With the approach of the new year, 1959, Beijing was in panic. Rumors that urban communes were soon to be established had swept the city, and people thought their private property was about to be confiscated by the state. The city was a gigantic garage sale as people sold their precious private possessions in the hope of holding on to the cash when their property was handed over to the communes.

My family's situation had deteriorated markedly since the Great Leap Forward began, and because I had spent most of 1958 traveling with Mao, I had been of little help. I was happy to be back.

My mother was terrified that she would be forced to work in the new urban commune. But she was too old and too tired and was busy during the week looking after my two sons while my wife was away at work. Who would look after the children once the commune was formed? Mao wanted them sent to state-run nurseries.

As rumors persisted, Lillian and I were offered extra space in Zhongnanhai for my mother and sons. But I did not want to involve my family any more than necessary in life in the inner court. And I wanted a place to escape to whenever I could. My old family home was still a haven—the only place where we could really be a family, forget the cares of the world, laugh and enjoy ourselves without restraint. It was the only place we all felt safe. I wanted to preserve that haven.

Mao heard the hue and cry of the urban residents and soon abandoned his plan for urban communes. But most of my family's property was confiscated anyway. Watchful neighborhood officials had noticed that my mother and our two sons occupied only five of the rooms in our huge thirty-room complex. My mother had been allowing relatives to live in some of the other rooms and rented out the rest for token sums. In the winter of 1958–59, when the leftist political atmosphere was at its height, our local neighborhood association, the Beijing Housing Administration, and the local public security bureau decided to confiscate all but the rooms my mother and sons were using. They did not call such expropriation “confiscation,” of course. My mother was to be “compensated” for the “voluntary” sale of her house, and she was to share in management of the property when the new tenants moved in.

Still, she was distraught, and so was my wife. The house was our inheritance, passed down through the generations. My wife urged me to talk with my superiors in the Central Bureau of Guards and the Central Bureau of Health. Maybe some sort of compromise could be reached.

I, too, was upset. But I could not ask for special treatment. My family had been privileged, and most of the people I worked with came from humble peasant pasts. My superiors had no reason to help save my family home—certainly not in the prevailing leftist atmosphere. Compared to others, we still lived a life of luxury. The likely result of my efforts to save our house would be another offer for the whole family to move into Zhongnanhai, and that I wanted to avoid. So we gave up our family home—all but the rooms occupied by my mother and sons. The sum from the sale was so paltry that it was an outright gift to the state, and my mother had no control over the tenants.

I consoled my mother as best I could, pointing out that she was lucky to own five rooms in a city where housing was crowded and most people owned no property at all.

In the same winter of 1958–59, the food shortage hit, causing further hardship for my mother. Lillian still ate in the dining hall at Zhongnanhai, and I joined her when I was there. There was no meat and the quality of the food had gone down, but the quantity was sufficient. Zhongnanhai would be the last place affected by a food crisis. But for my mother, even the basic necessities were in short supply. There was no meat at all, and oil and rice were difficult to buy. People waited in long lines to buy even basic foodstuffs.

My mother was over seventy then, and her health began to decline. She developed hypertension. We arranged for neighbors to help her, to wait in line and do her shopping. But the economic situation was becoming worse every month, and Tian Jiaying warned that this was only the beginning. The whole nation faced a serious shortage of food, and no end was in sight.

With the crisis continuing to deepen, I expected Mao to stay for a while in Beijing. I was wrong.

One afternoon in late January 1959, I was visiting Hu Qiaomu in Beijing Hospital, where he was convalescing after a recurrence of his ulcer, when I received an emergency call to return to Group One immediately. Mao must have taken suddenly ill. I rushed out, not even bothering to grab my sweater, hopped on my bicycle, and was pedaling out the front gate of the hospital when bodyguard Xiao Li arrived by car. The Chairman had decided to visit Manchuria. He was leaving immediately.

Mao had already left for the airport by the time I arrived in Zhongnanhai. My medical supplies had gone with him, and a car was ready to take me to the airport immediately. I had no time to pack a toothbrush, let alone any clothes. We arrived at the airport just after Mao's plane had taken off. Another plane was waiting, engines running and ready to go. Xiao Li and I were the only passengers, and the plane took off as soon as we were on board.

A few hours later, I stepped out of the plane in Shenyang, Liaoning, the coldest region of China during the coldest month of the year, with no overcoat or even a sweater. The buildings were, blessedly, well heated, but I was miserably cold outdoors. “Did you sell off your clothes because of the Great Leap Forward?” Mao joked when he saw my discomfort. “Or did you give them to the people's commune?” Fortunately, the trip lasted only five days.

