17 WTF Moments from China’s Disastrous 1966 Cultural Revolution

The official story for instigating the Cultural Revolution was an attempt to get the country back to a more purist form of Communist thought. It was Mao’s public contention that the Chinese form of Communism was, like the Soviet’s own brand, veering away from its academic roots in favor of relying on governing by experience (AKA, doing something that actually worked). Perhaps the real reason that Mao began to get the youth of the nation on his side was that his position in society had been compromised as a result of the Great Leap Forward, and he was looking for another shot at the title. The reason Mao most likely went after the kids was because most of the adults had already written him off as “That Dude Who Gifted Us a Famine”.

In order to prove his fitness to lead the nation after the disaster of the Great Leap Forward, the 72-year-old Mao joined Wuhan's annual Cross-Yangtze Swimming Competition: "Surrounded by six swimming bodyguards, accompanied by giant portraits of himself and by placards asking for 10,000 years of life for him, he stays in the water for 65 minutes, drifting some ten miles downstream with the powerful current."

During the Cultural Revolution, the streets of the country were supposed to simply beam Communism from every crevice. Every street was strongly advised to have at least one quote from the Chairman prominently displayed. Beyond that, speakers were set up on nearly every street corner that continuously proclaimed Mao’s wisdom. Even ticket-takers on buses and trains were instructed to “declaim Mao’s thought.”

During the Cultural Revolution, many artistic, cultural, historical, and religious artifacts were destroyed in an attempt to erase the pre-revolutionary past, including everything from Buddhist temples to dynastic artwork. In one incident in 1969, the bodies of the Ming Dynasty emperor Wan Li (who died in 1620) and his wives were dug up by the Red Guard, publicly denounced, and then set on fire.

Zhang Hongbing was 16 when the Cultural Revolution took place in China. He and his father were “devoured by the Cultural Revolution,” says Zhang. The result was Zhang accusing his own mother of political crimes. For her apparent affront, Fang Zhongmou was beaten in her home. Then she was bound and dragged before a crowd who harassed and abused her. That insult accomplished, they loaded Fang Zhongmou onto a truck, drove her to the edge of town, and shot her.

If there’s one possible symbol of the Cultural Revolution, it’s Mao Zedong’s Little Red Book of Quotations, a collection of little nuggets thought up by the Chairman himself. During the Cultural Revolution, every bookshop was required to stock and every citizen was required to own a copy of the Little Red Book. That way, the people of China were never far away from jewels like, “Just because we have won victory, we must never relax our vigilance against the frenzied plots for revenge by the imperialists and their running dogs.” Solid gold.

During the Cultural Revolution, edicts went out that sought to extinguish the western influence on fashion. As a result, women were forbidden from using beauty creams and perfume. They were also supposed to avoid “weird outfits.” In general, no one was allowed to sport “slick hairdos or wear rocket shoes.” Exhaustive research of the term “rocket shoes” yielded nothing but several science fiction blogs and one Urban Dictionary link to “pocket rocket,” which is almost certainly not what Mao had in mind.

According to the New York Times in an article discussing a newly released cache of documents surrounding the Cultural Revolution, "records from 1972, taken at a grade school outside Beijing, show that math students were made to sing two revolutionary songs and study and discuss six Mao quotations for 25 minutes of each class. The remaining few minutes were spent doing math."

It wasn’t long into the Revolution when Mao shut down the schools and called for the nation’s young people to collectively harass the adults around them for accepting bourgeois values. Ever precocious, the kids of China soon formed paramilitary groups called the Red Guard that sought out and harassed members of the elderly or educated population. This persecution often got violent, as Red Guard units are considered to have been responsible for the deaths of several hundred thousand people.

