41 DEFENSE MINISTER PENG'S LONELY BATTLE
41 国防部长彭德怀孤军奋战
(1958–59 •AGE 64–65)
1958～1959 年 64～65 岁
IN THE FIRST two years of the Great Leap Forward, most of Mao's colleagues went along with him. Only one man in the Politburo, Marshal Peng De-huai, the defense minister, had the courage to dissent.
大跃進的头一两年，中共政治局内只有一个人起来反抗，他就是国防部长彭德怀。
Peng had stayed close to his poverty-stricken peasant roots. In an account of his life written later while imprisoned by Mao he recorded that he often reminded himself of his famished childhood to avoid “becoming corrupt, or callous about the lives of the poor.” In the 1950s he spoke up among the top echelon about Mao's corrupt lifestyle: the villas all over China, and the procurement of pretty girls, which Peng described as “selecting imperial concubines.”
彭德怀的穷苦出身使他跟农民更有感情。他后来在狱中写成的《自述》说：“我常常回忆到幼年的遭遇，鞭策自己不要腐化，不要忘记贫苦人民的生活。”中共执政后，他对毛泽东在全国各地修别墅，招文工团员伴舞伺寝等，屡表不满。
Peng had crossed swords with Mao over the years. In the 1930s he had criticized Mao's vicious treatment of other military commanders. On the Long March he had challenged Mao for the military leadership when Mao was dragging the Red Army to near-ruin for his personal goals. In the 1940s, when Mao began his personality cult during the Yenan Terror, Peng had raised objections to rituals like shouting “Long Live Chairman Mao!,” and singing the Mao anthem, “The East Is Red.” Once Khrushchev denounced Stalin in 1956, Peng spoke out more forcefully against the personality cult, and even advocated changing the oath that servicemen took, from one that pledged allegiance to Mao personally, to one that pledged allegiance to the nation, arguing that “Our army belongs to the nation.”
赫鲁晓夫一九五六年谴责斯大林之后，彭欣赏他的“非斯大林化”，反对个人崇拜。看到《军人誓词》上第一条是“我们要在毛主席的领导下--”，他说这个写法有毛病，“现在的军队是国家的，不能只说在哪一个人领导之下。
This was guaranteed to rile Mao. Besides, Mao loathed the fact that Peng had not only expressed esteem for Khrushchev over de-Stalinization, but had also urged that spending on defense industries in peacetime “must be compatible with people's standard of living.”
彭对毛的军事工业化也持不同意见，不赞成“国家進口的最新式机械，多数是用在国防工业或与国防工业有关的工厂”，说：“和平时期的国防建设，一定要适合国民经济的发展。”
Peng had often voiced independent, unorthodox views. He openly admired the concepts of “Liberty, Equality and Fraternity,” which Mao denounced as “anti-Marxist.” Peng also advocated observing traditional Chinese ethical codes like “A prince and the man in the street are equal before the law” and “Do not do to others what you don't want done to yourself.” My “principle,” Mao said, “is exactly the opposite: Do to others precisely what I don't want done to myself.”
Peng had been a thorn in Mao's side for three decades, although he had also cooperated with Mao at certain key moments, like going into Korea in 1950. It was as a result of this that Mao made him defense minister in 1954—reluctantly, as Mao himself revealed later. Throughout Peng's tenure, Mao undermined him by creating competing chains of command. Still, Peng retained a fearlessness vis-à-vis Mao that was unique among top leaders.
虽然彭让毛不舒服，但毛一直还用他，因为他在几个关键时刻与毛合作，比方入朝参战。就是在朝鲜战争后，毛让他主持中央军委日常工作，任命他为国防部长。但毛又故意制造重叠交叉的指挥系统，拒绝澄清国防部与总参谋部的权限关系，使彭不断陷入纠葛之中，权力和威信受到严重影响。
WHEN HE LAUNCHED the Leap in May 1958, Mao plunged Peng and some 1,500 senior army officers into daily “criticism and self-criticism” meetings, at which they were made to attack each other for weeks on end. Such sessions, which had become a Maoist staple since the Yenan Terror, were full of bitter character-assassination, and were emotionally utterly draining.* Peng felt so demoralized that he offered to resign, an offer Mao rejected because he wanted to purge Peng. Meanwhile, he elevated his crony Marshal Lin Biao to be a vice-chairman of the Party, which put Lin above Peng, in the army as well as the Party.
一九五八年五月毛发起大跃進时，把他的老搭档林彪提拔为党的副主席，这使林位居彭之上。毛把彭和一千五百名高级军官集中起来“整”了两个多月“风”，让他们一天到晚开会，当面互相攻击。这种所谓的“批评与自我批评”，自延安以来一直是毛進行控制的利器，用它来破坏人们彼此的关系，破坏人的心理平衡，叫大家提心吊胆，不得安宁。这次整风把军队高层搞得四分五裂。” * 焦头烂额的彭向毛要求“不担任国防部长的工作”，毛未准。
* 毛利用整风，清洗了一批军中高级将领，目的是清除苏联对中共军队的影响。由于苏联在帮毛建设现代化的军队，军中高层同苏联有密切来往，毛怕削弱他对军队的控制，以清洗为警告，要人们和苏联人保持距离。
These upheavals consumed Peng's time and energy until late July, when the criticism meetings were brought to a close. Only then was he able to start taking stock of the fearsome panorama around him. He could see that Mao was fixated on acquiring an absolutely gigantic strike force—no fewer than 200–300 nuclear submarines, as Mao had insisted to the Russians, and every other state-of-the art weapon Russia possessed—and that Mao would go to any lengths to achieve this goal. One step towards this end was to shell the Nationalist-held island of Quemoy in August, with the aim of triggering nuclear threats from America in order to put pressure on Khrushchev. (Peng was deliberately excluded from this exercise, even though he was the army chief.) Then there was the flood of bogus harvest figures, which could only mean one thing: that Mao was aiming to squeeze out far greater quantities of food to pay for the enormous amount of hardware he was acquiring from Russia.
八月，在北戴河，彭听到毛宣布天方夜谭式的粮食产量指标。联想到毛一开口就向苏联人提出要造两三百艘核潜艇，彭警觉出高征购就要开始，农民就要大批饿死。
On the evening of 3 September, shortly after the shelling of Quemoy had started, Peng disappeared while at the seaside resort of Beidaihe for a round of meetings. Eventually, after a long search, the Praetorian Guard found him pacing a remote stretch of beach in the moonlight, alone. With a darkened face, he returned to his villa, where he lay awake all night.
