8
In mid-July 1955, some six weeks after standing with Mao atop Tiananmen, I was summoned unexpectedly to Beidaihe, the resort town on the Bohai Gulf where the top party leadership retreated each summer to escape the Beijing heat. Mao and his entourage had left only a few days earlier, accompanied by Zhou Zezhao, the doctor I had been appointed to replace. I was still working as director of the Zhongnanhai Clinic and was not yet traveling with the Chairman. That I should be summoned so urgently meant something was wrong.
I took the special train that went back and forth daily carrying official documents and ferrying officials and staff and arrived in Beidaihe the same day I had been called.
Mao, I learned, had had difficulty sleeping the night before and rose early for a morning swim. His bodyguards had tried to dissuade him. Beidaihe had been struck during the night by a spectacular thunderstorm. The wind was still high, and the sea was choppy. The guards were afraid Mao could drown in such turbulent waters. Mao insisted, however, and headed for the beach with his guards trailing behind.
The guards had alerted Wang Dongxing, who rushed to the shore and tried to talk Mao out of his adventure. Mao ignored them all, plunging into the stormy waters and swimming determinedly out to sea with a flock of strong young bodyguards paddling quickly behind.
Wang Dongxing was desperate. If anything should happen to the Chairman, he would be responsible. He called Luo Ruiqing and Zhou Enlai, hoping to pass responsibility for the Chairman's safety up the ladder to them. Mao was already far out to sea by the time the two leaders arrived. Zhou, in exasperation, immediately reported the incident to still higher levels—to Liu Shaoqi, second only to Mao—hoping that Liu could persuade the Chairman not to risk his life. Liu refused to intervene. He was either too smart or too reticent to attempt to thwart Mao's will.
Jiang Qing was also at the beach and so was Dr. Zhou. Jiang Qing was furious with the physician, a diffident man, then in his fifties, some twenty years my senior. “The Chairman just swam into the storm,” she yelled. “If he gets in trouble, what are you going to do? Just stand there?” But Dr. Zhou did not know how to swim.
Two soldiers helped the doctor into a small lifeboat and tried to row to Mao. But the waves were so strong the soldiers could not maneuver, and the doctor became hopelessly seasick. Mao had already returned from his swim while the doctor's boat continued to battle the waves. When the shaken doctor finally returned to shore, he climbed unsteadily out of the boat, collapsed on the sand, and vomited. Jiang Qing was furious. It was then that she sent for me.
Mao was furious with Wang Dongxing. “You bastard!” he cursed him. “You should know that I can swim under these conditions. But you not only tried to stop me yourself, you tried to intimidate me by getting the other party leaders involved.”
Wang Dongxing and Luo Ruiqing were not only Mao's protectors. They were his loyal and devoted followers. But they were faced with an insoluble dilemma. They were responsible for the Chairman's safety. If anything went wrong, their loyalty would not matter, nor would the fact that Mao himself had ignored their pleas not to risk his life. They could lose not only their jobs but their lives.
But Mao saw their efforts as an infringement on his freedom, and he resented the idea that other members of the politburo were trying to rein him in. His will would not be thwarted, and he was quick to lash out at anyone who tried. The Beidaihe episode was a turning point in Mao's relations with Wang Dongxing and Luo Ruiqing. His anger would fester for years, until he finally turned against them both.
The episode was a turning point for me as well. At the end of the summer, Dr. Zhou was quietly relieved of his duties, leaving Zhongnanhai to become head of Beijing Hospital, and I became Mao's exclusive personal physician. My job was not merely to treat Mao's illnesses but to keep him as healthy as possible. If he ever got a disease that could have been prevented or suffered needless pain or discomfort, the blame would be mine. Thus my job and my life were constantly on the line, and I had to be alert to any changes in the Chairman's health. To do this, I had to know him intimately, to be with him constantly. When Mao returned from Beidaihe, I began seeing him every day. The excuse we often used was his study of English. I accompanied him wherever he went, in Beijing and out.
I needed to conduct a medical exam both as a benchmark against future changes and because I had noticed in Mao's medical records that his white blood cell count had been higher than normal for the past two years—a little over 10,000cmm. rather than the normal 6,000–8,000. The Chairman was suffering from a chronic mild infection and I had to find out why.
I was reluctant to raise the topic with Mao. He prided himself on his physical prowess and hated to be sick, and I knew he had an aversion to doctors. In 1951, a team of Soviet physicians had examined him, poking and prodding for so long that Mao had lost his temper.
I took the opportunity of our English lesson—we were reading Engels's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific—to broach the subject, explaining to Mao that his high white blood cell count indicated a minor infection.
“Why?” Mao wanted to know. He was almost completely ignorant of modern medicine.
