Mao Zedong’s swim in the Yangtze River was a global sensation. (Web Photo)
Li Zhisui, Mao’s personal doctor, recalls: I was in Beijing on July 16, 1966. That day, Mao Zedong swam in the Yangtze River, which was a global sensation. I had swum with Mao several times, so I hardly noticed the news. I was unaware at the Time that many skeptical foreigners found it incredible that a 73-year-old man could set an astounding feat that surpassed the Olympic championship record. I did not think so. The section of the Yangtze River in Wuhan has a strong current, and Mao swam on the surface, all the way downstream, floating through dozens of miles at once.
In May 1966, after Mao had turned the world upside down, he began to live in seclusion again.
After the passage of the Notice of May 16, Mao told me, “Let them make a fuss, we’ll take a break.” This was Mao’s usual method of retreat, watching the tiger fight from a distance and waiting for his enemies to show themselves one by one.
We stayed in Hangzhou, avoiding the political turmoil.
Mao’s quiet control of change left the party leadership without a head. The Cultural Revolution needed Mao’s leadership. I think the real purpose of Mao’s Cultural Revolution was still confusing to the leaders at this time.
In early June, Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping came to Hangzhou once to report to Mao about the Cultural Revolution. After Liu and Deng left, Mao had said, “Let them go and deal with the problems in the movement, I am still resting.”
When I heard these two words from Mao at that time, I immediately felt that Mao seemed to have stayed out of it and adopted a laissez-faire attitude. Then wasn’t it the inevitable result that Beijing was in chaos.
When I stayed in Hangzhou, I continued to go to the ball twice a week, sometimes climbing Dingjia Mountain. I saw him meditating more and talking less, but he seemed to be in good spirits.
On June 15, he left Hangzhou and took a train westward. On the 18th, he arrived in Xiangtan County, Hunan Province, and took a small car to Shaoshan.
In June 1959, when Mao returned to Shaoshan, he went swimming in the reservoir at the bottom of the mountain and said, “When I retire in my old age, I can come back here and build a hut to live in.” Tao Cast, the first secretary of the South Central Bureau at that time, decided to build a villa in Dishui Cave since 1960. This is Mao’s “hut”.
It was surrounded by mountains on all sides, full of verdant trees and shrubs. There are no residents nearby, and it is a valley far away from the rest of the world. Mao said: “I came here when I was a child to let cattle and cut firewood. There is a boulder on the big stone drum, called the stone Goddess, when I was small, every time I pass by to pay homage. There is a tiger resting pavilion on another hill, I often came to lie in this pavilion when I was a child.”
After living in the Dripping Water Cave Hotel, the news became more closed. Every two or three days, Beijing sent a confidential correspondent to deliver documents. They brought Beijing newspapers, and I learned about Beijing from them. They said that all the schools in Beijing were in chaos and the students were making a lot of noise and no one could control them. When I tried to ask them more, they wouldn’t say much.
But I heard about Fu Lianzhang. He was fought at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. In 1958, Fu was forced to retire. Because of the health care system he used to implement, he made a lot of enemies, and none of the leading comrades liked him. But the main one who held a grudge against Fu was Lin Biao. At the beginning of liberation, Fu advised Lin to quit his drug addiction but did not listen, Fu wrote a report to the central government. Another time, Lin suffered from kidney stones, Fu organized a consultation, Ye Qun asked to check the urine, Fu did not agree, a doctor went to a private laboratory test to confirm the diagnosis. Therefore, Lin and Ye hated Fu to the bone and tried to put him to death. I have heard very little about him since 1958. After he was beaten up, he wrote a letter to Mao.
Mao said, “Fu Lianzhang told me that someone had fought against him and committed suicide once, but he was saved. He asked me to save him. In fact, Fu Lianzhang is a good person, has retired and does not care, there is still what fight head, this person should be protected.” And said: “I’m afraid that this time there will be a thousand people committed suicide.”
In fact, Mao’s words of protection were in vain. At the end of 1966, some people from the revolutionary rebel faction of the General Logistics Department arrested Fu and took him to Xishan, and since then there has been no news of him.
Ten days after we arrived in Shaoshan, in late June, the weather in Hunan was very hot. The cave was in the middle of a valley, and it was hot and humid every day, and there was no cooling equipment, only a few electric fans, which could not solve the problem. Mao then decided to move to Wuhan.
After arriving in Wuhan, contacts with the outside world became more frequent. The confidential correspondent came from Beijing once a day, bringing a lot of documents, newspapers, magazines and letters, and I received a letter from Hsien, whom we had not seen for a year. Mao was very happy to watch the Cultural Revolution unfold in Beijing from across the river in Wuhan. His enemies were gradually falling into his trap, and he took advantage of this to build up his strength and prepare to crush them. I sensed this implicitly from my conversations with him and from his letters to Jiang Qing.