In the "Up to the Mountains and Down to the Countryside Movement," Mao sent as many as 18 million urban young people out to the countryside, where these so-called "sent-down youth" would labor on farms, work that was considered more ideologically pure than work or study in the cities. Many were students with nothing to do after the closing of many schools and universities, and their working conditions were often extremely grueling or even fatal. A story recounted in the New York Times explains: In a handwritten series of 1972 speeches, many of them heavily edited in pen, a teacher from Beijing’s outskirts recalled how his comrades “patiently and delicately” sought to reform a teacher who was not a worker, but a member of the wealthy class. Rounds of criticism had little effect, so the group chose to help him realize his mistakes through physical labor, by weeding farmland. “He pulled grass,” the speech read. “At first, he was squatting, but he couldn’t handle it after two days. Then he pulled the grass while kneeling. Finally, he did it while crawling.”

After Mao kicked off the Cultural Revolution, those elders or capitalists who seemed to believe anything other than prominent Communist ideals were verbally and sometimes physically abused in the streets. The harassment was so tough that suicides were extremely common throughout the Cultural Revolution. (Meanwhile, in August and September 1966, there were 1,772 people murdered by the Revolution in Beijing and another 534 revolutionary deaths in Shanghai.) Mao was notoriously unopposed to suicide. He said that China was such a populous nation that they could afford to lose a few of its citizens.

Between 1966 and 1976, certain members of Chinese society were forced to wear signs identifying their status as criminals, rightists, landlords, or capitalists. People were encouraged to mock and abuse these previously high-ranking members of society. In addition, young people were granted incredible power to challenge their parents’ authority and their teacher’s instruction in order to ensure that only approved materials were being taught to the children.

Under Mao’s law, no one under 35 was allowed to smoke or drink, which would likely have resulted in some great medical improvements if doctors were actually allowed to conduct proper procedures. The Cultural Revolution prohibited "complicated treatment" in favor of simplifying the whole medical process. Instead of worrying about fixing their patients, doctors were directed to focus on writing legible prescriptions and avoid using English words at all cost.

After Red Guard units effectively helped Mao remove his political opponents and place them in jail, they began in-fighting. It seemed that none of them could really agree on the best way to interpret Mao’s wisdom. As a result of these philosophical disagreements, the Red Guard factionalized and turned violent. Chinese cities were thrown into turmoil. In the hopes of ending the chaos, Mao sent in troops under the command of Lin Biao to help restore order. Lin maneuvered Red Guard factions into the countryside surrounding the cities, where the movement slowly lost favor.

Thanks to the success he found leading the army against Mao’s Red Guard gone awry, Lin Biao was announced as Mao’s successor. Seizing the opportunity provided by his growing celebrity, Lin attempted to declare martial law in 1970. Had he been successful, Mao would have essentially been powerless. Thanks to some help from China’s premier, Zhou Enlai, Mao was able to wrest power away from Lin, who died in a plane crash in 1971 while fleeing the country to the Soviet Union. Of course, by the time of Lin’s death, the damage had been done, and a big portion of the Chinese population were beginning to wonder if the Cultural Revolution was really about preserving Communist ideals.

Though it technically lasted until 1976, the last four years of the Cultural Revolution were marked by a political struggle between Mao’s regime and a group known as the Gang of Four who were lead by Mao’s last wife, Jiang Qing. In 1972, Mao had a stroke. Then Zhou Enlai learned he had cancer. Faced with their own mortality, Mao and Zhou began to think about stabilizing their country more than revolutionizing it. They began to reopen the schools and did their part to repair the economy. Of course, all of that really ticked off Jiang and her buddies, who felt that Mao and his cronies were veering too far away from their own ideas.

Of course, the Gang of Four was kind of right when they accused Mao of going soft. In the wake of his stroke and Enlai’s cancer diagnosis, they threw their support behind Deng Xiaoping. That move was surprising, as Deng had been one of the politicians that Mao purged in the first wave of the Cultural Revolution. Deng’s support ignited a political battle between Jiang’s Gang of Four and Mao’s Communists. Mao eventually capitulated to the Gang of Four, only to die a few months later. At that point, the people of China ousted Jiang and her buddies and put Deng back in power. He would rule for the next 20 years.