Zheng Shengtian Qi Zhilong and His Chinese Girl

y the cold spring of 1967, the Chinese had entered a phase of all-out power struggle. I lived in Hangzhou Bat the time, working as a young teacher at the Academy of Fine Arts. Because of my political views I was detained, along with other alleged subversives, in a niu peng (cowshed)1 by the Militant Team; my punishment was to clean the campus and read ’s Little Red Book every day. One morning a Red Guard who kept us in custody ordered me to clean an abandoned courtyard bathroom that was dark, damp, and dilapidated. Even though I was puzzled as to the reason for the cleaning, I dared not ask why. That same night a young girl was brought in by a group of Red Guards Militant Team members who yelled at and berated her. Wearing a yellow military uniform with a military cap atop her shortly cropped hair, this girl turned out to be the leader of the opposing Red Guards faction known as the “Conservative Red Guards.” Since the time of her capture she had not only lost her freedom, but was also relegated to our company of niu gui she shen (monstrous and demonic evil spirits); following more than a month’s detention, she was finally released. While I knew back then that the Red Guards were not all the same, never had I thought that this particular Red Guard, whose name was Chen Aikang— many years later—would turn out to be my life partner.

The origin of these many militant factions can be traced back to May 29, 1966, when, at the Middle School attached to Tsinghua University in , a small number of students from families of the so-called “Five Categories of Red Elements” (which included revolutionary cadres, revolutionary military members, workers, and poor and lower-middle class peasants) established a rebel organization they called the “Red Guards.” On August 1, Mao Zedong personally wrote a letter to the Red Guards at the Tsinghua Middle School “to show his staunch support”2 for their rebellious attitude. As a result, the Red Guard movement soon exploded across the entire nation. Adolescent students took pride in joining the Red Guards, and membership in such a group became a coveted identity; revolutionary Red Guard organizations could be found throughout the country. Even though their slogans and propositions differed from one another (sometimes to the extent of being polar opposites), they all wore Red Guard armbands and carried Red Guard flags bearing Mao’s inscriptions.

The female Red Guards depicted in Qi Zhilong’s paintings remind me, first and foremost, of the public aesthetic context that gave rise to them. During

48 “Wanted” poster (detail) for Red Guard Chen Aikang, printed and distributed nation- wide by the opposition faction Red Guard Militant Group, Hangzhou. Courtesy of Chen Aikang.

the 1960s, a decade filled with images of fluttering red flags, revolution was clearly in vogue. Followers of this social trend were not necessarily true believers in Maoist ideology; many simply took the Red Guards’s military garments as some sort of fashion statement, not unlike the way famous brands today are strongly coveted by the general public. It did not matter whether a Red Guard uniform was worn or washed out, as long as it was genuine and certified. Military hats and belts, as well as military overcoats with fur collars, were as sought-after as today’s Chanel and Gucci. Young Red Guards exhausted all possible avenues to get their hands on these goods, begging and beseeching their friends and relatives in the military for them. If Red Guards were caught wearing knock-offs they might be ridiculed by their peers, or, worse, charged with committing the crime of being a “pseudo-revolutionary.”

As early as February 1961, Mao Zedong wrote a seven-word poem called Inscription on a Photograph for Militia Women:

How dapper they look, shouldering five-foot guns, when daylight first gleams on the parade ground. Children of have many aspiring ambitions; they love military attire, not red gowns.3

This poem planted the seed for the widely popular new aesthetic standard for women, seen in full bloom during the Cultural Revolution. According to official Cultural Revolution era reports, on August 18, 1966 Mao and his comrades-in-arms mounted the rostrum of Tian’anmen to review millions of Red Guards from all around the country. While one female Red Guard was pinning a Red Guard armband onto him, Mao asked her “What’s your

Song Binbin putting armband name?” and she answered: “ Binbin.” Mao asked her “Is that the same on Mao Zedong, 1966. ‘binbin’ as in the phrase wen zhi bin bin (gentle and refined)?’” “Yes,” she said. Mao replied: “Violent is what you ought to be!”4 Many contemporary scholars believe that this playful reply, interpreted as a “highest directive”

49 from Chairman Mao, served as a key catalyst for the Red Guard movement’s sudden escalation in violence and brutality over the ensuing months. But actually, Mao’s reply was rhetorically inaccurate. According to the Analects, Confucius said:

