Mao needed Wang Dongxing. Wang was in charge of the Chairman's security, and Mao did not feel safe. As he moved to cast out his enemies, he grew more insecure. After discovering that the Chrysanthemum Fragrance Study, his residence in Zhongnanhai, had been bugged, he never trusted the place again and suspected that new listening devices had been planted in his absence. He wanted to move.

Shortly after his return in July 1966, we moved to his villa, Building 1, in the Jade Spring (Yuquan) Hills outside Beijing. I stayed with him there, but after a few days, he complained that the place was contaminated—poisoned, he thought. He wanted to move again.

We went to Diaoyutai, the huge estate for state guests to the west of Zhongnanhai that had once served as an imperial fishing ground. Another complex of villas had been built there, nestled among the trees and fishing ponds. The Central Cultural Revolution Small Group had set up its headquarters there, in Building 16, and Jiang Qing, Chen Boda, and several other members of the group had already moved into nearby villas. Mao moved to villa number 10. Jiang Qing was staying in villa number 11.

Then Mao began to feel insecure in Diaoyutai, too, and wanted to move again. He went to Room 118 of the Great Hall of the People, where he had often sought pleasure from the young female attendants who served him. He lived there for several months, and continued throughout his life to take refuge there. But toward the end of 1966, he moved back into Zhongnanhai—not to the Chrysanthemum Fragrance Study, where he had lived since 1950, but to the building that housed his indoor swimming pool. New rooms, more modest than his earlier quarters, were constructed, and he stayed there until weeks before he died.

Briefly, soon after his return to Beijing, goaded perhaps by the asceticism of his Cultural Revolution, Mao gave up his female companions. The Zhongnanhai dancing parties had been revived when he returned to Beijing in July, and when Jiang Qing returned from Shanghai later that month, she joined them, too. Mao still enjoyed the parties and the music from the decidedly counterrevolutionary, and therefore banned, opera The Emperor Seduces the Barmaid. But Jiang Qing was now the arbiter of culture, and her personal transformation was complete. Upon her return to Beijing, I was shocked to see that her style of dress had completely changed. She wore loose-fitting jackets and trousers, so baggy they might have fit Mao, and her shoes were sturdy, masculine, and flat. She was arrogant and dictatorial. She held the fate of millions in her hands and was possessed by a new and determined prudery. Dancing parties were unacceptable to her new code. By the end of August she had persuaded Mao to end them.

“I've become a monk,” he told me shortly thereafter.

But in a couple of weeks the young women were back. Room 118 was Mao's primary place of pleasure, and the young women attendants from the Fujian Room and the Jiangxi Room (each of China's provinces has a “room” in the Great Hall of the People, decorated with representative artifacts) were his favorites for a while. Even when the Cultural Revolution was at its height, Tiananmen Square in an uproar and the streets outside in turmoil, Mao continued to savor the imperial life, playing with his female companions inside the Great Hall of the People and within the walls of Zhongnanhai.

Many of the women who had previously been close to Mao got in trouble during the Cultural Revolution, and they turned to him for protection.

Zhang Yufeng was the first to come—in early November 1966. She appeared one afternoon at the Zhongnanhai guard gate laden with maotai liquor and chocolates for Mao. Since she had no direct access to the Chairman, she called his nurse, Wu Xujun, instead. Zhang was still an attendant on Mao's special train, but since he was in Beijing, the two had not met for several months. Zhang Yufeng, then in her early twenties, had already married, and she was in trouble.

The “revolutionary rebels” in Zhang Yufeng's Department of Special Transportation Services had overthrown the party secretary and taken over the department. But Zhang Yufeng was a loyal member of the party and had supported her boss and thus she herself came under attack. Her gifts for Mao were an effort to persuade him to protect her.

When Wu Xujun reported the conversation, Mao not only saw Zhang Yufeng but agreed to help. Her relationship with him was public knowledge within the Department of Special Transportation Services, and no one doubted her when she returned to report on her meeting with the Chairman. When she told her colleagues that Chairman Mao himself had said that her boss, the party secretary, ought not to be overthrown, her job was quickly restored. And Zhang Yufeng was safe.

Liu, one of Mao's girlfriends from the cultural work troupe of the air force, was the next to call, and again Wu Xujun met with her first. Liu was accompanied by two of her friends, and all three young women burst into tears when they saw Wu. Liu poured out their story. The Cultural Revolution had spread to the air force, too, and Liu's work unit was divided into two factions—the rebels intent on overthrowing the existing party leadership and the “protect-the-emperor faction” determined to maintain the status quo. Loyal party members like the three young women were, naturally, supporting the existing party leadership. All of Mao's girlfriends were. The political screening that allowed them to become close to Mao required that they be loyal to the party.

When the rebels gained the ascendancy, the three young women were driven from their dormitories. By the time Wu talked to them, they had already been wandering the streets for two days, desperate.

Mao was delighted to meet with the three young women. “If they don't want you, you can stay with me,” he said. “They say you're protecting the emperor? Well, I'm the emperor.”

Liu benefited greatly from her liaison with the Chairman. When Mao instructed Lin Biao's wife, Ye Qun, the director of the Cultural Revolution within the Military Affairs Commission, to call off the attacks against Liu and her companions, Ye Qun did more. She asked the commander in chief of the air force, Wu Faxian, to appoint Liu director of the new revolutionary committee of the cultural work troupe. Liu was quickly transformed from a pariah wandering the streets to a Cultural Revolution celebrity.

Liu and her female companions returned often to Zhongnanhai after that. As chaos raged outside, Mao would often withdraw for several days at a time to relax with them. During one such session, Jiang Qing suddenly arrived from Diaoyutai unannounced, sending the young women into a panic. Alerted by the head nurse, they barely had time to hide before the Chairman's wife burst into his room.

Mao called Wu Xujun in shortly after. “When other top leaders want to see me, they all have to ask my permission first. Why is Jiang Qing such an exception? Tell Wang Dongxing to make sure that the armed guards don't let her in until I give my okay.” From then until Mao died, Jiang Qing had to request permission to visit her husband.

The friendship between Liu and Ye Qun continued. In 1969, when Liu became pregnant, Ye Qun assumed that the baby was Mao's and arranged for Liu to stay in a room reserved for high-level cadres at the air force general hospital, sending her delicacies every day while she awaited the birth of her baby. When the child was a boy, Ye Qun was delighted. “What wonderful news!” Lin Biao's wife exclaimed. “The Chairman has had several sons, but some have died and one has become ill. With this baby boy, he can continue his family line.” Several people commented that the child looked just like Mao.

I and Wu Xujun visited Liu in the hospital. My work with Mao required that I maintain good relations with his female companions, too. Liu related the story of Ye Qun's visit, assuming I shared the belief that the baby was Mao's. I kept the fact of Mao's infertility to myself.