Group Photograph

The ranks look up with reverence, inching quietly forward, getting ever closer. The people up front bow their heads; father bows his. Jianguo bows his head as, for an instant, he gets a clear glimpse of Chairman Mao: that pallid, serene face, thinner than in the pictures. This is Chairman Mao – the Chairman Mao of a hundred thousand photographs, pictures, books – lying inside, separated by only a layer of glass, that everyone is allowed to gaze upon. Jianguo’s heart jumped in excitement, and his palms broke out in sweat without his even being aware. People pushed him quietly and gently forward from behind, on around the Chairman’s chin and cheeks and side until he could only see, from the corner of his eye, the Chairman’s neatly combed hair covering the back of his head, the heart of the heart of the New China. Only when he was nearing the exit did he realize that the memorial hall smelled like disinfectant, the kind sprayed in school’s classrooms to prevent hepatitis.

After they had emerged, he and his father stood under the pine trees in Tian’an men Square scanning the Gate of Heavenly Peace bathed in evening sunlight. The Chairman’s giant portrait floated in the sky above the masses, as if the old man were staring back at his own mausoleum. Jianguo realized that so many people standing in front of the gate were all inadvertently taking pictures in the same direction. Father told him to stand up straight and took a photo, completely indistinguishable from anyone else’s, either in pose and background. Everyone was so innocent, so unified.

At this moment, it seemed as if everyone were taking the same picture.

The pilgrimage ended, Jianguo and his father made the long trip home. Later he heard someone say that the glass casket could only preserve a body for so long, and that the body he had seen, wrapped in a Communist Party flag, had long ago been replaced. This left him shocked, unable to eat for several days, as the image of Chairman Mao’s toes poking up through the Party flag kept floating back into his mind. Superglue, plastic, wood, wax—how did they make those toes point straight upward? The red flag covered the Chairman’s body so quietly, without a single wrinkle, its shiny surface extending up to the sturdy slope of his chest.

Guangzhou, 1998

Hu Fang, New Arcades ( Survival Club, Sensation Fair and Cool Shanshui), Map Book Publishers, 2006, Hong Kong