How did people respond to the political campaigns of the Mao era? This chapter looks beyond the dominant images of the Hundred Flowers to explore reactions to the now national campaign among writers and cultural workers. Drawing on contemporary diaries and letters, this chapter uncovers diverse intellectual and emotional responses to the movement, in tension with the jubilant bloom visible across China’s media-sphere. It shows how individual responses to the Hundred Flowers were intwined with perceptions of Mao as a leader and with a perceived disconnect between signals from the Party center and local conditions. We find those in support of Mao and against local authorities; we find those, like Xu Chengmiao, who see the Hundred Flowers as a source of great hope; and we find those who doubt both central and regional leadership. Belying depictions of the Hundred Flowers as an outpouring of dissent against the Party, we find a tangled undergrowth of diverse and nuanced responses to the movement.

This chapter focuses on the Chinese volunteers who fought in Korea during the Korean War. It looks at the interactions between the Chinese volunteers and North Korean civilians. It shows how the CCP strove to shape the emotions of the volunteers and inspire feelings of empathy toward North Korean civilians. Through using new North Korean source materials, it shows how the North Korean government sought to shape popular perceptions of the volunteers.

This chapter explores the parallel efforts of the CCP and the KWP to train loyal party cadres. This was a critical taks for both parties. It shows how Sino-North Korean friendship was a powerful tool for training the emotions of the party bureaucracy.

Following the blooming of the Hundred Flowers came a metaphorical springtime. How was it formed? As metaphorical wordplay continued to shape public discourse, the sustained input of creative writers gradually transformed the discussion of flowers to a broader theme of spring. Poets such as Ai Qing wove ever more detailed depictions of bucolic scenes to both comment on the state of the Republic and to join in the word play that was now present across genres of writing. In the process, an ever-expanding circle of writers joined the metaphorical and allegorical debate, including Zhou Shoujuan, who saw the movement as a resurrection of the literary public sphere of the May Fourth era. We also observe the migration of metaphorical imagery from text to visual-culture, as floral scenes and those of spring became omnipresent in magazines and newspapers.

What could you do if you felt out of step with Maoism? What if the great blooming of early 1957 did not reflect your feelings about the People’s Republic? How could you express yourself with the language available to you and circulating throughout public discourse? This chapter traces the frequent but disparate and isolated practices of botanical metaphor inspired by the Hundred Flowers but deployed in critique, echoing practices that have remained potent since the Book of Odes. It begins with the story of Jiang Rende, who arranges grass on his desk and thinks of Lu Xun, and reveals a world of critical but disconnected deployments of the botanical imagery of the Hundred Flowers.

This chapter explores the interactions of high-level Chinese and North Korean leaders. It argues that the actions of Chinese and North Korean leaders – especially Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung – were critical to building political order in the PRC and the DPRK. It shows how the utterances and actions of these leaders were particularly influential in shaping popular emotions and establishing the legitimacy of the PRC and DPRK.

Who had the power to innovate and shape public discourse in the high Mao era? Through the example of Fei Xiaotong and his essay “The Early Spring Weather of the Intellectuals,” this chapter explores what happens when critique, however mild, captures an audience, draws responses, and creates its own eddies of creative imitation. It shows the power of the classical literary canon eight years after the founding of the People’s Republic and that literary brio drawing on this canon could shape public discourse and challenge the dominant framing of a national slogan. It also shows how writers who supported the campaign turned to the same literary canon to attack Fei Xiaotong’s metaphor and restore the sense of springtime. It was not only the Party that was capable of “doing things with words.”

How do national campaigns and local literary practice interact? This chapter tells the story of Liu Shahe and Shi Tianhe, two Sichuanese writers who, following signals from Beijing and Moscow, found themselves on the wrong side of local political and literary elites. It explores how Liu and Shi fell out with the Sichuanese literary establishment, and how what became known as the “poetry case” came to the attention of Mao Zedong. It describes the differential power dynamics that existed among the individual, the local, and the central state in the early People’s Republic of China. Despite becoming known as “anti-Party,” “anti-socialist,” and “poisonous weeds,” the chapter reveals that Liu and Shi fell from grace for putting into practice signals from the Party center.