PART ONE THE APPRENTICE

1 THE FOSTER CHILD OF THE BODHISATTVA

The South China village of Shaoshanchong, in Xiangtan county, Hunan province, sits in a narrow valley squeezed between hills covered with evergreen trees and rice paddies, the blue sky above. In the distance looms Shaoshan Mountain, which gave its name to the village and is particularly revered by Buddhists. A branch railroad runs from Changsha, the provincial capital, to the nearest town, which is also called Shaoshan. It takes the local train about three hours to traverse the hundred-mile distance. A line of buses parked in the broad square fronting the railway station awaits visitors. “Chairman Mao's birthplace! Chairman Mao's birthplace!” cry the conductors. A jolting, half-hour ride brings you to a village street, which takes you past flooded rice fields and lotus-filled ponds to a large, thirteen-room brick house cum museum. To the left and right are similar or slightly smaller typical peasant dwellings. The atmosphere is that of a typical rural community. A small village like so many others in Hunan, it is distinguished by being the birthplace of a man who changed the history of his country and whose influence is still felt throughout the world long after his death.

Many of the inhabitants of the village within this valley were surnamed Mao. This was where their clan had settled. All of the people named Mao traced their lineage back to the bold warrior Mao Taihua, a native of neighboring Jiangxi province who had left his native region in the mid-fourteenth century to take part in the campaign of the imperial army in Yunnan province against the Mongols, who had ruled China since the 1270s. The Mongols' main force was defeated by the rebel army of the monk Zhu Yuanzhang, who in 1368 proclaimed himself the emperor of a new Chinese dynasty, the Ming. There in distant Yunnan, Mao Taihua married a local girl and in 1380 took her and their children to Huguang (now known as Hunan), where they settled in Xiangxiang county, south of Xiangtan. Some ten years later two of his sons moved north to Xiangtan county and made their homes in Shaoshanchong. They were the progenitors of the Mao clan in Shaoshan.¹

The future supreme leader of China was born into one such family, that of Mao Yichang, on the nineteenth day of the eleventh month of the Year of the Snake according to the lunar calendar. By the official dynastic reckoning, this was in the nineteenth year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu, of the Qing (Manchu) dynasty, which had ruled China since 1644. The Guangxu (Bright Beginning) era had begun in 1875, proclaimed in the name of the young emperor Zaitian, who was then four years old, by his maternal aunt, the Empress Dowager Ci Xi. According to the Western calendar, the birth of a son, a joyful event in any Chinese family, occurred in the family of Mao Yichang on December 26, 1893.

Mao's father could hardly contain his happiness, but his mother was worried. The baby was very big, and she was afraid she might not be able to nurse him. She had already given birth to two sons who had died in infancy. Wrapping the newborn in swaddling clothes, she set off to see a Buddhist nun who was living in the mountains, and with tears in her eyes, asked her to look after the infant. But the nun refused. The baby looked very healthy, and there was no need to worry over him. The hermit nun, after recommending prayers to ensure the child's well-being, advised the distraught mother to keep her son. Snatching up her baby, the mother rushed off to her father's house in a neighboring district. There she stopped in front of a small temple perched atop a twelve-foot high rock dedicated to the Bodhisattva Guan Yin, the Goddess of Mercy. Prostrating herself, physically and emotionally exhausted, she prayed that the Bodhisattva would agree to become her son's foster mother.²

In keeping with tradition, the parents of the birth mother were quickly informed of the birth of the boy and a rooster was presented to them. If it had been a girl, they would have been given a hen.

The Chinese considered the nine months spent in the womb as the first year of life, so a baby was considered to be one year old at birth. An ancient ritual required that the newborn be swaddled in cloths sewn from his father's old trousers. More old trousers, supposed to absorb any kind of contagion, were hung above the cradle. The infant was bathed only on the third day, in the presence of guests who were allowed to view him for the first time. On the day of the infant's first bath, the father presented sacrifices to the spirits of the ancestors, and put an onion and ginger into the infant's hot bathwater, symbolizing mind and health. Picking up the infant, the mother handed him to the midwife who had assisted in the delivery. Holding the onion root to the baby's head, the midwife intoned, “First, be smart, second, be wise, third, be cunning.” Afterward she pressed a lock or a bar against the infant's mouth, arms, and legs, and said, “Be quiet.” A scale was placed on the infant's chest so that he would weigh a lot, and boiled eggs were placed against his cheeks for happiness. A red string from which silver coins dangled was tied around the infant's wrist. After a month the infant's head would be shaved, leaving locks of hair at the temples and the nape of the neck. This was an important event at which the infant was given a name. Guests again gathered, bringing gifts of money, pork, fish, fruit, and decorated eggs.

