Propaganda Term Analysis

“Good, very good!” Teacher Song paused. She glanced over the class. “Yes, we want to wish Chairman Mao a long long life, because our great leader saved us. I’m sure your parents have told you many stories about the cruel life they lived under Chiang Kaishek’s Guomindang regime. They were cold, dark days indeed. That government only cared for the rich. Children like you couldn’t even dream of sitting here, but Chairman Mao made it possible in China to have this privilege. Today, I’ll teach you how to write ‘Long, long live Chairman Mao, I love Chairman Mao, you love Chairman Mao, we all love Chairman Mao.’ I’ll now write them on the blackboard. Pay special attention to the sequence of the strokes.” She turned to the blackboard and wrote several lines with furious pace.

I was stunned. I didn’t get the sequence of the strokes at all!

Everyone of all ages in China was encouraged to learn from [Lei Feng]. Everyone wanted to be a “Living Lei Feng.” […]

For a brief period some students stopped attending school or were late for classes because they said they were helping the elderly and the needy just like Lei Feng. But they were just being lazy, and the teachers soon found out. A moral, a “tonic story,” for these students were told in our class:

One day, Lei Feng was late for his military activity because he was carrying home an elderly lady with bound feet. The head of his army unit criticized him without knowing the real reason behind his tardiness. Lei Feng apologized and wrote in his diary that he should be able to do kind things for the needy as well as carrying out the normal required activities.

I couldn’t understand all the words but I could make out that the story was about a rich steel baron, in some place called Chicago, who fell in love with a young girl. […] Love stories were hard to find. I would have given anything to read the whole thing. But the Red Guards destroyed any books that contained even a hint of romance or western flavor. You would be jailed if such books were found in your house.

I kept those forty pages for a long time, locking them like a treasure in my personal drawer […]. I poured over the words. I wondered how the people in the story could have such freedom. It sounded too good to be true. But even after hearing years of fearful propaganda about America and the West, the book was enough to plant a seed of curiosity in my heart.

The numbers, our political heads explained, referred to 7 May 1970, when Madame Mao delivered a famous speech to the arts and education communities, using Chairman Mao’s philosophies to encourage all intellectuals to engage, both physically and mentally, with the three classes: peasants, workers, and soldiers. They were golden words to the Ministry of Culture, so they proposed that Madame Mao should be the artistic director of this new university, and that it should be located in the heart of the communes, where future artists could learn and work among the peasants every day. In such an isolated site, surrounded by communes and fields, students would be protected from any negative influences from the city. Madame Mao supported this idea, and the project quickly received the central government’s backing.

There were no foreign books and almost all of the books were picture books—stories about foreign children written by Chinese authors, and the stories were always sad and tragic. Most of them were about struggling colored children in America and how the whites mistreated them, or they were about the struggle between good and evil. The good characters were always beautiful and handsome. The evil characters always had big crooked noses and fat ugly faces. They were Chaing Kaishek’s Guomindang officers and spies, or foreign enemies. I hated the evil guys and felt so sad for those impoverished colored children. I often shed sympathetic tears and I felt even more grateful for the heavenly life that Chairman Mao had given us. If our life was heavenly, then these poor children’s lives in America must be hell indeed.

“You can tell this ballet was designed by a capitalist,” our political head said. “He has glorified the rich and portrayed the peasants as whores. What a contrast to our model ballets! Our three classes of people are our heroes!”

We were all Mao’s faithful children and we all wholeheartedly agreed […] but I couldn’t help quietly admiring Albrecht’s brilliant dancing […].

During the Cultural Revolution almost every new creation in art was a joint project. […New] works had to have a Communist Party leader as one of the main creators […]. There would normally be more than one choreographer, set designer, lighting designer, and composer […]. Individualism was firmly discouraged. The Red Detachment of Women, which we’d performed for Madame Mao, was one of those ballets, and it took eight years to complete. But once I’d seen the beautiful Giselle I began to doubt The Red Detachment of Women was quite so artistically brilliant.

Aside from the drugs, though, I did want to experiment with nearly everything the Western world had to offer. I discovered Western movies, especially the John Wayne ones. I liked the courage he portrayed. I also liked movies such as Star Trek and the 007 films. I went to operas, symphonies, pop concerts and plays. Through Ben I met some extraordinary people—people including Liza Minnelli, Cleo Laine, Gregory Peck, Frank Sinatra and John Denver. I even went to discos, but I wasn’t too fond of them. Still, I was like a bird let out of its cage, and I could fly in any direction I chose.