His name, pronounced “Mout-zz-dung,” is easily mispronounced by foreigners. Once, during the Japanese war, when Mao was in Chungking for a short time, ostensibly to coordinate the Communist forces with the Generalissimo’s war effort, he was consistently called “Mousy-dung,” by Ambassador Hurley. In conferences, and with the best intentions in the world, Hurley would keep saying, “Mr. Mousy-dung,” this or that ..., while the Generalissimo would politely cover his face with his hand to hide his smile and Mao would blush. “Mousy-dung,” in a more common Chinese dialect means “the hole in the water closet.”
Earnest and zealous, Mao, a “China for the Chinese” promoter, and therefore basically at odds with the Russians, speaks in a distinct, sometimes shrill, high-pitched voice. He has a habit of quoting from his wide reading. His oratory is forceful but, like Hitler’s, not polished. Although brilliantly educated in the Chinese Classics and familiar with ancient Greece and Rome through translations of their history and literature, up to the time he left Yenan he had never learned to speak or understand English. Nearly all foreigners relied upon his interpreter when speaking to him. In spite of this, he held one group of reporters spellbound for nearly three hours as he talked to them in the Foreign Office cave, gesticulating nervously and cracking watermelon seeds endlessly between his square white teeth. Sometimes his sober countenance and intense preoccupation would amuse foreigners. Hurley, after long hours of serious discussions, always through an interpreter of course, would, on leaving, bow in sweeping Western style and invariably say in English, “Good night, you sad little apple you,” to his politely bowing host.
Mao’s childhood was one of unusual drudgery. His father was a peasant and a domestic tyrant. Understandably, the boy’s thoughts were turned, at an early age, to revolution against authority and oppression. He chopped off his pigtail in defiance of the Manchus and joined other restless youths who had a hand in the formation of the Chinese Communist Party. A few years later, largely through his help, this party was joined briefly to the revolutionary party of Dr. Sun Yat-sen, which Russia was then aiding.
Years of civil war had taught Mao the technique of guerilla warfare, as well as the qualities necessary for leadership. He likens his guerilla tactics to the behavior of fleas. “We attack by night,” he says, “and wear out strong men.” In 1927 he became President of the first Chinese Peasants Union and has never lost his standing with it. The ignorant peasants are always impressed not only by his rugged and often ruthless qualities, but also by his great learning and his ability to write Chinese poetry in the classic style. In the early days, he won their further applause by moving freely among the people, organizing rickshaw boys into labor unions, and sometimes pulling them about in rickshaws himself, while he talked intimately of the glories of Communism.
Most of the activities of the Communist Party in the early days were carried on in the South, especially around Canton. By 1934, however, the Nationalists had gained such power that the Communists were forced to leave the Southern province of Kiangsi for the Northern caves of Yenan. This, the “Long March,” was a journey of thousands of miles, travelled on foot, partly over almost impassable trails and some of the highest mountains and largest rivers in Asia. In three hundred and sixty-eight days, eighteen major mountain passes were crossed, five of them snow-capped, and twenty-four rivers were forded. At each stop that was made, the marchers ravaged villages, impoverished the well-to-do, and persuaded the poorer peasants to join them. They whipped up such a frenzied crusade that their ranks were swelled by thousands. So strenuous was the journey, however, that at its end only twenty thousand men and women were left, ten thousand having fallen by the way. Those who survived were tough, one may be sure. A much-quoted legend has grown up about Mao, the stalwart leader, which tells how he stumbled along barefooted, refusing a wounded soldier’s offer to share a pony’s back. “No,” said Mao to the soldier, “your wounds are worse than mine. We shall suffer and fight together. That is what makes us comrades.”
Mao’s domestic career, like his political one, has been stormy. His first wife, a child, was forced upon him by his parents, at the age of fourteen. In his opinion, she does not count, and he never mentions her. His second, a school teacher’s daughter, is said to have been shot by a Nationalist General. His third was the heroine of the “Long March,” and Mao had just cause to be proud of her. Tall, frail looking, clever and high spirited, she was sometimes argumentative, behavior unheard of in a Chinese women. A female soldier, she is said to have received many wounds in battle. She also gave birth to a son by Mao during the “Long March,” but when the going became too difficult and unsafe she left the child along the way with old peasants who were unable to join the marchers.
Alas for this brave wife, when Mao met the beauteous movie actress Lang Ping, on arriving in Yenan, she was completely forgotten. He was so enraptured with the newcomer that he sent his wife to Moscow, normally a reward sought after by any Communist. In this case it was only a face-saving gesture, however, and there were rumors that the rejected woman contracted tuberculosis and died. Mao’s new marriage to Lang Ping caused a flutter of excitement and alarm in Yenan, where the Communists knew and admired the courage and fortitude of his third wife and where she was held in esteem. News of this flurry of unrest reached the Comintern in Moscow, where the practice of casually exchanging wives was recognized, if not encouraged. There Mao’s conduct was dismissed lightly, and the Chinese Communists were told that the matter was to be regarded as “personal, not a Party affair.”
During the war, Mao lived happily in a cave in Yenan with wife Number Four. Both dressed simply in blue uniforms padded with cotton in the winter. In spite of this simplicity they enjoyed more privileges than the average Communist. They ate special meals and had extra rations of cigarettes, which Mao liked to chain-smoke. He and his ex-movie starlet went, occasionally, to Saturday night dances given for the Party workers. Here an improvised orchestra struggled with Viennese waltzes, known to be Mao’s favorites, along with scattered bits of boogie-woogie. Mao also liked Chinese translations of Russian songs, but whatever the music, he and his wife swung into action with genuine enthusiasm.
On the whole, Mao’s simple life adds to his popularity. A Mao-myth, similar to the Stalin-myth, is being built up about him, and by similar means. His picture is everywhere. His words are repeated and his name is spoken with reverence. In 1937, Mao wrote a letter to Earl Browder, head of the Communist Party in the United States, in which he said, in part: “We feel that when we achieve victory (in China) this victory will be of considerable help to the struggle of the American people for liberation.” Mao signed his letter, “President of the Chinese Soviet Republic.”
Today, Mao is not only the most influential Communist in China, but probably, next to Stalin, the most powerful Red on earth. With Kremlin approval, he controls, temporarily more than four hundred and sixty million people, which is three times the population of the United States and double that of Russia. A typical student of the methods of Moscow, in spite of his devotion to Confucius and Plato, he has no compunction whatever about condemning thousands to death upon suspicion that their loyalties are slipping. Aware of this quality in him, Japanese and Korean Communist representatives have declared him, “The Symbol of the struggle for emancipation of all the peoples of the Orient.” They claim he has attained his position of power through his sincere and idealistic solicitude for China’s masses and his realism in bringing about reforms. His enemies, however, intimate that his “realism” has not excluded any means to gain his ends, from walking out of attempted peace conferences to assassinations.