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Mao's cult of personality and "mango fever" (August)

In the spring of 1968, a massive campaign aimed at enhancing Mao's reputation began. A notable example was the "mango fever". On 4 August, Mao was presented with mangoes by the Pakistani foreign minister Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, in an apparent diplomatic gesture. Mao had his aide send the box of mangoes to his propaganda team at Tsinghua University on 5 August, who were stationed there to quiet strife among Red Guard factions. On 7 August, an article was published in People's Daily, saying:

In the afternoon of the fifth, when the great happy news of Chairman Mao giving mangoes to the Capital Worker and Peasant Mao Zedong Thought Propaganda Team reached the Tsinghua University campus, people immediately gathered around the gift given by the Great Leader Chairman Mao. They cried out enthusiastically and sang with wild abandonment. Tears swelled up in their eyes, and they again and again sincerely wished that our most beloved Great Leader lived ten thousand years without bounds... They all made phone calls to their own work units to spread this happy news; and they also organised all kinds of celebratory activities all night long, and arrived at Zhongnanhai despite the rain to report the good news, and to express their loyalty to the Great Leader Chairman Mao.

Subsequent articles also propagandized the mangoes, and another poem in the People's Daily said: "Seeing that golden mango/Was as if seeing the great leader Chairman Mao... Again and again touching that golden mango/the golden mango was so warm." Few people at this time had ever seen a mango before, and a mango was seen as "a fruit of extreme rarity, like Mushrooms of Immortality."

One mango was sent to the Beijing Textile Factory, whose revolutionary committee organized a rally in its honor. Workers read quotations from Mao and celebrated the gift. Altars prominently displayed the fruit. When the mango began to rot after a few days, the fruit was peeled and boiled. Workers then filed by and each was given a spoonful of mango water. The revolutionary committee made a wax replica and displayed it in the factory.

Several months of "mango fever" followed as the fruit became a focus of a "boundless loyalty" campaign for Mao. More replica mangoes were created, and the replicas were sent on tour around Beijing and elsewhere. Many revolutionary committees visited the mangoes in Beijing from outlying provinces. Approximately half a million people greeted the replicas when they arrived in Chengdu. Badges and wall posters featuring the mangoes and Mao were produced in the millions.

The fruit was shared among all institutions that had been a part of the propaganda team, and large processions were organized in support of the "precious gift", as the mangoes were known. A dentist in a small town, Dr. Han, saw the mango and said it was nothing special and looked just like a sweet potato. He was put on trial for "malicious slander", found guilty, paraded publicly throughout the town, and then shot in the head.

It has been claimed that Mao used the mangoes to express support for the workers who would go to whatever lengths necessary to end the factional fighting among students, and a "prime example of Mao's strategy of symbolic support." Through early 1969, participants of Mao Zedong Thought study classes in Beijing returned with mass-produced mango facsimiles, gaining media attention in the provinces.