Consuming a difficult past unapproved: Chairman Mao as commodity

Introduction

Valentine’s Day 2010 was a special day for Jordan Chan and Cherrie Ying Choi Yi, pop stars with millions of fans across China. On this day, Jordan and Cherrie finally wed in the Little White Chapel in Las Vegas. As part of the celebration, they took a series of wedding pictures in the style of the Cultural Revolution. In one of these pictures, Jordan and Cherrie were wearing green military uniforms and green hats with red stars, typical attire of the Red Guards. Completing the image, Jordan and Cherrie held up Quotations from Chairman Mao, also known as the “Little Red Book,” in front of their chests. The book’s cover featured the face of Chairman Mao, with a big red sun shining in the background.

This type of wedding photography has soon become a national fad as well as a controversial topic of the Internet. While many young couples have been taking similar pictures, many others have condemned such photos—one post on Zhihu (a site similar to Quora) even compares the Cultural Revolution’s Red Guards to the Nazis and regards the photo theme as equally offensive as wearing Nazi uniforms would be in Europe. ¹ There was also a news report featuring the conflicts between the younger and older generations regarding this wedding theme—the bride in the report wanted to pose for such a photo, while her in-laws clearly did not. The mother-in-law tried every way to move the bride’s focus away from the Red Guard uniform and suggested other styles, to no avail. Finally, the father-in-law exclaimed, “You just can’t.” It so happens that this couple’s parents had been brutally persecuted in Mao’s Cultural Revolution in the 1960s. ²

In all these stories and debates, Chairman Mao is a crucial symbol representing the controversial history in the Mao era (1949–1976), especially the political turmoil surrounding various state programs and movements, such as the Great Leap Forward (1958–1962), the Anti-Rightist Movement (1957–1959), and the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976). Although the “great leader” passed away in 1976, the controversies surrounding him and his era have not ceased. While the Chinese state has never fully acknowledged the suffering in the Mao era and discouraged the discussion, evaluating Mao and his era remains a controversial issue in civil society and in academia (Leese, 2011; MacFarquhar and Schoenhals, 2009; Schram, 1994). There has even emerged a literary genre called “the literature of the wounded,” telling “the stories of the victims of the Cultural Revolution” (Yang, 2016: 165). In this sense, the symbol of Chairman Mao not only speaks to Mao as a person, but more importantly, to a whole era with suffering, controversies, trauma, and conflicts, that is, what memory scholars termed as a “difficult past” (Teeger and Vinitzky-Seroussi, 2007; Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz, 1991).

Against this background, the consumption ³ of the Mao symbol in contemporary China has become a puzzle awaiting an explanation. Why do people remember and commemorate such a difficult past (in the Mao era) through a contradictory light-hearted way—in the form of Mao coin purses, “Chairman Meow” T-shirts, and Mao-themed restaurants? What does this consumption mean to people? How do political and discursive contexts affect people’s mnemonic consumption? Theoretically, what role does consumption play in remembering a difficult past that is not fully “approved” or acknowledged by the state?

To unravel these questions, I dialogue with research on the “difficult past” tradition, as well as studies on memory, consumption, and generation (Larson and Lizardo, 2007; Vinitzky-Seroussi, 2002; Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz, 1991). I treat the Mao symbol mainly as a “sign” or “representation” that “conveys to a mind an idea about a thing” (Peirce, 1998), ⁴ since most consumers purchased the Mao products for the “ideas” they stand for instead of the objects’ “pure” functional or use values. By examining these “ideas” and meanings attached to the Mao commodities, I argue that the consumption of a difficult past under imposed discursive ambiguity illustrates a process of mnemonic displacement: through denial and diversion, the difficult past “unapproved” by the state is largely displaced and forgotten by the very consumption and commemoration.

Remembering and forgetting a difficult past

Remembering and commemorating a difficult past can take various forms. In their seminal work on “difficult past,” Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz (1991) find that “opposing social constituencies,” such as entrepreneurs, politicians, veterans, artists, and visitors, would fight over methods of commemoration and compete to define the past. This approach is echoed by Gary Alan Fine’s study on “difficult reputation.” Fine views the process of reputation formation as a battlefield, in which different “reputation entrepreneurs” fight over the discourse surrounding a particular figure (Fine, 2001). Following this tradition, Vered Vinitzky-Seroussi (2002) argues that besides “multivocal commemoration,” as the Vietnam War memorial case shows, a commemoration of difficult past can also be “fragmented” by time, space, and audience (Vinitzky-Seroussi, 2002).

