Da jia hao tongzhimen and welcome back once again to the great proletarian cultural revolution podcast with your host Drew Smith once again broadcasting from the ancient city of Xi'an.

Hope you guys are doing well. Uh, first off, well, I guess I better go on and uh, apologize for the lateness on this particular uh, episode. You know, life was kind of crazy getting ready for and then going on vacation for this particular uh, National Day holiday. Uh, the missus was in Nanchang, aka the city of heroes, where the Nanchang uprising happened, where the um, people's war, the Chinese people's war began and it's also her birthplace, so how about that? And uh, I was in Yan'an.

Yes, the cradle of the Chinese revolution itself. Um, I had a great time. I ran into a friend of mine who was who lives there.

He's a colleague of mine, Dr. Wen Lung. He is an expert on translating uh, Shaanbei, that means northern Shaanxi, Shanbei folk songs into English. And uh, he had that week free. His family wasn't really doing anything, so he decided to come out and play with me and show me around the town, and we had a great old time. If you follow me on Twitter, you probably saw some of the high jinks I was getting into.

Definitely a fun town. If you can go, go. Definitely go see Yan'an once in your life. It is really an experience to remember. Would I live there? No. It's still pretty developing. It's got a long way to go when it comes to this, you know, when it comes to fun stuff to do other than history, but as a vacation spot for history buffs and commies, well, yeah. That's Yan'an's there for you. Other than that, uh not much to report.

Life is good otherwise. So, how about we go in and launch into today's episode? So, our episode today is a thematic episode that is very near and dear to my heart. It's one of my hobbies.

That hobby being collecting Mao badges, Chairman Mao badges, the ubiquitous symbol of the Cultural Revolution that everyone at that time was wearing on their breast. Every Red Guard had one. People who were in the Panthers and in the SDS in the USA had one.

Uh kids in the streets of Paris in May of '68 were wearing them. They became a symbol of both loyalty to Chairman Mao and a symbol of rebellion. And because of that, I find them to be so fascinating. So, what we're going to mainly do is I recently gave a presentation about Mao badges at my university to um share and uh share the joy of being a Mao badge collector.

And I got into like the history and the symbolism and all of those kinds of things. So, a lot of this will be not based off a script like it usually is, but me basing off my notes and I'm reading off my PPT. Uh I've given this talk three times now and um I'm going to be giving it now again to you. So, it shouldn't be hard.

Um let's talk about Mao badges, my friends. Let's talk about Mao badges.

So, before we discuss Mao badges in during the Cultural Revolution, we actually have to go back, way back.

Back into time. And let's talk about the earliest Mao badges. Now, the earliest Mao badges were created in Yan'an, mainly between, of course, 1936 to 1948. And these badges were mainly little square badges that were made of either rubber or they were made of like very thin aluminum from toothpaste cans or deodorant cans. And then they would just paint them on or emboss them with a symbol.

A lot of them are pictures of Mao with Peng Dehuai. Like, during this time there was a large amount of two heads on each Mao badge, Mao and then someone else. Like I said, usually Peng Dehuai, but every once in a while Zhou Enlai or Zhu De, one of the other uh marshals or people in the PLA. And so, this is where you first really begin to see Mao badges in a limited form start coming out of the woodwork and be made as a popular thing. Then in the 1950s you see them crop up again.

This time as um small tokens of celebrating the building of the country and during the resist-America aid-Korea war in my collection I actually do have one very interesting Mao badge which is where I it's actually interesting it's Mao and Kim Il Sung on the same badge and the Chinese flag and the DPRK flag flanking their heads.

That's extremely rare to have a foreign head of state on Mao's next to Mao on a Mao badge. So I'm very glad that I have that specimen in my collection. These are very rare. Mao badges from the 1950s are extremely rare. I only have five in my collection of 500 Mao badges only five about are from the 1950s.

Um most of them are now in museums or in private collections of the most elite Mao badge collectors.

