<<Name>>
<<Professor Name>>
<<Subject>>
<<Date>>
In 1966, Mao Zedong wanted to show his authority over the government in China and he launched what was called the Cultural Revolution (History.com). At this point in China’s history, Mao believed that the nation was being led into a wrong direction.
Like many communist leaders across the world, Mao enthused the youth of China to come together to remove the bad elements of society. This kind of rhetoric and ideology revitalized the revolutionary spirit in Chinese youth which had led to victory in the civil war, 20 years ago. The call for a cultural revolution which lasted till 1976, led to widespread violence, torment and death.
Mao felt that the party leadership was emphasizing on “expertise rather than ideological purity” (History.com). Mao’s initiatives from 1958-1960 had resulted in an economic crisis and since he wanted to gain authority and control, he made a new group of radicals and his wife to take control.
In order to infuse the ideology of Chairman Mao, in the initial stages of the revolution, Defense Minister Lin Biao ensured that the little red book with Mao’s quotations got printed and widely distributed to inner regions of China. In August 1966, Mao had launched the full fledged revolution. He mobilized youth and shut down schools. He encouraged youth to take action against party leaders who were following middle class values, lacking revolutionary thoughts. This activity soon led to the youth forming their own paramilitary groups called Red Guards, attacking the leaders, elderly and intellectuals (History.com). President Liu Shaoqi and team were soon forcibly and violently removed from power. The nation was in chaos with many different factions of the Red Guard emerging in cities. In September 1967, many Chinese cities saw violence and disorderly conduct and Mao had sent in the Army to deal with the problem.
Many of the Red Guards were made to move to the rural areas by the army. However this chaos had a negative effect on the Chinese economy. In post 1968 years, Lin was gaining more power and Mao tried to rein him in with the help of Zhou Enlai, dividing the power at the top. Soon Lin perished in an air crash and Zhou took over control. Chinese population was not happy with the way the ‘revolution’ had dissolved into such chaos and fight for power. Zhou managed to bring back education and some older officials to revamp the government system. After Zhou’s and Mao’s death, Deng got power in 1977 and ruled China for 20 years.
The Cultural Revolution witnessed the death of more than 1.5 million people. There were many stories of people suffering imprisonment, loss of property, torture and violence. The short term and long term effects of the Cultural Revolution will affect China over decades. For one, many Chinese lost faith in the government. Many opponents of Mao were ostracized and were sent to labor camps in rural areas.
In the post-Mao era, following his death in September 1976, there was a marked change in Chinese culture. From the government propaganda which promoted the Cultural Revolution as a historical milestone filled with glory, it changed to a view which criticized it as a period of violence, economic woes, brutality and death. More than anything else the Cultural Revolution brought to light the struggle between different classes and political ideologies. The creative output by authors, poets, film makers also changed and focused mainly on the victims of the Mao era and their “physical and psychological sufferings (King, “Chinese Literature Post-Mao”).
More Chinese writers began reading western works and the culture was opening up to western thoughts and art. The decade of 1980s changed the Chinese civilization and that was followed by lower state sponsorship of art and culture. Many of the literary works in the Post-Mao period were printed in commercial printing presses and translated into English and many languages.
This not only helped the authors spread their stories of despair and despondency during the Mao era, but also helped some of them win Nobel Prizes. In 2000, Gao Xingjian won the Nobel prize, followed by novelist Mo Yan in 2012. The change in the art and literary scene impacted Chinese cinema positively. As an example of this change, Zhang Hongbing, writes about how his mother was shot because she was opposed to Mao. Also he writes about photo records of his father insulted by wearing a dunce's cap. He speaks of his mother fondly and the way in which the Cultural Revolution was thrust on them. He talks of the suffering and the struggle they underwent to survive the great famine. According to historian Yin Hongbiao, many youth were forced to turn against their won parents due to political pressure. Many children were protective of their parents, but were eventually beaten or executed by the Red Guards.
Movies like The Herdsman, starring Shimao Zhu, Shan Cong, Qiu Liu, shows the many tensions that arise due to the separation of 30 years of life between a father and son. The film begins with the reunion of the two and shows the movie as a flash back. The story of Xu Lingjun, who stayed as a herdsman in the far northeast, shows the very frugal and basic lifestyles. It shows the plight of the rural people with poverty, but highlights their lack of attraction to money with a focus on ethics and integrity. The love for the land and its people is clearly brought out in this evocative movie, where in the end the father also requests the son to keep a small piece of land in the village as a grave (YouTube).
