For a long time in China, the dissemination of stories about heroes had
been a mainstay of Confucian education. While in the past it was mostly
emperors, military officers, officials, poets and virtuous widows who were
upheld as models worthy of emulation, towards the end of the 1930s, the
Chinese Communist Party started its own cult of revolutionary martyrs and
heroes in Yan’an. Now model workers were the ones worthy of emulation.
Taking a page from the Stakhanovite Movement that had recently emerged
in the Soviet Union, in 1939, the Communist leaders began to designate
labour heroes and model workers. In the following years, especially after
1942, the Party media would publish articles about peasants, workers,
cadres and soldiers who had been conferred these titles, often assigning
them significant prizes. This essay tracks the spectacular rise and fall of
Wu Manyou, one of the earliest labour heroes, who was singled out by
Mao Zedong himself for his achievements.