All right. So that leaves us you know so after the Korean war during the Great Leap Forward you really don't see any Mao badges. I've never found any Mao badges from the Great Leap Forward or from the socialist education movement anti-rightist campaigns. Basically from 56 to 65 you really don't see any Mao badges. Maybe one or two.

Actually, now that I think about it, I have one Mao badge from 1965, but one. So, of course, this is the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution podcast, so let's get to the Cultural Revolution. And so, the early Cultural Revolution from '66 to '69, that's when most Mao badges were made.

According to most sources, at least 5 billion were made, and according to one expert at Zhengzhou University, who I spoke to, uh maybe up to 8 billion were made before production was shut down in late 1969. And what's very interesting to me about Mao badges is Mao badges have a very specific spirit and a very specific message.

Um during the times factional fighting and sharp class struggle, the badges acted as something that people could unify around. Um they concentrate on loyalty, they concentrate on success, they concentrate on marching together on the road to communism under the leadership of Mao.

They're very inspiring message. Um you mostly see a lot of stuff like uh serve the people rather than it's right to rebel or bombard the headquarters. I have a handful of what you might call attack messages. I do have a handful of Mao badges that uh have stuff like it's right to rebel and bombard the headquarters, but maybe less than 20 in my collection. The rest of them are uh very unifying messages.

Now, I'm going to be jumping around a bit, but one thing is that that Mao badges you might notice I just said that Mao badges were uh mainly made from '66 to '69.

And there was a reason for that. Mao badges were mostly made of aluminum and aluminum is what makes airplanes.

And some estimates says that there were enough to make 39,000 MiG fighter jets at a time when China was facing a lot, and I mean a lot, of Soviet and US pressure. And at the time when China's population was 800 million, Premier Zhou Enlai estimated there were enough badges for every Chinese person to have five to 10 badges. And because of this, Mao referred to this as wasteful and Zhou referred to it as formalism.

Many of these badges, and I have a few huge badges that basically are like gigantic uh necklaces rather than badges that you wear on your breast. Um they basically they became too big to wear and they were often just used as empty gift giving and well, frankly, bribery. And that's not a good thing to have.

Bribery means corruption. If any of you guys know one of the things that you know, one of the causes of the Cultural Revolution was, you know, corruption. Today Mao badge collecting is a very common hobby. In the 1980s, the Chinese government, who actually regulates the antiques and says like what kind of things can act as antiques, Mao badges were recognized as antiques, which is funny cuz like it was just after the Cultural Revolution was officially condemned in 1981 that they designated Mao badges as collectible antiques.

So, not that long after the Cultural Revolution, less than 10 years afterwards, and then like less like basically the same year that they condemned the Cultural Revolution. So, things like coins, porcelain, antique furniture, they are classified in that same way. And that's when people really began collecting badges, particularly badge sets. Many badges are made to be parts of sets. Example, I have one where it's Mao through the years, where the first badge is him as a as a child going all the way to him during his great swim.

That's the last one. Serious collectors often hold the large meetings and conventions, sort of like coin collectors and baseball card collectors, comic book collectors.

You know, they'll have these big vending rooms that they'll hold meetings. People will publish whole volumes of catalogs. I, for example, I own the Shanxi catalog, which has all of the badges from our provinces.

Um some collectors are pretty hardcore. They'll have up to 50,000 to 200,000 badges, which I would love to have that if I ever am able to get a house, the you know, that can hold that, but I don't know if the missus would be okay with that. [laughter]

Uh yeah, um I I only have 500 so far. Although that number is always growing. I just got a badge from Yunnan. While I was there, I bought one badge when I was in Yunnan. Of the 5 billion badges made, we now think only about 50 million are still around. That's what the collectors catalogs and uh the Antiquities um board association of China say.

Most of them estimate it's about 50 million. The rest were melted down to make into airplanes during the Sino-Soviet Border Dispute. All right. Well, let's now move on.