九月三日晚上，彭德怀突然失踪了。中央警卫团派人四处寻找，最后在一处僻静的海滩上看见彭独自在月光下来回踱步。彭满面阴沉地回到住处，那天一夜未眠。
Afterwards, he set off on an inspection tour of northern China, during which he learned that the crop figures were indeed inflated, and that peasants were dying of starvation. He saw for the first time the disastrous impact of Mao's pet obsession, the backyard furnaces. Passing through Henan, Mao's model province, he saw the furnaces getting denser, with crowds and carts and shovels and ladders and baskets, and flames stretching out like a blazing sea to the horizon. Gazing out of the train window, he turned to his aide-de-camp and shook his head: “These fires are going to burn up everything we have.”
之后，彭去北方视察。一路上，他看到粮食收成被大大夸大，农民已经在挨饿。他领教了毛的“大炼钢铁”，招待所服务员向他诉说家里“房子被拆了，果树也砍了，把木料拿去给“小土群”当柴烧”，“有的煮饭锅也砸了，把废铁拿去当了原料。”火车经过毛的模范省河南时，他看到密密匝匝的土高炉，拉车的、挑筐的、扛铁锹扛梯子的人群围着高炉川流不息，从高炉里腾起的熊熊大火遍地延伸。他俯在车窗口凝视良久，掉转头对秘书说：“这一把把火会把我们的家底烧光！”
At the beginning of December, at a conference in Wuhan, Peng heard Mao announce that the harvest figure for 1958 was more than double 1957's, which had been a very good year. Peng said that this was impossible, but Mao's agriculture chiefs shut him up with what amounted to “We know better than you.”
十二月初，毛在武汉宣称他天方夜谭式的粮食产量已经达到。彭说：“粮食没有那么多。”管农业的人把他堵了回去，说：“老总呀！你这也怀疑，那也怀疑，怎么办呢？”
Peng decided to go back to his home area in Hunan, which was in the same county as Mao's home village, to find out what was really happening. There, he got confirmation that the harvest figures were false. Peasants had had their homes torn down to feed the backyard furnaces; they were being worked to the point of collapse; and grassroots cadres were using violence to force them to work. “In some areas, it has become common practice to beat people up,” Peng wrote. “People are beaten up when they can't fulfill their work quota, beaten up when they are late going out to work, beaten up even for saying things some don't like.” Peng also registered the special misery that Mao's slave-driving was inflicting on women: overwork, he noted, had caused “many women to suffer prolapses of the womb, or premature stoppage of menstruation.”
彭回家乡了解情况。他的老家乌石离韶山不远。彭的看法得到证实：“实际收获的粮食数字没有公布那样多”， 他感到“这样的造假数字，真是令人可怕。”他看到农民被强迫干活，“有的地区打人竟成了风气，完不成任务打，出工迟到也打，说话不好听也有挨打的。”过度劳累“致使不少妇女发生子宫下垂和停经的疾病”。
Peng's childhood friends had famished, waxen faces. They showed him their canteen wok, which contained only vegetable leaves and a few grains of rice, with no oil. Their beds were just cold bamboo mats with flimsy quilts, in freezing December. As his coevals were sixty-ish, they were living in the commune's quarters for the old, called the “Happiness Court.” “What sort of Happiness is this?” Peng exploded. The beds in the kindergarten had only thin rags. Many children were ill.
彭少年时代的伙伴现在都六十来岁了，住在号称“幸福院”的人民公社敬老院里。他们揭开食堂的锅给彭看，锅里是清汤菜叶，只有几颗米，没有油。他们的床数九寒天还是光光的篾席，连褥单也没有，被子也破烂不堪。彭看看锅，看看床，再看看他们菜色的脸，紧锁眉头忍不住说：“名字好听，幸福院！什么幸福院？”
Peng gave the kindergarten 200 yuan out of his own pocket, and left another 200 yuan to buy bedding for the old. A Red Army veteran who had been disabled in the 1930s tucked a piece of paper into his palm. It was an entreaty for Peng to “cry out for us.”
彭用个人的钱捐给敬老院两百元。给了幼儿园两百元，幼儿园床上也没有被褥，不少孩子在生病。彭离开家乡时，一位因伤残回乡的老红军把一张纸条塞進他的手心，上面写着：“请为人民鼓咙呼！”
On 18 December, Peng met one of the top economic managers, Bo Yi-bo, and told him Mao's figure for the grain harvest was unreal, and that they must not collect food on the basis of this exaggeration. Bo agreed with him. In fact, all Mao's economic managers, as well as Politburo members, knew the truth. But when Peng suggested that he and Bo send a joint telegram to Mao, Bo declined. So Peng cabled Mao on his own, urging that food collection be reduced. There was no response.
十二月十八日，彭遇到管经济的薄一波，对他说粮食产量绝没有毛公布的那样高，决不能在此基础上征购。薄有同感。但当彭提议联名给中央发电报表示意见时，薄害怕了，说还是各自反映好。彭自己发了封电报给毛，力请降低粮食征购数字。
Peng knew his report was not news to Mao, who had reprised his offhand views about death at Wuhan earlier that month: “A few children die in the kindergarten, a few old men die in the Happiness Court … If there's no death, human beings can't exist. From Confucius to now, it would be disastrous if people didn't die.”
毛没有回音。就在半个月前，毛刚弹了一番死人没关系的老调，说：“托儿所死几个娃娃，幸福院死几个老头……如果没有死亡，人就不能生存。自从孔夫子以来，人要不灭亡那不得了。”
How could Mao be stopped? Even though he was defense minister, Peng had little power—nothing like the power which defense ministers had in other countries. The army was completely controlled by Mao, and Peng could not move troops without Mao's explicit permission. Peng began to contemplate seeking help from the only possible source—abroad.
彭德怀没有什么办法制止毛的胡作非为。身为国防部长，他手里并无军权，所有部队调动都得经过毛批准。彭开始考虑从国外寻求帮助。
With no access to the West, Peng's only hope was Eastern Europe, and Khrushchev. This was an extremely long shot. He decided, it seems, to try and make a sounding, on the off-chance.
在当时的情况下，彭的唯一希望是苏联。赫鲁晓夫反斯大林的暴政，他或许会给一些帮助？当然，这个希望是渺茫的。但心急如焚的彭德怀，感到非试一试不可。
PENG HAD long-standing invitations to visit Eastern Europe. Getting there meant passing through Moscow, and Mao had indicated that he was not keen on Peng taking up the invitations. But he agreed on 28 February 1959, after Peng had taken the uncharacteristic step of pressing him for his consent.
