15

The weather in Guangzhou was unbearably hot. It was already June. Mao moved to Building 3, setting himself up in the spacious reception hall, where attendants brought five big barrels of fresh ice every day in an effort to keep him cool. The rest of us used electric fans, which only circulated the heat.

The mosquitoes had arrived. If we slept without mosquito nets, we were bitten. If we used nets, we suffocated. Mao, too, was bothered by the pests and accused his guards of not doing enough to get rid of them. But the guards passed the responsibility over to me. Mosquitoes might carry malaria, they said, and hence were a doctor's concern.

The problem seemed intractable. We were on an island, and the mosquitoes were breeding in the surrounding waters. The ceilings in the buildings were nearly fifteen feet high, and the windows were covered with heavy drapes. The mosquitoes hid in the curtains, emerging after sundown for their nocturnal attacks. Our efforts to eliminate them were hopeless. The problem wasn't solved until we ordered DDT from Hong Kong.

But the heat was still oppressive, and the staff was becoming restive. They wanted me to persuade Mao that the time had come to leave. “I don't mind the heat,” Mao said. “And there are still a few things I have to do here. Let's wait for a while.” I assumed that important political business was brewing. During Mao's absence from Beijing, the central leadership had begun publishing criticisms of “adventurism” in the editorials of the People's Daily, saying that industrial and agricultural production should advance with steady steps. The Chinese public surely did not understand at the time—nor, in fact, did I—but the “adventurism” the party leadership was attacking was Mao's own, for it was Mao who insisted on rapid collectivization and intensified industrial production.

Shortly after I had tried to persuade Mao to leave, Luo Ruiqing and Wang Dongxing came to see me, wondering whether the Pearl River was clean. I was taken aback. The Chairman had just announced that he intended to swim in three rivers—the Pearl in Guangzhou, the Xiang in Changsha, Hunan, and the Yangtze in Wuhan, Hubei. Luo Ruiqing and Wang Dongxing were convinced that Mao's plan was too dangerous, and so was the provincial leadership in the places where he wanted to swim. Tao Zhu said that the Pearl in Guangzhou was too polluted. Wang Renzhong was saying that the Yangtze in Wuhan was too wide and that its whirlpools were too dangerous. Mao was not listening. Now Luo and Wang wanted my official judgment on whether the Pearl River was too polluted.

I was certain the water could not be particularly clean. We were downstream from Guangzhou's industry. But without testing, I could not say how polluted the water was.

They wanted me to test the water for bacteria and pollutants and to report to them as soon as the results were in.

The next morning, before my tests were complete, one of Mao's bodyguards rushed in to fetch me. The Chairman was furious. “It's about the swimming,” the guard told me. Luo Ruiqing and Wang Dongxing were meeting with Mao. They wanted me there, too.

I went immediately, running into the two security officials, both flushed and perspiring heavily, just as I entered Mao's quarters. Wang smiled at me awkwardly. The test results no longer mattered. The Chairman was about to go swimming.

Just then, Mao emerged from his bedroom wearing a white robe, white swimming trunks, and a pair of leather sandals. He walked quickly toward the dock, arms swinging, and boarded a waiting yacht. Tao Zhu, Wang Renzhong, and Yang Shangkun were following close behind, and I ran to join them. Mao was showing that his determination was not to be challenged.

He had begun swimming as a child, using the pond on his father's property to learn, and was a good swimmer. Now, however, everyone responsible for his safety had tried to persuade him not to swim, but the more his security staff tried to protect him, the more he insisted on swimming. He was defying us all, telling us symbolically that it was useless to attempt to restrain him.

The yacht sailed upstream a short distance and stopped as four sampans immediately surrounded it. Mao descended a ladder over the side and plunged into the water, trailed by a squadron of twenty to thirty guards, followed by the other leaders. I plunged into the water after them, joining the protective circle around Mao. Mao's decision had come so unexpectedly that he was the only one wearing a bathing suit. The rest of us were in our underwear.

The river was more than a hundred yards wide, and the current was slow. The water, just as I had feared, was filthy. I saw occasional globs of human waste float by. The pollution did not bother Mao. He floated on his back, his big belly sticking up like a round balloon, legs relaxed, as though he were resting on a sofa. The water carried him downstream, and only rarely did he use his arms or legs to propel himself forward.