From time immemorial, parents had chosen names for their newborns with the aid of Daoist fortune-tellers. In accordance with tradition, Mao Yichang consulted the local geomancer, who advised him of the need to use the “water” sign in his son's name, because this was lacking in his horoscope.³ The wishes of the geomancer dovetailed with the imperatives of the clan's genealogical chronicle. Each generation had specific Chinese characters allotted to it that were supposed to be used in the given names of all the males of that particular generation. The given names themselves could be quite different, but all of them had to contain these common characters that denoted membership in the generation to which they belonged. In the generation of Yichang's newborn son (the twentieth generation of the Mao clan), this signifier was the character ze, the left side of which contains the three strokes of the “water” element. The character ze had a dual meaning: it signified moisture and to moisten as well as kindness, goodness, and beneficence. Mao Yichang chose dong, meaning “east,” as the second character of the infant's given name. The name Zedong was unusually beautiful—“Benefactor of the East!” At the same time, again in accordance with tradition, the child was given a second, unofficial name to be used on special, ceremonial occasions: Runzhi, which means “Dewy Orchid.” Mao's mother gave him yet another name, shi, or stone, which was supposed to protect him from all misfortunes and hint at his kinship with the Bodhisattva. Since Mao was the third son in the family, his mother called him shisanyazi, literally the Third Child Named Stone.

Mao Zedong was born into a small household. Besides his father and mother there was only his paternal grandfather. (Mao Zedong's paternal grandmother, named Liu, had died nine years before his birth, on May 20, 1884, when she was thirty-seven years old.) The family occupied only half of the house, the eastern or left wing. Neighbors lived in the other half. In front of the house were a pond and rice paddy and in back, pine and bamboo groves. Almost everyone in the village of some six hundred households was poor. Hard and exhausting work on tiny plots of land yielded little income.

Mao Zedong's paternal grandfather, Mao Enpu, had been poor his entire life, leaving his son debt-ridden. Mao Zedong's father, Mao Yichang, however, was able to wrench himself loose from poverty. An only child, Yichang was born on October 15, 1870. At the age of ten he was betrothed to a girl three and a half years older than him, named Wen Qimei. They were married five years later. Soon afterward, on account of his father's debts, Yichang was drafted into the local Xiang Army. (Xiang, the traditional name of Hunan, was named after the Xiang River, which flows through the province.) When Mao Yichang returned after a long absence, by spending his accumulated army pay he was able to redeem the land his father had lost, and became an independent cultivator. He was crude and irascible, but very hardworking and frugal. According to Mao Zedong's daughter, who evidently heard this from her father, Mao Yichang often repeated, “Poverty is not the result of eating too much or spending too much. Poverty comes from an inability to do sums. Whoever can do sums will have enough to live by; whoever cannot will squander even mountains of gold!”⁴ Yichang's wife, who was known in the village as Suqin (“Simple Toiler”)⁵ because of her industry and goodness, helped him make his way in the world. By the time Mao Zedong was ten, the year his grandfather died, Mao Yichang by dint of incredible exertions had managed to save up some money and acquire a bit more land.⁶ Eight years earlier, a younger brother, Zemin, was born, and a year after the grandfather's death, a third son, named Zetan. In addition to these children and the two sons who had died prior to Mao Zedong's birth, Mao's parents also had two daughters, but both of them died during infancy.