彭德怀早就收到若干对东欧军事代表团回访的邀请。去东欧会经过莫斯科。毛明显表示他不想彭接受邀请，一九五八年七月十七日批示说，回访得取决于“时局许可与否”。中共高层都知道毛忌讳他手下的人跟外国有关系，这事就搁下了。彭回乡视察之后，于一九五九年一月八日主持军委会议，决定由他率团于“五一”国际劳动节后回访东欧。报告毛后，毛没有回覆。二月十六日，彭异乎寻常地催毛同意：“大家都认为不应再加推托。因此，准备在四月下旬派一个军事代表团去德，然后即到其他六国访问。”毛在二十八日批覆：“照办。”
The beady Mao guessed Peng was up to something. On 5 April, shortly before Peng's scheduled departure, Mao exploded to a top Party gathering: “Is comrade Peng De-huai here?… you really hate me to death …” Mao then flew into a temper the like of which those close to him said they had never seen. “We have always been battling each other …” Mao exclaimed. “My principle is: You don't mess with me and I won't mess with you; but mess with me, and I sure as hell will mess with you!”
毛猜到彭为什么急于出访。四月五日，他当着全体中央委员忽然问道：“彭德怀同志来了没有？”然后他发了一通身边人从未见过的大脾气，说彭：“你是恨死了我的”，“你彭德怀是一贯反对我的”，“我是人不犯我，我不犯人；人若犯我，我必犯人！”
That night, Peng was seen pacing up and down his office. When a secretary came to consult him about plans for the following day, Peng, who never mentioned private matters, astonished him by suddenly speaking with melancholy about how much he missed his former wife. His current wife was a scared and “correct” Party person, from whom he could not expect understanding or support for the course of action on which he was about to embark.
毛显然是警告彭，同时他也故意刺激彭：“看了湘剧《生死牌》， 那剧中的海瑞，很有勇气，敢于批评皇帝。我们的同志哪有海瑞勇敢？我已把《明史·海瑞传》送给彭德怀同志。”
That night, Peng was seen pacing up and down his office. When a secretary came to consult him about plans for the following day, Peng, who never mentioned private matters, astonished him by suddenly speaking with melancholy about how much he missed his former wife. His current wife was a scared and “correct” Party person, from whom he could not expect understanding or support for the course of action on which he was about to embark.
彭看出毛猜到了他心中的念头。何去何从？彭内心的激烈交战不难想像。那天晚上，他在办公室一人长久地踱步，低头沉思。秘书進来向他请示第二天的日程时，吃惊地发现向来不谈私事的彭若有所感地对他说：“我现在很思念刘坤模同志！” 刘是彭的前妻。彭的现任妻子是个循规蹈矩的“好”党员，从她那里彭是不可能指望得到支持的。
On 20 April, just before leaving for Europe, Peng attended a reception given by ambassadors of the countries he was to visit. There he did something unprecedented. He took Soviet ambassador Yudin into a separate room and, with only a Russian embassy interpreter present, which was a major breach of the rules, initiated a conversation about the Great Leap Forward. According to the interpreter, Peng's sounding was cautious: “Only by the character of his questions and the tone in which they were put was it possible to understand his negative attitude towards ‘the leap.' ” The interpreter told us: “It seemed Peng wanted to see what the ambassador would say about the Great Leap—to get the ambassador's opinion.” Yudin waffled about the “positive” aspects of the Leap. “What stuck in my mind,” the interpreter recalled, “were the Marshal's mournful eyes, reflecting a gamut of feelings: from alarm for the fate of his country to firm determination to fight for its future.”
四月二十日，彭出访前夕，东欧国家大使馆为代表团举行招待会。会上，彭不顾毛定下的任何谈话必须有中国翻译在场的规矩，把苏联大使尤金和苏联翻译请進单独房间。他对两人讲起了大跃進。这位翻译告诉我们：“彭显然是想引大使谈大跃進，试探大使对大跃進的看法。”彭的试探是小心翼翼的，“只是从他问的问题上，和他谈话的口气上，可以听出他对大跃進持反对立场。”尤金大使嘟嘟囔囔说了些大跃進的“积极”方面。翻译回忆说：“深深印在我脑子里的，是彭元帅悲哀而复杂的眼神，既为他的国家担忧，又要为它争取一条出路。”
Peng found no more sympathy when he got to Europe. East Germany's leader, Ulbricht, said he knew that China was enjoying fantastic growth in agriculture, and could it send more meat so that they could match West Germany's annual consumption of 80 kg per capita? In China, even in the cities, the meat ration for the whole year was only a few kilos.
在东欧，彭也没有得到任何同情。东德的乌布利希说他从报上看到中国农业获得奇迹般的丰收，问可不可以多给东德一些肉，使东德能赶上西德的肉食消费水准，每人每年八十公斤？在中国，即使是城市里，每人每年定量也不过两三公斤。
After Ulbricht spoke, Peng fell silent for a long time before telling his host that there was actually a tremendous food shortage. Ulbricht, an old Stalinist who had concocted a few claims himself, was unmoved. Whether Mao's claims were true or not was immaterial to him. In fact, food imports from China had just allowed East Germany, with a standard of living incomparably higher than China's, to end rationing, in May 1958.
听了乌布利希这番话，彭德怀沉默了许久，说：“各地报纸宣传都有很多假话，粮食肉类不是很多，而是很缺。”乌布利希这个老牌斯大林主义者自己也虚构过不少数字，当然明白彭所言不差，但他无动于衷。中国老百姓挨不挨饿跟他没关系，中国只要能供给他食品就行。正是中国的食品，使东德在上年五月取消食品配给制度。*
(Later, when tens of millions of Chinese had already died of starvation, Ulbricht asked Mao for more food, on 11 January 1961. When Chou told East European ambassadors that China could not deliver all the food it had contracted to send, and asked to postpone or cancel some contracts, Poland showed understanding, but East Germany flatly refused even to consider a postponement, and pressed for delivery on the dot. “Great Germany above all,” Chou remarked, but still sent 23,000 tons of soybeans.)
