Obsessions with Flies Back in China after 75 Years

Much merriment is being had at the expense of Beijing’s Municipal Commission of City Administration and Environment announcement that public toilet hygiene must be improved and that no more than two flies will be tolerated in any one public bog. Any more than two flies discovered in a toilet and someone’s in trouble. All a bit daft and of course unenforceable and typical sort of oddity from Chinese officials. Here’s the BBC report on it all. I point to the BBC for no particular reason except that the article includes an unintentionally hilarious “At the Scene” piece from BBC hack Michael Bristow – now I know that some overpaid honcho at the Beeb will have decreed that all internet stories must be accompanied by an “At the Scene” piece and it probably works from the trenches of Basra or Afghanistan, but “At the Scene” of a Beijing lavvy!! What intrepid journalism!!

Anyway, the point of this post is of course to put the “two flies” campaign into some sort of historical context. Now many will know of the silly Four Pests Campaign during the Great Leap Forward which targeted flies as well as rats, mosquitoes and sparrows. Many of you will also know that it was daft as killing all the sparrows meant worms proliferated as a far greater pest. The food chain not being one of Mao’s strong skills. A massive disaster – kids shooting down pest eating sparrows above in this poster.

But hatred of flies goes back even further. Here from my Carl Crow biography based on his observations of the Madame Chiang Kai-shek inspired New Life Movement of the 1930s:

“The New Life Movement had its slightly comical side, which Madame Chiang acknowledged to Crow when she explained the policy to him. The rampant spread of signs urging people not to commit suicide or not to visit brothels were some manifestations of exuberance as were the fly extermination contests in local schools where prizes were awarded to school children bringing the most dead flies to class for the teacher’s inspection and counting by official tellers. Crow noted that exterminating China’s fly population was probably an impossibility but did record with encouragement on a trip to Suzhou at the time that the vendors of ripe red slices of watermelon were now covering their wares with mosquito nets. To Crow the small changes, such as the local signs and wire nets over food stalls, were further indication that in China change always ultimately comes from below be it school children collecting flies, the anti-gambling patrols that wandered the back streets of Chongqing listening for the telltale click of Mahjong tiles late at night or the train boys Crow noted on the Lung-hai railway who voted to forgo their tips for the sake of the Movement. This soon proved problematic as tips were an important part of their salary so they revised their decision and decided to only forgo accepting tips from foreigners.”

CKS and Madame on a tour checking out how well their New Life Movement was doing in 1934