Scenes 91 to 100
Song Qingling listens to the radio, where Mao’s phrase to celebrate the leaving of the Americans and the coming of their white paper [on their failed China policies] is broadcasted. She turns off the radio and sits down to play the piano.
A car arrives. The wives of Deng Xiaoping and Zhou Enlai get out, and Song Qingling’s servant leads them into the living room. The servant tells Song Qingling that the guests have arrived when she comes down the stairs.
Song Qingling welcomes her guests. They talk about the war times when they met in Chongqing, and Song Qingling asks about Mao’s health and whether he still smokes as much as he used to do during the Chongqing negotiations with the GMD after the anti-Japanese war. Zhou Enlai’s wife then gives her a letter from Mao as well as from her husband in which both of them ask her to come to Beiping for the proclamation of the new state. Song is afraid to go and looks in melancholy at her dead husband’s (Sun Yat-sen’s) photograph who died in Beiping in 1925. But after she has read Mao’s and Zhou’s personal letters she feels encouraged enough to go to Beiping.
1949/9/21: During the first plenary session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, the founding of the People’s Republic of China, its flag, anthem and parliamentary structure is decided. Beiping is to be renamed Beijing and made capital. Outstanding people of Chinese society who support the Communists, and leading Communists are shown to give speeches (all real footage, accompanied by the voice of the commentator). Finally the first Central People’s Government is elected, including Mao Zedong as chairman, Zhu De, Liu Shaoqi, Song Qingling, Li Jishen, Zhan Lan and Gao Gan as vice chairmen. It is further told that Mao uttered his famous sentence: “Now the Chinese people has stood up”.
Mao rows a boat and talks with old Cheng Qian (程潜) who had organised the defection of the GMD troupes in Hunan and who was personally invited by Mao to Beijing as a sign of honour. They talk about Mao’s youth in Hunan and that he used to be a troublemaker. Mao asks him about the former head of the teacher’s academy in Hunan with whom he had clashed once. Cheng Qian tells him that he is not well, because he lost his job and almost lives like a beggar. When Mao asks for the reasons, Cheng Qian tells him that nobody dares to give him a job, given the fact that he had clashed once with Mao. Mao therefore wants to write the provincial committee a letter, send the old man some money and invite him for a year and a half to Beijing. Cheng Qian thereupon praises Mao as a great personality.
Mao offers Cheng Qian that the government send him every month 50.000 pounds of rice which he can distribute as he thinks appropriate to his men. Then a secretary comes over and tells Mao that the guests from his home province have arrived. Mao jokes that they certainly have come to profit from their successful relative but adds in melancholy that without their help, e.g. with raising his children, his family might have suffered even more than it did. Cheng thus takes his leave to not disturb any further.
Mao Zedong’s relatives take a look around the hall, when Mao enters. An elderly uncle wants to know what the name of the new country will be and what “reign title” would be used. Mao answers that they will call the country the “People’s Republic of China” and will use the common era. The uncle thinks this not bad since to claim “1949” years suggests a very long reign! Then Mao sits down with them and asks them how the assignment of the peasants to the different categories of status are proceeding. The uncle tells Mao that his family has of course been assigned to the “poor peasant” category, but Mao objects since they should be classified as “rich peasants”. He wants to have this corrected, but the relatives in any case are not planning to go back. They rather want Mao to get jobs for all of them, but Mao tells them that this is impossible. The old uncle gets angry and reproaches Mao since he even helped this old GMD official Cheng Qian, but Mao explains that the Communists support all those GMD members that had helped them avoid more bloodshed.
1949/9/30: Mao honours the comrades who died during the revolution and the Civil War and inaugurates the foundation stone of the monument for the people’s heroes. He takes a spade and throws earth over the stone. All is bathed in red light and heroic music is played. A battlefield with dead soldiers is faded in and then doves fly into the red sky.
A table with food is shown. Mao stands at the table unmoving when Anying enters. Anying notices his father’s wet eyes and asks why he cries. Mao evades an answer and asks his son where he is planning to work. Anying says he wants to work in the central government but Mao opposes this as a too quick and easy way of career. He should rather gather experiences first. Anying remarks that this again makes him pay for being Mao’s son, and Mao acknowledges that Anying had no easy life, going to prison with his mother, risking his life in the Soviet Union later etc. On Anying’s comment that at least he survived, Mao discloses the reason for his emotional distress: many comrades have lost their lives for them to hold the fruits of the revolution in their hands now (including Anying’s mother Yang Kaihui who was executed by the GMD). Mao thus thinks of his former wife’s family and tells Anying to go back to Hunan and tell his maternal grandmother that Mao still considers himself also her son.
The setting is gloomy and faint music is playing in the background. Jiang asks his son Jingguo what is going on on the mainland. Jingguo tells him that Mao is going to inaugurate the new state, the People’s Republic of China. It will be the next day. Jingguo wants to cheer his father up citing the old proverb that it is easy to conquer a country but not easy to govern it. Jiang, though, replies that Sun Yat-sen already said: only those who follow the people’s wishes will have success. Now they have lost the people’s hearts and the others have won it. Only if they should find strength in their defeat to regenerate, they might again have a chance. Jingguo thinks they will be able to do so, so there is hope. Looking in the direction of the mainland, Jiang just mutters “hope…”.
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