“It's nothing serious,” I said. “I just need to find out where the infection is.” I told him I would examine his sinuses, teeth, throat, and prostate and assured him the exam would be brief—no longer than half an hour. He agreed.
Nothing was wrong with his nose and sinuses. I looked into his mouth. Mao never brushed his teeth. Like many peasants from southern China, he simply used tea to rinse out his mouth when he woke, eating the leaves after drinking the water. He had resisted all attempts to get him to see a dentist. Peng Dehuai, the straight-talking military leader who so openly spoke his mind to Mao, had already suggested that I encourage the Chairman to improve his oral hygiene. “The Chairman's teeth look like they are coated with green paint,” he had told me, and as I looked into Mao's mouth, I saw that his teeth were covered with a heavy greenish film. A few of them seemed loose. I touched the gums lightly and some pus oozed out. He had never complained of discomfort, even though an infection of that sort ordinarily causes considerable pain. I suspect that Mao had a high tolerance of discomfort and so hated doctors and illness that he often endured his pain in silence.
“Can you do something about it?” Mao wanted to know when I explained the problem. I said that my medical training did not include dentistry, and I advised him to see a dentist.
Mao smiled. “Confucius said, ‘To know what you know and what you don't know, that is true knowledge.' It seems you don't pretend to know things you don't.”
I examined his prostate. His foreskin was exceptionally tight and difficult to pull back, and I was concerned about the possibility of infection. Mao had stopped bathing after he moved to Zhongnanhai. He considered it a waste of time. Instead, his attendants rubbed him down with a hot, wet towel every night as he reviewed documents, read, or talked.
I noted, too, that the left testicle was smaller than normal and that his right testicle was not in the scrotum or groin. An undescended testicle, a congenital defect where the testicle remains in the abdomen, does not affect sexual function but does increase the likelihood of testicular cancer. I would have to watch this abnormality.
I needed a sample of Mao's semen to test for further infection. His prostate was small and soft. I massaged it to extract the secretion for laboratory tests.
A few days later, Mao let me arrange for a dentist from Beijing Medical College, Dr. Zhang Guangyan, to treat him. Zhang had been a schoolmate of mine, two years my senior, at West China Union University Medical School's department of dentistry.
The dental procedure, like Mao's haircut, was to be performed in the dining room of the Chrysanthemum Fragrance Study, the high-backed wicker chair transformed for the occasion into a dentist's chair. Zhang was nervous as he laid out his equipment, asking what my own examination had revealed and wondering about the Chairman's habits and temperament. Having assumed my post only a few months earlier, I had no great insight to share. “I do know that he likes things done quickly and without too much talk,” I said, and assured him that since Mao had agreed to see him, he would make every effort to cooperate.
The Chairman was reading a history book when we went to meet him. He often held a book when greeting guests. Mao, for all his power, was sometimes ill at ease when he met people for the first time, and he knew that guests, viewing him as a demigod, were also nervous in his presence. The book was a way for him to relax and open the conversation. He liked to help people relax by telling jokes and making small talk, and he was good at this. At first meetings, he was usually attentive and humorous. By putting people at ease, he could coax them to speak frankly. It was a way of gathering information.
“Ah, so you've arrived,” Mao said when he saw us. He put the book aside. “Reading can really carry you away.” He stood up and shook hands with Dr. Zhang, then motioned for us to sit.
We were served tea. A bodyguard handed Mao a hot towel, which he used to wipe his face and, meticulously, to clean his hands.
Mao asked Zhang's given name. The dentist explained that it was guang yan—guang meaning “to glorify” and yan meaning “the Han people.” China is a multi-ethnic nation, but the dominant race, some 93 percent of the population, is the Han—the group most people associate with “Chinese.”
“So you intend to glorify the Han people,” Mao responded. “Your name would have been very popular during the campaign against the Manchus in the last days of the Qing dynasty.” The Qing dynasty that collapsed in 1911 had been non-Han, run by the Manchus from north of the Great Wall. Much of the anti-Qing sentiment had been racial, directed at the fact that the dynasty was ethnically “foreign.”
When Mao asked where Zhang was from, he explained that he was originally from the province of Hebei, meaning “north of the river,” but that he had lived in the province of Sichuan, meaning “four rivers,” for many years.
“Ah, Hebei province. Do you know what river ‘north of the river' refers to?” Mao asked.
“Yes, the Yellow River,” the dentist replied. The Yellow River has changed its course many times in Chinese history and was just south of Hebei when the province received its name. Today, the river at the same longitude is much further south, flowing through Shandong.
Mao lit a cigarette. “And in Sichuan,” he continued, “what are the four rivers?”
Zhang responded without thinking. “The Min, the Tuo, the Jialing, and the Jinsha,” he said.