A difficult past can be covered, reconstructed, or silenced as well. In studying tourism in Croatia, Lauren Rivera argues that the state used particular strategies of “covering” and “cultural reframing,” such as the omission and reconstruction of historical elements, to present Croatia as an identical culture to the West (Rivera, 2008). Meanwhile, as Zerubavel’s (2006) work shows, a difficult past might be publicly covered and “denied” in order to avoid pain, discomfort, fear, embarrassment, and shame. In studying the memory of Yitzhak Rabin’s assassination, Vinitzky-Seroussi and Teeger (2010) identified yet another situation, that is, “cacophonous commemoration,” which incorporates multiple themes to one mnemonic time, thus “diluting” the difficult memory.

Despite their contributions, most of these studies draw their cases from democratic societies, and the role of the coercive state is downplayed. Although Rivera’s study on Croatia mentioned the state’s strategies, the role of the state in her case is similar to other agents and producers of memory. The coercive influence of the state over citizens’ meaning-making practice is less emphasized.

Consumption and memory

Memory scholars’ study of consumption is affected by the debates on whether consumption is boundary making or breaking (Bourdieu, 2013 [1984]; Veblen, 2007; Zukin and Maguire, 2004). These boundaries, in the context of memory studies, are related to various identity-themes such as citizenship, nationality, and generation. For instance, Berdahl and Bunzl (2010) found that consumption in post-socialist Germany is also a rite every German citizen experiences to incorporate into a unified country; consumption thus constitutes new citizenship. In the context of “ostalgia” consumption, however, consuming the “East German things” serves more as a symbolic challenge and resistance to Western capitalism (Berdahl, 1999).

Generation, as a cultural and historical concept (Mannheim, 2011), is another boundary-making factor for mnemonic consumption. Through their survey research among Spanish citizens, Larson and Lizardo found that “Che [Guevara] is more often recalled by those generations who saw him rise to prominence during their formative years” (Larson and Lizardo, 2007). This finding clearly illustrates that generation effect outweighs the massification effect of consumption.

Consumption also shapes particular forms and contents of memories. For instance, Mike Wallace used the term “Mickey Mouse history” to show how the Disney version of history selectively tells the story of national history, leading some contents (such as that of the Vietnam war) to be forgotten (Wallace, 1996). When examining tourism of the Oklahoma City Memorial and Ground Zero, Marita Sturken finds that tourism (as a form of consumption) takes on the healing power and constructs a form of “comfort culture” (Sturken, 2007).

These studies on consumption and memory are inspiring, but they focus more on extended categories of memory, such as identity and citizenship. While some studies have touched upon tragic memories, those memories are more or less consolidated. Yet, what about difficult pasts and memories which are still contested but simultaneously repressed by the state? My study on the Mao symbol is an ideal case for exploring mnemonic consumption of this type.

The Post-Mao China and imposed discursive ambiguity

Chairman Mao passed away in 1976. Two years later, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) adopted the “reform and opening up” policy, adumbrating a new “reform era” or “Post-Mao China.” Since then, the Chinese government has promoted a “socialist market economy,” opened its door to the outside world, and loosened its control over ideology. A “consumer revolution” gradually emerged in urban China, vastly changing the “relationships between agents of the state and ordinary citizens” (Davis, 2000).

