The controversy over the movie "I Am a Mountain" has risen to the level of communist beliefs. To be honest, in the past, although I also knew some about Teacher Zhang Guimei's deeds, it was only at a rough and approximate level, and I didn't really understand many details. Through this controversy, I began to learn more about the details of Ms. Zhang Guimei's relevant aspects. She has a firm belief in communism, and everything she does is carried out and completed under the support of this belief. Her artistic cooperation with her husband was that her husband pulled the erhu, and she sang a song "Chairman Mao Came to Our Farm". I also know that she admires the revolutionary martyr Sister Jiang very much, and Sister Jiang is also the heroic image that she gives her strong support in her work.
In the past, I was so ignorant of Teacher Zhang Guimei, I should be ashamed of it. However, because of the controversy caused by this movie, I made up for a lesson in re-understanding Mr. Zhang.
Here comes the question of belief in communism. On this issue, many people today are either confused, puzzled, doubted, or ridiculed. In reality, there must still be people who can be like Teacher Zhang Guimei with firm communist beliefs, although not necessarily very many, but definitely not very few.
Teacher Zhang Guimei is a person with a firm belief in communism, and Lei Feng is also a person with a firm belief in communism. What do they have in common? There may be many people who can't answer. I have my own answer to that, though. My answer lies in their firm belief in communism, in their down-to-earth work, and in their concept and practice of serving the people wholeheartedly. Their firm belief also lies in their persistence and dedication to this cause.
For Lei Feng and teacher Zhang Guimei, communism has never been illusory. Communism has always been real, and communism exists around us and in our time. Because for a true communist, communism was a great movement, a great struggle, and a great cause from the very beginning. This movement, this struggle, and this cause all exist unequivocally in reality. Their ideals and beliefs are based on this solid reality.
There may be many people who don't understand this answer, or even don't understand it. It is not surprising that there is such a phenomenon. For it is true that in the minds of these people, communism is nothing more than a so-called lofty goal for the future, which today seems very far away. As for whether this goal can be achieved, there is a huge question mark in itself.
However, Teacher Zhang Guimei doesn't think so, and Lei Feng doesn't think so either. The communism in their minds exists in the down-to-earth work of every day and in the great practice of building socialism with Chinese characteristics under the leadership of the Communist Party of China by all the Chinese people.
For a true Marxist, for a true dialectical materialist, communism was a realistic movement from the very beginning. In the words of Marx and Engels, it was a "movement to abolish the reality of the existing situation". Existing, i.e. capitalism, reality, i.e. communism. This great movement has existed since the day of the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848. After the First International, the Paris Commune, the October Socialist Revolution, the Chinese Revolution, China's Socialist Revolution and Socialist Construction, and the persistence and development of the current road of socialism with Chinese characteristics, every stage and step is a part of the great communist cause and every different stage of the communist movement. Where is communism? Communism exists all around us. Communism lives with us day and night. Every day, we make progress and develop together with the communist cause. This is the practical basis for many Communist Party members to have firm communist convictions.
At that time, when the Communist Party of China was just founded, countless Communists had already thrown themselves into the torrent of the great Chinese revolution. Where their belief in communism comes from, it comes from the practice of the Chinese revolution. When Li Lisan came back from studying abroad, his father of the rich generation asked him, what are you going to do when you come back. Li Lisan's answer was, "I want to be communist." Li Lisan's answer made his rich generation father angry. But this was the expression of the Chinese Communists' firm belief in communism in that era. I want to be communist, that is to say, what I want to do is the communist revolution, that is, the revolution to overthrow the reactionary mountain of imperialism and feudalism in old China. This revolution was then called the Communist Revolution. This communist revolution is fundamentally the same thing as the communist movement we speak of today.
Countless revolutionary ancestors threw their heads and shed their blood in the revolutionary struggle, and they never regarded communism as some kind of illusory future society. In their eyes, communism is the present, real revolutionary movement, the real fiery revolutionary struggle into which they are devoted. Therefore, many of them have an incomparably firm revolutionary conviction and an incomparably firm fighting spirit. This is the true communist conviction as understood by the Chinese Communists.
