The New Folk Song Movement In The Great Leap Forward

During the Great Leap Forward in 1958, a national poem writing campaign happened in the field of literature and led to a creation climax that everyone could write poems and everyone was a poet. The wrote countless poems at that time, which were mainly about glorifying the Party and Mao Zedong, publicize the Great Leap Forward, thePeople’s Commune Movement, the Forty-article program for agricultural development and other state policy, describe bustling working scenes, growing constructing enthusiasm and ’huge’ achievements. It was a typical case of the Great Leap Forward in the field of literature.The New Folk Song Movement started after Mao’s speech in the Cheng Du Conference in March 1958, in which he asked every province to collect some folk songs. After the conference, the whole nation began to mobilize. In April, Yun Nan Province was the first to follow Mao’s request and announced to collect folk songs. People’s Daily also published an editorial to call for a large-scale collection. Meanwhile, other provinces also issued notices, organize collection and publish works. The Association of Chinese Folk Literature and Art put colleting and publishing new folk songs as their first job. Guo Moruo, Zhou Yang and other writers wrote a lot of articles to compliment new folk songs and call for collection. since then, an all people involved movement started.Tens of thousands of creation groups was founded in the countryside, factory, streets and armies in order to encourage creation. From 7or 8 years old children to seventy or eighty years old people, nearly everyone in China took part in it, although many of them had just learned to read. lots of newspapers and magazines started a column for new folk songs and different poem activities showed up one after another, such as poem match, poem competition and poem fair. All kinds of carriers were used to record and disseminate poem. There were poem sheds, poem halls, poem windows, poem tablets, poem bamboo skewers, poems on the wall, poems on the machine tools, poems on the gun, poems on the boilers, poem leaflets and so on. The whole country had published countless poem books only in two or three years. Zhou Yang and Guo Mmoruo picked up 300 of them and published a book called Red Flag Folk Songs, which was regarded as the Book of Songs in the era of socialism.In line with Mao Zedong’s standpoint that "Chinese poetry will develop in two ways, one is folk song and the other is classic. New poems shall generate from such basis. The form shall be ethnic and the contents shall be the unity and opposition of realism and romanticism", two massive debates occurred among the field of literature and art. One topic is the writing technique of the new folk song. They all agree that the unity of the realism and romanticism of revolution shall be the only way to create poems and even all kinds of literary creation. The other topic is the development path of the poetry. Referred to the evaluation of the new poems after the May 4 Movement, the value and status of new folk songs and whether the new folk song shall be the direction of the development of modern poetry, some poets try to rationally admit the advantages of the new poems and oppose to evaluate highly of the new folk songs. They received different degrees of criticize. Not until the end of the New Folk Song Movement does the discussion of the development path of poetry return to rationality and emphasizethe combination and unity of classic, folk song and the new poetry form of the May 4th Movement.The New Folk Song Movement is a political movement advocated by Mao Zedong, responded and corresponded by party committees at all levels and groups of literature and art, and the whole country follow the trend. It is the manifestation of the Great Leap Forward in the field of literature and art and manifestation of the literature instrumentalism which was established by "the Speech on the Forum of Literature and Art in Yan’an". It is a superincumbent fake massive movement organized through administrative order. Mao Zedong’s advocation is the direct trigger factor of the NewFolk Song Movement. However, tracing to its source, it’s the result of the destruction of the democracy within the Party and the tendency of making decisions arbitrarily after the criticize of Anti-Rash Advance. The contents of the new folk song reflect the ridiculousness, exaggerate, Utopia, personal cult and fatuity in politics, economics and culture during the Great Leap Forward. It’s also the reflection of the abnormal social emotion such as false pride, contempt of nature and contempt of natural laws. As a result, it will fail along with the failure of the Great Leap Forward. Since Mao Zedong criticized "Poetry Satellite" at Zhengzhou Conference in 1959, the boom of the New Folk Song Movement has been faded out. Till 1960, different kinds of poetry activities vanished, the publishing of poems reduced significantly, the discussion in the field of literature and art virtually stopped and the New Folk Song Movement finally ended.