"Heart shaped Mao Zedong necklace"

Today there is not much that indicates that China has recently been a communist country. Capitalism is even more evident here than in Norway or even the USA. In Beijing you cannot go down any street without having people trying to sell you whatever they have (Even their babies!). What follows is a serious round of bargaining and negotiating as you look through the different stores/street vendors. Then you settle on a market price. It is all supply and demand, down to the very last "Mao". (A "Mao" is a street-name for the bank notes with the value of 1/10 of a Yuan.) Considering that Mao Zedong is on every bank note her in China (As Genghis Khan is in Mongolia), I found it strange that the Great Leader's name was used about the least valuable of the bank notes. The explanation was that the word for this value sounds similar to "Mao", so they called it that on the street. Just as they say "qwai" instead of "Yuan". The same goes with "bucks" in the US, and "quid" in the UK.

Mao Zedong was the first leader of the Peoples Republic of China. After leading the Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) to victory in the decades long civil war against the Kuomintang forces, Mao became the nations leader in 1949. In the process there were enormous, and not thoroughly recorded losses. Both civilian and military Chinese died in the fight for power. One of the turning points in the war was the Peoples Liberation Army's siege of Changchun. Mao managed to Occupy the city for a few months, and more than 160 000 civilians are believed to have perished. One of the lieutenants of the PLA later wrote in his book: "The casualties were about the same. Hiroshima took nine seconds; Changchun took five months."

Mao is by the Chinese government, and most people considered a "Great everything"; revolutionary, military mastermind, poet, political strategist and most of all, savior of the nation.

Mao was in many ways a visionary, and maybe a more than average naive man. Some of his political decisions were not the most realistic, and I believe the result bear a heavy aftertaste of his naiveness. Some of the policies that sort of failed are the "Great Leap Forward" (1958 - 1962), where Mao more or less decided that China would go from being an agricultural nation to an industrialized country. Peasants, not used to industrial work were given jobs producing steel (Steel was one of the commodities that Mao put a lot of pride into producing). The result of this was of course very low-quality steel, produces in the backyards in every commune. Workers were diverted from harvesting their fields, rather to melt scrap metal, producing steel of such low quality that no one would buy it. This left a lot of crops rotten, and the hunt for scrap metal forced people to give up their frying pans, pots and other metal to meet the optimistic production goals. (They did not even manage to produce half as much as they wanted.) What all of this came down to in the end was the death of tens of millions. Despite this failure, many modern Chinese consider this as the fundament of what has created the development that has taken place here in China over the passed years. And in most ways, I guess it is.

Another fatal decision was the "Cultural Revolution", where Mao wished to even out the differences in society, and at the same time get rid of potential opposition. So he sent educated people to labor camps in the countryside to work in the spirit of the party, producing goods. A lot of the Cultural Revolution was different moves to keep the structure of the party together. But this also affected the peoples all over China. It was important for Mao to keep the people together, and one of the means to create a feeling of a common goal was to attack all the "old ways of thinking". Chinese history and culture suffered severely form this. Temples all over the country were destroyed, and traditional costumes, and even the Chinese calendar was prohibited.

To me, all of this seems a little backwards. Mao wants China to enter the industrialized world, but he tries to get rid of the intellectuals, to create lifestyles closer to those in the industrialized countries, and by taking away people's pots and pans, does not seem like it is properly thought through. Just the same goes for Mao's orders for people to catch and kill birds, since they eat the grains / rice. This should increase the grain production, right? After a while, of more than a million people working full time with capturing birds, the crops were attacked by the insects, which the birds were not around to eat anymore. But hey, now more than one million people could be put into the profession of insect catching! (It is still a bit like this here in China. A lot of people working everywhere, and much of it, I believe, is just to give people jobs. With that said, it is not expensive to hire people in China, and very many don't even get paid. They get food and a room to sleep in, and then, if the boss is making enough, they may get paid a bonus once a year!)

The same goes for Mao's commandment that everyone should eat chicken for every meal. When Mao asked for updates form the communes (a system of making labor patterns where they could mobilize and supervise the masses), the people ranking below him would tell him that everyone was eating rice and chicken. This was of course not true. People were starving all over the country. One time when traveling by train, Mao decided he wanted to get out of the train to see that people were actually eating chicken. He came inside a house where an old man sat (probably surprised as if aliens had come to his home), with a piece of chicken in his hand. The people around Mao had managed to place some chicken in the hands of the old man, before Mao came inside. The poor guy, with the chicken in his hands, may not have been eating chicken in ages. But naive as hi was, this satisfied Mao.

Now Mao is not as satisfied. Across from his picture on Tian'anmen Square there is a large building that functions as his mausoleum. Mao did not want to be put on display, but now he is, and his modern party comrades are making dough on displaying him as well. The entrance is still free of charge, but there is more ways than enough to make some money off of the communist leader. And the Chinese have found them. After waiting in a long line and gone through an airport-style security check, there is a stand where you can buy flowers to take in to the Great Leader. A lot of Chinese people do, and then they carry the flowers about 50 meters before they are told to put them down in front of a statue of Mao. Then they walk into the next room, to see their "country's savior". They never look back to see that the stand they placed the flowers on was on wheels, ready to be pushed out the back door and resold out front.

Unlike Lenin, we could only walk along one of the sides of Mao. He was lying in a crystal casket, really worth reading about, but I have no time to give it more than a mention here in my blog. It did not look impressive at all, but it has a great story. Then we were out in the room behind him. This was where they sell the Mao pictures, Mao watches, Mao playing cards, Mao statues, and as I bought, a Mao necklace, shaped as a hart, with a picture of Mao on it. I have to say I was so offset by how Chairman Mao is now surrounded by the capitalistic spirit.

China is in so many ways very interesting when it comes to exactly the capitalist policies. It is in name a communist nation, but with some of the most advanced trading and commerce districts in the world. They are great at marketing, which is easy to notice as you walk through the streets. One thing that fascinated me a lot was how they have long screens outside of the windows in the subway, with pictures moving at the same speed of the train, so that you get to see the advertisement they show. It is something very different than the black tunnels where you cannot look out at anything, found in the rest of the world.