First Pickled Mao, now Barbecued Mao

Chris O'Brien — Sun, 13 May 2007 15:06:14 +0000

There is not a lot more to add to the stories here and here. The Publicity Department controlled all the news on this story and spent a few hours “working out how to report” Mao’s flirtation with fire. To be fair they didn’t do a bad job. I was half-expecting them to talk in vague terms about an incident on Tiananmen Square which has now been resolved but they went some way to reporting the specifics. However, the Publicity Department’s involvement makes me sceptical of the perpetrator of the crime once being “treated in a mental disease hospital in Urumqi last year”.

Tiananmen Square is on my bike ride home and at 8 pm I expected everything to have returned to normal - maybe with just a glimpse of a “he won’t be doing that again” kind of look on Mao’s face. A few more police aside, no problems. Tourists were still happily snapping away in front of the Forbidden City. But cycle a bit closer and there it is! An ugly sooty blotch the size of my hand (I have fairly big hands, which is not intended as a boast) below his right lapel as if he had just slipped forward while twiddling a couple of ‘yangrou chuanr’ (lamb skewers for non-China residents). Obviously the picture was replaced overnight (people aren’t ready to see Mao’s picture being taken down just yet) and that was that. I just pity all those tourists who had journeyed to Beijing for the money shot - standing in front of an illuminated Forbidden City - who will be cursing the dirty smudge on the bottom left of their camera lens.

A post on EastSouthWestNorth about the reporting of the incident is worth a read. Some reporters’ attempts to link one man chucking a burning object at Mao’s mole to Chinese society reaching boiling point are nice and predictable.

Beijing Newspeak » Mao

First Pickled Mao, now Barbecued Mao