The song Tuanjie jiu shi liliang, Unity Is Strength, was written in the summer of 1943, during a local campaign, led by the Party, to review the reduction of rents and interest. According to People’s Daily, Mu Hong wrote the words in twenty minutes, lying on a villager’s roof. Lu Su then set them to music in a little more than ten minutes, on a villager’s millstone.
In Memory of Norman Bethune
On December 21, 1939, Mao Zedong wrote In Memory of Norman Bethune. “Comrade Bethune’s spirit of utter devotion to others without any thought of self was shown in his boundless sense of responsibility in his work and his boundless warmth toward his comrades and the people.”
“A person’s ability may be great or small, but if he has this spirit, he is a noble person, a pure person, a person of moral integrity, a person above vulgar interests, a person who is of value to the people.”
Collectivism in the Constitution
Article 24 of the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China, in the form amended on March 11, 2018, reads: “The state advocates the core socialist values and promotes the public virtues of love for the motherland, for the people, for labor, for science and for socialism. It educates the people in patriotism, collectivism, internationalism and communism, and in dialectical and historical materialism, and opposes capitalist, feudal and other decadent ideas.”
The Small Home and the Country
To build the Three Gorges Dam, 1.31 million people left their homes in the reservoir area and settled elsewhere. By August 2008, the resettlement had passed its national stage inspection, one year ahead of plan. In 2021, the overseas edition of People’s Daily called it the story of the dam and of a million migrants who “gave up the small home for the country.”
Fire at Me
In 1964, the Changchun Film Studio released Heroic Sons and Daughters, a film about the Korean War. In one scene, the volunteer soldier Wang Cheng shouts into his radio: “Fire at me!” In 2013, the magazine Global People recalled the image of Wang Cheng crying out these words and then leaping forward to a heroic death.
Brothers Quarrel Within the Wall
The ode Changdi in the Book of Songs praises brothers. “Of all the people of today, none are like brothers.” It also says: “Brothers quarrel within the wall, but they fend off insult from outside.” (兄弟阋于墙，外御其侮) The idiom xiongdi xiqiang, brothers quarreling at the wall, now means conflict within one’s own group.
A later stanza turns. “When the troubles are over and there is peace and quiet, though one has brothers, they are not as good as friends.”
Three Monks
The animated film Three Monks was made by the Shanghai Animation Film Studio in 1980 and directed by Xu Jingda, known as A Da. It has no dialogue. It is based on a folk saying: “One monk carries water on a pole. Two monks carry it between them. Three monks have no water to drink.”
The film won the Golden Rooster Award for best animated film and a Silver Bear at the 32nd Berlin International Film Festival.
Involution
In early December 2020, the language magazine Yaowen Jiaozi named its ten buzzwords of the year. Neijuan, involution, was one of them. The historical sociologist Philip Huang had used the word for “growth without development” in the peasant economy.
The dictionary Handian now defines it as excessive competition among peers or individuals for limited resources or opportunities.
Huoshenshan Hospital
On January 23, 2020, the government of Wuhan announced a new hospital for coronavirus patients, modeled on Beijing’s Xiaotangshan SARS hospital. Work began on January 25. On February 2, Huoshenshan Hospital was handed over to the army, and on February 4 it took its first patients. From planning to completion took ten days.
Millions of people at home watched the building site on a livestream, and “cloud supervisor” (yun jiangong) became a popular term. By 10 p.m. on one evening, the CCTV stream had counted 86.24 million views.
Workers later said that on February 3 only the first of four zones was in operation. Zones 2 to 4 were still in their final stage of construction.
Lei Feng
During basic training, the young soldier Lei Feng did many good deeds in his camp and in the city of Yingkou without leaving his name (做好事不留名). He died on duty in 1962, at the age of 21. On March 5, 1963, Mao Zedong wrote the inscription “Learn from Comrade Lei Feng,” and March 5 became Learn from Lei Feng Day.
His diary, found and published after his death, contains the line “I want to be a screw forever” (我愿永远做一个螺丝钉).