Jung Chang - Chairman Mao Badge

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Jung Chang - Chairman Mao Badge

A History of the World in Spy Objects, Episode 22: Jung Chang - Chairman Mao Badge NARRATOR: What are the objects that define espionage? What secrets lie hiding in plain sight? I’m Alice Loxton, and this is A History of the World in Spy Objects. It’s the nature of humankind to always wonder what lies on the other side of the looking glass. But not everyone gets to find out. The woman you are about to meet? She found out. JUNG CHANG: I'm Jung Chang. I'm a writer. NARRATOR: Jung Chang is the acclaimed author of several monumental books including Wild Swans, her memoir about growing up in communist China, told across three female generations of her own family. All of her subsequent writing has, in some way, explored the culture and history of her home country. And yet, it is a country she was destined to leave. JUNG CHANG: I came to London in 1978 when China began to open up, and in 1976 Mao died and China was emerging from this isolation and Mao's tyranny. And I became one of the first Chinese to leave communist China and study in the West. NARRATOR: To describe Jung Chang as adventurous would be something of an understatement. She is nothing short of a ground-breaker. JUNG CHANG: In 1982, when I got a doctorate in linguistics from the University of York in Britain, I became the first Chinese to get a doctorate from a British university. NARRATOR: There, she quickly came to challenge all that she had once taken for truth, the foundations of her childhood in communist China. JUNG CHANG: I do remember there was a friend, a good friend in Britain, and he said he knew I was full of fear. And he said, “The thing about you is you are afraid, but you are you go on doing it,” - meaning breaking these rules. “You can't help it.” NARRATOR: And so, at a time when such things were only just becoming possible, Jung boldly stepped through the looking glass. She began writing her honest assessments of the country she had left behind, exploring the possibility that everything she had been told was a lie. She was never truly [able] to return to her old home. Not that she has a great deal of choice in the matter anymore. JUNG CHANG: I love London. London is home. But my mother still lives in China and some members of my family, are in China. And all my books are about Chinese subjects. And so, in that sense, I haven't cut off ties with China. But all my books are banned in China and I'm persona non grata. NARRATOR: The reason you are meeting Jung now - deep in the archives of espionage and surveillance ephemera - is because she has a powerful understanding of the mechanics of the People’s Republic of China. A country that was, under the rule of Mao Zedong - almost entirely inaccessible to the West. And the item she has chosen for introduction to this collection? It’s one that paints a vivid picture of life behind that locked door. JUNG CHANG: In 1966, Mao launched his Cultural Revolution, which was his big purge, to purge people, party officials, as well as ordinary people whom he regarded as being disloyal to him. And in order to do this big purge. He very successfully built up his personality cult. And the most important thing about the personality cult was for everybody to wear a Mao badge. NARRATOR: If you grew up in the West, it’s likely you have never encountered a Mao Badge. But in China, they were ubiquitous. JUNG CHANG: A Mao badge. It was a badge with Mao's face on it. Well, there were several billion badges produced in China in the two or three years after the Cultural Revolution started. So we had to wear those all the time on our left chest, which was supposed to be close to our heart. So there were badges made of porcelain, made of aluminum, made of a kind of glass. NARRATOR: For Jung’s older brother, Mao badges represented an opportunity to indulge in a forbidden hobby: collection. JUNG CHANG: My brother, my 13-year-old brother, loved the collection. He used to collect stamps. But in the Cultural Revolution, all collections were banned as a bourgeois habit. And so, people's instinct to collect turned to the sanctioned item of the Mao badges. NARRATOR: Soon enough, Jung’s older brother discovered that he wasn’t the only one obsessively collecting Mao badges. JUNG CHANG: And he started to deal on the Mao badges with other dealers. And he made quite a lot of money from his dealings. NARRATOR: Jung herself was never that interested in the badges. What she cared about was books. JUNG CHANG: At that time, books were banned across China - 1966, ‘67 - books were banned. And if the Red Guards, which was Mao's task force, came to your house - which was constant, to raid people's houses - and if they saw books, except selected works of Mao and a few authorized authors, including Marx, Lenin, and Stalin and so on. And if there were other books then the Red Guard would beat up the owners of the house. NARRATOR: Not an ideal situation for a young girl who dreamed, deep down, of becoming a writer. JUNG CHANG: China was like a culture desert. You yearn for something to read. I remember once, I stayed with a relative, and in the whole household, there was nothing except Mao’s works and a dictionary. So I remembered almost the whole dictionary. I mean, you would just yearn for something to fill your mind. NARRATOR: And that yearning might have been left unfulfilled were it not for Jung’s older brother and his illicit trade of Mao badges. JUNG CHANG: So my brother dealt in the Mao badges and made a small fortune. And he used the money to go to the black market selling books and he bought these books. And he brought the books home. And we were then living in a government compound with a big garden. And he found an unused water tower. And he buried these books there, wrapping them up with plastics and so on. And he brought some books back to the flat. And of course, we had to guard against the constant raiding by Red Guards of our flat, so my brother would often use the cover of the selected works of Mao and put those covers on a collection of Shakespeare, say. NARRATOR: The Mao badge was synonymous with Mao Zedong’s cracking of the whip, with his tightening of censorship, and his erasure of outside influence. And yet, if it wasn’t for those badges, Jung Chang might never have been able to study the foundations of literature. JUNG CHANG: I was able to read over 1,000 foreign and Chinese classics thanks to the Mao badge. NARRATOR: And if she hadn’t had that opportunity, maybe she would have stayed where she was on the other side of that looking glass, dreaming about what lies beyond. So it’s with mixed emotions that she offers this small red pin, bearing the profile of a 20th-century dictator, into the archive. It was just another tool of oppression for many. But for Jung Chang, it helped set her free. I’m Alice Loxton. More secrets from the archives of espionage await in A History of the World in Spy Objects. Explore them at your leisure.

