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Mao was sitting on his sofa, gasping for breath, his face flushed. “I'm in real trouble,” he said. “I'm seriously ill. I had to call you back. You have to look at my chest X ray. Tell the head nurse to get it for you. Then tomorrow examine me and tell me what you think.” We chatted for a while about my work in Ningan. I assured him that I had enjoyed being a “barefoot doctor” and that life had not been so hard. I left him as soon as I could. I wanted to see the X ray.
“Something really big has happened, President Li,” Wu Xujun said as she handed me the X ray.
I was confused. President Li? Why was she calling me president?
“Your appointment as president of 305 Hospital has come through,” she explained. “Chief of staff [of the PLA] Huang Yongsheng has already announced it.” While I was in exile, the chiefs of the general staff, the political department, and the general logistics department of the People's Liberation Army had agreed to my appointment as president of 305 Hospital.
“And what has happened? What is this something big?” I asked Wu Xujun.
The problem was Lin Biao. The split between him and Mao was widening.
The problem had reached crisis proportions with the Second Plenum of the Ninth Congress of the party Central Committee, held in Lushan in August–September 1970, not long after I had left for Heilongjiang. Lin Biao had wanted to restore the post of chairman of state, the position Liu Shaoqi had assumed in 1959 after Mao had resigned. With Liu's purge, the position had been abolished. Lin insisted on restoring it and suggested that Mao resume the post. But he knew Mao would refuse and was maneuvering to have himself elected. Not wanting to give the appearance of lusting after power, however, he wanted others to act on his behalf.
Lin wanted Wang Dongxing on his side. As Wang told me the story, Lin's wife, Ye Qun, had contacted him before the Lushan meetings to solicit his support. She was worried that unless Lin was given some official position, such as chairman of the republic, his designation as Mao's successor would be meaningless. She also knew that Mao would not like the idea and hoped that if other leaders pressed Lin's cause, the Chairman would be forced to give it some thought.
At Lushan, Lin's closest associates—commander in chief of the air force Wu Faxian, commander in chief of the navy Li Zuopeng, and commander in chief of the general logistics department Qiu Huizuo—lobbied on his behalf, especially within the small groups that met outside the plenary sessions. Chen Boda, the former director of the Central Cultural Revolution Small Group and a member of the politburo standing committee, had also pressed Lin's case. He wrote a piece called “On Genius,” praising Mao effusively and attributing China's progress to his genius, and arguing that Mao should resume the post of chairman of the republic. The tract was distributed to the small groups that were meeting by region and published as part of the Lushan conference proceedings in Bulletin Number Two of the North China group.
Many participants mistakenly assumed the bulletin reflected Mao's own views and that Mao wanted to resume the post.
But Mao categorically did not agree. Early in 1970, he had made it clear to the politburo standing committee that he would not become chairman of the republic again. Most conference participants did not know this. But if people agreed that someone should occupy the post and Mao refused, Lin Biao was the only possible choice. This was Lin Biao's strategy.
Lin Biao had made the same mistake as Liu Shaoqi, and in Mao's eyes it was an egregious crime. Lin Biao wanted two chairmen in China, and Mao would have only one. He made certain the leadership knew this by calling an enlarged meeting of the politburo standing committee on August 25, 1970. The meeting revoked Bulletin Number Two, Chen Boda was purged, and a campaign to criticize him was launched.
Wang Dongxing was one of those implicated in the affair. He had listened to the urgings of Ye Qun and spoken at Lushan in favor of Lin Biao. Mao was furious with him, accusing him of betrayal and of joining the Lin Biao camp. Intending to punish Wang without dismissing him permanently, Mao ordered Wang Dongxing temporarily relieved of his duties so he could “think over his conduct.” Wang, who was still in communication with Mao, confessed everything, telling the Chairman about his conversations with Ye Qun and reporting fully on her efforts to secure Lin's appointment. Zhou Enlai, who wanted Wang permanently dismissed, had appointed Yang Dezhong to take over directorship of the Central Bureau of Guards; and Kang Sheng, acting at the behest of Zhou, had asked Wang Liangen, the director of the political department of the General Office, to take over Wang's post as director there. Zhou had made the appointments quietly, without informing Wang Dongxing.
Wang remained stoic. “I made a big mistake,” he told me, “and I'm writing a report on my conduct, examining my faults behind closed doors, so to speak, just taking a break from my duties. I spoke at the conference and the Chairman got mad at me, but regretting it now won't get me anywhere.” Still, he was furious with the people who had maneuvered against him—Zhou Enlai and Kang Sheng—and with Yang Dezhong and Wang Liangen, who had been slated to take over his posts. “They'll hear from me later, just wait,” he told me.
Wang's “mistake” was reverberating now throughout Group One. Mao was suspicious of Wu Xujun too, accusing her of belonging to the Wang Dongxing camp and relieving her of all but the most essential nursing duties.
