shanxi huabao chinese magazine (1958)

The 1958 Shanxi Pictorial Magazine proudly displays on its cover the arrival of the freedom train arriving in a local town ... it’s the great leap backward to the great leap forward ... it’s 1958 and mao’s policy of the forced industrialisation of the chinese countryside is about to take effect ... a local band is greeting the train with people drumming, clashing of cymbals and waving of bright red flags ... small children are running alongside the train waving and smiling ... he garlanded engine with an old man and young child at the window is towing carriages full of steel ingots and coal ... in the nearby pond ducks are swimming under the old stone bridge holding up an old tree ... in the top branches of the tree a child dressed in white shirt and red neck-tie, waves a long stick with firecrackers attached to its tip ... on a nearby verandah a crowd of townspeople have gathered looking on at the spectacle; young women with bright red parasols, young men in mao caps and even a photographer capturing the triumphant scene it’s the great leap forward, marking a great future full of hope and unbounded progress.

The large colour inside foldout illustrates the utopia that china will become, with large harvests promised for everyone ... horses pull carts laden with freshly cropped wheat, chimney stacks belch pure white smoke, orchard trees bend under the weight of ripe apples, pumps move water from one newly built terrace to another, hand made smelters pour out hot new steel, a young baby rides a sheaf of wheat across the clear blue sky …… everybody is happy and productive ... the reality that came to be over the next two years was very different.

In the west, thirty years later, british singer billy bragg was doing his own take on the great leap forward with his song 'waiting for the great leap forward .. here are the lyrics ...

It may have been Camelot for Jack and Jacqueline
But on the Che Guevara highway filling up with gasoline
Fidel Castro's brother spies a rich lady who's crying
Over luxury's disappointment
So he walks over and he's trying
To sympathize with her but thinks that he should warn her
That the Third World is just around the corner
In the Soviet Union a scientist is blinded
By the resumption of nuclear testing and he is reminded
That Dr Robert Oppenheimer's optimism fell
At the first hurdle
In the Cheese Pavilion and the only noise I hear
Is the sound of people stacking chairs
And mopping up spilt beer
And someone asking questions and basking in the light
Of the fifteen fame filled minutes of the fanzine writer
Mixing Pop and Politics he asks me what the use is
I offer him embarrassment and my usual excuses
While looking down the corridor
Out to where the van is waiting
I'm looking for the Great Leap Forwards
Jumble sales are organized and pamphlets have been posted
Even after closing time there's still parties to be hosted
You can be active with the activists
Or sleep in with the sleepers
While you're waiting for the Great Leap Forwards
One leap forwards, two leaps back
Will politics get me the sack?
Here comes the future and you can't run from it
If you've got a blacklist I want to be on it
It's a mighty long way down rock 'n roll
From Top of the Pops to drawing the dole
If no one seems to understands
Start your own revolution, cut out the middleman
In a perfect world we'd all sing in tune
But this is reality so give me some room
So join the struggle while you may
The Revolution is just a t-shirt away

oriental stories pulp magazine (1930-34)

Oriental Stories, later retitled The Magic Carpet Magazine, was a pulp magazine of 1930-34, an offshoot of the famous Weird Tales.

Posted on Wikipedia

Like its parent, it was published by J.C. Henneberger's Rural Publications and edited by Farnsworth Wright. As its titles indicate, the magazine specialized in adventure and fantasy stories with Oriental settings and elements. Its stories were largely written by the same distinctive group of authors that filled the pages of Weird Tales, including Robert E. Howard, Otis Adelbert Kline, E. Hoffmann Price, andClark Ashton Smith, among others.

The magazine struggled financially for the entirety of its existence (as indeed did Weird Tales); it was published first bi-monthly, then quarterly, during the grimmest years of the Great Depression. Volume 1 of Oriental Stories consisted of 6 issues that appeared on newsstands from October 1930 through Autumn 1931; Volume 2 comprised only 3 issues in the first half of 1932 (Winter, Spring, Summer). After a six-month hiatus, the first of four quarterly issues of Volume 3 appeared in January 1933, but with the new title The Magic Carpet.("Oriental Stories combined with The Magic Carpet Magazine," read the masthead of Vol. 3 No. 1, January 1933.) Still unable to muster sufficient circulation, Volume 4 started and ended with the single issue No. 1 in January 1934. The Magic Carpet was then defunct.

Its brief existence and scarcity eventually made The Magic Carpet an object of romance and nostalgia among followers of Weird Tales and fantastic literature. In particular, fans and collectors of Robert E. Howard's works, oppressed by the magazine's unavailability in the years after Howard's suicide in 1936, helped elevate The Magic Carpet to something close to legendary status.