Consuming Fragments of Mao Zedong: The Chairman's Final Two Decades at the Helm

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511781476.007

5 - Consuming Fragments of Mao Zedong: The Chairman's Final Two Decades at the Helm

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 August 2012

Michael Schoenhals

Edited by

Timothy Cheek

Show author details

Timothy Cheek: Affiliation:
University of British Columbia, Vancouver

Book contents

Get access

Summary

Every people puts its own scent on its food, and it accepts change only if it can conceal the change from itself, by smothering each novelty in its scent. Optimism about change, whether in politics, economics or culture, is only possible if this premise is accepted.

Theodore Zeldin, An Intimate History of Humanity, 1994

Nikita Khrushchev was not to Mao's taste. The Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) showed no craving for gulyáskommunizmus. He hungered for something … er … different. In the remarkable art film The Ming Tombs Reservoir Fantasy from 1958 (in which Mao appears briefly in person), we are served a sampling of what it may have been. Set in 1978, ten years after the liberation of Taiwan, with New China well into the “higher phase of communist society [when] … all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly,” the film has young revolutionaries gathering in the shade of a tree from the branches of which grow bananas, apples, pears, loquats, lizhi … and living among farmers who each rear an average of 365 pigs a day to meet some of the dietary needs of a population that has found a cure for cancer (massive quantities of Turfan grapes) and whose members live to the ripe old age of well past a hundred. It is a unique record of the utopia of Mao's Great Leap Forward, a sweet Chinese dream of plenty.

Type: Chapter
Information: A Critical Introduction to Mao , pp. 110 - 128

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511781476.007 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Zeldin, Theodore, An Intimate History of Humanity (London: Harper Perennial, 1994), p. 95Google Scholar

Wilson, Edward O., Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1998), pp. 88–90Google Scholar

Fairbank, John K. and MacFarquhar, Roderick, eds., The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 15: The People's Republic, Part 2: Revolutions Within the Chinese Revolution 1966–1982 (Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1991)Google Scholar

Parmentier, Richard J., The Sacred Remains: Myth, History, and Polity in Belau (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), p. 2Google Scholar

Dupriez, Bernard, A Dictionary of Literary Devices (Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press, 1991), p. 276CrossRef Google Scholar

Mingshan, Sun, ed., Lishi shunjian III [A Moment in History III] (Beijing: Qunzhong chubanshe, 2004), p. 191Google Scholar

Bianjibu, Chongqing gongren, ed., Yi Mao zhuxi weishou de wuchanjieji silingbu wansui [Long Live the Proletarian Headquarters Headed by Chairman Mao] (Chongqing, 1968), pp. 304–305

Hua, Cheng, ed., Zhou Enlai he tade mishumen [Zhou Enlai and His Secretaries] (Beijing: Zhongguo guangbo dianshi chubanshe, 1992), pp. 178, 381

Schram, Stuart, ed., Mao's Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings 1912–1949 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1992—), Vol. 6, p. 606Google Scholar

Schoenhals, Michael, “Mao Zedong: Speeches at the 1957 ‘Moscow Conference,’” Journal of Communist Studies 2:2 (June 1986), p. 113CrossRef Google Scholar

Schoenhals, Michael, Saltationist Socialism: Mao Zedong and the Great Leap Forward 1958 (Stockholm: Föreningen för orientaliska studier, 1987), pp. 40–43Google Scholar

MacFarquhar, Roderick, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution 2: The Great Leap Forward 1958–1960 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 218–221Google Scholar

Burroughs, William S., Naked Lunch (New York: Grove Press, 1966), pp. xxi–xxvGoogle Scholar

MacFarquhar, Roderick, The Origins of the Cultural Revolution 3: The Coming of the Cataclysm 1961–1966 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997), p. 341CrossRef Google Scholar

Bangongting, Zhonggong zhongyang zuzhibu, ed., Zuzhi gongzuo wenjian xuanbian 1963 nian [Selected Documents on Organization Work from the Year 1963] (Beijing, 1980), p. 103

Xianzhi, Pang and Chongji, Jin, ed., Mao Zedong zhuan 1949–1976 [Biography of Mao Zedong 1949–1976] (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chubanshe, 2003), pp. 1550–1551Google Scholar

Jarvis, Charles E., Visions of Kerouac, 2d ed. (Lowell, MA: Ithaca Press, 1974), p. 7Google Scholar