Mao's mother tried to imbue her sons with her own religious feelings. During his childhood and adolescence, Mao often accompanied his mother to a Buddhist temple, and she dreamed that her eldest son might become a monk. Mao's father, however, did not share her wishes, but neither did he object very much. He treated Buddha with secret respect, although he gave no outward signs of this. It happened that once, not far from the village, he had encountered a tiger on the road. Mao's father was terrified, but apparently so was the tiger. Man and tiger ran off in opposite directions. Mao's father interpreted this as a warning from on high. Always a religious skeptic until then, he now began to fear excessive atheism.⁷

Although Mao Yichang respected and feared Buddha, he thought it more useful for his eldest son to grasp the wisdom of Confucianism, the traditional philosophy derived from the sayings of the ancient philosopher Confucius (551–479 BCE) and his followers. China's political system was based on Confucian principles that demanded moral perfection from humanity. According to Confucius, people had to fulfill the sacred covenants (li) bestowed by Heaven, among which the most important were humanity (ren), filial piety (xiao), and virtue (de). Only by observing these Heavenly laws could one achieve the highest ethical ideal, the goal that Confucianism strived for.

Individual conscience determined whether one actually followed the teachings of Confucius, but as a practical matter it was impossible to have a career without knowledge of the sayings of the philosopher. An ability to juggle quotations from Confucius was necessary in order to receive an official post. Anyone who was unfamiliar with the Analects of Confucius and the other books of the classical canon, including the Mencius, the Great Learning, and the Golden Mean, was considered uneducated.

Therefore, not surprisingly, Mao's father, who had only two years of schooling, was eager for his eldest son to master Confucian learning. Yichang had lost a lawsuit regarding a hilly parcel of land because he had been unable to bolster his case with citations from Confucius. The court instead ruled in favor of the defendant, who had demonstrated his deep knowledge of the classics. Mao's daughter writes that her grandfather decided at that point, “Let my son become just such an educated man and stand in on my behalf.”⁸ Accordingly, Mao Zedong was sent to a private elementary school in Shaoshan, where he was required to memorize the Confucian classics.

Mao memorized the sayings of the revered philosopher for purely utilitarian reasons, to vanquish others in arguments by introducing an apt quotation at precisely the right moment, but the moral-ethical precepts of Confucius seem to have left not a trace in his soul. Mao's daughter recounts how her father once bested his own teacher in an argument. “One hot day,” she writes,

when the teacher was absent from school, Father suggested to his classmates that they go swimming in a pond. When the teacher saw his students bathing in their birthday suits, he considered this extremely indecent and decided to punish them. But Father parried with a quotation from the Analects in which Confucius praised bathing in cold water. Father opened his book, located the needed quotation, and read the words of Confucius out loud. The teacher now remembered that Confucius really had said this, but he could not lose face. Infuriated, he went to complain to Grandfather.

“Your Runzhi is absolutely unbearable. Once he knows more than me, I will no longer teach him!”

Mao was equally adept at deploying quotations from Confucius in his private disputes with his father, who constantly cursed his son for being disrespectful and lazy. Sometimes Mao won out, but usually the disputes ended badly for him. His father, who prized filial piety above all other Confucian principles, would thrash his son when he dared to contradict him. “I'll kill you, such a mongrel who respects no rules whatsoever,” he shouted at Mao.⁹ He also whipped his two other sons. Mao's mother trembled over her darlings and tried to defend them, but usually failed.

The family conflicts, the cruelty of his father, and the defenselessness of his mother, whom he greatly loved and pitied, inevitably affected the character of Mao. He grew into a passionate and proud rebel no less stubborn than his father, whom he greatly resembled.¹⁰ Although irritated by his father's stern temper, Mao himself became increasingly harsh, bitter, and headstrong.

His stubbornness may have had ethnopsychological as well as family roots. The Hunanese, who season their food with liberal doses of hot red pepper, are famous throughout China for their hotheaded temperament. “Hot like their food,” is the way they're usually characterized.

Many years later Mao provided a semifacetious Marxist explanation for the conflicts within his family. In July 1936, when he granted the American journalist Edgar Snow's request for an interview, he said:

As middle peasants then my family owned fifteen mou [1 mou or mu is one-sixth of an acre] of land …… my father accumulated a little capital and in time purchased seven more mou, which gave the family the status of “rich” peasants …… .

