China Reconstructs, March 1968
(pp. 36-37)
How the "Red Guards' Battle Song"
Was Born
By Red Guards of the Middle School of the Central Conservatory of Music
We are Chairman Mao's Red Guards,
We steel our red hearts in great winds and waves,
We arm ourselves with Mao Tsetung's thought
To sweep away all pests.
LISTEN! The dynamic melody and rhythm of the "Red
Guards' Battle Song" resounds across our great socialist motherland!
Listen! This song bursts forth as group after group of daring Red Guards,
wearing shining Chairman Mao badges and carrying red quotation books,
pour into the streets to destroy the "four olds" of the exploiting
classes and promote the "four news"* of the proletariat!
Hear the Red Guards sing it as they board trains for every part of the
country to spread the flames of revolutionary rebellion far and wide!
Hear the Red Guards sing it as they charge forward in the battle to "fight
self, repudiate revisionism", mercilessly attacking the "self"
in their own minds and raining annihilating blows on the handful of Party
capitalistroaders in authority!
"The Red Guards' Battle Song", a
revolutionary marching song of the proletariat, was born in the life-and-death
struggle between the proletarian and bourgeois headquarters, between the
socialist and capitalist roads, between the proletarian revolutionary
line and the bourgeois reactionary line.
Red Guards of Chairman Mao
In June 1966 our great leader Chairman Mao himself launched the great
proletarian cultural revolution, a revolution unprecedented in history.
Revolutionary teachers and students responded at once and rose up to rebel
against the capitalistroaders, exposing and denouncing their crimes. For
17 years, in the literature and art world and in our school, these traitors
had tried to create public opinion for the restoration of capitalism in
China by protecting, fostering and spreading decadent, bourgeois and revisionist
literature and art, and opposing Chairman Mao's revolutionary line on
literature and art.
China's Khrushchov and his followers were by no means willing to take
defeat. They tried to put out the first flames of the cultural revolution
by sending out work teams to suppress the growing mass movement. One such
work team came to our school. But after a short while we felt there were
things seriously wrong with it, so we stuck up dazibao (big-character
posters) against it. The work team promptly retaliated by branding us
"counterrevolutionaries." We were only a tiny minority, but
we were confident that this was only a temporary situation, that the capitalistroaders
could not crush revolutionary fighters armed with Mao Tsetung's thought.
When our struggle was the toughest, we drew strength from these lines
of Chairman Mao's poem:
Only heroes can quell tigers and leopards
And wild bears never daunt the brave.
Plum blossoms welcome the whirling snow;
Small wonder flies freeze and perish.
Chairman Mao also says: "The world is yours, as well as ours, but
in the last analysis, it is yours. You young people, full of vigour and
vitality, are in the bloom of life, like the sun at eight or nine in the
morning. Our hope is placed on you."
How profound these words are! Our revolutionary forbears gave their blood
and their lives to win this state power for the proletariat. Can we young
people allow criminal revisionism to trample it down? Can we allow our
red state power to change its colour in our generation? Never! We must
become successors to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat. After
we have studied Chairman Mao's teachings, our minds are illuminated, our
eyes grow sharper, we are firmer in our stand and stronger in our strides.
We swear never to leave the field of battle until we have wiped out every
poisonous vestige of the sinister line on literature and art, until we
have thoroughly repudiated and discredited China's Khrushchov.
Chairman Mao had not been in Peking when China's Khrushchov began suppressing
the revolutionaries in the early part of the cultural revolution. He returned
in July, and the bourgeois reactionary line of suppression went bankrupt.
The black clouds lifted, and once again we saw the glorious rays of the
sun. With the warmest support from our dear Chairman Mao, the great Red
Guard movement rose. It's right to rebel! In this spirit we organized
the first Red Guard group of the Central Conservatory of Music on August
2. We swore to defend Chairman Mao, to defend the red state power and
to be Red Guards for ever faithful to Chairman Mao.
Taking Up Our Weapon
How should we express our boundless loyalty, love, veneration and faith
in our great red commander Chairman Mao? What could we use to help inspire
the Red Guards in our struggle against the class enemy? We recalled what
Chairman Mao had taught us, that we must "ensure that literature
and art fit well into the whole revolutionary machine as a component part,
that they operate as powerful weapons for uniting and educating the people
and for attacking and destroying the enemy, and that they help the people
fight the enemy with one heart and one mind". We are music students
— our weapon would be music, a battle song for the Red Guards!
