Chapter 27 Chapter 5 Aftermath: The Collapse of American Optimism

The book "China's Shadow" is a wonderful essay.After the book was published in 1974, it ended France's annoyance with Mao.The author, Simon Reis, whose real name is Pierre Rickmans, is a Belgian art historian who has published several books on China, including Su Renshan: The Rebellious Painter and the Madman", a collection of words and "Sun Tzu's Art of War" translated from Chinese classics into French, and he also added annotations to the French version of "Sun Tzu's Art of War".Reis visited China for the first time in 1955 and married a Chinese woman (to whom he dedicated his book), so he knew Chinese life very well.Reis lived in Hong Kong for another five years. His book "Chairman Mao's New Clothes" published in 1971 ruthlessly exposed the brutal attack on Chinese cultural heritage by the "Cultural Revolution".This is the most ruthless exposure of the "Cultural Revolution" by a sinologist.

In 1972, Reis stayed in China for six months. He lived in the Beijing Hotel and visited various provinces seven times.He visited many cities and some tourist spots near Beijing, the ancient capitals of Luoyang and Xi'an, irrigation projects in Lin County, Henan, the Dazhai Brigade in Shanxi, the birthplace of Mao in Hunan, and Suzhou and Hangzhou near Shanghai. The main part of the book "China's Shadow" was written in 1972 and 1973. In 1973, Reis went to China again, but his stay was very short. Since 1976, he has added some annotations to this book.Reis, therefore, saw in China something comparable to what most observers saw, but he far surpassed them in both knowledge and presentation.

Mao's economic policies had long been dissected in dissection; the Soviets were still outraged by Mao's political policies, and they disapproved of teenage Red Guards bashing party bureaucrats.But of all the eggs Mao broke for his revolutionary omelet, it was the fate of Chinese culture and intellectuals that concerned the Western public most. China's Shadow denounced Mao's Cultural Revolution for attacking culture and intellectuals.Thus, the book reveals the gap between Western liberals and Maoist bureaucrats.Given that neither of these two types of people will disappear from the face of the earth, the difference between them deserves our attention.First, their views on the role of academics are diametrically opposed.For 1,300 years before 1905, Chinese scholars competed in the intricate imperial examination system, practiced self-education, and became tame tools of the government.A modern intellectual community consisting of critics, reformers, and revolutionaries did not emerge in China until this century.As a peasant organizer, Mao never admired or trusted the independent thought and independent spirit of these intellectuals.In his view, they still displayed the arrogance characteristic of the ancient scholar-bureaucratic ruling class.Mao got along very well with the peasants in the countryside, which made him opposed both intellectuals and beautiful things.Like many neurotic, power-obsessed emperors, Mao dismissed writers and artists as worthless.His wife, Jiang Qing, did the same before she was imprisoned.

Simon Reis, like most foreigners who study China, was first fascinated by the charm of Chinese culture, then fell in love with the beauty of Chinese culture, and finally became more and more appreciative of Chinese culture, and felt that he had become Fill up.Such an experience must have given these foreigners a sense of belonging.Although their contact with China is superficial and limited, it is important in everyone's life.They sympathize with their Chinese counterparts, hate the destruction of art and culture by the Chinese bureaucracy, and sometimes make Western-style criticisms of China, believing that Chinese politics itself is a betrayal and contempt for the government.

Reiss' "China's Shadow" began by criticizing China's tourism industry, including restricting tourism to only a dozen cities, allowing tourists to live in high-end hotels, taking cars, and "developing friendship among peoples" without allowing personal friendship among others. "Foreigners can only see about 800 million people..., and these people's jobs are to receive foreigners." He believes that the privileges enjoyed by foreigners isolate them from the Chinese, and he calls these privileges "The Shameful Legacy of the Old Age of Imperialism-Colonialism".He scoffs at the "tame visitors" who never ride a bus with a Chinese or eat noodles at a street stall.They "follow the circumstances, live in dark palaces, isolate themselves from the world, and pay no attention to the voices and smiles of the Chinese people."Since these "tourists don't know anything about China, they are therefore not surprised by anything", even the long-time second-in-command (Liu Shaoqi) suddenly became a traitor, and Mao's long-time confidential secretary (Chen Boda) turned out to be a liar Nor was it surprising that Mao's second designated successor and "close comrade-in-arms" (Lin Biao) unexpectedly attempted to murder Mao.Reiss also writes about foreigners who have been shunned, including journalists who have been harassed as spies and diplomats who are concentrated in Beijing. "Tourists... don't realize that they are being moved around in cages; while residents who have to stay in Beijing have plenty of time to count all the bars on the cage."

