Today I was listening to a radio program, one of those wonderful NPR shows that explores ideas on a theme and lets experts or people with salient experiences on the theme tell their stories. At one point the man who was telling his story gave this quote in regard to the wonder of being open to all kinds of ideas and possibilities--"Let a thousand flower bloom!" He attributed it to Chairman Mao. How intriguing I thought. I love a good quote from an improbable source so I wanted to explore it a little more. This is what I discovered.
First, it was based on something attributed to Mao Zedong,
but it's misquoted. The actual
quote is found in speech that he gave in February of 1957 in Peking and in
context it goes like this;
"Letting a hundred flowers blossom and a hundred schools of
thought contend is the policy for promoting progress in the arts and the
sciences and a flourishing socialist culture in our land."
Wow! Very interesting for the good Chairman, right? Or is it? You see, they took in all the flowers for a couple of months
and then cleaned the "garden".
Those with flowers that they did not like were executed or sent to die
while doing forced labor in the countryside. Kind of takes the glow off of the quote, eh?
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