The Direction of People's Literature and Art

Kong Qingdong， December 17,2024

When I stepped out this morning, I discovered it was still a day heavy with smog. However, all of us friends here today, as well as countless other conscientious friends and compatriots across the nation, have braved this "toxic haze," braved the frost and bitter cold, to gather here with great enthusiasm. Why do we join with people across the country in such gatherings? Because we carry the rising sun in our hearts! [Applause] Because we have a red sun in our hearts, and this red sun illuminates us as we fight in this world where black and white are unclear, right and wrong indistinct.

Mao Zedong's great achievements cannot be enumerated one by one. Regardless of whether his birth anniversary falls on a fifth or tenth year, everyone knows we commemorate him more grandly year by year, more warmly year by year, more sincerely year by year. Just now, many scholars, experts, and leaders have already discussed from various aspects the precious legacy Comrade Mao Zedong left us. I don't have much time today, so I'll focus on Mao Zedong's contributions to literary and artistic work. If I were to give this a title, I'm discussing "The Direction of People's Literature and Art."

The Chinese nation has created brilliant and splendid civilization, of which literature and art are important components. Mr. Lu Xun said "literature and art are the guiding lights for national spirit's advancement." A history of human civilization tells us that the rise and strength of many countries begins first with the strength of their literature and art. Without the Renaissance, Western countries might now be divided into hundreds of small states and thousands of "communities." The Chinese nation established a glorious, magnificent, and varied literary kingdom under the guidance of this brilliant row of lights: Book of Songs and Songs of Chu, Han rhapsodies and Jin prose, Tang poetry and Song lyrics, Yuan opera and Ming novels.

But everyone also knows that by the Qing Dynasty, except for early masterpieces like Dream of the Red Chamber and Strange Tales from a Chinese Studio with their exposing and critical nature, the later period entered what Gong Zizhen called "ten thousand horses all mute—how deplorable," or in Li Bai's words, "refined music has long been absent."

When a country's culture declines, regardless of how high its GDP is or how many people have nothing to do but take drugs, that country is not far from destruction. In the late Qing period, national spirit was dispirited, leading to repeated military defeats. The nation didn't know what was wrong. At first they thought it was military inadequacy, then industrial, economic, and political inadequacy—they looked for problems one by one and tried to fix whatever they found, but the more they reformed, the more they failed. That Westernization Movement—we can compare its achievements to the reform and opening up one hundred years later. What was it missing? The more the Westernization Movement developed and the more GDP it earned, the more catastrophically the country was defeated in wars, until finally the navy was almost completely annihilated by the enemy.

Not until the early twentieth century did the Chinese nation's elite discover that we weren't militarily backward or economically backward, we didn't lack post offices or mines—we lacked a soul. Only then did they discover that national spirit had problems, and how to rebuild national spirit? There was only one answer—literature and art.

I have spent many years studying the Mandarin Duck and Butterfly School [note: early 20th century popular literature movement], researching those martial arts, detective, romance, and exposé novels from late Qing to early Republic periods, accidentally becoming an expert in this field. Through this literary research, I vividly saw the so-called national spirit of late Qing and the so-called national spirit of the Republic of China. Not until the May Fourth literary revolution did the Chinese people finally open a new era of modern literature and art.

Everyone knows the achievements of May Fourth, but the May Fourth literary movement also fell into new confusion. This confusion was that to correct previous feudal society's literary errors, it took the simple path of Europeanization, establishing what Comrade Qu Qiubai criticized as "new classical Chinese." Though written in vernacular, ordinary people still couldn't understand it—they felt it was less clear than reading Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The first great writer of the modern era, master Lu Xun—his own mother didn't read Lu Xun's novels; his mother read Zhang Henshui [note: popular novelist]. Some people say: Teacher Kong, you seem to be today's Lu Xun. I say I can't compare to Lu Xun, because my mother reads my works; my mother reads my books. Lu Xun was too great—his mother couldn't read or understand his books.

Where should Chinese literature and art go? Should it become what some scholars call a tributary, a small stream of Western modern literature and art? Or simple "anti-Qing restoration of Ming," returning to what some scholars call the Ming Dynasty? Beijing and Shanghai scholars wearing Western suits or traditional robes couldn't reach consensus. At this time, in a cave dwelling in northern Shaanxi, a middle-aged man in gray old military uniform with long hair pointed out the direction for China's modern literature and art. Simply put: the literature and art we want to establish should be national, scientific, and popular! Of course, as previous speakers noted, this wasn't something Mao Zedong proposed from nothing—he summarized the experience of China's modern literature and art since May Fourth.

With this direction, we see that from then on China had new "Feng, Ya, Song" [note: classical poetry categories]. This "Feng, Ya, Song" rose from the northwestern plateau, and with it, the Chinese nation's vanguard quickly united China's peoples of all nationalities, defeated the Japanese invaders, drove out Chiang's bandits, and established New China. [Applause]

With New China's development, every era, every movement, every undertaking was accompanied by healthy, positive, fresh literature and art. This is the source of the core appeal of those countless red songs across our motherland today. Meanwhile, Mao Zedong also used his own literary and artistic practice to provide the best and most brilliant example of such literature and art—his poetry, his calligraphy need no discussion, plus his specific guidance to various literary and artistic fields: literature, music, art, sculpture, drama, etc. These could fill many books, especially his guidance on model operas and his penetrating instructions on evaluating Water Margin in the late Cultural Revolution period.

