The Hundred Flowers movement marked a turning point in the history of the People’s Republic of China. How did it begin? While Mao has been credited with sole authorship of the Hundred Flowers, this chapter exposes the plural and deep roots of the blooming of 1957. It traces the gradual coalescing of the political and literary fields, as “let a hundred flowers bloom” spread from a nineteenth-century novel to a twentieth-century campaign slogan. From 1949 to 1956, before they were Mao’s, the Hundred Flowers were captured and appropriated by a growing field of writers, philosophers, scientists, poets, and politicians. In the process, a literary trope became a central term in political discourse and political discourse became a field of creative play. This chapter argues that practices of literary circulation shaped and powered the birth and transformation of the Hundred Flowers.

The introduction explains why China and North Korea would not have survived as communist states without Sino-North Korean friendship. It discusses the relevance of different theories of emotion to this issue. It shows how Sino-North Korean friendship was critical to the emotional regimes created in both states.

Chapter 1 examines the concept of the Caliphate and focuses on how the Ottoman caliphal discourse became a global idea. After discussing the Caliphate’s role in earlier periods, I argue that the idea of the Caliphate began to appear as a global phenomenon in the 1860s by taking up the case of an Ottoman scholar who travelled from Istanbul to South Africa in 1862. I then examine the transnational and intercontinental networks of the Caliphate via examples of people who travelled on steamships and railways from all over the world. In contrast to the popular belief that the Caliphate and Pan-Islamist missions were engendered through the policies of Sultan Abdülhamid II, I claim that such ambitions began before his reign and also continued after him. I discuss the globalization of the Caliphate as a process that took place in parallel with the spread of steam and print in the Ottoman Empire and demonstrate how Ottoman rulers and ulema used printing presses in the service of the caliphal idea. In this regard, I situate the Hejaz, where thousands of Muslims gathered for the Hajj, as a major hub for the communication of ideas and I point out how it was crucial for the Ottomans.

This chapter uses Black confraternities as a case study to show the vital role of such organizations in organizing mutual aid, fostering saintly devotions, and maintaining communal bonds. Confraternities built churches, commissioned art, and took part in public festivals; such activities by Black confraternities also enabled Afrodescendants to navigate social hierarchies and visibly assert their presence in the Catholic world.

Cultural exchange was another critically important mechanism for influencing popular emotions. This chapter looks at Sino-North Korean exchanges in theater, film, and the arts. It argues that these exchanges reached large audiences in both countries while inculcating official emotions.

How were writers not labeled in the first waves of the Anti-Rightist campaign affected? Did they change their writing practices in response to the public excoriation of what were now “poisonous weeds”? How did they balance demands to continue to publish with the now clear danger of circulating texts that could be interpreted as anti-Party, anti-socialist, or simply circumspect in their ambiguity? We inherit a historiography that delineates between those who were labeled and those who acquiesced, but this bifurcation masks complexity and diversity among both groups. This chapter, through the diary and letters of Wu Mi, explores the ambiguous and precarious position of those writers not labeled in the summer of 1957. It also follows those writers who were labeled in 1957, their experiences through and after the removal of their “Rightist” label, and reflects on what it means for literature to “interfere with life.”

The literature generated by the cult of the saints extended well beyond their written lives to encompass plays, poetry, and prose. This chapter explores the vital role played by vernacular print and manuscripts in sustaining English Catholics and their exile communities overseas as one of the many ways literary works on saints could help to construct, foster, and defend early modern Catholic identities.

What held the textual community of the People’s Republic together? This chapter explores how literary acts by individuals across a spectrum of influence, from Mao Zedong to Xu Chengmiao, created meaning and connection out of the imagery of the Hundred Flowers. Despite his leadership of the Leninist state mechanism, in early 1957 Mao joined in what had been dismissed as “language games” with his own extended allegory and metaphor that borrowed more from writers like Ai Qing than from Party formulism. This chapter argues that Mao’s creative appropriation of the imagery of the Hundred Flowers enabled him to speak to a broad audience that included the Soviet leadership, Party conservatives, and literati across the political spectrum. The creative circulation of the Hundred Flowers enacted a resurrection of literary communities with roots in dynastic China. Finally, we turn to the writers Guo Xiaochuan, Xiao Jun, and Xu Chengmiao to observe how personal literary practice connected writers to the growing national movement and how the movement of a literary trope created a national community.

Liturgy was central to the cult of the saints, regulating how, when, where, and with what honors they were worshipped. This chapter examines how Roman attempts to censor and standardize the liturgy after the Council of Trent came up against local, regional, and national efforts to preserve the distinctiveness of their particular devotions.

Sanctity intersected with medicine during the early modern period because the remains of aspiring saints could offer evidence of divine favor. By studying examples of extreme asceticism, bodily incorruption, and other anatomical wonders, this chapter reveals how medical expertise became a crucial part of Catholic canonization efforts.