Mao: The Unknown Story

I was born extremely weak, and would faint when I started crying … At the time, I sympathised with animals … Every night going to bed, horrible shadows such as the killing of chickens, of pigs, people dying, churned up and down in my head. That was so painful! I can still remember that taste vividly. My brother, not only my brother but many other children, I just couldn’t understand them at all. How was it they could bring themselves to catch little mice, or dragonflies, and play with them, treating them entirely as creatures foreign to pain?

If it were not to spare my mother the pain — the pain of seeing me die — if it were not for this powerful hold, then I simply would not have lived on.

I really wanted to have a faith!..

I sympathized with people in the lower ranks of life. I hated those who wore luxurious clothes, who only thought of their own pleasure. In summer I looked just like people from lower ranks, wearing a baggy rough cotton top. This was me at about seventeen or eighteen …

She wrote about how she fell in love with Mao, how totally she loved him, how she learned about his infidelities, and how she forgave him (these pages are in chapter 3). But at the end she showed that she was thinking of breaking away from him and the ideology to which he had introduced her:

Now my inclination has shifted into a new phase. I want to get some nourishment by seeking knowledge, to water and give sustenance to my dried-up life … Perhaps one day I will cry out: my ideas in the past were wrong!

She ended her memoir with:

Ah! Kill, kill, kill! All I hear is this sound in my ears! Why are human beings so evil? Why so cruel? Why?! I cannot think on! [words brushed out by her] I must have a faith! I must have a faith! Let me have a faith!!

Kai-hui had been drawn to communism out of sympathy for the deprived. Her crying out for “a faith” says unmistakably that she was losing her existing faith, communism. She did not condemn Mao, whom she still deeply loved. But she was letting him know how strongly she felt about the killing, something she had hated since childhood.

She wrote this piece primarily for Mao, thinking she might be able to see him in Shanghai. But as time wore on, it became clear that she would not, and in fact he was studiously avoiding the city. Kai-hui hid what she had written so far, twelve pages, between bricks in a wall.

It was in a mood of despair that she wrote her last piece on 28 January 1930, two days before the Chinese New Year, traditionally the time for family reunion. Four pages long, it described what she had been through in the past two and a half years since Mao left. She began by recalling her feelings in the days just after he went:

For days I’ve been unable to sleep.

I just can’t sleep. I’m going mad.

So many days now, he hasn’t written. I’m waiting day after day.

Tears …

I mustn’t be so miserable. The children are miserable with me, and Mother is miserable with me.

I think I may be pregnant again.

Really so wretched, so lonely, so much anguish.

I want to flee. But I have these children, how can I?

On the morning of the fiftieth day, I received the priceless letter.

Even if he dies, my tears are going to shroud his corpse.

A month, another month, half a year, a year, and three years. He has abandoned me. The past churns up in my mind scene after scene. The future I envisage also churns in my mind scene after scene. He must have abandoned me.

He is very lucky, to have my love. I truly love him so very much!

He can’t have abandoned me. He must have his reasons not to write …

Father love is really a riddle. Does he not miss his children? I can’t understand him.

This is a sad thing, but also a good thing, because I can now be an independent person.

I want to kiss him a hundred times, his eyes, his mouth, his cheeks, his neck, his head. He is my man. He belongs to me.

Only Mother Love can be relied on. I’m thinking about my mother …

Yesterday, I mentioned him to my brother. I tried to look normal, but tears fell, I don’t know how.

If only I can forget him. But his beautiful image, his beautiful image.

Dimly I seem to see him standing there, gazing at me with melancholy.

I have written to First Cousin, saying this: “Whoever takes my letter to him, and brings his letter to me, is my Saviour.”

Heaven, I can’t help worrying about him.

As long as he is well, whether or not he belongs to me is secondary. May heaven protect him.

Today is his birthday. I can’t forget him. So I quietly had some food bought, and made bowls of noodles [a special birthday meal, since long noodles symbolise long life]. Mother remembers this date, too. At night in bed, I think sad thoughts to myself.

I hear he has been ill, and it comes from overwork … Without me beside him, he will not be careful. He will simply tire himself to death.