Read the transcript →

Read the transcript

Jung Chang - Chairman Mao Badge

NARRATOR: What are the objects that define espionage? What secrets lie hiding in plain sight? I’m Alice Loxton, and this is A History of the World in Spy Objects. It’s the nature of humankind to always wonder what lies on the other side of the looking glass. But not everyone gets to find out. The woman you are about to meet? She found out.

JUNG CHANG: I'm Jung Chang. I'm a writer.

NARRATOR: Jung Chang is the acclaimed author of several monumental books including Wild Swans, her memoir about growing up in communist China, told across three female generations of her own family. All of her subsequent writing has, in some way, explored the culture and history of her home country. And yet, it is a country she was destined to leave.

JUNG CHANG: I came to London in 1978 when China began to open up, and in 1976 Mao died and China was emerging from this isolation and Mao's tyranny. And I became one of the first Chinese to leave communist China and study in the West.

NARRATOR: To describe Jung Chang as adventurous would be something of an understatement. She is nothing short of a ground-breaker.

JUNG CHANG: In 1982, when I got a doctorate in linguistics from the University of York in Britain, I became the first Chinese to get a doctorate from a British university.

NARRATOR: There, she quickly came to challenge all that she had once taken for truth, the foundations of her childhood in communist China.

JUNG CHANG: I do remember there was a friend, a good friend in Britain, and he said he knew I was full of fear. And he said, “The thing about you is you are afraid, but you are you go on doing it,” - meaning breaking these rules. “You can't help it.”

NARRATOR: And so, at a time when such things were only just becoming possible, Jung boldly stepped through the looking glass. She began writing her honest assessments of the country she had left behind, exploring the possibility that everything she had been told was a lie. She was never truly [able] to return to her old home. Not that she has a great deal of choice in the matter anymore.

JUNG CHANG: I love London. London is home. But my mother still lives in China and some members of my family, are in China. And all my books are about Chinese subjects. And so, in that sense, I haven't cut off ties with China. But all my books are banned in China and I'm persona non grata.

