44

While Wang Dongxing was preoccupied with consolidating his power in Beijing, I was in Guangzhou engaged in my own personal struggle. I had gone to the southern city in late December 1960 at Jiang Qing's request. The Chairman's wife was spending the winter there, and her usual complaints continued. She was ill, she said, and troubled by light, noise, and drafts. Her nurses, attendants, and bodyguards were of little help, and she complained about them constantly. She needed my services.

But her demands on me had become excessive. Even Mao had become suspicious. Rumors began circulating again within Group One, fueled by Ye Zilong and Li Yinqiao, that Jiang Qing and I were “good.” “Let the two of them stick together,” Mao had responded sarcastically when he heard that Jiang Qing wanted me to join her in Guangzhou. He encouraged me to go.

I did not want to go. Jiang Qing's physical ailments were imaginary, and I had no way to solve her psychological problems. Her staff was miserably unhappy, but my efforts at mediation had little effect. Being with the Chairman's wife made me extremely uncomfortable. I knew Mao was suspicious, and I did not want to give the rumors credence.

But I had no choice. The Chairman ordered me to Guangzhou. He even sent me off in a special air force plane.

When I arrived at the villa where Jiang Qing always stayed in Guangzhou's Islet guesthouse, her nurses and guards rushed out to meet me, already complaining. The Chairman's wife was not sick, they insisted. The proof of her health was in her activities. Guangdong party secretary Tao Zhu was holding frequent dancing parties, and Jiang Qing was always belle of the ball. All the top leaders of the province joined the festivities. Everyone, from the highest provincial leaders down to her bodyguards and attendants, had to dance with Jiang Qing at least once, and she could dance for three or four hours with no sign of fatigue—and then watch movies, too. How could she be sick?

But when I saw her, Jiang Qing insisted she was sick. Her nurses and attendants, she said, were rude and inattentive, disrespectful, and lax in their duties. She was clearly irritated when I told her that I would give her a checkup and return right away to Beijing. “I just don't understand that doctor,” she complained later to one of her nurses. “He comes to Guangzhou, tries to get away with doing a slipshod job, and then wants to run back to Beijing. Who does he think he is?”

Not wanting to anger her further, I decided not to rush the checkup or mention my wish to leave. I would bide my time waiting for Jiang Qing to bring up the question.

The Chairman's wife was lonely, in desperate need of companionship, and she had chosen me as her companion. Life in Guangzhou should have been idyllic. Every day was a holiday for Jiang Qing, who had nothing but leisure time. We quickly settled into a routine. With dancing parties or movies every evening, Jiang Qing would sleep very late, rising only at around ten or eleven in the morning. After eating and dressing, she would begin her activities at twelve or one. At two or three she would take a nap, waking again at four or five in the afternoon. We would go for a walk together then or watch a movie, and then it was time for dinner. We ate separately, but I shared Jiang Qing's life of splendor. The famine was getting worse, but we never knew it on our protected little island in Guangzhou. I ate extremely well.

Days thus passed idly by. On December 26, the same day Mao was in Beijing announcing the exile of Ye Zilong and Li Yinqiao, we celebrated the Chairman's birthday at a banquet hosted by Guangdong party secretary Tao Zhu. New Year's Day came and went. Our surroundings were beautiful and life was comfortable, but I was painfully bored and ill at ease, and I could see that the Chairman's wife, for all her privilege and luxury, was profoundly unhappy.

Mao's philandering was becoming more blatant, and Jiang Qing was very insecure. But as I listened to her talk, I came to realize there were other reasons for her unhappiness. Jiang Qing had political ambitions. Many thought that was why she had pursued Mao so actively in Yanan. But her efforts to attain power had been thwarted.

One way to deny her power was to make sure her party rank was low enough that it conferred no authority. Party officials were all assigned grades. One was the highest rank, reserved for Mao and the top five party secretaries. The next highest ranks ran from two through six. Other high-ranking cadres were placed in grades seven to thirteen, middle-ranking cadres in grades fourteen to seventeen, and lower-level cadres in ranks eighteen to twenty-five. Jiang Qing was a grade nine, but Ye Zilong and Wang Dongxing were assigned the higher grade of seven. She complained about this to me one day, pointing out that she and I were just the same, ordinary members of the Chairman's staff, and accusing Yang Shangkun of arbitrarily making her a nine.