* 当数千万中国人饿死之后，乌布利希仍继续向毛要食品。一九六一年三月，周恩来约见东欧各国驻华使节，说明中国农产品出口困难，希望减少贸易额，推迟和撤销一些订货。波兰表示合作，但东德拒绝考虑，派人来中国要求中国履行合同，继续供应大豆、大米、油脂等。周恩来生气地说他们是“德意志高于一切”，但还是给了东德两万三千吨大豆。
同乌布利希谈话以后，彭德怀对中国代表团苦笑着说：“我们的老百姓要知道人家要我们帮助他们每年吃上八十公斤肉，不知作何感想！”
After his conversation with Ulbricht, Peng burst out to his staff: “How would our people feel if they heard they were being asked to help others have 80 kg of meat a year?” His next stop was Czechoslovakia. When he told the Czechs about what was really happening in China, and said that anyone but the Chinese would be taking to the streets, he got little reaction. Peng realized that the East European regimes were a lost cause. They “all pay great attention to arms,” he noted. “They all have a privileged class trained by the Soviet Union.” The bottom line was that these regimes did not care what it cost the Chinese people to supply food to them, even if it meant Chinese dying; Eastern Europe's imports of food from China reached their highest levels yet in 1958.* Throughout the trip, Peng was downcast.
他的下一站是捷克斯洛伐克，又是向中国要食品的国家。彭告诉他们中国老百姓很苦，换上他们的国家恐怕要上街游行了。可是捷克人也充耳不闻。彭看出东欧都是“在我们这个干骨头兄弟身上刮油”。一九五八年，东欧与中国机器换食品的贸易达到了最高峰。整个旅途彭德怀的情绪都很坏，常常独自沉思，一声声长吁短叹。*
* 此行也使彭德怀预见到未来的毛的陵墓。他说：“领袖遗体看到了列宁、斯大林、哥特瓦尔德、季米特洛夫，每个国家都搞一个。亚洲国家大概将来也要搞。”
Peng's last stop in Europe was Albania. When he arrived there, on 28 May, he found that Khrushchev had just turned up, unexpectedly, for his first-ever visit. Any hopes Peng might have entertained about Khrushchev perhaps having come specially to meet him were dashed at once. Khrushchev had no Chinese-language interpreter with him.
彭的最后一站是阿尔巴尼亚。他五月二十八日到达时，赫鲁晓夫也刚到。两人随后见了面。此事使毛寝食不安。
Khrushchev was in Albania for a very different reason. Albania provided Russia with a unique submarine base in the heart of the Mediterranean, on Sazan Island. Peng's own mission, dictated by Mao, was also geared to this base. On his first full day in Albania, 29 May, Peng got up at 5:30 AM and headed straight there. The purpose of Khrushchev's visit was to try to prevent the Albanians doing a deal with China over the base.* Peng saw that he could not count on Khrushchev, or any of the Communist countries, for help.
其实赫鲁晓夫并不是为彭德怀而来。他没有带中文翻译。阿尔巴尼亚的萨森岛(Sazan Island)，是苏联在地中海的核潜艇基地。赫鲁晓夫的亲自出马，是为了阻止阿尔巴尼亚和中国在核潜艇方面达成什么交易。对赫鲁晓夫是指望不上了。
It seems that Peng then, in desperation, contemplated something akin to a military coup. When he returned to Peking on 13 June, the first thing he did was to try to move some military forces “to transport grain to famine-stricken areas,” he told the army chief of staff, Huang Ke-cheng, who was a close friend and a kindred spirit. Huang clearly understood what Peng wanted the troops for, as he expressed a degree of reluctance that he would not have shown if he had thought the proposal was really about transporting food. Mao seems to have got wind of this conversation, and had Peng grilled intensely about it later.
有迹象表明，彭德怀可能考虑过“兵谏”。六月十三日他一回到北京，就试探能否以运粮救荒的理由调动军队。他对他的知心朋友、时任总参谋长的黄克诚提起调兵。据彭德怀狱中《自述》说，黄显出“为难的表情”。彭、黄到底谈了些什么，至今仍是个谜。但两人谈话的风声传到毛的耳朵里，后来彭在狱中被反覆审问调兵的事。
As all troop movements had to have Mao's authorization, Peng was unable to move any forces. All he could do was try to exert pressure on Mao by sending him annotated reports about the famine, and lobby others to do likewise. Seeing famished peasants from the train, he would say to his companions: “If China's workers and peasants weren't so nice, we would have had to invite in the Soviet Red Army [to prop up the Communist regime]!”
彭德怀动不了兵，只能不断把饥荒的情况上报给毛。坐火车看见窗外蓬首垢面、衣衫褴褛的人民，彭对同行的其他领导人说：“要不是中国工人农民好，也会要请红军的！”他鼓励他们也向毛反映情况。
Mao had followed Peng's every step in Europe through spies in the delegation, and knew Peng had got nowhere. Mao was soon to remark complacently that Peng had gone abroad “to sniff around,” but had been unable to do any more than that. As soon as he was convinced that Peng had secured no foreign backing, Mao decided to pounce. Part of his calculation was to use the purge of Peng to kick off a wider terror campaign. Mao badly needed to keep up the great squeeze, as China was falling behind on payments to Russia. The trouble for Mao was that grassroots officials, out of pity, were often holding off taking food that the peasants needed to survive. Mao knew that much of his own machine, as well as the entire nation, was resisting his policies. In February and March 1959 he had said quite a few times: “Several hundred million peasants and production team leaders are united against the Party.” Even his provincial bosses now mostly kept an awkward silence when he pressed them to cough up more food. Mao needed his stand-by, terror, to steel his machine.
彭在东欧时，毛安插在代表团里的眼线监视着他的一举一动。毛把彭的出国访问称为“闻味”。彭一事无成，毛安心了。
毛此时面临一个大麻烦。粮食出口计划第一、二季度没有完成。基层干部对饥饿的农民下不了手。毛屡次说：“几亿农民和小队长联合起来抵制党委。”就连听话的省委书记们，在毛指名要他们对分配的征粮指标表态时，也保持沉默，有的吞吞吐吐讲困难。毛感到必须搞一场整人运动来扫除障碍。本来就想清洗彭的毛，决定用彭作头号靶子来掀起运动。
ON 20 JUNE 1959, a week after Peng returned from Europe, Mao left Peking by train. It was ferociously hot, and the electric fan was switched off in case Mao caught cold. A big bowl of ice was placed in his carriage, to little avail. All the men, Mao included, stripped down to their underpants. (Immediately after this, an air-conditioned train was ordered for Mao from East Germany.) To cool himself off, Mao went swimming in the Yangtze and the Xiang River—which doubled up for him as baths. He had not taken a bath or a shower, or washed his hair, since 1949, almost a decade before, when he discovered the pleasure of being rubbed by a servant with a hot towel and having his hair and skull combed by his barber.
