Anchee Min - Becoming Madame Mao

He begins with a stylish folk joke very few understand.

The girl is star-struck. It feels as if she has met Buddha himself.

The man on stage talks about the relationship between art and philosophy, between the roles of an artist and a revolutionary.

Comrades! How are we doing with the weeds that have been growing in our stomachs?

His movement is scholarly and relaxed. His voice has a heavy nasal sound, mixed with a vibrating Hunan accent.

I have been cleaning up mine. A lot of pulling and scaling. The thing is that Chiang Kai-shek and the Japanese are easy to identify as enemies. We know they are there to get us. But dogmatism is like weeds. It wears a mask of rice shoots. Can you tell the difference? To be a good artist one has to be a Marxist first. One has to be able to distinguish dogmatism from Communism.

She detects metal in his frame. She suddenly wonders if there is any truth in Kang Sheng's advice: what counts in Yenan is the proof of one's background as a Communist. Her instinct is telling her a different truth, telling her what nature tells men and women. There isn't anything to prove. Everything is in the bodies, in the catching of the eyes of the human animals.

The man on the stage continues. Words, phrases and concepts flow.

The dogmatists pretend to be true revolutionaries. They sit on important seats of our congress. They do nothing but mouth Joseph Stalin. The revolt and attack has started from within, inside our Party's body. They are invisible but fatal. They call themselves one hundred percent Soviets, but they are spiders with rotten spinners-they can no longer produce threads, they are useless to the revolution. They speak in Karl Marx's tune, but they help Chiang Kai-shek. We have been mocked. We have been given glasses with scratched lenses-so we can't see clearly. We have believed in Stalin and trusted the people sent by him. But what do they do here except make social experiments at our cost?

Mao elaborates on Chinese history in light of the current situation, applies theories with military design and invention. Then his expression changes, withdraws, sinks into solemnity, as if the crowd has disappeared in front of him.

The girl can't help but begin measuring. She measures the man's future with a fortuneteller's eye. She zooms in. On his face, through a glittering, she sees an imprint of a lion's claw. She hears its roar. A howling out of time. It is at that moment she hears a click between herself and her role.

His bodyguard comes with a mug of tea. The boy has a caterpillar-like scar between his eyebrows. He places the tea on the ground in front of his master's feet. This amazes the girl. In Yenan it seems natural for people to pick up a mug from the ground instead of a table.

The voice on the stage grows louder. The truth is, comrades, we have been losing-our men, horses and family members. Because of the wrong direction we have been forced to follow, our map has shrunk again. Haven't we learned enough lessons? We didn't lose the battles to Chiang Kai-shek or the Japanese, but to the enemy within. Our brothers' heads roll like rocks… About preserving political innocence, yes, we want to preserve it, not out of ignorance, but out of knowledge and wisdom. Our leadership is so weak that bad luck has been glued to us. Our teeth fall out when we drink cold water, and we stumble over our own fart! We must stop taking the road to our own graves! Comrades! I want you all to understand that dogmatism is about making sausages with donkey's shit!

He bends, picks up the mug and takes a sip.

She hears the sound of pencils scratching paper.

The crowd, including Fairlynn, writes down Mao's speech.

The girl doesn't write. She memorizes Mao's lines, the spoken and unspoken. It is where she puts her talent to work.

He paces, sips the tea and waits for the crowd to raise their heads from the notepads. He has no printing machine, no newspapers. He relies on the mouths of his crowd. His eyes brush through the hall. Suddenly there is an unexpected sight. His focus is interrupted. He recognizes her, the girl who doesn't take notes like the rest. The actress with her makeup off. The impact is like dawn-light lunging through darkness. Its sensation shoots through him.

A sleeping-seed sprouts.

She looks away, knowing that she has altered his focus. His attention is now on her, and on her alone. It happens in complete silence. A wild chrysanthemum secretly and fervently opens and embraces the sunbeams. The girl feels strangely calm and experienced. She is her role. She takes the moment and tries to make it shine. She is pleased with herself, an actress who has never failed to cast a spell over her audience. Her heart misses no beat. In silence she introduces herself to him. Every part of her body speaks, delivers and reaches. She has him watching her, freely and boldly. Her neatly combed hair, her ivory skin. She sits still, on the ground of Yenan. She lets him find her.

And he smiles. She turns toward him. Her eyes then pass and go beyond him. She doesn't allow him to make contact. Not yet. She crosses him in order to light the fire, to grasp him, to have him begin the pursuit.

The arias of opera flow in her head. The butterfly wings are heavy with golden flower-powders… She then hears Fairlynn. Her shout. Marvelous! I love the lecture! I love the man!

Mao signs autographs and answers questions. The girl raises her arm. He nods her a yes. She projects, asks a question on women's liberation. Suddenly she notices that there is an absent look in his smile. He is looking at her but his eyes don't register.

She drops her question. She feels unsure of herself as she sinks back into the sea of the crowd. Mao raises his eyes. She hopes that he is looking for her. She can't tell. He discontinues the search. She stands up and walks out. She tells herself that she would rather disappear than be unrecognized.

Later on he explains to her the problem. Although he has been living alone the obstacle is that he is still married. The wife's name is Zi-zhen, a heroine as popular and respected as he is. When he was a bandit Zi-zhen rebelled against her landlord family to follow him. She was seventeen then. She was known for her beauty and bravery. She had bullets beneath her ribs from the Long March in 1934. She had borne him six children, but only one, a girl, is alive.

Their separation began when she became terrified of another pregnancy. She refused to sleep with him and he started to sniff around. Zi-zhen found out. Then give it to me, he demanded. She punched him in the face and then went straight to the Politburo. Make him behave like Mao Tse-tung the Savior! she demanded.

Mao wished that he could gun down the marriage certificate that hung between him and Zi-zhen. He moved out of the cave and told Zi-zhen that the marriage was over. Zi-zhen took out her pistol and shot every ceramic pot in the room. He imagined that it was his head that she smashed. He ran away. She broke down but was determined to get him back, determined to make herself suit him. He avoided her. Gradually she learned his will.

Teach me how to suit you! She moved back, he left the room. She insisted that he had to give a reason. He made one up: You know too little of Marxism and Leninism.

She marked his words in her notebook and put herself on a train to Russia. I'll be one hundred percent Marxist and Leninist when I come back.

Agnes Smedley, an American journalist visiting Yenan at that time, recalled her effort to teach Mao to dance. She made a prediction in a letter to a friend: If Mao ever picks up dance he will abandon his wife Zi-zhen. Mao asked Agnes whether romance really existed. I certainly have never experienced one, he said.

When the girl from Shanghai enters his cave, she becomes the representation of what Mao has been looking for.