Everyday socialism or the socialist everyday? Dong Zhongchao’s visual encyclopaedia of ordinary Maoist living

This article investigates the recent publication by one of China’s well-known Red collectors, Dong Zhongchao. His 2023 book, Shiguang wuyu (A Tale of the Times), pairs together Mao-era poster images with photographs of the everyday objects depicted in the poster. This article will analyse this form of visual pairing through two contrasting understandings of the everyday: everyday socialism (the lived experience of ordinary living in the Mao era) vs. the socialist everyday (the idealized project of the socialist transformation of everyday life). It argues that the poster images depicted represent the socialist everyday, while the material objects hint at the realities of everyday socialism. Through this distinction, the article offers two alternative readings of Dong’s book: the first sees the material objects as legitimating the poster images; the second, conversely, suggests that this pairing can actually open space to see the gaps between the idealized images and the material realities. These readings can help us to move beyond narratives of nostalgia in understanding the memories of the Mao era in contemporary China.