Mao Mania

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So far, both purveyors and consumers of Mao kitsch have skirted punishment by relying on the tongue-in-cheek assertion that the products in question are really symbolic of the people's love and admiration for China's hero. If Mao rucksacks and night lamps sell well in tourist markets, it's only because 'people from all over the world are also learning to admire Mao,' a stall owner at Panjiayuan says with a tight grin.

Many older Chinese do venerate Mao, of course, and every day great numbers of people from all across the country travel to Beijing to pay their respects at Mao's mausoleum at Tiananmen Square. Some openly weep as they file past his embalmed body. And yet, the Chinese Communist Party has been forced to begin acknowledging the chairman's dark side (the official party line that the leader was '70 percent right and 30 percent wrong') and is itself stretching previous limits on the use of his image.

In 2003 the party commissioned a rap artist to write a song using Mao's favorite exhortation, the Two Musts -- people must preserve their modesty and their style of plain living and hard struggle -- as part ofa drive to recruit new youth members. When the Xin Dong Cheng Gallery for Contemporary Art featured the Great Helmsman flirting with Marilyn Monroe last fall, however, the party shut down the exhibit.

That the party would be hot and cold on the kitsch makes sense. For while all of this funny business is in some ways just harmless fodder for young Chinese, there's no doubt that a newfound flippancy indicates a serious desire for reform.

'What I'm waiting for is the day Mao's portrait at Tiananmen Square comes down,' said an activist in Beijing. 'Until that happens, nothing will really change.'

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