Was the Hundred Flowers Campaign (1956–1957) – epitomized by Mao Zedong’s ringing 1956 slogan “Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend” – a period of free expression and political relaxation? Or was it a political trap set up by Communist Party leaders to lure dissidents into the open so that they could be identified and purged as “poisonous weeds” in the ensuing Anti-Rightist Campaign (1957–1958)? Dayton Lekner’s insightful book, A Hundred Flowers: How Literature Shaped Maoism, does not enter this political-trap debate but, instead, focuses on an important but understudied subject: how do literary practice and political campaigns interact?

In the book’s four sections – Flowers, Weeds, Weather and Seeds – Lekner explores the two political campaigns as a literary movement in which writers used floral metaphors and bucolic imagery as creative devices to freely air their political views and attempt to shape government policies. Such an attempt, however, resulted in severe consequences for the authors.

In section one (Flowers), Lekner argues that Mao’s slogan “Let a hundred flowers bloom” was a vivid but ambiguous metaphor that “encouraged patterns of adoption, elaboration, modification and mutation” (p. 87) by writers. A colourful array of botanical metaphors – “new sprouts,” “violets,” “Chinese roses,” “night-blooming jasmine” – were employed in literary circles to depict different types of writings about the campaigns, reflecting pluralism in the arts as well as demonstrating writers’ eagerness to interact with Mao’s policies. The literary landscape resembled a vast garden where both “fragrant flowers” (for the Party) and “poisonous weeds” (against the Party) were seemingly allowed to coexist.

Section two (Weeds) centres on the sociologist Fei Xiaotong’s influential article “The Early Spring Weather of the Intellectuals,” which told the story of how “fragrant flowers” abruptly morphed to become “poisonous weeds.” In this article, published in the official People’s Daily (Renmin ribao) in March 1957, Fei applauded the new policy of free expression and encouraged intellectuals to speak out, but he also revealed their apprehension that this early spring might be a frosty “trap” (quantao). Fei’s “spring chill” metaphor resonated with many of his contemporaries and subsequently drew the wrath of high officials, who read it as an oblique attack on the Communist state. As intellectuals’ criticisms of the government mounted, the leadership moved swiftly to stifle them.

The most original part of the book is section three (Weather), which explores how Sichuanese poet Liu Shahe’s “Pieces on Plants”– a series of poems published in a local literary journal Stars (Xingxing) in early 1957– ridiculed those individuals who “wrapped themselves around the Party like a vine around a tree and in the process were strangling it” (p. 152). The poems drew quick rebukes from the authorities. Liu and Shi Tianhe, editor of Stars, were condemned as anti-Party individuals and banished from the literary scene.

In the final section (Seeds), Lekner provides a compelling account of the split life of the scholar Wu Mi during the Anti-Rightist Campaign: he publicly praised official policies, but, privately, in his letters, lamented that “the garden is silent, leaving only empty trees” (p. 208). Lekner concludes his book by observing that the tradition of paralleling nature with politics continues to be a force in literary exchanges in today’s China.

A major virtue of the book is its proposal that writers and their creative works, not political leaders and top-down decrees, were at the heart of the two political campaigns. This grassroots literary drive demonstrated clearly that one of the intrinsic values of literary activity is its ability to provide a private and imaginative space that allows authors to be partially and temporarily insulated from political pressures.

Lekner has mined a wide range of sources, including newspapers, literary journals, diaries, letters, pictorials and internal documents. The skilful use of diaries is particularly illuminating. It is in these diaries, perhaps more than any other writings, that the anxiety, vulnerability and hidden desires of individual souls were most urgently communicated. Another merit is the book’s focus on regional literature, an often-overlooked subject. Lekner compellingly argues that local journals were as important as national publications for understanding the zigzag course of political campaigns.

Like any book, this one has a few weaknesses. Maoism, as the title indicates, is at the centre of the book, but Lekner uses the term loosely without defining it clearly. At times, he seems to suggest that “Maoism” was “a set of ideas, practices, and finally a potentially cohesive system” (p. 5). On another occasion, he describes “Maoism” as something constituted by a “vast diversity of subjective experience” (p. 40). The absence of a solid definition renders his arguments disjointed.

Lekner is perceptive in analysing texts and images, but on less solid footing when documenting historical sources. For example, it is questionable to claim that “Ai Qing had maintained throughout his career a belief in the spiritual individuality of literati” (pp. 71–72). Quite the opposite, the poet was a faithful follower of Mao Zedong’s 1942 “Yan’an Talks,” which dictated that literature and art must serve politics. Ai Qing was particularly known as a vocal critic of Wang Shiwei during the “Wild Lilies” Incident in 1942 (The Liberation Daily [Jiefang ribao], 24 June 1942), a major episode during the Yan’an Rectification Movement to silence dissenting voices.

Lakner has a penchant for grand theories. He draws concepts freely from a host of authorities (John Searle, Stephen Greenblatt, Zygmunt Bauman, to name just a few) but with thin explication. It would require more than a few short sentences to convince readers why Timothy Mitchell’s survey of the “limits of the state” (p. 97), based largely on American and European models, is pertinent to our understanding of the specificities of Mao’s China.

Finally, Lekner writes approvingly of New Historicism (p. 100), a literary theory that emphasizes reading literature within its social, historical and cultural milieu, yet he pays insufficient attention to historical context. The tensions between literature, art and politics began very early in the People’s Republic. No fewer than three incidents preceded the Hundred Flowers Campaign: the 1951 official attack on the film The Life of Wu Xun (Wu Xun zhuan); the 1954 criticism of the Qing novel The Dream of the Red Chamber (Honglou meng); and the 1955 campaign against the writer Hu Feng. Briefly recounting these incidents would bring Fei Xiaotong’s “spring chill” metaphor into sharper focus.

Overall, the book’s many strengths outweigh its flaws. A Hundred Flowers is an impressive read for scholars who are interested in China’s literary campaigns and political movements in the 1950s.