Mao Zedong

Just some background for those of you who don't quite know about Mao Ze Dong and his Cultural Revolution:

China is a Communist country which means that the gov't controls everything. From what they read and write, to what they know, to where they work, to how much money they make! Now after WWII, a man named Mao Ze Dong was in power and he essentially made China uber-communist. He worked to "socialize" industry and agriculture, or in other words- bring everything under gov't control. In the 1960s Mao worked to transform society. He did this by executing intellectuals, writers, high officials-- all people that would oppose him. He distributed the "Red Book" which was Mao-ism, or basically all of his thoughts and ideas about how China should be. The army was forced to read this and everyone basically looked at it as the Christians would the Bible. Now another thing with Communism is that they are "Atheist" or don't believe in God. (not REALLY, but technically-- the gov't says they are-- so they are) So during this "Cultural Revolution" Mao went around burning all Buddhist and Confucian temples, and a lot of Christian churches. All of this instilled fear, violence, mistrust and basically a pretty bad time.

Now that Mao has been dead since the 70s the people somewhat idolize him and want the country back to the way it was!!



(Caption: a car that drove high government officials around in the Mao-era)

So today we went to a "Mao Era Restaurant" which was just so crazy!! They were all dressed in Mao-era garb, we ate Mao-era food (much blander than today's food), and ate off of Mao-era plates! (Man-look at that rust!!)(The beer was even Mao-era beer!!) We had SOOO much food (some was blech!) but it was crazy how they just kept putting plate after plate after plate onto the turntable. They had crawfish, which I have never had so don't know what really to expect, but they reminded me of my Scampi adventure in Italy- blech! (I did not touch them, just to let you know)

Evidently the place was a REAL nice dinner establishment where the Chinese "Go Out for the Evening" and get dressed up and all. It's a dinner-theater where the servers put on dances and sing songs (which they are all REAL good singers, btw.. even though we had NO CLUE what they were singing, lol) from the Mao-era. People from the audience get up and dance with them and then when they are all done with the show audience members get up and do karaoke. All of us Americans got onto the stage for the finale and got our picture taken and it was HI-larious the amount of Chinese audience members that were taking our pictures! They are really fascinated by white people, it's funny. It's not un-common to be stared at, talked about, checked out... (esp. those of us with blonde hair!) So needless to say, a bunch of white Americans on stage was just so surreal to them.

What's even more interesting was that everyone seemed to be rather serious and sentimental about this Mao-era time machine. None of the workers were alive during that time period but it's crazy to see that they are clueless as to what it was like back then. In America, we have freedom of speech and knowledge everywhere but here there is none of that. Individuals are not taught freedom of speech or thought and they just don't talk about politics b.c. it's too risky. We spoke with our guide "Sebastian" about the Cultural Revolution and Tiananman Square and his remarks were rather interesting. He said that he knew there were tanks there but that was it. He heard a "lie" about how a person was standing in front of the tanks and about how people were killed but he doesn't think any of that is true!!! Now this is a VERY educated Chinese man that has numerous degrees and speaks fairly good English and it's just shocking to me the amount he has been brainwashed. To not have books available to you unless they have the communist propaganda in them is just so foreign. (Which, btw, in addition to the library segment from earlier: China did not have even ONE public library until 10 years ago!!! When they did come about they were what I described and the one here at the University is the ONLY ONE in the ENTIRE country where you can look at the books!!)

So there's your info for today and I'm off to my rock bed.
Wan-an!