‘Red song’ campaign in China strikes some false notes

Reporting from Chongqing, China —  Although her musical tastes run to Mariah Carey and Norah Jones, Vicy Zhang didn’t hesitate when she received an instant message inviting her to sing paeans to Mao Tse-tung at a celebration of the 90th anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party.

“How could I refuse?” said Zhang, a 26-year-old graduate student at Chongqing University who hopes to join the party and have a career in civil service. “I thought it was boring and useless, but I didn’t dare say no.”

More than 10,000 students and faculty members participated in the event last month. Although Zhang wore an evening gown, other students were dressed as Red Army soldiers, with red epaulets and armbands. Carrying red flags, they danced around a university athletic field with arms swinging rhythmically to martial music harking back to China circa 1966.

Among the musical offerings: “Without the Communist Party, There Would Be No China” (sample lyrics: “It pointed the people to the road to liberation/ It leads China toward brightness”) and “Follow the Party” (“You are the lighthouse/Shining on the ocean before dawn/ You are the helmsman”).

Throughout China, people are singing and dancing in homage to the Communist Party. The “red song” campaign began in Chongqing, where it was launched by party Secretary Bo Xilai, an ambitious politician who is believed to be angling for a seat on the Standing Committee of the Politburo.

“Red songs depict China’s path in a simple, sincere and vivid way,” Bo was quoted as saying by state news agencies in November. “There’s no need to be artsy.... Only dilettantes prefer enigmatic works.”

With the approach of July 1, the date when the Communist Party of China was founded in Shanghai in 1921, the red song phenomenon has spread throughout the nation. In Beijing’s subways, television screens show transit employees competing in a red song competition. In some parts of China, karaoke clubs have restricted playlists of Taiwanese love songs in favor of patriotic mainland ballads.

A recently erected statue of Confucius mysteriously disappeared from Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in late April. It is believed to have been removed by hard-line Maoists who disparage the ancient sage as a relic of a feudal past.

To critics, the Maoist revival has echoes of the maniacal quest for political correctness during the Cultural Revolution, a dark period when about 36 million people were persecuted and anywhere from 750,000 to 1.5 million killed.

“People with a sense of history look at it and wonder whether it is possible to go back to an era in which cruel things would happen again,” said Alan Zhang, a recent law school graduate from Chongqing and blogger who, like other students interviewed, agreed to be quoted using only an English name.

“The red song campaign has made Chongqing a laughingstock,” he said.

Chongqing, the largest city in China’s southwest, is the front line of the red revival. It has a reputation for hot temperatures, spicy food and the fervor of its populace. Now, in one of those puns for which the Chinese language is so well suited, the metropolis is sometimes called the “tomato,” xihongshi, a homonym for “western red city.”

The Cultural Revolution ravaged Chongqing. The city experienced some of the heaviest losses of that 1966-76 era as a result of a clash between two rival gangs of Red Guards who seized weapons from the city’s munitions factories. They fought so fiercely that much of the population fled.

Stung by the historical references, Chongqing officials have said that participation in the campaign is voluntary.

“It’s not that everyone is required to sing and love the songs. What we are seeking is a wider participation,” Xu Chao, the Chongqing official in charge of the program, told the party-controlled Global Times in April.

At Chongqing’s universities, those invited to participate in Communist Party anniversary celebrations were primarily party members and aspiring party members, many of them top students who see membership as a prerequisite to jobs in government or academia.

“You have to accept when you get an invite, or you will be considered politically incorrect,” said Owen Chen, a 24-year-old student and party member. “In our country, these are the kinds of things you have to do.”

When the invitations were sent out, students jokingly turned red song into a verb, saying to one another “I’ve been red songed. Have you been red songed?” Participation meant going to rehearsals up to twice a day in the weeks before the May 11 performance.

“I didn’t see a single student who sang these songs with passion,” Vicy Zhang said.

It wasn’t just the inconvenience; the politics were distasteful to the students too. They said the performances looked just like the “loyalty dance” everybody was required to do during the Cultural Revolution, moving arms from the heart to the sun in a display of boundless devotion to Mao.

Under orders from the local propaganda department, Chongqing satellite television suspended its soap operas in favor of patriotic songfests. From April 20 to May 20, local newspapers had to publish the lyrics to familiarize the populace with the songs.

Outside the airport, a billboard as high as a seven-story building features photographs of pink-cheeked young Chinese students and workers urging the public to “Sing Red Songs! Spread the Truth! Raise Your Spirits!”

In public parks, retirees set up portable stereos and dance in long lines to songs praising Mao, even in Shapingba Park, which is next to an overgrown cemetery where thousands of people killed in the fighting of the late 1960s are buried.

On Wednesday and Friday mornings at 7 a.m., former schoolteacher Cao Xingfen, 66, leads fellow retirees through an elaborate dance routine set to red music, beneath billboards advertising Ermenegildo Zegna suits and Louis Vuitton bags.

“These songs have a good rhythm; it’s easy to dance to them,” said Cao, a petite, silver-haired fireplug of a woman dressed in red pajamas.

No doubt there is a genuine gusto for red songs, particularly among the older generation, for whom Communist marching songs are the campfire tunes of their childhood. On a balmy recent evening, a dozen people twirled through the dark in Renmin Park, the dancing figures illuminated by slivers of fluorescent light from a nearby beauty salon.

“We know these songs from our youth. We grew up with revolutionary spirit and we want to pass that on to our children,” said Cai Derong, 55, who wiped his brow as he watched his wife, dressed for the occasion in a silky black-and-white dress, dance with one of her girlfriends.

“Our economy is good. We want to express our appreciation to the Communist Party,” piped in a middle-aged woman, Zhang Jin, who was also taking a break from the dancing.

As soon as the music died, one of the older men sat down on a stone bench next to a reporter and in a loud voice offered up contrary opinion.

“These people are all afraid to tell you the truth. They’re dancing to these red songs because it is all they have in their brain. For 40 to 50 years, they’ve heard nothing else. The propaganda songs have drowned out regular Chinese folk music,” said the man, Hu Jiaqing, 60. “It is just like the Cultural Revolution: They’re using these big campaigns and movements to cover up their social problems.”

None of the other dancers argued. They just drifted away in the dark.

barbara.demick@latimes.com