I was no swimmer and had to use all my energy just to stay afloat. Mao noticed my efforts and called me over to him. “You have to relax your body,” he instructed. “Don't move your arms and legs so much. When you want to change position, just move lightly against the water. This way you can stay in the water for a long time without so much effort. Give it a try.”

I tried, but to no avail. I had to move my arms and legs or drown.

“Maybe you're afraid of sinking,” he said. “Don't think about it. If you don't think about it, you won't sink. If you do, you will.”

Yang Shangkun and Wang Renzhong were faster learners. They, too, got swimming lessons from Mao and soon were floating along with him. Several years and many more tries in the ocean, in swimming pools, and in rivers would be necessary before I could master his style.

We floated down the Pearl River for nearly two hours, covering some six or seven miles. Then we took showers and had lunch on board the well-equipped yacht, joined by Jiang Qing, who had been observing our swim from the deck.

Mao was as elated as if he had just won a war. “You people told me that Dr. Li said this water was too dirty,” he said to Luo Ruiqing.

“Yes,” I interjected. “I saw human waste floating by.”

Mao laughed heartily. “If we tried to follow the standards of you physicians, we wouldn't be able to live. Don't all living things need air and water and soil? Tell me which of these things is pure? I don't believe there is any pure air, pure water, pure soil. Everything has some impurities, some dirt. If you put a fish into distilled water, how long do you think it would live?”

I was silent. Mao was clearly not going to accept my views on sanitation.

When I met with Mao again that evening it was clear that another spat was brewing between him and his protectors. “I want to swim in all three rivers,” he told me. “Luo Ruiqing and Wang Dongxing didn't want me to swim in any of them. After we swam in the Pearl River today, they still said that it's not a good idea to swim in the Yangtze—too many strong waves and whirlpools. If I'm trapped there, they say, no one will be able to rescue me. Tao Zhu didn't want me to swim in the Pearl, but he doesn't care if I swim in the Xiang. Wang Renzhong doesn't want me to swim in the Yangtze, but when I asked him if I could swim in the Pearl and the Xiang, he said that I could.”

The problem was one of jurisdictional responsibility. Luo Ruiqing and Wang Dongxing, responsible for Mao's safety wherever he went, did not want him to swim in any of the rivers. Tao Zhu, as first party secretary of Guangdong, did not want him to risk the Pearl. Mao's safety in the Yangtze was Wang Renzhong's concern.

“I don't need their protection,” Mao argued. “They don't even know what's going on in the water. So I've sent Han Qingyu and Sun Yong to do a test swim in the Yangtze and to report their findings to me.” Security officers Han Qingyu and Sun Yong were very good swimmers, among the coterie who always accompanied Mao into the water.

That Mao should swim in the Yangtze was truly unthinkable. It is the mightiest of China's rivers, the swiftest and most dangerous, with strong currents and whirlpools. Even boats have difficulty maneuvering. No one had ever swum in the Yangtze River before—not even the people who lived along its banks. But Mao wanted to swim the Yangtze anyway.

When Han Qingyu and Sun Yong returned from their test swim, both agreed that the Yangtze was much more dangerous than the Pearl. Anyone trapped in one of the whirlpools could not be saved. Moreover, the water was infested with snails carrying schistosomiasis, a debilitating disease.

Luo Ruiqing suggested to Wang Renzhong that he report the findings to Mao. But Wang wanted the two swimmers to tell him. Wang knew that Mao would not listen to him.

Luo Ruiqing instructed the two guards to tell Mao the truth. “Don't just tell him what we know he wants to hear,” Luo insisted. The two men agreed.

We all went together to see Mao. Han Qingyu, never very articulate, was so nervous to be brought before his great leader that he began squirming and stammering and couldn't talk at all. After a few false starts, Mao finally interrupted him.

“All right, don't say anything,” Mao ordered. “I'm going to ask you one question at a time. You answer each one as it comes.” Han became even more tense.

Mao began. “Is the river very wide?” he asked.

“It is very wide.” Han nodded.

“Are there many whirlpools?” Mao wanted to know.

“Many whirlpools,” Han responded.

“If trapped inside, is it possible to get out?” Mao continued.

