Jiang Ji-Li, in her sixties and on the West Coast, is eating lunch with her parents when I call. We are half-way through the hour long interview before Mao’s swim in the Yangtze surfaces. “Oh yea, there were plenty of swimming pictures... we saw them in China,” her accented voice filters through the static of my phone.

I imagine the morning after July 16, 1966, when Mao, features cast in black and white under the sun and head afloat on grey rippling waves, stared back at millions of Chinese from the front page of national newspapers. Framed by his bodyguards’ shadow-stenciled faces, the Chairman of the Communist Party wades his way through chopped water, sometimes sidestroke, other times floating with belly beached above the waves. He swims in rhythm to the cheers of tens of thousands crowded along the river banks, their sweating bodies molded into a mass, hands jutting out with bright red flags and fingers clenched around placards printed with Mao’s words. Against incessant roars of “Long Live Chairman Mao”, the balding 72-year-old makes small talk. He teaches a young woman the backstroke. He chats with a party member about local children’s swimming ability. He stays in the water for 65 minutes, swimming, according to the Peking NCNA International Service, almost 15 kilometers in total.

This is not Mao’s first dip in the Yangtze. In June 1956, he swam three times across the width of the river; in the same month he writes a poem, “Swimming”, to commemorate his love for the sport. It is to be sung to the melody of “Shui Diao Ge Tou.” In honor of Mao, the nearby city of Wuhan begins hosting annual swimming events. It is the 11th annual re-creation of his 1956 swim when Mao drops by on July 1966. “The East is Red” is blaring from loudspeakers on both banks of the Yangtze, the shores are ringing with bystanders’ cheers, and five thousand swimmers are furiously kicking through the waves towards Mao, when all boats and ships in port simultaneously wail their sirens to welcome his arrival. He strolls on the deck of a motorboat as he reviews the competitors, waving in response to the crowd’s adoring cries. The river froths and boils with bodies. Swimmers empty onto shore, joining tens of thousands of onlookers. At around 11 a.m., Mao treads down the gangway and glides into the water.

There is something ridiculous about this piece of perfected propaganda, seeing nothing but the disjointed heads of Mao and his bodyguards bobbing above water, their brows wrinkled against the sun, laugh lines carved deep in shadow. All of them, shirtlessly waddling around in the Yangtze’s murky depths. Anywhere else, they would just be middle-aged men swimming along a leisurely grandpa. But here, they solidify the sport as a nation-wide movement. In Shanghai, Jiang Ji-Li’s younger sister is trained to swim for four to five hours nonstop in a pool while carrying a fake gun; she is to join an official procession of hundreds in the Yellow River. On the day of, her sister’s friend has her period, but swims regardless. With this snapshot, Mao stages a political coup — by demonstrating his health and physical fitness for leadership, he rallies the public’s support. It is enough for him to push the Cultural Revolution, launched mid-May that year, into full swing by August. Officially a means of resolving what Mao denounced as bureaucratic degeneration within the party and a dissolution of Communist ideology, in practice, it is a power grab from those who had dared cross him. Party opposition arising from the economic failure and humanitarian disaster of Mao’s prior 1950s Great Leap Forward does not stop him. It is to be amputated. By the time the Revolution ends a decade later, more than a million lives are lost.

1967, the height of the Revolution, but now an ocean away. A sophomore History class in Palo Alto, California. It is Monday and Mr. Jones is lecturing on the beauty of discipline. Self-control. The power of the will. He instructs the class on a new sitting posture: feet parallel and flat on the floor, palms pressed into the small of the back to straighten the spine. The class runs through speed drills, learning to move from standing to sitting at attention in fifteen seconds; focus drills, concentrating on sitting with feet firm on the floor, knees at ninety degrees, hands crossed behind the back, spine straight, chin down, head up. He introduces new rules. All students must be seated at attention before the late bell; they must come to class equipped with pencil and paper; they must stand at the side of their desk to ask or answer a question; when doing so, all responses must begin with “Mr. Jones.” They go through short “silent reading” sessions. Those who are slow at drills are reprimanded and forced to repeat their behavior until punctual and perfect. Mr. Jones requests that students respond to questions in three words or less and rewards them for their effort. Class engagement improves. Discussion moves beyond the few who always talked, new people are contributing, everyone listens attentively to their classmates, they are more focused on assignments. They treat each other with more compassion.

