“I wash in the bodies of my women”, replied Chinese leader Mao Tsetung when his doctor tried to convince him that he could finally start washing and generally taking better care of his personal hygiene. Few people dared to give the great leader any advice, let alone such intimate advice, but when his promiscuous sex life led to a veritable epidemic of contagious venereal diseases, his doctor confronted him with the truth. Mao was the carrier of the disease, and because he did not wash and slept with dozens of different girls a week, it was impossible to tame the spread of the disease. But Mao was not at all moved by this, and the girls considered it an honour to be infected by the most important man in the country.
Mao Tse-tung, the founder of the People’s Republic of China and the father of Chinese communism, and certainly the most ‘successful’ dictator of the 20th century in terms of the number of victims of his nearly 30-year rule, had a scandalous and shameful sex life. From an idealist and budding revolutionary who believed in gender equality and women’s rights, and the victor of an epic duel with the Nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, he turned into a promiscuous sex addict and a heartless paranoid murderer of millions of Chinese.
After his death in 1976, many embarrassing details began to emerge, from the fact that his genitals were only occasionally rinsed with damp towels by servants, to the fact that he never brushed his teeth and that over the years they had developed a grey-green coating.
Above all, the public has learned that the last years of Mao’s life were a period of constant upheaval. Over the years, his sexual appetite only grew. Ever since the so-called Great Leap Forward and the devastating Cultural Revolution, which by some estimates claimed up to 50 million victims, Mao had retreated from reality to the shelter of his lavishly furnished quarters and his huge bed, made for the Chairman’s ‘special’ needs. It accompanied him on his special train on his travels in China and was even flown to Moscow when he visited Stalin. In his old age, he spent whole months in it, especially during periods of increasing political and economic crises and internal divisions, which he was unable to cope with.
Mao presented himself to the world as a respectful, friendly and polite man, but in reality he was not only an unrepentant serial womaniser, but also a vindictive, unbalanced and vicious hypocrite. He was a brilliant politician and strategist, but he was also a hopeless economist and a megalomaniac, prone to many grand schemes of destruction, for the failure of which he never took responsibility.
While his regime, through the Cultural Revolution, preached simplicity, morality and asceticism, and forbade any kind of entertainment, he and his inner circle lived in luxury and debauchery. Since 1949, when the Communist Party took over the unchallenged leadership of the country, his life has been similar to that of the imperial Chinese court. At his slightest whim, ten people at a time jumped to their feet. Public Mao and private Mao were like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
Women were served to him like food, and he was often in bed with three, four or even more mistresses at once. Often they took on the roles of carers and nurses, as well as Mao’s personal secretary. Simple country girls thus gained more political power than some ministers. But all this was an open secret, the truth known and carefully guarded only by the highest Party cadres.
In the eyes of the masses, Mao was an immaculate leader – the Chinese idolised him as a god and knelt before his image every morning and every evening, quoting sayings from his little red book as a mantra. When his home was opened after his death, it was full of old tattered clothes, and the public’s false image of his simple personality was further entrenched.
Mao was married four times, and all of them had tragic outcomes. The most famous is, of course, his last wife, the infamous Madame Mao, who used her position as First Lady for the most depraved and murderous purposes. It was she who was the most ardent advocate of the Cultural Revolution and, with her ‘Gang of Four’, was co-responsible for the complete disintegration of the cultural and intellectual fabric of China in the period from 1966 until Mao’s death in 1976.
What is not discussed is that Mao played the most important role in her complete transformation into a bloodthirsty murderess. While his portrait still adorns Beijing’s main square, Tiananmen, she has gone down in history with one word – monster. But it was Mao who, through his sick deception, contempt and unbalanced lifestyle, plunged an otherwise truly conceited and acquisitive girl into such a deep emotional abyss that she became a complete wreck without any moral compass.
The behind-the-scenes of Mao’s private life from 1954 onwards is described in detail by his personal physician, the courageous Dr Li Zhisui, himself just one of the victims of Mao’s regime.
