Back in Beijing, Mao began pulling me more tightly into his circle. His confidence in me was growing, and he wanted me to become more politically involved, serving not only as his doctor but as one of his secretaries, too. “My health is okay,” he said, “and your work is not so heavy. I think you are a good person.” He wanted me to play a role similar to that of Lin Ke. In addition to reading Reference Materials, the daily top-secret compilation of reports from international news agencies, Mao wanted me to make my own political investigations, write reports, and offer him advice.

I did not want the job. If I were to serve as Mao's secretary, I would be sucked into an unpredictable and dangerous political maelstrom. I still did not understand politics and I did not want to become involved. Wang Dongxing encouraged me to accept Mao's offer. With me as one of Mao's secretaries, Wang's own links to the Chairman would be tighter. But I knew that the other staff members in Group One would become even more jealous of me, and their sniping and bickering would intensify. The envious would lie in wait, ready to pounce on my slightest mistake. The prospect was frightening. My life was precarious enough with my work confined to medical matters. As Mao's secretary, I would be in perpetual danger. I had to refuse his offer.

I explained that I had no competence in administration and that I could never be as good a secretary as Lin Ke. I wanted to continue as his doctor.

Mao did not give up. He began showering me with personal favors, sucking my family in, too. As the summer of 1956 progressed and the time for our yearly sojourn in Beidaihe approached, he suggested that my two little boys come with us to the seaside resort.

I objected. My younger son was just an infant, and John, the older one, was not well behaved. All the high-ranking leaders would be in Beidaihe. It wouldn't look right for me to take my children.

“You're too cautious,” Mao admonished. “No wonder Jiang Qing says you are too reserved. If children like Li Na, Li Min, and Yuanxin can come, why can't yours come, too?”

Mao's favoritism put me in a difficult position within Group One. Ye Zilong and Li Yinqiao were clearly displeased. “Then take them along,” Ye had said without enthusiasm, a bite to his voice, when I told him Mao's suggestion. The situation made me uneasy.

Wang Dongxing thought I had to do as the Chairman said, but he was worried about the morale of the security personnel if I took my children along when others could not. He suggested that I get the Central Bureau of Health to make the arrangements. That way the security guards would make less of a fuss.

I still had two masters—Wang Dongxing and his Central Bureau of Guards and the Central Bureau of Health. Since most of China's ranking leaders summered in Beidaihe, medical staff from the Central Bureau of Health went with them to run a clinic for the leaders and their staff. The Central Bureau of Health staff agreed to take my children on the train with them to Beidaihe. In the end, though, I only allowed my elder son, John, then six years old, to go. Erchong stayed in Beijing with Lillian and my mother.

Before we left, Jiang Qing suggested to Wang Dongxing that I tutor Li Min, Mao's nineteen-year-old daughter by his second wife, He Zizhen, while we were in Beidaihe. Li Min was honest, simple, well mannered, and polite, but not very bright. She had spent World War Two in the Soviet Union, and her education had suffered there. In 1956, she was a high-school student and needed help with mathematics, physics, and chemistry. Wang Dongxing, without consulting me, agreed that I would become her tutor.

I had no objection to tutoring Li Min. But Jiang Qing's requests did not stop there.

Jiang Qing had heard that my wife's English was very good, Wang Dongxing told me. She wanted Lillian to tutor Li Na in English. Wang had agreed to that request, too.

I was shocked. For me to teach Li Min was one thing, but for Lillian to tutor Li Na was quite another. Li Na was Jiang Qing's daughter, sixteen years old, but I found her caustic and mean, not merely lacking in basic good manners but downright rude. Lillian was a kind and gentle woman. How could she manage Li Na?

Wang Dongxing insisted. “I already promised Comrade Jiang Qing. Please don't let me down.”

I was firm. “No,” I reiterated. “Lillian is extremely busy with her work.” One of my wife's former professors had arranged for her to work with the Foreign Affairs Association, and she was often away escorting foreign delegations around the country. “She is not a member of the party. It would be inappropriate for her to come and go at the Chairman's residence. Besides, her parents were landlords and her brothers and sisters are in Taiwan. She has serious political problems.”

Wang insisted. Luo Ruiqing and the security apparatus had already cleared her for the work.

I became adamant. “I have enough problems as it is,” I said. “I can't let Lillian work here, too. That would make things even more difficult for us.”

Wang was growing increasingly irritated. “Don't you trust our party leadership?” he shot back. “Minister Luo and I both agreed, but you refuse. Don't you know you are making things difficult for us, too?”

“It is not my intention to make things difficult for you,” I responded. “But you know as well as I that Jiang Qing is an extremely difficult woman. Li Na is mean and brash. Then there are people like Ye Zilong and Li Yinqiao who spread rumors and create trouble for nothing. My wife is a simple, gentle person. She would have no idea how to cope here in Group One.”