In this context of post-Mao China, the Chairman Mao imagery and objects, together with other “red legacies” (Li, 2016), have experienced a rather interesting and somehow ironic posthumous life. In Shades of Mao, Geremie Barmé examined various usages of the Mao image in the 1990s, including borrowing the image to open restaurants and make money (Barmé, 1996). That is why Barmé (1996) calls the “Mao cult” in the 1990s as a “money cult.” Meanwhile, by examining the Cultural Revolution theme restaurant in the 1980s and 1990s, Jennifer Hubbert argues that the restaurants serve both as places to “satisfy the demands of consumer capitalism” and as mini-museums “that refuse to accommodate an amnesiac nation” (Hubbert, 2005). In another study on the Mao badges, Hubbert contends that the badge (re)collection in the late-socialist context reflects a dialectical nature of meanings—for some, it is to display the greatness of Mao, while for others, it is mainly for monetary aims ⁵ (Hubbert, 2006). In addition to the Mao imagery, other “red cultural legacies,” such as the red arts, red collections, and revolutionary museums, have also survived and even thrived in contemporary China (see Coderre, 2016; Ho and Li, 2016; Li and Zhang, 2016; Mittler, 2013). Using Jie Li’s (2016) words, “historical ignorance, folk beliefs, and disillusionment with market reforms all contributed to a mass commodification of Maoist memorabilia.” In this sense, the posthumous life of Maoist memorabilia resembles some features of the “post-communist nostalgia” in Eastern Europe, illustrating the (contradictory) power of the market and the cultural shock brought by sudden historical upheavals (Bartmanski, 2011; Berdahl, 1999).

However, China is not Eastern Europe. While the latter has officially jettisoned the communist past, the Chinese state has never experienced such a political transformation. Instead, the Post-Mao China (1976 to present) still embraces communism as its official ideology, retains its censorship system, and holds ambiguous attitudes toward Mao and his era. In 1981, the CCP passed the Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China, arguing that the Cultural Revolution was a mistake but “it would be a no less serious error to overlook or deny our achievements.” On the subject of Chairman Mao, the resolution contends that although Mao made mistakes, his merits are still primary; an overly attack against Mao is also an attack against the Party and the state. In 2013, Chinese president Xi Jinping commented that the two “thirty years” (referring to the 30-year Maoist era and the 30 years of "reform and opening-up") should not negate each other, sending rather mixed and confusing messages. Meanwhile, while the Chinese censorship is functioning well for curbing collective action and deleting sensitive messages, it leaves a certain room, at least privately, for people to criticize the government (King et al., 2013). Nevertheless, “the plethora of unofficial historiographies giving a cathartic outlet to past sufferings remained in the shadow of censorship and never dealt with crucial issues of collective guilt and responsibility” (Li, 2016).

This situation in contemporary China stands for a state-imposed discursive ambiguity, that is, an ambiguous discursive environment sustained by state-run censorship without clear rules and guidelines. While the authoritarian state’s censorship is still working, it neither works in a totalitarian way in which the sensitive topics are completely forbidden, nor does it allow for a free, open, and thorough discussion of the sensitive topics. As a result, a discursive ambiguity is created—everyone knows that the topic is sensitive, but no one knows exactly where the boundary is. ⁶ Thus, actors’ own interpretation of this discursive ambiguity is crucial for their meaning-making practices.

Mnemonic displacement: a theoretical framework

Based on my study of the Chinese case, I argue that the consumption of a difficult past under imposed discursive ambiguity is also a process of “mnemonic displacement,” that is, a mechanism through which the original theme of commemoration is displaced or replaced by alternative mnemonic themes and forms. ⁷ Specifically, the effect of mnemonic displacement is realized through two generational mechanisms: denial and diversion (see Figure 1).

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Figure 1.

The mnemonic displacement mechanism.

To begin with, actors can be divided into two generations based on their personal experiences of historical events: the “attendant generation” with “autobiographical memories” (Mannheim, 2011) of the difficult past and the “posterior generation” with indirect “appropriated memories.” Denial is a coping mechanism associated with the attendant generation’s consumption practices. Specifically, denial refers to the process of passive repression or active suppression of the difficult past publicly to avoid political punishment and psychological pains, echoing Zerubavel’s research on denial (Zerubavel, 2006). Due to their personal experiences in the “difficult pasts,” members of the attendant generation tend to be cautious about political issues and hold a conservative reading of the discursive ambiguity. Their consumption of mnemonic symbols serves either as a nostalgic projection of their passed youth or as a blatant calling for Mao’s utopia, while the traumatic memories in the Mao era were passively or actively denied.

Diversion is the second scenario of mnemonic displacement, often associated with the posterior generation’s consumption practices. Diversion refers to the omission of difficult pasts and memories through passive or active replacements of mnemonic themes. In the context of diversion, the difficult pasts in the Mao era are not psychologically repressed; the posterior generation reads the discursive ambiguity more openly and consumes the Mao symbol mainly to experience a foreign temporality (since the past is a foreign country) or to mock the contemporary issues. While the attendant and posterior generations consume the Mao imagery for different symbolic purposes, the results of their mnemonic consumption are ironically similar: through either denial or diversion, the very difficult pasts in the Mao era are forgotten in the public sphere.