A brave doctor on Mao’s personality
For twenty-two years, as Mao’s personal physician, he shared the daily life of the Great Helmsman, as the Chinese called their leader. During that time, he was forced to become very close to him and was much more than a doctor; he became his confidant and interlocutor and, above all, a witness to the increasingly extreme excesses to which Mao was subjected.
After his death, Zhisui emigrated to the United States and was persuaded by friends and acquaintances to write about his unique experiences. In this way, he revealed the true face of Mao Tse-tung openly and without embellishment. He claimed that he was a born actor. This was not the man who smiled for the cameras and showed off for the masses and who was described in authorised biographies, memoirs and textbooks. He was a disturbed and paranoid dictator, an emotional invalid and often so insecure that he stayed in bed rather than face the world. Even today, many in China do not want to admit that their Great Helmsman was actually an impostor.
He spent his revolutionary youth, like many budding revolutionaries, among like-minded zealots in the belief that together they would change China’s destiny. But when, as a brilliant and charismatic strategist, he first took over the leadership of the Communist Party, and then, in a struggle with the Nationalists, expelled them to Taiwan, his way of life changed profoundly. Since 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed, his life has been the most precious and therefore the most protected life in the country.
When Li Zhisui became Mao’s doctor against his will in 1954, Mao was already spending most of his time in the heavily guarded Zhongnanhai government compound a stone’s throw from Tiananmen Square. The security measures there were in many ways a copy of Stalin’s. All the buildings were interconnected by secret passageways, every mouthful of Mao’s food was tasted by at least two tasters, he was guarded by hundreds of Praetorian guards, and he had a medical team always present. Mao set up his headquarters next to an indoor swimming pool built exclusively for his use. He had always been a keen swimmer and hardly a day went by that he did not swim.
He was increasingly isolated from the outside world and often lonely. He and his wife Jiang Qing were already estranged, he rarely had contact with his surviving children, and dictators cannot have real friends anyway. Although his bed was constantly warmed by young girls, he still sought intellectual entertainment. He had devoured books since childhood, and was particularly interested in Chinese history, classical literature and philosophy. With a book in his hand, he was in the habit of entertaining party bigwigs and even foreign leaders.
But he did not afford his people the privilege of reading. “The more you read, the more stupid you become,” he used to say. During the Cultural Revolution, millions of ‘inappropriate’ books were burned and only a carefully selected few were allowed, including compulsory reading of collections of all his speeches, thoughts, quotes and political manifestos. In doing so, he not only cemented Maoist doctrine and the cult of his omnipotent personality into the collective mind, but also made a fortune from the royalties. By the end of his life, he owned some fifty estates, including magnificent villas, mountains and lakes.
Thus, his alleged apology was also just one of his fabrications. While most Chinese were starving, his favourite dishes were sent to him wherever he went. Among them was a special fish from a thousand kilometres away, which was sent to Beijing alive in a plastic bag. A servant travelled with it, in charge of putting oxygen in the bag to ensure that the fish survived until it was time to please the President.
Obsessed with sex in old age
He recognised in Doctor Li a talented young man, educated in the West, which had always fascinated him, but at the same time unencumbered by party politics. He wanted to pass the time with him, so he demanded his constant presence.
Mostly fit and healthy, he rarely needed medical attention at first. However, his mental problems increasingly affected his physical health. In addition to insomnia and anxiety, he often suffered from itching, excessive sweating, dizziness and impotence. Mao’s personal hygiene was medieval, chewing tea leaves and rinsing his mouth to care for his teeth, but he saw washing as a waste of time.
He did not follow any schedule – neither in terms of sleeping nor eating. He swallowed incredible amounts of sleeping pills – almost certain to put an ordinary mortal in the grave. He disregarded routine and often demanded all sorts of favours from his entourage in the middle of the night. Most of the people responsible for his welfare rarely closed their eyes for more than a few hours, and slept dressed just in case. They lived in constant fear of Mao’s often unexpected outbursts.
They organised dance evenings for him, mainly to recruit mistresses. Hundreds of young women would line up before Mao’s eyes to the rhythm of the waltz, the foxtrot and the tango, and the spectacle would often last until the early hours of the morning. Soon, one of the specially adapted beds was set up in a room next to the Zhongnanhai ballroom so that the leader could “rest” several times during the event. At least a third of Mao’s bed was always lined with books, but there was still enough room for several mistresses at the same time.