Mao himself had agreed to Jiang Qing's rank. Her talent did not match her ambitions. She had no skills and would accept direction only from Mao. Bad-tempered and fond of lecturing everyone, she got along with no one. No one wanted to take orders from such a woman.

Jiang Qing's imaginary illnesses were linked to her thwarted ambitions. Her neurasthenia was political. Were she ever to become well, she would have to work, and if she had to work, her rank as grade nine commanded neither power nor respect. But as Mao's wife, without work, people kowtowed before her—not because they respected or liked or even wanted to serve her but because she was the Chairman's wife. The fawning and flattery would stop were she ever assigned an official job. The many enemies she had made with her sharp tongue and nasty temper would scorn her.

She needed to be sick, I finally understood, because illness was the only way she could dominate others. And she needed Mao to believe that she was sick, because otherwise he might ask her to work, and that would make Ye Zilong and Wang Dongxing her superiors.

After I had been in enforced indolence for three weeks, Jiang Qing called me to her living room. Motioning for me to sit, she pointed out that I had been there for several weeks without doing a thing. “What do you have in mind?” she wanted to know.

“I have been waiting for you to tell me when you want the checkup,” I responded.

“There is something else I want to discuss with you,” she said.

I steeled myself.

“The Chairman is in good health and has said himself that he does not need a doctor with him all the time. But I am in poor health,” she said. “Since Dr. Xu Tao left, I have not had a personal physician. I want you to serve as my doctor. You can still take care of the Chairman when he needs you.”

Jiang Qing's proposal was my greatest fear come true. I had agreed to serve as her physician when she and the Chairman were together. Now she wanted me to stay with her all the time, treating Mao only when he was ill. This I did not want to do.

Her offer was no surprise. I had suspected there was something behind the invitation to join her in Guangzhou. I had already prepared my response.

I told her that my superiors had assigned me to work for the Chairman and that working for her was not the assignment given me by the party. My superiors had not given me orders to work for her. Nor had the Chairman told me of the change. I pointed out that I thought changing jobs would be unwise.

Jiang Qing had already spoken to Mao, however, and he had agreed. She was willing to talk to my superiors. No problem.

“I still think we should give this matter some further thought, Comrade Jiang Qing,” I continued. “It is really not a good idea to change my job this way.”

Jiang Qing was becoming tense. “And why is it not a good idea?” she wanted to know, her voice rising. “Is the Chairman the only person you respect? You look down on me, don't you?” Jiang Qing had always feared that I admired her husband while scorning her.

What I feared, though, was the gossip. If I were officially appointed her doctor, the palace rumors would be confirmed and our affair would become fact. “It is not a question of looking down on anyone,” I countered. “As a physician, of course I will treat any patient I am asked. But I'm afraid that if we do it your way, people will talk. What they say might not reflect well on you or the Chairman.”

Suddenly, she stood up and glared at me. “What are you talking about? What does not reflect well on us?”

“It's just gossip,” I responded. “There is no use talking about it.”

Jiang Qing was becoming extremely agitated. “Doctor, I have always treated you well,” she said. “If you have something to say, then say it. Speak out!”

“If you insist, Comrade Jiang Qing, then I will say it. Since I returned to Group One at the end of 1959, there have been rumors. Some people have said that you are too nice to me, that there is something ‘special' between us. Someone has even told this baseless rumor to the Chairman. He responded by saying, ‘Let the two stick together.' Comrade Jiang Qing, this is the reason I do not think your idea is a good one.”

She turned quiet. “Who said this?” she asked, her voice strained.

“Let it go. It doesn't matter.”

“Don't be silly, Doctor. I have been nice to you because I know it is not easy to find a doctor for the Chairman. He likes you, and I have been easy on you because of this. Now someone is spreading a rumor. Who is it?”

“If you insist, I will tell you. It is Ye Zilong and Li Yinqiao.” I had no qualms about telling the Chairman's wife who was spreading the rumors. I was furious with both Ye and Li. They thought that if they told Mao, I would be forced to quit.

