These bicycle-riding Red Guards were young, passionate and also naïve. They wanted something exciting, and Mao’s revolution delivered exactly the idealistic illusion they needed: building a paradise on earth, killing all evil elements of the society such as landowners, capitalists, old traditions, wrong ideas especially in books, or anything judged to be decadent by an intolerant teenage mind. Their dreaming was not restricted to China, for they passionately believed that one day Mao’s promised Communist society would be dominant all over the world. Their fanaticism lead many of them to even volunteer to go to Vietnam to fight against American imperialism. Unfortunately a lot of these teenagers sacrificed their lives in the rice patties and jungles of Vietnam without ever seeing a world-wide Communism revolution.
In Beijing, the Red Guards were now cruising around in the streets, targeting and attacking anyone they thought were a bad influence on their idealistic society. Former landowners and factory owners, writers, artists, singers, even people with relatives overseas were targeted. Anything related to pre-Communist Chinese tradition, old temples, books, antiques, paintings; all would be destroyed, whether held in public displays or private collections. In a few weeks’ time countless cultural treasures were smashed or burned by the Red Guards.
Recall that the first Red Guards came into being in several elitist schools where they verbally challenged their curriculum and teaching staff. The first wave of mass chaos also hit the schools, but this time it swept through the entire educational system in China. Teachers and professors were all verbally criticized, and as the teenagers grew more emboldened they began to physically punish and even torture the academic staff as though they were the hated capitalists and landowners during the civil war. Classrooms were trashed and most teaching materials, especially anything foreign, were destroyed as counter- revolutionary. Many schools had to shut down or if they remained open, they hardly resembled educational institutions any more.
1966 was a bloody time in Beijing. Innocent people were attacked, their homes were robbed, their properties were stolen or destroyed and their persons were beaten and humiliated in public. The structure of society had been turned upside-down. Roving teenage gangs on bicycles, with Mao’s blessing, were the new order of the day.
Most of the Red Guards were wearing their parents’ old uniforms, discarded since the ranking system was outlawed. This was indeed strange, for while their parents had been stripped of any external display of rank, their teenage children now wore their old uniforms displaying the rank of their father or mother. In addition to rank designations, the uniforms were of a different color and made of different materials. No one else wore them now, except for the Red Guard students, and so their presence and ultimately their class identity were easily discernible.
As elitist teenagers, these Red Guards were fearless, naïve, loud, and brash. Since Beijing was packed with high-ranking officials, there were an even higher number of their children, thousands of them. They were visible everywhere, especially in the west of Beijing where many of the People’s Liberation Army military headquarters were based, including the marines, air force, logistics and so on. It was an exciting summer for these students. By the middle of the summer semester, all studies were stopped. But for Mao the show was not big enough; he was planning something on a much grander scale.
On the 18th of August 1966, during a military parade, Mao shook hands with several Red Guards on Tiananmen Tower overlooking the famous square. His appearance with them proclaimed his clear support for the Red Guards. The photos of Mao with the Red Guards were front page news on the next day’s newspapers.
One of the most circulated photos was that of a young girl, wearing an old style yellow military uniform from her father, putting an armband with Red Guard characters on Mao’s arm. To the surprise of all veterans, Mao himself was wearing an old style green uniform. He had not worn an army uniform for ages. The signal could not be clearer. Mao was showing his generals that he was the real leader of the country’s military force. But what was he up to?
Mao asked the young girl’s name. Hearing her name, Song Binbin, which means in Chinese “polite”, Mao answered with a smile: “Be violent.”
The girl who was so lucky to be so close to Mao was not just any ordinary girl next door. Her father, Song Renqiong, joined the CCP in 1926 and followed Mao along the Long March. At that time in 1966 he was the Party leader in charge of three provinces in the northeast of China. The image of the daughter of such a high official placing a Red Guard armband on a similarly uniformed Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square was powerful indeed.
Song Binbin’s photo with Mao’s had a huge impact, not just on the internal politics of the Red Guards, but also on the Chinese and eventually world fashion industry. Old military uniforms became the latest in vogue fashion overnight and dominated the Chinese fashion scene for the coming decade. All Chinese young people craved the same fashion. But only the children of military officials had access to those old uniforms which made them so very proud. Soon mass produced copies emerged, and the rest of China had to be satisfied with these copies. As with today’s designer brand knock-offs, these copies would immediately give away the lower social status of their wearers within the Red Guard movement.
In Beijing, the summer of 1966 continued to be an exciting season. Millions of Chinese came to Beijing, wishing to catch a glimpse of their beloved Chairman Mao. Following the disastrous Great Leap Forward debacle, Mao had pretty much removed himself from public view. But now he generously let himself be seen by his millions of worshippers. Eight times that summer he appeared in public. His generosity drove the young people wild with excitement and they swore to follow Mao’s revolution. His special relationship with the nation’s youth to reinvigorate the Communist Party and its revolution, albeit with very conservative overtones, predated by just twelve years another long-reigning head of state coming from another Communist country, Pope John Paul II, and his ability to publicly rally millions of Roman Catholic youth into action by his charismatic presence.
Hoping to see Mao in person attracted millions of people to Beijing, and the majority of the more than 10 million pilgrims who arrived during that summer had their dream fulfilled. Of course, very few of them actually saw Mao. To do that in such vast throngs would require a telescope. But just a tiny glimpse and to be part of that vast sea of Chinese humanity swept up in the hysteria of the moment would be enough to make them feel they had seen him. Many cried till tears came streaming down their faces. It was indeed a summer of atheistic pilgrimages.
The whole of Beijing had to be shut down to hold these events. Seeing millions of people, an ocean of red flags, accompanied by loud military marching music stunned the usual reserved residents of Beijing. These urbane and sophisticated Beijingers felt that their city was being invaded. What it all meant, and where this crazy demonstration would lead, no one could tell.
With the desire to see Mao whipping the whole nation into frenzy, the chaos happening over the summer school break showed no sign of abating. When the school break was over, the demonstrations continued and nobody knew when or if school would start again. The Red Guard numbers swelled and bands of youths continued to roam the streets attacking people and property.
The revolution had started and could not be stopped any more. As with all revolutions, the fluidity of the situation meant that new people started to emerge on the Chinese political stage in the summer of 1966. Many such personalities appeared fleetingly and temporarily. But one person in particular caught the attention of the public eye; Jiang Qin, Mao’s wife. Previous to that chaotic summer, she was hardly to be seen in public and she was most certainly never referred to as Mao’s wife and definitely not the First Lady. At the time “the First Lady” was an exotic foreign term to the Chinese that “did not translate” into the national political landscape.
On those rare occasions when she was referred to, she was simply called Comrade Jiang Qin. Comrade Jiang Qin had been banned from Chinese politics for nearly 30 years since she married Mao in 1938 in Yenan. American President Woodrow Wilson’s wife Edith might have virtually run the country following the President’s stroke, as it has been rumored about First Ladies Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton during trying times in their husband’s presidencies. But in China, despite the amazing