Mao: The Unknown Story

During his entire stay in the outlaw land, which lasted fifteen months, Mao ventured into the mountains only three times, for a total period of less than a month. And when he did go, he was not exactly traveling rough. When he went to call on bandit chief Zuo, he stayed in a brilliantly white mansion known as the White House, formerly owned by a Cantonese timber merchant. He was entertained lavishly, with pigs and sheep slaughtered in his honor.

The contours of Mao’s future lifestyle in power were already emerging. He had acquired a sizable personal staff, which included a manager, a cook, a cook’s help with the special duty of carrying water for Mao, a groom who looked after a small horse for his master, and secretaries. One errand boy’s “special task” was to keep him supplied with the right brand of cigarettes from Longshi. Another orderly collected newspapers and books whenever they took a town or looted a rich house.

MAO ALSO ACQUIRED a wife — his third — almost as soon as he settled in outlaw country. A pretty young woman with large eyes, high cheekbones, an almond-shaped face and a willowy figure, Gui-yuan was just turning eighteen when she met Mao. She came from the rich county of Yongxin at the foot of the mountain, and her parents, who owned a teahouse, had given her the name Gui-yuan (Gui: osmanthus, and yuan: round) because she was born on an autumn evening when a round moon shone above a blossoming osmanthus tree. She had attended a missionary school run by two Finnish ladies, but was not content with being brought up as a lady. Her restless, fiery temperament rejected the traditional claustrophobic life prescribed for women, and made her yearn for a wider world, enjoyment, and some action. So, in the stirring atmosphere of the Northern Expedition army’s entry into her town in summer 1926, she joined the Communist Party. Soon she was making speeches in public, as a cheerleader welcoming the troops. At the age of only sixteen, she was appointed head of the Women’s Department in the new government for the whole county, starting her job by cutting off her own long hair, an act that was still revolutionary and eyebrow-raising.

A year later, after Chiang Kai-shek’s split, Communists and activists were on the run, including her parents and younger sister, who had also joined the Party. Her elder brother, also a Communist, was thrown into prison, along with many others, but the outlaw Yuan was a friend of his, and helped to break him out of jail. Gui-yuan and her brother escaped with the outlaws, and she became best friends with Mrs. Yuan. Zuo, the other outlaw, who had three wives, gave her a Mauser pistol.

When Mao came, Yuan assigned her to act as his interpreter. Mao did not speak the local dialect, and he never learned it. Here, as in his later peregrinations, he had to communicate with the locals through an interpreter.

Mao at once began to court her, and by the beginning of 1928 they were “married”—with no binding ceremony but a sumptuous banquet prepared by Mrs. Yuan. This was barely four months after Mao had left Kai-hui, the mother of his three sons, the previous August. He had written to her just once, mentioning that he had foot trouble. From the time of his new marriage, he abandoned his family.

Unlike Kai-hui, who was madly in love with him, Gui-yuan married Mao with reluctance. A beautiful woman in a crowd of men, she had many suitors and considered Mao, at thirty-four, “too old” and “not worthy” of her, as she told a close friend. Mao’s youngest brother, Tse-tan, handsome and lively, also fancied Gui-yuan. “My brother has a wife,” he said. “Better to be with me.” She chose the elder Mao because she felt the “need for protection politically in that environment,” as she later conceded.

In a world of few women and a lot of sexually frustrated men, Mao’s relationship with Gui-yuan caused gossip. Mao was careful: he and Gui-yuan avoided appearing in public together. When the couple walked past the building that housed wounded soldiers, he would ask Gui-yuan to go separately.

By the end of a year of marriage, Gui-yuan had resolved to leave Mao. She confided to a friend that she was unlucky to have married him and felt she had “made a big sacrifice” by doing so. When Mao decided to leave the outlaw land, in January 1929, she tried desperately to stay behind. Gui-yuan may well have been thinking about more than just leaving Mao. She had been swept into a maelstrom while still only in her teens, and now her desire to quit was so strong that she was prepared to risk capture by the Reds’ enemies. However, Mao ordered her to be taken along “at any cost.” She cried all the way, repeatedly falling behind, only to be fetched by Mao’s guards with his horse.