China's Mango Cult of 1968

Manipulating the Masses

In 1966, China's dictator, Mao Zedong, unleashed his Cultural Revolution to purge the country of capitalism and traditional ways of thinking. The result was bedlam, during which the humble mango was elevated as an object of almost religious devotion.

China's Cultural Revolution

First there was the Great Leap Forward of 1958 to 1962, Mao Zedong's disastrous attempt to modernize China's economy. It was a complete failure that triggered a famine that left as many as 45 million people dead.

Most national leaders would be ousted over such a catastrophe, but Mao was a feared dictator, so he held on to power.

To revive his sagging popularity, in 1966, he set off another wave of upheaval—the Cultural Revolution.

Armed with a little red book of Chairman Mao's thoughts, students were recruited into the Red Guards. They were instructed to cleanse the country of the Four Olds—old habits, old ideas, old customs, and old culture.

The paramilitary student groups went on a rampage as they “shut down schools, destroyed religious and cultural relics, and killed intellectuals and party elites believed to be anti-revolutionaries (history.com).”

In one notable clash, Mao tried to quell a student ruckus at Qinghua University in Beijing. Two opposing forces among the Red Guards were fighting each other with spears and sulphuric acid to prove which was the most loyal to Mao.

The leader realized he had set off pandemonium that needed to be brought under control. He sent 30,000 workers, who he called the Capital Workers Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Teams, onto the campus to subdue the students. In the ensuing battle, five were killed and more than 700 injured.

The workers beat back the students, and Mao was very grateful. In August 1968, he sent the workers a gift, actually a re-gift, of a crate of 40 mangoes that he had received as a present from Pakistan's foreign minister the day before.

Unwittingly, a cult was born.

The Gift of Mangoes

When the workers received the re-gifted mangoes, they were puzzled. They'd never seen the fruit before. The peach was the country's iconic fruit and symbol of immortality and had been for 2,000 years. But, the mango was a mystery.

The fruit came from on high with Mao's directive that “The Working Class Must Exercise Leadership In Everything.”

The motive for Mao's present was misinterpreted. It was thought to be a sign of the great leader's self-sacrifice; by choosing not to eat the delicious fruit, he was putting the needs of the workers above his own.

Other mysterious signals were drawn from the gesture. Was this a message that the chairman's ill-conceived Cultural Revolution was finished? Were mangoes the symbol of a change in policy? It seemed so.

Zhang Kui was one of the workers who took part in the Qinghua University action. He is quoted by Princeton University historian Alfreda Murck as saying, “The military representative came into our factory with the mango raised in both hands. We discussed what to do with it: whether to split it among us and eat it or preserve it. We finally decided to preserve it.”

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With only 40 mangoes to share among the country's then 745 million people, other measures were needed. So, wax replicas of the fruit were turned out in vast numbers for the population to revere.

Alfreda Murck says the real reason behind Mao's generosity was far more prosaic—he didn't like fruit, and mangoes are messy. However, when you've got a leader who reaches god-like status, their actions tend to be dissected for hidden meaning.

(If such devotion sounds naïve to the sophisticated minds of the 21st century, understand that according to a November 2022 Newsweek poll, 103 million adult Americans believe the 2020 presidential election was rigged because their leader has told them that this is so).

Further Adventures in China's Mango Cult

Communist China was officially an atheist regime, so the mangoes came to be treated as almost holy. In one factory, the precious gift from Mao started to rot, so the workers boiled the fruit in a vat of water. Then, each person on the shop floor was given a teaspoon of very thin mango juice to savour.

Cambridge University lecturer Adam Yuet explains that the Chinese population believed something akin to transubstantiation was taking place: “Not only was the mango a gift from the Chairman, it was the Chairman.”

Somebody wrote a poem:

Seeing that golden mango

Was as if seeing the Great Leader Chairman Mao!

Standing before that golden mango

Was just like standing beside Chairman Mao!

Again and again touching that golden mango:

the golden mango was so warm!

Again and again smelling the mango:

that golden mango was so fragrant!

Perhaps it loses something in the translation.

The mango motif turned up on plates, mugs, and bed sheets. There were mango-flavoured cigarettes and mango-scented soap. It was like the pumpkin-spice infusion that invades everything each fall.

A village dentist who did not succumb to the hype compared the mango to the sweet potato. He paid the heavy price of being publicly humiliated for his blasphemous attack on the Mao deity.

He was tried, found guilty of counterrevolutionary action, taken out of the village, and shot. Historian Alfreda Murck believes this was not an isolated incident.

But all good things come to an end, even the killing of dentists. About 18 months after the mango cult sprang to life, it died.

The unruly Red Guards were banished to work in the rice paddies, and the official ideology was that workers now ran the country.

The mango disappeared from posters and official propaganda. The wax replicas were melted down and turned into candles to bring light in the night through the frequent power outages brought about by the glorious Communist revolution.

Bonus Factoids

• The mango is the national fruit of Pakistan, India, and The Philippines.
• Imelda Marcos, the wife of the dictator of The Philippines, paid a visit to Jiang Qing, wife of Chairman Mao in 1976. Marcos presented “Madame Mao,” as she was known in the West, with a gift of mangoes. Jiang Qing tried to repeat Mao's success by re-gifting the fruit in an effort to polish up her image. It didn't work. Shortly after Mao's death in the same year, Jiang released a movie called Song of the Mango in another failed attempt to improve her chances of succeeding Mao. Within a week, the film was banned, and Jiang was in prison.
• One of my favourite sandwiches is canned tuna mixed with mayonnaise, finely chopped celery, with a sprinkling of curry powder. It is topped off with sliced mango. Yum, yum.

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Sources

• “What Was the Cultural Revolution?” Christopher Klein, history.com, August 9, 2019.
• “China's Curious Cult of the Mango.” BBC News, February 11, 2016.
• “40% of Americans Think 2020 Election Was Stolen, Just Days Before Midterms.” Giulia Carbonaro, Newsweek, November 2, 2022.
• “The Mao Mango Cult of 1968 and the Rise of China's Working Class.” Ben Marks, collectorsweekly.com, February 18, 2013.
• “How a Fruit Basket From Mao Made China Mad for Mangoes.” Jessica Gingrich, Atlas Obscura, November 4, 2019.

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This content is accurate and true to the best of the author’s knowledge and is not meant to substitute for formal and individualized advice from a qualified professional.

© 2023 Rupert Taylor