On Tuesday, when Mr. Jones enters class, everyone is sitting at attention, gazes glued ahead in concentration. He pauses, walks to the blackboard, then writes in all caps

“STRENGTH THROUGH DISCIPLINE”, and below it, “STRENGTH THROUGH COMMUNITY.” Chalk rasps in the silence. He turns around to face the class and launches into a sermon on community, drawing from make-believe experiences, enrapturing the class with talk of communal bonding and belonging to something greater than oneself. They run through motto drills, the whole class reciting “Strength through discipline” and “Strength through community” in varying choruses and volumes. As class comes to an end, Mr. Jones creates a class salute. It is a raised right arm, hand cupped and curled to resemble a wave — the third wave. They say waves travel in chains, the third wave being the last and largest.

Everyone is sitting at silent attention while the class bell rings. When it stops, Mr. Jones raises his arm, curls his fingers; the class returns his salute in unison. He looks over an ocean — each length of arm a ripple, each curved hand a crest. Together, they are the Third Wave.

The Cultural Revolution comes in waves. First was Beijing’s issuing of the “May 16 Notification” in 1966, an official warning that the party was infiltrated by counter-revolutionaries. Then came a declaration by the party’s newspaper on June 1, urging the public to attack the “evil habits of the old society”, the “Four Olds” as it came to be known — old ideas, old habits, old customs, and old culture. Then, chaos, as Chinese high schoolers and college students answered Mao’s call to action, forming paramilitary groups, donning olive army jackets with red armbands pinned on one sleeve to identify themselves as hong-wei-bing, or Red Guards. They fancied themselves revolutionary rebels, direct extensions of Mao’s authority — duty-bound to weed out traditional elements of Chinese society and righteous purgers of the government’s bourgeois taint. At its peak, the Red Guards numbered near 11 million. Last came bloodshed. Schools and universities were shut down; churches, shrines, libraries, private homes and businesses ransacked or razed; local party authorities, teachers, and intellectuals publicly humiliated, tortured, killed. On August 18, 1966, when Mao hosted his first Red Guard Rally in Tiananmen Square, millions answered his call. He encouraged revolutionary assault, violence, rebellion — in that month alone, 1727 teachers and principals died in Beijing.

Jiang Ji-Li’s grandma is forced to sweep the alley and her father is arrested. Her home is searched twice. Once in the summer of 1966, when the Revolution was still a refreshing sport to partake in, even if it was as a recipient of its offences, then again in 1968, when the thrill of watching other people’s homes plundered had long faded and the Red Guards’ pounding footsteps sent dread prickling down Ji-Li’s spine. The second time their home is searched, the Guards come with an official warrant. Upon overhearing Ji-Li’s mother shout “hide the letter” while visiting the Jiangs, a friend of Ji-Li’s sister rushes out of the apartment; she runs to tips off the Guards. When they storm in, “where’s the letter” bursts from their lips. It is a spectacle: Guards pack the alley leading to their building; neighbors and passersby stop to stare; stage lights are set on the Jiang’s third floor apartment balcony for illumination — to ease the search, perhaps, but more so for dramatic effect. Cabinets and containers are thrown open, possessions rifled through, the letter is found, and furniture is heaved out the door. By four in the morning, all that is left are the now bare walls of their apartment and a pile of clothing on the floor.

“All my life, I was naive,” Jiang Ji-Li sighs. She did not know the Revolution was Mao’s fault, she tells me. They were a lost generation, bred on brainwashing and raised in ignorance. Students were taught that teachers, principals, and intellectuals were polluters of the mind, they corrupted younger generations and prevented them from becoming firm revolutionaries. Landowners were the bourgeois remnants of Chinese feudal society — they too, had to be condemned and purged. Some did not care for what Mao had to say, they stuck with their family to the end; others took Mao’s words to heart, reporting their families to the Red Guards for any suspected bourgeois or anti-revolutionary activity. One famous writer’s son led Red Guards to ransack their home, his mother had previously been condemned as an anti-revolutionary for daring to question Mao’s legitimacy. High-schoolers publicly denounced their parents, cutting ties with their families in all but blood. And yet, Jiang Ji-Li could not reconcile Mao’s image of evil with her kind instructor at school nor her loving grandma at home, who was a landowner’s widow. Once the beloved traditional good student, Ji-Li was cast aside. She was not revolutionary enough, she could neither attack her teachers nor denounce her bourgeois tainted family. She was a failure. It was as if “heaven and earth switched places.”

