12

It was only when I began traveling with Mao that I began to understand the lavish and wasteful arrangements that were always made on his behalf. No measure to protect his safety and health was too great. His comfort and happiness were paramount. I knew that the arrangements for Mao's safety were elaborate, but in Zhongnanhai the security measures were so routine I barely noticed them. When we traveled, the extravagances became obvious.

Mao traveled constantly. He was rarely in Beijing. He never felt at home in the “northern capital.” He was a southerner by both inclination and birth, and Guangzhou (Canton), Hangzhou, Shanghai, and Wuhan were his favorite cities. He would travel for months at a time, returning to Beijing only for mandatory appearances on May Day and National Day and for visits with foreign guests. He traveled whimsically, too. If in the morning he decided to visit Hangzhou, we could be on our way by afternoon. Even those of us traveling with him were not told his ultimate destination, and though Mao might know about the trip well in advance, we were ordinarily informed only the night before. The security staff was afraid that word of his impending departure might leak. Rarely did we have more than a day or two to prepare.

He traveled ordinarily in his own private, elegantly appointed train, eleven cars in all. It was housed in a special shed far away from the central Beijing train station, another way of assuring that his arrivals and departures took place in the utmost secrecy. Mao and Jiang Qing each had a separate car, though Jiang Qing traveled with us only once. A third coach served as the dining room and kitchen. Mao's quarters were luxurious, outfitted with one of his huge wooden beds and a large supply of books, which took up much of the space.

Four dormitory cars crammed with bunk beds housed Mao's bodyguards, the armed guards from the Central Garrison Corps, the railroad staff responsible for maintenance, and his personal staff—photographers, confidential aides, and the chef who always accompanied him. Another car served as their dining room. One car was filled with emergency medical equipment, and another was a spare.

My only complaint about the train was the absence of air-conditioning, which made for sweltering summertime travel. But in the early 1960s Mao got a new train, built in East Germany and extremely luxurious, with recessed lighting, every conceivable modern appliance and, of course, air-conditioning. On the new train, Wang Dongxing, Mao's confidential secretary Lin Ke, and I had our private car, sharing a common living room. We had our own individual living compartments, which were large and comfortably furnished, each with a washbasin, table, bed, and hot running water.

Similarly astounding were the security precautions along the route. All train traffic along the entire rail line was stopped for the duration of Mao's journeys, and traffic throughout the country would often become so snarled that schedules did not return to normal for an entire week. Train stations, ordinarily teeming with frenzied travelers and vendors hawking their delicacies, were cleared of all but security personnel. Coming into empty train stations, seeing only sentries along the platforms, was always an eerie experience. When I and other members of the staff commented to Wang Dongxing on the unnatural absence of vendors, he arranged to add reality to the scene by having security personnel pose as vendors.

The leadership of each province through which Mao's train passed was responsible for the Chairman's safety while he was there, and each province provided a special driver and engine for that leg of the trip. When the train passed through a province, the local director of provincial public security had to be on the train until the next province was reached. Then the director of public security of that province would replace the previous one. In addition to guards from Beijing, who traveled on the train and stood watch nearby when it stopped, the provincial public security bureaus also provided troops to protect the route, and hundreds of sentries were posted at regular intervals, one every fifty meters, along the entire way. I once spoke to the director of a local security office on the rail line between Beijing and Manzhouli—the town on the Manchurian border with the Soviet Union—who had stood watch during Mao's return from Moscow in January 1950. For two weeks in the dead of winter several hundred miles of the rail line had been guarded around the clock by soldiers and militiamen stationed every fifty meters. The guard himself had crouched for two weeks in a ditch along the route. Everyone knew that some top-ranking leaders would be passing through, but only much later did they learn that the train had been carrying Mao.

Mao had no schedule when he traveled, because the train moved only when he was awake and stopped while he was asleep. Since his sleep patterns were erratic, so was the progress of his train. When he slept, the train would pull into sidings within the walled compounds of military airports, railway yards, or factories. Protecting him was easier that way, and the factories were always emptied before his arrival.

Occasionally, Mao would fly. The first plane trip I took with him was in the summer of 1956. After he spent the winter working on Socialist Upsurge in the Chinese Countryside, visiting Hangzhou and Shanghai, and trying to push his plans for rapid agricultural collectivization, he wanted to fly—just for the experience of flying, he said. Mao had flown only once before, in August 1945, when U.S. ambassador Patrick Hurley brought him by American plane from Yanan to Chongqing to participate in the ill-fated negotiations between the communists and the nationalists aimed at preventing the outbreak of civil war.

