Illustration:
ill. 4.6 (set: 4.1)
Date:
1975, August
Genre:
poster, propaganda poster
Material:
internet file, colour; original source: poster, paper, colour, 55 x75 cm
Source:
DACHS 2009 Propaganda Posters, Maopost.com (edited by Pierre-Loic Lavigne and Pierre Budestschu): C00632, Heidelberg catalogue entry
Courtesy:
Pierre Lavigne
Inscription:
家喻户晓
Keywords:
Mao’s writings, Mao’s works, studying, reading, children, countryside, Mao quotations, Cultural Revolution, bicycle, Mao Cap, family

Well known to every family, everywhere, in the cities and the countryside (Jia yu hu xiao 家喻户晓)

What these different depictions insinuate, then, is that Mao and his writings (and not just the Three Character Classic discussed in the last chapter) are indeed, as one four-word phrase has it, “well known to every family, everywhere, in the cities and the countryside” 家喻户晓. This propaganda poster published in 1975 even bears this as ist very title. It shows a young girl who has hung upon a tree in the centre of the image a blackboard with a quotation by Mao. People from all walks of life gather around the blackboard, some more seriously (like the old woman sitting in the foreground) others more casually (like the young man in the back, who is just arriving on his bicycle). Almost all of them are holding different paraphernalia related to reading and studying Mao: newspapers, booklets, notebooks. The backdrop, too, to the scene, which shows more people reading and posting big-character-posters at some of the surrounding (house-)walls, emphasizes this intense atmosphere of ideological instruction and learning. Numerous images of this sort could have been seen during the Cultural Revolution (cf. ill. II.1, ill. II.2, ill. 1.10).