{"id":760,"date":"2006-11-03T15:50:00","date_gmt":"2006-11-03T15:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=760"},"modified":"2006-11-03T15:50:00","modified_gmt":"2006-11-03T15:50:00","slug":"the-apotheosis-of-mao","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=760","title":{"rendered":"The apotheosis of Mao"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I was half-listening to an ABC News story last night about Chinese billionaires (and now I cannot find any link on their site. Help!) that mentioned one man whose mansion had something like a mosaic of images of Mao Zedong.<\/p>\n<p>The reporter seemed bemused, since Chairman Mao (1893-1976) was after all <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Mao\">a Communist<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Coincidentally, I was reading <a href=\"http:\/\/www.yorku.ca\/jpaper\/\">Jordan Paper&#8217;s<\/a> <em>The Deities are Many: A Polytheistic Theology<\/em> where he writes of visiting China in the late 1980s:<\/p>\n<p><em>[At that time] a new deity of wealth was needed, one that would be effective in the new economy. Who was the most powerful dead not yet with a divine specialization? Why, Mao Zedong (Mao Tse-tung) of course! Small icons of his image, with a plastic version of a Chinese gold ingot hanging from it, were on sale everywhere. They were variously hung, such as from automobile rear view mirrors, including government vehicles. When I asked a bureaucrat, a member of the Communist Party, why it was hanging there, the answer was succint: &#8220;Ta shi shen&#8221; (He&#8217;s a Deity.)<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The old Greeks <a href=\"http:\/\/dictionary.reference.com\/browse\/apotheosis\">had a word for it<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I was half-listening to an ABC News story last night about Chinese billionaires (and now I cannot find any link on their site. Help!) that mentioned one man whose mansion had something like a mosaic of images of Mao Zedong. The reporter seemed bemused, since Chairman Mao (1893-1976) was after all a Communist. Coincidentally, I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6xQTg-cg","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5282,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=5282","url_meta":{"origin":760,"position":0},"title":"&#8216;Ghost Brides&#8217; Keep the Family Together","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"March 4, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"If family and ancestors really, really matter, you can dig up a corpse and manufacture an ancestor. Ritual ghost marriages, which may date back to the 17th century BC, are increasingly rare in contemporary China \u2013 Mao Zedong tried to eliminate them when he assumed power in 1949 \u2013 but\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"ancestors\"","block_context":{"text":"ancestors","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=ancestors"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":12568,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=12568","url_meta":{"origin":760,"position":1},"title":"An Offer to Buy the Pomegranate, and Other Pagan Studies Scams","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"November 8, 2021","format":false,"excerpt":"Periodically I receive these emails, usually in the business-school dialect of babu English. Academic publishing, apparently, is full of scammy stuff like this.((I have also encountered them in real estate and in regard to mineral rights.)) Dear Editor\/Publisher, Hope this mail finds you in best! I am writing down this\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"academia\"","block_context":{"text":"academia","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=academia"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/people-worship-mao-zedong.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/people-worship-mao-zedong.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/11\/people-worship-mao-zedong.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]},{"id":2311,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=2311","url_meta":{"origin":760,"position":2},"title":"Two Festivals at Once!","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"January 30, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"If you are celebrating Imbolc in the next few days, be aware that Chinese New Year falls on February 3, so you may hear some extra fireworks, depending where you are. Calculated by the Sun, Imbolc occurs at 0420 Greenwich Mean Time on February 4.","rel":"","context":"In \"festivals\"","block_context":{"text":"festivals","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=festivals"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3313,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=3313","url_meta":{"origin":760,"position":3},"title":"The Care and Feeding of Writers","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"October 18, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"\"The writer was first domesticated by the Chinese, in 3400 B.C. Although the keeping of writers has been popular among the aristocracy for millennia, it has become widespread in the last few centuries as the working masses have accrued more time and resources to devote to the care of others.\"\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"writing\"","block_context":{"text":"writing","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=writing"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1778,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=1778","url_meta":{"origin":760,"position":4},"title":"What Does that Tattoo Say?","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"September 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"It is to laugh. A blogger who reads Chinese and Japanese tells tattooed victims people what those Asian characters really say\u2014if, indeed, they say anything. Such as green vegetable. Or not chi (qi) but rice. Or not \"beautiful\" but \"disaster.\" This must be the revenge of the Orient for our\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"weirdness\"","block_context":{"text":"weirdness","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=weirdness"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":13501,"url":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?p=13501","url_meta":{"origin":760,"position":5},"title":"Now They Are Stealing Pagan Artisans&#8217; Designs","author":"Chas S. Clifton","date":"December 4, 2023","format":false,"excerpt":"\"Did you find an awesome statue of Odin with a price too good to be true?\" begins a recent entry at the Wyrd Designs blog. The article focuses on a Ukrainian Pagan artist who sells on Etsy. Chinese copyists mass-produced his carved wooden statues in resin, along with others. (Those\u2026","rel":"","context":"In \"art\"","block_context":{"text":"art","link":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/?tag=art"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/zagrava-workshop-copy-1024x403.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200,"srcset":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/zagrava-workshop-copy-1024x403.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1 1x, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.chasclifton.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/12\/zagrava-workshop-copy-1024x403.jpg?resize=525%2C300&ssl=1 1.5x"},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.chasclifton.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}