Data and methods

To address the research questions, I conducted interviews and participant observations in three Chinese sites: Shanghai, Beijing, and Hunan. Shanghai is my primary case because it is the economic center of China. It has many shopping areas and businesses featuring Mao and his era, among which Tianzifang is a most representative site. Tianzifang is a modern art and crafts enclave full of boutique shops, bars, and restaurants, located in the central district of Shanghai. All kinds of Mao products are sold in Tianzifang, ranging from Mao coin purses to Mao enamel cups, which makes it an ideal place for my fieldwork. Among my interviewees were shop owners, sellers, and consumers. In addition to Tianzifang, I interviewed consumers of other Mao-related products and services, such as the Mao-theme restaurants in Shanghai. I also selected Beijing as a research site due to its status as a political center, though it also has similar enclaves, such as the South Luogu Lane, promoting a nostalgia industry featuring Mao. Finally, Hunan was chosen because it is the hometown of Mao Zedong.

I used snowball sampling as my primary recruitment method. I followed Small’s logic of case selection (Small, 2009) and stopped when no new theoretical pattern emerged. In the end, I conducted 20 interviews in Shanghai, 21 interviews in Beijing, and 15 interviews in Hunan, comprising a total of 56 interviews. While generational and age cohorts were one major criterion for case selections (23 born around 1949 or after and 33 born in the 1980s or after), my interviewees also varied in terms of gender, education, and class background. Themes in all interviews include interviewees’ experiences of purchasing the Mao-related products and services, the opinions and attitudes toward Mao and his time, their life stories in the Mao era and the Post-Mao era, interviewees’ family backgrounds, and their opinions on current social and political issues. After transcribing the interviews, I engaged in an inductive process of identifying patterns of mnemonic consumptions (together with semiotic analyses of images), based on which I further developed my theoretical framework.

The attendant generation: mnemonic consumption as denial

Denial is the first scenario of mnemonic displacement, corresponding to the attendant generation’s consumption practices. This “attendant generation” in China was generally born around 1949 or in the 1950s. Due to its members’ complicated and sometimes traumatic life experiences in Mao’s political movements, this generation is also called “the Red Guard generation” (Yang, 2016), “the zhiqing generation,” or “the lost generation” (Bonnin, 2006).

This generation’s conservative stance toward discursive ambiguity has historical roots. In the Mao era, the totalitarian state had firm control of ideology and society. Records show that one peasant was severely punished because he accidentally used the newspaper with Mao’s image on it as the toilet paper (see Leese, 2011: 207). Therefore, while the Chinese state today has never completely suppressed the discussion of the “mistakes” in the Mao era, the “attendant generation” tends to read the discursive ambiguity conservatively and prefers to keep silent publicly.

Passive denial

Passive denial is a mechanism associated with members of the attendant generation who suffered in Mao’s various political movements, especially the Red Guard Movement and the Sent Down Movement. Red Guards were students who answered Chairman Mao’s call to “continue the revolution” and engaged in a series of attacks on the “reactionary authorities,” “bad elements,” and the “old culture” during the Cultural Revolution. When the fever of the Red Guard Movement died down, many of them were sent down to the countryside to “receive the re-education from the peasants” (original words from Mao), becoming the so-called “educated youth.” These experiences brought many of them lifelong trauma and difficulties; as a result, many of them have a rather negative attitude toward Mao and his era. Moreover, learned from the experience of the Cultural Revolution, many know the danger of speaking out and prefer to keep silent in public; their denial of the difficult past is thus forced and passive (passive denial); their consumption of the Mao symbol in this sense mainly reflects their nostalgia for youth.