The Chairman had come north because it was the largest coal- and steel-producing region of China, and he wanted to know how steel was produced and whether the quality of the backyard steel furnaces was good. He had wanted to decentralize steel production both as a way of allowing the creative energies of the peasants full flower and to deprive the central-level economic bureaucrats of their stultifying power. But Mao had still not settled the question he kept raising with me. Why, if good steel can be produced in tiny backyard furnaces, does the technologically advanced West rely on gigantic factories for production? He was also interested in the question of how the furnaces were fueled. In rural China, where the demand for cooking fuel had long since denuded the forests, peasants were resorting to burning their doors and furniture to keep the mini-furnaces stoked. The steel factories in the northeast were huge and modern, and coal supplies were plentiful. Mao wanted to see both steel factories and coal mines.

What he learned during his visit was conclusive. High-quality steel can be produced only in huge modern factories using reliable fuel, like coal. But he gave no order to halt the backyard steel furnaces. The horrible waste of manpower and materials, the useless output from the homemade furnaces, was not his main concern. Mao still did not want to do anything to dampen the enthusiasm of the masses.

We returned briefly to Beijing, but Mao was quickly off again to Tianjin, Jinan, Nanjing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou. He invited Luo Ruiqing and Yang Shangkun to join him. He wanted to use the tour to “educate” them, he said. Both men had fallen out of favor with the Chairman and were honored by the invitation. Luo Ruiqing, ever loyal to Mao, was still trying to win the Chairman's favor—removing himself from active involvement in security arrangements and even taking up swimming as a way to show his support. But Mao's trust had not fully returned, and Luo had been depressed.

Yang Shangkun, still smarting from Mao's dissolution of his General Headquarters post after the Black Flag Incident months before, was also trying to ingratiate himself with Mao. He was lying low, concentrating on administration rather than politics, presenting himself as a faithful servant without political ambition. Isolated and insecure, he had hooked himself to Deng Xiaoping as the rising leader most likely to protect him from the vagaries of political change and to grant him his political due. Yang's opportunities to see Mao were rare, and he was elated to join him on the trip.

The trip was another “inspection tour,” and we visited factories, universities, people's communes, and schools. The provincial party and military leaders showered the Chairman with praise, enthusiastically professing their loyalty. Even as the economic situation worsened, the cult of Mao was growing. If food was scarce, people reasoned, the fault lay not with Mao but with their local leaders. The Chairman, everyone supposed, had come to put things right. The popular attitude toward Mao was rooted in Chinese tradition. The emperor was never wrong, only misguided by his advisers and court officials. Huge, enthusiastic crowds turned out to welcome him, greeting him with thunderous applause and shouts of “Long Live Chairman Mao.”

Mao wanted Luo and Yang to see for themselves how greatly he was loved by the masses. Indeed, Luo Ruiqing and Yang Shangkun were properly impressed. Mao had given them great face by inviting them along. They basked in his reflected glory. It was a heady experience.

Yang Shangkun had only one regret. Mao had spoken often during the trip—about how to organize the relationship between industry and agriculture, how the people's communes ought to be structured, how to arrange for equitable distribution and pay for labor performed. But no notes had been taken on the Chairman's remarks. One night, chatting with Luo Ruiqing and others on the staff, Yang Shangkun said he wanted to find a way to record Mao's remarks. Mao often discussed matters of policy when he toured the provinces, but the central secretariat, with no record of what the Chairman had said, had no way to transform them into written policy instructions. Local officials were at a similar loss. They could pass Mao's informal comments up to higher levels—to Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping—but with no official record, no one was willing to take responsibility for taking local-level reports as the basis for policy.

“We have to think of a way to record the Chairman's words and send the minutes to the central secretariat for future reference,” Yang Shangkun said. It was a thoughtful suggestion by a grateful subordinate.

Ye Zilong told me Yang Shangkun had suggested that he request Mao's permission to bring a stenographer along on future trips, so the center could have a complete record of everything the Chairman said. But Mao did not want a stenographer, Ye Zilong said. He saw his remarks as casual talk, and he knew the power of his words. All of rural China had rushed to establish people's communes when they knew Mao had said “people's communes are great.” He did not want further casual remarks to be translated so hurriedly into policy. The responsibility was too great.

Not long afterward, an elite team of technicians from the Public Security Ministry came aboard Mao's train to put bugging equipment in Mao's sleeping compartment and in the reception area where he often held meetings. The tiny imported devices were so cleverly hidden—in lampshades, wall lamps, and flower vases—that Mao would never find out. The microphones were linked to recording equipment in another compartment, and a technician from the General Office, a young man named Liu, came to record Mao's conversations and maintain the equipment. Mao was never told the nature of Liu's work, but the young man began accompanying us on all of Mao's travels. Later, Ye Zilong told me that similar high-tech bugging devices had also been installed in the provincial guesthouses Mao frequented.

Ye Zilong swore me and everyone in Group One to absolute secrecy. The decision to bug the Chairman had been made above him, at the highest levels, he told us. If the secret were ever to be revealed, the consequences would be dire. We all stayed quiet. The party had spoken, and we obeyed. None of us could have known then how disastrous the decision would be.