Let's move on and let's talk about the three main phases of Mao badge production. So, Mao badges really start rolling out during the Cultural Revolution about a month after the Cultural Revolution is launched, we have the May 16th Circular. And during that time, in June of '66, you start seeing um spontaneous production by local people.

Most Mao badges at that time are handmade or uh just made by local shops. And there are really no rules set in place on how to make them by the government. There's no regulations. After the January storm of '67, that's when you see factories set up in Beijing and Shanghai um due to such high demand. And badges from this time tend to be very small.

They are usually only about the size of your thumb. About the size of your thumb tip. Or fit, you know, any of your fingertips. There That's about how big they are. Um if you have a small badge, if any of you collect badges or have a Mao badge, and they tend to be very small, and they're like the little star, those tend to be from uh June of 1966 to May of 1967.

The second phase of the Mao badge production was May of '67 to September of 1968. So, during the height of the factional fighting.

So, during this time, you see um, more standardization and regulation. That's when actually folk badges are kind of suppressed and the more round red badge becomes the most popular.

The the badge that you guys think of when you think of a Mao badge. When you think of a Mao badge, you think of the round red one with his face pointing left. That is when these became the most popular and the badge factory industry exploded.

Every badge began to have their own badge factory. The most some of the most popular ones were of course Beijing and Shanghai, but Zhengzhou, Xi'an, and Yan'an had very large badge factories. Wuhan did too. Guangzhou did. Chongqing of course.

Um, and badges from places like Yan'an and Wuhan due to their excellent quality and of course their revolutionary credentials are highly sought after by um, Mao badge collectors.

And really a lot of it was the people and when it came to leading production, this is about the time that the factions, the Red Guard factions, stop being the main leaders in production and the People's Liberation Army and Revolutionary Committees start leading in production.

Then in September of '68, once the Red Guard movement is over, the rebel movements and mass movements are disbanded, this is where the third Mao badge production phase happened. September of 1968 to April of 1969.

And that's when you begin to see a lot of gift badge sets, um, and oversized badges becoming more and more common. Um, many badge sets are begun to be produced by Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda teams, and this is actually it's not until this phase of the Mao badge production that you begin to see Mao badges basically becoming essentially required of all citizens at all times.

And badges are almost treated as like sacred religious objects. You want to, you know, like wash your hands before you handle a Mao badge. You want to you know, make sure that a Mao badge doesn't fall on the ground. People, you know, don't wear your Mao badge into the latrine or into a bathhouse. You know, take it off and put it in your pocket and then put it back on.

It was very highly ritualized. Um, in fact, there's an interesting story from a book called called Mao's Children in the New China, The Voices of the Red Guard Generation.

Um, the name escapes me of the two authors at the moment. It's a compilation of interviews with Red Guards. It's a great book. I would highly recommend it. Once again, Mao's Children in the New China, Voices of the Red Guard Generation. I highly recommend everyone read it.

But one story that sticks out to me is that um, one guy interviewed remembers how um, when his girlfriend died in a farming accident when they were sent down youth, he [snorts] buried her with her favorite Chairman Mao badge. And then when he mentioned that to his production manager, the manager became extremely irate, extremely irate, and demanded that they dig the girl back up to get the badge out of her off of her corpse.

Truly grizzly, but that just shows you just how reverent people became towards these things.

Of course, I should make a note that Mao and the party center very much opposed this very cult-like viewpoint. Oh, another thing, and I I did mention this in my episode on Tibet And Xinjiang during the Cultural Revolution is that Tibetans began to believe that Mao badges had like talisman-like properties, that they could ward off evil spirits and demons, that they warded off evil eye.

Uyghurs and Hui would often believe that they could ward off the evil eye that is mentioned in Islam. So, yeah, it was very interesting how people reacted in that way to Mao badges.

All right, well, let's move on and let's go to the final phase of Mao badge production, and that's April of 1969 to January of 1970. And this is when Mao badge production is is declared to be out of control and becoming Mao says something very funny in a circular.

