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| The Wall |
Here's what the white characters in the slogan mean:
"Thoroughly criticise the anti-revolutionary revisionist line of Deng Xiaoping".
In the middle, the black characters overwrite the three characters “Deng Xiao Ping”, and they are: "Gang of Four".
A palimpsest of the times.
There's the new characters "Gang of Four", but you can still see the old characters: “Deng Xiaoping".
This captures in one photo the dramatic changes happening in China at the time.
Rewind a little what had happened in the previous few months. At the time I was studying Mandarin at the Peking Languages Institute (PLI), as an Australian diplomat attached to our Embassy, but with special permission to do full time language study.
September 9th 1976: Chairman Mao Tse-tung died.
We were walking along the main shopping street of Wangfujing when the news broke. People all around us suddenly burst out crying. It was kind of surreal. We had no idea what was happening. The Great Leader had died. The Great Helmsman had dropped the helm.
October 6th 1976: The Gang of Four was arrested. They had been in charge of China’s Cultural Revolution.
I was at school, the PLI, when the news trickled out. At first our teachers didn't want to admit it. In retrospect, I think quite a few of our teachers were G-4 sympathisers.
October 21 1976: Began three days of nationwide celebrations for the downfall of the Gang of Four.
We took part in the celebs along the main east-west street, Chang'an Jie in Beijing. Crowds were huge and happy. Jubilant. Drums drumming, gongs gonging.
Fireworks let off everywhere. So many they ran out of fireworks.
Maotai liquor was drunk everywhere. So much they ran out of Maotai.
Celebratory meals were "hairy" crabs, just then in peak season, tied in bundles of four: three male one female, representing the Gang of Four, three leftie dudes led by Jing Qing, aka "Madame Mao" the wife of Mao Tse-tung. And by then a hated ultra-leftie.
The overthrow of the G-4 was a glorious happy exuberant time for China. While — as an aside here — in America today, Democrats fight to install the leftist society China giddily shrugged off fifty years ago. Jiang Qing has been resurrected in male form as Hasan Piker the Maoist Pied Piper leading the rats of the DSA-Dems to perdition. See them side by side:
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| The smug self righteousness etched into both faces. Superimpose the faces and you have another palimpsest. |
July 22 1977: The formal rehabilitation of Deng Xiaoping.
Deng had been overthrown twice before; but he re-arose three times. This latest would be his final, as he ruled China for the rest of his life. But, delightfully, he did so with no formal title except “Chairman of the China Bridge Association”, Deng being a master of the bluff and counter bluff of Contract Bridge. He wasn’t Chairman of the Party, or Premier of the State. He ruled by the force of his personality.
The photo I took at top would have been right about that time. Explaining why the farmers couldn't do a more thorough job, like whitewashing the wall and starting over. Time pressure. You can imagine the local village head on the arrest of the G-4: "What should we do? Repaint the whole thing?". Locals: "No boss, there's no time. And anyway things might change again. Better just paint over Deng". Done.
Deng himself would have approved of such pragmatism….
It was Deng who set China on the path to "Open up and Reform". The "Four Modernisations". The whole panoply of what allowed China get rich. Which was, to be clear, capitalism. As I’ve said often on this blog: in the past 40 years, China has succeeded economically to the exact extent it has allowed the Free Market to flourish. Deng: “To get rich is glorious”. “It doesn’t matter if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice”. “Look to the future”. Which homonym is also “Look to money”.
Deng is the non-Bernie Sanders. Bernie the socialist; Bernie the darling of the Left. That’s not Deng. Dare we suggest Deng was the Trump of the times? Rough, crude, brusque, opinionated. Direct to the point of rudeness. The drainer of the swamp?
When I say Memory-holing "with Chinese characteristics", I'm referring to Winston Smith's job in George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four: which was to get rid of inconvenient facts from the past. To memory-hole them. "With Chinese characteristics" refers to Deng's reference to what they were doing as "Socialism with Chinese characteristics" to make the move to Free Markets more palatable.
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The characters on the wall:
彻底批判邓小平 四人帮反革命修正主义路线
Chèdǐ pīpàn Dèng Xiǎopíng Sìrén Bāng fǎngémìng xiūzhèng zhǔyì lùxiàn
Thoroughly criticize Deng Xiaoping's Gang of Four’s counter-revolutionary revisionist line.