Mr. Yao in Beijing is a great example illustrating the coping mechanism of passive denial. Mr. Yao was born in the 1950s and is now a senior staff member, nearing retirement, in a public institution in Beijing. When the “big-character poster” in Peking University was posted in 1966, Mr. Yao was still in elementary school. However, due to the subsequent political turmoil, he became a “little Red Guard,” and thus lost the opportunity for further education. Around 1972, he was “sent down” to a rural area not far from Beijing, which was lucky compared with the experiences of some, but he still had to wait 3 or 4 years before returning to the city. He witnessed various kinds of violent activities during that period, including the persecution of officials, teachers, neighbors, and his own father. When I told him what I was studying, he cautiously asked, “Can we not talk about this? You know, this issue is not easy to study in China . . .” When I further asked him why, he said,

You know, this is China. In the socialist period, Mao and the communist party made huge mistakes. So, your research topic is kind of sensitive . . . We can talk about something else . . .

As his tone implied, Mr. Yao was perfectly aware of the discursive ambiguity. Despite his negative attitudes toward the Mao era, Mr. Yao still identifies with his status as “educated youth,” and frequently attends the “educated youth” activities. As mentioned in the interview, he made many good friends in the Sent Down Movement, which became good memories in the “difficult years.” In this sense, his nostalgia for youth coexists with his passive denial of the difficult past.

Mr. Fang in Shanghai is another example. Fang was born in 1949 and sent down to Heilongjiang Province as an “educated youth.” After 1980, Mr. Fang eventually returned to Shanghai, and is now an enthusiastic organizer of the “educated youth” gathering activities, such as dining in Mao-theme restaurants or singing the old “red songs.” Through our conversation, I know Mr. Fang is not a sympathizer of Mao, and yet he and his friends still sing “red songs” (such as “The East is Red”) praising Mao and his time. Confronted with this contradiction, Mr. Fang exclaimed,

Of course we sing the “red song”! What else can we sing? We sang these songs when we were young . . . I think we should sing songs like “Unity is Strength,” but we should also sing “The International”! The lyrics of “The International” are good, right?

This quotation illustrates Fang’s complicated feelings: since the lyrics of “The International” say “there has never been a savior” in the world, Mr. Fang was subtly indicating that Mao was not a savior of China, as confirmed in our later conversation. In this sense, the red songs, together with other activities, do not indicate his love for the Mao era but rather express his nostalgia for youth. The subtleness in Mr. Fang’s words illustrates both his awareness of the sensitivity and his passive denial of traumatic memories.

This passive denial toward the difficult past is shared by many members of the attendant generation. Besides Yao and Fang, many other interviewees, such as Mr. Gao, an engineer, and Ms. Lei, a retired worker and housewife, expressed similar views. These interviewees have their commonality: despite their nostalgia for youth, they all acknowledged the sensitivity of the topic and all repressed the traumatic memory publicly.

Active denial

Active denial is often associated with members of the attendant generation who were not adversely affected by Mao’s movements but often suffered in the reform era. While some of them are also “educated youth,” many are more likely to be the lucky ones who had joined the army or factory instead of being sent down to the countryside. However, this group’s experience today is not that pleasant. As Guobin Yang’s (2016) study illustrates, “one of the most serious problems facing this generation in the late 1990s was unemployment caused by the restructuring of state-owned enterprises” (p. 173). Ching Kwan Lee studied these “laid off” workers and found that many of them used collective memories of Chairman Mao to voice their dissatisfaction with the present and to mobilize social protests (Lee, 2000). Since publicly endorsing and praising Mao is less sensitive under today’s discursive ambiguity, these admirers of Mao often actively deny the suffering in the Mao era. Correspondingly, their favorite products represent an “authentic” style loyal to the official portrait in the Mao era.

Mr. Li is one such admirer of Mao in Shanghai. He was born in 1949, the same year the People’s Republic was established. During the apex of the Cultural Revolution, he participated in the Red Guard Movement and bought one of his first “Chairman Mao badges” during his trip to see Chairman Mao in Beijing. After that, he began buying and collecting badges, along with other objects representing the Mao era. When the Red Guard Movement faded away, he was not sent down to the countryside. Instead, he was fortunate to join the factories in Shanghai, becoming a worker—an admired role by many Chinese at the time. When I interviewed him in Shanghai, he was wearing a bright “Chairman Mao badge”, as he had been doing every day for the past 40 years. I asked him why, and he said,

I insist on my belief. Wearing the badge is a symbol! What symbol? It illustrates that I haven’t changed my belief! Every time my behavior deviates from reality, I will think that I should not do this because I have the Chairman Mao badge on me! It stands for justice! You won’t do bad things when wearing the Chairman Mao badge!

