On the afternoon of September 9, 1976, all of China was literally frozen in time.
Millons of soldiers and civilians alike stood at the square of every major city and town.
Trains were ordered to stop wherever they stood on the rail tracks and give a long whistle in salutation fo the Helmsman of China, who was no longer with them.
Mao Zedong may not just be the historical ruler of modern China.
Mao Zedong IS modern China.
The man whose face hangs on the Tiananmen Palace overlooking Red Square, where a sea of adoring students used to assemble on the parade ground just to get a glimpse of the man who was to control not only their day-to-day lives, but the future that was to come.
Born on December 26, 1893 in the village of Shaoshan located in Hunan Province, his parents were middle-class peasants who were able to keep them and their children out of poverty, but could not afford an education until a distant uncle — seeing some strong academic potential in the boy — was able to provide him one in his later youth.
His mother was a devout Buddhist woman named Wen Qimei, who — like Stalin and Hitler before him — tried to persuade her son to pursue a religious life, with the ultimate aim of becoming a monk, though Mao gave up on this by the time he was well into adolescence.
And just like Stalin and Hitler, Mao’s father was known for having him physically beaten.
Furthermore, he used to always have this to say about poverty:
“Poverty is not the result of eating too much or spending too much. Poverty comes from an inability to do mathematics. Whoever can do sums will have enough to live by; whoever cannot will squander even mountains of gold!”
The future of Chairman of China was to take this lesson to heart.
Throughout his schoolyears he was always the biggest and oldest child in his class, due to financial circumstances having forced him to wait a few years.
Despite being middle-class, Mao Zedong was also the “poor” boy of his school, comprised almost exclusively with males whose families came from the Imperial Court, and as a consequence, they would routinely bully him by means of physical and emotional beatings, and exclude him from their out-of-school activities.
By the time he was in his late teens he had become largely disillusioned with social friendships.
At the age of thirteen his father forced Mao into an arranged marriage with a seventeen-year-old by the name of Luo Yixiu, though he himself absolutely detested the idea of marital unions at this age — especially those that were pre-arranged by the parents — which would later motivate him to ban this practice throughout all of China.
Meanwhile, a disheartened Luo Yixiu was to die a few years later at the age of twenty, having never again set eyes on her “husband”.
Mao Zedong as a young man
During working days, Mao would labour on his father’s farm, though he always had at least one book nearby — usually on the subject of Chinese history, which he particularly adored — which he would read during his breaktime or right before or after work.
Just like all the other boys, he memorised the texts on Confucius, Lao Tzu, and other ancient scholars, even though he himself was personally uninterested in adopting Confucian principles, and so he never studied it beyond the minimum requirements needed to graduate.
Though he was among many young prominent Chinese men who was offered a scholarship to study in France, Mao turned it down, for he believed that there was enough to see and study in China.
Eventually he was able to get a teaching certificate and became a history teacher to elementary and secondary school students.
During the Civil War with the Kuomintang, Mao Zedong was known to be both “lazy” and “arrogant” at the same time.
It is quite likely that he suffered from a lifelong sleeping disorder that was to spill over into his days in office, which made him unable to follow a proper bedtime schedule.
As a matter of fact, when the Long March began during the early morning hours of October 16, 1934, Mao Zedong — still only a senior official, and not the leader of the movement — completely slept in, only to be alarmed when he woke up and saw the column starting to move away from him!
Furthermore, there were certain duties he refused to participate in, which included certain physical jobs, such as retrieving and filling buckets of water for the army, since he felt that his educational background placed him above this sort of menial labour.
On the other hand, he was known to be caring towards at least some of the lower-ranking men under his command, one of whom would become a lifelong servant after he felt he owed his life to Mao Zedong when the latter saw to it that not only would he be allowed to ride his horse, but that he be given a full chicken per day after he had fallen gravely ill.
Though the Red Army was known to often be harsh towards certain segments of the civilian population — so much so that it was not unheard for some to flee to the Japanese occupation zone — Mao Zedong nonetheless ordered those under his immediate command that should they choose to take any food, clothes, or other belongings from civilians for their own personal usage, that they were to provide fair compensation.
On March 20, 1943, Mao Zedong finally became the new leader of the Chinese Communist Party, and though he had once greatly admired Joseph Stalin of the Soviet Union, he quickly became disillusioned, and even grew to detest him once the Soviet Premier ordered him to lay down his own weapons and give in to the Kuomintang as he had done with the communists in Greece, Italy, and France as part of a bargaining tool with the Western Allies.
Mao Zedong refused to comply.
Even after becoming leader of China on October 1, 1949 and then agreeing to an in-person meeting with Stalin in Moscow — the only time Mao Zedong would ever participate in a diplomatic meeting abroad — the Soviet dictator proved bitter that he had inadvertently thwarted his plans, and so he kept him waiting in his hotel for two months before the Chairman threatened to return home.
