The sun is the reddest, and Chairman Mao is the dearest..."
"What Chairman Mao said, the people of Ava do. Follow Chairman Mao, follow the Communist Party..."
On a spring day in April, Li Ye was walking in an alley in Dahongmen'er, Beijing, with these well-known red songs that were popular in the 1960s and 1970s echoing in his ears. These songs are played by various shopkeepers on both sides of the alley. Not only in this alley, but if you walk in any alley in Beijing, you will hear these soulful, melodious, passionate and sonorous songs.
Books about Mao Zedong can be seen everywhere on street stalls and in various large and small bookstores. "Mao Zedong Steps Down from the Altar", "Inside and Outside the Red Wall", "People's Leader Mao Zedong"... official history, unofficial history, anecdotes and essays about Mao Zedong seem to have occupied people's spare reading time overnight. . In Beijing taxis, there is almost always a photo tied with a red thread - the plastic-wrapped front shows Mao Zedong who looks exactly like the one on Tiananmen Square, and the back shows Mao Zedong as a young man wearing an octagonal hat...
Li Ye has more of a perceptual understanding of this founding leader. From the time he could remember, Li Ye knew that this fat and kind old man was the great savior of the people of the country and Chairman Mao. Now Li Ye still vaguely remembers the memorial service held in the village when he was six or seven years old.
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