Early in 1970, gossip began circulating within Group One that one of Mao's female companions, a confidential clerk in the General Office, was having an affair with another member of Mao's staff. Wang Dongxing wanted to put an end to the relationship. He was impeccable in his own personal dealings, so faithful to his wife that the thought of straying never crossed his mind, and he never understood Mao's lust. But Mao was an exceptional man and Wang therefore granted him the right to exceptional behavior. But he was scrupulous about the behavior of Mao's staff. While we were in Wuhan, Wang decided to call a staff meeting to criticize the woman and her friend, and he wanted me to serve as chair.

I refused. I liked the young woman. Unlike many of the women around Mao, she was still naive and innocent, willing to serve Mao only because of the tremendous respect and awe with which she viewed the Chairman. I did not believe the accusations against her. She and the young man joked and laughed together, but nothing more than that. She and the man would greatly resent public accusations against them, and Mao was not likely to approve of the idea, either. But Wang Dongxing insisted. He thought I was too timid. “The worst that can happen is for you to lose your job in Group One,” he told me. “You can always find work elsewhere.” Having twice been exiled himself by Mao, Wang had still not completely forgiven the Chairman and was not yet certain how far Mao would go in supporting him. Much as he wanted to avoid another exile, he was always prepared for the possibility and wanted me to be ready, too.

Wang Dongxing was still my boss. I had to obey him. I called the meeting as he ordered.

The young woman was so unhappy with the criticisms that she asked two of Mao's other female friends, including Zhang Yufeng, to go with her to complain to Mao. I never learned what they said to the Chairman, but he soon let me know that I had made a colossal mistake.

“You're really not such a smart fellow, are you?” he said to me sarcastically a few days later while we were on the train from Wuhan to Hangzhou. “You meddled in things you shouldn't have. You still have a lot to learn, you know. When we get back to Beijing, I want you to organize a medical team and go to the countryside, where you can really serve the people, make contact with the people, get some education from the poor peasants. It'll do you a lot of good.”

I decided to go to Heilongjiang, the province in China's far northeast, on the border with the Soviet Union. It was around Zhenbao (Treasure) Island in Heilongjiang, just along the border, that the military clashes had broken out between the two sides, and the whole population was now busy digging underground bomb shelters in preparation for war. I wanted to see how the masses, by getting ready for war, were demonstrating their great creativity. Mao agreed.

I was almost relieved to leave. Even with Mao's protection, my circumstances in Beijing had continued to decline. The rebellion within the Ministry of Public Health had heated up again in 1969, and so had the assault on my apartment compound in Gongxian Lane. One of the contending factions had cut off water and heat to the compound while rebels from the other side, in control of the ministry payroll, refused to pay anyone who had not declared himself a member of their faction. But I refused to take sides.

When the situation became unbearable, Mao had Wang Dongxing transfer my personnel files from the Ministry of Public Health to the safer Central Bureau of Guards, and I moved my family to an apartment complex a couple of blocks from Zhongnanhai that housed the staff of the General Office.

Then, not long after the announcement that cadres and intellectuals were to be shipped off to May 7 Cadre Schools, Lillian's entire office was sent to a remote area of Heilongjiang, near the Soviet border, leaving me behind and responsible for our two sons.

Lillian lived not only in miserable physical circumstances but in continual fear as well. Her bourgeois background continued to cause her problems, and when her group gathered every evening to delve into their fellows' political pasts, hers was constantly held up for criticism. We both knew that only the fact that I was Mao's doctor protected her from still greater abuse. If I lost my job, her life would disintegrate.

In Heilongjiang, I would have a chance to see Lillian and perhaps to comfort her. Even if my medical team was in a different part of the province, we would still be closer than we were with me in Beijing. Away from the political tensions of the capital, I was certain we would find ways to meet.

Heilongjiang was an appropriate site for my banishment for another reason, too. High-ranking officials of the Qing dynasty had often been exiled there in disgrace. Ningan county, known during the reign of the Manchus as Ningguta, was the place to which most exiles had been sent. I, too, felt like a man in disgrace, sent against his will into exile. So I chose Ningan county as the place for our medical work.

Wang Dongxing did not want me to go. He had other plans for me. With the Beijing Hospital still in chaos, Wang Dongxing was increasingly concerned about how to guarantee proper medical facilities for Mao and the other party elite. He decided to convert the high-ranking cadres' club at Yangfengjiadao (Bee Raising Alley), near North Lake just outside of Zhongnanhai, into an exclusive hospital, reserved solely for Mao and the country's other highest-ranking officials. Named 305 Hospital of the People's Liberation Army, the facilities were to be under direct military control. Wang wanted me to serve as president of the new hospital.

But I blamed the fiasco of my exile on him. He had directed me, against my better judgment, to organize the criticism against Mao's female companion. Mao's trust in me had already been undermined, both by my reluctance to be an activist in the Cultural Revolution and because of the repeated accusations against me by Jiang Qing and Kang Sheng. Nonetheless, I saw myself as a scapegoat. Wang Dongxing, blinded by his own antagonism to Jiang Qing, was leaning too closely to the side of Lin Biao, refusing to see that Mao no longer fully trusted either Lin Biao or Wang himself.

I had continued to warn Wang Dongxing that loyalty to Lin was not the same as loyalty to Mao, telling him of the flashes of hostility toward Lin I had detected in Mao, trying to persuade him that Mao really did demand absolute loyalty directly to him. Wang would scoff. Sophisticated though he was politically, he could not believe me. But I was certain that Mao was punishing me in lieu of Wang.

After hiring a nanny to take care of my sons, I organized a medical team consisting of seven people—two doctors from the Beijing Hospital, a surgeon, Dr. Niu, a nurse from the newly formed 305 Hospital, a political officer named Zhang from the Central Garrison Corps, the medic Li, who had protected me during the melee at Qinghua University, and myself. We left by train on June 29, 1970, heading for Harbin, the provincial capital of Heilongjiang.