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Big-character poster Wikipedia

Big-character posters (Traditional Chinese ?????????, Simplified Chinese ?????????, pinyin d??z??b??o, literally "big-character journal") are handwritten, wall-mounted posters using large-sized Chinese characters, used as a means of protest, propaganda, and popular communication. They have been used in China since imperial times, but became more common when literacy rates rose after the 1911 revolution.

A key trigger in the Cultural Revolution was the publication of a dazibao on May 25, 1966 by Nie Yuanzi (?????????) and others at Beijing University, claiming that the university was controlled by the bourgeois anti-revolutionaries. The poster came to the attention of Mao Zedong, who had it broadcast nationally and published in the People's Daily. Dazibao were soon ubiquitous, used for everything from sophisticated debate to satirical entertainment to rabid denunciation; being attacked in a dazibao was enough to end one's career. One of the "four big rights" in the 1975 state constitution was the right to write dazibao.

Dazibao sprouted again during the Democracy Wall Movement, starting in 1978; one of the most famous was The Fifth Modernization, whose bold call for democracy brought instant fame to its author, Wei Jingsheng.

As a linguistic note: 'poster' is a description, not a translation; the last character is the same as in ?????? (b??ozh??) 'newspaper'.

Last Modified:   2005-11-07