At the time my father was a middle peasant he began to deal in grain transport and selling, by which he made a little money. After he became a “rich” peasant, he devoted most of his time to that business. He hired a full-time farm laborer, and put his children to work on the farm, as well as his wife. I began to work at farming tasks when I was six years old. My father had no shop for his business. He simply purchased grain from the poor farmers and then transported it to the city merchants, where he got a higher price. In the winter, when the rice was being ground, he hired an extra laborer to work on the farm, so that at that time there were seven mouths to feed …… . He gave us no money whatever, and the most meager food …… . To me he gave neither eggs nor meat.

Somewhat later, Mao, laughing, added,

There were “two parties” in the family. One was my father, the Ruling Power. The Opposition was made up of myself, my mother, my brother, and sometimes even the laborer. [Mao was referring to his brother Zemin, since his brother Zetan had not yet been born.] In the “United Front” of the Opposition, however, there was a difference of opinion. My mother advocated a policy of indirect attack. She criticized any overt display of emotion and attempts at open rebellion against the Ruling Power. She said it was not the Chinese way …… . My dissatisfaction increased. The dialectical struggle in our family was constantly developing.

Quarrels between a father and his eldest son were uncommon. Mao even got into fierce disputes with his father in the presence of others, an unthinkable display of impudence. In his interview with Snow, Mao said of his father, “I learned to hate him.”¹¹

Mao's thrifty father gradually made his way in the world, buying up the land deeds of other peasants and managing to amass a rather considerable fortune, some two to three thousand Chinese silver dollars. The majority of Chinese peasants lived in grinding poverty. Generally speaking, late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century Qing China was an extremely backward, wild, and medieval country. Capitalism was just in its infancy and had not yet made a serious impact on society. Contemporary capitalist enterprises were established in places like Shanghai, Tianjin, and Wuhan, far from Shaoshan. Only in these few cities was there growing economic prosperity. In the villages life went on as it had since ancient times. The vast majority of peasants expected no benefits from the market. In the autumn they typically had to sell part of the grain they needed themselves, at heavily discounted prices, to profiteers like Mao's father to pay off their debts. In the spring, when prices had risen, they then had to buy back a like amount of grain, suffering severe financial losses in the process, just in order to avoid famine.¹² Paupers and the rural underclass, including vagabonds, homeless beggars, and other riffraff, who made up a significant part of the population, roughly 40–45 million out of a total population of about 400 million, were particularly ill-disposed to ordinary businessmen and traders. A full tenth of the Chinese population was poor and unemployed.¹³ These were the people who contemptuously referred to peasants like Mao's father as tuhao (masters of land) or bloodsuckers. Since in the cities there were few modern enterprises that could offer employment to those who wanted it, the great mass of the population was confined within its native places. There at least some of them could find odd jobs, especially during the rice-planting and rice-harvesting seasons. But most of them had no such luck. Hordes of ragged and filthy people wandered along the rural roads, begging for alms. In the market squares one often saw peasants holding signs, offering to sell their young daughters, and sometimes their sons, whom they had brought with them in woven willow baskets.

Many peasants joined mafia-type bandit gangs like the Triad Society and engaged in robbing the tuhao. Cruel insurrections were a common occurrence not only in Hunan, but in other provinces as well.

In the cold winter of 1906, the district of Pingxiang, about 150 miles from Shaoshan, was in the throes of a vast insurrection begun by the Hongjiang (Prosperity) society, a branch of the powerful Hongmeng (Red Brotherhood), which had branches in many provinces in south and southeast China. Particularly active on the border between Hunan and Jiangxi, between Shaoshan and Pingxiang, it sought to overthrow the alien Manchu dynasty (Qing), which had conquered China in the middle of the seventeenth century, and restore the previous Ming dynasty. The members of the society—the “Brotherhood of the Sword,” as they styled themselves—were bound by a unique religious ritual that was kept hidden from the uninitiated. They were obligated to help each other in all circumstances, and they believed in magical Daoist and Buddhist exorcisms as well as in shamanism and sorcery. They practiced martial arts in the belief that a series of physical and spiritual exercises (wushu and qigong) would render them invulnerable.

