Our Life Unbound: Cultural Re-revolution

There has been a lot in the local Chongqing news lately about Bo Xilai's efforts to bring back the "red songs" of the Mao era and generally spruce up the city with the Five Chongqings campaign (Translated as: Forest Chongqing, Livable Chongqing, Traffic-smooth Chongqing, Healthy Chongqing and Safe Chongqing). I see a lot of billboards and posters about the Five Chongqings and see the results of the campaign in thousands of trees (even some fully grown 2 ft diameter ones) being planted along roads and in newly reconstructed parts of the city, with the rapid completion of metro lines, and new outdoor police stations springing up on every street corner. But I haven't seen (or heard) any evidence of the return of the red songs. At least not until last weekend.

The past several weeks on campus, we have witnessed a quickened pace in the many construction projects on campus in the run-up to the big 60th Anniversary celebration of the college's founding. On the North Campus (where we live, but where no classes take place) they finished a new parking garage and installed a park with badminton courts on top, repaved all the pathways, installed new landscaping along the fences and tore down an old building to construct a new campus gate. On the New Campus (where we go everyday to teach our classes, and where we have a new dorm to sleep at occasionally) they installed giant countdown clocks for the May 18th Anniversary and the May 21st celebration, hung giant red lanterns and streamers along all the roads, turned an empty lot into giant park with a lake in the middle, began to turn a drainage ditch into a decorative pond, opened a fancy on-campus hotel, completed landscaping around our dorm building (despite the bottom floors being unfinished inside) and covered all the student dorm buildings with giant red banners. So needless to say, the fact that the 60th Anniversary celebration was coming was not a surprise.

What was a surprise, was being invited to the ceremony one early morning bus ride by the assistant director of the foreign relations office. I had feared the invitation because I was afraid they would ask us to give a speech in front of a giant crowd, but luckily there was no such obligation. She simply asked if we would attend that Friday evening, so we agreed. All classes were canceled for Friday, so Richy and I didn't arrive until early evening and were amazed by the thousands of students milling around campus. Usually the campus has a more somber, sleepy tone. It actually felt kind of like an American campus, where students were just lounging around, laughing, and generally enjoying the day. Of course the fact that they were all wearing matching t-shirts depending on their major was a big difference...

Around the time that the ceremony was set to begin, we wandered over to the field and found a red carpet catwalk lined with about 10 women in matching dresses standing at attention on either side. The carpet lead to rows of plastic stools, with a few executive style desks and chairs in the front. We didn't want to be presumptuous, and we didn't see anyone from the foreign relations office to guide us to our seats, so we sat down on the plastic stools (later we found out that some executive style seating had been reserved for us). The stage was set up with several giant screens, stage lights and spot lights, and real television cameras and sound booms were swinging about. The students in attendance had all been given multicolored light sabers. There was definitely an outdoor-concert vibe, and the elderly gentlemen seated in front of us kept holding up and taking photos with a banner that proclaimed they were the petroleum majors of '66, '67 and '68. I wondered what they were thinking about how their little petroleum college had changed since then (it merged with the polytechnic college 7 years ago to become the giant Chongqing University of Science and Technology - 20,000 students strong).

I was feeling sleepy and sticky in the 85 degree humidity, but when the announcers came to the stage in full formal attire and a giant spotlight, the students all started screaming with glee and waving their giant light sticks. Obviously, everything said was in Chinese, but I could pick out enough of what they were saying to know they were wishing the college a happy birthday and talking about how great and awesome everything was. The first act were the petroleum majors (generally considered the most impressive major at our college). About 50 students in matching red pants, shiny hardhats and suspenders poured onto the stage. The screens lit up with panoramas of oil derricks back lit by a sunset. It wasn't until they started singing and dancing (using their hardhats as props) that I realized that this was Bo Xilai's red song campaign manifest.