Paper Tiger by Xu Zhiyuan

Author:Xu Zhiyuan [Xu Zhiyuan]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781781859810
Publisher: Head of Zeus
Published: 2015-09-02T04:00:00+00:00

Flaws in individuals

4 September 2008

Song Binbin was carrying the hopes of the members of the Red Guard throughout China. It was 1966, and she was standing on Tiananmen Gate next to Mao Zedong. She was a student with a bob haircut, who went to the Experimental High School of Beijing Normal University. She took Mao Zedong’s arm and pinned a red band onto it.

Mao was seventy-seven years old. He asked her what her name was, and after receiving her reply, continued, ‘Binbin, as in “educated and refined”?’ When she said ‘Yes’, he advised her to change it to something more aligned with his views, ‘How about Yaowu (‘Wants Violence’)?’

The next day, the People’s Daily published an article with the headline ‘I pinned a red band on Chairman Mao’, which had the by-line Song Yaowu, though someone else had written it. Song Binbin discovered that she was no longer able to control her image or even her own name. She had never liked violence, and yet she had been transformed into a proponent of violent measures. When Red Guard members flocked to her high school, they were disappointed to find that Song Yaowu was not nearly as revolutionary as they had imagined. Nevertheless, when she was sent to work in the countryside, rumours spread throughout the village that Song Yaowu had beaten and killed countless people.

I watched a documentary called Morning Sun (2003) in which Song Binbin was always in shadow when she was interviewed. It was as if her real face and expressions had been swallowed up by the clamour of that era. Today, few people remember the episode on Tiananmen Square. Those who actually lived through it have seen too many inflaming and absurd things in real life to be affected by watching a documentary about it. Yet the episode perfectly demonstrates the characteristics of that era and that system: the value of the individual and even individual characteristics became insignificant. They could be modified or substituted at any time. The reasons for a substitution usually related to some higher purpose, such as the national interest, or the needs of the revolution, or someone just claimed it was part of the regular pattern of history. In the name of these higher purposes, individuals were diminished and made abstract. What came afterwards was, not surprisingly, an abandonment of principles which valued the individual and individual courage. The youths who tortured their own teachers, betrayed those closest to them and mercilessly beat strangers have all been mischaracterized. Rather than saying their hearts held evil and ugly thoughts, it would be better to say that they were completely unable to think for themselves. But according to the rest of the world, they had lost even the most basic ability to understand and make judgments. At the behest of the revolution and the collective, they rejected individual responsibility, and promptly felt immensely free and unrestrained. However, some of the more sensitive souls discovered this way of life to be insufferable. Their lives were completely out of their control and lacked meaning.

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