"Long Live Chairman Mao!"

Pictures from Cultural Revolution-themed Lunch and Performance

Every Friday afternoon, my fellow ACC students and I all participate in an extracurrricular language-related activity. Sometimes we're sent out to interview ordinary Chinese people, sometimes we watch a movie. This past Friday we went to a themed restaurant that commemorated the 10 year political period here from 1967 to 1977 known as the "Cultural Revolution."

On our way to the restaurant, I was a little surprised that a place like this even existed. My basic understanding of the Cultural Revolution is that in those 10 years, pro-Communist Party and pro-Mao propaganda saturated Chinese society, to the extent that it even replaced traditioanl educational material. Would-be college students were sent to rural areas to receive a kind of agricultural and propaganda-based education instead. Those who resisted the new all-encompassing Communist ideology were imprisoned or killed, and during those 10 years, it's estimated the acting government killed half a million people. On top of the human catastrophe, ancient art was purged, and it's estimated that almost 90% of pre-1967 Chinese artifacts were destroyed.

When we arrived at the restaurant, as expected, it was filled with propaganda- there were plenty of portraits of Chairman Mao, slogans printed in bright red characters "Communist Party 10,000 years, 1,000,000,000 years!" portraits of Lenin, Marx, Engels, and Stalin, and plenty of smiling workers wielding shovels and bales of wheat. On top of the propaganda, all of the staff at the restaurant were dressed in either the Red Guard's military green outfit or the "Mao Suit" of a blue collared shirt and jean overalls.

The main performance area had a high ceiling and could probably sat about 500 customers. After our food arrived (it was 21st century fare), the performance commenced. The backdrop to the stage was Chairman Mao's gigantic smiling face, and the show was just people singing about how great Chairman Mao and the Communist Party were. During the show, there were about 20 performers among us in the tables dancing around. They gave us all red flags, and the highlight of the show was everyone, foreigners, Chinese, and performers alike waving the flags and chanting "Mao Zhuxi Wan Sui!" (Literally, "Chairman Mao 10,000 years," or "Long Live Chairman Mao").

Considering the aforementioned human rights blunders, I asked one of my teachers (who, on this day, I had taken to calling "Comrade" instead of "Teacher") if regular Chinese would find this kind of performance to be in bad taste. I was surprised when she said that almost everyone who lived through the Cultural Revolution wouldn't be offended, and actually quite enjoy it. Since the show intended to be a true replica of a 1970s era propaganda show, and there were people (employees) dancing in the crowd, I asked her if this was a normal phenomenon. She said, "during the Cultural Revolution, people were a little crazy. When people started singing about Chairman Mao, a lot of people couldn't help but dance."

The next night, I went to a rock concert featuring local Beijing indie rock band. The singers sang standard 2008 apolitical rock fare about love and heartache. And it hit me that only 30 years ago, when the Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and the Woodstock festival had come and gone, people in China were wearing Mao suits and singing about how much they loved the Chinese Communist Party. It's hard to think of a more powerful example of short-term cultural change.