This chapter focuses on the Chinese volunteers who fought in Korea during the Korean War. It looks at the interactions between the Chinese volunteers and North Korean civilians. It shows how the CCP strove to shape the emotions of the volunteers and inspire feelings of empathy toward North Korean civilians. Through using new North Korean source materials, it shows how the North Korean government sought to shape popular perceptions of the volunteers.

This chapter explores the parallel efforts of the CCP and the KWP to train loyal party cadres. This was a critical taks for both parties. It shows how Sino-North Korean friendship was a powerful tool for training the emotions of the party bureaucracy.

Following the blooming of the Hundred Flowers came a metaphorical springtime. How was it formed? As metaphorical wordplay continued to shape public discourse, the sustained input of creative writers gradually transformed the discussion of flowers to a broader theme of spring. Poets such as Ai Qing wove ever more detailed depictions of bucolic scenes to both comment on the state of the Republic and to join in the word play that was now present across genres of writing. In the process, an ever-expanding circle of writers joined the metaphorical and allegorical debate, including Zhou Shoujuan, who saw the movement as a resurrection of the literary public sphere of the May Fourth era. We also observe the migration of metaphorical imagery from text to visual-culture, as floral scenes and those of spring became omnipresent in magazines and newspapers.

What could you do if you felt out of step with Maoism? What if the great blooming of early 1957 did not reflect your feelings about the People’s Republic? How could you express yourself with the language available to you and circulating throughout public discourse? This chapter traces the frequent but disparate and isolated practices of botanical metaphor inspired by the Hundred Flowers but deployed in critique, echoing practices that have remained potent since the Book of Odes. It begins with the story of Jiang Rende, who arranges grass on his desk and thinks of Lu Xun, and reveals a world of critical but disconnected deployments of the botanical imagery of the Hundred Flowers.

This chapter explores the interactions of high-level Chinese and North Korean leaders. It argues that the actions of Chinese and North Korean leaders – especially Mao Zedong and Kim Il Sung – were critical to building political order in the PRC and the DPRK. It shows how the utterances and actions of these leaders were particularly influential in shaping popular emotions and establishing the legitimacy of the PRC and DPRK.

Who had the power to innovate and shape public discourse in the high Mao era? Through the example of Fei Xiaotong and his essay “The Early Spring Weather of the Intellectuals,” this chapter explores what happens when critique, however mild, captures an audience, draws responses, and creates its own eddies of creative imitation. It shows the power of the classical literary canon eight years after the founding of the People’s Republic and that literary brio drawing on this canon could shape public discourse and challenge the dominant framing of a national slogan. It also shows how writers who supported the campaign turned to the same literary canon to attack Fei Xiaotong’s metaphor and restore the sense of springtime. It was not only the Party that was capable of “doing things with words.”

How do national campaigns and local literary practice interact? This chapter tells the story of Liu Shahe and Shi Tianhe, two Sichuanese writers who, following signals from Beijing and Moscow, found themselves on the wrong side of local political and literary elites. It explores how Liu and Shi fell out with the Sichuanese literary establishment, and how what became known as the “poetry case” came to the attention of Mao Zedong. It describes the differential power dynamics that existed among the individual, the local, and the central state in the early People’s Republic of China. Despite becoming known as “anti-Party,” “anti-socialist,” and “poisonous weeds,” the chapter reveals that Liu and Shi fell from grace for putting into practice signals from the Party center.

The conclusion offers a broader look into the role of emotions in alliances and the similarities and differences between Sino-North Korean friendship and other Cold War alliances. It shows how the idea of Sino-North Korean friendship limited emotional freedom in China and North Korea.

From the summer of 1957 and throughout the Mao era, “poisonous weed” was a label to be avoided at all costs. Having fallen for the flowers in early 1957, Xu Chengmiao would find himself labeled a “poisonous weed” by the end of the year. As with the Hundred Flowers, the advent of this pernicious botanical label has its own history. This chapter explores how “poisonous weeds” entered the Chinese garden, the role of the Soviet Union in the Chinese Arcadian turn, and how lionized writers such as Guo Moruo gave an endogenous spin to writing that celebrated an idyllic rural life. This then deepened the creative engagement with the Hundred Flowers as it traveled back to the Soviets and into internal circulars. It also studies how the circulation of the Hundred Flowers helped Mao navigate the fallout from Khrushchev’s “secret speech,” and what happened after the chairman stepped into the garden with his own take on the flowers.