Chairman Mao

“The actor who plays Chairman Mao is back there!” one of them said.
“Which row?”
“Twenty-five!”
He had the middle seat, wedged between two Wenzhou businessmen, who had conked out like nearly everybody else on the flight. But the actor who played Chairman Mao was completely alert. He wore a neat gray suit, a red tie, and stage makeup—his face glowed with unnatural brightness. His teeth gleamed, too, and his hair had been dyed black and brushed away from his forehead, the way Mao used to do it. He even had a prosthetic mole on the left side of his chin. Every time somebody walked past on their way to the bathroom, they did a double take: Mao Zedong, sitting in economy class, seat 25E.
After we landed in Wenzhou, a bus transferred all passengers from “the plane to the terminal. The bus was even more crowded than the plane, and I found myself pressed against Chairman Mao. I introduced myself and gave him a business card; he fished one of his own out of a pocket. It listed no fewer than seven official titles:
Jin Yang, The Actor Who Plays the Role of the Great Leader Mao Zedong
Director, Phoenix Cultural and Artistic Center
Director-General, China International Film Company, Ltd.
Vice-Manager, Beijing Strong and Prosperous International Martial Arts Cultural Development Company
Business Director, Beijing Film Research Institute
Honorary Director, Zhonghua Societal University Film“Institute
High-Level Advisor, China Red Dragonfly Group
Chief Inspector, China Red Dragonfly Business and Cultural Center
He was traveling to Wenzhou in order to film a miniseries for China Central Television. They planned to tell the story of an incident from the 1940s, when the Red Army clashed with Japanese invaders in Zhejiang. Jin Yang said that for the past decade he had played the Chairman in movies and television shows. He smiled when he read my business card.
“Oh, you’re a journalist,” he said. “There was a famous American journalist named Edgar Snow who was friends with Chairman Mao.”