A QUIET DAY IN TIANANMEN SQUARE

A QUIET DAY 

 IN TIANANMEN SQUARE 

PLA SOLDIERS MARCH THROUGH. 

THE PORTRAIT OF MAO ZEDONG GAZES ON. 

BEIJING 1981 

CHINA THEN & NOW: MAID & CHILD

CHINA THEN & NOW

MAID & CHILD, NANJING 1981

In 1981, the People's Republic of China was on the cusp of major change. The Third Plenum of the Eleventh Congress late in 1978 had seen Deng Xiaoping's return to power and a new line proclaimed. When I first went to China almost two and a half years later, the new line had begun to be implemented, but ordinary people were not yet sure that it would triumph, and the new policies endure.

The first, sometimes tentative shoots could be seen in, for example, "free markets" -- as in a farmers' market in Yan'an. Under Mao Zedong the exploitation of labor had been frowned on, but in Nanjing I found a lower-ranking cadre who had a maid for his small child (above).

Cremation had been promoted in Mao's "New China." Burial in graves was discouraged as wasteful of scarce land. Yet in Ji'an in June 1981 I came across an early-morning funeral procession, which quickened its pace and tried to escape notice when discovered.

More generally I recorded both the distinctive city scenes and historical sites and the everyday activities of farming and eating and buying and selling and transporting goods to market and living life.

Now these photographs and many others taken in 1981 and since are being collected in a book: HERE BE GIANTS.

MAO ZEDONG SLEPT HERE

MAO ZEDONG SLEPT HERE 

THE BEDROOM IN MAO ZEDONG'S CAVE RESIDENCE IN YAN'AN, CHINA

This year marks the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the final stage of which was a campaign fought north to south by the People's Liberation Army. This was a victory years in the making.

As we have seen with more recent guerrilla movements, weak governments which cannot control their peripheries can be threatened by rebel groups which seize power in the borderlands or "badlands."

So it was with the Chinese Communists, who escaped the "bandit extermination campaigns" waged by the KMT, or Nationalist, Generalissimo Chiang Kaishek by making the daring, desperate, Long March (1934-1935), which brought the remnants of Mao Zedong's forces to Yan'an, China.

There a residence could properly be a home in a cave carved into the hillside, and the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) leadership shared a compound of such houses.

THE HORSE MAO RODE IN ON

THE HORSE MAO RODE IN ON 

MAO ZEDONG'S HORSE ON DISPLAY

IN THE MUSEUM IN YAN'AN, CHINA

Yan'an was the site of the revolutionary base Mao Zedong and the other leaders of the Chinese Communist Party established at the end of the Long March (1934-1935). Mao's horse (see above) seems to have been lovingly preserved. A white horse.