24.11.09
Brand Mao

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My brief trip to China last week was my first, ever. In the few hours off that I had, I frittered away a forgettable hour looking for Chinese guitars, but then my visit to Beijing’s Dirt Market (panjiayuan) was quite the reverse.

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There are hundreds of things you can observe from this market. How appallingly cold it was, or that there are a staggering amount of stalls specialising in jade bracelets. But as I walked around with a camera, collecting images, the 33-years-dead Chinese leader, Chairman Mao Tse-Tung was following me.

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Now at school I studied Mao - The Revolutionary. I mugged up on the long march and the good and bad sides to life in post-war China.

But I wasn't prepared for Mao - The Brand. Everywhere you look, he stares at you. Busts, hats, rucksacks, posters, badges, clocks, watches. It’s amazing.

Presumably there’s a substantial collectors market for this product and I eventually cracked myself, returning home with a Mao rucksack emblazoned with a classic quote, ‘Serve the People’. (I looked for one that said ‘The peoples of the world who struggle to oppose American imperialism and its running dogs will achieve the greatest victory’ - but weirdly couldn't find one).

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On returning, just a quick bit of ebay searching shows that there are collectors out there happy to shell out thousands of dollars for porcelain Maos to dominate their mantlepieces.

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Is this the same Mao that let millions starve during the Great Leap Forward? Perhaps. Buried hundreds of scholars alive? Quite possibly. The same Mao that watched millions more disappear during the Cultural Revolution? That’s the one.

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Would we visit Rome and scour flea markets for busts of Mussolini, or rummage for SS stuff in Berlin? Do millions of tourists visit London’s Camden market each year and leave disappointed that they couldn’t buy any Margaret Thatcher memorabilia? I doubt it.

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It’s hard to judge exactly how ‘New China’ truly feels about the elevation of Mao to this odd form of marketing (and therefore capitalist) sainthood. Mao’s own grand-daughter has defended ‘Brand Mao’ and the phenomenon of his face on everything: ‘It shows his influence, that he exists in people's consciousness and has influenced several generations of Chinese people's way of life. Just like Che Guevara's image, his has become a symbol of revolutionary culture. It is natural that he would be used on T-shirts or cups as a cultural logo.’

And of course, designers stroll through this market stuffed with this remarkable iconography and it’s hard not be be seduced. Who wouldn’t be by all that white red and black?

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When someone told me that there’s a Mao tie-up with Coke (or was it Pepsi?) I wasn’t really surprised. But I did double-take a little.

Our 20th century revolutionary icons (Che, Lenin, Stalin and Mao) have become the faces that sell cola and t-shirts. Class struggle has become size struggle.

Available now, in S, M, L and XL.

By Michael Johnson

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