On Burns Night, we remember Robert Burns, the great bard of freedom and romance. The Chinese state doesn't forget him, either
It’s Burns Night tonight - the global celebration of the work of Scottish 18th century poet Robert Burns. He’s a complex character - both an ostentatious human universalist in his poetry, and a doughty defender of the Scottish national interest. A new book by French-Scottish academic and poet Paul Malgrati, titled Robert Burns and Scottish Cultural Politics, is interesting on this complexity.
But Malgrati has, in the course of his promotion, produced this fascinating tweet thread - which is on the use of Burns, and particularly his New Year’s anthem Auld Lang Syne, in Chinese national celebrations:
The Chinese government has recently made two heavy uses of Burns in its propaganda. One was the giant Mandarin rendition of 'Auld Lang Syne' at the finale of the Beijing Olympics in February 2022.
Then we also find 'Auld Lang Syne' in the Soundtrack of 'The Rebel', a 2021 Chinese series commemorating the centenary of the Chinese Communist Party.
In other words, it seems that 'Auld Lang Syne' is being turned into one of the official tunes of the 'Popular Republic of China' - with a both international and internal purpose. What might be the meaning of this?
Of course, such uses of 'Auld Lang Syne' cannot but conjure the Hong Kong Handover Ceremony of 1997. Could it be a way to integrate a powerful Hong-Kongese memory into the Chinese canon?
Yet Chinese uses of Burns go further back than 1997. According to the Bibliography of Scot Lit in Translation (@GUBoslit) the first book-length Chinese translation of Burns was written by Wang Zuoliang in 1959 and published by the Maoist 'Beijing People's Literature Press'.
1959 was also the date of Burns's Bicentenary, when, in the middle of the Cold War, huge celebrations of the poet had taken place in the Soviet Union where Marshak's translation and sold by more than half a million. It seems that Tso-Liang Wang was inspired by Marshak.
But Wang Zuoliang was not Burns's first Maoist translator. According to this article, at least another Communist poet, Yuan Shuipai (Mao's future vice-minister for Culture) had found interest in Burns as early as the 1930s.
Shuipai's collection of Scottish poems, 'My Heart's in the Highlands' was published in 1944. Amongst other Scottish texts, it included 30 Burns pieces rendered in 'Modern Chinese' as favoured by the Communists.
The choice of 'My Heart's in the Highlands' as a title was not random. As noted by Clark McGinn in Murray Pittock’s 'Robert Burns in Global Culture' (2011, p.197), Mao had allegedly used this song to bolster morale against Japan during WWII (potentially based on Shuipai's version).
So, what should we make of all this? Well, similarly to the 1950s USSR, it seems that China is currently developing its ownership of Burns as a way to both converse with the West (and perhaps Hong-Kong) whilst harking back to the Republic's founding myth.
Some might see this as a gross misappropriation — and certainly, uses of a humanitarian poet by an oppressive regime is rather prickly. Yet, like with 1950-60s Russia, Burns's music might provide a rare chance to bridge the gaps of an increasingly divided world. 🏴🇨🇳
In 2021, Malgrati produced an entertaining thread on the geographic extremes of Burns Supper celebrations. And if you were ever looking for an interactive map of Burns Suppers taking place regularly across the planet, well, here it is.
And we can’t escape without citing our favourite, long-termist, future-oriented, fully-automated luxury Robert Burns lines:
