I really enjoyed the opening ceremonies for the Beijing Olympics tonight, except for the commentators. A lot less of them would have been nice. And I heard two *odd* choices of words that particularly fed into my worries for these olympics (see http://politicalhousewyf.wordpress.com/2008/08/08/the-beijing-olympics-why-i-worry/ ).
The first was in the grandiose opening to the programming, all about the wonders of sport and the possibilities of peace through the olympic tradition. (What is it with some athletes that makes them think they’re God’s gift to the planet?) “This will be a great leap forward, not just for China, but for the world…” went one line, as best I remember it (emphasis in the original narration).
I stopped and stared at the TV. “Tell me they didn’t just use that line,” I asked my husband.
“Nope, they went there…” he confirmed, also staring at the TV in surprise.
“The Great Leap Forward” (1958-60) attempted to thrust China into the modern world. Since industry was key to modernity, farmers (with no experience or expert help) were ordered to mine ores and set up thousands of furnaces in the countryside. They produced only useless lumps of iron, not the necessary steel, and massive famines ensued because of the diversion of farm labor. At the same time, the farms were collectivized, to the point of communal kitchens and communal child rearing, with further disastrous effects on harvests. Estimates of the death toll range from 14 to 43 million people in only a few years.
Even China’s government, not prone to admitting communist mistakes, has stated the obvious: the “Great Leap Forward” was an absolute disaster.
And here comes NBC using it as an evocative phrase in the Olympic opening. Maybe some script writer remembered the phrase vaguely from high school history (but had forgotten what it meant) and thought it would sound good. You know, a nice nod to Chinese history…
Then, during Tom Brokaw’s relatively balanced piece, he said something to the effect of, “And so, the long march of China’s work towards these Games…”
Again, the phrase “the long march” is not a neutral phrase in China. The Long March is the name of Mao’s fighting retreat from Chiang Kai-Shek’s nationalist (government) forces during China’s civil war. During the Long March, the communists wore down the government’s forces and managed not to be completely annihilated, which was something of a victory. The Long March forms a critical part of the heroic mythology of Mao, which would propel him to heights of adulation. How could you question the hero of the Long March? You couldn’t. It cemented Mao’s power. Mao would become the man responsible for launching the Cultural Revolution in 1966, to try to eradicate the intellectuals and other elites that Mao blamed for “sabotaging” the new communist China.
During the Cultural Revolution, everything old became evil, a symbol of the old repression before communism. The Beijing city wall was almost completely destroyed, stone by stone. Monuments and artifacts were smashed or burned, scholars were mocked and exiled to the edge of the desert, and anyone with traditional art or craft knowledge was under threat. Believers of all religions were severely persecuted as another hinderance to proper communism. Millions of Chinese were relocated, sent to “re-education” prison camps, beaten by the Red Guards, killed, or driven to suicide, all for the crime of being deemed an obstacle to the proper formation of the new China Mao was creating.
One documentary I saw interviewed a man who was the descendant of dozens of generations of bow makers who had supplied the emperors. When Mao’s “Great Leap Forward” began, his family’s shop was ransacked by a zealous mob led by the Red Guard. The family managed to hide one bow by breaking it in half and stashing it in a woodpile. If they had been turned in by a neighbor, the whole family could’ve been arrested and likely executed for keeping the bow. Decades later, with the danger finally past, the man learned from his father how to make the bows and now continues this historic art form.
Mao himself is no longer universally adored. His mausoleum still garners lines of visitors, but our guide in Beijing sort of sheepishly explained, “The older people still admire him, but the younger ones…” and she shrugged dismissively. China’s communist party decries the “excesses” of Chairman Mao’s time in office (chalking the problems up to the “cult of personality” around Mao) and is now going to great lengths to preserve the cultural relics and traditions China has left.
Today, China’s communist party views the result of the Long March (excessive hero-worship of Mao and the ensuing Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution) as horrible disasters for China.
So why reference the Great Leap Forward and the Long March in the opening minutes of the Olympic coverage? And in a positive context? I suspect it’s ignorance of the human suffering behind those innocuous phrases… which does not bode well for our understanding of the human suffering behind the policies of today’s communist party, which lacks Mao’s charisma but not his crushing and deadly ruthlessness towards anyone who would upset China’s “harmony”.
