/lit/ - Literature

>>19598388

>>19598388
forbidden door by Tiziano Terzani is kino.

>>19598443

This is an all-time classic, but if I'm honest I only bought it because the cover looks good on my shelf.

Wild Swans by Jung Chang is quite good. It's a biography of the author's grandmother, who was a concubine to a warlord, the author's mother who was a communist party cadre during the civil war but was later purged, and the author who lived through the cultural revolution.

>>19598388
>Books on Maoist China?
I highly recommend "Tombstone" and "Mao's Great Famine" which records the history of the Great Leap Forward of 1958-1962. It was the largest famine ever as if like the apocalypse

>>19598388
Mobo Gao - The Battle For China's Past

>>19600101
this book sucks

>>19600101
youre being a faggot

>>19598610
show shelf

The World Turned Upside Down: A History of the Chinese Cultural Revolution by Yang Jisheng

Chinese Shadows by Simon Leys

To make this thread somewhat /lit/ related, I recommend Mao's Lectures at the Yan'an Conference. In these talks, Mao lays out a philosophy of what revolutionary literature and art should look like. The impression I get is that the guy was a big fan of peasant culture, disliked classical works but wanted to repurpose their forms for a revolutionary cause, and really hated Japan.

Don't want to get political, but is it true the communist revolution of china sort of "wiped out" traditional chinese culture?

>>19598388
The Paris Commune in Shanghai by Jiang, Hongsheng
>>19601293
No, Confuscianism is explictly promoted by the CPC. The cultural revolution was about fighting against capitalist roaders and a new bourgeoise class who would often used appeals to the 'chinese way of life' to defend Landlords, decommunization, markets and private property. People who whine about 'traditional chinese culture' do not really care about Chinese people when that culture was brutal subjugation of peasants by landlords and torture

>>19598388
When I was in like 3rd grade I thought I could heat up rocks in the oven and turn them into diamonds

>>19601293
To some degree, as this retarded tankie hints at:
>>19601355
A lot of culture was promulgated by upper classes (bourgeoise), some dude farming rice to prevent his family from starving probably doesn't have time to write or study philosophy or art.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Olds
During revolutionary fervor, it's not clear what sort of cultural practices or artifacts are acceptable, so a lot of shit ends up being destroyed that even the leaders of the revolution might not intend.
Some dude you don't like (maybe because he's rich) has a book that you can vaguely connect to counter-revolutionary ideology? Line him up against the wall and throw his book on the pile.

>>19598388
Literally what the fuck is Logo's defense for these two instances of Mao's complete retardation

>>19598388
"Mao's China and After"

https://youtu.be/xxzzsO9_-VU

>>19598443
underrated

>>19601519
70% good 30% bad

>>19601293
The Cultural Revolution destroyed much of the traditional culture but it needed to be destroyed for Deng's reforms to be possible. For instance, both the nationalists and communists prior to 1949 forced women in their governing regions giving up foot-binding. The oriental world was left far behind the western world in terms of modernization. There didn't have hundreds of years to waste to let the traditional culture slowly proceed into the modernized one. Like the USSR in the 20s-30s, the PRC in the 50-60s needed to initiate the largest industrialization in the history of the world in a short period of time at any cost, squeezing centuries of industrialization and the accumulation of capital the West experienced into 10 years or less without letting the "colonial subjects pay for it" in order to survive from the two great superpowers in the Cold War.

Materially, the primary thing that needed to be done for industrialization was the land reform, redistributing 90% of the land of the country controlled by 10% of the population to the peasants or use for industrialization to turn the peasants into workers. This was not enough, though, as feudalism was deeply rooted in the mindset of the majority. Many peasants, for instance, were generational "serfs" for centuries. Women weren't allowed to work and study. And many temples were controlled by male elites who monopolized "divine powers" against anyone who disobeyed them.

Hence, to correspond with and also accelerate that great transformation, a relatively violent and radical crackdown on the traditional culture built upon feudalism, social oppression and patriarchy was the only way out for the country's future. Angry and oppressed peasants released their anger fully on the landlord and "rich peasant" class.

This movement was too radical and lots artifacts with significant historical value were destroyed. But everything has two sides. The movement, after all, liberated many Chinese from the feudal ideology and backward social structure.