Another movie that is typical of the life during the cultural revolution is called “Sacrificed Youth”. The film by Zhang Nuanxin tells the story of a 17-year-old city girl from an educated higher class family, who is sent to a mountain village to live. She faces a lot of inhibitions and problems but slowly starts liking the simple life, warmth and beauty of the village (YouTube).
Anita Chan’s ‘Children of Mao’, writes about the complex culture in China’s development in 3 decades. This was as a result of a new system of “political socialization” learnt in schools (cpp.edu). The family was no longer acting as a socialization agent and that role was taken over by the state. The interesting fact is that most of the authors blame Mao’s policies for the struggles. Others often consider things like the personality of Mao and factional differences. It also blames the cultural revolution on the struggles between the classes and the problem of governing a country as large as China. As a comparison, Lucian Pye wrote about how Nazi Germany affected German culture and German society. Questions remain on the cause of the cultural revolution – whether it was because of tensions due to farmer uprising, student repression and frustration or a combination of all. Another scholars’ coalition headed by Song Yongyi published The Chinese Cultural Revolution Database, a “monumental work with 40,000 entries, including unpublished speeches, documents, and other information (Johnson, “China’s Brave Underground Journal”).
Song Yongyi was in jail for 5 years during the cultural revolution. Yang Jisheng’s father starved to death during the famine, and Yang as a child had to watch him die. Similarly, Wu Di was only seventeen when he was sent off to Inner Mongolia along with other youth. This idea by Mao helped him to gain control after the initial phase of the revolution. However Wu recalls having lived with herders and horsemen. He faced jail term for false cases of robbery and violence. He was witness to the ethnicity and hatred in that period, where in Inner Mongolia more than 22,900 people died and more than 790,000 people were imprisoned. These ethnic tensions are still prevalent today since most of the victims were Mongolians.
The period saw lot of struggles between indigenous people and Hans. These people were discriminated against and forced to move to poor regions in the mountains. As they were outnumbered by Han population, they were forced to live like them and follow a strict Han regimen. Education was primarily done in Hanyu (Mandarin Chinese). Even farming practices were supposed to conform to Han techniques and any misdemeanors were seen as anti Mao teachings, resulting in violence and punishment. Another Chinese-American author Nien Cheng, who wrote the book "Life and Death in Shanghai”, has written about her jail term and torture in the Cultural Revolution (voanews.com). She was persecuted and jailed for six and a half years for not admitting to a crime she never committed. Nien Cheng was born in a wealthy family, and was educated at the London School of Economics. After her marriage to a Chinese diplomat and businessman, they were blessed with a daughter. Her home was invaded in 1966 by the Red Guard and she was arrested as being a spy. The Red Guard also killed her only daughter.
China’s cultural revolution, inspired by Mao Zedong, has been also called the lost decade. It was a sign of frustration and chaos, where many leaders and intellectuals were beaten, insulted and driven to kill themselves. Friends and neighbors did not trust each other and many cultural monuments and universities were closed. But Chinese development and reform process followed quickly after the death of Mao and saw a resurgent China take centre stage in the world (theguardian.com).
References
Cpp.edu. The Chinese Cultural Revolution: A Historiographical Study. Cpp.edu. Web. 18 March
2016. http://www.cpp.edu/~zywang/cultrev.pdf
History. Cultural Revolution. History.com. Web. 18 March 2016.
http://www.history.com/topics/cultural-revolution
Johnson, Ian. China’s Brave Underground Journal. Nybooks.com. Web. 18 March 2016.
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2014/12/04/chinas-brave-underground-journal/
King, Richard. Chinese Literature Post-Mao. Oxfordindex.com. Web. 18 March 2016.
http://oxfordindex.oup.com/view/10.1093/obo/9780199920082-0017
The Guardian. China’s Cultural Revolution. Theguardian.com. Web. 18 March 2016.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/27/china-cultural-revolution-sons-guilt-zhang-hongping
Voanews. Chinese Author Describes Horrors of Cultural Revolution. Voice of America. Web.
18 March 2016. http://www.voanews.com/content/a-13-2009-11-18-voa36-
70423177/415690.html
YouTube. Sacrificed Youth. Youtube.com. Web. 18 March 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xHNjRFcp6rU,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x0WCDbX0L5g
YouTube. The Herdsman. Youtube.com. Web. 18 March 2016.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGfi0zB0eQc