At first Mao did not have a plan for the Cultural Revolution. But this letter to Jiang Qing shows Mao’s view of the situation at that time, his analysis of the development of the Cultural Revolution movement, and the possible changes that might occur in China in the future, with a particularly full affirmation of his own role in these aspects. And Mao spoke from his heart to Jiang Qing, and no one else, elevating Jiang Qing’s political status even more and demonstrating Mao’s trust in Jiang Qing. I think this letter, which is extremely important, can be seen as Mao’s manifesto in the political struggle and one of the wills he issued in the political struggle.
Mao wrote in his recluse Life in Wuhan –
Jiang Qing.
The letter of June 29th was received. It is better for you to stay there (i.e. Shanghai) for a while, as Wei (Wenbo) and Chen (Pi Xian) have suggested. I have two foreign guests this month, see after the line and then tell you, since June 15 after leaving Wulin (i.e. Hangzhou), in a cave in the West for ten days (i.e. in the dripping cave) is not very well informed. On the 28th, I came to the place of Baiyun Huanghe (i.e. Wuhan), and it has been ten days. Every day to read the material, are very interesting. The world is in chaos, and it has reached the rule of the world. After seven or eight years and again. The cattle, ghosts and snakes jump out by themselves. They are determined by their own class nature and must jump out.
My friend (Lin Biao)’s speech was urged by the Central Committee to be issued. I was prepared to agree to send it. He was talking about the issue of coup d’état. This issue has never been discussed in the past. I always felt uneasy about some of his references. I have never believed that my small books have such great power. Now by his blow, the whole party, the whole country is blowing up. It is really a woman selling a melon, self-promotion. I was forced by him to the mountain, it seems to disagree with him can not. It was the first time in my life that I agreed with someone against my will on a major issue, and it was called not by human will.
Ruan Ji, a Jin dynasty man, opposed Liu Bang, and he walked from Luoyang to Chenggao, sighing: The world has no heroes, so the vertical son became famous. Lu Xun also said the same thing about his miscellaneous writings. I share Lu Xun’s heart. I like his frankness. He said: “To dissect oneself is often more severe than to dissect others. After a few falls, I tend to do the same. But comrades often don’t believe me. I am confident, but somewhat unconfident.
When I was a teenager, I once said: confident life two hundred years, will be when the water strikes three thousand miles. It can be seen that the full strength. But not very confident, always feel that there is no tiger in the mountain, the monkey called the king. I have become such a king. But it is not eclecticism. I have some tiger spirit in me, which is the main thing. I also have some monkey spirit, which is secondary.
I have cited a few lines written by Li Ku of the later Han Dynasty to Huang Xin: the one who is easy to break, the bright one is easy to stain, the Yangchun white snow, and the one who covers the few, the reputation, in fact, difficult to match. These last two lines refer precisely to me. I have been in the Politburo Standing Committee, read these lines. People should have self-awareness. At the Hangzhou meeting in April this year, I expressed my disagreement with my friend (Lin Biao), but what was the point? At the May meeting in Beijing, he still said the same thing, and the press was even more aggressive, blowing it out of proportion. In this way, I had to go to the beam. I guess his intention was to fight the ghosts (Mao’s enemies in the Party) with the help of Zhong Kui. In the 1960s, I became the Communist Party’s Zhong Kui.
Things always go the other way, the higher you blow, the harder you fall. I was ready to fall to pieces. It doesn’t matter, the material is not reduced, but just crushed. There are more than a hundred parties in the world, and most of them do not believe in Marxism-Leninism anymore. Marx and Lenin have been shattered, let alone us. I advise you to pay attention to this problem as well, and not to be overwhelmed by victory. Always think about your weaknesses, shortcomings and mistakes. I have talked to you about this issue for many times, you still know it, and also talked about it in Shanghai in April. What I wrote above is a bit close to black words. Isn’t that exactly what some anti-Party elements say? They want to bring down the whole Party and myself, but I only talk about the role I played, and I think some of the references are inappropriate, which is the difference between me and the gangsters. This matter cannot be made public now, the whole left and the general public are saying that, and making it public would throw cold water on them and help the right. And the task now is to bring down the rightists in the whole Party and the whole country basically (not all of them), and in seven or eight years there will be a campaign to sweep away the cattle, ghosts and snakes. And there will be many more sweeps after that. So these almost black words of mine cannot be made public now, and they may not be. Because the leftists and the general public do not welcome me to say so. Perhaps at some time after my death, when the rightists are in power, they will make them public. They will use this kind of speech of mine to try to raise the black flag forever. But if they do so, they will be doomed. Since the fall of The Emperor in 1911, the reactionaries have been in power for a long time. The longest he was in power was only twenty years (Chiang Kai-shek), and he fell as soon as the people revolted. Chiang Kai-shek took advantage of Sun Yat-sen’s trust in him and opened a Whampoa Military Academy to recruit a large number of reactionaries, thus starting his career. Once he rebelled against the Communists, almost the entire landowning and bourgeoisie supported him. At that time, the Communist Party was inexperienced, so he was happy and temporarily gaining power. But for twenty years, he never unified. The war between the Communist Party and the Kuomintang, the war between the Kuomintang and the warlords of various factions, the Sino-Japanese War, and finally the four-year Great Civil War, he rolled to a group of islands in the sea. If there is an Anti-Communist rightist change in China, I conclude that they too will not have peace and will probably be short-lived. For all revolutionaries who represent the interests of more than ninety percent of the people will not tolerate it. At that time the rightists may use my words to gain power for a while. The Left will certainly use some of my other words to organize and bring down the Right. This Cultural Revolution is a serious exercise. Some areas (e.g. Beijing), with deep roots, were overthrown at once. Some organs (e.g. Peking University and Tsinghua University) were disorganized and disintegrated in an instant. Wherever the rightists are more arrogant, the worse they fail, and the more the leftists become energized. This is a nationwide exercise in which the leftists, the rightists and the wavering centrists will all learn their respective lessons. Conclusion: The future is bright, the road is winding. It’s the same two old sayings.
