Illustration:
ill. 5.48 a (set: 5.48)
Genre:
photograph
Material:
scan, colour; original source: photograph, colour
Source:
Yang 1995: Yang Kelin 杨克林. Wenhua da geming bowuguan 文化大革命博物馆 (Museum of the Cultural Revolution). Hong Kong: Sanlian, 1995:85.
Inscription:
毛泽东选集; 毛泽东思想万岁
Keywords:
Mao Zedong, Tian’anmen Square, popularity, Cultural revolution, contemporary China, omnipresence, Mao Cult, red flag, Mao portrait, public

Mao at Tian'anmen (Mao zai Tian'anmen 毛在天安门)

Photographic evidence seems to support the idea that during the Cultural Revolution, Mao was quite popular—at least in one sense of the word—as much as he could be seen everywhere: in public at Tian’anmen (ill. 5.48 a&b), as well as in private at home (ill. 5.49), in the cities (ill. 5.50), as well as in the countryside (ill. 5.51, 5.62), in the factories (ill. 5.52) as well as at the universities (ill. 5.53, 5.63).

In all of these depictions, we can see images, photographs, paintings of Mao, the old and the young, or Mao the sun and pattern, hung each in a fitting size, at the most central and prominent places. But these repetitious images are not only representative to the experience of the Cultural Revolution alone.