In the antique store run by Luo Zhuqing, a porcelain badge with the portrait of the late Chinese leader Mao Zedong is sold at around 40 yuan apiece.
“The most expensive ones in my store are worth of more than 10,000 yuan,” says the 59-year-old collector in Leshan, southwest China’s Sichuan Province, who has 30 years in the business.
But for the once Mao badge makers Guo Zhiquan and Wen Jiyan, they are priceless
Guo and Wen, both 67 and form Leshan, an inland city noted for its world’s tallest stone Buddha, have known each other since they became workers of the state-run Leshan Qinghua Porcelain Factory in 1962.
Guo was assigned to make porcelain blanks, while Wen became a painting worker. The two youngsters, both lovers of art and literature, soon became good friends, but it was the national icon Chairman Mao who brought them more closely.
In 1966, when Cultural Revolution broke out, which Guo called “an era of political illusion”, they both became Red Guards, Mao’s loyal soldiers.
“We believe Chairman Mao was sent to change the world then, so were we,” says Guo.
His background from a worker’s family and the rebellious spirit helped Guo thrive amid the social turmoil. Soon he became a leader of a Red Guard faction and took over the management of the factoryin March 1968.
With the power in hand, Guo was eager to find a breakthrough in his work — he locked his eyes on Mao badges.
It’s a fashion to wear and collect Mao Badge after Mao met the Red Guards for the first time in Beijing in August 1966. The badges, with Mao’s head portrait and his quotations, were carried from Beijing by enthusiastic Red Guards to other parts of China ever since.
“First come the metal badges and then those made of plastic, or bamboo. Porcelain ones are regarded as the best for their delicacy,” says Guo. “I thought that’s our opportunity.”
Guo wanted to conquer all, but he knew the limits of his factory, which mainly produced daily utensils. So he turned to the Jianxiang Porcelain Factory in Changsha, capital of Hunan Province, also Mao’s hometown. It is among the country’s first group of Mao badge manufacturers.
In July 1968, Guo led a team, including Wen, for Jianxiang and they brought back with badge-making crafts and some samples about 20 days later.
During their apprenticeship, Guo and Wen didn’t forget to visit Mao’s birthplace in Shaoshan County. The two pilgrims took a picture in front of Mao’s home. Wen even brought back a bottle of earth and small rubbles he scooped up from the courtyard.
Qinghua set up a special team called “badge platoon” dedicated to making badges, with more than 30 elites recruited.
Political record accounted much in the recruitment. Any one recognized to be politically wrong was likely to be rejected.
Wen was fired from the team after passing on what he learned from Hunan to his fellow colleagues, only because he was born to a family doing salt business. Businessman was regarded as capital is toxic then.
The arrangement was no surprise to Wen. “Mao badge is holy article and allows no stain,” he says.
Yet, the pity of the denial was sort of paid back as Wen found his love Xie Huirong from another team. Xie eventually became his wife.
It took more than 20 procedures, like crushing, grinding, mud-washing, molding, polishing, decaling and firing before a piece of stone became a badge.
A qualified badge should be “as thin as paper, white as jade, bright as a mirror, and sending out musical sound when flicked” –a standard for a certain porcelain articles used by royal families in ancient China.
To show their love to Mao, all the badge team members performed “the Loyalty dance” before and after their work everyday.
The postures were simple and identical across the country: holding both hands high towards the sky to show faith in Mao, making bow steps to indicate determination to follow him and clenching fists symbolizing their revolutionary fervor. They also sang songs like “Long Live Chairman Mao” while dancing.
“Our work is a serious political task,” says Guo. “We don’t say’ make’ badges, but ‘produce badges with full respects’, and people don’t say “get a badge’, but ‘greet’ a badge’. The wording is all honorifics related to Buddhism.”
The high-spirit workers produced about 40,000 badges for the first time in September 1968, however, more than 80 percent of which were defective because of the work place pollution.
“Small sands were mixed into the badge mud and caused the pinhole-sized pores on the surface,” says Guo. “I was dumfounded, and some women colleagues even went to tears, not for fears but for regrets. It’s a sin to distort the leader’s image.”
All the workers, even the canteen chief, were organized to have meetings to examine each procedure, which was followed by a weeklong cleaning work.
Qualified badges were produced in 10 days, featuring Mao’s head portrait in different ages. Best samples were selected and stuck onto a wooden board in the shape of Chinese character Zhong — loyalty. Guo led a team, carrying the board, to show their works to the Leshan county government.
“It’s such a sensation as nobody had ever seen a porcelain Mao badge before. People across the county talked about it and thrilled. The same situation only happened once in 1964 when China had its first successful atomic bombing,” says Guo.
