Life and Death of Zhou Enlai
Jan Wong wrote in Red China Blues that with the death of Zhou Enlai (周恩来), many Chinese felt that they had lost their last voice of reason in the government.
She noted: "Of the top communist leaders, only Zhou had tried to mitigate the suffering of the Cultural Revolution, to stem some of the madness, and to protect some of his old comrades from Mao's wrath."
Wong added that although Zhou was a yes-man who never crossed Mao, many Chinese loved Zhou because he was "the best of the lot." But what the Chinese didn't know was that Zhou was so politically weak that he had failed to save his own adopted daughter, who was tortured to death in prison in 1968.
On the day of Zhou's funeral, Madam Mao was said to have scandalized every one by wearing a bright red sweater which could be seen under her black tunic!
Wong who was in Beijing in the aftermath of Zhou death said she had not realized she was witnessing the first spontaneous anti-government protest in communist Chinese history.
She wrote: "By commemorating Zhou, the Chinese people were indirectly expressing their anger at Mao and the Gang of Four. Under a dictatorship, commemorating a dead communist premier was the safest, and perhaps only way, to stage a protest."
As ancient poems were recited and circulated during the commemoration, Wong said she could not figure out "why thousands of perfectly normal people had developed a sudden passion for melodramatic Chinese poetry."
She added: "I did not understand that Empress Wu and the first Qin emperor were surrogates for Madam Mao and Mao himself, and that the poets were using the hoary Chinese technique of using the past to attack the present."
Wong observed that it is "eerie" to see how closely the 1976 Tiananmen incident foreshadowed the Tiananmen massacre 13 years later.
"Both protests began as disguised mourning for a senior communist official. Both crackdowns coincided with purges at the top. Both times, the victims were labelled counter-revolutionary, and the death toll was a state secret. The only difference was that in 1976, Deng was the victim. In 1989, he gave the order to shoot and kill."
She noted: "Of the top communist leaders, only Zhou had tried to mitigate the suffering of the Cultural Revolution, to stem some of the madness, and to protect some of his old comrades from Mao's wrath."
Wong added that although Zhou was a yes-man who never crossed Mao, many Chinese loved Zhou because he was "the best of the lot." But what the Chinese didn't know was that Zhou was so politically weak that he had failed to save his own adopted daughter, who was tortured to death in prison in 1968.
On the day of Zhou's funeral, Madam Mao was said to have scandalized every one by wearing a bright red sweater which could be seen under her black tunic!
Wong who was in Beijing in the aftermath of Zhou death said she had not realized she was witnessing the first spontaneous anti-government protest in communist Chinese history.
She wrote: "By commemorating Zhou, the Chinese people were indirectly expressing their anger at Mao and the Gang of Four. Under a dictatorship, commemorating a dead communist premier was the safest, and perhaps only way, to stage a protest."
As ancient poems were recited and circulated during the commemoration, Wong said she could not figure out "why thousands of perfectly normal people had developed a sudden passion for melodramatic Chinese poetry."
She added: "I did not understand that Empress Wu and the first Qin emperor were surrogates for Madam Mao and Mao himself, and that the poets were using the hoary Chinese technique of using the past to attack the present."
Wong observed that it is "eerie" to see how closely the 1976 Tiananmen incident foreshadowed the Tiananmen massacre 13 years later.
"Both protests began as disguised mourning for a senior communist official. Both crackdowns coincided with purges at the top. Both times, the victims were labelled counter-revolutionary, and the death toll was a state secret. The only difference was that in 1976, Deng was the victim. In 1989, he gave the order to shoot and kill."
posted by Maria Siow @ 12:11 AM
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