Stalin then had his meeting with Mao Zedong in February 1950, in which several issues were discussed, including Mao’s request to Stalin that he have his copy of the Quotations of Chairman Mao translated into Russian.
While perhaps not inevitable, the Chinese Civil War would no doubt have been much more difficult for the Red Army to win had Kim Il Sung of North Korea not sent some of his own troops to assist him.
The Chinese leader proved to be so grateful that in later years, he would send some of his own men to Korea against the United Nations, in part due to his recognition of the North Korean contributions.
Just as before, Mao Zedong always hated getting out of bed, especially first thing in the morning.
Instead, it was not unusual for him to rest until late morning and early afternoon, only to return to bed sometime after midnight, or even 6 AM.
When his personal physician, Doctor Li Zhisui — an Australian-trained doctor who first spoke with him on April 25, 1955 — met Mao Zedong, he was seen sitting about in his old robe by the indoor pool.
This swimming pool was to prove one of his few personal luxuries.
According to Zhisui and the others who saw him, Mao almost always walked about the Zhongnanhai palace barefoot with nothing but his old, thread-worn pyjamas.
Due to his hatred fo baths — as he found them too time consuming — Mao would routinely order his servants to scrub and wash him down at different hours of the day while he occupied himself with reading, writing, and work-related business.
Despite this seemingly obnoxious representation of his character, officials put up with him due to his intelligence and knowledge, which at least one official privately described to a critic as being as “deep and as wide as the seas”.
On a typical night, Mao’s late night meals — of which he only ate twice a day, including a late breakfast-lunch and supper — consisted of vegetables, some fish, pork with roasted peppers, and lamb with leeks.
Even though Mao often had a very good if not sadistic sense of humour — often making morbid jokes at his own expense — he was also known to have a violent temper, and would not hesitate to fire any guard or official who got in the way of his enjoying certain activities, particularly swimming.
Against the protest of his own staff, Mao would jump into a raging sea naked and swim about in a water filled with human feces while his disgusted guards followed him in the water — much to his aggravation.
Mao Zedong swimming in the Yangtze River
On another occasion, his personal swimming pool was remodified by his officials for “safety concerns” which included reducing its length to that of two regular bathtubs, and water that was only knee-deep.
Mao outright refused to accept this “useless toy” and never went in it.
In his propaganda photographs, Mao was often seen around cheering peasant children.
Though these images were all staged, according to Li Zhisui, there was a lot of truth to it.
On at least one occasion, while Mao was walking on a trail, a group of excited children spotted him and excitedly ran over towards him.
Mao’s guards angrily shouted at them to scurry, but the Chairman quickly overruled their barking orders and encouraged the children to come back to him.
They did so, and the gathering took place peacefully, and without mishap.
Among his guards, Mao was often known to give his staff “dating advice”, perhaps due to his own history of failing to find love in his own life, and not wishing that others follow in his footsteps.
Even the young teenage Dalai Lama — before his exile to India in 1959 — had met Mao Zedong on multiple occasions and began to see him as more of the father he had never had.
The Dalai Lama and Mao Zedong
Despite these positive qualities, by the early 1950s, even Li Zhisui — who had once been excited at the prospect of serving the Father of Modern China — was beginning to see a much darker side of him develop.
Mao had reportedly become angered after an elderly peasant woman bluntly said “so-so” in regards to the harvests.
Needless to say, her remarks were probably an understatement, for its policies may have already claimed millions of lives by the mid-1950s.
Remembering what his father had taught him, he concluded that his subordinates had behaved irresponsibly, and that only through making China more “democratic” would he be able to find the rotten weeds from within and have them “corrected”.
This was to start the Hundred Flowers Campaign, in which intellectuals and peasants alike were encouraged to come out and speak openly about their discontent against members of his own party.
Not only would this allow Mao to know who was “at fault” for the struggles the country was facing, it would also give him ammunition in the future, should any of his subordinates find themselves on the wrong side of the barrel of a gun.
At first all was going well.
As they went up the party ranks, the voices became louder and more hostile, with the worst of it being reserved for none other than Chairman Mao Zedong himself.
Many have long believed that the entire Hundred Flowers Campaign had been a clever trick intended to expose and identity those who were vocally critical of his government, yet according to Li Zhisui, Mao Zedong — far from growing a villainous smile at the scheme — became mentally sickened and retreated to his bed, where he laid under his blanket and stood staring up into the ceiling for about a month.
Li Zhisui and Mao Zedong
In the early days, the Chairman was certainly wrapping his mind around how the peasants could have turned on him.
By the time his stay in bed was coming to an end, he was almost without a doubt mentally plotting out his revenge.
Hundreds of the most notable critics were quickly rounded up, and as many as a hundred were instantly executed without trial.