“No, impossible to get out.” Han shook his head emphatically.

“It's not good for swimming?” Mao demanded.

“Not good for swimming,” Han agreed.

Suddenly, Mao pounded his fist on the table and exploded, “I bet you didn't even go into the water. How could you know? How can you serve as captain of our guards?

“Gun dan!” he yelled, using the vulgar phrase that roughly translates as “Get your balls out of here!” It is not language the Chinese people expect from their highest leaders.

Han's face turned ashen. He stood frozen in terror.

Again Mao exploded. “Gun dan!” he repeated.

Han backed out of the room. No one else moved.

Mao turned next to Sun Yong. “Now, you tell me what the Yangtze is like.”

Sun knew exactly what to say. “Chairman,” he responded immediately. “You can swim there.”

Mao smiled. Sun started trying to say something else, but Mao stopped him. “That's enough. Don't say anything more. Just get ready to go swimming.”

Wang Dongxing was furious with Sun Yong. “Why did you say that to the Chairman?” he demanded. “Didn't you agree to tell him the truth?”

Sun's face turned red. “Vice-Minister Wang,” he said. “Didn't you see what happened to Han? If I had said the same thing, he would have ordered me to get my balls out of there too. I can't help it.”

Han, too, confronted Sun, accusing his fellow officer of selling him out.

Wang Dongxing tried to reassure Han, promising to protect him from Mao's fury. But he could not. After we returned to Beijing, Han was transferred out of Group One. Sun Yong, who had both lied and betrayed his colleague, continued as one of Mao's guards and was promoted up the ranks.

It was late June 1956 and Mao was finally ready to leave. He wanted to go next to Changsha, the capital of his native province of Hunan, to test the Xiang River, where he had often gone swimming in his youth. We traveled on his special train.

The weather in Changsha was miserably hot, hovering around 104 degrees. Mao took his first swim the day after we arrived.

The Xiang River was reaching the flood stage and in some places was two hundred yards across. Mao's party, scores of people altogether, began approaching the river in a wide line from a road that ran parallel to the water. Suddenly there was a commotion ahead and to Mao's left. “Get him to a hospital,” people were yelling. Li Xiang, the director of Hunan's bureau of public security and the man in charge of local security arrangements for Mao, had been bitten by a water snake.

Mao was coolly unconcerned, but the protective circle of some thirty security guards tightened around him. Luo Ruiqing, visibly shaken, moved over to me. “Do you have medicine for snake bites?” he asked. I assured him that I did. He was not worried about Li Xiang, and I was not expected to offer medical assistance to the stricken official. My responsibilities were exclusively to Mao.

Luo Ruiqing wondered how there could be a snake on Mao's route and why the security people had not done a thorough check of the area.

But Mao had changed his plan at the last minute. The security staff had readied another site for his swim. They had no chance to clear the path he finally chose.

Mao's unpredictability only added to the burden of his security staff. Wang Dongxing decided that in the future, the security check for Mao's swims would have to extend ten li in either direction from the spot where Mao said he would enter the water.

The current of the Xiang River was much faster than that of the Pearl, but Mao swam the same way he had in Guangzhou, slowly moving to the center and floating downstream in the current. He floated to a small island in the middle of the river—Orange Island, it was called—a place he had visited in his youth.

As soon as he set foot on the island, one of the accompanying patrol boats landed, too. Mao's attendants brought him a robe and his sandals and a pack of cigarettes. The rest of us followed barefoot, wearing nothing but our swimming trunks. The orange trees for which the island had been named were nowhere in sight. Suddenly, some peasant children, who had recognized the Chairman, appeared and began to chant “Long Live Chairman Mao!” The security people tried to chase them away, but Mao insisted that they stay. He loved contact with the “masses.”

Only a few families lived on the island, and their houses were dilapidated.

Cigarette in hand, Mao walked up to an old woman in threadbare clothes and started a conversation. The old lady was concentrating on mending other garments that seemed equally worn out.

“How is your life here?” Mao asked. If the old lady knew she was being questioned by the chairman of China's Communist party, she gave no indication. She continued her work without bothering to respond. Mao repeated the question.

“Mama huhu,” the woman finally answered, not even bothering to look up. “So-so.”

