Mao’s Travelling Mangoes: Food as Relic in Revolutionary China*

A relic is usually a small thing that is a fragment or concentration of something larger, an inanimate thing reminding one of a previously live thing or person; it has power and therefore is revered and worshipped. Well known examples of relics include the Buddha’s remains (sarira) and the remains of Jesus Christ and Christian saints. Things used or touched by high religious personages are often treated by worshippers as powerful relics. For example, it is rumoured that when the Dalai Lama travels and stays in hotels, the hotel management is often bombarded by requests from Tibetan Buddhists to give or sell to them the (unwashed) towels and toiletries used by His Holiness. Because the Dalai Lama is considered the reincarnation of a bodhisattva, the things he has touched or used become something similar to the Buddha’s relics.

A relic is usually small, hard, and rare (e.g. a bone fragment, a tooth, or a piece of bloodied cloth from a martyred saint). But can food be relics? The usual qualities of food do not lend themselves to becoming relics. Food is perishable, and rotten food stinks. Food is meant to be consumed, therefore it is more likely to end up in someone’s stomach than on an altar or in a relic collection. A food item is seldom unique, therefore it does not possess one of the necessary qualities of relics: rarity. Because food is usually commonplace, it is difficult to endow a food item with extraordinary qualities. But this article is about one unusual moment in history when a few mangoes acquired relic-like qualities. The mangoes were from Pakistan. But the ‘relicking’ of these mangoes took place in Mao Zedong’s revolutionary China. This article will attempt to explore the mango relics through the lenses of changing political winds during the …