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Relic of an earlier time

kc430kc430 (81 posts) • 0

The entrance to Beijing's Forbidden City sports a large portrait of Mao Zedong and these grand Chinese characters:

Long live the People's Republic of China! (中华人民共和国万岁)

Long live the great unity of the people of the world! (世界人民大团结万岁)

Which serves as introduction to what I saw recently in a small town in western Guizhou Province:

Long live Chairman Mao! (毛主席万岁)

The characters, faded and in poor repair, measured about a meter high and appeared on the wall of an old building located in a side alley. Many people could see the slogan as they walked to nearby shops and vendor stalls.

This slogan, as a written public expression in present-day China, I

suspect is quite the rarity. My Chinese relatives told me the characters were likely applied during the Cultural Revolution, a relic of that era which has never been taken down.

GoK Moderator (5096 posts) • 0

There are some in my wife's small hometown too, also down back alleys. A lot of larger buildings (mostly larger houses at that time) were taken over by the party for party offices. The slogans followed.

My wife's hometown is not wealthy and people will not have wasted money repainting the houses. It might be worth taking a photo, as many of these building (cw slogans) have already been lost through urban redevelopment.

kc430kc430 (81 posts) • 0

These slogans are more common than I thought. Just discovered several more at Tuanshan Historical Village in Yunnan's own Jianshui (建水). The Qing dynasty era village is undergoing active reconstruction.

Wonder if the slogans will survive.

"Wish long life for Chairman Mao!" (祝毛主席万寿无疆). Those are simplified characters, but several are actually written in traditional form.

imgur.com/DtEmtyc

"Forge valiantly ahead holding high the great red flag of Chairman Mao's thoughts!" (高举毛泽东思想伟大红旗奋勇前进)

imgur.com/a/hXblS

JanJal (1243 posts) • 0

Just to bring the other side of the coin in the mix:

In remote parts of Changning, Baoshan, my wife pointed me to a place now overgrown, explaining that there used to be a house which was burned down because the family chose to not follow the calling of these slogans, so to speak.

She couldn't say whether the family survived elsewhere. Herself, she carries such slogan to grave as part of characters that form her given name ().

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