Zhongnanhai was the scene of a veritable orgy, but the truth about Mao’s private life was closely guarded by top Party cadres, and those who knew it lived in constant fear for themselves and their families. One careless word and they would have found themselves in forced labour, in prison or inexplicably disappeared.
Dr Li also soon realised that Mao’s initial relaxation and friendliness were only illusory. He had lost all respect for him, as he was “devoid of human feelings, incapable of love, friendship or warmth”. Once, when a young acrobat, still a child, was seriously injured during a circus performance, and the audience was speechless with horror, and the child’s mother wept inconsolably at the top of her voice, Mao continued to smile and carry on the conversation as if nothing had happened.
Perhaps he has simply seen so much death that he has become immune to suffering. He has lost six children, many relatives, brothers, his second wife. When his son Mao Anying was killed in the Korean War, he said: ‘In war there must be casualties. Without sacrifices there will be no victory. There are no parents in the world who do not mourn for their children. /…/ The children of so many ordinary people had to shed their blood and were sacrificed for the sake of the revolution.” He rarely mentioned his son from then on, and kept his death a secret from Anying’s young widow for two years.
The older he got, the more he devoted himself to sex. He became a devotee of Taoist sexual practices, which were said to prolong life. According to traditional Chinese belief, they were supposed to allow the yin – the ageing Mao – and the yang – the plump young women – to complement each other and keep the leader healthy and youthful. This gave him the perfect excuse for his bed activities, and he entertained younger and younger girls in bed. In order to provide him with better services, they were given a Taoist guide to sexual skills to read. Often fascinated by his masculinity, they felt honoured when he paid them some attention. It was not uncommon for Mau to be offered to his wives by their husbands, as this was a way for the couple to gain privileges and special status.
But Mao never had such a degrading and exploitative attitude towards women. In his youth, he advocated gender equality and respected strong, independent and intelligent women.
Revolt against tradition
Nor has his relationship with women always been pathological. He was very attached to his mother and respected her much more than his father. He said that she had excellent analytical skills, was organised, caring, always tidy, fair and never raised her voice. He valued the girls who reminded him of her, but at the same time he despised traditional Chinese marriage, in which women were relegated to a subordinate role and often found themselves in polygamous relationships. Particularly wealthier Chinese often took multiple wives during the Chinese imperial period (the last clock struck in 1911), and most marriages were arranged, with young girls being given away in their early teens.
Mao was also a victim of this system. When he was only 14 years old, his father married him off to Luo Yixiu, a fellow countrywoman and relative a few years his senior. “But I never lived under the same roof with her and never considered her my wife”, he confided years later to the American journalist Edgar Snow. In 1936, after living with Mao’s Communists for a few months, he wrote a worldwide bestseller entitled The Red Star Over China, an excellent propaganda piece by today’s standards, idyllically presenting the Chinese Communist struggle and its protagonists. Snow is credited with launching the mythical cult of Mao Tse-tung.
Not only was Mao opposed to arranged marriages, he was also too ambitious to settle down with a simple peasant girl and work the fields for the rest of his life. He wanted to go to schools. Luo died shortly after their marriage and Mao enrolled in a school outside his hometown. There he became interested in Sun Yat-sen and his efforts to free China from the shackles of imperialism and put it on the path of development, progress and independence. When the Republic was proclaimed in 1912 and Sun Yat-sen became its President, Mao was delighted.
In parallel with the breakthrough of new progressive political forces, liberal Western thought on social order, civil rights and liberties and, last but not least, gender equality, began to make its way east. Mao became an outspoken advocate of free love and free choice of marriage partners, and increasingly rejected traditional family relationships. He advocated women’s rights to property, divorce and paid work.
Decades later, when the Communist Party was already in power, it passed many laws giving women more rights. Mao’s statement that “women hold up half the sky” became famous. But between the lines, this meant nothing more than that it was also their duty to work to contribute to China’s progress.
