Mao's forth wife Jiang Qing (widely known as Mme Mao) was once found weeping by the lake in Zhongnanhai. She told to Mao's doctor who saw her crying :"Don't tell anyone, the chairman is someone no one can beat in political fighting, not even Stalin; nor can anyone beat him in having women either."
That tells the story, the glorifying and mythical communist leader Mao was very fond of Romance. Though, each of them had ended in a cruel node as Mao always was cruelty maniac.
If we see the life history of Mao, Mao formally married 4 women throughout his life.
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| Mao surrounded with young Women |
He married 'woman Luo' aged 18 when he was fourteen years old in 1908, who was family relative of his. It was done after he was expelled from his forth tutor, so his father set the term that he will be rejoined to study only after marrying. Mao never lived with his first wife, mentioned only once about his first marriage with American journalist Edgar Snow with no hint of her being alive or dead. In fact, she died in 1910, just after one and more year of their marriage.
This forceful marriage had made Mao very dedicated opponent of being married, he always advocated love-marriage of western society, rejecting the imposing marriage system based on parent's decision calling it "Indirect Rape".
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| Mao with his second wife Yang Kai Hui |
2nd marriage of Mao was love marriage, the way he advocated, on his one choices. Around 1918-1919, he got involved with Yang Kai-Hui, daughter of his former teacher Yang Chanh Chi. She was 8 years junior than Mao, when Mao picked her to be viewed. But she also fell for him after her father died in 1920 when Mao gave much time to the family. They exchanged many letters, and became lover when Mao returned as the headmaster in a school at Changsha. She was not allowed to stay for nights but they used to date around the daytime. Being frustrated from the very closed society, he wrote to one of his friends on 26 november :"I think all men and women in the marriage system are nothing but are in 'rape league', I refuse to join the 'rape league'." He also came up with the idea of forming a 'resisting marriage alliance' saying :"Even if no one agrees with me, I am my own 'one man alliance'". :D
During those eras of love, he had written many poems longing his desire for love.
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| Yang Ki-Hui with Mao's 2 Sons |
Using many of these poems, Mao cleverly persuaded Kai-Hui to stay overnight at school, then everything was owned by romance. No teachers' wives were allowed to sleep at school, but Mao changed the rule for himself for being the headmaster. Kai-Hui's diary included these extracts : "Let heaven collapse and let Earth sink down, let this be the end." She was so deeply in love with him but Mao didn't seem to have much feelings for her as he continued to see other girlfriends, one of them was Si-yung, a three year junior than Mao and a widowed teacher.
Mao married Kai-Hui around the end of 1920 although she knew about his playboy image. But Mao went on having two more relationships soon after the marriage, one of them was Kai-Hui's Cousin. One of Mao's friend from that era had called him bu-zhen(unfaithful). But Kai-Hui remained faithful to him, never created scenes though she hit her cousin once when she found out about the relation.
Mao soon traveled to Sanghai, as the delegate for the communist meeting under the Umbrella of Russians, for which he received 200 Yuan as travel costs. After the meeting ended, he again received 50 yuan as travel costs which dragged him again to see his girlfriend Si-yuan in Hangzhou and Nanjing once again.
Mao left Kai-Hui when he got involved in the uprising against the nationalist government around 1927 but barely after 3 months, he was married again. His second wife Kai-Hui used to live in the outskirts of Changsha with their three young sons, when she was executed in 1930 by the nationalist troops, merely for being Mao's wife. She met the death in the age of 29, first taken around the market being tied in the rope and then shot dead. She never manifested any sign of fear and got executed although she didn't have any connection with the party. Mao used to move from the way closer to Changsha, but he never visited her even once after he left her.
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| Mao with his third wife Gui-Yuan |
Mao got to involved with his third wife, a large-eyed, high chick boned and almond shaped face, Gui-Yuan just turning 18 when she met Mao. She used to work as an interpreter to Mao as Mao didn't know the local language when he started a red base in outlaw lands of Ruijin. Soon, he started courting her and they got married around the beginning of 1928, with no special ceremony. It was after almost 4 months he left Kai-Hui and their 3 children, he started dating Gui-Yuan, just wrote once to Kai-Hui mentioning the foot problem. As soon as he was with Gai-Yuan, he completely abandoned the family.
