Illustration:
ill. 3.4
Date:
1947
Genre:
illustration, textbook
Material:
scan, paper, grayscale; original source: photographs print on paper, black-and-white
Source:
Xin Minzhuzhuyi geming shiqi gongnongbing sanzijing xuan 新民主主义革命时期工农兵三字经选 (Selection of three character classics for the peasants, workers and soldiers of the new democratic revolutionary age), Beijing: Wenwu, 1975:31.
Keywords:
Mao Zedong, hero, saviour, Chinese people, Sino-Japanese War, fight, nation, Red is the East, Mao portrait

Selection of Sanzijing for the Peasants, Workers and Soldiers of the New Democritic Revolutionary Age (Xin Minzhuzhuyi geming shiqi gongnongbing sanzijing xuan 新民主主义革命时期工农兵三字经选)

Politics remains an important factor in the production of alternative Three Character Classics. The 1940s see the publication of the anti-Japanese Kangri Sanzijing 抗日三字经 (XMZZY 1975:24-28) which, as one of the first of its kind, mentions Mao as China’s “real hero” able to unite the Chinese people and to make everyone fight to the end: 共产党有主张打到底不投降毛主席真英明讲政治论战争 (XMZZY 1975:25).

This tenor is echoed in later Sanzijing such as an Illustrated New Sanzijing 绘图新三字经 seen here which may be dated to 1947 (XMZZY 1975:29-34) and which calls Mao, who also appears prominently in the illustrations, a “saviour of the nation” 咱领袖毛主席能救国能抗日 (XMZZY 1975:29), alluding to the well-known line in that famous song Red is the East.