The Fallen God: Mao - Ananth Krishnan in
The HinduExcerpts
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Yuelu is the first stop on what has now unofficially become the Mao Pilgrimage Tour. The second stop is Shaoshan, his birthplace
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Shaoshan's main square is, however, the main draw for visitors. A towering Mao statue, one of the largest in China, casts a shadow over the main square. The devotees — there is no more apt description — walk around the statue slowly, their heads respectfully lowered. They circle the statue four times, before kneeling down in front of it. As they place a wreath at Mao's feet, some utter prayers. Many are moved to tears.
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There are two aspects to this devotion, says Chen Yuxiang, who is a professor at the Marxism School of Hunan University, whose campus today houses the Yuelu Academy. The first, he says, is the pervasive belief of most Chinese today that Mao was a great man, despite an awareness of all his flaws, from the 1958 Great Leap Forward and subsequent famine, which claimed the lives of an estimated 30 million Chinese, to the devastating Cultural Revolution (1966-76). Government propaganda, which emphasises Mao's achievements as the People's Republic's founding father while downplaying his mistakes, has contributed to this perception.
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The second reason, Professor Chen says, is a calculated commercial attempt to build a “Red tourism” industry. Last year, more than five million visitors descended on Shaoshan. Part of the tourism effort has been to create an image of Shaoshan as an almost mystical place of pilgrimage. One popular story that locals like to tell visitors is when the Mao statue was unveiled in 1996, both the Sun and the Moon rose together. Others say this town of green fields and lakes, which is surrounded by mountains, has the best feng shui in all of China, which passes positive energy to visitors.
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One young Changsha girl, who works in the town's booming entertainment industry and carries a Louis Vuitton bag, said she had visited Shaoshan on three occasions. On each trip, she made a sizeable donation. She said her prayers “always came true”. “In the 20th century Mao in China was treated no different as a God,” Professor Chen told me.“In China now, many people have no belief so they need to have some source of spiritual support. In part it is the belief Mao was a great man. But encouraging Mao as a god is also a way to earn money.”
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Earlier this year, a leading Chinese economist, Mao Yushi, triggered heated debate when he penned an article flaying Mao's legacy. “In Mao Zedong's eyes, the people were just meat and muscle,” he wrote. “They were tools he used to shout ‘Long Live'. His thirst for power dominated his life, and to this end, he went entirely mad.” Such explicit criticisms are rarely voiced in China, in spite of a consensus among historians of Mao's direct responsibility for both the calamitous Great Leap Forward and the cruelties of the Cultural Revolution, even as the CPC continues to officially largely blame Mao's associates for the disasters.
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The article was taken down by censors, but not before it unleashed a storm of controversy. Nationalists and the “New Left” lambasted Mao Yushi. Some called for his arrest, and others threatened violence. What was remarkable was that a number of liberal intellectuals openly came to his defence. I visited Mao Yushi, now 82, in his modest west Beijing apartment and asked him why he wrote that essay. “My view,” he said, “is that the legitimacy of the CPC comes from success in conducting reform and opening up, and not because of Mao.”
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“The fact is in the last 50 years, we have had many problems because of Mao Zedong Thought,” Professor Chen told me when I asked him about the temple. “Mao believed we needed violent revolution for independence. The main problem was that after the PRC was founded, we continued to use violent revolutionary ways to solve all problems. This has been his biggest negative influence.”
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