Gui-Yuan was with Mao all along with his ruling in the bandit land of Ruijin, his long March and the beginning part of his Yanan red state, where Mao stayed for almost a decade. They had their first child in June 1929, a baby girl who was lost as they were not allowed to pick children while they leave. Their Second child, a son was born in November 1932, named as little Mao was also left behind with Mao's brother Tse-tan and nurse, who was lost after Tse-tan died in the battle. Their 3rd child was dead within some days after being born. Mao didn't even say good bye to little Mao and other kids, neither he ever tried to find them. Gui-Yuan fought hard to find her left behind kids after the communist came to power, partly succeeding to find look alikes in some moments but never could get back any of them.
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| Mao with Gui-Yuan |
Gui-Yuan gave birth to their 4th child, a baby girl during long march on 15 February 1935. She was shown the baby being wrapped up in a jacket, to whom she rejected to give the name. She left her behind with an old lady with handful of silver coins and some opium, where the baby died after three months. Mao was in the same town but didn't come to see the baby and wife, when she described him, he bluntly said :"we have to do this." Mao often cracked jokes on his wife, once he said :"Why other women are so afraid of giving birth to children, Look at Gui-Yuan, giving birth for her is as easy as a hen dropping an egg." 2 months after the birth of 4th child, Gui-Yuan was bombed and was unconscious and wounded for a long time, Mao never came to see her though he was informed. Their fifth baby, a girl named Chiao Chiao was born on 1936 in Baoan. Mao was brutally indifferent to his children, but he kept making his wife pregnant. Within one year of fifth child born, she was pregnant again.
After establishing the new red base in Ya'nan, Mao more or less started womanizing openly. Yanan was a culture centre which provided Mao an opportunity to get a new life with luxury. Once Mao told his fellow-Philander that he could only go without sex "for forty days at the most." The first woman to come into the scene being with Mao was a 26 year old married actress Lily wu who appeared in the scene in early 1937 with fantastic physique and dress-ups. Then slowly, Mao started taking part in the dance parties(square dancing), with a privilege of picking the liked woman. An American Journalist Smedley, who was also one of the organizers, had described Mao for having no sense of dancing as he used to walk on the floor.
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| Mao on the Dance Floor |
Mao's wife refused to take part on these dance programmes. She found Mao's womanizing being intolerable. On one night of June, Smedley heard Gui-yuan screaming :"Son of a pig, Turtle's egg, whoremongering no good! How dare you sneak in here to sleep with the little bourgeois bitch?" Smedley went to the scene where she saw Gui-Yuan lashing out to Mao with the Flashlight. Mao and his bodyguard were just staring at the scene as Mao was only talking to Lily. Then Gui-Yuan started scratching Lily's face and pulled her hair where Mao kept standing by. Then Gui-Yuan hit Smedley saying her to be the cause of all these wrongdoings who hit her back and Gui-Yuan fell in her knees. She then screamed to Mao :"Wht kind of man are you, what kind of husband and communist? You let an imperialist whore to beat me up in front of your eyes?" Then Mao signaled his bodyguard to carry her out who was knocked off by Gui-Yuan, then it took three bodyguards to carry her out trailed by silent Mao. Then Smedley went on packing to return and Lily just banished from the scene forever.
Mao didn't stop flirting, One of which were the boyish looking writer Ding Ling. Mao used to send her very sensitive poems and after years Ding Ling recalled how she used to visit Mao every often with romantic talks like naming the states(He used to request her to give state the name she likes and to pick the name for provinces as well, romantically).
In October 1937, Gui-Yuan left for Russia for the treatment with frustration and dumped body, where she again gave birth to a baby boy, whom she gave the Russian name Lyova, as her one year old baby girl stayed in Yanan. Lyova died after six months because of pneumonia. She was very lonely to suffer as Mao neither replied for the letter she notified him the birth of his look alike son, nor the death. After two years in Russia, she learned Mao had married again, when Mao sent a brief letter claiming they are only comrades from now on and he wants Gui-Yuan to progress politically. Mao insisted to keep Gui-Yuan in Russia so that he can have married life with his new wife.