一九五九年六月二十日，彭从东欧归来一个星期，毛乘专车离开北京南行。走走停停，晚上火车停在专道上，毛睡在车里。天很热，车厢里的电风扇没开，以防毛着凉，只放了一大盆冰。毛跟随行的其他男人一样，光着脊梁，只穿条裤衩。(这趟出行之后，中国从东德给毛买了辆带空调的专车。)毛游了长江、湘江。对从不洗澡的毛来说，这就算是洗澡了。
Meanwhile, he began to make ready for his showdown. On the 24th, he told his secretary to telephone Peking to call a conference at Lushan, the mountain resort above the Yangtze. Mao dictated a list of the participants, but did not spell out that this was to be a forum to condemn Peng.
二十四日，毛叫秘书给北京打电话通知在长江畔的避暑胜地庐山开会，指定了参加会议的人。
Having decided on the highest-level purge since he took power, it seems that Mao felt he needed personal confirmation that he still held godlike status, and was invincible. He was staying at the time near his home village, Shaoshan. On the spur of the moment, he decided to go there to sniff the air.
清洗就要开场了。这次要对付的是老资格的、最桀骜不驯的彭大元帅。毛似乎想亲自了解一下人们在饿肚子时对他的反应。他的火车这时正停在韶山附近，毛忽然决定回乡。
This was Mao's first visit home in thirty-two years, even though he had passed by the area frequently. The local authorities had built a villa for him, at his express wish. Pine Hill No. 1, situated in pine woods, had been on standby for years. They had also evicted any “undesirable” families years before, to prevent them from getting near Mao—or bumping into visiting foreigners.
三十二年了，这是毛第一次回乡，尽管他的火车经常路过韶山。地方上早给他盖了别墅，叫“松山一号”，随时恭候他的驾临。韶山的“阶级敌人”也早都迁走，怕他们撞上毛，或前来瞻仰的外国人。
Mao stayed two nights in Shaoshan. Having invited complaints, he got them aplenty. The harvests, the villagers told him, had been inflated. Those who had made objections had been put through denunciation meetings and beaten up. An old man inquired whether it was Mao's idea that men and women should live segregated lives in barracks conditions (which had come with the communes in many parts of China). Above all, they were hungry, as they were getting only between one-third and one-quarter of what was traditionally considered enough in this area. When Mao gave a meal to several dozen villagers, they wolfed it all down unceremoniously.
毛在韶山住了两个晚上。他要乡亲们对他“讲真话”，乡亲们也就壮胆说了些心里话：亩产收成夸大，说实话的挨斗挨打。一位老人质问：“现在吃食堂，搞集中，男男女女要分开住……像个什么世道？”人们讲得最多的，还是吃不饱饭。从前韶山是“一身一口，七担二斗”，折合九百二十五斤粮一年，现在吃粮数不到从前的三分之一。这还是在毛的故乡，享受各种特殊照顾。毛请大家吃饭，他们狼吞虎咽地把桌上的饭菜一扫而空。
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.
乡亲们的真话，没有一句支持毛的政策。但毛也看得很清楚，再牢骚满腹，人们也不敢指责他，有的还得以歌颂他的形式发怨气，说：“您老人家的政策到下面就变了卦。”“主席，要是您不回，我们都快饿死了呀！”有个年轻人敲着饭钵诉苦：“饭钵叮当响，餐餐吃四两[老秤四两折合新秤二点五两]，做事没有力，全都懒洋洋。” 毛把脸一沉对他说：“现在还有三四两，总比过去吃百家饭（指乞讨)好吧？”虽然毛的话根本不是事实(他从前说韶山人“易于致富”)，可是没人敢顶撞他。接着他文不对题地下指示：“忙时多吃，闲时少吃，搞好节约，计划用粮。”没人敢问他这指示从何落实。毛针对村民的意见对随行的省委书记大言不惭地说：“这是在告你的状，这些是你管的范围，你要把这些意见记起来。”做了替罪羊的书记也只能默默地听着。
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.
毛的造神运动已使他凌驾于众怒之上。民不聊生，人们仍对他欢呼万岁，他跟将近三千人握了手，手都握红肿了。“松山一号”别墅的一个年轻服务员很有代表性。她回忆道：毛来的时候，招待所所长把她叫去，要交给她“一个最好的光荣的任务”--洗毛的内衣裤。她想：
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 …
“毛主席的衣服，不得了的。一定要把它洗好。衣服一身都汗湿透的，都黄了。我想到毛主席，世界人民的领袖，生活是这么的艰苦。衣服是丝绸的，我伯搓，就轻轻地揉，洗坏了怎么交得了差。晒出去我怕让别人看到，看到就怕搞破坏。我坐在办公室，坐一下，就到外面去看一下，随时去摸一下。没有电，不能电烫，我就把它放在玻璃板下压。”“我现在一穿衣服就想到毛主席。”
一九六0年五月十八日，当毛再次经过此地时，四百七十名工人冒着八级大风，架上了通往韶山的电线，以备毛回韶山，可是毛没有回去。
Mao left Shaoshan with no doubt that he would come out on top against Peng.
毛泽东以必胜的信心上了庐山。
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:
长江边一千五百公尺高的庐山是古人学道求仙的地方，生活在这里也有些飘飘欲仙的味道。山里的云时聚时散，时浓时淡，从峡谷里奔驰而上，一瞬间便把街上的行人包裹起来，路边闲谈的人会忽然失去了对象。有时可见一朵白云从一扇开着的窗户飘進来，转个弯儿从另一扇窗户飞出去。“不识庐山真面目，只缘身在此山中”， 苏轼的着名诗句再贴切不过地形容出庐山的变幻莫测。
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.
十九世纪后期，欧洲人最先看中了庐山作避暑之地。从山下难耐的湿热上得山来，人全身立刻一爽。在庐山的中心牯岭，各式西洋风格的别墅有八百多座。蒋介石把这里作为自己的“夏都”， 常住在一幢原属于英国人的别墅里。一九四八年夏天，他最后一次来，把别墅以他夫人“美龄”的名字命名为“美庐”，叫石匠把他题的字刻在大门外的岩石上。
“美庐”如今成了毛的下榻之处。毛这是第一次上庐山。一天他看见石工在锉去“美庐”二字，连忙摆手制止。
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.
蒋介石是坐滑竿上山的。中共修了条七、八公里长的环山公路。毛的车要上公路时，从山顶到山脚所有车辆一律不许通行，他居住期间全山封山，远近老百姓都被临时迁走。毛的保安措施之严密，远超过蒋介石。“美庐”他嫌不够安全，另造了一幢巨型仓库似的毛式建筑，防弹防炮，取名“芦林一号”，紧挨着水库，以便毛随时游泳。“芦林一号”是在大饥荒最严重的时期修建的。
In the face of raging mass starvation, Mao made a point of generating a holiday atmosphere at Lushan. Participants had been specially instructed to bring their wives and children. (For many of the children, this was their first experience inside European villas, whose flush toilets and stone walls mesmerized them.) The food was excellent; even the staff canteen served more than half a dozen dishes at each meal. In the evenings, there were local operas chosen by Mao, and dances in a former Catholic church, with dancing girls bussed in. At least one of the dancers and one of the resort nurses were summoned to Mao's villa “for a chat.”