Jiang Qing gave up her plan and made a tearful phone call to Mao. I returned to Beijing a couple of days later, on January 12, 1961, by special air force plane. “Don't ever tell anyone,” Jiang Qing warned me when I went to take my leave.

The situation in Beijing had become visibly worse. There were almost no people on the streets, and those who were, were thin and listless. People were staying at home to conserve energy. When my family celebrated the New Year a couple of weeks later, we had only a thin porridge of rice and vegetables. Ordinarily, we would have stuffed ourselves with all sorts of delicacies—meat and fish and dumplings. The lunar New Year is the one day of the year that Chinese families everywhere traditionally gorge themselves. This year, there was nothing.

I waited before talking with Mao. The Ninth Plenum of the Eighth Central Committee was to begin two days after my return, and I knew he was busy with that. The plenum would finally start to confront the dark side that Mao had so wanted to ignore. Mao was still depressed and spending more time in bed. To this day, ruthless though he was, I believe Mao launched the Great Leap Forward to bring good to China. The problem was that he had no modern education and no idea of what the modern world was or how China might join it. The twentieth century was marching forward and Mao was stuck in the nineteenth, unable to lead his country. Now he was in retreat, trying to figure out what to do.

The plenum was a blow to Mao. The participants set the restoration of agricultural production as the party's most vital task. With so many people starving, Mao's dream of rapid industrialization was empty. People had to have food in their stomachs first.

I met with the Chairman on January 18, just after the meetings had concluded, and told him about my conversations with Jiang Qing and the rumors about our special relationship. I told him that I had kept quiet for a long time but that I thought Ye Zilong and Li Yinqiao were trying to insult the Chairman, not me. “What is their evidence of a special relationship? Why have they been saying this?” I asked. In fact, I was also angry with Mao, who had also fostered the gossip. Telling him the rumors was an insult to him, too, a subtle slap in his face.

Mao listened attentively until I finished, his eyes narrowing as I talked. Jiang Qing had already told him the story. “Don't worry, I understand everything,” he said. “Forget the whole thing. Who can say he has never said anything behind another's back?” It was only then that Mao told me that Ye Zilong and Li Yinqiao had been demoted and would be leaving soon for Henan. Even Wang Dongxing had not told me yet.

The Central Bureau of Health dispatched several other physicians to examine Jiang Qing in Guangzhou—Ji Suhua, the president of Beijing Hospital, Xue Bangqi, the president of Shanghai's East China Hospital, and Su Zonghua, the president of the Shanghai Psychiatric Hospital, who was both a psychiatrist and a neurologist. She kept them waiting for six weeks, until Mao arrived with Wang Dongxing and me in late February.

The doctors felt greatly honored to be called upon to treat Jiang Qing, but they had already been away from their posts for too long and were anxious to finish their work. “They take themselves too seriously,” Jiang Qing quipped when I explained that they hoped to carry out the exam as soon as possible.

Finally, she agreed that each doctor could examine her on a separate day and that she would take a day of rest between each exam, so the process was spread over six days. Dr. Ji Suhua, the surgeon, and internist Xue Bangqi took little more than an hour each to complete their work. Only Su Zonghua's neurological cum psychiatric exam took much time. Jiang Qing had been told Su was examining her for possible neurological, rather than psychiatric, problems. She was cagey and successfully evaded any question that might give the doctor real insight into her psychological problems.

I met with Jiang Qing soon after the exams. She wanted to know what kind of disease the doctors had found.

I told her the doctors found nothing significantly abnormal. “Your health continues to improve. They would like to meet with you to discuss their findings,” I said.

But Jiang Qing did not want the doctors to say there was nothing significantly wrong. She did not want to meet with the doctors and demanded a written report instead. And she did not want the Chairman to be told anything about the checkup. She wanted Mao to believe she was still sick.

A tug-of-war ensued. The doctors' new report contained only minor revisions of an earlier one. It concluded that Jiang Qing's recovery from cervical cancer was progressing, alluded to her chronic neurasthenia, and recommended that she continue her activities—watching movies, dancing, listening to music, and photography. But Wang Dongxing opposed any report suggesting that Jiang Qing was ill. He did not want the doctors to legitimize her indolence by suggesting movies and dancing as a cure for nonexistent maladies.