Everyone responsible for his security was nervous about the flight, and the safety precautions were especially elaborate. Minister of public security Luo Ruiqing worked directly with the head of the Chinese air force, General Liu Yalou, to select, test-fly, and equip the plane—a Soviet-made LI-2, reputed to be the safest of the Soviet models.

On the morning of our departure, General Liu came personally to escort Mao and his entourage to the West Garden (Xiyuan) military airport in the western suburbs, not far from the Summer Palace. All air traffic everywhere in China was grounded for the duration of our flight, and several fighter planes patrolled our route. There were four planes in the entourage. Luo Ruiqing, Yang Shangkun, Wang Dongxing, and a coterie of secretaries, security guards, and aides took off first in another Soviet-made plane, an IL-14. Mao's two drivers, his chef, a photographer, two “food technicians,” and more security guards were divided between two other planes. Other members of his staff, a retinue of some two hundred people, had been sent ahead on Mao's special train, together with his car—a bulletproof, armored Soviet-built luxury “ZIS” limousine built specially for him. His car was thus there to whisk him from the airport to his villa in Guangzhou, and the train sat in a shed at the White Cloud airport in case Mao should decide to continue his travels by rail.

Mao's plane, the LI-2, was small, with a single propeller. The original twenty-four seats had been removed and the entire interior remodeled. In the front were a bed, a small table, and two easy chairs for the Chairman. At the back were four other comfortable chairs for those of us accompanying him—two bodyguards, a confidential secretary, and me.

Air force colonel Hu Ping was our pilot.

“So I must trouble you with this flight,” Mao greeted Colonel Hu when we boarded the plane, summoning his usual charm to put the pilot at ease.

“It is my great honor and good fortune to fly for Chairman,” Hu Ping responded. I would soon discover a strong correlation between the flattery Mao received and the speed with which the flatterers were promoted. During the Cultural Revolution, Hu Ping rose to become chief of the headquarters of the air force general staff. In 1971, however, he would be implicated in Lin Biao's plot against Mao and jailed, and all record of his service to the Chairman expunged.

We made the journey in two legs, passing time in the air by studying English. Around noon, we stopped in Wuhan for lunch. We were greeted by an impressive array of local leaders, including provincial first party secretary Wang Renzhong and Wuhan municipal party leader Liu Kenong, who hosted an elaborate banquet in a magnificent guesthouse that had been a villa of Chiang Kai-shek's. Located on the city's scenic East Lake, the villa was just across from the famous Wuhan University, and the waiters, trained by the British and French in the foreign hotels that had been a feature of Wuhan before 1949, were gracious and attentive. The Wuchang silver carp, a favorite of Mao's, was delicious.

The trip gave me an opportunity to witness the elaborate flattery Mao received wherever he went, and Wang Renzhong's was particularly extravagant. “Stalin and the Chairman cannot be compared,” he said to Mao. “Stalin killed so many people. But our party not only tolerated your rival Wang Ming but tried to maintain unity with him.”

Mao responded warmly. “Of course we have to differentiate between contradictions within the ranks of the people and contradictions between us and the enemy,” he said. “When dealing with contradictions within the ranks of the people, we must never arrest and kill people at random.”

“This is possible only under the Chairman's leadership,” Wang responded in what seemed to me to be calculated praise. Wang's political star continued to rise until the Cultural Revolution. He became one of its deputy directors when the movement began, plunging from grace only after insulting Jiang Qing by making a public speech without her explicit approval.

We arrived at Guangzhou's White Cloud airport at about six that evening, where our greeting was no less impressive. Guangdong's first party secretary, Tao Zhu, was there, together with provincial leader Chen Yu. Peering through the windows of the limousine to catch my first glimpse of Guangzhou as our cavalcade sped through, I was struck by the dirt and the clamor. Trash was strewn everywhere, and sewage flowed through the streets. The noise was a combination of the singsong chattering of Cantonese and wooden thongs clacking against the pavement.

Mao's presence in Guangzhou was a closely guarded secret, and the staff of Group One was sequestered, prohibited from leaving our enclave, making phone calls, or receiving visitors or mail. Our occasional letters home were sent through special couriers outside the regular mails. Only days before we left did Wang Dongxing finally send us sightseeing, with members of the Guangdong provincial security bureau as our guides.

Mao's comfort was second only to his safety.