As his words reveal, Mr. Li downplayed and ignored the monetary aspects of the Mao badge collection, and instead emphasized his loyalty to the thought of Chairman Mao. Mr. Li resembles Wang Anting, the Mao admirer and badge collector in Hubbert’s (2006) study, illustrating the dialectical nature of badge consumption, which includes not only the market logic but also the admiration of Mao’s road.

I continued to talk to Mr. Li, especially regarding the “difficult past” and “mistakes” in the Mao era. Mr. Li enthusiastically responded:

The mistakes only account for a tiny portion. If you infinitely magnify the mistakes but ignore those major achievements, you are purely “pouring dirty water” on Chairman Mao and his time.

As the conversation continued, Mr. Li began to criticize the contemporary era:

Today, you can see many examples of social injustice, including corruption. For a young person, his classmate can drive a BMW or get into a famous university without studying, while his hard work barely brings him anything.

All these problems, Mr. Li believed, are due to the abandonment of Chairman Mao’s road. As his words and escalated emotion show, Mr. Li was directly denying the suffering in the past, while his adoption of official discourse kept him safe against the background of imposed discursive ambiguity.

Mr. Li is not alone. When I visited Shanghai, I also met Mr. Zhan, a retired factory worker similar in age to Mr. Li. Mr. Zhan wore a green t-shirt with Chairman Mao’s official portrait printed on it. I asked him about his opinions of Mao and the suffering in the Mao era. He said,

These are rumors. You should not attribute all these things to Chairman Mao and his era! That is horrible! . . . There is also a misunderstanding of the Cultural Revolution. The Cultural Revolution is a kind of education; it is not about the persecution of people!

In the following conversation, Mr. Zhan continued to complain about all the social problems today, such as pollution, corruption, and social inequality. Mr. Zhan’s frustration in today’s China further strengthened his belief in Mao and his road, while the suffering in the Mao era was blatantly ignored and denied. Besides Mr. Li and Mr. Zhan, many other interviewees, such as Mr. Hai, a retired civil servant in Beijing, and Mr. Xie, a taxi driver in Hunan, expressed similar views, illustrating a clear and active denial of the difficult past.

The posterior generation: mnemonic consumption as diversion

Diversion is the second scenario of mnemonic displacement, corresponding to the mnemonic consumption of the posterior generation. In contrast to the attendant generation, the posterior generation (born around the 1980s or after) has no living memory of Mao’s movements. Growing up in the reform era, a considerable portion of young people in this generation lacks interest in the past, mainly due to the temporal distance to the Mao era as well as the state’s censorship ofthe past. The Mao symbol for them is more of a channel toward a foreign temporality or a way to mock the present, which diverts their attention away from the suffering in the Mao era. This diversion, however, does not involve a clear and sophisticated recognition of the suffering, which is one major difference compared with the denial mechanism.

Passive diversion

As the phrase “the past is a foreign country” indicates, many members of the posterior generation represent a mentality similar to the people from other countries would have. They consume the Mao products because, to them, the Mao image is a symbol of an alternative time and space, one vastly different from the “reform era.” While they know the topic is somehow sensitive, they do not care much to explore the theme further. Since they do not actively use the Mao symbol to make symbolic statements, I call their practice “passive diversion.”

Ms. Zhen is a young journalist who is in her 20s. She was born in 1987 into a business family. After graduating from college in Shanghai, she worked as a journalist for several years. She told me that she had purchased a fair amount of Mao products, such as coin purses, enamel cups, and card covers with Mao’s image because these products were “interesting.” When I further asked her what she meant by “interesting,” she said,

Because they are beyond your imagination! I didn’t expect anybody to make this stuff . . . it has a dramatic tension or contradiction, because it appears in this world! Looking at these things, you get the feeling that they are from my parents’ era. It is somehow mysterious.

These items, like tourist souvenirs, document her “time travel” back to the past.

I noted similar sentiments in my interviews with Mr. Bo and his wife, both graduate students in their late 20s. During their recent trip to Shanghai, they visited a popular theme restaurant featuring Mao and the Cultural Revolution (Figures 2 and 3). The waiters and waitresses dress as if they were Red Guards or “educated youth” during the 1960s and use particular “red” words such as “comrade.”