I, too, ran afoul of the physicians. I had been present and agreed when the Central Bureau of Health instructed them to take good care of Jiang Qing and to treat her health problems seriously. Later, in exasperation, I backtracked, telling them it was pointless to try to accommodate her every whim and urging them to report frankly that her health was good. The doctors were extremely conscientious and knew nothing of how badly Jiang Qing treated people. But my patience had already been tried, and Wang Dongxing's hostility toward Mao's wife only fed my own growing bitterness.

The doctors' report satisfied no one. “What is this?” Jiang Qing demanded as soon as she had read it. “These people are totally irresponsible. What do they think they are doing?” She returned it to them as unacceptable and dismissed them.

Guangdong party secretary Tao Zhu hosted a farewell banquet to thank the doctors for their services. They knew that Jiang Qing was unhappy with their report but had no idea how vengeful and vicious she would be. All three men would suffer miserably during the Cultural Revolution. Ji Suhua was imprisoned for years and so badly beaten that he lost his mind. When he was finally released at the end of the Cultural Revolution, his brain seemed to have atrophied. He was never able to function again and died shortly thereafter. Xue Bangqi was also the object of numerous criticism and struggle sessions. He survived the Cultural Revolution only to die of a heart attack at its end.

Psychiatrist Su Zonghua suffered the most. He was imprisoned for his alleged anti-party, anti–Jiang Qing activities and was badly beaten while incarcerated. He wrote me several letters from prison, reminding me how seriously he had taken his assignment to treat Comrade Jiang Qing and how conscientious he had been. I wrote the Shanghai Psychiatric Hospital attesting to his innocence but never received a reply. Su committed suicide shortly thereafter, while he was still in jail. He could no longer bear the torture.

After the doctors left, I was the only outlet for Jiang's fury at not being declared ill. Our relations continued to deteriorate. She began telling people that I had changed, and accused me of turning against her. As proof, she cited an instance in 1958 when I had helped her out of a distasteful obligation by telling Mao that she was sick. Now I was no longer willing to make excuses for her.

She saw my change in attitude as the result of the shifting balance of power within Group One. I no longer needed her protection, she said. With Wang Dongxing in exile and Ye Zilong and Li Yinqiao in power, I had had to rely on her for support. Now Ye and Li had been sent away, and my friend Wang Dongxing had returned to rule Group One with an iron hand. With Wang Dongxing protecting me, Jiang Qing reasoned, I could afford to slight her. She thought I looked down on her, but she also assumed that my adulation for the Chairman continued unabated.

Jiang Qing had misinterpreted me, however. It is true that with Wang Dongxing back in power my life within Group One had become easier, and I certainly did not like Jiang Qing—her decadent life of luxury and leisure, her pretending to be ill when her health was as good as mine, her constant bossing and pushing people around, her incessant, impossible demands. She was as bad as the evil landlords of an earlier era whom the party vociferously attacked. But I had grown to hate the hypocrisy around me, the communist leaders' public carping against the corrupt bourgeois life-style of their predecessors, the touting of their high and lofty communist moral principles, while they themselves were living lives of luxury as the masses suffered and toiled and died. My hopes and dreams, my visions of Mao and of the new, good society, were shattered for good.

Jiang Qing was wrong in assuming that I still revered Mao. My adulation of him had dissipated, too. What lofty moral principles did he follow? He had cast aside Peng Dehuai, one of the country's great revolutionary leaders, a man loyal to the communist cause and devoted to the good of China, as if he were garbage, and he was gathering young women around him like the most degenerate of ancient emperors. And the Chinese people? The Communist party had taken “the people” and praised them to the sky while these very people were being oppressed and exploited, forced to endure every hardship, accept every insult, merely to survive. “The people” were nothing but a vast multitude of faceless, helpless slaves. This was the “new society,” the communists' “new world.” Jiang Qing was right that I was disgusted with her. But I was disgusted with her husband, too, with all of Group One. “New China” had become corrupt.