When the inner qualities are in excess of the outer refinement [wen], we are crude; when the outer refinement is in excess of the inner qualities [zhi], we are pedantic. Only when the outer refinement and inner qualities are equally matched can we be a man of true virtue.5

In this passage Confucius uses the word wen to refer to one’s outer refinement Anonymous, Spring in the Desert, 1975, watercolour, 106 and the word zhi to refer to one’s inner virtues. Hence the phrase wen zhi x 76 cm. Courtesy of AW Asia, New York. bin bin means that one should be beautiful both inside and out, balanced and congruent—not “gentle and refined” (the opposite of “violent”) as the term is commonly misunderstood and used. It is unfortunate that a minor error, stemming from a rhetorical misinterpretation, could have set off such an unimaginable tragedy of historic proportion. Not only were innumerable lives humiliated and harmed, but as a result the country as a whole also suffered immeasurable losses.

50 Without doubt, the Cultural Revolution is one of the darkest chapters in Chinese modern history. More significantly, after more than forty years the fallout from the Cultural Revolution is still everywhere to be seen, whether in the realm of political ideology or the domain of daily life. I once had a discussion with a well-known Chinese historian about the art of the Cultural Revolution. In his opinion, no real artwork was created during that period, only political propaganda; thus nothing from that time is of an artistic merit worthy of consideration. There are also people who condemn any non-critical interpretation of the Cultural Revolution, for they regard this as a distortion and a betrayal of history. However, for many people—

Chen Huamin, Learn from including those who did not support the Cultural Revolution—this Dazhai in Agriculture, 1973, gouache on paper, 68 x 98 cm. tumultuous era still evokes a degree of yearning and nostalgia. Courtesy of AW Asia, New York. In an interview with Li Xianting, Qi Zhilong stated:

Members of the Intellectual Youth Generation, born in the 1950s and ’60s, are beginning to look back upon their past with a kind of romantic imagination, one which helps them view their harsh life experience through rose-tinted

51 glasses. They are gradually lightening up and watering down difficult memories, without forgetting them, as well as singling out moments that have inspired the human spirit.6

Born in 1962, Qi grew up during the Chen Yiming, Liu Yulian, Li Bin, Feng (Maples), 1979, gouache years that saw the Red Guard movement on paper. lose steam. Countless young students were sent off to rural villages or remote borders, their past glories buried away— covered with wind, frost, sweat, filth, and dirt. As a result, artistic impressions capturing the era have, to a large extent, been derived from “romanticized” or “sensationalized” cultural memories. A case in point is the sentimental novel Feng (The Maples)—the first example of “Scar Literature” about the Red Guards to be published after the Cultural Revolution— and the award-winning comic strip based on it, which followed. In Feng, a female Red Guard named Lu Danfeng tragically and romantically ends her own life in a narrative that constructs a “Cultural Revolution version” of The Dying Swan.7 Similar phenomena are quite common throughout history; classic examples include the stories of Lara in Doctor Zhivago, Doniya in How the Steel was Tempered, and Lin Daojing in The Song of Youth. These twisted and sensational female tales wrap cruel and bloody revolutionary periods in heartwarming veils. As stated by poet T. S. Eliot: “Mankind cannot bear very much reality.”8 It seems we cannot help but filter out the truth from our lives and histories. Eliot’s observation also explains why nostalgia is forever popular; it satisfies our all-too-common human predilection to escape reality.

Next page right: Posters for the exhibition Mahjong at MdM Mönchsberg Museum of Modern Art, Salzburg, Austria. Photo: Zheng Shengtian.

Perhaps precisely because of this, the Red Guards created by the brushstrokes of Qi Zhilong have slowly become a Chinese Girl “brand” that people feel good about. In fact, Qi’s Chinese Girl has little to do with actual history. Whether consciously or subconsciously, the artist’s depiction of pretty young girls in military uniform alludes to Confucius’s concepts of both wen (outer refinement) and zhi (inner quality). But though they all wear the Red

52 Qi Zhilong, Female Student, 2007, oil on canvas, 220 x 180 cm. Courtesy of the artist and AW Asia, New York.

53 Qi Zhilong, Female Student, 2009, oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm. Courrtesy of the artist and AW Asia, New York.

