Illustration:
ill. 5.78 (set: 5.76)
Date:
2003
Genre:
collage, photomontage
Material:
internetfile, colour; origingal source: photomontage, colour
Source:
DACHS 2009 Mao SARS Zhang Erping “SARS: Unmasking Censorship in China” Association for Asian Research 8 November 2003, Heidelberg catalogue entry
Inscription:
最新指示: 一定要把非典的事情办好!
Keywords:
Mao portrait, leader, SARS, Mao Cult, talisman, Tian’anmen Square, crisis, protective symbol, Mao Cult, Mao´s words, popular culture, folk culture

Maos Latest Instruction: You must handle the SARS affair well! (Zui xin zhishi: Yiding yao ba feidian de shiqing ban hao 最新指示: 一定要把非典的事情办好)

Mao wards off evil not just in New Year Prints but in anti-SARS propaganda, too. One image from the SARS crisis in 2003 shows Mao’s standard portrait on Tian’anmen wearing a mask that reads “SARS.” The caption reads: “(Mao’s) latest instruction: You must handle the SARS affair well” (最新指示: 一定要把非典的事情办好). Mao not only does not sleep in constantly giving out his instructions, but he comes alive again when his people need him; his words and portrait were used to build up morale during the 2008 earthquake, and he has been turned into a protective symbol against all kinds of other difficulties, social upheavals, and dislocations that have constantly marked the reform period. These images can be read as evidence for a popular longing for the orderly society and the imaginary golden past as seen in the propaganda posters of the 1950s through the 1970s (Landsberger 2002, 162–63, see also DACHS 2009 Mao Memory).