Chairman Mao Is Dead

• Published in: Manoa (Honolulu, Hawaii. 1989) Hawaii. 1989), 2020-01, Vol.32 (1), p.96-107
• Main Authors: Danhong, Tang, Henochowicz, Anne
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Allusion; Children; Death & dying; Earthquakes; Families & family life; Literary devices; Literary translation; Logic; Mao Zedong (1893-1976); Memorial services; Morality; Slogans; Translators
• ISSN: 1045-7909; 1527-943X; 1527-943X
• DOI: 10.1353/man.2020.0011

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-USASCII text omitted.) Translator's Note: Mao died two months after the 1976 Tangshan earthquake killed anywhere from 240,000 to 779,000 in the northeastern port city of Tianjin (the far lower official estimate conflicts with the initial numbers reported by the Hebei Province Revolutionary Committee), and the "feudal" notion still lingered that natural disaster means the ruler has lost the Mandate of Heaven. [...]the earthquake came to Songpan and Pingwu, and then the earth winds were done, and it was decided that all the children "might as well" be moved back into their houses. Looking back on all their petty arguments about me, about my strengths and weaknesses, he told my mother that he had concluded I was like a rotten piece of wood-I could still be carved. Brimming with sympathy, I described the miserable conditions of "you, the children in Taiwan": empty stomachs, tattered clothes, bags of bones begging in the streets with broken bowls.