The practice of confiscating elegant old villas and building new ones for the exclusive use of the party elite had begun shortly after the liberation of Beijing, when Yang Shangkun's General Office had five villas constructed for the top five leaders—Mao, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Ren Bishi—in the Jade Spring Hills (Yuquanshan), near the Fragrant Hills. A swimming pool was added for Mao, built under the specifications of his non-swimmer guardians Luo Ruiqing and Wang Dongxing. With Mao's safety their paramount goal, the two security officers specified that the pool be only the length of two bathtubs and barely knee deep.

Mao was furious at being presented with such a useless toy, and his fury was only further fueled when the irrepressible Peng Dehuai spoke out at a politburo meeting against using state funds to indulge Mao's private pleasures. Mao used his private funds to reimburse the state for the pool's construction, but he never went near the villa.

The confiscation and construction of villas and pools continued in Beidaihe. In 1950, Yang Shangkun's General Office began expropriating old mansions there, assigning one villa to each of the ranking leaders. A brand-new one—designated Building 8—was constructed especially for Mao.

Then new villas started cropping up in other provinces, with provincial leaders competing to build the structure most closely in tune with Mao's tastes.

There were miscalculations. Assuming that modern was best, many provincial leaders provided Mao with soft Western-style mattresses and sit-down toilets. Mao countered by traveling with his own hard wooden bed and insisting on a squat-style privy. Even when he went to Moscow in 1949–50, Mao took along his own wooden bed, and during his visit in 1957 he squatted over a bedpan because the toilets in the Kremlin were all of the sitting variety.

Tao Zhu had been one of the first of the provincial leaders to construct a luxurious new villa for Mao and Jiang Qing, and he had been guilty of fewer miscalculations than other provincial leaders. Mao liked to visit Guangzhou.

The Islet (Xiao Dao) guesthouse where we stayed was a complex of villas situated on a small island flanked by two branches of the Pearl River. The grounds were luxuriant with sweetly scented flowers, banana trees, and tropical plants.

Three buildings at Xiao Dao were reserved especially for Mao. One was Dr. Sun Yat-sen's old villa, but because Tao Zhu considered it too small he had another, Building 1, constructed. It had separate bedrooms for Mao and Jiang Qing, with a spacious meeting room, large enough for showing movies, in between. A third building was for recreation, reading, and dining, and an Olympic-size swimming pool was built later. Villas 4, 5, and 6, located nearby, were ordinarily reserved for Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and Zhu De. In June 1956, Luo Ruiqing, Yang Shangkun, Wang Dongxing, Mao's secretary Lin Ke, and I were housed there.

Security was always tighter in Guangzhou than elsewhere. Tao Zhu, Luo Ruiqing, and others in the public-security apparatus feared some sort of hostile intrusion from Hong Kong. The British colony, some ninety miles away, was teeming, they believed, with Guomindang spies and other subversive agents intent on doing the Chairman in. Armed soldiers from the Central Garrison Corps were posted all over the island. All river traffic was stopped, and patrol boats constantly circled, alert to possible intruders. With all this protection, the place was eerily silent. Only the tropical birds continued to sing.

Wang Dongxing's Central Garrison Corps had sent an entire company to Guangzhou, so Mao's retinue from Beijing alone totaled some two hundred people. Most were housed eight to ten to a room in a Guangdong public security bureau building located just at the end of the bridge that joined the islet with the mainland.

With such a large entourage, the capabilities of the Guangdong public security bureau and the staff at the Islet guesthouse were taxed to the limits. There was not enough space, equipment, or kitchen staff to accommodate us all. Mao's separate kitchen was well equipped and sanitary, posing no great difficulties in either health or management. The Chairman's food was flown in daily from Giant Mountain Farm in Beijing and prepared by Mao's chef. Mao often sampled the fine fruits and vegetables and the fish of Guangdong, but he still preferred his oily, spicy Hunan food to the more subtle Guangdong fare.

But the kitchen serving the security guards posed a real problem. There were no refrigerators, and with food for two hundred people sitting around in the heat, the risk of food poisoning was great. The trash was also difficult to manage, and garbage was an invitation to rats and disease.

Wang Dongxing assigned some of the personnel from Beijing to assist the Guangzhou kitchen staff, and a system for sanitation and purchasing and handling food was set up. I was put in charge of all medical work.