A small crowd of island folk had gathered. Mao began talking about how he used to swim to the island when he was young. The place had been deserted then.

It was deserted when we went back several years later, in June 1959. Mao's unscheduled stop had so terrified the security personnel that immediately after he left, the provincial public security bureau and the soldiers of a nearby military unit had searched the island for “bad elements” and moved everyone away. They transformed the place into a magnificent park filled with orange trees—beautiful when they bloomed in autumn. I asked Li Xiang, the head of Hunan's public-security apparatus, what happened to the old woman, but Li said he did not know. He did know, of course. He was just not willing to say.

On the third day of our visit to Hunan, Mao went swimming again. All of us were trying to float like him, catching the river's current, when suddenly the hapless Han Qingyu, who had cautioned Mao against swimming in the Yangtze, got caught in a manure pit. Manure pits are usually right on the riverbank, but this one had been submerged when the river started to flood. Han was covered with human feces. Awful as it was, I had to join the others in laughing.

As Mao's doctor, though, I was concerned about the Chairman's health. I mentioned it to him that evening.

Mao laughed, pointing out again that the food we eat takes its flavor from the manure with which it is fertilized. “The problem is that the Xiang River is too small,” he continued. “I want to swim in the Yangtze. On to the Yangtze River!”

Within hours, we were on the train to Wuhan.

Wang Renzhong had made elaborate preparations for Mao's swim. We stayed again at the East Lake guesthouse. Wang had found an elegant steamer, the East Is Red Number One, which could accommodate two or three hundred people and had a large outer deck, many berths, a full bath, and plenty of toilets. Mao, the leaders accompanying him, and a swelling staff that included both his own and local security personnel, boarded the boat at a factory that had been emptied of workers and filled with security guards instead. As Mao boarded the East Is Red, eight boats filled with security people encircled it, moving together with the steamer out to the middle of the river. Four motorboats were patrolling a still wider radius, on the lookout for anything untoward.

As the steamer reached the middle of the Yangtze, just down-stream from the huge bridge that was then under construction, Mao descended the ladder and got into the water, the other leaders following. Immediately, some forty security guards formed a protective circle around the Chairman.

As I stepped from the ladder into the water, the rapid current immediately carried me some fifty yards downstream. I managed to keep my balance, floating with the water, moving my arms and legs as little as possible, trying to imitate Mao's style. The feared whirlpools were nowhere in sight, and after the initial shock I felt at the strength of the current, I was calm, floating effortlessly downstream, basking in the midday sun, as though melting into the warm brown water. The Yangtze was in flood, and from the middle of the river the banks were barely visible. It was a wonderful way to relax.

Suddenly I heard people on the East Is Red shouting and saw several small boats racing toward it. A number of sailors jumped into the water near the steamer. I moved closer to Mao to find out what was going on. But neither he nor anyone else knew.

Only when we got back on board did we learn that three-star general Chen Zaidao, the commander of the Wuhan Military Region, had decided to enter the water alone shortly after we left. But the rapid current frightened him and he tried to swim upstream back to the boat. The powerful current overwhelmed him, and he swallowed great quantities of water. By the time the sailors reached him to haul him out, he was nearly drowned.

After about an hour of floating, Luo Ruiqing and Wang Dongxing urged me to try to convince Mao to stop.

But Mao wanted to continue. “Swimming in the Yangtze River isn't so frightening after all, is it?” he asked.

“No, not this way,” I responded.

“It seems to me,” he continued thoughtfully, “that even the most difficult thing, the most dangerous thing, is not to be feared so long as one prepares for it well. Without good preparation, even an easy thing can create complications.”

I had to agree. But he was not just talking about swimming in rivers, I suspected. His words had other implications, too.

We floated for another hour. Again, Luo and Wang urged me to get Mao back on the East Is Red. We were about to reach the part of the river that was heavily infested with the schistosomiasis-carrying snails.

I told Mao. “What infested area?” he demanded. “They just want to get me back on the ship.”

“But two hours is enough,” I said. “A lot of people didn't have a chance to eat before we started. They must be very hungry by now.”

“All right,” he agreed. “Let's go back and eat.”

One of the sailors swimming with us estimated we had gone about fifteen miles, but I thought we had gone much further. The current was very swift. We both agreed that the swim had been effortless. We had not been exercising at all.