毛把庐山会议称作“神仙会”， 要一百多名与会者来“读书”， 畅所欲言地谈“国内形势”，“放松一下”，把妻子、孩子也带来。第一次住進欧式建筑的孩子大开眼界，领略了石头墙壁和抽水马桶。天天饭菜丰盛，连工作人员用餐每顿也有八、九个菜。晚上不是看戏就是跳舞，戏有毛亲自点的《思凡》、《惊梦》之类，舞厅设在天主教堂，歌舞团的伴舞女郎由大客车载着上山。起码一个女演员和庐山疗养院的一个护士，很快在夜间被召到毛的住处“谈话”。
Mao's womanizing was now more brazen than ever. In Zhongnanhai, a new lounge was added to the dance hall, and a bed installed there. Mao would take one or several girls into it to engage in sexual play or orgies. The lounge was well insulated so the noise did not carry, and the thick floor-to-ceiling velvet curtain would be drawn behind them. It was obvious what Mao disappeared in there for, but he did not care.
WHEN PENG arrived at Lushan for the conference, he was stopped as he entered the villa area by guards with little flags: “Group One”—code-name for Mao—was resting. Peng had to get out and walk. His villa, No. 176, was about 100 meters from Mao's—so Mao's security men could monitor him easily.
彭德怀被毛点名上庐山开会。汽车行至牯岭路口，警卫人员举旗示意停车，说“一组”(毛的代号)在休息，请彭和其他中共领导人下车步行。为彭挑选的一百七十六号别墅，离毛的别墅只有一百多公尺，与彭德怀来往的人尽入眼底。
The conference of over 100 top officials began on 2 July 1959. Mao's first tactic was to split the participants into six groups, each chaired and controlled by a trusted provincial chief, who reported directly to Mao. Discussions were confined to these groups, so any unwanted views would have only a restricted audience. The rest of the participants could find out only what Mao wanted them to read in the conference bulletin, which was printed by his office.
会议一九五九年七月二日开场。毛一开始不开全体会议，把与会者按管辖数省的行政大区分成六个小组，每组由他信得过的大区第一书记执掌，把谁说了什么直接向毛汇报。凡是不利于毛的声音，都无法越出小组之外。想知道其他小组的人说了些什么，只能通过“会议简报”。简报由毛控制，只登毛想要人看的，其余一律不登。
When Peng spoke to his group, the Northwest Group, he voiced his views about the Leap, raising the issue of the phantom harvest claims, and basically called Mao a liar: “The growth figure claimed by … Chairman Mao's home place for last year was far higher than the real figure. I was there and asked around and learned that the increase was only 16 percent … and even that was because the state gave large subsidies and loans.”/“The Chairman has also been to this commune. I asked the Chairman: What was your information through your investigation? He said he didn't talk about it. I think he did.”
彭德怀被分配在西北组。从第一次发言起，他就把批评矛头直指大跃進，直指虚假的收获数字，差一点说毛撒谎：“毛主席家乡的那个公社，去年搞的增产数，实际没有那么多，我去了解实际只增长百分之十六……国家还给了不少帮助和贷款。主席也去过这个社，我曾问主席，你了解怎么样，他说没有谈这个事。我看他是谈过。”
Peng spelled out Mao's responsibility again the next day: “The 10.7 million [tons of steel, the 1958 target] was decided by Chairman Mao. You cannot say he didn't have responsibility.” Over the following days, Peng called into question Mao's role in the villa-building spree, and warned that Mao “must not abuse his prestige.” Peng also hit out at Mao's policy of squeezing out food for export “at the cost of domestic consumption.”
第二天他又提到毛的责任问题：“一千零七十万吨[一九五八年钢铁指标]是毛主席决定的，难道他没有责任？” 以后的发言里，他要么抨击毛的腐化(“好多省都给毛主席修别墅”)，要么告诫毛不要为所欲为：“滥用这种威信是不行的。”他反对为了出口而剥夺老百姓，说“农村四个月不供油”不行，不能搞“内销服从外贸”。
But, as Mao had made sure would be the case, Peng's words did not percolate beyond his group. In frustration, on 14 July, Peng wrote a letter to Mao, criticizing the Great Leap Forward, using carefully phrased language. His hope was that this would set off a real debate about the Leap. Mao circulated the letter to the other participants, only to turn it into an excuse to purge Peng.
但是，正如毛算计好的，彭的这些话都只有小组的人听见，简报上一字未登。毛不开全体会议，使彭没有机会把他的意见传达给与会者。彭一天比一天沮丧，感到会开得不死不活。十一日下午，彭突然接到会议秘书处通知，说会议就要结束。这增加了他的急切心情，要把自己对大跃進的意见在会议结束前让与会者知道。第二天，他坐下来给毛写信，十四日送交毛。信的语气比小组发言温和得多。他希望这样一来，毛能把信印发与会者，大家读了信后能响应他，促使毛改变大跃進政策。
这封信也正是毛所想要的，他要以此为题目来清洗彭。十六日，毛把信印发了大会。
Mao had been watching Peng like a cobra to see whether Peng was involved in any conspiracy, which was the only way Mao could really be threatened. He wanted to know who was coming to see Peng so he could round them all up.
毛已经对彭观察了两个星期，看彭跟谁来往，他好“一锅端”。
In fact, Peng had put out some feelers. He knew that Lo Fu, the former Party No. 1, was opposed to Mao's policies, and Peng had asked Lo to read the letter he was sending to Mao. But Lo declined; and when Peng tried to read it out to him, Lo jumped up and fled. Mao had instilled such fear about “plotting” that people were simply paralyzed when there was any whiff of it. Under Mao, as under Stalin, only one person was allowed to plot—and that, as Stalin's sidekick Molotov observed, was the boss.