In a millennium-old country, hope for democracy was born, new parties and a new constitution were created, and Sun Yat-sen’s Nationalist Party (Kuomintang) was legalised. Mao was enthusiastic and devoured the works of the most influential Western philosophers and thinkers – Rousseau, Smith, Stuart Mill, Darwin, Montesquieu – which were finally translated into Chinese.
But the greatest intellectual influence on him as a young man was his social studies teacher, Yang Changji, “an idealist, a man of high moral standards”. Educated in Britain and Germany, he introduced Mau first-hand to the world of philosophical concepts and Western thought, and further sowed in him doubts about the fairness of Chinese society, including the role of women in it. Changji also advocated the influence of physical exercise on the spiritual and mental faculties, as was the custom in the West. It was then that Mao began to swim regularly. Throughout his life, he remained convinced that physical strength was an important quality of successful leaders.
He often stayed at Yang’s home with the other students, and there he grew to like the teacher’s beautiful and clever daughter, educated according to her father’s views. Yang Kaihui was the first girl at the local school and soon became a committed activist and feminist.
Love in the maelstrom of communism and nationalism
When Yang was offered a professorship at the prestigious Peking University, Mao felt lost in the province. At the age of 24, after completing his studies, he followed his adored teacher to the capital, which was also a bustling intellectual centre. He earned money by working in the university library. He soon began to learn about Marxist thought, for it was 1918, when the success of the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia less than a year earlier had fairly shaken up the world geopolitical scene. Slowly, a more radical political thought than Sun Yat-sen’s more moderate and democratic one was also beginning to emerge in China.
Mao became increasingly active, organising student strikes and writing for many newspapers. He gained less fame when he published a scathing article against arranged marriages, based on the true story of a 19-year-old who took her own life rather than be forced into the bonds of marriage.
During this time, Mao and Kaihui also became intimately close and soon started a new life together. They married in 1920. But this did not stop him from having a brief fling with other girls, and he made no attempt to hide his infidelity from Kaihui. She had to look through his fingers if she wanted to keep him. This pattern has been a red thread running through all of Mao’s love affairs since then.
The couple soon started a family and became increasingly active in the organisation of the labour movement and in the struggle against the old military and local ruling elites. When the Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921, Mao became its leader in one of the provinces. The Communists were then a fringe movement, forced to cooperate with the Nationalists, mainly because of the growing fear of the conquering tendencies of neighbouring Japan.
Mao worked for a time for both the Communists and the Kuomintang. The United Front of Communists and Nationalists was still functioning somehow under Sun Yat-sen, but after his death Chiang Kai-shek took over the leadership of the Nationalists and caused a radical turn to the right. They were the voice of the bourgeois, military and rural elites, not of the working class, peasants and students. A split was on the horizon. Moreover, the membership of the Communist Party was growing rapidly and they had become a threat to Chiang Kai-shek.
Fearing the Nationalists, the Communists were forced to retreat into the guerrilla in 1927. Ten years later, they were reunited for eight years to fight their common enemy, Japan, and after the Second World War they fought again during the Civil War.
He left behind his young family, which by then already had three sons, and for a while lost contact with Kaihui completely. In the mountains, where the Communists had set up their Party headquarters, he was happily cheating on his wife, and she was constantly thinking of him and writing him worried letters. “Who cares for you when you sleep alone? Are you as lonely and sad as I am?”
But the real tragedy was yet to come. The city of Changshau, where Kaihui lived, was under the rule of the Kuomintang and, although she was a well-known member of the Communist Party, she was left alone, at least temporarily. Until a fateful and unsuccessful attack by the Communists, who wanted to take control of the town. The city commander had Kaihui imprisoned and demanded that in exchange for her freedom, she publicly denounce Mao, confess her crimes and his, and demand a divorce.
A principled, loyal and courageous young woman, she refused the offer without hesitation. She was tried before a court-martial and after only a few minutes of questioning, the judge drew a red line on the card with her name on it. That meant death.
She was taken outside the city and on the way Kaihui kept shouting slogans of loyalty to Mao and the communists. Her clothes were taken off and she climbed into the morgue in her underwear, where she was beheaded. Her eight-year-old son, Mao Anying, witnessed the bloody spectacle.