I have not corresponded for a long time, so I will write a long one, so I will talk about it next time.
Mao Zedong
July 8, 1966
The letter was first delivered to Zhou Enlai and Kang Sheng. When Jiang Qing received the letter, she was overjoyed. Although the letter also contained criticisms of her, she circulated it among a few core leaders in order to further consolidate her current political position. When Mao learned of this, he ordered Jiang Qing to withdraw it and forbid its circulation. I made a copy of the letter before returning it to the General Office and have kept it to this day.
For the next twenty-five years, I often thought back to the contents of this letter. Today, having experienced the political turmoil, I still feel that this letter is sufficient proof that Mao had his own insightful views on politics. Mao never fully trusted Lin Biao. Mao only used Lin temporarily to lend a knife to kill people. Lin betrayed Mao not long after. After Mao’s death, the so-called rightists finally regained power.
Whenever there was a political movement, I tried to avoid it so as not to get into trouble. This time, I thought I could stay out of the movement because I was with Mao in the field. Now it seems that I can’t avoid it.
At the beginning of July, Mao had been out of Beijing for several months. Beijing was in chaos, and he was preparing to go back. He said to me, “Beijing is now bustling with activity. I will stay here for a few more days, and you should go back to Beijing first. It is not enough to read documents and materials, but to see with your own eyes in order to distinguish the good people from the bad people. You should prepare and go back tomorrow.” Mao wanted me to investigate the activities of the Cultural Revolution in Beijing and report back to him. When he didn’t let anyone go back to Shixi in January, the “thing” he said was this task.
I said, “From the materials sent to me, it seems that the Politburo and the Secretariat can no longer control the situation. Now it is not clear who are the good guys and who are the bad guys. After I go back to Beijing, what kind of person should I look for?” By this time the leaders of the CCP were in a state of confusion. In this political maelstrom, who should I look for when I get to Beijing?
Mao pondered for a moment and said, “Tao Cast was transferred to Beijing. He is a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Political Bureau, Vice Premier of the State Council, Minister of the Central Propaganda Department, and an advisor to the Central Cultural Revolution Group. You go to him and say I asked you to go. Ask him to arrange for you to see the revolutionary rebellious activities of the masses and the large-character postings. When I come back, you can tell me what you think.”
I still wasn’t very reassured. Under Mao’s protection, I could rest easy, but once I went alone to investigate a movement I didn’t know anything about, I was on thin ice. Mao said to me a few weeks ago, “I think a thousand people are going to die this time. Now the sky is turning upside down. I am just happy that the world is in chaos.”
I didn’t want to see chaos, and the Cultural Revolution had me on edge. The next day, after being away from Beijing for more than a year, I flew back to Beijing.
I was in Beijing on July 16, 1966. On that day, Mao was swimming in the Yangtze River, which was a global sensation. I had swum with Mao several times, so I barely noticed the news. I didn’t know at the time that many skeptical foreigners found it incredible that a seventy-three-year-old man could set an amazing feat that surpassed the Olympic championship record. I didn’t think so. That section of the Yangtze River in Wuhan has a strong current, and Mao swam on his back on the surface, floating on his belly all the way downstream, floating through dozens of miles at once.
To me, Mao’s Yangtze River swim meant the end of his self-imposed exile. It also signaled that Mao was dissatisfied with the central leadership and was sending out a signal to fight. Two days later, on July 18, Mao returned to Beijing, fully loaded and on the front line of the political struggle, and another major disaster was officially unveiled. He began to direct the Cultural Revolution himself.
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