彭德怀曾想过找同盟军。他知道张闻天也反对毛的政策，曾请张闻天看他给毛写的信。张怕被说成是搞阴谋，不敢看，彭便念给他听。张听了一段，借故仓皇离去。毛把“搞阴谋”跟“里通外国”一样定为滔天大罪，其实毛自己才是“搞阴谋”和“里通外国”的大师，要不然他哪里有机会進得了紫禁城。正如斯大林的副手莫洛托夫所说，只有一个人允许搞阴谋，那就是大老板本人。
Mao brought all the participants together for the first time on 23 July. He opened in a characteristically thuggish, and plaintive, manner: “You have talked so much. Now allow me to talk for an hour or so, will you? I have taken sleeping pills three times and still couldn't sleep.” He made it sound as if someone had been preventing him speaking, and even sleeping. To create an atmosphere where rational debate would be smothered and he could evade the real issues, Mao worked himself into a rage, and belittled the catastrophe his policy had caused with remarks like: “All it means is a little less pork, fewer hairpins, and no soap for a while.” Then he unsheathed the ultimate deterrent. If I am opposed, he declared, “I will leave … to lead the peasants [!] to overthrow the government … If the army follows you, I will go up the mountains and start guerrilla warfare … But I think the army will follow me.” One general recalled: “We felt the atmosphere in the hall freeze.” Mao had polarized the issue into one of: Peng or me; and if you back Peng, I will fight you to the death.
七月二十三日，毛出其不意地首次召开全体会议。大会采取临时通知的办法，使任何人都没有机会串联。毛一上来就说：“你们讲了那么多，允许我讲个把钟头，可不可以？吃了三次安眠药，睡不着。”这口气好像是有人不让他讲话。毛用这种蛮横不讲理的架势说话，为的是造成一种吵架的气氛，使得任何理性的辩论都不可能。他故作发火状，把大跃進的灾难轻描淡写地说成是：“无非是一个时期猪肉少了，头发卡子少了。没有肥皂……”接着他亮出了杀手锏：要是不听他的话，“那我就走，到农村去，率领农民推翻政府。”“人民解放军跟你走，我就上山打游击。”“我看解放军会跟我走的。”毛这是告诉在座的：要么跟我，要么跟彭，你们跟彭，我们就兵戎相见，来个你死我活。
Everyone knew that Mao was unbeatable. He drove home the point about the army obeying him by arranging for his crony Marshal Lin Biao, whose prestige in the military was as high as Peng's, to appear at the conference the next day. Up to this moment, Lin had not been in Lushan itself; he had been on hand, lurking at the foot of the mountain.
人人都知道斗不过毛。连彭德怀本人也临阵怯场，没有站起来针锋相对地说明自己的观点。
When Lin got up to Lushan, he attacked Peng venomously, and gave Mao his total and demonstrative support. There was nothing Peng or anyone else could do to defy Mao or to reason with him. Mao had also made it easier for people to go along with him by pretending to make some concessions—on food extraction levels, steel output targets, and expenditure on arms factories—and by expressing a willingness to put some money into agriculture. Mao had no intention of honoring any of these promises, and was soon to renege on them all.
为了强调解放军会跟毛走，毛把他的老搭档、军中威望不亚于彭的林彪元帅召上山来。在随后的会议上，林彪说“只有毛主席能当大英雄”，“你我都是丘八”。毛拿出他惯有的软硬两手，一方面吓住人们，一方面摆出妥协的姿态，表示愿意降低征粮数量，减少钢铁指标，压缩军工投资，还答应给农业投资一点钱。所有这些让步他都在庐山会议后一一推翻。
Mao labeled Peng and other critics, including Chief of Staff Huang Ke-cheng and former Party No. 1 Lo Fu, as an “anti-Party clique.” He now enlarged the conference to a plenum of the Central Committee, so that his critics could be condemned more formally. Mao read out the resolution himself, and simply announced that it was passed, without even going through the motions of asking the participants to raise their hands.
毛把彭德怀和另外几位跟彭来往，并批评了他政策的人打成“反党集团”，有总参谋长黄克诚，外交部副部长张闻天，湖南省委第一书记周小舟。毛把庐山会议扩大为中央全会，以党的决议正式谴责他们。决议是毛念的，念完也不走走举手表决的过场，就自己宣布一致通过。
After the obligatory degrading denunciation meetings, Peng was put under house arrest, and the others suffered various punishments. Their families became outcasts with them. Huang's wife went out of her mind. The youngest and most junior of the group, Mao's occasional secretary Li Rui, went through nearly 100 denunciation meetings, and was then sent to do forced labor in the Great Northern Wilderness. His wife divorced him, and under her influence his children disowned him with a frosty letter, turning down his request to have a photograph of them. He spent virtually all of the next two decades in and out of forced labor camps and solitary confinement in prison, narrowly escaping a death sentence. This bravest of men emerged with his sanity, intellect, and moral courage undiminished, and continued to speak out against injustice in the post-Mao years.
几番批斗后，彭德怀被送到北京郊外的挂甲屯软禁，其他人也受到惩罚，他们的家庭一夜之间成了罪人。黄克诚夫人在严重打击下一度精神失常。这个“反党集团” 中最年轻的人是毛的秘书李锐，毛对他的惩处也最为严酷。他经历了近百次批斗会，然后被流放到北大荒劳动。妻子同他离婚。有次他想要张孩子们的照片，却收到这样一封回信：“你对我们还有感情，而我们要同你划清界线。照片现在不能给。”庐山会后二十年，他的生命大半在监狱、劳改农场孑然一身地度过，还被判过死刑。可是，一切折磨，一切痛苦，都未能摧毁这位顶天立地的人。在当今中国，他仍以他的才思智慧、敢做敢为，为中国人放声疾呼。
AFTER LUSHAN, Peng was replaced as defense minister by Lin Biao, who immediately started to purge Peng's sympathizers in the army. He also set about promoting Mao's cult on an even grander scale. From January 1960 he ordered the armed forces to memorize quotations from Mao—a move that was to develop into the compendium known as “the Little Red Book.” Mao was overjoyed. He later told the Australian Maoist Edward Hill that Lin “has invented a new method, that is, to compile quotations … Confucius's Analects is a collection of quotations. Buddhism also has collections of quotations.” Mao then mentioned the Bible. This was the company in which he thought his aphorisms belonged.
庐山会议后，林彪做了国防部长，在军队里清洗同情彭的人。林彪卖力推行毛的个人崇拜，一九六0年初，下令部队背诵毛著作中的“警句”， 这就是后来《毛主席语录》的开端。毛对林彪的做法大加赞赏，他对澳大利亚毛派领袖希尔(Edward Hill) 说：林彪“发明了一个新方法，就是编语录。”“孔夫子的《论语》是语录，佛教也有语录。”毛接着提到基督教的《圣经》。显然在毛看来，他说的话足以同这些不朽的经典媲美。
Across the nation anyone resisting hyper-requisition and slave-driving was hounded down. Over the next couple of years, according to post-Mao leader Deng Xiao-ping later on, an “estimated 10 million” people were made victims in this drive, which in addition jeopardized the life of “several tens of millions” of their relations. Many of the 10 million victims were grassroots cadres. Their replacements were people willing to slave-drive as harshly as ordered.
