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.”