54 Right: Qi Zhilong, China Girl, 2007, oil on canvas, 220 x 180 cm. Courtesy of the artist and AW Asia, New York.

Bottom: Qi Zhilong, China Beauty, 2008, oil on canvas, 220 x 180 cm. Courtesy of the artist and AW Asia, New York.

Following page: Qi Zhilong, The Idea of Workers No. 2, 2009, oil on canvas, 162 x 130 cm. Courtesy of the artist and AW Asia, New York.

55 56 Guard uniform, their faces and expressions do not accurately reflect the reality of that period; plainly put, the wen does not match the zi. For today’s audiences, these pretty faces seem more in line with the aesthetic interests of contemporary pop culture. The artist clandestinely alters the aesthetic values of his work in ways that permit these young girls in military uniform to attract attention in twenty-first-century galleries and exhibition halls, both domestic and overseas. Two years ago, when I was in the ancient city of Salzburg, Mozart’s hometown, I remember people on the street looking at Qi Zhilong’s giant posters of the Red Guards. Though the posters were hung right alongside advertisements for cosmetics that displayed dazzling models, the passersby didn’t seem to find the pairing incongruous, or the pictures out of sync with each other. This kind of strategy also reminds me of the 1996 modernized movie version of Romeo and Juliet by Baz Luhrmann—although in this film, director Luhrmann and his screenwriter used a somewhat different approach to clandestinely alter the aesthetic values of their work. At its core the film retains a sentimental and heartbreaking love story, but the story is infused with late twentieth-century American, super-urban West Coast culture. Though their approaches differ, these two artists have enjoyed similar success.

Dutch scholar Pieter Geyl believes that, in describing the past, historians are inevitably influenced by contemporary events. According to Geyl, not only are the ways that people write history constantly changing, but the ways that different generations perceive history vary from one to another. He said: “Imagination plays too important a role in the writing of history; and what is imagination but the projection of an author’s personality?”9 The innocent faces of Qi Zhilong’s Chinese Girl are like a multi-faceted mirror. The reflection helps us see how our trans-century generation is looking for some kindness—and even exquisiteness—against a cruel historical reality; it also helps us cope with an unending and overflowing sense of emptiness and helplessness in today’s world of ostentatious consumption.

Translated into English by Vincent Cheng (Tzu-Wen)

Notes 1 A “cowshed” was where the Red Guards kept detainees during the Cultural Revolution. The detainees in these sheds were mostly leaders, cadres, professors, and experts—or anyone else whom the Red Guards deemed hostile. Collectively the detainees were known as the niu gui she shen (monstrous and demonic evil spirits—literally, “cow ghosts, snake gods”). Red Guards Militant Team was the name of the “Rebel Red Guards” organization at the Zhejiang Academy of Fine Arts (now the China National Academy of Fine Arts), where I taught. 2 “Mao Zedong’s Letter to the Red Guards at the Middle School Attached to Tsinghua University,” Chronicles of the People’s Republic of China (Beijing: People’s University Press, 1992), 712. 3 This poem by Mao Zedong first appeared in the book Poems of Chairman Mao, published by People’s University Press in Beijing in December, 1962. 4 Yaowu Song, “I Pinned a Red Armband onto Chairman Mao,” originally published in Beijing’s on August 20, 1966. 5 This passage is from The Analects: Yong Ye. For the original text, please visit http://www.wenxue360. com/archives/9.html. 6 Xianting Li, “The Charm of Politics and Fashion: A Dialogue between Qi Zhilong and Li Xianting,” ARTCO, no. 171 (December 2006), 195. 7 Feng (The Maples) is a short novel written by youth writer Zheng Yi; it was published in Shanghai’s Wen Hui Daily in February 1979. That same year Beijing’s Comic-Strip Monthly, in its August issue, published the comic strip Feng (The Maples), collectively created by Chen Yiming, Liu Yulian, and Li Bin. The comic strip later received a golden award in the National Art Exhibition celebrating the 30th anniversary of the founding of the republic. 8 T. S. Eliot, Quartet No. 1: Burnt Norton, 1943. For the original poem, see http://www.tristan.icom43.net/ quartets/norton.html. 9 Pieter Geyl, Napoleon: For and Against (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1949), 133.

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