New China's literature and art advanced triumphantly on this path of great refinement, shining globally, continuing until the 1980s.

Though the Cultural Revolution had ended by the 1980s and certain overly leftist aspects were corrected, the mainstream of 1980s literature and art remained healthy. However, in an article I wrote specifically about popular culture development, I pointed out that exactly one hundred years after Comrade Mao Zedong's birth, in 1993 CE, a song called "New Mandarin Duck and Butterfly Dream" became popular in China. That year also produced two heavyweight novels: Abandoned Capital and White Deer Plain. Marking this point, China entered a "New Mandarin Duck and Butterfly" era, from which began national spiritual dispirit, confusion, vulgarity, and pornography—what ordinary people call "very yellow, very violent"—with "strange forces and chaotic spirits" that Confucius opposed everywhere, lacking the shao music Confucius wanted to hear, lacking the great refinement Li Bai called for. Ancient people awakening would surely say "ritual collapse and music destruction."

But even more paradoxical is that we haven't even captured these popular arts markets. If we sacrificed refined literature and art in exchange for markets, that might be acceptable, but we didn't gain markets either. Our literature and art markets are controlled by foreign capital. Scholars like Dai Jinhua have made very incisive analyses of capital's control over our film and television fields.

Looking back, we completely departed from the path Mao Zedong indicated, losing national, scientific, and popular art. Chinese literature became Western stories written in Chinese.

This literature is first anti-national, with large amounts of content opposing the Chinese people and slandering Chinese history. Some writers know this is wrong. One military writer said: "Respected chief, if I don't write this way, not only can't I win awards, I can't even find places to publish. I can only publish by writing things that damage Chinese people, only then can I win domestic awards and further pursue Nobel Prizes." This is anti-national literature.

Second, it's anti-scientific. Large numbers of works fabricate wildly, with screens flooded with various court scandals. Even so-called main melody works include anti-Japanese war trash dramas with fabricated plots of "hand-tearing devils," causing great public indignation, making people doubt the entire War of Resistance, causing a generation of youth to be ignorant of history. Comrades Guo Songmin, Mei Xinyu and others shouldn't have needed to fight lawsuits over the honor rights of the Five Heroes of Langya Mountain [note: famous WWII resistance fighters]. That such a clear matter of right and wrong requires lawsuits to restore justice—what does this indicate? Justice has been absent too long!

I saw news about a female student who wanted to drop out of school. Why? Influenced by TV dramas, she wanted to "travel through time" back to the Qing Dynasty to become a princess. This isn't a joke—it's fact.

The final point is anti-popular. For a long time, our mainstream literature and art have praised "feudalism, capitalism, and revisionism," praised emperors, generals, and ministers while despising and insulting working people and ordinary intellectuals, causing the entire society to be filled with fawning over power and wealth. People open their mouths saying "our family is from a great mansion," "our family has noble lineage," "my grandfather was an authentic eunuch." The entire trend of literature and art is anti-popular and anti-democratic.

Anti-popular, anti-scientific, anti-national—should our literature and art ranks long endure or remain in this state? Look at our literature and art ranks—I deal with many artistic groups and give lectures. Today's literature and art ranks have relatively abundant funding and high cultural levels; many are graduate school graduates. Looking at individual qualities, each has handsome appearance and graceful bearing, good voices and good looks—they just can't produce good works.

In thirty years, who can produce a universally recognized masterpiece (not to mention globally recognized, just nationally recognized)? Many works hyped for a time and very popular can't withstand looking back again. Think about those works hyped in the 1980s—can any be considered classics? Earlier ones like "The Class Teacher" and "At the Silent Place"—the authors themselves might be embarrassed to look at them now. Actually these still had some historical and aesthetic value; post-1990s works are even more unwatchable.

Precisely under these circumstances, besides calling out against unfairness encountered in real life, in terms of overall spiritual state, the people miss Chairman Mao. Every day, in countless large and small squares and parks nationwide, millions sing those red songs—the most affectionate call to Chairman Mao. These songs, summarized, are really just one line: "Looking up to see the Big Dipper, thinking of Mao Zedong in my heart." [Applause]

Looking at today, the literary and artistic views Chairman Mao established are both far-sighted and possess universal value, because he summarized all human literary and artistic experience, ancient and modern, Chinese and foreign, while standing at a new century's theoretical height. For people to live healthy spiritual and artistic lives, they must return to the path Chairman Mao indicated. Not just Chinese people—I believe American people, French people, Russian people are all the same; all should establish their own countries' national, scientific, and popular literature and art.

Today we see smog everywhere, but because we have Mao Zedong, our confidence remains. At the end of this speech, I'll quote lyrics by elder Yan Su from the opera "Sister Jiang" as conclusion:

"Today bidding farewell to foggy Chongqing, black clouds heavy, night not yet ending. When we return tomorrow, we'll welcome back a red sun."