Little Red Book

“I much prefer Hustler.”

~ Oscar Wilde on The Little Red Book

The Little Red Book (红宝书,Hóng bǎoshū, literally meaning "red treasure book") was a Sanskrit-to-Chinese translation of the ancient Indian volume on human sexual behaviour, Kama Sutra, by Chairman Mao The Doom (also, Mao Zedong) of the PRC (People's Relief Committee, a heavily underfunded organization in charge of the life and death of about half a billion Chinese people at the time). The official publication of the Little Red Book started in April 1964 by the PRC government.

Controversies

It has been argued that the bulk of the translation workload was undertaken by Mao's secretaries, but due to the lack of evidence this claim remains groundless as yet.

Also, during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, certain scholars even raised the objection that Mao did not understand Sanskrit and therefore could not be the translator. Their opinion was fiercely refuted by the rest of the academia and conclusively declared heretic. The scholars themselves received salary cuts, demotions or torturous deaths in collective farms, political prisons, meat blenders, etc.

History

Having suffered the trauma of decades of war and political unrest, commie China faced severe challenges during its early years. Mao The Doom, a leader with great vision, laid hope in his belief of "the more people, the stronger we are" (人多力量大). As such, the Chinese people at that time were encouraged to have more children. To increase the efficiency and robustness of the people's procreative activities, Mao decided to translate the Kama Sutra into the Little Red Book which has obviously leaked out to the Chinese population and caused modern China's first baby boom from 1949 to 1958, before its belated official release in 1964.

However, Mao's outright plagiarism (the Little Red Book itself made no acknowledgement whatsoever to the text of Kama Sutra or its author) has angered the Indians, especially descendents of Vatsyayana who was the original writer of the Kama Sutra. As the Indians had no political power to expel Mao for his academic dishonesty (moreover, Mao was not an academian for the most part), they decided to go to war with China. This was known as the Sino-Indian Border War which started out on 20 Oct 1962 and ended on 21 Nov 1962 with a unilateral ceasefire by the Chinese. To avoid further conflict, the PRC government compromised by publishing the official version of the Little Red Book in 1964 under the code name "Quotations from Chairman Mao Ze Dong".

Legacy

The immense wisdom of an ancient tome such as the Kama Sutra, coupled with the fanaticism of the Chinese Mao-worshippers, had indeed significantly increased the population of mainland China, to the extent that the hazards of overpopulation became more apparent by the year.

For one, food supplies showed tendency of falling short of national demand in the near future, even though three quarters of the Chinese nationals were farmers. Also, multi-storey bicycle parking lots had to be built to accommodate the 1:5 ratio of the people to bicycles. The worst of all was the shortage of Chairman Mao badges, although it was somewhat alleviated when Chairman Mao was mummified in 1976.

To deal with the overpopulation problem, Deng Xiao Ping, then leader of China, started the One-Child Policy which was implemented since 1979. Seeking to remove the root of the problem, the publication of the Little Red Book was stopped nationwide, and the existing copies soon decomposed and sublimated due to the poor quality of printing paper used. A Sanskrit hype followed immediately but was short-lived due to the complexity of the language. Soon, the Chinese were known to be generally lacking in penial size along with the rest of the Asians. Impotency became rampant among men above the age of 40 and fathers no longer gave their sons the Little Red Books as wedding presents, but Maxman® or other pills of similar purpose.

Famous Sayings

"Run up the stairs quickly...when the bathtub overflows."
"It is an auspicious sign of good fortune to step in dog crap on New Year's Day. Also your birthday."
"Everyone in the world is 1/15 Chinese farmer."
"Not Claw...Claw!"
"The Glorious Revolution of the People will throw stones at the Glass Houses of the People's Oppressors until the glass is broken. Then the Party will move in."
"What you mean, Hitler-Stalin pact? I thought we had a thing!"

and most famous of all:

"You're more than a number in my Little Red Book"

See also

• Mao Zedong
• Jean Chrétien and the Little Red Book
• Little Red Riding Whore