Chinese media, advertising, and urban life.

Tiananmen at night

Online magazine Slate's Daniel Gross, currently traveling through China, introduces a short post on Marxism in contemporary Chinese society with a surprising historical claim:

When you stand in Tiananmen Square and look toward the Forbidden City, you see a huge portrait of Mao flanked by slogans. The slogans used to say things like "Long Live Marxism-Leninism." Today, they're simply nationalistic: "Long Live the People's Republic of China!"

Gross must have a particularly lousy tour guide. First he can't manage to find a chocolate bar anywhere in China, and now he's suggesting that explicit mentions of Marx and Lenin once adorned Tiananmen Gate.

The slogans have actually changed very little during the PRC's first six decades. At the ceremony to announce the founding of the republic on October 1, 1949, a portrait of Mao Zedong was hung in the center of the gate and slogans reading "Long Live the People's Republic of China" (中華人民共和國萬歲) and "Long Live the Central People's Government" (中央人民政府萬歲) were placed on either side.

The following year, the eastern side (bearing the "government" slogan) was replaced with "Long Live the Unity of the World's Peoples" (世界人民大團結萬歲). An expression of solidarity and internationalism, this slogan had the added benefit of containing the same number of characters as its counterpart on the other side.

The National Day parade, 1949

The slogans in a more traditional era

The first simplified writing scheme was promulgated in 1956, and just ahead of Labor Day, 1964, the slogans were converted to simplified characters. Although the display has been renovated with updated materials over the last four decades, the text itself has not changed.