NARRATOR: The reason you are meeting Jung now - deep in the archives of espionage and surveillance ephemera - is because she has a powerful understanding of the mechanics of the People’s Republic of China. A country that was, under the rule of Mao Zedong - almost entirely inaccessible to the West. And the item she has chosen for introduction to this collection? It’s one that paints a vivid picture of life behind that locked door.

JUNG CHANG: In 1966, Mao launched his Cultural Revolution, which was his big purge, to purge people, party officials, as well as ordinary people whom he regarded as being disloyal to him. And in order to do this big purge. He very successfully built up his personality cult. And the most important thing about the personality cult was for everybody to wear a Mao badge.

NARRATOR: If you grew up in the West, it’s likely you have never encountered a Mao Badge. But in China, they were ubiquitous.

JUNG CHANG: A Mao badge. It was a badge with Mao's face on it. Well, there were several billion badges produced in China in the two or three years after the Cultural Revolution started. So we had to wear those all the time on our left chest, which was supposed to be close to our heart. So there were badges made of porcelain, made of aluminum, made of a kind of glass.

NARRATOR: For Jung’s older brother, Mao badges represented an opportunity to indulge in a forbidden hobby: collection.

JUNG CHANG: My brother, my 13-year-old brother, loved the collection. He used to collect stamps. But in the Cultural Revolution, all collections were banned as a bourgeois habit. And so, people's instinct to collect turned to the sanctioned item of the Mao badges.

NARRATOR: Soon enough, Jung’s older brother discovered that he wasn’t the only one obsessively collecting Mao badges.

JUNG CHANG: And he started to deal on the Mao badges with other dealers. And he made quite a lot of money from his dealings.

NARRATOR: Jung herself was never that interested in the badges. What she cared about was books.

JUNG CHANG: At that time, books were banned across China - 1966, ‘67 - books were banned. And if the Red Guards, which was Mao's task force, came to your house - which was constant, to raid people's houses - and if they saw books, except selected works of Mao and a few authorized authors, including Marx, Lenin, and Stalin and so on. And if there were other books then the Red Guard would beat up the owners of the house.

NARRATOR: Not an ideal situation for a young girl who dreamed, deep down, of becoming a writer.

JUNG CHANG: China was like a culture desert. You yearn for something to read. I remember once, I stayed with a relative, and in the whole household, there was nothing except Mao’s works and a dictionary. So I remembered almost the whole dictionary. I mean, you would just yearn for something to fill your mind.

NARRATOR: And that yearning might have been left unfulfilled were it not for Jung’s older brother and his illicit trade of Mao badges.

JUNG CHANG: So my brother dealt in the Mao badges and made a small fortune. And he used the money to go to the black market selling books and he bought these books. And he brought the books home. And we were then living in a government compound with a big garden. And he found an unused water tower. And he buried these books there, wrapping them up with plastics and so on. And he brought some books back to the flat. And of course, we had to guard against the constant raiding by Red Guards of our flat, so my brother would often use the cover of the selected works of Mao and put those covers on a collection of Shakespeare, say.

NARRATOR: The Mao badge was synonymous with Mao Zedong’s cracking of the whip, with his tightening of censorship, and his erasure of outside influence. And yet, if it wasn’t for those badges, Jung Chang might never have been able to study the foundations of literature.

JUNG CHANG: I was able to read over 1,000 foreign and Chinese classics thanks to the Mao badge.

NARRATOR: And if she hadn’t had that opportunity, maybe she would have stayed where she was on the other side of that looking glass, dreaming about what lies beyond. So it’s with mixed emotions that she offers this small red pin, bearing the profile of a 20th-century dictator, into the archive. It was just another tool of oppression for many. But for Jung Chang, it helped set her free. I’m Alice Loxton. More secrets from the archives of espionage await in A History of the World in Spy Objects. Explore them at your leisure.

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