Yang Shangkun agreed. “This isn't swimming,” he said. “It's just floating with a little effort.”

Once Mao was finally on board, the leaders in charge of his safety breathed a collective sigh of relief. Wang Dongxing had been particularly worried. He wondered out loud what would have happened if it had been Mao rather than Chen Zaidao who nearly drowned. “I would have been accused of committing an unpardonable crime,” he said.

Sun Yong, who had assured Mao that the Yangtze was swimmable, was equally relieved. He knew that if anything had gone wrong, he would have lost his life.

Mao invited us to join him for lunch on the ship. He was exhilarated with his success, and soon the flattery began. Wang Renzhong poured a glass of wine for Mao. “Chairman, please have a drink,” he said. “It can keep you from catching cold.”

Mao laughed. “In this hot weather how could anyone catch cold?” he asked. “But let's have a drink anyway. Everybody can have a drink.” Taking a sip from his own glass, Mao turned to General Chen, who was still recovering from his ordeal. “Comrade Chen Zaidao, I think you need a drink. People normally swim with the current. Why did you try to swim against it?”

Chen was speechless.

Wang Renzhong began his fatuous flattery. “Chairman, we have been following you for many years but did not know you were such a great swimmer, a man of such strong determination. When you were young you said, ‘Struggle against heaven, struggle against earth, struggle against people—the happiness is endless.' This is really true. After swimming with you today, our happiness is endless. We have learned a great deal from the Chairman. I hope you continue to teach us more and criticize us more in the future.”

Luo Ruiqing, who had so strenuously opposed the swim, joined in. “We have been followers of the Chairman for a long time,” he said. “But we have not digested what we have learned from him. I am not one of those people Chairman has often talked about whose brains are as hard as granite. I can change myself.”

Yang Shangkun had not opposed Mao's swim but he had remained silent. Yet he had called our swim “floating with a little effort,” and I knew that he had been unimpressed with Mao's physical feat. Now he, too, joined the chorus. “Speaking of the strength of the Chairman,” he began with a smile, “no one can match it. No other world leader looks down with such disdain on great mountains and powerful rivers. But Chairman can. No one in history can match him.”

Even Wang Dongxing, who had done everything he could to prevent Mao from swimming, put his earlier objections behind him. “Chairman, we need to draw some lessons from this experience,” he said. “We should not just think about the problem of safety. We have to think about the great consequences of Chairman's actions for the whole nation. The people of our nation can draw lessons from Chairman's example: Think what used to be considered unthinkable, and do what used to be considered undoable.”

Mao basked in the praise. “Don't flatter me,” he protested, loving every word. “There is nothing you cannot do if you are serious about it. Remember, when you face something unfamiliar, don't oppose it right away. And if your opposition fails, don't be indecisive. Instead, make serious preparation for it. Comrade Wang Renzhong opposed my swimming before, but then he switched his position and made serious preparation for the swimming. That is the right attitude.”

Jiang Qing reserved her praise until everyone else had spoken. She had not wanted Mao to swim in the Yangtze. But when she saw how determined he was, and how angry toward those who opposed him, she shifted gears. “What's so dangerous about swimming?” she had asked in her cold, disdainful voice.

Looking at the guests with smug satisfaction, she now said, “In Guangzhou you people opposed the Chairman's swimming. You were scared to death. I disagreed with you. I am a supporter of swimming.”

“Only Jiang Qing completely supports me,” Mao often said. He was right. Jiang Qing always supported Mao in all that he did. She had to.

I looked around the table at the assembled guests, ranking leaders of the Communist party. I recalled Mao's remarks about his staff. “They are always competing with each other, courting my favor,” he had said. “They are good to me. I can make use of them.” But these leaders of the Communist party were also mere sycophants and courtiers. What use would Mao make of them?

