How “To Live” Brought Out Life Under Mao During the 1950’s

Not only is “To Live” telling a story of a family living under the worship of Mao during the 1950’s, but it also shows how life under Mao really was. In the first part of the movie, you can see things start to change when the Red Guards begin to paint pictures of their beloved leader Mao Zedong everywhere; when Erxi first meets Fungxia, he soon after gets himself and the rest of his Red Guard friends to paint a large mural of Chairman Mao on Fungxia’s family’s wall. This shows how loyal Mao’s Red Guard “army” was to him and how much unconditional trust the Red Guards and the people of China had in him. You can also see this when the man comes into the middle of the village with low quality steel just recently produced, yelling about how he had made enough steel to throw canons and Chaing Kaishek’s house. This proves how much trust they had in Mao because they trusted that the amount of steel Mao was requiring them to make was enough, when really it was not. The same situation goes with their food supply; when any good event occurred, the people in the village would feast, unknowing of the famine that would come in upcoming years. The Chinese people had exponential trust in Mao; even though he had given them no warning that they were using their vital food supply up.