Other chapters of the book discuss the superficiality of these organized tours, attacking fake heroes and thinking along party lines, before discussing class struggle, bureaucracy and the state of the university.Reis traveled around China after the Cultural Revolution and was extremely sensitive to the trauma left by the Cultural Revolution.He often quotes Lu Xun, the great Chinese essayist of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as George Orwell.He saw totalitarian behavior in the People’s Republic—“the cancer of Maoism . . . eroding the face of China . During the time, they received traditional training, learned to provoke trouble, and legalized violence and hatred against others. They witnessed teenagers robbing, taking revenge, beating and scolding their elders every day under the pretext of 'class struggle'. Insulting; they had to attend, and even actively speak out at, meetings where they openly criticized their neighbors, friends, colleagues, and parents.  …This struggle against intelligence nearly led to the extinction of critical intellectuals in China".

With Beijing losing its walls, gates and archways along its main streets, it became, in Reiss' eyes, "a strangled city, a disfigured ghost. But it was once one of the most beautiful cities in the world." .At the same time, China sent "cultural relics" unearthed during the Cultural Revolution to foreign exhibitions in order to conceal the destruction of ancient temples and other monuments from the outside world. In fact, in addition to important cities, one or two such Other similar buildings were destroyed for people to visit.Mao was a peasant and disliked intellectuals, which shut down China's higher education institutions for about five years (certainly a record in the modern world).Professors were harassed, vilified, and punished with manual labor.But the proletarians who replaced these professors had nothing to teach the students.Thus, 9 out of 10 teaching staff returned to their posts after receiving manual labor re-education, but they had little prestige among the students.At the same time, except for Mao's works, publications of books and magazines ceased. "All pre-Cultural Revolution movies, plays, operas, etc. were banned....Many writers, artists and intellectuals committed suicide." After these excesses, recovery was extremely slow, "Chinese people still yearn for culture Life".In this way, "China's Shadow" explains the people's heartfelt joy after the fall of Mao's followers, the "Gang of Four" in October 1976.

In explaining this anti-intellectual approach, Reis uses the tragic phrases used by Orwell and Lu Xun.He believed that the Qing inherited the "single orthodoxy" of the Ming's autocratic rule.Some historians have gone further, arguing that China's earlier liberal cultural development was "derailed" from the time the Mongols conquered China.In any case, the Cultural Revolution was more important than Mao, and the atrocities in the Cultural Revolution were to be blamed on hundreds of years of accumulated peasant hatred of the ruling class.Once the peasants took power in this closed society, they could only implement the bureaucracy that their previous class enemies had implemented, thus becoming a new ruling class.Indeed, Mao's Cultural Revolution specifically targeted the old ideas, old habits, and old customs of the old ruling class.Mao's creed of using politics to control literature and art came directly from the eighteenth-century Emperor Qianlong, who had many literati and scholars who criticized the court punished.This suggests that if China wants to eliminate bureaucracy (and corruption when morale is low), it will depend in part on continued engagement with the outside world (which has worked in the past to dismantle the old ruling class ), creating an intellectual community of independent entrepreneurs, industrialists, journalists, writers, artists, scientists and university professors.Of course, such contacts are now being carried out on a large scale.It must be noted, however, that "Shadows of China" makes almost no mention of the material achievements of the People's Republic, which undermines Reis' argument.In fact, the People's Republic rebuilt China, including planting trees, building dams, canals, motorized wells and fertile fields, growing crops and setting up factories.It also reorganized society by making its members learn culture, organize to learn technology, teach hygiene, get involved in politics, patriotism, hard work, cooperation and self-esteem.If Zhou Enlai was still alive, he might have explained to foreigners that the revolution has twists and turns.He is by no means pessimistic, and neither should we.China is not Russia, on the contrary, it is deeply rooted in China's so-called Legalist intellectual tradition, which Mao took advantage of.Perhaps Reis can see today that the Confucian tradition of self-cultivation can still create a better future for China.

This review is "China's Shadow" by Simon Reiss (New York, Viking Press, 1977), published in the New York Times Book Review on August 28, 1977, entitled "Mao Wars Culture ".