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Seeing Red Over Mao in Alhambra

Values in China today are only carried forward by the culture largely as a result of the destruction of ethical and civic standards wrought by Mao during the Cultural Revolution. In other words, in my experience, there is generally no honor given in China today for verbal or written contracts and the visitor will find him or herself at the mercy of Chinese pragmatism.

In China today portraits of Mao are everywhere and due to the controlled press few Chinese know the truth of their own modern history. And I am horrified when I hear “Maoism” being bandied about…even here in Oaxaca Mexico!

To understand how this came about, to understand the ability of the Chinese to dupe Westerners and to understand the anger of the Chinese community in Alhambra over the hanging of Warhol-like images of Mao you can read the 1995 “Mao: The Unknown Story,” an 832-page biography of Mao written by the husband and wife team of historians, Jon Halliday and Jung Chang who herself was a Red Guard during the Revolution. It depicts Mao Zedong, the former paramount leader of China and Chairman of the Communist Party of China, as being responsible for mass murder (upwards of 30-70 million people) on a scale greater than that committed under the rule of Adolf Hitler or Joseph Stalin.

The authors spent 12 years researching the Russian and Chinese archives after the fall of the Soviet Union and interviewed hundreds of eye-witnesses to events largely fabricated by Mao including the Long March. In a speech given at Stanford University, former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski mentioned a conversation that he once had with Deng Xiaoping, who commented that the taking of Luding Bridge had been extremely easy and was dramatised for propaganda. At that point, Chairman Deng smiled and said, “Well, that’s the way it’s presented in our propaganda. We needed that to express the fighting spirit of our forces. In fact, it was a very easy military operation.”

Perry Link, Professor of East Asian Studies at Princeton University, wrote in The NY Times Literary Supplement:

“Foreigners who cannot see past the surfaces become trophies of the system’s deception and sometimes even turn into official “friends of China” (although, to the insiders, little true friendship, and even less respect, is actually involved). Part of Chang and Halliday’s passion for exposing the “unknown” Mao is clearly aimed at gullible Westerners. Mao entranced Edgar Snow, (the journalist who carried forward Mao’s propaganda in “Red Star Over China) and Zhou Enlai charmed Henry Kissinger, and in both cases the consequences for Western understanding of China were severe… If the book sells even half as many copies as the 12 million of Wild Swans, (Chang’s immensely popular 3-generational epic) it could deliver the coup de grace to an embarrassing pattern of Western thinking.”

To top it off you can read the 1994 “The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao’s Personal Physician.” Written after the death of Mao when Dr. Li joined his sons being educated in Chicago, Illinois, the book is an intimate account of the bowels, the brains, and the psychic, as well as the physical, ailments of the late Chairman Mao Zedong, and is of the highest importance for revealing the unseemly private face and the destructive passions of the man whom the youth of the world long venerated as the savior of mankind, and for demonstrating with a wealth of evidence that the most damning previous accounts of Mao’s behavior fell lamentably short of the actual horrors Dr. Li witnessed.

This extremely detailed anatomy of the revolutionary who created the People’s Republic of China and then virtually destroyed his own creation is unique. Dr. Li saw Mao Zedong in all moods and at all times, from the insomniac vigor of 1955 to the protracted death scene of 1976.

During the arduous two decades that came close to destroying his own family life, Dr.Li saw a man who professed great concern for the Chinese masses, but repeatedly sacrificed them to his visions and his whims in spite of his propaganda in the “Little Red Book.” Mao could let millions die to further his dream of becoming an immortal by creating the “stage of pure Communism” over which Karl Marx rhapsodized.

He could also pass on his genital infections to the hundreds of young women with whom he slept, in part because he hoped to absorb their youthful energy. He could not be bothered to undergo the treatment that would have cured his ailments.

Seeing Red Over Mao

After a complaint, Alhambra evicts a Warhol-style painting of the communist leader.
By David Pierson, LA Times Staff Writer
February 24, 2007

Mao Tse-tung’s image has received the iconic Andy Warhol treatment. It’s been plastered onto tens of millions of kitschy cigarette lighters, medallions, watches, T-shirts and snow domes.

Yet when a painting bearing the former Chinese communist leader’s visage was displayed this week as part of a lunar new year celebration in Alhambra, it set off a debate in Southern California’s Chinese community about ghosts from the past and the promise of the future.

A former basketball player for China’s national team demanded the city remove the painting, saying the display romanticized a despot responsible for the death and suffering of millions of Chinese. The artists behind the exhibit agreed that Mao was a tyrant but countered that Mao brought about a new era of Chinese nationalism, one that would springboard the nation into modern times.
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In November, John Kong and a crew of three other artists — all from various Beijing art schools — started creating 35 silk-screen paintings playing off a Year-of-the-Boar theme with Andy Warhol-inspired renderings. At the request of a festival organizer, the paintings were put on display Feb. 1 at City Hall and were set to remain there until today’s new year parade.

The exhibit went on without a hitch until last week when someone walked into the lobby and noticed among all the paintings of pigs one that depicted Mao and George Washington’s images on piggy banks.

He told Kai Chen, the former basketball player who is now an author and real estate owner. Chen was so livid to learn that Mao was being displayed in a municipal building that he called the assistant city manager and demanded the artwork be removed. A day later on Feb. 16, the painting was gone.

The synopsis to Chen’s “One in a Billion: Journey Toward Freedom,” on Amazon.com said his family “endured political persecution during the most oppressive years of Chinese modern history — the Cultural Revolution.”

Chen, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1981 after falling in love with an American exchange student, said he and his family were exiled to Manchuria in 1965 because of their ties to the toppled Nationalist regime and Taiwan.

“This is a moral issue. You cannot commercialize Mao,” he said. “They will repress Mao’s true image to save face and for national pride. This is a perversion.”