Wang was still annoyed. “Okay,” he said. “Don't you bother about this. I'll talk to your wife myself. Tell her to come see me.”

I rushed home as soon as I could, imploring Lillian not to agree. I urged her to explain to Wang Dongxing how busy she was. “You get home late every day,” I reminded her. “You have no time. Be firm.”

She agreed and went immediately to see Wang. I waited anxiously for her return.

She was calm when she came back an hour later. Just seeing her allayed my fears. “We had a good talk,” she began. “I told Vice-Minister Wang about my work—about all the foreign visitors I am responsible for hosting, about how I often accompany them on tours to different parts of the country. I explained that it would be impossible for me to commit myself to any specific time for Li Na.”

I was relieved. “You spoke very well,” I complimented her. “What did he say?”

“He listened to me carefully. He agreed that the assignment would be difficult. He said we could discuss the matter later. That's all.”

“Your wife is a very busy person,” Jiang Qing commented when I saw her the next day.

“She certainly is,” I agreed. “She has to host so many foreign guests. She comes home late every day.”

Jiang Qing nodded. “Let's talk about tutoring Li Na later. Can you start tutoring Li Min?”

“Yes,” I agreed. “For two hours a day.”

I left with Mao for Beidaihe, traveling on his special train, in late July 1956. Mao and Jiang Qing again set up residence in Building 8; Jiang Qing's sister, Mao's two daughters, and his nephew, Yuanxin, lived in a villa once owned by Zhang Xueliang, the man who had held Chiang Kai-shek hostage in 1936 and who was then under house arrest in Taiwan. Lin Ke and I stayed in Building 10.

Beidaihe was charming. Lillian and I had been there in 1954, in what turned out to be our last vacation together for more than two decades, and we had fallen in love with the place. Beidaihe had originally been a tiny fishing village on the coast of the Bohai Gulf, in northern Hebei. Sometime after the Opium War, the British had developed it into a beautiful summer resort, connecting the town to Beijing by train. The village had continued to prosper even after the British left, as Chinese officials and wealthy businessmen came to build their own villas, and the town now bustled with restaurants and shops. The red-brick British-built villas, set in the midst of evergreens, were outlined against the blue and white of the sky. The ocean was a kaleidoscope, too, its color changing, so the local fishermen told us, with the color of the various schools of fish swimming through. We were all particularly fond of the fish that turned the waters a shimmering silver.

When Lillian and I had been there, we would wake at two or three in the morning, when the tide was at its furthest ebb, and wade out in the sand to collect mussels and seashells. At around four in the morning, the fishermen would begin selling their morning catch, and we would buy our food for the day. The crabs were especially good, but Lillian and I liked the kind of flounder the Chinese call bimuyu. The eyes of the bimuyu are both on the same side, and we remembered the Chinese love poem about the two bimuyu swimming out to sea together.

The weather during this visit with Mao in 1956 was a marvelous respite from the heat of Beijing. A gentle, misty, salty sea breeze blew in every morning and evening, and those times of day were particularly pleasant and cool. Just in front of our villa was a smooth, sandy beach stretching east and west some seven miles, and we could see colorful, old-fashioned fishing junks bobbing in the distant horizon. Four lush plum trees, dripping with fruit, stood in front of our building, and the egg-sized purple plums were cool and sweet and free for the picking. Mushrooms were another delicacy of Beidaihe, and after a rain, we would organize small delegations to scour the forest for the big, sweet mushrooms, redolent of pine, that would spring up in the damp. We would present our chef with a bagful to be mixed with dried shrimp, and he would make a rich, delicious soup. Mao never liked our fresh mushroom soup, but Jiang Qing loved it.

The whole place was enchanting, and our routine was relaxed. There were movies every night, including the latest foreign films, and Mao hosted dancing parties on Wednesday and Saturday evenings in a big hall with an outdoor deck just at the edge of the beach. Liu Shaoqi and Zhu De would occasionally join the dances, too. I would tutor Li Min for two hours in the morning, then go swimming with Mao in the afternoons, accompanied by a whole squadron of security guards and assorted staff from the General Office—thirty or forty people in all. The security staff had set up a raft some two thousand meters offshore, where Mao would rest for a while, sunning himself, before swimming back to the beach.

Beidaihe was often hit by violent summer thunderstorms, and the surf would stay rough long afterward, completely submerging the raft. Mao insisted on swimming nevertheless, and Wang Dongxing and Luo Ruiqing seemed to have given up trying to prevent him. I had to swim with him in the rough and choppy waters—an exciting, often frightening experience. The waves would lift us up and toss us into the air, then slam us down to the bottom of the sea, and I would fight my way back to the surface, gasping for breath. Often, I would exhaust my strength swimming in the direction of Mao's raft only to be thrown back to the beach in one quick flip of a wave.

“Don't you think it's fun to do battle with the wind and the waves?” Mao would ask after such adventures.

