of Chinese humanity swept up in the hysteria of the moment would be enough to make them feel they had seen him. Many cried till tears came streaming down their faces. It was indeed a summer of atheistic pilgrimages.
The whole of Beijing had to be shut down to hold these events. Seeing millions of people, an ocean of red flags, accompanied by loud military marching music stunned the usual reserved residents of Beijing. These urbane and sophisticated Beijingers felt that their city was being invaded. What it all meant, and where this crazy demonstration would lead, no one could tell.
With the desire to see Mao whipping the whole nation into frenzy, the chaos happening over the summer school break showed no sign of abating. When the school break was over, the demonstrations continued and nobody knew when or if school would start again. The Red Guard numbers swelled and bands of youths continued to roam the streets attacking people and property.
The revolution had started and could not be stopped any more. As with all revolutions, the fluidity of the situation meant that new people started to emerge on the Chinese political stage in the summer of 1966. Many such personalities appeared fleetingly and temporarily. But one person in particular caught the attention of the public eye; Jiang Qin, Mao’s wife. Previous to that chaotic summer, she was hardly to be seen in public and she was most certainly never referred to as Mao’s wife and definitely not the First Lady. At the time “the First Lady” was an exotic foreign term to the Chinese that “did not translate” into the national political landscape.
On those rare occasions when she was referred to, she was simply called Comrade Jiang Qin. Comrade Jiang Qin had been banned from Chinese politics for nearly 30 years since she married Mao in 1938 in Yenan. American President Woodrow Wilson’s wife Edith might have virtually run the country following the President’s stroke, as it has been rumored about First Ladies Eleanor Roosevelt and Hillary Clinton during trying times in their husband’s presidencies. But in China, despite the amazing advances in women’s equalities following the Communist revolution, Party politics was almost exclusively a male dominion despite the large number of young women who joined the Party and served in its military during its campaigns against the Nationalists and the Japanese occupiers.
Back in 1937, when the Japanese occupied much of Northeast China, a young woman who called herself Lan Ping followed this trend and came to Yenan, the Communists’ base after the Long March. Like many young people, Lan Ping was frustrated by the situation of Japanese occupation and the seeming inability of the Nationalists in power to do anything about it. And like many of her contemporaries, she ran away to join the Communists. She bravely crossed half of China during those perilous times, travelling over a thousand kilometers from the coastal city Shanghai to reach the center of the Chinese Communist revolution.
Before arriving in Yenan at the age of 23, she was already an actress of some note working under the stage name, Lan Ping. She had starred as Nora Helmer in a Chinese adaptation of Ibsen’s Norwegian drama A Doll’s House and appeared in several other anti-Japanese films made by the left wing movie-makers in Shanghai. Besides her show business career, she had several marriages under her belt and had caused a number of scandals in Shanghai. The gossip about her filled the tabloid newspapers. She divorced three times in her previous life. People admired her courage to stand up for herself, for Lan Ping had been the daughter of a concubine, abandoned by her father and she also had her feet bound as a child. This strong-minded personality was simultaneously denounced by the conservatives and envied by millions of women. The parallels between the real life story of Lan Ping and the Nora Helmer character in A Doll’s House weren’t wasted on the Chinese audience. If she had kept her movie career as her public platform, who could tell what kind of star she might be?
Once in Yenan, Lan Ping wasted little time starting her new career in the Communist base. Compared with many other female fighters, Lan Ping appeared a worldly, sophisticated and urbane young woman. As soon as she arrived, she started to cause stir by appearing on Yenan theater stages. Multi-talented, she could sing Beijing opera and also act in modern dramas. She joined the Yenan Marxist and Leninist Academy and became a member of the drama faculty, eventually working as its director. Entertaining the troops was evidently taken very seriously in Yenan.
Even more strangely, ballroom dancing became popular at the Communist base in Yenan. While the war was waging on, the Communist leaders seemed to be very relaxed and fell in love with ballroom dancing. Extraordinary! The few foreign journalists there became their teachers. Many male comrades, including Mao and other top leaders certainly enjoyed it, but not their wives. The liberal atmosphere of the encampment, as evidenced by ballroom dancing with various partners and glamorous actresses in propaganda plays, fell victim to the envy and jealousy of many of the wives. In this tense atmosphere under the serene surface, Mao’s second wife, Zizhen He, became very unstable mentally and was sent to the Soviet Union for treatment.
And Lan Ping stepped in to fill the gap. Within months she didn’t just catch the attention of Mao, she became quite intimate with him. They met frequently after her stage performances and soon became lovers. Mao gave her a new name, Jiang Qin, meaning “river clear”.
Before long the rumor mill started cranking out the story of the new, young and alluring film actress Jiang Qin and the revolutionary leader Mao who had soon become inseparable. The public nature of their affair was a propaganda nightmare for the Communist leadership. No one personally disliked Jiang Qin. But “family values” was at the foundation of the Party’s platform, and Mao was already married. In fact, some effort had been made to portray his mentally unstable wife as a martyr to the cause, losing her mind due to the horrors of war and suffering brought on by the Nationalists and Japanese. Because of his position, Mao’s personal life was also an issue for the Party.
Mao however was smitten, and blind to this criticism. Chen Yun, one of the most influential and powerful men in Yenan and Chairman of the Party’s important Organization Department had a private chat with Mao about his affair with Jiang Qin. Despite their close working relationship, this infuriated Mao, who accused Chen of trying to interfere with his private life. Mao hinted that he and Jiang Qin were to marry.
Greatly disturbed by this news, a letter was circulated and sent to Mao with signatures of numerous military officers and Party officials opposed to the marriage. The letter didn’t stop the marriage, but instead provoked Mao to speed up his plans. When Jiang Qin soon fell pregnant, Mao’s critics relented and allowed him to quietly divorce his wife, still confined to a mental hospital in the Soviet Union, and marry Jiang Qin.
On the 20th of November 1938, one year after Jiang Qin arrived at Yenan, a simple wedding of sorts took place. The new couple, Mao already 45 and the 23 year-old film actress Jiang Qin, were the hosts. The occasion was not announced as a wedding, but rather a dinner party. Mao had invited some guests for a very quiet meal. The exact sequence of events in terms of divorce and marriage is unknown, but soon the couple had a baby girl, and their relationship was sealed. But one thing is known, the Central Committee made it clear that Jiang Qin was to stay out of the public eye.
And so she did. Jiang Qin had remained quiet for nearly 30 years, largely leading a separate life from her husband, hidden from public view. But the Cultural Revolution which Mao had started now needed her and her strength of character evidenced so clearly all those years ago. Mao needed his wife to tackle his many enemies that the Cultural Revolution was aiming to sideline or eliminate altogether. Jiang had already started to position herself for this opportunity. Slowly emerging from the shadows, she had spent some time in Shanghai quietly rebuilding her acting connections there and working with youth groups. She fed Mao’s paranoia, reporting to him that certain plays were subversive and aimed at ridiculing him. She convinced him that under her direction, appropriate cultural vehicles using the country’s youth could be mobilized in his favor to combat those already in power who were trying to subvert Communism and destroy him personally. The seeds of a new Red Guard variety were already being sown by Jiang Qin.
High on Mao’s “to