Staging an insurrection in Pingxiang, the Hongjiang society openly proclaimed its goals via two slogans: 1) “Overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming,” and 2) “Destroy the rich, help the poor.” Rumors about the uprising quickly spread through the neighboring districts of Jiangxi and Hunan. Armed with sabers, spears, and swords, the rebels terrorized the surrounding districts, attacking the homes of the tuhao and pillaging the lieshen (literally, the evil literati), the term the poor peasants applied to the wealthy rural gentry. They made off with the money and supplies of the relatively prosperous peasants and held wild orgies in their homes. A portion of the stolen goods was distributed to the poor. After ten days government troops suppressed the uprising, but the local people were unable to calm down for a long time. Zhang Guotao, a native of Pingxiang, who was then nine years old and who became later one of the founders of the CCP and Mao's chief rival in a power struggle, sympathized with the insurrectionists, but was terrified nonetheless. He remembered the scene this way:

People came and went on the road—some empty-handed, others carrying things—all in silent haste. But we three youngsters encountered nothing exceptional as we trudged along. After five li [a li is about .3 miles] we arrived at a small general store that the Wens owned …… the shopkeeper cautioned us against walking it alone …… Since he tended the shop alone and could not leave it to accompany us, he suggested that we eat there and spend the night. We were only too happy to accept his warm invitation.

It must have been about midnight when a crowd of hefty drunken men carrying sabers dragged us from bed and stood us on a counter …… brandishing sabers at us. “Chop off the kids' heads and wet our battle flags in their blood,” some yelled. “They'd be nice to try our sabers on,” bawled others. “Don't kill them,” still others suggested. “Tie them up and cart them off, and let their families ransom them back with big shiny silver dollars.”

The shopkeeper tried desperately to save us. Pleading that we be allowed to go back to sleep, he promised them wine, food, and everything else in the shop. And because he belonged to their gang, as we learned later, they listened to him. Pandemonium continued for a while; but they left us alone at last, and we crept back to the bedroom. As our terror gradually subsided, we reentered the village of slumber.¹⁴

Similar rebellions occurred in other places, including Changsha, the Hunan provincial capital. In Shaoshan members of the Elder Brother Society, soon joined by other poor peasants, rose in rebellion. Demanding relief from the rich peasants, they began a movement under the slogan “Eat rice without charge!” “My father,” Mao recalled, “was a rice merchant and was exporting much grain to the city from our district, despite the shortage. One of his consignments was seized by the poor villagers and his wrath was boundless. I did not sympathize with him. At the same time, I thought the villagers' method was wrong also.”¹⁵

The rebels were brutally suppressed. A new governor quickly ordered the arrest of the leaders of the uprising, many of whom were decapitated, their heads displayed on poles for the edification of future would-be rebels. Troops were also sent into action against the Elder Brother Society in Shaoshan. Their leader was caught and also decapitated.

Executions in China were public. Criminals were dressed in sleeveless vests on which “bandit” or “murderer” was written in black characters. Their arms were tied behind their backs and they were paraded around the city or the countryside in open carts, preceded by soldiers bearing arms or sabers. People crowded around both sides of the procession. Many of them accompanied the cart along its entire route. Escorting the condemned in this fashion, the soldiers finally threw the condemned from the cart onto the jam-packed square. One of the soldiers, handing his saber to a comrade, would approach the criminal, kneel before him, and ask forgiveness for what he must now do. This was to protect himself from possible revenge by the soul of the imminent victim. This ritual also allowed the condemned to preserve face by giving him a last modicum of respect. The condemned man was now made to kneel, and the soldier cut off his head with one swift blow. After this, the crowd dispersed. Village life was rather dull, so a spectacle like a public execution was of genuine interest. It was particularly appreciated if during the procession the condemned exhibited bravery by singing songs or shouting slogans. Then someone in the crowd would be sure to say, “Hao! Hao!” (“Bravo! Bravo!”).