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Figure 2.

The Mao-style restaurant.

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Figure 3.

Young women take selfies in the restaurant as if taking pictures at a tourist site.

When I asked them about their experience in this restaurant, Mr. Bo said,

Once you went inside, the waiters and waitresses would call you “comrade.” It is very interesting . . . Today you would not be called “comrade . . .”. It is kind of exotic and exciting . . .

Compared with Ms. Zhen and the Bo couple, Ms. Guo, a waitress in the abovementioned restaurant, is younger and less educated. Ms. Guo was born in 1993 into a peasant family in Henan. After middle school, she did not go to college but found a job as a waitress. Her response perfectly illustrates their generation’s lack of interest in the difficult past:

I don’t have much comment on Chairman Mao and his era. For those of us born in the 1990s, we don’t really care about things of the past. We don’t care much about those bad things either. After all, we don’t know much . . .

The amnesia of Ms. Guo’s generation is partially explainedby state strategies and their outcomes, illustrated by both the discursive ambiguity and the school curriculum. The omissions of relevant content in history textbooks and public media are great examples. As Ms. Zhen mentioned, “for our generation, there is not much information on that period of the past provided in school. The teachers do not discuss that era in detail.”

Although educational background affects interviewees’ knowledge in the Mao era, this lack of contemplation of the difficult past is shared by many members of the posterior generation. In addition to the abovementioned cases, other interviewees, such as Ms. Gui, working in a financial company, and Ms. Yi, a graduate student in Beijing, expressed similar feelings, demonstrating a clear mechanism of passive diversion.

Active diversion

Compared with the abovementioned “time travelers,” some other members of the posterior generation consume and exploit the Mao symbol more actively. Through the Mao symbol, they voice their dissatisfaction with the status quo, mock the official political narrative, and experience the excitement of symbolically walking through the “grey area” between social definitions of morality and immorality. In terms of the particular forms of Mao products, these mockers’ favorites are usually the modern re-inventions, which often contain elements of irony and clearly depart from the “authentic” style consumed by the attendant generation. During this process, the posterior generation actively diverted their attention to contemporary issues, while the theme of the difficult past in the Mao era is once again neglected.

Ms. Fan, a college student in Shanghai, is a great example. Ms. Fan once bought notebooks and coin purses with “fake words” from the Quotations fromChairman Mao. These words are fake because they resemble the Mao quotations in form but are not from the original content. When I asked her why she bought these products, she said,

Because it’s funny! . . . It is kind of sensitive . . . When my parents saw these things I bought, they laughed and said that if it were the 1960s or 1970s, I would be captured!

“Why did they say that?” I continued to ask:

Because [these things] are making fun of the leader, making fun of the party; it is a reactionary behavior! When I visited the Shanghai Expo in 2010, I was worried that the security guard would find this notebook and throw it away. But fortunately, he did not say anything. That period of time is kind of sensitive . . .

Ms. Fan mentioned the word “sensitive” twice in her short answer, indicating that she was fully aware of the imposed discursive ambiguity. However, Ms. Fan bought and used the Mao products anyway, even though this is a “reactionary behavior.” This response to discursive ambiguity sharply contrasted with those of the conservative attendant generation.

I also talked to Ms. Wu, a young salesperson in Tianzifang. According to Ms. Wu, these people (the posterior generation mocking the present) purchased the products not for their utilitarian functions but for the “funny and special” words (and images) on the products. “What do you mean by ‘funny and special’?” I asked. Ms. Wu responded, “it is kind of contradictory, because at that time [referring to the Mao era], [people] would not say the words that are on the products today!” In other words, although these Mao products resemble the socialist past in form, their meanings are vastly deviant from those of the orthodox ideology.

Below (Figures 4 and 5) are two examples illustrating the meaning of “buying for the funny and special.” Figure 4 shows enamel cups that were used in almost every household in the Mao era, but the images and words on the cups have now been entirely re-invented. Specifically, the words on the cup with Mao’s image reads, “Chairman Mao said, every relationship not having a final goal of marriage is a form of bullying and harassment.” However, reading the Quotations fromChairman Mao, I never found the exact sentence. Figure 5 features the coin purses with slogans in socialist styles. One of Chairman Mao and CCP’s famous political slogans is “to serve the people.” This is still an official slogan frequently used by CCP today. Yet, the new phrase on the coin purse has an additional character, and thus completely transformed the meaning. The new motto is now “to serve people’s money/RMB,” which mocks the capitalist fetishism in today’s China.

