americanrepertorytheater.org 2011/2012 SEASON


some sixteen million young people were rusticated for up to a decade. For the remainder of the revolution, no political or economic vision for China got the clear upper hand. Mao could not remake the Party to fit his vision of socialism, but the Party could not do without Mao. So while Mao succeeded in temporarily marginalizing key opponents like Deng Xiaoping, the pragmatists, professionals, and elites remained stronger in the CCP overall. The Cultural Revolution finally drew to a close with the 1976 death of Mao and arrest of the Gang of Four.


CONTESTED LEGACIES The Cultural Revolution sanctioned the destruction


of “class enemies” and of Chinese culture on an epic scale. Millions of people—including many thousands of Party members—were tortured, imprisoned, or exiled to the countryside. Unknown numbers were killed or driven to suicide. In a reversal of filial norms, Red Guards attacked educators, intellectuals, and their own parents. Students zealously destroyed thousands of historical and religious buildings and countless artifacts across China, while Party higher-ups defined art and literature as weapons of class struggle. As a horrified world listened to xenophobic sloganeering, China’s foreign relations deteriorated. To view the Cultural Revolution as sheerly destructive,


however, is to dismiss the perspectives of many millions within China who benefited from its changes. Alongside “scar literature” and memoirs like Wild Swans is testimony from former Red Guards thrilled with the new powers and freedoms they gained. For many, the revolution provided their first chance to travel and become politically active. Many peasants valued the expanded health care and educational services made possible by the new “barefoot” village doctors and urban youth who served as teachers. Workers made gains such as higher pay and greater political representation, though many such changes ended even before the revolution did. Millions of girls and women, especially in urban areas, benefited from the expansion of roles opened to them as comrades building a new China. For all the sufferers who felt relief at Mao’s death, there were those incredulous that their idol could die. In the end, the Cultural Revolution prompted a steady shift away from Maoist policies and a welcoming of Deng and other reformers back to leadership roles. Nostalgia for Mao hasn’t disappeared, but since 1978 the party-state apparatus has set its course firmly in the direction of economic growth, ideological dampening, and re-engagement with the outside world. Old and new cultural ways now either coexist or contend for adherents in a more modern fashion.


MEMORY AND THE CULTURAL


REVOLUTION Officially, the CCP has condemned the Cultural Revolution, laying blame for it squarely on Mao. Simultaneously, the government has taken steps to prevent discussion and academic exploration of the decade, keeping documents classified and limiting what the press can report. Many in power act as if the Cultural Revolution were irrelevant, aberrant,


7


or embarrassing: a more proper focus is what China has achieved since 1978.


This approach largely denies the possibility of learning from these cataclysmic years. So works like Wild Swans are all the more important: they motivate us to care how individuals fare when ideology, fear, and youthful militancy dominate. They prompt us to explore critical questions about power, culture, and human psychology. And they allow us to connect past and present in China, for it was the backlash against the chaos of the Cultural Revolution that set the stage for both China’s dramatic economic gains and deep concern with political stability in the late twentieth century. All who seek to explain China’s rise—including increasing numbers of U.S. educators who now teach about the country—need to understand how in 1966 Mao took China down a diametrically different path.


Deborah Cunningham, PhD, is lead editor of China in the World: A History Since 1644 (forthcoming revised edition, Cheng and Tsui). She is Senior


Program Director at Primary Source, a nonprofit that supports teachers in globalizing curriculum at the K-12 level (www.primarysource.org)


MAO TSE TUNG, 1966.


Wild Swans


FUTURITY


Woody Sez


PHOTO: ASSOCIATED PRESS


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