The video screen sizzles into darkness. We are thrown back into our armchairs wondering how we arrived at this point in history. Players of the “Saga of the Peasant Revolution” live on, locked on screen in their immortal struggle for the Liberation of the oppressed masses. Armed with the invincible Coca-Cola bomb, they travel the four seas in the name of Chairman Mao, to times ancient and modern, in search of lurching enemies.

No other modern leader or political movement seduces the popular imagination in quite the same way as Mao Zedong and his revolution; not Lenin, not Roosevelt, not Hitler; and certainly none provokes such sense of fun. Feng Mengbo’s Videogame manufacturer Nintendo, who has produced an extremely popular game based on the political conflicts of China’s Three Kingdoms period (3rd century A.D), which stories every Chinese knows by heart. In this game one can side with the losers and reverse the course of history. “The Romance of the Three Kingdoms” has long become the stuff of myth and forms an integral part of the Chinese imagination; this game simply asserts the right of everyone to make his claim on his collective past. Has the history of the Mao years turned, so soon, into the myth of Mao?

Over the long evolution of China’s Dynasties, nothing has obsessed the intellectual mind more than the study of history. All the wisdom of philosophy, sagacity of learned men and folly of

kings, justice and iniquity of institutions, laws good and evil, vindication of the wronged, - in other words, the entire fabric of morality – is woven into the paradigms of history. The writing of official history, being the only permissible interpretation of national events, has therefore always been one of the most honoured intellectual assignments. Private writings of history were either periodically censored or absorbed into the vast body of historical annotations. The awareness of history on a popular level has been equally high; Chinese folklore is often based on popular versions of actual events, and literary references turn to history as readily as Western ones refer to Greek and Roman mythology.

This exceptional historical sense of the Chinese people has served Mao Zedong well in his revolution. In him ideology has been transformed by design as well as by popular will into a morality tale; such episodes of his career (for example his narrow escapes on the Long March) are turned into fold myth, in justification of the mandate of heaven. To cast himself in the paradigm of history, Mao was ruthless in his exhaustive censorship, and was never ambiguous about his intention to re-write Chin’s past in accordance with has own vision. The Cultural Revolution was a totalitarian effort to reshape the Chinese collective memory. With this exhibition, we see that the gaming table has now been turned; created at a time when China has finally decided to detach itself from Mao, Feng Mengbo’s Endgame series of paintings and videogames wittily expose the theatrical and fantastic nature of modern ideology, while suspending judgement on the myth of Mao an his legacy.

The claim to a superior morality lies at the heart of all modern ideology, no matter whether it be Communism of Democracy. The goal of Communist ideology is history destiny. The machinery of mass media communication forms the masses is its aim. It is no wonder that the excesses of Mao’s purges and “movements” are remembered for their euphoria and celebratory exuberance. Looking at these years from a distance, especially through Feng Mengbo’s Vdieo Endgames, everything takes on an unreal quality of theatricity. The mobilization of masses here appears to be a nationwide party. The hopes and fears, the passions and the terrors are blurred by distance. Feng Mengbo makes absurd the passions of propaganda, but also takes away its moral and historical imperatives. From here, dispassionate cerebral games, the game moves may be made differently. Without his lofty station and the costume of power, Mao’s great hand wave could well be a feeble call for a taxicab. From this safe distance, we ask “what if” so-and-so did or did not happen. What if?

The “if”s of history cannot be reversed. Destiny works in retrospect. We know Mao was king because he was so. And yet many turns of fate and historical accidents converged to create the present reality, and it is the knowledge of the possibility of alternative visions and alternative destinies that makes history a morality tale; not its ideological preordination. Is this the wisdom of the videogame?
Perhaps Feng Mengbo’s Endgame Series symbolize the new myth of China, which has happily turned history into a game that is open-ended and open to new players. Gone from mass consciousness are the burden of diplomacy and the gravity of policy. The self-assurance of historical  truth is exchanged for a fixed set of game rules and simple moves. Now anyone can join in and, anyone who learns the rule can score points. We are in the age of the marketplace, hailed by the ideology of Democracy. The world hails the open market of China.

This game started two hundred years ago with the world prying at the closed doors of China. The reward was the untapped China market. After all the ironic twists and turns of historicalfate: gunboat diplomacy, fall of dynastic empire, civil war, Communism, Cultural Revolution; China has finally arrived at the gaming table. Feng Mengbo floods Tiananmen Square with Coca-Coca tins at the closing scene of Game Over: Long March.

From herbs and opium to Amway and Coca-Coca. The market open, and the game starts.




From , Page 8, Published by Hanart TZ Gallery, Edited by Valerie Doran/Melanie Pong/Stephen Cheung/Ying Yee Ho/Una Shannon