He sends out an internal memo to all the party committees and revolutionary committees of all the Mao badge production plants in China, and that he says provocatively, "Give us back our airplanes."

Because like I said, aluminum is a key part in making fighter jets and bombers. So, they were basically with they they had made enough, like I said, enough to make 39,000 military airplanes, which could have come in quite in handy to intercepting large illusion bombers from the Soviet Union.

So, with that, Mao requested that they uh stop production and then a uh later in April of '69 after the Ninth Congress, Zhou Enlai signs an order, an official order to shut down the Mao badge factories, and the last Mao badge factory closes in uh at the end of January of 1970.

Now, and this is basically where Mao badges end. Now, there were small sets of badges made in 1977 to commemorate the opening of the Chairman Mao Memorial Hall in Tiananmen Square, and another set was created in 19 uh '93 for his 100th birthday.

And there's always uh fake badges being counterfeited to sold to tourists in this day and age. Um so, in a weird way, Mao badges are still being made, just in a very different way.

All right. So, now that we've gotten through the brief history of Mao badges, let's talk about the symbolism on Mao badges, because in my opinion, every Mao badge tells a story. Every Mao badge tells a story. Symbols, signs, and words sending a message of unity, socialism, loyalty.

And these are all very um every there's so much symbolism in Mao badges. So, let's go over the most common symbols.

Once again, I'm uh let me go through my PPT. All right. So, the globe or people of the world, you know, a sign of proletarian internationalism, Marx's edict workers of the world unite, proletarians of all countries unite. Um the edict uh the people of the world love Chairman Mao.

So, many badges will be in the shape of a globe and will often have little people looking upward at ChairmanMao and they'll have like things like hijabs and some prayer arrows, kufis, um Russian ushankas, baseball caps.

So, you can definitely tell they're like all little different ethnic groups or different uh nationalities from around the world looking up reverently at Chairman Mao as a sign of proletarian internationalism and the universal applicability of um Maoism.

Another common symbol you will often see is um Shaoshan, his uh birthplace in Hunan, you'll often see his birth house.

Um underneath him and uh what I've noticed is that Mao Zhuxi Wansui is often put on the reverse of these badges.

I'm not sure what the the two the the connection of those two things is, but yes, often times if there's a Shaoshan badge on the front, on the back underneath the back clasp will be Mao Zedong Thought.

Um the city of Yan'an, you know, Baotashan mountain with the Baota Pagoda on it and uh or uh scenes from the Yan'an Forum on Arts and Literature. These are very common. So, Yan'an of course is a very common symbol.

Uh Jinggangshan in Jiangxi province, that's another very common symbol you will often see. So, if you see three to five mountains underneath Mao on a badge, that's Jinggangshan.

Um of course, Tiananmen, Tiananmen Square, the gate, or the Great Hall of the People, those are very common symbolism.

Another thing is often times you will see three flags under Mao's head, and that's um the three flags of socialist construction, the general line of the party, and the people's communes.

Another thing is sometimes you will see not just slogans like serve the people, but you will see the names of important documents or important articles. So, if say People's Daily, Liberation Army Daily, or Red Flag Journal sent out an important editorial, let's just say as an example like Jiang Qing's on the overall exercising of the dictatorship of the proletariat, or the people's the revolutionary committees are good. You will often have the names of those essays or editorials emblazoned onto Mao badges.

Um of course, mangoes and the mango mania of uh July of 1968 through April of 1969. If you've been following the podcast lately, you know that mangoes were auspicious symbol during the Cultural Revolution. So, you will often see a mango or a plate of mangoes underneath Mao's face on many badges.

And uh another thing to look out for is sunflowers. Sunflowers pointing towards Mao or bedecking the edges of a badge is common.

The sunflowers looking up at the red sun in the sky and Mao Zedong thought being the red sun in the sky.