Then Mao Zedong ordered the extermination of two demographics — the “Rightist Landlords”, whom he felt were responsible for China’s political and economic struggles, as well as the sparrows, whom he blamed for eating the peasants’ crops.
In an effort to prevent the surviving public from discussing politics any further, Mao Zedong created the “Great Leap Forward”, which was to be a five-year plan that would make China a hundred times more powerful than her current status, and help her overcome the Western world in terms of production.
So confident was he — at least outwardly — that his plans would work, that he began increasing the export of grains to countries such as Australia and Canada, even when famine was becoming more rampant.
Tens of millions of peasants quickly starved to death, while many more were left permanently malnourished.
In some villages, peasants died to the last.
Those who protested risked being executed by the military — some historians suggest as many as 20% of deaths during the Great Leap Forward was the result of executions, and not starvation or diseases.
Often, prisoners in the Laogai camps would escape, only to voluntarily turn themselves over to the nearest police station once it became apparent that “free” Chinese citizens were just as badly fed.
Even when a growing number of reports showing the true scale of the famine reached his ears, Mao Zedong refused to acquiesce until one day — at least, according to legend — a distant nephew from his home village, who had been given all the remaining grain from the village, marched into his palace in person to tell him that his own family was dying, and that he — the boy — would be too if things did not change.
Only then did Mao Zedong quickly abolish the collective kitchens, and — for one of the few times in his public life — admitted responsibility for what had transpired.
As penance, he also elected to give up meat, because he could not bear to indulge in such meals while his people starved — according to Li Zhisui in his book, The Private Life of Chairman Mao.
By the time the Great Leap Forward came to an end, anywhere between 20–50 million Chinese had been killed.
Mao Zedong on parade
Despite Mao’s guilt over the Great Leap Forward, he was far less concerned about the enormous death toll in itself, and more in feeling that they were avoidable, if not for certain administrative decisions, which he also felt responsible for to some extent.
In fact, Mao had boasted that the prospect of a nuclear war was of no concern to him, because if even 20 million Chinese were killed, they could always repopulate — a statement that alarmed Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru when he heard this from his lips.
Mao Zedong had also refused to let Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka apologise to him for the atrocities committed by Japan during the Second World War, since he felt that this had been necessary to get the Chinese population to learn how to stand up for themselves.
Though he most certainly knew about some of China’s more “benevolent” monarchs, such as Taizong of Tang and Kangxi of Qing, he much preferred studying the lives of the more controversial rulers, such as Zhou of Shang, Qin Shi Huang, Yan Sui, and Wu Zetian.
Among the Western leaders, his favourites were George Washington and Napoleon Bonaparte — the first because of his revolutionary visions for the future, and the second because of his usage of artillery to win battles, which Mao saw as a revolutionary strategy in the art of warfare.
Since he always liked to know what others were thinking of him, Mao Zedong would sometimes feign illness and tell Western officials coming to visit him as far back as the early 1960s that he did not have long to live, just so that he could lay back afterwards and listen to the gossip over the radio.
Starting in 1966, Mao Zedong launched a new wave of terror by employing his student Red Guards to effectively besiege every inhabited area of the country and wage a war against the “intellectuals”.
At first these demonstrations started as mocking campaigns, whereby victims would be forced to wear pointy hats as a form of ridicule, though this quickly escalated into beatings and even executions.
It is debatable whether Mao Zedong — who had conveniently retreated to the countryside at the start of the Cultural Revolution — had intended for the situation to reach this level of violence.
Eventually he began sending the actual military into the afflicted areas to put an end to the demonstrations, though these had little effect, with Red Guard attacks continuing on and off for the next decade, when Mao Zedong was himself to die.
In his final years he became increasingly immobile.
At first it was assumed that he had Parkinson’s disease.
It was soon discovered that Mao Zedong may have been dying from Lou Gehrig’s Disease.
Even Richard Nixon, a Republican President who had met Mao Zedong in 1972, spoke of how painful it was to see him in such declining health.
On May 27, 1976, Mao Zedong was seen in public for the last time when he met Pakistani Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
Mao Zedong’s final appearance
In the late summer he tried to jump into the pool, but due to his immobile body and lungs, he quickly began drowning and had to be pulled out.
Mao Zedong would never swim again.
One of his final activities was to rest in his darkened cinema and watch Western classics, sound as The Sound of Music.
At 5 PM on September 2, 1976, Mao Zedong suffered a major heart attack.
Over the next few days he became increasingly fatigued before falling into a coma on September 7.
By the following day, party officials knew he was done for.
At midnight on September 9, 1976, it was decided to take him off life support.
Li Zhisui saw that he was still breathing, and so he walked over to Mao Zedong and comforted him by stating that he was about to get him through this.
For all but a moment, Mao’s eyes widened in relief, only to then close.
At 12:10 AM on September 9, 1976, the eighty-two-year-old hospital patient’s heartline went flat.
Mao Zedong was dead.
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