Kaihua’s sacrifice was in vain. Although Mao later claimed that she was the great love of his life and continued to write poems to her for thirty years after her death, he had been living a double life for over a year at that point – he had arranged a quasi-marital life with He Zizhen in the mountains. He was visibly distressed for at least a few moments at the news of Kaihua’s fate, but not enough to send for his two surviving sons – one of whom had died in infancy – who were thus forced to live a beggar’s life on the streets of Shanghai for a while.
Third time’s not the charm either
Barely of age, He Zizhen was a hot-blooded revolutionary with leadership skills who was noticed by Mao for her extraordinary beauty while living in the mountains. At first, she was much more interested in his younger brother Zedan, as she found Mao, 17 years her senior, too old. But when he finally caught her in his tentacles, it was not easy for her, even though she was the only one of his wives who dared to resist him. During his shameless cheating, she later repeatedly harassed him in public, and once even slapped and licked one of his mistresses, the beautiful actress Lily Wu.
Often pregnant, she lost all her children in one way or another, except for one daughter, Li Min, who is now 84 years old. Mao did not stand by her as a loving husband and father during her losses, for he was already one of the Party’s leaders at the time and devoted much more time to her than to his wife. Of course, Zizhen did not remain faithful for very long either.
In 1934, fleeing the Kuomintang, the Communists set off on their famous march of almost 10,000 kilometres to north-west China. Of the 130,000 or so fugitives, only about 10% survived the march, but it was during this very feat that Mao proved to be a leader of nerves of steel, slowly becoming first among equals in the Party leadership.
Zizhen went on the road in her fifth month of pregnancy, and when she could no longer walk, she was carried on a special stretcher, as were other wives of top Party leaders. During the march she gave birth and, convinced that the newborn would not bear the inhuman hardships, left her daughter in the care of a peasant woman in exchange for some money and opium. Soon, the trace of her was lost.
Mao was too tired to come and see his baby and wife after the birth. They saw each other only a few days later, and when she tearfully told him that she had left the baby behind, he said, “You did the right thing.” Zizhen had lost her fourth child, leaving a deepening mark on her.
The march continued, and six months later, during an air strike, He Zizhen almost lost her life. As many as twelve shrapnel rounds lodged in her head and body and she almost bled to death. The medics managed to remove only a few small fragments, but in agony she continued her tireless journey. It was only after three days that Mao took the time to visit his wounded wife. She became the epitome of endurance and inhuman march, which finally ended in Shaanxi after a year in October 1935. He Zizhen was one of the few women to complete the march. And Mao became the undisputed leader of the Chinese Communist Party.
He Zizhen finally gave birth to a healthy baby girl, Li Min, in 1936, but her marriage to Mao was already bursting at the seams. Although she was pregnant again in 1937, she decided to leave her heartless husband. She went to the Soviet Union, where the remnants of shrapnel were finally removed. There, she gave birth to a baby boy, who resembled his father, but he too soon died. For a while she looked after Mao’s two sons from his marriage to Yang Kaihui, who were found on the streets of Shanghai by the Communists and sent to the Soviet Union for safe education.
Although Mao had written to her that they were “just friends from now on”, she had a complete mental breakdown when she saw the news about Chairman Mao and his new wife in a Soviet newspaper. She was a second-rate Shanghai actress called Yang Qing. He Zizhen was therefore destined for a fate similar to that of her predecessor Yang Kaihui, except that she did not succumb to death but sank into severe schizophrenia.
Jiang Qing becomes Mao’s fourth wife
Jiang Qing, or Madame Mao, as the infamous First Lady of Communist China is forever remembered, was not of the same calibre as her predecessors. She had a difficult childhood with an abusive alcoholic father and soon realised that she would have to rely on herself to survive. Self-confident and ambitious, she loved the limelight and an acting career was the perfect match for her. She was attractive and slim, but far from being a beauty. Even for the stage, she was only a mediocre talent and throughout her life she was jealous of those better and more beautiful than herself. Later, when she had almost unlimited power during the Cultural Revolution, she often took cruel revenge on actresses from her youth who had been more successful than her in the past.