Mao corrected Zhang with a smile. “The last one is not the Jinsha River, I believe. It's the Wu River, which is much larger than the Jinsha.”
Zhang smiled too. “I was thinking of one of your poems about Sichuan, which has a line, ‘The waters of the Jinsha River hit the cloud-covered banks.' So I thought the Jinsha must be one of the four rivers.”
Mao laughed. “It's only a poem.”
Mao began talking about West China Union University Medical School, which had been funded by the United States, and the fact that Zhang had actually studied in America. Mao was delighted by this. “During the war against Japan, the United States sent a military mission to Yanan,” Mao said, “and we all got along very well. An American physician named Dr. George Hatem came and stayed with us for good and has made great contributions to our campaign to eliminate venereal disease. He is in the same profession as you.” Dr. Hatem (1910–1988) had gone to the party's northern base in Baoan, Shaanxi, with Edgar Snow in 1936, staying in China and serving as a physician.
“The United States has also trained many skilled technicians for China,” Mao continued, a remark that would have been unthinkable for ordinary Chinese. The United States was still publicly reviled as China's Enemy Number One and to praise it was counterrevolutionary. “So all of you belong to the British-American school,” Mao said. “I like people trained in England and the United States.” He told Dr. Zhang that he was studying English with me. “We're reading Engels's Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Shehuizhuyi is pronounced ‘socialism' in English, isn't it?”
“Yes, that's right,” Zhang replied.
Seeing that Mao's banter seemed to have calmed Zhang's nerves, I suggested we begin the checkup. Mao agreed.
Zhang cleaned Mao's teeth, removing the heavy layer of plaque and accumulated food residue. “Chairman, you need to brush your teeth every day,” Zhang suggested. “There was too much plaque.”
“No,” Mao protested. “I clean my teeth with tea. I never brush them. A tiger never brushes his teeth. Why are a tiger's teeth so sharp?”
Mao's logic was often unorthodox. Zhang and I were speechless.
Mao winked at his small victory. “See, there are a lot of things you doctors can't explain.”
“Quite a lot,” Zhang agreed politely. He told Mao that one of his upper left teeth needed to be extracted. “The gum surrounding the tooth is full of pus, and it is very loose. If the tooth isn't taken out, the teeth next to it could be affected, too.”
“Is it really that serious?” Mao wanted to know.
“Yes, I wouldn't dare fool you,” Zhang replied.
“Okay. But I'm afraid of pain. Use a lot of anesthetic.”
Zhang turned to me and whispered, “Is the Chairman allergic to Novocain?”
“No,” I responded. Mao had already had quite a few shots of both penicillin and Novocain. He had never been allergic.
“Do we really need an anesthetic?” Zhang continued in a whisper. “I can easily pull out the tooth.”
“I think we'd better use it,” I replied. “He'll be less nervous.”
Dr. Zhang used the Novocain, and the tooth came out with a gentle yank.
Mao was delighted. “The British-American school has scored a great victory!” he shouted.
A few days later, Mao's white blood cell count had returned to normal.
Again, Mao was pleased. “You solved a problem that had been with me for several years,” he said. “You have scored a great victory! Long live the British-American school!” he repeated. He asked me to get him a toothbrush and toothpaste and began brushing his teeth. But after a few days, he stopped. Rinsing his mouth with tea was deeply ingrained, one of many peasant habits that he would never change. Besides, Mao did not like routine, even in such basic matters as washing his face and brushing his teeth.
As the years went by, the problems with his teeth continued and so did his aversion to dentists. His teeth became blackened and began falling out. By the early 1970s, all his upper back teeth were gone. Fortunately, his lips usually covered the remaining few teeth even when he talked and smiled, so the absence of so many and the color of the few that remained were not often noticed.
The laboratory tests from the prostate examination came back, revealing that he was infertile. The sperm were dead. Mao had fathered several children by his three wives, and the last of them, his daughter with Jiang Qing, Li Na, was then some fifteen years old. The infertility apparently had begun sometime in mid-life, for reasons I was never able to discern. But the problem could not be corrected.
“So I've become a eunuch, haven't I?” was Mao's response when I told him about his infertility. He was genuinely concerned.
“No, not at all,” I replied. Most eunuchs serving in the imperial courts had been deprived of their entire genitalia, though some had lost only their testicles.
I soon saw that Mao lacked even rudimentary knowledge of the workings of the human reproductive system. Our discussion was the first he knew of his undescended right testicle, but neither that abnormality nor his infertility made him in any sense a eunuch.
I tried to explain. “Your sperm are abnormal, and this makes you infertile. But you still have normal sexual desires and normal sexual potency. This will not be affected by your abnormal sperm.”
