Struggling with my on-off perennial battle to shed some flab, I was in the changing rooms of Songshan Sports Center (松山運動中心) the other morning, about to shower after a feeble effort on the track, when I heard an old man crooning away.
Old men and crooning are pretty standard fare at such establishments in the early hours – shit, happy-go-lucky fellow that I am, I’m not averse to spraying a lazy verse or two of Smooth Da Hustler myself while going about my much needed ablutions. This was a little different though.
Mao Zedong Máo
You’re not human … Nǐ bù
The old fellow warbled, before switching to another ditty with a different tune:
Communist Party Gòng
You’re dreaming! Nǐ zài mèng
Taiwan will be Tái
The death of you! Nǐ mù
“What do you think, Private Lin? Is Mao Zedong actually human?”
OK, I’ve taken liberties with that last couplet, which translates literally “Taiwan really is your grave,” but you get the picture.
“You understand that?” asked the old wag, before commencing a hearty reprisal, as he put on his shirt.
“Most of it. What’s that last word?”
“Ger-lay-vee” offered a grinning cohort.
Gravy?
“Grave” a bespectacled gentleman corrected, not grinning.
“Ah, as in graveyard (墓地) grave? ” I asked.
“Yes,” said the serious man, plonking himself down on the wooden changing room bench to pull on his socks.
He cast a slightly disapproving glance at the vocalist who was solo waltzing as he engaged in a further encore.
Does anyone know these songs in full? Funnily enough, I happen to be reading Thomas A. Marks’ Counterrevolution in China: Wang Sheng and the Kuomintang at the moment, and these seem like just the kind of songs the old nationalist vanguard would have favoured.
What surprised me, however, and was also immediately picked up on by the first person to whom I related this incident, was the fact they used the word Taiwan in the song, rather than the ROC.
As I can’t imagine many native Taiwanese hollering these propaganda slogans when old Mao was the least of their worries, let alone coming up with them, I’m almost certain they must have been penned by Nationalist vets. Were they then cunningly tweaked to get the locals on board?
Answers on a postcard or right here, should anyone read this and have a clue. (I suspect those two conditions narrow that down to a field of one.)
Have to be honest and say that this looks like you and your source here are exaggerating the degree to which Taiwanese 1) didn’t like hating on Mao, at least for show, and 2) ROC propagandists would avoid the term ‘Taiwan’. More to the point, ‘Taiwan’ goes into the song, whereas ‘Zhonghua Gongheguo’ totally wouldn’t, and would be illogical to boot even at the level required by this kind of song (Mao was already in the territory claimed by the ROC).
During the 70’s especially, everyone expected the next battle to be for Taiwan – I don’t see why they wouldn’t have had some songs about how they were going to do the Chinese Civil War equivalent of “sending them home in the back of an ambulance”.
Finally, hmm, is it just me, or does that last tune sound like new lyrics for “The East Is Red”? If it’s a piss-take on that made by ROC soldiers (wherever they got drafted from) then that probably answers your questions, since they would have had to listen to it continually if they were stationed near the coast. It was also often used in jamming signals, so people would have heard it over the radio.
Was Mao really the least of your average Taiwanese person’s concerns back then? I think that’s a wee bit of an exaggeration, no?
FOARP´s last blog post ..The insanity at the heart of Chinese nationalism
PS – this is the bit that made me think it was an “East Is Red” piss-take:
Gòngchǎndǎng,
xiàng tàiyáng,
Zhàodào nǎlǐ
nǎlǐ liàng
共产党，
像太阳，
照到哪里
哪里亮
FOARP´s last blog post ..The insanity at the heart of Chinese nationalism
The Gilman, the Gilman. You don’t half spout some gibberish. What the hell would the rhyme scheme have to do with it?! I’m not saying they just directly substituted four characters (中華民國 by the way – tut-tut, schoolboy stuff) for two. I shall address the rest of your twaddle when I have a bit more energy. About to put myself through another 1-1/2 hours of agony. You watching?
Oh, ‘East is Red’ sounds possible, though!
Interesting story.
I would love to know more about it.
Argh . . . where did ZhongHua Gongheguo (中华共和国) come from? It’s the title of the (CCP-controlled) Fujian Government! Yet more evidence of my communist brainwashing . . .
FOARP´s last blog post ..The insanity at the heart of Chinese nationalism