Even when Jiang Ji-Li began questioning the Revolution, she never questioned Mao. None of it made sense. “Chairman Mao said ‘95% of people are good people, only 5% are enemies’ and I said to myself, ‘looking around this is a lot more than 5%.’ ” It wasn’t until after his nationally mourned death in 1976 that newspaper articles revealed the Revolution’s hidden agenda. “My political beliefs collapsed at that moment, because all my life he said ‘you put the country’s interests first’, and how dare he on earth could manipulate the whole country for his own personal power struggle?” Shocked and outraged, Jiang Ji-Li swore she would never blindly trust any leader anymore. Mao should have been held accountable, she says, but “Mao did not conduct all the persecutions alone.” The masses came to his aid. Mao incited violence, yes, but he did not instruct Red Guards to stab teachers’ hands, nor to break their fingers, nor to drench them in boiling water. When the first vice principal died in Beijing in 1966 after three hours of torture, body riddled in holes and wounds weeping blood, it was Red Guards who had hit her using a large staff porcupined with nails. Mao was never there. Jiang Ji-Li’s voice crackles in my ear, “ I do believe humans, we all have some dark side inside of us. When the circumstances arise, if we are not vigilant, the darkness could grow, could explode” — could make monsters of us all.

Wednesday. Mr. Jones issues membership cards to the now 43 member class; 13 students had skipped their class to join his. Recruits must be recommended by a current member, issued a card, and pledge to obey Third Wave rules to join. He marks three cards with a red X, the recipients are charged with reporting on students who don’t obey class rules.

He then lectures about action, the importance of taking full responsibility for what is done. He assigns each student with a specific task: to stop non-Third Wave members from entering the classroom, to design the Third Wave banner, to train and convince at least twenty children from a nearby elementary school of the importance of sitting at attention... Outside of class, a student becomes Mr. Jones’ self-assigned bodyguard and follows the teacher all day, walking on his right, opening and closing doors for him. Though only three students receive the red X, around twenty tattle-talers report to him by the end of the day.

Thursday. The class has swelled to over 80 students; only sitting at attention allows them to all fit. Today, Mr. Jones lectures about pride, voice loud and crescendoing. It is internalized, it can not be destroyed, it is knowing that you are the best. He quiets abruptly, reveals that the Third Wave is a nationwide movement; there are other students just like them, youth brigades trained and ready to fight for political change in America. Primed to demonstrate the benefits of discipline, community, pride, and action; to forever alter how society is run. Mr. Jones instructs three high schoolers who he knew questioned the Third Wave to leave — formerly the brightest, most active students in class, throughout the week they had grown quiet, pensive, held-back. They had to go. Mr. Jones then explains how a rally is taking place at noon tomorrow, members only. The national candidate for president is going to declare the formation of a Third Wave Youth Program on television and over 1000 youth brigades across America are to simultaneously display their support for the movement.

The press will be there. Mr. Jones asks if they can perform well.

Friday. At 12 p.m. sharp, all 200 seats of the auditorium are filled. The ceiling hangs with Third Wave banners and the students sit in hushed silence, only speaking to interact with circling photographers and reporters. A group photo is taken. Mr. Jones leads the brigade through a drill, arms snapped in salute, the roars of “Strength through discipline” echoing in unison. At 12:05, he turns the lights off and a television on. For a minute — nothing. Just a bright static whining in the stillness. The room holds its breath in suffocating anticipation. Then another minute; still nothing. Anxiety fizzles into frustration. “There isn’t any leader is there?” a voice pops up. Mr. Jones slowly turns toward the television. Turns it off. Turns back to the students, sucks in a breath to pop the silence.

“There is no such thing as a national youth movement called the Third Wave,” he begins. “You are no better or worse than the German Nazis we have been studying.” Layer by layer, Mr. Jones peels apart the illusion which has gripped his students in a vise — an onion dissected to reveal its putrid core. “You thought that you were the elect. That you were better than those outside this room...But where were you heading? How far would you have gone? Let me show you your future.” On a projection screen behind the television, he plays a video of the Nuremberg Rally; Nazi Germany scrolls across 200 students’ eyes. When the film is over, he confesses his horror and regret at the experiment. Describes how they have all experienced a taste of life in the Third Reich. The pleasure of being right. Of finding a hero. Of taking control. But there was one last lesson to be learned. The experiment was set into motion by a question in class, a bewilderment as to how the German citizenry could be so ignorant as to claim by the end of the Third Reich that they knew nothing of what was going on. “In the next few minutes and perhaps years,” Mr. Jones voice sinks in the dark of the auditorium, “you will have an opportunity to answer this question.” If the enactment of Nazi

Germany is complete, not a single student will admit to being at the final Third Wave rally. Not a single high schooler will acknowledge they were on the brink of sacrificing their freedom, of devoting their all to indoctrinated leadership. No one will admit to being manipulated so much nor pushed so far.