Of course, you'll often see the Little Red Book or the Selected Works of Mao Zedong underneath him.

And another thing you will often see is nine stars. Nine little stars. Always count the stars on your Mao badges. Most of the time there will be nine stars. And those nine stars represent the ninth Congress of the Communist Party of China. So those are all some things to look for. Other things is that you will often see two um characters. You will often see two Chinese characters on Mao badges and that's Zhong and ai. And Zhong means loyalty and then Ai means love.

And so often you will see those two words, loyalty to Chairman Mao and love for Chairman Mao. So if any of you do have Mao badges, dig them out and try to find what kind of interesting um symbols you see.

And let me know in the comments on my Twitter account what you find on your Mao badges.

All right, so the last point I want to get into is how to get started on collecting Mao badges. How do you want to get started on collecting on Mao badges? Well, this is a little bit of a tough one because for many most of my listeners are not in China.

So, that makes it hard in one way. What I would recommend is to eBay is probably your best bet for now unless you can find a private dealer who gets them from China. The main thing you want to look at is to go and look on the back.

Here's what you do. Email the vendor or the seller and ask them to take pictures of the back of the Mao badges.

If they are like gold leafed and the back clasp looks very thin and long and flimsy, it's a counterfeit. Another thing that you should also look for is certain colors like black or green or orange are were kind of prohibited.

You should only see red and maybe blue and gold and silver on a Mao badge. On a front of a Mao badge because that means it's authentic and those were allowed. Um but most of all though that's the rule of thumb when trying to look for fakes.

Um if you decide to come to China, the best things are antique markets and bazaars. I would recommend Panjiayuan in Beijing Huiminjie and Datang Xishi in Xi'an and then Taobao and 7788 Shoucang (7788收藏) here in China. Those are websites that sell large amounts of badges. So, those are some great ways to get involved in Mao badge collecting.

It's a highly rewarding hobby. Um you're preserving history and yeah, it's just it's a very interesting way of getting in touch with a um not just Maoism as an ideology, but you know, something that was so very precious and meant something so much to the Chinese people. So, there you have it, guys. That's the little spiel I wanted to give about Mao badges.

Um so, I guess with that, I want to just say um most likely because of midterms coming up, uh we will not be having a chronological episode this month. Um we will resume a chronological episode at the end of November. At the end of November, I will be trying to do a minisode at the end of this month.

Um I'm going to see if I could possibly get someone to help me um with doing a Q&A session uh that some people have been asking me to do. Um I'll be calling it off-topic or off-the-cuff. I'm not sure yet, but it will be basically um me talking about, you know, how did I become a Sinophile? How did I become such an enthusiastic China head? Um how did I become a Maoist? Uh how did I get involved with the Revolutionary Communist Party back in the day? Um so, hopefully maybe um we could uh I'll find if my fiancée wants to help me with that, that'll be cool.

If not, um I'll see if uh there's anybody else who will uh want to interview me or uh chop it up with me a little bit in uh on a for a Minnesota. Well, we'll see where that goes. We'll see where that goes. But until then, my friends, let's just put a bookmark in it there, and I will see you at the end of November for our next episode of August 1968 through November of 1968, Cleansing [snorts] of the Class Ranks.

Until then, from the ancient city of Xi'an, I say, "Zaijian."

Sources for today's episode have been

Chairman Mao Badges, Symbols and Slogans of the Cultural Revolution by Helen Wang.

Mao Badges by the Billions, lecture at the 2016 US-Chinese People's Friendship Association Fall Forum by Dr. Douglas Reynolds.

maozedong.net, Mao Badges Database administered by Clint Twist.

Long Live Chairman Mao Badges, Buttons as Revolutionary Odd Objects by Emily Williams.

And Chairman Mao Badges Catalog, Shaanxi and Hunan Editions compiled by Shu Shen and Zhong Ji Ping. (Names attributed on this source may be questionable)

All right. Bye-bye, guys.