“Dance of Fidelity” ( Chinese trad. 忠 字 舞 , pinyin : Zhōngzì Wŭ ) is a ritual dance symbolizing the dancer’s devotion to the country 's leader Mao Zedong during the Cultural Revolution in China in the 1960s. He had simple rhythmic movements, reaching out from the heart to the portrait of the leader and clenching his fists, often with musical accompaniment. The dance spread widely throughout the country, it was performed in schools, enterprises, on the streets, in trains and airplanes [1] .
Historical Background
During the struggle of party groups, Mao Zedong sent youth detachments of hungweibins (students and schoolchildren) and tsaofan (young workers) against political opponents represented by the party bureaucracy. The Hunweibins and Zhaofani physically persecuted the unwanted, they developed the cult of Mao's personality to a grotesque scale. After the movement got out of control (when youth groups began to fight among themselves), Mao Zedong hit them with the army and exiled millions of hunveibins to the countryside. Later, the Communist Party of China officially called this period the time of trouble .
Distribution
 External Images | |
|---|---|
 | Tiananmen Square Dance - A Million Hongweibins Waiting for Mao, Beijing, 1966. Photo by Li Zhengsheng |
| Dance at the train station - Shenyang, 1967 |
| Child's Dance - Harbin, 1968 |
The dance was widespread in China, it was popular among students, workers and peasants. However, among the intelligentsia, many did not like him, they considered him absurd. One of the eyewitnesses recalled that at the hotel he was offered to dance with other guests. When he refused, he was accused of disrespect for Mao, and under pressure he joined the dancers [2] . Refusing to participate in the dance meant incurring suspicion of disloyalty [1] . Young women were more willing to dance, for many of them it was entertainment [1] .
Sometimes the passion for dance took an absurd form. Eyewitnesses said that in Xi'an, thousands of workers walked down the street with a dance of fidelity, moving behind a truck with a portrait of Mao, from where the songs sounded. At the same time, the dancers held themselves seriously, and the people on the sidewalks looked at them with respect [2] . One of the party functionaries, after returning from Beijing on the way from the airport, sang songs and danced all the time; the seller in the store gathered all the buyers for the dance [2] .
Notes
- ↑ 1 2 3 China Under Mao
- ↑ 1 2 3 Xing Lu. Rhetoric of the Chinese Cultural Revolution: The Impact on Chinese Thought, Culture, and Communication . University of South Carolina Press, 2004.
Links
- Dance of the girls of the Hungweibins - a fragment from the movie " The Last Emperor "