And in the following four years of Mr. Jones’ teaching at Cubberley High School, no one ever did.

“So the people involved in these cruel acts...do they ever talk about it?” I ask.

Jiang Ji-Li clicks her tongue in exasperation,“No, no.” Forceful, curt, to-the-point.

“Red Guards were not punished and people don’t talk about it.”

By late 1968, the Revolution was spiraling out of control. Violence bled across the country as rival factions of Red Guards fought over who best represented Maoist thought. To rein in the bloodshed, Mao instructed for millions of urban youth to be sent into the countryside; there, farm labor would serve as “re-education”. Not two years before, these Red Guards’ hands had smashed “bourgeois” store signs and slashed shopkeepers’ trouser belts in the street, egged on by passersby’s cheers; their sweating fingers had gripped the smooth plastic covers of Mao’s “Red Book” — a palm sized pamphlet inscribed with his doctrine, a physical manifestation of their Maoist devotion — while the Chairman himself rallied them beneath the August glare at Tiananmen Square. Now, the same hands were rough, fingers calloused from threshing rice and harvesting grain. Deaths tallied up as Mao sent military men to reinforce order in cities and urban students died from overwork in rural fields; not until Mao’s death in 1976 did the Cultural Revolution finally dwindle down.

After, pride sealed the lips of perpetrators and opened the mouths of formerly silenced victims. When her family visited China after immigrating to America, Jiang Ji-Li’s father joked about their time in detention with his former colleagues. A woman poked fun at how one male colleague would put cigarette smoke through a crack in the wall between their adjacent detention cells. “Were you trying to talk to me?” she laughed. Detainees were forbidden from talking; the silence — the pain of being so close to each other, yet so far away — drove them insane. They only glimpsed each other while they were taken out of their cells for forced labor. When the male colleague had realized his neighbor was someone he knew, he couldn’t help but yearn for communication. Even if it was as frail and fragile, as hopeless, as the acrid scent of cigarette smoke — to do something, anything, was better than nothing.

The wave of the Revolution had run its course: rising, surging, crashing... trickling away. Only a debris of chaos and dead bodies marks its passing; against the banks of the Yangtze, the water’s stillness betrays no sound.

Jiang Ji-Li does not hate China. The country is her homeland, no Mao can change that. But the herded masses... They are as countless as rippling waves in the Yangtze on a hot summer day, parting beneath each stroke of Mao’s hands and propelling him forward with each kick of his feet. They are the people blindly bending to the will of a leader, the crowds who fuel the state’s agenda, playing into the schemes of the few at the cost of many. They are a river of right arms raised in salute, each cupped palm and curved hand one wave out of many. They are the ones who kept Mao afloat.

On July 16, 2018, a Swedish man and a Chinese woman win top prize at the 44th Wuhan International Yangtze River Crossing Festival. They waddle in the waves with Mao’s legacy. In 1966, the water was translucent, interweaving grey and white and every shade in between; now, it is a thick blue-green, dense with thousands of swimmers’ sweat and rich with history. The weather is hot, the current strong, and both contestants win twenty thousand U.S. dollars.

Many thanks to Jiang Ji-Li for her interview and Professor Hendrickson for his guidance.

Sources

Mao Zedong | Biography & Facts. (n.d.). Retrieved April 29, 2019, from Encyclopedia

Britannica website: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Mao-Zedong

Phillips, T. (2016, May 11). The Cultural Revolution: all you need to know about China’s political convulsion. The Guardian. Retrieved from https://www.theguardian. com/world/2016/may/11/the-cultural-revolution-50-years-on-all-you-need-toknow-about-chinas-political-convulsion

Red Guards | Chinese political movement. (n.d.). Retrieved April 29, 2019, from Encyclopedia Britannica website:

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Red-Guards

The Chairman Goes for a Swim. (2013, October 7). Retrieved April 29, 2019, from Readex website: https://www.readex.com/blog/chairman-goes-swim

The Story Behind the Photo of Mao in the Yangtze River. (n.d.). Retrieved April 29, 2019, from 100 Photographs | The Most Influential Images of All Time website: http://100photos.time.com/photos/charman-mao-swims-yangtze

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Xu, X. (2018, July 16). XinHuaNet. Retrieved April 29, 2019 from XINHUANET.com website : http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-07/16/c_137328804.htm