Shumeng, as her birth name was, was a cunning, scheming and streaky woman who always manipulated people and relationships to her own advantage. She changed her name three times, from Shumeng to Yunhe, from Yunhe to Lan Ping and from Lan Ping to Jiang Qing. She found an equal partner in Mau, but in the end it was she who pulled the strings. Jiang Qing was also promiscuous and married and divorced several times before she met Mao. Possessive and obsessively jealous, she was always looking for quarrels and conflicts and was incapable of genuine relationships.
Her partners were well-known people in Shanghai’s cultural circles, and her often scandalous affairs regularly led to Jiang – known in cosmopolitan Shanghai by her artistic name Lan Ping – filling gossip columns. In her quest for a stellar acting career, she first decided to make up for her lack of talent by marrying the influential film critic Tang Nao, but quickly made up for it by making love to an even more influential theatre director. Tang Na attempted suicide out of desperation. She briefly returned to him, but when the Japanese occupation of Shanghai threatened in 1937, she headed for Yanan, the Communist headquarters in north-west China.
Mao spotted her when she was performing in an opera, and she too quickly realised that he was one of the most important Party bigwigs. She cunningly attended his seminar, asked him questions and pretended to be more interested in communist ideology than anything else.
It didn’t take long before they were living together and married in 1938. Mao’s revolutionary soul-sister He Zizhen was long forgotten by then and he began to be fascinated by starlets, dancers and classical beauties. This was to suit his increasingly autocratic and haughty style of Party leadership.
Jiang initially played the role of a greedy wife, taking care of the home and serving Mao’s colleagues during their frequent multi-hour evening talks. The traces of her past life did not cast Mao in the best light, and she slowly began to fade from the public eye. The films she had starred in and the articles that carried her were burned. Later, during the Cultural Revolution, she also made people who had known her during the controversial Shanghai period ‘disappear’.
In 1940, she gave birth to a daughter, Li No, and also took custody of her husband’s two sons from his marriage to Yang Kaihui when they returned from their education in the Soviet Union. Slowly, however, she began to show signs of mental disorders, especially paranoia. She accused her daughter’s nanny of poisoning her milk and persuaded Mao to throw the unfortunate girl in prison. Such absurd accusations became part of the daily routine of the Mao household. There was no help for anyone who took any offence at Jiang. Even Mao was sometimes said to have been afraid of her.
After 1949, when Mao took over the leadership of the country after the end of the civil war and the expulsion of the Nationalists, and settled with his entire entourage and the government in the Zhongnanhai compound, he also began to become estranged from his fourth wife. She was thus no longer able to perform any function and, out of boredom, became hypochondriacal and even more wicked.
Jiang Qing’s transformation into the cruel Madame Mao
After years of fighting with Japan and a civil war, China was in a state of total economic collapse, without a single currency, with astronomical inflation, destroyed infrastructure and millions of displaced people. The Communists had their work cut out for them in their desire to unify the country, as they wanted to rebuild the social foundations, abolish class divisions and nationalise private property. Agrarian reforms, collectivisation and rapid industrialisation were to enable the country to take the so-called Great Leap Forward and put it on a par with the developed Western countries.
When the Soviets announced that they would catch the United States, Mao declared, “In the next fifteen years we will overtake Great Britain.” Relations with the politically and ideologically related Soviet Union were strained, with the two giants flirting nervously and striving for supremacy in the communist world bloc.
Even within the Party, not all cadres were united on economic policy, and Mao grew increasingly worried and anxious. His misguided policies also led to the Great Famine (1959-1961), which claimed tens of millions of lives. His wife was unable to stand by him through it all.
Jiang Qing had no political or diplomatic skills, never understood the bigger picture and had no exposure to any field other than film and theatre, although she pretended all her life that she did not. Her political skills are best described by the statement: “They are wrong and we are right”.
When Mao began to avoid his overworked wife, and had long ceased to be erotically attracted to her anyway, she took revenge on those around her. She was apparently ill all the time, allergic to cold, wind, light, water, draughts. She once accused her personal doctor of having been too slow to lower the blinds, so that the sun would permanently destroy her eyesight. She made a brief living watching Hollywood films imported from Hong Kong, a hobby which Mao took up at the end of his life. She loved photography – once, just because she wanted to take pictures of the sea with the big ships on the horizon, they had a naval fleet brought in. She simply enjoyed her position as First Lady too much to dare to leave Mao, preferring to endure his humiliating behaviour and increasingly blatant cheating.
