    17

    17

    The Chinese Cultural Revolution

    "The men who are the most honored are the greatest killers.  They

    believe that they are serving their fellowmen...."

    Henry Miller

    In the mid-60's, Mao Zedong tore the fabric of Chinese society

    apart.  In doing so, he unleashed emotions of the most primitive kind,

    the true demons of the human mind.  These primordial motivators

    ripped across the face of China, bringing death, destruction and pain.

    But the frenzy Mao had freed was not some freak child of Mao's

    philosophies.  It was the simple product of passions that squirm every

    day inside you and me.

    In 1958, Mao decided to throw China violently into the future.  His

    catapult was The Great Leap Forward, an economic plan designed to

    harness China's manpower in a massive modernization program.

    Billboards carried pictures of a Chinese worker astride a rocket.  The

    slogan read, "Surpass England in Fifteen Years!"  Students, senior

    citizens, intellectuals and farmers labored ceaselessly to build steel

    furnaces.  They collected iron pots and tore brass fittings off the ancient

    doors of their houses to provide the scrap metal the construction of those

    furnaces would require.  Peasants left their homes in mass mobilizations,

    slogged to communal dining halls, and threw themselves into their work

    with tremendous enthusiasm.   After all, says Gao Yuan, one Chinese

    schoolboy who lived through it, "People were saying that true

    communism was just around the corner."9

    Unfortunately, somewhere along the line the 'Great Leap Forward'

    stumbled and fell on its face.  The communal dining halls closed.

    Householders who had taken their pots to the furnaces were forced to

    find new ones.  Ration coupons appeared for grain, oil, cloth and even

    matches.  The little boys who had thrown themselves so enthusiastically

    <<  <  GO  >  >>