Mao: The Unknown Story

And so she went to her death, on a winter day, wearing a thin blouse, at the age of twenty-nine. As she was taken through the streets, tied up with ropes, which was the normal treatment for someone about to be executed, an officer hailed a rickshaw for her, while soldiers ran along on both sides. The execution ground lay just beyond one of the city gates, among the graves of the people executed who had no one to take their bodies home. After they shot her, some of the firing squad took off her shoes and threw them as far as they could: otherwise, legend went, they would be followed home and haunted by the ghost of the dead.

As the executioners were having lunch afterwards at their barracks, they were told that Kai-hui was not dead, so seven of them went back and finished her off. In her agony her fingers had dug deep into the earth.

Her body was taken back to her village by relatives, and buried in the grounds of her family home. Her son was released, and early in 1931 Mao’s brother Tse-min arranged for the three boys to travel to Shanghai, where they entered a secret CCP kindergarten.

When Mao learned of Kai-hui’s death, he wrote in what seems to have been genuine grief: “The death of Kai-hui cannot be redeemed by a hundred deaths of mine!” He spoke of her often, especially in his old age, as the love of his life. What he never knew is that although Kai-hui did love him, she had also rejected his ideology and his killings.

IN THE YEARS between Mao deserting her and her death, Kai-hui wrote reflections on communism, and on her love for Mao, in eight intense, forgiving and occasionally reproachful pieces, which she concealed in her house. Seven were discovered in cracks in the walls in 1982, during some renovation work. The eighth came to light under a beam just outside her bedroom during repairs in 1990. She had wrapped them up in wax paper to protect them from damp. Mao never saw them, and most are still kept secret — so secret that even Mao’s surviving family were barred from seeing the most devastating passages.

The writings show the pain Kai-hui suffered from Mao’s desertion, her disappointment and bitterness at his heartlessness towards her and their sons — and, perhaps more damning, her loss of faith in communism.

The earliest piece is a poem, “Thoughts,” dated October 1928. Mao had been gone for a year, and had only written once. He had mentioned having trouble with his feet. In June, when a CCP inspector she referred to as “First Cousin” went off to Mao’s area, she gave him a jug of chili with fermented beans, Mao’s favorite dish, to take to her husband. But there was no reply. On a cold day, Kai-hui missed Mao:

Downcast day a north wind starts,

Thick chill seeps through flesh and bones.

Thinking of this Far-away Man,

Suddenly waves churn out of calm.

Is the foot trouble healed?

Is the winter clothing ready?

Who cares for you while you sleep alone?

Are you as lonely and sad as I am?

No letters are coming through,

I ask, but no one answers.

How I wish I had wings,

Fly to see this man.

Unable to see him,

Sorrow, it has no end …

The next piece, written to First Cousin in March 1929, and marked “not sent,” talks about her loneliness and her yearning for support:

I cower in a corner of the world. I am frightened and lonely. In this situation, I search every minute for something to lean on. So you take a place in my heart, and so does Ren-xiu who is staying here — you both stand side by side in my heart! I often pray: “Please don’t let these few people be scattered!” I seem to have seen the God of Death — ah, its cruel and severe face! Talking of death, I do not really fear it, and I can say that I welcome it. But my mother, and my children! I feel pity for them! This feeling haunts me so badly — the night before last it kept me half awake all night long.

Worrying about her children, and clearly feeling she could not count on Mao, Kai-hui wrote to her First Cousin:

I decided to entrust them — my children — to you. Financially, as long as their uncle [probably Mao’s brother Tse-min] lives, he will not abandon them; and their uncle really loves them deeply. But if they lose their mother, and a father, then just the love of an uncle is not enough. They need you and many others’ love for them to grow naturally as if in a warm spring, and not be destroyed by violent storms. This letter is like a will now, and you must think I am mad. But I don’t know why, I just can’t shake off the feeling over my head of a rope like a poisonous snake, that seems to have flown in from Death, and that binds me tightly. So I cannot but prepare!..