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Jie Li, Cinematic guerrillas in Mao’s China, Screen, Volume 61, Issue 2, Summer 2020, Pages 207–229, https://doi.org/10.1093/screen/hjaa017
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In 1958, when the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) sought to ‘liberate’ Taiwan from the Nationalist Party (KMT) by shelling islands in the Taiwan Strait, a group of children, inspired by war films about anti-Japanese guerrilla heroes, stayed on to help the troops do laundry, deliver water, hide cannons, repair telephone cables and catch spies. Their ‘heroic feats’ were written into a play that was adapted into a film, Yingxiong xiao balu/The Heroic Little Guerrillas (1961).1 In the film’s climactic scene an enemy bomb explodes the PLA telephone cable, with the result that headquarters are unable to issue an order to fire back. In a quick-witted response, five ‘little guerrillas’ hold hands and grab onto the two ends of the broken cable to let the current pass through their bodies (figure 1). Thanks to their electrical conduction, the KMT flag on the other shore falls, and the film closes on the triumphant note of their song, We are the Heirs of Communism. This film song later became The Song of the Young Pioneers, taught to every Chinese schoolchild from the 1960s to the present day when they start wearing red scarves at the age of seven or eight.