Wang Dongxing and Luo Ruiqing endeavored to shield Mao from the troubles his elaborate security staff were causing, but the Chairman could not help but notice. “You've got guards all over us, as if you're getting ready to confront a major enemy,” he complained to Wang Dongxing. “You want to do everything yourself, as if you don't trust the local leaders, much less the masses.” Mao never felt the same sense of threat as his security personnel. The masses, he knew, loved him. Who would want to do him harm?

Shortly after we arrived, Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, Zhu De, and Chen Yun also began arriving, followed by provincial and local-level leaders. Mao had called a meeting. The top leaders took up residence in the Islet guesthouse, and I moved to the public-security building across the bridge. The provincial and local-level leaders were scattered in several different guesthouses managed by the Guangzhou Military Region and the Guangdong provincial government.

Tao Zhu hosted a banquet to welcome the new arrivals, inviting Mao as guest of honor. Cantonese cuisine was one of the country's national treasures, he said, and he hoped that Mao would give it a try. But Mao could not be bothered by such social niceties and declined the invitation, deputizing Wang Dongxing, Ye Zilong, and me to represent him. He wanted me to report on the banquet.

An hour and a half before the banquet was to begin, I received a visit from Tian Chou, the chief of the office staff for the Central Bureau of Guards. He was alarmed. The food analysts had found cyanide in the food. The kitchen had been quarantined and the staff forbidden to leave. Wang Dongxing told me to go to the kitchen immediately.

When I arrived, the seven banquet tables were already elegantly set with white tablecloths, awaiting the arrival of the distinguished guests. I went to the laboratory in the room adjoining the kitchen where the two food analysts from Beijing were testing the various delicacies, the rice, and the drinks that were supposed to be served at the banquet. They were tense and perspiring heavily, but relieved to see me and anxious for my advice.

The deputy director of the Guangdong public security bureau, a man named Su, explained that the backgrounds of the people working in the kitchen had been checked many times and no one seemed to have any political problem. But he was worried. Hong Kong, with its thousands of spies, was too close. Maybe some “bad element” from there had managed to sneak in and slip poison in the food.

Only the bamboo shoots contained cyanide. The other dishes were fine. Bamboo shoots are a delicacy in China, and these had been grown right in one of the guesthouse gardens. I had fresh bamboo shoots dug out for further testing. Again the test showed a trace of cyanide. I ordered a car and went immediately to the library at Sun Yat-sen Medical College, a short drive from the guesthouse. Bamboo shoots, I discovered, naturally contain a trace of cyanide, but well within safe limits.

Tao Zhu was delighted with my discovery. Grinning, he took my hand and thanked me profusely, promising to honor me with a toast at the banquet.

The deputy director of the Guangdong public security bureau also thanked me profusely. “You have done us a great favor,” he said. “A moment ago Secretary Tao was so upset he was going to discipline me and my staff. Now the whole thing has been cleared up, and the banquet can be held on time. Without you, we would have had a terrible problem on our hands.”

When I stood up at the banquet to thank Tao Zhu for his toast, he turned to Wang Dongxing and repeated the old Chinese adage “a powerful general commands no weak soldiers.” Wang was delighted with the compliment, proud that his choice of me to serve as Mao's doctor had been so publicly vindicated.

I went to see Mao as soon as the banquet was over. He was lying in bed reading a history of the Ming dynasty. I told him the story of the cyanide. He blamed the Soviet Union.

“I don't think it's such a great idea to copy everything indiscriminately from foreign countries,” he said, referring to the food-tasting system, which, like the elaborate security arrangements, had been copied from China's big brother. “Now they're doing this food tasting not only in Beijing but in other parts of the country, too. It upsets everyone for no reason. Tell Wang Dongxing to stop it.”

Wang was irritated that I had talked to Mao.

If I hadn't told him, someone else would have, I said. I knew that every time I greeted Mao he would begin by asking, “Any news?” and wanted to hear what was happening within his staff. If he had heard about the cyanide from someone else, the story could have been distorted, and he would have blamed me for not telling him sooner.

Wang knew I was right. And he knew he would be forced to institute changes in Mao's food-supply system.

Shortly thereafter, the two food laboratories and the tasting service in Beijing were abolished, and the Central Bureau of Guards turned management of the Jushan farm over to the city of Beijing. But the changes were largely cosmetic. Most of Mao's food continued to come from Jushan farm, even though the supply station was authorized to purchase Mao's food not only from there but from several other markets as well.

When I told Mao about the changes, he smiled. “When I say ‘Learn from the Soviet Union,' we don't have to learn how to shit and piss from the Soviet Union too, do we? I'd rather not learn from the Soviet Union. I want to learn from the United States.”