“I've never had this experience before,” I would answer, not sure that I wanted such excitement again.

“It's like ‘riding the great wind and breaking the powerful waves for ten thousand miles,' ” Mao would insist.

The ocean was infested with sharks, and Mao's security staff had erected a net just beyond the raft to keep them out. Occasionally the security personnel would actually catch a shark, and they would put it beside the path to the beach to make certain Mao saw it, a silent warning against swimming out too far. Wang Dongxing knew that if Mao were actually cautioned against swimming beyond the nets, he would insist on taking the risk. Silently displaying the captured shark was much more effective.

Mao would stay at the beach, reading documents or talking with other party leaders, until late in the afternoon, protected from the sun by a canvas awning that served as his lounge.

My son John adjusted quickly to life in Beidaihe and was soon having the vacation of his life, becoming strong and tan. The security guards befriended him, taking him swimming in the afternoons and to the movies at night. Li Min liked him, too, and often played with him and kept him company. He stayed with me, making my bed neatly each morning and seeing that our clothes were clean. He was not so naughty after all, and I was proud that he behaved so well.

The other top leaders were also in Beidaihe, but Liu Shaoqi and Zhu De were the only two I saw regularly. Mao's presence was inhibiting to the other leaders, and they kept separate lives, swimming at their own beach and holding their own dances in the East Hill facilities set up by the State Council. Rarely did they venture into Mao's section of town. I never went to visit them, either, for Mao expected our undivided devotion and worried that if we were in contact with others, his secrets might be revealed.

Zhu De, though, seemed unaware that Mao was still angry with him and would often come to the beach when the Chairman was there, sometimes joining Mao under the awning for a chat. The former commander in chief did not know how to swim but would often go into the water with a life preserver. He was a fan of Chinese xiang chess, and when other players were scarce would invite my son to play. He was unfailingly polite and friendly to me, always solicitous of the Chairman, invariably asking after Mao's health, wondering whether the Chairman was busy and if he had been sleeping well.

Liu Shaoqi—tall, lean, silver-haired, and slightly stooped—was the only other party leader who often came to the beach while Mao was there. He usually arrived at about three or four in the afternoon. Reserved, dignified, and very alert, Liu Shaoqi was then Mao's chosen successor, the number-two man in the party, in charge of day-to-day domestic affairs. Mao and Liu worked closely together, but they were comrades rather than friends and rarely met in Beijing, communicating instead through party documents. When the party center composed a document for Mao's approval, it would first be sent to Liu, who would write his own comments and recommendations in the margins before sending the document, via the Bureau of Confidential Communications, on to Mao. Mao would then write his comments and return the document to Liu for implementation.

Wang Guangmei, the latest of Liu's several wives, usually accompanied him to Beidaihe. Like many of the leaders' wives, Wang was much younger than her husband. She was then about thirty and had thick black hair, an oblong face, and slightly buck teeth. She was not pretty but was attractive and very outgoing and enjoyed the limelight. Wang Guangmei would greet Mao warmly whenever she saw him and sometimes swam with him out to the platform. Jiang Qing made little effort to hide her displeasure with Liu's wife and I sensed a certain jealousy toward her. Wang was much younger than Jiang Qing, and far more relaxed and sociable. Jiang Qing always seemed ill at ease at the beach. She had never learned to swim and was embarrassed that her right foot had six toes. She kept her feet covered with rubber shoes even when she waded into the ocean.

Liu had numerous offspring from his several marriages, and a number of them were also at Beidaihe that summer. Liu Tao, a sixteen- or seventeen-year-old daughter of Liu's former wife, Wang Qian, was also very active and outgoing and friendly to Mao. She, too, would occasionally swim with him out to the raft and at the twice-weekly dancing parties often asked Mao to dance. She asked in innocence, and Mao never took the same liberties with Liu Tao that he did with so many other young women. Jiang Qing nonetheless was angered by the young woman's open and friendly personality.

But Jiang Qing was often angry, and I was trying then to inure myself to her nastiness. Never could I have imagined in bucolic, enchanting Beidaihe that a decade later her petty jealousies and insecurity would lead to such viciousness and vindictiveness that she would set out to destroy every member of Liu Shaoqi's family.

Nor could anyone have predicted in the summer of 1956 that Mao himself would later turn with such vehemence against the man we all then believed to be closest to him.

But the seeds of that split were already sown, for Mao and Liu had different ideas of what Liu's role should be. Mao considered his own rule supreme. He viewed Liu Shaoqi as his assistant in the daily affairs of the party, responsible for doing Mao's bidding. But Liu Shaoqi came to view himself as Mao's equal, or nearly so, and indispensable to the running of the state. The more equal Liu believed himself to be, the more dissatisfied with him Mao became.

The summer of 1956 was a turning point in Mao's relations with Liu. I discovered this circuitously, only after my own relationship with Mao had suffered a wounding blow.