The county government took the badges as a great merit of Guo and he was later selected as a delegate of Sichuan to watch the celebrations in Beijing for the National Day in October. The Qinghua’s badges were among the gifts to Mao and Guo was among delegates to be received by the leader.
Guo remembered clearly the moment he saw Mao in Great Hall of the People.
“He was much taller than I expected and his hands were very soft,” Guo recalls. “I was so nervous that I can’t stop trembling when shaking hands with him, as if I was sick.”
The demands for the Qinghua’s badges soared after Guo’s Beijing trip and the worker’s number increased from 300 to more than 500 as the factory’s territory expanded. The varieties of the factory’s Mao badges exceeded 30 in 1969. Mao’s images and quotations also appear on its other products.
“Even the jars for pickles were painted with slogans like ‘with Helmsman, to sail on the seas, with Mao Zedong Thought, to undertake the revolutionary’,” says Guo.
However, the badges were not for sales, but mainly for praising “heroes from different fields”. A special office under the local government, known as “Mao’s office”, took in charge of the badge distribution and Mao’s works printing. Qinghua was allowed to keep a small amount to reward outstanding workers.
“No corruption. Even our relatives asked for one, we didn’t violate the rules,” says Guo.
However, the factory’s prosperity came to the end with an order from the central government in June 1969 to stop producing Mao badges to avoid waste of materials, especially metals.
Qinghua altogether produced more than 100,000 badges before the order. And nationally, the number hit over 8 billion.
Now, Guo had to face the problem of dealing with the storage and the defective badges.
“Mao’s portrait was on them, so we can’t either bury or abandon the badges casually. That’s a political mistake,” says Guo.
After his repeated asking for instructions from the Mao’s office on how to deal with the rest badges went unanswered, Guo ordered several workers to put all defective badges in several big bamboo baskets and loaded them on a small boat.
“They secretly poured all the badges into the Dadu River nearby. at night. Only a few factory officials knew it. That’s best solution we could figure out,” says Guo.
However, Guo’s history can’t go that easily. The Red Guard rebels like Guo and Wen began to recede from the center stage of the Cultural Revolution since the 1970s.
The two men were put in jail twice from 1968 to 1972 in the struggles among different Red Guard cliques. They began to fell tied of the endless political struggles.
“It’s dangerous. You are in heaven now, but maybe in hell next second,” says Guo.
Guo decided to end his political ambition and become an artist in 1974. He was recommended to study Chinese painting at the Sichuan Academy of Arts.
“My families couldn’t understand, but I knew only those who had skills survived at any time,” he says.
Guo came back to Qinghua after graduated from the academy in 1977. He became a painting worker as Wen.
However, he wasn’t reconciled to a life of painting worker. The next few years were critical in China: Mao’s successor Deng Xiaoping began to steer the country toward reform and greater openness since the late 1970s, which gave Guo an opportunity to change his fate.
“Intellectuals regain respects since the 1980s and talents are needed everywhere. My college diploma has changed my life,” says Guo.
A college friend invited Guo to have his first painting exhibition in Luoyang, in Henan Province in 1983. The exhibition turned a thriller and brought another opportunity for Guo — He was invited to establish the art department of the Luoyang University.
Guo became the first chair of the university’s arts department in 1986 and his whole family moved to the city later. “I didn’t change the world. It changed me,” he says.
To pursue his art dream, Guo moved to Beijing to become a professional painter after his retirement from the university in 1999. His works of landscapes were selected as the gifts from Chinese Foreign Minister to foreign guests.
In 2004, Guo returned to live in Leshan, which the old man describes as “falling leaves returning to their roots”. His home was set at one of the city’s most expensive area.
Guo is satisfied with his life now — painting, practicing calligraphy or writing art critics, but he is reluctant to talk about the past. He has almost abandoned everything that can remind him of his youth experience.
“There are many sad memories behind,” says Guo. “Thirty years ago, I thought my values was to make Mao badges, but now I have found it in helping others and being useful to the society. That is enough.”
Different from Guo, Wen Jiyan didn’t leave Qinghua except a three-year training of Chinese Language at a local college in the 1980s. He retired from the porcelain factory as a general affairs manager in 2002 and then became a freelancer.
He plans to write a book on the modern history of Leshan, which begins with the history of Qinghua plant and its badges.
“The history needs be recorded, the past should not be forgotten. I hope people will read my book,” he says.
Wen still keeps the bottle of sand and stone taken from Mao’s birthplace, though its rusty cap can no longer open.
In what he called the “memory box” keeps several Mao badges he used to wear and a few paper badge bags.
The Mao badge has been popular again in China since the 1990s, not as amulets, but collections. It’s estimated that 200 to 300 million badges survive from times and more than 2 million badge collectors are in China’s mainland. The badge study associations and related websites were also established across the country.
“People today are more practical. The badges mean belief for us, but money for them,” says Wen.