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| Entrance to Museum. Apartment Complex on HuaShan Road |
The museum was small, charming, and had many layers to it. By displaying the propaganda that engulfed, haunted, inspired China during the 20th century, it managed to show the controversial transformations that Chairman Mao forced onto the Chinese People. The era of Mao was the first time that China was united in over 2,000 years. From what I understand, this group of people shared a common history, a common culture, and a common (written) language. What they lacked was a common vision of what was to become of them as a group of people. Between the British invasions, the Manchus, War Lords of the north, Dragon Lady Empresses, the opium wars, Dr. Sun Yat-sen's attempt to make China a democratic nation, and the showdown between Mao and Kai-shek, the people were living in a country that was changing rapidly. The ability to steer their fate and the fate of their children was out of their hands - and in a constant state of flux. After Mao's Long March, China was finally united once again. A sense of hope swept throughout the country. The events that followed and bled into the Cultural Revolution seems both traumatic yet (sadly) necessary for China to transform itself. In retrospect, it's no wonder why Mao is such a controversial figure. Ask anyone in China today about their opinion of Mao, and you will get anything from strong admiration and loyalty, to anger, to humorous comments. I have yet to run into someone that has a neutral opinion of Mao here in China.
The museum is prefaced with a small introduction: "As Winston S. Churchill famously said, “The Empire of the future will be the empire of the mind.” In the days before CNN and Fox News, a still image truly was worth a thousand words, and these posters were how Mao and his group informed and restored the collective mind of the Chinese people. It is a heroic saga of countless victories over momentous struggle..."
I will be going back a few more times while in Shanghai to learn more. For the sake of the length of this particular blog post, I will focus on the Big Character Posters.
In one portion of the modestly sized museum were Dazibao（大字报), or Big Character Posters. Dazibaos play an important role in Chinese history, as they allow a society that praises reputations and outward appearances to create an anonymous public spectacle of criticisms towards leaders. These posters were some of the most powerful pieces of the Cultural Revolution. They represent the fear, paranoia, and chaos of the time.
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| Dazibao - created by Mao as a weapon to denounce rightist sympathizers. On university campuses, students would paste these large posters to denounce their professors as reactionaries, either because they truly believed in this idea or that they feared being otherwise being called a rightist. |
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| Dazibao represent one of the few effective modes of free speech that voice political concerns in China |
The museum describes the collection as "imaginative creations" and had few links to actual truth. Dazibaos were created by Mao as a weapon in the Cultural Revolution. They were weapon of propaganda, a weapon of the mind.
China is the birthplace of paper, and Mao thought of himself as a calligrapher and fancied poetry. In many ways, he started a revolution with paper and pen. The irony is that by describing the Dazibaos of the Cultural Revolution as pieces of art (rather than historical documents) ethical questions about what art can be used for and what art has the power to do are considered.
Dazibao suddenly disappeared after the Cultural Revolution, as people hated what they stood for, and nobody saw them as having any value as an art form.
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| Big-character posters were used to denounce people as opponents of the Revolution. Mao turned to the medium of the big-character poster in order to express his own revolutionary goals and he encouraged the masses to do the same. |
I didn't hide a GeoCache here, the exhibit is enough of a find.
Here are the coordinates:
31 12'48.37"N, 121 26'20.51"E
