Word: mao
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Tens of thousands of Chinese solemnly gathered around a newly opened marble and granite mausoleum in Peking's T'ien An Men Square last week, honoring the memory of Mao Tse-tung on the first anniversary of his death. Although they joined in the tributes, Peking's new rulers also issued a discreet warning against exaggerated respect for the late beloved Chairman. In a Red Flag article broadcast by Peking radio, Politburo Member Nieh Jung-chen argued that Mao's thoughts should be used as a general guide to the solution of China's problems...
...least a few Chinese dissenters have gone much further in rejecting Mao's posthumous influence. One sign: novels and short stories dealing with forbidden themes are now being clandestinely circulated among friends in manuscript form. One such novel is entitled Ah Hsia, the name of its heroine-a hapless working girl who has been ravished by her factory's party boss. Another underground story, The Hunan River Runs Red, tells of a high-living party official whose son drowns himself out of disgust with his father's profligacy and privileged life. An illicit "yellow book"-Chinese slang...
Chinese Shadows is a brilliant, uncompromising account of political distortion and sycophancy in contemporary China. Simon Leys, the pseudonym for Pierre Ryckmans, a distinguished Belgian-born Sinologist, lucidly argues that the Chin of Mao, so far from being a revolutionary paradise of egalitarianism, is a monstrous tyranny ruled over by a new privileged class of bureaucrats and generals...
...charge that Peking itself is "a murdered town, a disfigured ghost of what was once one of the most beautiful cities in the world." The fabulous imperial Forbidden City remains; so does the exquisitely harmonious Temple of Heaven -marred only by a huge red screen bearing the inevitable Mao poem. But the capital's ancient wall and magnificent gates have been torn down. Dozens of graceful arches have been destroyed. Whole neighborhoods have been bulldozed for broad, eerily empty avenues. The reasons once again have to do with the politics of totalitarianism. "Exalting deserts of tarmac" are required...
Wang has also been credited with bringing down Defense Minister Lin Piao in 1971. According to the official Chinese version, Lin had been caught plotting against Mao and was accidentally killed in a plane crash over Mongolia, probably while fleeing to the Soviet Union; in fact, Western specialists have suspected the "crash" was the result of sabotage - Wang's work, in short...