Mao: The Unknown Story

There was not a word of support for Mao’s policies, even here in his home village, which was extremely privileged and was receiving large state subsidies. But Mao could also see that although the discontent was massive, no one dared to do more than grumble, and some complaints had to be dressed up as flattery. “Chairman,” one said, “if you hadn’t come to Shaoshan, soon we would all die of hunger.” When one young man complained more bitterly than others, Mao pulled a long face and snapped: “After all, it’s better than the old days.” Though this was a pathetic untruth (he himself had said in “the old days” that in Shaoshan “it is easy to get rich”), nobody called Mao’s bluff. Neither did anyone challenge his subsequent instruction, which was transparently irrelevant: “Eat more in busy seasons and eat less in slack seasons. And be thrifty with food …” When he turned to the provincial leaders and said unashamedly that the complaints were “appeals against you; it is your responsibility, write them down,” the scapegoats took it in silence.

Mao’s personality cult had ensured that he was untouchable. A young servant at the guest house had spent three sleepless nights and days cleaning the place up. Decades later, she recounted how the manager had called her in. “ ‘Can I give you the best and most glorious task?’ I said: ‘Certainly …’ ” It turned out to be washing Mao’s dirty underwear.

Wow, it was Chairman Mao’s clothes. This is really, really fantastic … They had been drenched in sweat. This color, yellow. One shirt, one pair of long underpants … I thought of Chairman Mao: he was the leader of the people of the world and yet he lived such a hard life. [!] The underwear felt so flimsy I didn’t dare to rub, so I stroked them gently. What was I to do if I messed them up?… I was afraid someone might see them [hanging out to dry], and might do something … so every few minutes I went out and felt them to see whether they were dry … There was no electricity and no electric iron. But I had to make the clothes look pretty. So before they were dry, I folded them and put them under the glass top of the desk to press them … When I delivered them to the director, he said: “Very good, very good.” But I was thinking: it won’t do if Chairman Mao doesn’t like my work …

Mao left Shaoshan with no doubt that he would come out on top against Peng.

RISING ALMOST 1,500 meters sheer out of the steamy Yangtze plain, Lushan had the air of a magic mountain divorced from life below. It was permanently veiled by swiftly massing and evaporating clouds. A great poet, Su Shi, has left an immortal poem about its mystery:

Unable to see the true face of Lushan

No surprise, as you are inside it.

Clouds of the most fabulous shapes gushed from the gorges up the cliffs, swaying in front of pedestrians on the paved streets. Sometimes, as one sat chatting, clouds would imperceptibly envelop one’s interlocutors — only to unwrap them an instant later. One could even catch the surreal moment of a cloud curling and floating in through an open window, then turning and sailing out of another.

Europeans turned Lushan into a summer resort in the late nineteenth century. Here, bamboo and pines, waterfalls and mossy rocks, offered blissful relief from the stifling heat of the lowlands. At its center, Kuling, there were over 800 villas in different European styles. It became Chiang Kai-shek’s summer capital for thirteen years. A villa originally built for an Englishman had been Chiang’s residence, and it now became Mao’s. During the Chiangs’ last stay, in August 1948, Chiang had named it “Villa of Beauty”—“Mei-lu” (the character “beauty” being part of Mme Chiang’s given name, Mei-ling). Knowing that his days on the Mainland were numbered, Chiang inscribed the name and had it carved into the rock at the villa entrance. When Mao saw masons trying to chisel it out, he stopped them.

Chiang and earlier residents had ascended Lushan in sedan chairs if they did not fancy a steep walk up of 7–8 km. The Communists had built a road. When Mao’s motorcade was on it, no other cars were allowed from top to bottom. The whole mountain was sealed off during his stay; even residents outside the villa area were sent away. Mao’s security was immeasurably tighter than Chiang’s. In fact, after this one visit, Mao became dissatisfied with Chiang’s villa, as he was with all the old villas selected for him all over China. Here too he ordered one of his enormous bullet-and bomb-proof warehouse-style bunkers of cement, steel and stone. This new estate, Reeds Wood No. 1, which was completed two years later, was built beside a reservoir, so that Mao could go swimming at his leisure. This, like many other villas of Mao’s, was built during the worst years of the famine.