The young women from the cultural work troupe of the air force had been dismissed—including Liu, who some believed had borne Mao's child, together with her two friends. The three young women were too close to Ye Qun and Lin Biao, and Mao suspected that they had begun to serve as spies. “They were all unreliable,” he told me later.
Zhang Yufeng, the attendant from Mao's train, had started waiting on him instead and moved to Zhongnanhai. Then two women from the Foreign Ministry—Wang Hairong, the director of protocol within the Foreign Ministry and later to become a vice-minister, and Tang Wensheng (Nancy Tang), deputy head of American and Oceanic Affairs and Mao's frequent English-language interpreter—came to have considerable power within the inner circle. They served as liaison between Mao and the top-ranking leadership, keeping such tight control that finally even Zhou Enlai had to go through them to see Mao.
Nothing final had been decided at the Lushan meetings in August-September. The power struggle within the party was continuing. With Lin Biao's power declining, Jiang Qing's was increasing. Wu Xujun told me that the deal I had long suspected had apparently become explicit at Lushan. If Jiang Qing kept quiet about his infidelities, Mao would support Jiang Qing's efforts to build her own power. And now, in November, Mao was sick, as he often was at times of political struggle, before the outcome was final.
He had started feeling sick while the meetings were still in session. As usual, his discomfort began with a cold that first settled in his chest and then turned into bronchitis. He refused to see a doctor, and his situation got worse. By late October he was so ill that Zhou Enlai insisted he get medical treatment and sent three physicians to examine him. They took a chest X ray, prescribed antibiotics, and told him he had pneumonia.
Mao's paranoia was in full bloom, and he suspected a plot. Lin Biao, he was convinced, wanted him dead. Mao's understanding of medicine had not greatly improved under my tutelage, and he was convinced that pneumonia was inevitably fatal, the result of hopelessly rotten lungs. Mao thought Lin Biao was behind the three doctors who told him he had pneumonia. Mao did not believe them.
But he did not get better, either, and finally Zhang Yufeng suggested that I be recalled from Heilongjiang. Wang Dongxing had wanted to call me back much earlier but knew that anyone he suggested would be implicated as a member of his clique.
Mao did have pneumonia. The X rays left no doubt. But I could not tell him that. If I told him that he had pneumonia, I would be accused of being a member of the Lin Biao–Wang Dongxing clique. So I told him it was his old problem—acute bronchitis, nothing too serious. A few shots of antibiotics and he would be fine.
Mao started thumping his chest with both fists when I related my diagnosis. “Lin Biao wants my lungs to rot,” he said. “You just show those X rays to the doctors and see what they say now. They were really funny, those three guys. One examined me without talking at all. Another one talked incessantly but did not examine me. And still the other one put a mask over his mouth and neither talked nor examined me. If they still think it's pneumonia, then I'll stop the injections. Let's see if I die.”
I consulted with the three doctors, explaining why we could not let Mao know he had pneumonia, trying to assure them that what was most important was to make certain he received appropriate treatment. They agreed, but the director of the Zhongnanhai Clinic was not happy. “We had no idea what happened in Lushan,” he said. “How could we have known that politics and the Chairman's health would get all mixed up? We're really unlucky. We did exactly as Premier Zhou instructed.”
Mao, though, was delighted when I told him that the doctors now agreed that he had bronchitis rather than pneumonia. He credited me with saving his life and invited me to dinner as his honored guest. My days as a “barefoot doctor” were over. He did not want me to return to Heilongjiang. “There may be something here I want you to do for me,” he said. A week or so later, Wang Dongxing arranged for Lillian to return to Beijing, too. My family at last was reunited.
By December 18, 1970, Mao's health had improved sufficiently that he was able to meet with American journalist Edgar Snow, who had first interviewed the Chairman in Baoan in 1936, had written the classic bestseller Red Star over China, and had remained a friend of China's over all those years. “I think Snow must be working for the Central Intelligence Agency,” Mao told me at the time of the visit. “We have to give him some inside information.”
Believing that Snow would pass the information on to his superiors in the CIA, Mao used the meeting to further U.S.-China relations, conveying his willingness to invite Nixon or any other ranking American official to meet with him in Beijing. He also took the occasion to warn the CIA of the deeper conflict within Chinese politics. “There are three types of people who shout ‘long life' to me,” Mao told Snow. “The first type really means it. There aren't too many of these. The second type is just following the crowd. Most people fall into this category. The third type are those who shout the slogan but really want me to die early. Not too many people fall into this category, but there are some.”
I had lived in the United States for some time before realizing that Edgar Snow was a pariah in his own country when he visited China in 1970 and that his message to the American government was delivered too late, well after direct channels between China and the United States had been established. And Snow probably never understood whom Mao was talking about when he said that some people wanted him dead even as they shouted, “Long live.” Mao was referring to Lin Biao.