After she had cancer – she was operated on in the Soviet Union – she became even more unbearable and no one wanted to work for her. She took countless pills, one for each hypothetical illness, and spent hours going on and on about her illnesses and ailments to those who had to listen to her. The irony of fate was that both she and Mao were increasingly paranoid, lonely and unhappy, and that was also why they were unable to stand by each other.
The time for the realisation of Mao’s political ambitions finally came during the period of the proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). The movement was the result of Mao’s conviction that capitalist and bourgeois elements were still present in Chinese society and therefore had to be permanently got rid of. He also blamed these elements for the failed Great Leap Forward, in an attempt to exonerate himself.
The destruction of traditional Chinese culture and cultural heritage was also on the agenda, with Mrs Mao playing a major role. That is when her true, evilly twisted character came to light. As soon as she was given an important political role as a member of the Politburo, she was miraculously cured.
The Cultural Revolution was another tragic period in 20th century Chinese history, and it affected every aspect of social life. It became completely robotised – people had to dress the same, they were not allowed to read unauthorised books, not to have pets, not to wear Western hairstyles, not to use foreign languages and not to speak foreign languages. Above all, it was a society of seduction – brother suing brother, daughter suing father, husband suing wife, student suing professor.
The Red Brigades, made up mainly of young people, obediently supervised the implementation of the measures. Intellectuals and all members of the middle class in general, and political opponents of the Communist Party in particular, were publicly tortured and humiliated, often executed, and most often sent to forced labour. Families were broken up. Trust in fellow human beings disappeared.
But Jiang Qing flourished. She was the mastermind behind the worst and most effective purges in the art world. In uniform and army boots, she became the epitome of the Maoist dictatorial regime. She controlled the media and was responsible for propaganda. She argued that those who loved opera, film, theatre and music from the ‘old’ days could not be good communists. She was, of course, allowed to do everything and continued to relax regularly by watching foreign films.
Mao was overjoyed to be able to enjoy the company of his many mistresses, especially Zhang Yufeng, whom he met while she was serving on his special train.
Mao the hero, Madame Mao the demon
The Cultural Revolution went so far that even Mao regretted it. But his health was failing, and he was withdrawing from political life. He spent most of his time in the company of Zhang Yufeng, fifty years his junior, who was his mistress, nurse and secretary. When he went blind due to cataracts, she read official documents to him, and towards the end of his life she was the only person who understood his increasingly slurred speech due to his illness. She behaved like his equal, defied him and ordered him around. No woman had ever had so much power over him. Even Jiang Qing had to go through her if she wanted to contact her husband.
Two years before his death, Mao received a fatal diagnosis – incurable Gehrig’s disease, or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. After three heart attacks, he died on 9 September 1976. The struggle for his succession began immediately and Jiang Qing was one of the main contenders. But the winner of the succession struggle, with the support of the army, was the moderate Deng Xiaoping, a once-expelled but later rehabilitated influential Party member. Xiaoping broke with the radical Maoist tradition in many respects and genuinely set the country on a course of economic development and moderate liberalisation.
It was the end for Jiang’s Gang of Four, who had a mortal grudge against even moderate party currents. It was time for revenge and in a highly publicised trial, all were sentenced to death in front of an audience of six. Jiang’s death sentence was later commuted to life imprisonment and in 1991 she was transferred to house arrest because of cancer. Just ten days later, she hanged herself in a hospital bathroom.
Today, Mao’s fourth wife is considered an undisputed mistake of history. Her legacy is 100% negative. What about Mao? Although he recklessly sent millions more people to their deaths than probably anyone else in the whole history of mankind, he is regarded as the great unifier of the nation and the father of the Chinese version of communism, which, unlike most others, has largely survived. His misguided policies are still not allowed to be spoken of too loudly by the Chinese people today. History has not (yet) judged him impartially, and it is a question of when and if it ever will.
