Chairman Mao Zedong Badges & Ephemera

A few months ago, Mike posted a link to his collection of Mao badges over at Flickr. He’s also translating the Chinese-language characters found on the fronts and backs of the badges, making the collection a great storehouse of Cultural Revolution-era slogans as well. Enjoy!

Worker-Peasant-Soldier Pictorial Magazine - Cover, originally uploaded by Oldtasty.

It’s been a long time since I’ve had any time to update the site, but I wanted to alert anyone who’s dropping by that I’ve added a new publication to my Flickr site, a September, 1970 issue of Worker-Peasant-Soldier Pictorial Magazine. Great images, and lots of copy, so any translator who wants to have a crack at it, go for it.

As a native English-speaker, I occasionally forget about the wealth of Cultural Revolution-era ephemera that’s out there on Chinese-language web sites. Take the above, for instance; back in 2003 — in celebration of the 110th anniversary of Mao’s birth — the folks at the Jinan Archives Information Network assembled a small collection of Chairman Mao badges. There’s no descriptive text accompanying the images, but there’s a broad range of badge types, including one that’s heart-shaped and another featuring yellow rays of sun radiating out from Mao’s image. Well worth a quick look at the very least, and a reminder not to ignore Chinese sites.

Exhibition: Gerald Ford Presidential Museum, originally uploaded by Oldtasty.

This is posted too late for anyone to act on but in going through some old emails I came across some photos I received of the exhibit Opening an Empire: U.S. Relations with China at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum. The exhibition ran from October 15, 2004 to March 13, 2005 and included sections on all periods of Chinese history including the era they called “Mao’s Dynasty.” Why did they send me photos in the first place? They were kind enough to include one of my 10″ LPs in the Cultural Revolution display.

Photo courtesy of James Draper

After 10+ years of hiding Chairman Mao Zedong Badges & Ephemera in a subdirectory over at my personal site, I’ve finally taken the plunge and given it its own domain (as well as a spiffy WordPress install). Just about everything that was over at the old site is here, and there are some new things planned as well. Have a look around, and feel free to contact me at kurt.groetsch@gmail.com with questions, comments and suggestions. Don’t forget to subscribe to the site feed too — you never know when new content will pop up. Thanks for dropping by, and I hope you find something of interest.

I have a new batch of Cultural Revolution LPs in hand, some of which you can view over in my Flickr photostream. I have four more on order and access to a large-format flatbed scanner, so I hope to have all of them available for review in the near future. I also have some photos of the recent China exhibit at the Gerald Ford Presidential museum that I’ve been meaning to post that I’ll get to shortly. I’ve been meaning to update the site more regularly, but grad school is occupying most of my free time at the moment. Hopefully there will be more soon.

On the occasion of Mao’s 111th birthday, Getty Images has posted some photos of collector’s house full of Mao portraits, sculptures and badges. The large images are watermarked, which is a little distracting, but they’re interesting none the less. There’s another Getty Images gallery here, featuring some folks selling old Cultural Revolution-era posters (probably to foreigners, since most Chinese I met didn’t have the slightest interest interest in the subject). A keyword search of the site also reveals all kinds of great Mao imagery.

Edit: Links to GettyImages.com seem to be a little wonky — maybe by design on their part — so if they’re not working for you, just go to the main news page and do a keyword search on Mao Zedong. That should pull up all the relevant photos.

After putting it off for a couple of months, I’ve gotten around to posting a second volume of Cultural Revolution-era clip art over at Flickr. As with the last one, I’ve been translating the slogans as time permits — fortunately, my dictionary was compiled during the ’70s and contains direct translations of revolutionary slogans. Assistance or corrections always welcome.

Among the things I’ve picked up from Sandra’s eBay store are a couple of books of Cultural Revolution-era newspaper masthead clip art. I thought about building a gallery of scans on this site, but then realized that the folks over at Flickr have provided the perfect suite of tools for archival material such as this, particularly since they let you add notes to photos. I plan to annotate this material with translations over time — feel free to leave comments on individual image pages if you think I’ve mistranslated or have any additional suggestions. View the first gallery now.

Bill Joseph recently posted a comment to this site containing some excellent links to Cultural Revolution-related material over at wellesley.edu. I thought I’d repost them here for anyone who might have missed them:

• MP3s of Cultural Revolution-era songs.
• Photos from Mr. Joseph’s 1972 trip to China.
• A collection of China-related political links.

As someone who lived in Beijing until recently, it’s a treat to see how much things have changed there in the last 22 years. While it’s still the seat of political power in China, just about everything else about the place is different; what used to be a small backwater town is now a booming (and bourgeois) metropolis. Also, don’t miss the photos of Zhou Enlai attending a meeting with Yao Wenyuan and Zhang Chunqiao, two members of the Gang of Four, a group that would lead a criticism movement aimed at Zhou in early 1974. They were ultimately arrested in October 1976 and sentenced to jail along with Jiang Qing and Wang Hongwen.

It was through Bill’s pages that I discovered Vivian Wagner’s Songs of the Red Guards: Keywords Set to Music. It’s an outstanding piece of work, and should be required reading for anyone with an interest in the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guard movement or Mao propaganda.

And finally, a personal note. I do this site for kicks, and to share the bits and pieces of Mao Ephemera that I’ve accumulated over the years with others who have an interest in post-1949 Chinese politics. Therefore, it gives me great pleasure to announce one of the items I’ve posted about here will be on display at the Gerald R. Ford Library and Museum as part of their exhibit China: The Opening of the Middle Kingdom, running October 15, 2004 through March 13, 2005. I suppose this means I’m now a “noted collector.”