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Figure 4.

Mao-style enamel cups.

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Figure 5.

Mao-style coin purses.

In addition to the above mentioned examples, many other interviewees, such as Ms. Pan, a college student in Shanghai, expressed similar cynical attitudes when explaining those “funny and special” words and images to me. While nuanced differences exist in the symbolic meanings people attach to the Mao symbol, one similarity is that the posterior generation cares more about the present and often lacks a deep interest in knowing the Mao era. Their consumption is thus a diversion of mnemonic themes without contemplation of the difficult past.

Conclusion and discussion

What role does consumption play in remembering a difficult past under imposed discursive ambiguity, that is, when the difficult past is not fully “approved” or acknowledged by the authoritarian state? Based on the study of the Mao case in China, this article explores the difficult past of this type and puts forward a theory of mnemonic displacement centering on denial and diversion as mechanisms. Due to their personal experiences in the Mao era, the attendant generation tends to have a conservative reading of the discursive ambiguity and passively or actively denies the traumatic memory through consumption. In contrast, the posterior generation growing up in the Post-Mao era often reads the discursive ambiguity more openly and diverts their attention to other mnemonic themes and forms, without contemplating Mao’s difficult pasts. In the end, the difficult past unapproved by the state is displayed through consumption but also forgotten ⁸ in the public sphere.

Two caveats should be noted though. First, while I argue that consumption in the context of discursive ambiguity is also a process of public forgetting, I do not mean that consumption causes public amnesia; it might also be possible that public amnesia makes consumption more likely. It thus could be a “chicken and egg” problem which is out of the scope of this study. Second, while there are other mentalities toward the Mao symbol, they are either unrelated to consumption or can be grouped into one of the patterns summarized above. For instance, some members of the attendant generation hate Mao and his era so much that they do not want to relate to the Mao symbol at all; they are thus not consumers and not subjects of my study. Meanwhile, while the particular meanings attached to the posterior generation’s consumption in the study might vary in nuanced ways, they can all be summarized into one of the two diversion scenarios analyzed above. In this sense, denial and diversion are indeed two central mechanisms working behind mnemonic consumption under imposed discursive ambiguity.

While consumption of the Mao symbol is a case based on China, my study might be of interest to a broad audience. To begin with, my study contributes to the study of collective memory by theorizing a type of difficult past not fully “approved” or acknowledged by the state. As the review of memory scholarship indicates, current studies of difficult past usually discuss cases in democratic societies (Vinitzky-Seroussi, 2002; Wagner-Pacifici and Schwartz, 1991) and pay less attention to the role and impact of the authoritarian state. My research is an effort to address this gap. It shows that interactions between state coercion and receivers’ generational position heavily influence actors’ meaning-making practices.

Second, my study contributes to the study of memory and consumption by developing a theory of displacement as forgetting. Many studies of mnemonic consumption have often assumed, if not articulated, that commodities are used to commemorate and remember the theme or figure featured. For instance, Sturken (2007) argues that the kitsch souvenirs serve to heal psychological wounds; souvenirs in this sense directly address the original theme. Hubbert argues that the Cultural Revolution theme restaurants serve as mini-museums “that refuse to accommodate an amnesiac nation” (Hubbert, 2005). My study shows another possibility. In the context of imposed discursive ambiguity, consumption might actually commemorate the theme away by the very commemoration. In this scenario, mnemonic consumption contributes more to collective amnesia than collective remembering in the public sphere. ⁹

By delineating the specific mechanisms that transform commemoration and consumption into amnesia, my theory of mnemonic displacement speaks directly to the debates on memory, forgetting, and regime contexts. In Seven Types of Forgetting, Paul Connerton (2008) argues that “repressive erasure” is the “most brutal form” through which a (totalitarian) state or ruling party blatantly “erases” particular memories. My study echoes Connerton’s analysis but provides a fine-tuned adjustment: while the state power seems brutal in form, the realization of “repressive erasure” and amnesia is often not a result of state repression alone but is an outcome of political, commercial, generational, and psychological forces combined.