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| Mao with his forth wife Jiang Qing |
It was in 1937, before Gui-Yuan left for Russia, Mao had already started spotting the actress Jiang Qing, an opera dancer recently came to Yanan. She was a woman with bad past, but she tried everything to get noticed like sitting in the front row during Mao lectures. One night, when Mao went on watching opera, where Qing was starring, Mao went back stage and covered her with his coat and left. The very next day she went to Mao's place to return the coat and stayed there overnight.
They started appearing in Public together, which caused a small upheaval as she was already married with four man and was best gossip topic around Sanghai, even with her connections with nationalists and many other government officials including Jailer. As almost everyone stood against the marriage between them, Mao stood against all like a movie hero, notified everyone to come to their marriage and tied her knots with her.
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| Mao with his son |
She had some good time with Mao, but the best thing was being Mme Mao as Mao no longer felt sexual interest in his wife after getting absolute control over China but he went on womanizing. After 1940, they were often seen quarreling. While marrying, she was signed with a contract with not coming to public with Mao for 30 years, so she was not seen public almost before cultural revolution in 1966. The had only daughter together named Li Na. In 1949, Russian doctor Orlov cabled Stalin about the sexual problems with Mao. Furthermore, Mme Mao suffered many gynecological problems, for which she was treated in Russia in pseudo names. But those illnesses dragged Mao further off to her, be began deserting her as well. The reports around the cultural revolution era suggest that the hysteric behavior of Qing led her to be so rude towards culture.
Apart from all these shown records, Mao was non stop in the path of womanizing. As everything personal about him kept as huge secrets, nothing was allowed to tell outside but Mao was very much woman maniac. He used to have villas around almost every provinces during his era, as he was the only millionaire in his regime. He used to watch opera quite often and chose the women he liked. He rarely used to take bath, sometimes not even once a year, but used to get wiped with hot towels from women servants.
Mao's sex drive seem to increase as he got older. In the 1960s, Li said, he often went to bed with three, four or five women simultaneously. When Mao was told he was infertile, he responded, "'So I've become a eunuch, have I?,'" Li wrote, “not understanding that it meant his sperm was abnormal not that his sexual desires were reduced." [Source: "The Private Life of Chairman Mao" by Dr. Li Zhisui, excerpts reprinted U.S. News and World Report, October 10, 1994]
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| Mao on the Dance floor again! |
"Mao's sexual activity was not confined to women," Li claimed. "The young men who served as attendants were invariably handsome and strong, and one of their responsibilities was to administer a nightly massage as an aid to sleep. Mao insisted that his groin be massaged. In 1964, I saw Mao, naked, grab a young guard and begin fondling him. At first I took such behavior as evidence of a homosexual strain, but later I concluded that it was more an insatiable appetite for any form of sex." [Source: "The Private Life of Chairman Mao" by Dr. Li Zhisui, excerpts reprinted U.S. News and World Report, October 10, 1994]
Mao was always cruel towards everyone, his mentor and godfather Stalin, his wives, his father, his children and his colleagues, everybody of them. That might have been the reason he could went on ruling china for almost 3 decades beating Chiang-Kai-Shek who was always bound with family relations and inner circle. When his children were studying in Moscow, he just wrote to them once when he was too frustrated with power struggles inside the party. His eldest son, An-Ming died in the Korean War, but he took 1 and half year to reveal it to his just married daughter-in-law. He had no sign of grief for losing his son.
For me, he was the cruelest ruler of human history, towards his own and others' lives, started his career from purging and ending with the same.
Disclaimer : Many of the Ideas presented in the blog has been taken from Jung Chang and Jon Halliday's book "Mao, The Unknown Story". If you have confusions about the mythical and legendary figure of Mao, that book may help clearing!
Image Sources :
Exerpt from Dr. Li Zhisui's book "The Private Life of Chairman Mao" was takne from "http://factsanddetails.com/china.php?itemid=71&catid=2&subcatid=6" named "Mao's Private Life."