Then I realized that Mao was not worried about his infertility but was afraid of becoming impotent. He had long believed that sexual activity is confined to the period between twelve and sixty. His own sexual experiences, I would learn later, had begun when he was still a teenager in his hometown of Shaoshan, and he was fond of recalling?a youthful sexual encounter with a pretty twelve-year-old village girl.
Mao had turned sixty in December 1953, and when I came to work for him in 1955, he feared the end of his sexual activity was approaching. He had begun to experience bouts of impotency and linked sexual desire to health. So long as he wanted sex, he was healthy. My predecessors had given him frequent injections of an extract of ground deer antlers, an aphrodisiac according to traditional Chinese medicine, but his impotency persisted and he worried greatly. He was determined to stay alive, healthy, and sexually active until eighty, and one of my jobs was to help him do that.
Thus he was exasperated when I cautioned him against using deer antlers. I had no idea what effect they had and wanted to be sure they were harmless. “You doctors!” Mao responded. “One of you says this; another says that. I am only going to listen to doctors seventy percent of the time.”
Mao did not insist on the shots of ground deer antlers, but he did demand that I find some other treatment for his impotency and his longevity. In this, as in so many other matters, he followed the tradition of Chinese emperors. The legendary first emperor of China, the Yellow Emperor, father of the Han race and the man from whom all other Chinese are said to have descended, is reputed to have become immortal by making love with a thousand young virgins. Emperors ever after have believed that the more sex partners they have, the longer they will live—hence their thousands of concubines. Qin Shihuangdi, the founding emperor of the Qin dynasty, with whom Mao often identified, is said to have sent a Daoist priest and five hundred virgin children across the sea in search of the elixir of immortality. Legend says that the Japanese are their descendants.
Shortly after I began working for him, Mao heard that a Romanian physician, a woman named Lepshinskaya, had a new formula that would lengthen life, enhance sexual potency, and renew overall strength and endurance when taken daily by injection in small doses. Mao was interested, but he wanted me to test the drug first. If it worked for me, he said, he would take it himself.
I pointed to the difference in our ages—I was only thirty-five and he was sixty-two—assuring him that I was still young and vigorous, untroubled by the symptoms that bothered him. Dr. Lepshinskaya called her formula vitamin H3, but the substance was merely Novocain. While I did not believe in such allegedly magic potions, I knew Mao was not allergic to Novocain, and therefore had no strong medical objections to letting him test it. He took vitamin H3, injected in the buttocks, for about three months and then stopped for lack of results.
In all the years I worked for him, I was never able to educate Mao in medicine. His thinking remained pre-scientific. As a Western-trained doctor, however, I suspected that the bouts of impotency that so concerned him were more psychological than physiological. After consulting a number of urologists and neurologists and assuring myself he had no physical problem, I began treating him with a placebo. I prescribed some capsules of glucose and ginseng and gave them to him under the guise of a “body-building tonic.”
In time I could see that Mao's problem with impotence was most pronounced when he was embroiled in a political struggle whose outcome was uncertain. By the early 1960s, as his power rose to new heights, he rarely complained about impotence. At the height of the Cultural Revolution, in the late 1960s, he and Jiang Qing were sexually estranged, but Mao had no problems with the young women he brought to his bed—their numbers increasing and their average ages declining as Mao attempted to add years to his life according to the imperial formula.
Even as Mao searched for an elixir of long life, he never really doubted that his life would be extraordinarily long. He believed the couplet he had written as a youth proclaiming that he would live two hundred years and swim against the current three thousand li.1 Mao's remarks to foreigners in the mid-1960s that he was preparing to meet God—or Marx—were mere strategic tricks. Mao had never been healthier than at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, and his health remained good for several years thereafter. Mao often took to his bed when he was the object of political attack, but he also used ill health as a political ploy. Mao's health and the country's politics were often intertwined.
Mao was not above feigning ill health, either, and in 1963, at a low point in Sino-Soviet relations, he put on a great dramatic performance before the Soviet ambassador to China as a way of testing Soviet reaction to his possible death. He first rehearsed his act several times in front of me and other members of the staff, covering himself with a terry-cloth blanket, feigning lethargy and pain, pretending to have great difficulty talking. “Do I look like I'm sick?” he wanted to know. Then he called the Soviet envoy to his bedside and staged an excellent dramatic performance.
Similarly, in 1965, when Mao told his old friend the journalist Edgar Snow that he was going soon to meet God, he was testing the U.S. government's response to his death and trying to foster a change in U.S. policy toward China. Mao was convinced that Snow, whose Red Star over China had become a classic in both Chinese and English, was a CIA agent and a conduit of information to the highest levels of the American government. And in 1965, when Mao told French culture minister André Malraux that he did not have long to live, he really wanted to watch European reaction to the news.
Mao frequently accused others of fomenting conspiracies, but he was the greatest manipulator of all.
1 A li is a third of a mile.