A Chill in Spring: Literary Exchange and Political Struggle in the Hundred Flowers and Anti-Rightist Campaigns of 1956–1958

Who had the power to innovate in the linguistic and literary realms in the high Mao era? To date, scholars have emphasized a top-down enforcement of formulaic language through a mixture of Communist Party organization and Maoist charisma. This article challenges the exhaustiveness of that model by articulating the circulation, appropriation, and modulation of literary tropes during the political campaigns of 1956–1958. To this end, it traces the widespread uptake of the titular metaphor of the Hundred Flowers Campaign and its proliferation throughout public debate. Troubling the top-down model is the challenge to this propagation posed by sociologist Fei Xiaotong 费孝通 (1910–2005) with his essay “The Early Spring Weather of Intellectuals” and the impact that essay, and its central metaphor, had on public discourse. In exploring this battle over the metaphorical season, this article reimagines the Hundred Flowers, Rectification, and Anti-Rightist campaigns through the lens of literary exchange. It argues that in distinct cases it was control of public discourse through literary virtuosity that constituted a key battleground during the campaigns.