Violence begot violence. It was in such an atmosphere, in a society where human life was worth nothing, where people labored unceasingly day after day just to make ends meet and in the hope of escaping poverty, that the character of Mao Zedong, Zhang Guotao, and many other future communist revolutionaries was forged. Peasant rebellion, as Mao himself acknowledged, produced an indelible impression on him during his childhood and influenced him throughout his life.¹⁶

According to Mao himself, Chinese literature, above all historical novels dealing with uprisings, rebellions, and insurrections, also had an enormous influence on his worldview and consciousness. He read over and over again such works as The Biography of the Ever Faithful Yue Fei, Water Margin, The Romance of Sui and Tang, The Three Kingdoms, and Journey to the West, books describing the feats of legendary knights, warriors, and adventurers as well as the leaders of popular rebellions. They praised the ideals of brotherhood among warriors and affirmed the cult of physical strength. Their heroes sounded the call to rise up against traditional ways.¹⁷

Mao's mother prayed in vain to the Bodhisattva. Her beloved son will not follow the holy noble path of the Most Gracious Buddha, but rather the road of blood, violence, and revolution. The ethical philosophy of Confucius, the great humanist, will also leave him cold. “I knew the Classics, but disliked them,” confessed Mao to Edgar Snow.¹⁸ Already in early childhood, under the influence of his despotic father, incendiary literature, and his surroundings, he concluded that open rebellion was the only way to defend one's rights. If you remained humble and obedient, you would be beaten over and over again.¹⁹

¹. See Jin Chongji, ed., Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]) (Beijing: Zhongyang wenxian chuban she, 2004), 1; Shaoshan Mao shi zupu (The Chronicle of the Shaoshan Mao Clan), vol. 1 (Beijing: Quanguo tushuguan wenxian sowei fuzhi zhongxin, 2002), 181.

². See Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 1; Ma Shexiang, Hongse diyi jiazu (The First Red Family) (Wuhan: Hubei renmin chubanshe, 2004), 4–5; Mao Zedong shenghuo dang'an (Archives of Mao Zedong's Life), vol. 1 (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi chubanshe, 1999), 60.

³. Philip Short, Mao: A Life (New York: Henry Holt, 1999), 19.

⁴. Li Min, Moi otets Mao Tszedun (My Father Mao Zedong) (Beijing: Izdatel'stvo literatury na inostrannykh yazykakh, 2004), 87.

⁵. “Anketnyi list na Mao Tszeduna zapolnennyi ego bratom Mao Tszeminem v Moskve 28 dekabria 1939 goda” (Questionnaire about Mao Zedong Filled Out by His Brother Mao Zemin in Moscow, December 28, 1939), Rossiskii gosudarstvennyi arkhiv sotsial'no-politicheskoi istorii “Russian State Archive of Social and Political History” [hereafter RGASPI], collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 1, sheet 265.

⁶. See Jin, Mao Zedong zhuan (1893–1949) (Biography of Mao Zedong [1893–1949]), 2.

⁷. Edgar Snow, Red Star Over China (London: Victor Gollancz, 1937), 131.

⁸. Li, Moi otets Mao Tszedun (My Father Mao Zedong), 89.

⁹. Ibid., 90.

¹⁰. Ibid., 89.

¹¹. Snow, Red Star Over China, 127–29.

¹². For more details, see A. V. Pantsov, Iz istorii ideinoi bor'by v kitaiskom revoliutsionnom dvizhenii 20–40-kh godov (On the History of Ideological Struggle in the Chinese Revolutionary Movement, 1920s–1940s) (Moscow: Nauka, 1985), 12–25.

¹³. Statistical data from V. G. Gel'bras, Sotsial'no-politicheskaiia struktura KNR, 50–60-e gody (The Social-Political Structure of the PRC in the 1950s and 1960s) (Moscow: Nauka, 1980), 27, 33–34, 38.

¹⁴. Chang Kuo-t'ao, The Rise of the Chinese Communist Party 1921–1927, vol. 1 (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1971), 2.

¹⁵. Snow, Red Star Over China, 132–33.

¹⁶. Ibid., 132.

¹⁷. Ibid., 130.

¹⁸. Ibid., 129.

¹⁹. Ibid.