Since the establishment of the CCP, Mao’s status has been unmatched within the CCP. The aura of lies that made Mao the “great savior” of the people was temporarily slowed down by the Soviet Union’s condemnation of Stalin and his cult of personality in 1956, which was officially criticized by the Communist Party.
However, Mao was not convinced of this. In his 1958 speech, he said that a distinction should be made between correct and incorrect personal worship. If a person has mastered the truth, he should be worshiped. Obviously, Mao believed that he was the one who had mastered the truth. Therefore, he launched one campaign after another to establish his authority, despite the voices of opposition.
In the early 1960s, Lin Biao, who had just succeeded Peng Dehuai as minister of national defense, took the lead in launching a campaign to deify Mao in the army, which spread to the whole country, and in May 1964, the army took the lead in publishing “Quotations from Chairman Mao”. In the preface of this book, which soon became known as the “Little Red Book” and was worshiped by people, Lin Biao declared that “Comrade Mao Zedong’s genius has raised Marxism-Leninism to a brand new stage” and admonished people to ” Read Mao’s book, listen to Mao’s words, act according to Mao’s instructions, and be a good soldier of Mao. Then, the whole army set off a wave of learning Mao’s writings. In the following three years, the army published billions of copies of Mao’s Quotations and about 150 million copies of Mao’s Selected Works.
By 1965, Mao and Mao Thought had been completely deified and reached its peak during the Cultural Revolution. Mao’s statues and photos were hung everywhere in the streets and rooms, Mao’s “Red Book” was everywhere, and “early instructions” and “late reports” were prevalent everywhere, and conferences and meetings were held to wish The “Red Sun”, the men and women sing the “Quotations Song”, and the old and young twist the “Faithful Dance”. Obviously, Mao himself was very much in favor of this kind of personal worship. In a conversation with the American journalist Snow in 1965, he mentioned that the cult of the individual was a political asset, and he believed that Khrushchev’s downfall was due to his lack of cult of the individual.
This article is about the absurdities surrounding the word “loyalty” during the Cultural Revolution. At that time, peasants paid grain called “loyalty grain”, accumulated fertilizer called “loyalty fertilizer”, all kinds of handicrafts called “loyalty products”, cars, trains, ships and machines also had big “loyalty” characters on them. The word “loyal” is also hung on cars, trains, ships and machines, and some places also raise “loyal pigs”, and of course the most widely influenced is the “loyal dance”. When the “loyalty dance” is the most frenzied, men, women and children have to dance regardless of age.
The originality of raising “loyalty pigs”
In October 2016, the mainland magazine “Old Photos” published this absurd old story: In 1966, in the suburbs of Shenyang, the commune required all members of the community to raise “loyal pigs”. The specific practice was to write the word “loyal” on the head of each pig with a red pen, and then frame a heart-shaped, and then use scissors to make layers, beautify some, to express loyalty to Mao.
At that time, a rather stubborn peasant Liu Quan-you said: “Loyalty to Mao × ×, not human and animal indistinguishable.” He was immediately branded as a “counter-revolutionary” and was criticized every day.
The “Ten-Year History of the Cultural Revolution” also mentions that the Duyun District of Guizhou Province specializes in “Zhong Zi Pig”. As for the end of the “loyal pig”, no one knows, it was probably offered to Mao to make braised pork.
Feverishly dancing “Zhong Zi dance”
There was a photo circulating on the Internet: a large group of people next to the train were dancing the “loyalty dance” with different expressions. The caption next to the picture reads: In 1967, when passengers stopped at Yingkou Railway Station, they all had to get off the train and dance the “loyalty dance” to show their loyalty to Mao before they could get on. Such a scene occurred in Hohhot, Shenyang and many other places, and its absurdity is not understood by today’s people.
The so-called “loyalty dance”, as the name suggests, is a dance to express loyalty to Mao, because the action is simple and easy to learn, so Chinese men, women and children will dance. Its dance movements are crude, exaggerated, mostly taking the expression of like shape ideograms, illustration, similar to radio gymnastics, but very rough, rigid, clumsy, monotonous, mechanical, lack of beauty.
The most commonly used song to dance the “faithful word dance” is “To Mao × × Wan Longevity”, because the words and actions of this song are easy to coordinate. When singing “how many heartfelt words we have to tell you”, the dancer should press his hands on his chest; when singing “how many passionate songs we have to sing to you”, to put both hands on the cheeks, look up, fingers in a radial flash; when singing “millions of red flowers”, the dancer should put his hands on his cheeks, look up, fingers in a radial flash. When singing “millions of red hearts”, the thumb and forefinger of both hands merge to form a heart shape than in front of the chest; when singing “to you”, the dancer jumps on the toes of one leg, kicks back the other leg, and sends the heart shape to the upper right with both hands When the song ends, the dancers will hold up the red book with their right hands, from the top to the bottom, one after the other, in the shape of kowtowing, and repeatedly sing “Longevity and Longevity” in their mouths.
The absurdity of the scene and the ridiculousness of its movements, especially when 10,000 people dance together, is like a group of demons dancing. Some netizens wrote that at that time, “the word dance”, almost everyone must dance. Under the guidance of the so-called “jumping good or bad is a matter of level, jumping or not is a matter of feelings for the great leader”, every morning, the crowd of people dancing the “loyalty dance” could be seen everywhere in many cities. In some places, the Red Guards set up posts at various intersections, stopping pedestrians and making them dance a loyalty dance before they could pass.
Newspaper propaganda of “loyalty”
Naturally, the newspapers during the Cultural Revolution also made great efforts to promote the “loyalty” campaign. One of them is about a 69-year-old “poor peasant’s grandmother”, Grandma Liu, who could not read or write, but in more than a year, she finally memorized “The Three Old Pieces” and more than 100 quotations of Mao, as it was written in the report: Grandma Liu reads them in the daytime, even at night when she could not sleep, and when she forgot, she called for teaching. When her granddaughter Yu Zhen slept with her, she had to shout and ask about ten times every night, which made her sleepless. Grandma Liu kindly said to her granddaughter, “Yu Zhen, you teach grandma to read one more word, is to Mao × × more loyalty, is to Liu Shaoqi more than one bullet.”
There is another example about a mountain village that has undergone a sea change after learning Mao’s thought. For example, Li Fa Zhong, a young member of the community, once hit a stone and was smashed out of his head by a flying stone, which later became infected and his head swelled up greatly. When the doctor came to see him, he took out Mao’s quotation from his pocket and shouted “long live” with all his might.
Then there was a fire in the middle of the night in the house of Wang Zengfu, a member of the community, and he didn’t take anything but Mao’s quotations out. When people asked him about the protection of Mao’s quotations, he said, “The house can be burned, but Mao’s treasured book can never be lost.
Conclusion
Lin Biao, who drove the worship of Mao to the climax, died in vain, and Mao, who enjoyed the worship of millions of people, went to see Marx, and the absurdities of that era, such as “loyalty dance” and “loyalty pig”, became the laughing stock of future generations. The reason for this is that the Chinese people have not yet reckoned with Mao’s sins. Perhaps that day is not so far away.
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