The Edge of Knowing by Chan Roy Bing

Author:Chan, Roy Bing
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Washington Press
Published: 2016-03-01T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 4

Sleepless Nights in Fast Socialism

Dream Rhetoric and Fiction in the Mao Era

For the Communists and their supporters, the establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 marked the new nation’s confident proclamation of being in synchronicity with the rest of the world. No more a backward, colonized, and feudal nation, China could now claim to stand on par with the rest of the world as a sovereign power. Literary critic Hu Feng celebrated Mao Zedong’s ascendancy atop the balustrade of Tiananmen Square by publishing the first part of an epic poem on November 20, 1949, titled “Time Has Now Begun!” (Shijian kaishi le!).1 In his lyrical epic, the poet reveals how his “dreaming eyes” and “dreaming heart” have been awakened in the sublime moment of liberation and redemption. In this moment of transfiguration, the whole cosmos recognizes China’s ascendancy:

Fatherland, my fatherland

Today

In this sacred time of your rebirth

The entire globe pays respects to you

The entire universe extends its congratulations to you2

For many citizens, October 1, 1949, marked a moment of triumphant celebration, a majestic “now” that a newly confident and victorious citizenry could proudly proclaim. However, it did not take long for the sense of a glorious present tense to fade, as the country now embarked on the arduous path of modernization and politico-economic transition. The glory of a present “now” had to be deferred to the future, as the nation struggled to meet the challenges of creating a new society in the aftermath of decades of war and revolutionary turmoil. If Hu Feng’s poem spoke to a sense that a fully transfigured and redeemed present had finally arrived, later discourse would grapple with the paradox that while the revolution had indeed happened, the country was still far, far away from socialism. In the span between the moment of Liberation and that future moment of true communism lay a period of unruly and difficult transition, a period marked profoundly by a sense of temporal disjuncture, of being betwixt and between but not at all settled.

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