That may be a disaster for the backward cultural traditions, but it also clears the way for the new culture to be created and the reborn of the good old ones. Once the "traditions" were broken down into atoms, they got decodified by society. Since 1976, many newly "discovered" traditions were liberated from dogma and formalism, given new values/meanings, reentering the stage of developing rather than stagnating, no longer standing in the way but accelerating modernization. Those are the traditions beneficial to the society, not "Confucius once said," "ancestor's law can't be changed," or "obeying your parents."

https://youtu.be/cYfTlpDvqMQ

>>19601756
why is there communist propaganda on /lit/

>>19601756
Near the end of the Analects, Confucius also said (as related by Ceng Zi), one can only truly attain oneself, once their parents are dead. If you think about this metaphorically, it means traditions and ancestors need to die.
[19-17] 曾子曰。吾聞諸夫子:人未有自致者也,必也親喪乎。』

>>19601756
The ambivalent process you describe was already taking place under the many different kinds of modernists and modernizers in China, for example here is Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Principles_of_the_People

There is no reason it had to take place under a brutal communist dictatorship with extremely limited experience of governance. Does that mean a completely decrepit, hesitating, western-infiltrated government would have been better? No, absolutely not. But if you want to maintain the ambivalence of modernization, you have to admit it could have been done a lot fucking better than Mao. Even Stalin did a better job in the USSR and that was mostly a trainwreck too. Even if your rationale is "centuries of modernization in record time," look at Japan's miraculous industrialization. Again, ambivalent, because this miracle was achieved under an authoritarian clique controlling the immature democratic organs for decades, but if you're willing to accept authoritarian dictatorships anyway, you might as well have an effective one.

>>19602454
>Confucius said this, therefore, if we apply quite a bit of mental gymnastics, we find that we HAVE to do this other thing without question
Logic: not found

>>19602454
>人未有自致者也
It is hard to translate the exact nuance of this phrase. It is like, "truly experience oneself", "truly release the extreme self (emotions?)". You can interpret it as just a call for mourning rites, Confucian courtesy or funeral piety etc. But it can mean something else entirely as well.

>>19598443

>>19600101
Dikotter is an insufferable faggot and even the deranged anti-china crowd admits his lies and interpretations have no subtlety or nuance to them

>>19602255
In the stink flower of modern internet, tankie nu-maoism is one of the most prominent petals. Its extremism and the intellectual sacrifices required to adhere to it are part of the thrill for its adherents. That's how zoomer philosophy works. You find the discord with the "vibe" you like, fr fr no cap, and deform your consciousness to participate in the LARP.

If your discord's "vibe" is "lmao who fucking care about kulaks #gaskulaks #gulags #guillotines #freeSRSsurgeries" then you are now a tranny stalinist whose preferred edgy humor is genociding landlords. There are several subvarieties and subdiscords you can then fall into, like tranny transhumanism with anime cyberpunk avatars, or unironic china/northkoreabooism.

>>19602473
I just thought it was an interesting phrase. Think about all the stories from fairy tales to bildungsromans David Copperfield, Great Expectations etc to Harry Potter lol which begin with the hero protagonist as orphan, liberated from his dead parents and family, to pursue adventure. (Sometimes this is a sign of weak author narrative, or psychological defense against the actual imperative of family relationships weird oedipal Freud stuff lol). You can only truly attain yourself when you free yourself from these societal bonds? Confucius had a message here.

Mao and China: A Legacy of Turmoil by Stanley Karnow. A pretty dry and "objective" description of the Mao years and pretty much just sticks to a strict timeline of events. Fairly neutral in so far as he doesn't really try to analyse Mao very much, just tries to outline what happened and where and to whom as much as that is possible.

>>19602484
I have only ever seen people write shit like "fr, fr, no cap" on 4chan.

>>19598388
Schematic Chronology of the Chinese National Epic
https://www.international-communist-party.org/CommLeft/CL23_24.htm#ChineseEpic

>>19598388
Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China is a great biography that deals with the times before, during and "after" Maoist China.

>>19602503
Go watch some of the most popular (male) streamers on twitch, especially games like call of duty. Sentanced are made up of rubbish such as

"I'm popping deaddie bro he's one shot for real ahh he got me no cap chat can I get an f"

>Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism by Robert Jay Lifton
It applies to more than just Maoism but China is the primary example. There are many parallels happening to this day. If you read enough, you'll think to yourself "Well shit, that's what's going on?"
In my opinion, all the major Communist revolutions were never intended to be long-term, successful ventures. Communism itself was only a theory on state oppression and needed to be used so that the scientifically minded elite could observe the effects, picking what works best to crush human spirit and wring every last drop of productivity.
https://b-ok.cc/book/5001532/67f75f

>>19598388
Read Simon Leys' Burning Forest or Chinese Shadows. He was a China scholar and a diplomat stationed in Peking during the Culture Revolution. Those two books offer you lots of rare insights. Also, there's a book written by an innocent French citizen who was imprisoned by the Maoist regime for over 20 years.

