No Mao!

Here's a quick update of what I've been doing in Purdue for the last week. Every morning we have 4 hours of Chinese and every afternoon we have 4 hours of Chinese history and culture. Here's Daisy as Confucius, their skit was actually pretty dang funny.Then yesterday we started learning about Mao. It was surprising. We spent a ton of time on Republican China (the nationalist party that led China under Chang Kai-shek before the Communists took over). Then we read one short very favorable overview of Mao. I couldn't believe it! Hardly a mention of the fanatical Red Guard, the re-education camps, the Great Chinese Famine caused by Mao's policies that killed 20-40 million people. Think about that number for a minute, 20-40 million people starved to death at a time when China had abundant grain stored in it's graineries and storehouses just so it would appear that production had increased under Mao's policies. Please read more here about it.

At the end of the day the professor made each group make a propoganda poster for Mao. I was not thrilled to participate. He was one bad dude. The man killed 50-70 million people. So I turned our poster into a chance to talk about Mao's role in the Great Chinese Famine. And with the amazing artist, Felipe, our poster won first prize.
The ObaMao poster was good too.this group had a funny one, their Mao unintentionally looks just like "Jigsaw" the killer from the Saw movies.
Yup, graduate students making Maoist propaganda posters, your tax dollars at work. And who said college professors weren't lefties?