European Socialism and Communism by Communist Research Cluster

Keystone/Getty Imagesįor Chinese people, Tiananmen Square is their history. His followers wave their “Little Red Books” as he passes. Mao is seen at a Red Guard rally in Tiananmen Square in 1966. Mao is seen at a Red Guard rally in Tiananmen Square in 1966 Sometimes they included the terrible famine just past in their list of miseries, but officials would quickly set them straight, reminding them that Past Bitterness meant the years before the Party came to power. So the grand museums were erected, and workers and peasants were encouraged to dwell on long-gone injustices in rituals of “recalling past bitterness and cherishing present happiness.” The people were still developing their political consciousness. It had established already that its rule depended not only on the promise of a better future, but also on a shared understanding of that pledge’s contrast with former misery. The Great Hall of the People and what were then the twin Museums of the Chinese Revolution and Chinese History were completed in the same year, 1959, as part of a monumental building program marking the Party’s tenth year in power. Under Mao its size was quadrupled to 400,000 square meters, making it the world’s largest city square. The square lies in front of the Forbidden City, home of the emperors, on Beijing’s north-south central axis. Most assume that the picture will hang there as long as the Party hangs on to power, so symbolic that the leadership would never dare remove it.įor centuries, this part of the city has been the political heart of the nation. Come what may, Mao continues to surveil his successors and his country.

At least one spare is kept at the ready in case it is damaged, as in 1989, when dissidents pelted it with eggs (and paid with years in prison). Now it is replaced with an identical version each year, just before October’s National Day celebrations. The picture morphed through a few incarnations before Mao approved its final template at the height of the Cultural Revolution.

It stands in Tiananmen Square, directly opposite the Great Hall of the People, where grand political ceremonies are held across the way hangs the portrait of late Chinese leader Mao Zedong, stretching 4.5 by 6 meters and reputedly 1.5 tons in weight.

Its current narrative is enshrined in the National Museum of China. This article is adapted from Red Memory: The Afterlives of China’s Cultural Revolution by Tania Branigan (W.W.

European Socialism and Communism by Communist Research Cluster