Swimming with Mao

By the time I left China, I had either thrown away or lost my childhood collection of memorabilia from the Cultural Revolution

By Xujun Eberlein

Memoir · From the July/August 2006 magazine

By the time I left China, I had either thrown away or lost my childhood collection of memorabilia from the Cultural Revolution— Chairman Mao buttons in various sizes and shapes, embroideries of Mao’s poems in his flying calligraphy, albums full of photographs of Mao at various stages of his revolutionary career. Nonetheless, a newspaper clipping of a black-and-white photograph of Mao found its way into a drawer in my American home.

The photograph was taken on July 16, 1966, and features Mao in a bathrobe waving from a boat. As a child I first saw this photo on the front page of China’s official newspaper, the People’s Daily, under the headline “Chairman Mao Enjoys a Swim in Yangtze.” At Wuhan, the seventy-two-year-old Mao had allegedly swum fifteen kilometres in China’s longest river. Like all the other kids in my fourth-grade class, I applauded our Great Leader’s superior health and strength, unaware that this action sent a powerful message to his political enemies and signalled the high tide of the Cultural Revolution. Nor did I have the slightest idea what this event would mean to my family.

In my family photo album was a picture taken almost exactly two years after Mao’s famous swim. Mao is again waving, this time as a life-size statue in the background. In front, a teenage girl wearing a Red Guard arm band and paramilitary uniform is holding a volume of the Great Leader’s writings, her braided pigtails stretching out like paintbrushes. The teenage Red Guard is my big sister, Ruo-Dan. She was sixteen.

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