It all started here. In this bookstore. I found it on my way back from an old Taoist temple that I had visited earlier. The temple was located in a neighborhood where most buildings had been demolished to make way to the construction of new high rises. I was walking down the half-demolished street when I saw them… those old books from the old times that everyone seems to have forgotten, or wishes they could forget. Testaments from the time when China was effectively Communist, when it was ruled by no one else than Mao himself, the very founder of the People’s Republic. The big man.
She was selling those little red books, famous all over the world as an icon of “Red China”. But what’s the big deal – you might think – those little red books can easily be found at any touristic area, all over China. But no. Not these ones. The books she was selling were genuine. Not cheap, flavorless imitations.
As an enthusiast of communist history and culture, I was in her bookstore like a kid in a candy store. She had all the books relevant to that era, with real annotations left inside by real people who were really from that time!
The owner of the bookstore and me had a long discussion about the Cultural Revolution and her own recollections of it. Then, I asked her if I could take a portrait of her. She accepted. I had the photo printed and I went back last Saturday to give it to her.
The first time I came to her bookstore, I bought several of her red books: 最新最高指示 (The Newest Supreme Instructions), 毛主席的五篇哲学著作 (Chairman Mao’s Five Philosophical Writings), 毛主席论无产阶级专政下继续革命 (Chairman Mao on the Dictatorship of the Proletariat under Ungoing Revolution) and 毛主席，马恩列斯语录 (Quotations from Chairman Mao, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin).
This Saturday, I bought some more books. First, this 4-part anthology written by Lenin. These books were not studied by the common people, but rather by Party officials as they would prepare themselves for their role as planifiers of the economy.
列宁选集 Lenin’s Selected Works.
Lenin, a noted polyglot, made his writings in Russian, but he would extensively quote German and French authors.
I also bought this thick brick, a bible-like 1400-page study Red Book 毛泽东选集 (Mao Zedong’s Selected Works).
When I opened this book, I finally understood the origin of all the agitation around that guy called “Bai Qiuen”. On page 620, a short article (written by Mao, as all the articles in the book) is titled “In Memory of Bai Qiuen”. It tells the life of the Canadian communist doctor who went to China in the 1930s to support Mao’s Army during the wars against the Japanese invadors and the Kuomintang. Nearly all Chinese know about this story, which became required reading in elementary school. In China, when you say that you are from Canada, you will always be told about this Bai Qiuen. I had actually never heard of him until I came to China. His real name is Norman Bethune, he was born in the province of Ontario. He was a talented physician and inventor. He studied medicine at University of Toronto and worked for a time at Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. He came to China in 1938 and died in November 12, 1939 of blood poisoning after a cut he received while performing a surgery, during the second Sino-Japanese war. He is buried in the Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery in Shijiazhuang, Hebei.
I also bought this book. Same thing, “Mao Zedong’s Selected Works”, but an earlier version published in four installments the 1950s.
Not only are the four books written in traditional characters, but also from top to bottom and right to left. This is the traditional way in which Chinese texts used to be written. Today, in Mainland China, very few books (if any) are written this way. Even imports from Taiwan (where some books are still written in this traditional way), are converted to the official simplified script (simplified characters, written horizontally from left to right).
Inside the book, I found this old propaganda illustration, exactly in the style of art that I like: “Socialist Realism”. It depicts workers on their way to the construction site up in the mountains. The traditional characters used for the slogan here attest of the age of this piece, probably prior to 1956. It goes: “學習紅軍長征的戰鬥精神，征服自然，建設我們的祖國!” (Let’s learn from the wartime spirit of the Red Army, let’s conquer nature and build our motherland!).
Here is a very famous article titled “Serving the people”. The first owner of this book seemed to have studied it very seriously. He underlined some sentences, among them this passage:
因为我們是为人民服务的，所以，我們如果有缺点，就不怕别人批評指出。不管是什么人，誰向我們指出都行。只要你說得对，我們就改正。你說的办法对人民有好处，我們就照你的办。
Because we are here to serve the people, if it turns out we have any faults, we will not fear any criticism. It doesn’t matter who makes the criticism. The only thing that matters is that if you are right, we will change. If your solution is good for the people, we will use it.
Interesting passage. To me, it means one thing: when the Communists took power, they were well intentioned. They came with their utopian views, and they truly believed they were there for the people. They really did accept criticism in China at some point of the Revolution. In the 1950s the communist party launched the “Hundred Flowers Campaign”, a political campaign that enabled the people to criticize the regime… but it only lasted one year after which that same Party cracked down on those who voiced criticism. From that moment on, the Party would never accept further criticism from the people.
This book is a collection of quotations from chairman Mao, Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin.
On the first page, as in all the other books mentioned above, you have the famous communist slogan: 全世界无产者，联合起来！”Workers of the world, Unite!”
On the second page, you have the title, on the third page (pictured above), you have a transparent protective page.
On the fourth page, there is Chairman Mao’s portrait.
On pages 5 to 8, you have the portraits of the masterminds of communism. Here, Karl Marx.
Engels.
Lenin.
Stalin. All these five portraits used to be displayed on Tian’anmen Square. Now, only Mao’s portrait remains.
On page 9, you have a message written by Mao Zedong. In his spare time, he would enjoy writting calligraphy. The message says: 學習馬列主義 – 毛泽东 (Study Marxist-Leninism – Mao Zedong).
Pages 10 and 11 were mysteriously cut off… on page 12, there is the table of contents.
Another red book. Above, the portrait of Chairman Mao… below… probably another portrait, but it was cut off, again. According to the woman who sold me this book, the portrait below was that of Lin Biao, former number 2 of the Party. Originally, Mao chose Lin Biao as his own successor… until he changed his mind and (allegedly) had him killed in 1971… He then ordered everyone to cut off his portrait from their red book. These books represent an everlasting reminder of the madness that plagued China during the ten years of the Cultural Revolution, when one single man had complete power over the fate of hundreds of millions of people. One man, elevated to the status of God, was worshipped and blindly listened to.
Consulting these books is really fascinating. Not only are they valuable historical documents, they also take you inside a crazy world in a most irrational time of folly and megalomania, where one can witness the creation of some sort of “religion”. A God was created, images of Him were made ubiquituous, His writings were spread all over the country and were compulsory reading for everyone. People would worship Him, listen to Him, follow Him… to death. And then, the God died and unlike other gods or prophets in History, after His death, the religion was ditched, forgotten, and became a symbol of national shame.
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