Ironically, it was the senior Tang who had struck on the idea to produce an easy-to-read collection of Chairman Mao Zedong’s sayings, which the youthful Red Guards wielded as they abused and humiliated those deemed to be political or “class” enemies.
Mao initiated the Cultural Revolution to assert control over the Communist Party, attacking elitism by targeting intellectuals, scholars, cultural figures, and those accused of clinging to traditional ways.
The Little Red Book, officially titled Quotations From Chairman Mao, was a collection of more than 400 aphorisms on everything from class struggle to revolution and power. It was a political weapon used against millions in the chaos and turmoil of the Cultural Revolution that did not end until his death in 1976.
Tang Pingzhu steered the project to produce the pocket-sized book with its distinctive red plastic cover while he was a founding member and deputy editor-in-chief of China’s military mouthpiece PLA Daily.
Five decades on, his son, Tang Yaming, has written a book on the history of the Little Red Book, detailing its making, the power struggles during the Mao era and the suffering the family endured during the turbulent decade.
On a visit to Hong Kong last month, he lamented that his 437-page book, The Birth of Mao’s Quotations and More: Tang Pingzhu’s Records of the Cultural Revolution, could only be published in the city because of censorship on the mainland.
“The Cultural Revolution took place on the mainland, but the study of the Cultural Revolution can only take place in Hong Kong,” said Tang Yaming, who has lived in Japan since the 1980s, working as an editor of illustrated children’s books.
He said his father hit on the idea for the Little Red Book, which was published in 1964, to help military and communist cadres understand Mao’s political beliefs.
Mao Zedong’s ‘little red book’ gets modern twist with mobile app for studying ‘Xi Jinping Thought’
At the time, Lin Biao – Mao’s enigmatic heir apparent who was later branded a traitor – had initiated a military-wide campaign to study the chairman’s thoughts that had been compiled in The Selected Works of Mao Zedong.
On a visit to the Tianjin Daily, Tang Pingzhu saw that short quotations from the selected works had been extracted and reproduced on cards categorised by subject, making them easy to find and read.
“He immediately said, ‘This is a very effective way to publish Chairman Mao’s quotes. We need to make a copy of all the cards here’,” Tang Yaming writes in his new book.
The PLA Daily editors went on to select about 400 quotes for the compilation, including lines such as:
“The Chinese Communist Party is the core of leadership of the whole Chinese people.”
“A revolution is not a dinner party.”
“All reactionaries are paper tigers.”
And: “Every Communist must grasp the truth: Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.”
The collection became a core feature of the cult of Mao, and a fixture at Red Guard rallies to show unquestioning support for the chairman – including the one where Tang Pingzhu was shamed in public as he fell from trusted publicity official to “counter-revolutionary” and imprisoned.
Tang Yaming was 15 years old at the time. In his book, he describes how the family home was ransacked at least three times during the revolution.
He and his nine siblings were separated and dispersed to eight provinces where they were made to work in factories or poor rural areas. Their mother was left home alone, battling illness and needing the help of kind-hearted workers of a nearby bathhouse to care for her.
His father was released in 1975, after almost seven years’ imprisonment, and died of cancer a day before his 72nd birthday in 1985. His mother died a year earlier. The Tang siblings went on to lead normal lives after the Cultural Revolution, getting jobs in the military, universities or government departments.
How official Chinese propaganda is adapting to the social media age
Tang Yaming held a few jobs before leaving for Tokyo in 1983 at the invitation of Tadashi Matsui, a well-known publisher of children's books. After completing his undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Tokyo, he joined Matsui's company to produce children's books. He married a Japanese woman, and they have three children.
Tang said Beijing should reflect more on the Cultural Revolution and other sensitive historical events, to avoid repeating the same mistakes.
Instead, he has noticed that social control on the mainland now discouraged people from speaking against the government, and self-censorship has become common.
His concern about increasing censorship on the mainland made him determined to publish his book.
“You must fight constantly,” he said. “It’s better to say what you ought to say in a lawful way, than do nothing.”
”
This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Author urges Beijing to reflect on sensitive historical events