一场“反对右倾机会主义分子”的运动横扫全国，打击对象大多数是那些抵制从农民口中夺粮、相对心软的基层干部。邓小平一九六二年五月说：这次运动被整的“全国估计总有一千万，影响的人总有几千万”。替换他们的是心狠手辣的人。
One other group particularly persecuted in this purge cycle was doctors, for the reason that they had so often identified starvation as the true cause of the tidal wave of illness and death. Mao wanted to ensure that the gigantic tragedy he had created remained a non-event. Even the names of diseases that suggested starvation were tabooed, like edema, which was just called “No. 2 Illness.” Years later, Mao was still flagellating doctors for doing their job professionally: “Why were there so many … hepatitis cases in [those days]? Weren't they all you doctors' doing? You went looking for them, didn't you?”
挨整的人中有医生，罪过是诊断出大批人生病死亡的原因是饥饿。医生王善身在被问到为什么浮肿病治不好，少了什么药时，说了一句：“少一味粮食！”他被开大会批斗，扔進监狱。浮肿病同饿饭有关系，连病名在不少地方也不准提，被隐讳地称作“二号病”。多年后毛还对医生们耿耿于怀，说：“困难时期为什么有那么多高血压，那么多肝炎，还不就是你们医生给找出来的！”
In the following year, 1960, 22 million people died of hunger. This was the largest number in one year in any country in the history of the world.
庐山会议后的第二年，一九六0年，中国因人为的原因饿死二千二百万人。这在世界历史上从未有过。
LUSHAN ALSO SEALED the fate of Mao's ex-wife, Gui-yuan. Twenty-two years before, unable to bear his blatant womanizing and general callousness towards her, she had left Mao and gone to Moscow. In Russia she had a mental breakdown, and spent two years in a provincial psychiatric hospital where she went through a nightmare regime. She got out in autumn 1946, stable, if a little slow, and was allowed to return to China. She was banned from Peking, and in 1959, at the time of Lushan, was living nearby, in Nanchang. She had made a good recovery, but her life was lonely, as she lived on her own. She had not set eyes on Mao for twenty-two years.
毛的庐山一行也影响了他的前妻贺子珍后半生的命运。二十二年前，因为无法忍受毛跟其他女人胡搞，以及对她的漠不关心，子珍离开延安去了苏联。在那里，她精神崩溃，关進一家精神病院，过了两年与世隔绝、梦魇般的生活。一九四六年秋，她出院了，反应有些迟钝，但人恢复了正常。回国后，毛不让她進京，多年来她一人独居，没见过毛。
On 7 July 1959, while Mao was watching Peng before pouncing, he was seized by a whim to see Gui-yuan. He sent the savvy wife of a local boss to fetch her, but specifically asked the woman not to tell Gui-yuan who it was that she was going to see, and just to say that she was invited to Lushan for a holiday—because, Mao told the intermediary, Gui-yuan “could well collapse mentally if she got too excited.” Mao was well aware that Gui-yuan was in a fragile emotional state, and the shock might be more than she could take. Their daughter had told him her mother had had a relapse at the unexpected sound of Mao's voice on the radio in 1954 (one of the very rare occasions his voice was broadcast—for which the radio was reprimanded). He was prepared to risk her having a breakdown merely to gratify his whim.
庐山会议时子珍正住在山下的南昌。毛心血来潮，想见她一面。七月七日，他派江西省委书记的妻子接子珍上山，特地交代不要说是来见他，怕子珍“过于激动因而触发旧疾”。毛很清楚子珍禁不起情绪波动。女儿娇娇曾告诉他，一九五四年子珍偶尔听到收音机里传出毛讲话的声音*，当场发病，很久才恢复过来。
* 毛不允许播放他的讲话，事后电台受到查处。
Mao's selfishness cost Gui-yuan dearly. When she suddenly saw him standing in front of her, her nerves gave way. The damage was worsened by the fact that when Mao was saying goodbye he promised to see her again “tomorrow.” But the next morning she was forcibly taken back to Nanchang, on his orders. This time her breakdown was worse than ever. She did not even recognize her own daughter, and would not wash, or change her clothes. Every now and then she would escape to the gate of the provincial Party HQ, hair disheveled, drooling at the mouth, demanding to know who had schemed to prevent her from seeing Mao again. She never fully recovered.
毛只关心子珍见到他之前不要发病。使者受命哄子珍：“今年南昌太热，省委请你到庐山去休息几天。”子珍欣然前往，一路上说说笑笑，非常愉快。晚上九点钟，她被带進毛的住所，突如其来看见毛站在面前， 她精神当即失常。…跟毛分手时，毛说：“时间不早了，我们明天再见面，再谈谈。”
但转过身，毛下令第二天送子珍下山。子珍被强行送下山去。她不停地问：“为什么要让我下山？主席说好同我再见面的……”这次发病比以往任何一次都严重，连女儿也认不出来。在南昌，她不时蓬头垢面，神情凄惶地冲到省委的大门口，要找江西省委问个清楚，是谁从中作梗破坏她与毛的再次会面。有一天下着倾盆大雨，她浑然不觉地立在雨中，对着省委的大门。守门的战士说她是疯子，她身边的工作人员看到她病成那样，忍不住心酸落泪。从此，她在精神分裂症的反覆发作中，定完了余下的一生。
*At the end of these sessions, Mao victimized a host of prominent generals, to make the point that the top brass must keep their distance from the Russians. Mao's message was: The only thing you are to learn from the Russians is how to use modern weapons.
*Eastern Europe also allowed Peng to anticipate Mao's gruesome mausoleum. “We have seen the corpses of the leaders: Lenin, Stalin, Gottwald, Dimitrov. Every country has one. The Asian countries probably will also have these in the future.”
*When Albania broke with Russia, control of the submarines there was at the core of the bust-up. In January 1961, Peking gave the Albanian leader, Enver Hoxha, the gigantic sum of 500m rubles, and when the Russians tried to pull their submarines out in early June that year, Hoxha used force to hold four of them back, and almost certainly gave Mao access to them.
*Electricity was installed for Mao the next time he was nearby, on 18 May 1960. This took 470 workers, who had to battle a force-8 gale. Even so, Mao did not drop in again.