Chinese Cultural Revolution

 

A Cultural Icon Embraces a New Role in Post-Revolution China

SHANGHAI — 

Tong Xiangling was window-shopping here when a 

government car pulled up and he was hauled to an audition that would 

change his life. 

Two songs later, Mao Tse-tung’s wife, Jiang Qing, 

personally cast him as the People’s Liberation Army officer and 

bandit impersonator in the revolutionary opera “Taking Tiger Mountain 

by Strategy.” His suave character played like a Communist James Bond, 

and the  role catapulted Tong to superstardom during the 1966-76 Cultural 

Revolution. Almost everyone in China knew the lyrics to Tong’s arias of 

class struggle. His dashing square face and green army uniform became 

trademarks for eight yangbanxi, or model operas--one of the few forms of 

public entertainment permitted at the time. More than 30 years later, the 

onetime cultural icon is making a living selling noodles in a small restaurant 

here. The changing political landscape long ago made the old hero obsolete, 

though his music is still popular and his name remains synonymous with the 

golden age of revolutionary opera. In the beginning, Tong couldn’t handle being 

seen waiting tables and washing dishes. At work he wore a surgical mask, large 

square glasses and a chef’s hat. 

These days, however, the 66-year-old is doing his best to make peace with 

the role of revolutionary hero Yang Zirong. Instead of hiding his past, he is 

capitalizing on it. He renamed the shop after himself, hung pictures from 

his glory days and wrote a memoir to reflect on a career that was long out of his 

control. But mostly, he is reinventing himself for the sake of his two sons, who 

inherited nothing but their father’s good looks and bad luck.

“I often tell them they wouldn’t have ended up this way if they were not my sons,” 

said Tong, now a balding grandfather who fidgets like a child, in contrast 

to the charismatic hero who once held the nation spellbound. Now the sons 

work at Tong Xiangling Noodle Shop, giving customers the illusion that there 

are three Yang Zirongs at work there. But the only backdrop for the sons is 

white plastic tablecloths and cheap fluorescent lights.

Ironically, Tong named his sons Yuming and Shengtian: “ready to sing” and 

“conquer the sky.” Neither name correctly forecast their fortunes. Bad timing 

doomed the boys from continuing the opera greatness established by their 

parents, uncle and two aunts. By the time Yuming was of school age, his 

father had been accused of not denouncing the boy’s aunt, a celebrated

traditional opera star hated by Mao’s wife. Tong family members were labeled 

lackeys of old theater because they were trained during the pre-Communist 

days under old Peking opera masters.

But while his relatives were banished to reeducation camps, Tong was told to 

continue performing the role he helped create, as a means to atone for his sins. 

Few people outside the theater knew that after Tong took off his makeup as the 

Communist hero, he had to go home and write endless confessions--just 

like the prisoners he grilled on stage.

“When I was a kid, I saw Red Guards beat my aunt until she was unconscious,”

 said Yuming, 46, who wears spiky hair and straps a hunting knife to his belt. 

“I also saw them flush her head in the toilet so they could keep on beating her. 

I refused to learn opera because I didn’t want to end up like her.” 

But even as a child he couldn’t escape guilt by association. A gang of Red Guards 

chased him and broke his leg. When the leg did not heal properly, a doctor 

had to break the bone anew and reset it, without anesthesia, according to his 

mother, Zhang Nanyun. At 14, Yuming’s parents enlisted him in the army, 

where they thought that he would be safer. He was supposed to stay in the propaganda 

brigade, but he was transferred to the Special Forces unit in the remote Inner 

Mongolia. Six years later, he returned to Shanghai and found work at a welding 

factory. A few years ago it went bankrupt.Around the same time, his 

younger brother also became unemployed. But Shengtian, now 36, had 

always been crazy about the opera. Twice his parents tried to enroll 

him in professional opera school when he was younger, and twice he was rejected. 

His family background was not considered “red” enough. Even after the Cultural 

Revolution, he had no chance. His father was seen as Jiang’s “running dog,” though 

Mao’s widow--a master-mind of the radical extremism of the 1960s and ‘70s who later 

committed suicide in jail--had been just as ruthless to the Tong family. As a

consolation prize, the child who was supposed to conquer the sky went to work 

as an elevator operator. He practiced singing on his own and tagged along 

with his father on some gigs, stepping in for actors who fell 

ill. Even though audiences raved about his performance, officials would not 

permit him to study the craft professionally.

The father blamed himself. “Every day I stared at two unemployed sons, but I 

had no power to help them,” he said. “These days all the jobs require

professional degrees. They have nothing.”Then six years ago, the sons came 

up with the idea of a restaurant. Tong decided to retire so he could help. 

Business has been lousy. The location is terrible, and they have 

no money to move or renovate. But the men make do with emotional rewards. 

Tong recalls three customers--the oldest in his 90s, the youngest in his 70s--who 

traveled three hours from a distant suburb to see if Yang Zirong is really back in 

town, serving noodles. “They stared at me from the outside for a long time,” Tong

said. “Then they held my hand and said, ‘We really miss you.’ ”

A few years ago, a storm blew off the shop roof. Customers ran out in the rain 

to help nail it back. “Afterward, all they thought about was how I was doing, if

 I needed some water. I said to myself, I am nothing without the support of my 

audience.” “He was my first hero; I will never forget him,” said Hu Yuedong, 37, 

a customer who eats at the shop three times a week. “I used to dress up like him

and pretend to be him.” Hu’s girlfriend, Cheng Yali, is nine years younger. 

She doesn’t know who Tong is and doesn’t care. Hu says that’s not unusual.  

“There’s a huge generation gap between those born in the 1960s and ‘70s,” 

Hu said. “All those born before 1968 should know who Tong is. He was our 

generation’s Sylvester Stallone and Arnold Schwarzenegger.” Some old fans, 

however, worry about letting nostalgia slip into hero-worship. “The model 

operas are the products of extreme leftist politics,” said Chai Junwei, 38, who

grew up adoring the shows but now runs a Web site for traditional opera buffs. 

“The reason they are still popular is because they existed at the expense of all 

other artistic expression. How could you be proud of that?”

But Tong can’t break his love-hate relationship with the past. Not that he cares 

to defend the Cultural Revolution, but he has yet to see how the commercial 

revolution sweeping China today is any better to the arts. “People say eight 

great pieces in 10 years is not enough,” Tong said. “How many years has

it been since the Cultural Revolution ended? And how many shows have

they produced since then that are worth remembering? But the model 

operas, 30 years later, people still sing them and love them. That makes it all 

worthwhile.”

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-2001-feb-11-mn-24050-story.html