The Dear Leader Is Dead, Again
By WENGUANG HUANG, Published: December 24,
2011
Chicago
WATCHING the outpouring of grief over Kim
Jong-il’s death in Pyongyang, North Korea, on YouTube transported me back to
China in September 1976, when Mao Zedong, whom we revered as the Great Leader, died.
I was a middle-school student in the
central city of Xian. That day, my head teacher interrupted our math class and
announced the news with tears. A young and impressionable student, I was
overwhelmed in a way I could not understand, as if life itself had been
overturned. How could it be possible? Mao was like an immortal to us. The first
words that I had learned in elementary school were “Ten Thousand Years to
Chairman Mao.”
While Western children sang carols and
hymns on Christmas, we celebrated Chairman Mao’s birthday on Dec. 26 with songs
like “Chairman Mao Is Our Savior.” My father used to point at Chairman Mao’s
portrait on our living room wall and explain how his physiognomy set him apart.
“Look at his big forehead, such a sign of greatness. His face and eyes exude
kindness. He’s no ordinary person. He is heaven-sent.”
At the end of her announcement, my teacher
began to wail, as did many of the girls in our classroom. We boys didn’t know
what to do, but, worried that people might think we didn’t love Chairman Mao
enough, we tried to squeeze out some tears. But it was hard because, as large
as Mao was, we really didn’t know him.
So I began to think of my grandma, who was
sick at home. If Chairman Mao could drop dead like this, so could she. My tears
became real. Soon, I worked myself into such a frenzy of emotion that I
fainted. A school nurse was called to treat me. All of my teachers were
impressed by the depth of my grief over Chairman Mao. “I don’t know what will
happen to us without Chairman Mao,” our head teacher sobbed while consoling me.
I could tell her tears were genuine.
The school handed out black armbands and
white flowers. Nobody dared laugh or joke. Wherever we went, there were portraits
of Mao, draped in black and surrounded by white paper wreaths. Thousands of
residents, organized by their work units, showed up at the People’s Square in
downtown Xian. They quietly knelt in front of Chairman Mao’s portraits first.
Then, someone started weeping. Soon, the whole group turned hysterical, beating
their chests, screaming and howling, as if they were in a wailing competition.
In a sense, they were competing to
see who was more loyal to Chairman Mao. Big posters went up wherever
there was enough space for them: “The spirit of Chairman Mao will stay with us
forever” or “Eternal glory to the Great Leader and Teacher Mao Zedong.” All
entertainment in the city was banned. All day long, loudspeakers broadcast the
same loop of mournful music. In our school, each class selected four students
to stand around a makeshift Mao altar in four-hour shifts. I felt it a
tremendous honor when I was chosen.
In a culture that frowned upon open
displays of emotion at home or in public as frivolous, funerals provided a rare
exception. In fact, the louder one’s wailing and the more dramatically you
conducted yourself — chest and feet stomping and thrusting oneself toward the
casket — the more respect you gained. It showed your deep love for the
deceased.
In the case of Chairman Mao, dramatic
displays of grief were a political necessity. At my father’s company, the
president and other officials drank liquor while preparing for Mao’s memorial
services late one night. Some passing workers reported the incident to the local
public security bureau, accusing the company president of lacking revolutionary
feelings for Chairman Mao and taking pleasure in a national catastrophe.
Subsequently, he was placed under investigation and forced to make one
“self-criticism” after another at staff meetings.
Looking back, it was ironic that Mao had
spent his whole life preaching that humans were mortals and that there was no
spirit left after death, yet in death, his designated successor elevated him to
a godlike status, an immortal like the great emperors of China who presided
over dynasties.
On the day of Mao’s memorial service in
Beijing, there was pouring rain. “The heavenly God is shedding tears for
Chairman Mao,” my teacher said somberly. “It always happened in the past when
an emperor died.” We children were too young to share her sentiments. While
listening to the live radio broadcast of the memorial service, a classmate of
mine farted. We all started giggling. The student eventually was spared
expulsion after his mother, a head nurse at a hospital, presented medical
records to show he had a digestive disorder.
Following Mao’s death, many scholars
secretly predicted that China would follow the path of the Soviet Union, which
experienced a political thaw after Stalin’s death. The predictions proved to be
true. Hua Guofeng, whom Mao had designated as the
country’s new leader, was a relatively unknown figure. The state media
fabricated his credentials and lavished praise on him. The country
addressed Hua as the “Wise Leader" and was urged to pledge loyalty
to him. However, his lack of political experience soon fueled a power
struggle, which eventually enabled the
moderate factions within the Communist Party and military to triumph over the radical Mao loyalists,
including Mao’s wife, Jiang Qing. Thus, China opened its door.
We cautiously looked at the world,
realizing that what we had been taught to believe was the greatest socialist
country in the world was actually one of the poorest countries in the
world. We studied the newly leaked information from our historical archives
and learned our saintly leader was actually a brutal dictator who
was responsible for the deaths of millions of people in his political
campaigns.
Like the antique treasures excavated from
the emperor’s tomb in my hometown, Mao’s
personality cult crumbled when meeting the fresh air. His omnipresent
statues were torn down and the billions of lapel pins that bore his image were
melted to make cooking utensils. At the moment, even though the current
leadership in China still venerates Mao and some people hang his picture in
cabs, or plaster it on the walls of businesses as if he were a patron saint for
the whole country, the Mao era has long ended.
Thirty-five years have passed, and it is
sickening to see the echoes of Mao’s tyranny still being played out in North
Korea. In the TV footage, I found many younger versions of myself among a group
of schoolboys in front of a Kim Jong-il statue. Several were covering their
faces, trying to force out a tear. They knew that if they didn’t, they or their
families could be denounced.
I also saw the likenesses of my parents and
my teachers — some were truly saddened at the loss of a demigod, while others
resorted to funeral histrionics out of fear.
At this moment, all one can hope for North
Korea, it seems, is that the transformation
that swept over China after Mao’s demise might also take hold in
this hermit kingdom that is so punishing to its people.
Kim Jong-il’s death and the ascension of
his son Kim Jong-un, a young leader who has no political legitimacy, might
provide a rare opportunity for the reform-minded leaders to follow the examples of Deng Xiaoping,
Nikita S. Khrushchev and Mikhail S. Gorbachev, and open up the country
to the outside world, allowing economic reforms, which have already been
initiated grudgingly in the border regions with China, to blossom further.
Could it also be possible that Kim Jong-un,
educated in the West, might consolidate his power with the help of loyal
supporters and drastically change his father’s radical domestic and
international policies, which have dragged the country down into total misery?
If he instead continues with brutal rule, it won’t surprise me if, in a few
years, he and his family stand trial, as so many other dictators in the world
have.
It is often hard to remember how insane the
1970s were, but China, for all its faults now, did emerge from the shadow of
Mao’s death. I’m optimistic that a North Korean Spring or Soviet-style glasnost
will come soon, and that the organized public wailing and chest-beating over
the death of a villain will forever be relegated to history.
Wenguang Huang, a writer and translator,
is the author of the forthcoming “The Little Red Guard: A Family Memoir.”