The whole lunchtime conversation and the fawning of the assembled leaders would have been ludicrous if the comments had only referred to Mao's three-river swim. But the praise he was receiving had political implications, too. Mao's plans for China were grandiose, dangerous, and daring, and in insisting on the rapid transformation of China into a socialist state, he was defying the more deliberate and cautious central leadership. Mao's criticism of those who opposed the unfamiliar without thinking was a criticism of the conservatives in Beijing, too. The problems encountered in the course of rural collectivization and urban economic restructuring were the result of incomplete preparation, not the policy of socialist transformation itself, Mao believed. If Mao himself could defy received wisdom by swimming in dangerous rivers and emerge healthy and triumphant, so China could risk transforming the entire economic and social structure to reclaim China's glory and international prestige. And if China's central leadership would not support him in his grandiose plans, provincial leaders like Tao Zhu and Wang Renzhong would. Essential to his schemes was the cooperation of provincial and local-level leaders, hence his frequent departures from Beijing to muster the support he was not getting in Beijing. His trip in the summer of 1956 was thus a major success.

Mao governed China the way he swam, insisting on policies that no one else had ever imagined, dangerous, risky policies like the Great Leap Forward, the people's communes, and the Cultural Revolution, all of which were designed to transform China. In June 1956, the most grandiose and daring of his political schemes—the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution—were still years away. The ten grand monuments to his rule, constructed to celebrate the first ten years of the Communist party's “liberation”—including the Great Hall of the People and the Museum of Revolutionary History—had yet to reach the drawing board. But it was in Wuhan, after Mao's first swim in the Yangtze, that I began to have an inkling of how extravagant Mao's ideas were.

I joined Mao for a meeting with the director of the Yangtze Valley Planning Office, a man named Lin Yishan, while we were in Wuhan, where I learned of his plan to build a huge dam along the middle reaches of the Yangtze. Listening to Lin's description and looking at the design for the dam, I was aghast, doubly so because Lin Yishan was a veteran revolutionary, not a scientist or an engineer. The project was a huge engineering feat designed to transform the whole Yangtze River valley. The undertaking would require extraordinary scientific know-how, and the results, it seemed to me, were unpredictable. But Mao was enthusiastic. “The Three Gorges will be gone in the future,” he said to me, referring to the most famous section of the Yangtze, with its high peaks and swiftly flowing currents, its breathtaking scenery that has been honored in painting and poetry for centuries, “and only a great reservoir will be left.”

That evening, after our visit with Lin, Mao composed a poem to celebrate his swims, the rivers, and the daring of men determined to change the world.

After swallowing some water at Changsha

I taste a Wuchang fish in the surf

and swim across the Yangtze River that winds ten thousand li.

I see the entire Chu sky.

Wind batters me, waves hit me—I don't care.

Better than walking lazily in the patio.

Today I have a lot of time.

Here on the river the Master said:

“Dying—going into the past—is like a river flowing.”

Winds flap the sail,

tortoise and snake are silent,

a great plan looms.

A bridge will fly over this moat dug by heaven

and be a road from north to south.

We will make a stone wall against the upper river to the west

and hold back steamy clouds and rain of Wu peaks.

Over tall chasms will be a calm lake,

and if the goddess of these mountains is not dead

she will marvel at the changed world.

Nothing could stop Mao, not even the storm and waves from the central leadership in Beijing. Like Qin Shihuangdi, the founding father of imperial China, who had built the Great Wall, Mao too wanted a massive monument that would live for centuries after him. The dam to tame the mightiest and most famous of China's rivers was only one such project.

Scientists and engineers were later brought into the Yangtze River project. Knowing Mao's dream of a dam surely must have colored their recommendations. They ingratiated themselves with Mao by agreeing that the project was feasible. Truly conscientious scientists, I think, would not have acceded so easily. Later, honest scientists and engineers under the State Council and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference expressed their reservations, but the project was nonetheless approved, more than fifteen years after Mao's death, in April 1992.

Mao swam in the Yangtze for the next two days, emerging each time triumphant. After his third swim, he suddenly announced that we would return by train to Beijing immediately. It was already well into July. Because I was focused on the day-to-day safety of the Chairman and the internecine squabbling of his inner court, I had completely ignored the political battles that Mao was fighting even while he was away. I never asked what was happening, and I did not want to know. My responsibility was Mao health. My survival depended on keeping out of politics. I learned of the vast changes sweeping the country only through what Mao himself chose to tell me, from the party documents that passed my way, and from the reports that my friend Tian Jiaying, Mao's political secretary, provided me. With our return to the capital, my detachment would not be so simple.