The choreographers and directors of the movie "I Am a High Mountain" are really too low. They do not understand communism at all, nor do they understand where the firm ideals and convictions of true communists come from. Fundamentally, they do not understand the Chinese Communists at all, they can only understand the individualism and liberalism of the West, and they are very familiar with the Western set, and it is easy to say it. Not only were they completely unfamiliar with communism, but they were also quite resistant to communism. In their view, in today's China and in today's world, there is no such person with firm communist convictions, and all those who say that they have firm communist convictions are all fake and are performing. They simply do not believe that there are people in the world who truly believe in communism.
In this counter-criticism of the film, a strange tone of anti-extreme "leftism" suddenly emerged. However, this kind of criticism of film criticism as ultra-"left" does not seem to indicate where this so-called "ultra-left" is. In my opinion, in these anti-criticisms, the ultra-"left" they refer to is not the criticism of the film itself, but the extreme "left" they refer to in people's criticism of the film, and the proposition that the tall image of the characters in the film should be based on the ideal and belief in communism, which is the crux of the problem.
The film's directors and directors, those anti-critics who oppose criticism of the film, they themselves must not believe in communist ideals and beliefs. In their opinion, where are there any people who believe in communism now? Nowadays, how can people, especially among the Communist Party members, really firmly believe in communism? They simply do not believe that in today's Chinese society, there will still be such people and such Communist Party members. In the criticism of the movie, people especially emphasized that if the characters in the film only talk about human nature and only talk about the love between men and women, then the characters in the film are not Teacher Zhang Guimei. But it is precisely at this point that the voices of criticism are the voices of the ultra-"left". They themselves don't believe in communism, and they don't allow Zhang Guimei, the teacher in the film, to believe in communism, and they even deny that today's Chinese communists, and there are still many people who believe in communism.
Having said that, if the Communists do not believe in communism and do not establish communist ideals and beliefs, then are they still Chinese Communists? Will there still be a communist movement in this world? The fangs exposed by these anti-critical voices lie precisely in the fact that they not only do not believe in communism, but also do not allow genuine communists to believe in communism. In their view, communism is not realistic, communism is illusory. Therefore, they do not believe that there are communists today who still have a firm communist conviction. They themselves do not believe and do not believe that others will believe. So they fundamentally did not allow the existence of real communist convictions. That's probably the root of the problem.
In the eyes of these anti-critics, the so-called communism has no basis in reality, and the so-called communist ideals and beliefs are all deceptive and hypocritical. However, they just do not understand that the communist movement, from the very beginning of its existence, was a movement of the working class aimed at overthrowing the capitalist system, and that this movement named after communism was real from the very beginning, and that it had a great practical basis. The reason why Lei Feng and Zhang Guimei have a firm belief in communism is that they are stepping on the real land of Chinese socialism, and they love and are engaged in such a great communist cause. Isn't that realistic? Is this false? To these counter-critics, none of this is true, not realistic, but so-called false, and they will even think very viciously that it is all a lie. Ren Zhiqiang, an anti-communist who once wore the garb of a Communist Party member, thinks so.
But a real communist would not see the problem in this way. Most of them may not be able to say much in theory, but they are faithfully carrying out the party's decisions, they are fulfilling the tasks assigned by the party to the letter, they are also walking step by step on the road to communism, their actions are realistic, their ideas are realistic, their emotions and their beliefs are also realistic. Those anti-critics regard these real things and ideas as "left" in their eyes, which not only proves that they do not believe in communism at all, but also proves the inferiority and mediocrity of their own ideas. Otherwise, how could they think that the conviction of communism was an ultra-"left"?
(The author, Hu Maoren, is a senior researcher at the Kunlun Ce Research Institute; source: Kunlun Ce Network [author's authorization], revised and released; the picture comes from the Internet, invaded and deleted)