Those who read the Chinese press only occasionally and when not in China may be tempted to dismiss its inept and unreadable Maoist jargon with an amused smile or an ironic shrug. But for those in China who must read it everyday, who must endure simultaneously the whole pressure of visual and aural propaganda that illustrates, explains, organizes, that warms up and serves over again and again the same ideological stew, everywhere and all the time (the same slogans are written in gigantic characters on the walls; they are in small print on tickets, calendars, cigarette packs; they are engraved on ashtrays and spittoons, painted on teapots and screens, embroidered on handkerchiefs and towels; loudspeakers moo them in the streets, in the fields, in trains, canteens, factories, latrines, barracks, airplanes, and railway stations), it soon becomes obvious that this gigantic enterprise of cretinizing the most intelligent people on earth is animated, beneath the grotesque exterior, by frighteningly rigorous and coherent intention. The aim is to anesthetize critical intelligence, purge the brain, and inject the cement of official ideology into the emptied skull; once hardened, this will leave no room for the introduction of any new idea, and will oppose its compact, amorphous, and watertight mass to any intellectual operation that would be autonomous or heterodox.

—Simon Leys, Chinese Shadows

>>19602483
>tfw own the whole trilogy
Should I throw them out?

>>19603177
Yes. The problem is that with other lies propogated to secure western hegemony, they can get away with it due to carefully planning their claims and sources. People like Dikotter just go mask-off and give away the whole charade. If you want to read western propaganda, theres plenty of other, more believable works of fiction. of course, the truth is always waiting for anybody willing to seek it out, it can just be hard to find sometimes

>DUDE
>if I read books about le powerful country ill have a lot to say about things

>>19598388
Why are Communist dictators in particular so thin-skinned? They always give some ridiculously pompous edict that's inevitably retarded, and then gulag everyone who dares to say it's less than optimal until millions have died

>>19603537
i'm not sure what you mean by that?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundred_Flowers_Campaign

>>19603550
…
You realize this was followed by the “Anti-Rightist” (read: get rid of everyone who disagreed with Mao) Campaign, right?

>>19603236
Can you go into more specifics? I had the exact same intuition after the hundredth page of cartoonish evil and incompetence. I got suckered by the pretty covers. Goddamnit.

>>19603564
oh, really? gosh you're so smart it's not like i referenced the hundred flowers campaign in jest

>>19603610
I admit I thought you were a communist pointing to the Hundred Flowers campaign as a legitimate example of free thinking being encouraged in Mao’s China.

Here's what Simon Leys says about the Anti-Rightest Movement:

The death warrant of Chinese intellectual life was given by Mao Tse-tung in Yenan, in 1942, when he delivered his famous “Talk on Arts and Letters.” This clearly expressed resolution to destroy critical intelligence—put into practice at once with the physical elimination of Wang Shih-wei—was applied in ever-widening circles: from the “rectification movement” of 1951-52 to Hu Feng purge of 1955 to the repression of the “Hundred Followers” in 1957 to the gigantic purges of the Cultural Revolution. The war against the mind has become larger but has not changed in nature or direction. Between purges, various (practical, technological, even diplomatic) factors will require the reactivation of this or that cultural sector, but these truces are motivated by tactical imperatives and express no change in the regimes cultural policy.

This policy, steadily followed since the Yanan days, has resulted in the near-total extinction of Chinese intellectuals as such. There only survive specialized technicians in propaganda, science, and technology; others have been “recycled” in the fields a d factories; an irreducible minority of them have committed suicide or been liquidated.

—Simon Leys, Chinese Shadows

>>19603165
All the 1984 quotes ruin this book. Peak reddit.

>>19602484
>northkoreabooism
this is rational though

>>19602892
>Go watch some of the most popular (male) streamers on twitch

>>19604118
i cant find a pirate copy of chinese shadows fuck

>>19600118
>>19600127
>>19602483
>>19603236
>>19603594
>I wonder who's behind these posts...
This is the best revisionist posting since the infamous 'my grandfather is a rwanda genocide denier' shitposts of 2018. After NATO has cheerfully glassed the middle east under the guise of freedom and covid retardation, how could we ever believe maoists slaughtered every insect they could find to stop disease spreading by american bioweapons in korea? Dikotter is fine and well cited, and I prefer Stalin apologists.

>>19605121
Archive.org has it.nhvsk

>>19600101
Histrionic CIA lies for the Guardian crowd

>>19602483
>deranged anti-china crowd
By which you mean anybody who dares to point out that china is a dispotic shithole, I guess.

>>19605197
AAAAAAAAAAAAA but I already them out AAAAAAAAAAA

>2022
>not being a pothead

>>19602979
>A psychology book written by an actual expert in the field
For sure I'm going to read.