objectives. We think they are essentially one and the same. They both seek as their objective social justice for all in a rich and prosperous China. Indeed, both camps need a rich and prosperous China to achieve the socialist goals. So there is little likelihood of strangling the golden goose.
As someone who grew up in Australia and was subjected to years of anti Mao thinking, it has taken me quite a while to see him objectively. This was not helped by hearing Xiaosui's story of growing up during the Cultural Revolution.
Mao, I now believe, has been much maligned. He was the right person to take power in China, he was the wrong person to wield it. He had the people’s welfare at heart but was blinded by ideology. Essentially, if all people were selfless and strove to help their fellow man, then Marxism, Socialism – whatever ism you want to use – would work. People, in general, are not. The majority of us, I have to say, are essentially selfish. Capitalism works well because it is founded on basic human psychology.
There was much hardship under Mao and he made some horrendous planning blunders. All of which wasn’t helped by Russia turning its back on China and the sanctions imposed by the ‘west’ until the 1970’s. Mao knew he had to sweep away the old China if the New China was to have a chance. The Cultural Revolution, apart from being a power play by Mao, was the extreme implementation of that. Would a softly, soflty approach have worked? Would it have given Mao the determination to win the revolution and establish the new China in 1949. I think not. Were the sacrifices made by the Chinese people who fought in the revolution and went through the 1950’s, 60’s and early 70’s under Mao worth it? That is for China to decide.
In the end, whatever the ‘ought’, Mao was the ‘is’. Without him, we certainly would not have the China we have today.
Articles
Children of the revolution
JOHN GARNAUT - The Sydney Morning Herald
The Communist Party has enjoyed enormous success in turning China into a powerful nation and lifting its citizens out of poverty. But the party is also a club that allocates political, financial and social privilege to its members. It has its own internal system of hierarchy and quasi-royalty, where revolutionary leaders bequeath their status to their children and children's children. Those descendants are called "princelings" in China.
Mao colossus strides a divide
Asia Times Online
The most recent chapter of this trend is a profound re-study of Mao Zedong's ideals and a benevolent revisionism of his legacy by prestigious scholars, both in China and abroad. Mao led the People's Republic of China from its establishment in 1949 until his death in 1976.
The global financial crisis has given analysts of Marxism a new role as protagonists, and intellectuals from some of the world's top universities are rethinking Mao Thought as a way to help close growing social and wealth gaps. In doing this, they are also trying to cast new insights toward the New Leftist movement itself.
Ban Wang, professor of Chinese literature and culture at Stanford University, rejects defining this "upsurge of interest" in Mao's thinking as New Maoism because "it is not a systematic restoration of the whole package of Mao's thought".
Power struggle behind revival of Maoism
Asia Times Online
As the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leadership tries to convince United States President Barack Obama and other world leaders that China is eagerly integrating itself with the global marketplace, the ultra-conservative norms and worldview of Chairman Mao Zedong are making a big comeback in public life.
In provinces and cities that foreign dignitaries are unlikely to visit, vintage Cultural Revolution-era (1966-1976) totems are proliferating. In Chongqing, a mega-city of 32 million people in western China, Mao sculptures - which were feverishly demolished soon after the late patriarch Deng Xiaoping catalyzed the reform era in 1978 - are being erected throughout government offices, factories and universities.
SUN WUKONG
Tough times breed nostalgia for Mao
By Wu Zhong, China Editor
HONG KONG - Although Mao Zedong died 33 years ago, the founding father of communist China seems to still be alive in the hearts of many Chinese. A new wave of nostalgia for the late chairman is sweeping the nation ahead of the 60th birthday of People's Republic of China (PRC) and amid the global financial crisis.
SINOGRAPH
Memories are made of Mao
By Francesco Sisci
BEIJING - Two elderly people, wearing headscarves in the manner of peasants from Shanxi province, had just left the south gate of the Forbidden City - the former imperial palace in the heart of Beijing. They turned, and raised their heads toward the giant portrait of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square, then placed their hands together in a gesture of reverence typically used in religions all over the world.
POSTSCRIPT
China Daily
Kong Dongmei, granddaughter of former chairman Mao Zedong,
wants to popularize "New Red Culture".
Kong Dongmei has been following in the footsteps of her grandfather, Mao Zedong, by promoting literature and culture. Yang Guang reports
Kong Dongmei has the same mole on her chin as her grandfather, former chairman Mao Zedong, but that's not all. She also has the same ambition to promote culture.
The daughter of Li Min, Mao's only surviving child with second wife He Zizhen, Kong is the president of a Beijing culture corporation.
"I started the enterprise with much the same goals as my grandfather," says the 38-year-old.
In the early 1920s, Mao helped found the Cultural Book Society and its affiliated bookstore, in order to reform academic studies and provide intellectual comfort and stimulation for the nation by introducing new Chinese and foreign publications. Kong intends to popularize "New Red Culture", by offering a modern and diversified perspective on revolutionary history, through publishing books, filming documentaries and operating art studios.
'jiang gu shi'
讲故事
Storyteller
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