We concentrated on studying Chairman Mao's brilliant work, Talks at the
Yenan Forum on Literature and Art, and other related articles, and this
helped clarify our task. Into the stanzas of the song we wrote the revolutionary
rebel spirit of the Red Guards. The revolutionary composer, Li Chiehfu,
helped us set the words to music.
We had many discussions. We all agreed that the first line of each stanza
should begin with "We are Chairman Mao's Red Guards" because
Chairman Mao is the reddest sun in our hearts and Mao Tsetung's thought
is our guiding light. It was Chairman Mao, with the true spirit of a great
proletarian revolutionary, who discovered the Red Guard organization when
it was first born, praised it highly and supported it firmly. This is
our greatest pride and joy. The second sentence is "We steel our
red hearts in great winds and waves". Chairman Mao teaches us that
successors to the revolutionary cause of the proletariat must steel themselves
in the teeth of winds and waves. We are now in the midst of a great storm
of class struggle. We must, in fighting against the bourgeoisie, forge
red hearts completely dedicated to serving the great majority of the people
of China and the world.
The first stanza we emphasize: "We arm ourselves with Mao Tse-tung's
thought to sweep away all pests." Mao Tsetung's thought is living
MarxismLeninism at its highest in our era, the era in which imperialism
is heading for total collapse and socialism is advancing to worldwide
victory. We will wield the invincible weapon of Mao Tsetung's thought
to wipe out the imperialists, revisionists, reactionaries and human pests
of all types.
In the second stanza we stress, "Marching on the revolutionary road
of our forbears, we shoulder the heavy task of our age". Chairman
Mao teaches: "In China the struggle to consolidate the socialist
system, the struggle to decide whether socialism or capitalism will prevail,
will still take a long historical period." Will the socialist system
be consolidated or not? Will China turn revisionist or not? It is our
generation which will decide these lifeanddeath questions. Not only will
we overthrow China's capitalist roaders, we will wipe out U.S. imperialism.
We will help the world's revolutionary masses overthrow all the forces
of reaction. This is the heavy responsibility of the era which we must
shoulder.
In the third stanza, "We unite with the masses and together plunge
into the battle to wipe out all monsters and demons" expresses our
determination to follow Chairman Mao's teaching to unite with all the
people that can be united in our struggle; to unite with all revolutionary
peoples to sweep away every ghost and monster from the face of the earth!
In the refrain we write: "Dare to criticize and repudiate, dare to
struggle, never stop making revolutionary rebellion! We will smash the
old world and keep our revolutionary state red for ten thousand generations!"
Yes, we Red Guards will always put daring to the fore. We dare to criticize
and repudiate any aspect of the "four olds" that is not in accord
with Mao Tsetung's thought. We are determined to rebel against all revisionist
counterrevolutionaries. No matter who he is, how high his position, how
famous his name or how great his seniority, as long as he dares to oppose
Chairman Mao and Mao Tse-tung's thought, we will overthrow him without
mercy and trample him underfoot, never to rise again.
Today, singing this battle song, we have smashed the plot of China's Khrushchov
to restore capitalism, defended the dictatorship of the proletariat and
Chairman Mao's revolutionary line. Tomorrow, singing this song, we will
plunge into the final great struggle of the world's people to smash the
system of exploitation and realize communism throughout the world. The
future is ours. The all-illuminating thinking of Mao Tse-tung will inevitably
win a whole bright red new world!
Red Guards’ Battle Song (Hongweibing Zhan Ge)
We are Chairman Mao’s Red Guards,
We steel our red hearts in great winds and waves.
We arm ourselves with Mao Tse-tung’s thought
To sweep away all pests.
We are Chairman Mao’s Red Guards,
Absolutely firm in our proletarian stand,
Marching on the revolutionary road of our forbears,
We shoulder the heavy task of our age.
We are Chairman Mao’s Red Guards,
Vanguards of the cultural revolution.
We unite with the masses and together plunge into the battle
To wipe out all monsters and demons.
Refrain:
Dare to criticize and repudiate, dare to struggle,
Never stop making revolutionary rebellion.
We will smash the old world
And keep our revolutionary state red for ten thousand generations!
*The "four olds" means the old ideas,
culture, customs and habits; and the "four news" means the new
ideas, culture, customs and habits.
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