Anchee Min - Becoming Madame Mao

He nods, takes her hands, holds them and continues. My father gave us no money whatsoever. He fed us the most meager food. On the fifteenth of every month he made a concession to his laborers and gave them eggs to go with rice, but never meat. To me he gave neither eggs nor meat. His budget was tight and he counted by pennies.

What about your mother? the girl asks. His face lights. My mother was a kind woman, generous and sympathetic, who was always ready to share what she had. She pitied the poor and often gave them food. My mother didn't get along with my father.

Again the girl responds that she shares the feeling. What could a woman do but weep and endure under such circumstances? The comment let Mao speak of rebelling against his father, of his once threatening to leap into a pond and drown himself. The beating must stop or you will never see me again. He demonstrates the way he yelled at his old man. They laugh.

He describes his turbulent years as a student. He left home at sixteen and graduated from the First Normal School of Hunan. I was an omnivorous reader and I inhabited the Hunan Provincial Library.

To her embarrassment, none of the titles he mentioned has she heard of. Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, Darwin's Origin of Species and books on ethics by John Stuart Mill. Later on she would be required to read these books but she would never be able to go beyond page ten.

He seems to enjoy talking to her tremendously. The girl is grateful that he doesn't ask whether she has ever come across one of his beloved books. She doesn't want to go into poetry. She has no sense of it. She is afraid, of a name, Fairlynn. She decides to quickly change the subject.

Sounds like you skipped a lot of meals, she interrupts gently. You didn't take care of your health.

He laughs loudly. You might not believe this, but I was more than fit. In those days I gathered a group of students around me and founded an organization called the New Citizen Society. Besides discussing the great issues, we were energetic physical culturists. In winter we tramped through the fields, up and down mountains, along city walls. We also swam across rivers. We took rain baths, sun baths and wind baths. We camped in the snows.

She says that she would like to hear more.

It's late, I should not keep you from sleep.

Her eyes are bright like morning stars.

Well, I'll tell you one last detail of my story. He takes off his coat and wraps her shoulders with it. No more after this, all right?

She nods.

It was one over-rained summer when all the plants outgrew their sizes. A giant honeycomb constructed by horse bees was discovered on a tree in front of my house. The object was like a mine hung in the air. In the morning the tree was bent over because of the comb's weight-it had absorbed the moisture of the previous night and gotten heavier. After noon, the tree straightened itself back up.

This was a very strange honeycomb. Instead of being filled with honey and wax, it was filled with fiber of all sorts: dead leaves, seeds, feathers, animal bones, straw and rags. It was why the honeycomb smelled rotten at night. The smell attracted bugs. Especially lightning bugs. They swarmed in and covered the comb. By this time the horse bees had gone to sleep. The light of the bugs turned the comb into a glowing blue lantern.

Did you know that when lightning bugs get together they turn on and off their lights in unison?

Every night, the girl goes to sleep with the same fairy tale in which she always sees the blue lantern described by Mao.

The desire to meet in the dark increases. Mao begins to send the guard away. One evening Lan Ping is determined not to be the one to invite affection. She bids good-bye right after dinner. Taking his horse he offers to walk her a mile.

They are silent. She is upset. There are rumors about my spending time with you alone, she tells him. I am afraid I can come no more.

His smile disappears.

She starts to walk away.

I have been trying to use a sword to cut the flow of water, he murmurs behind her.

She turns around and sees him setting a foot in the stirrup.

Suddenly he hears her giggle.

What's funny?

Your pants.

What about them?

Your rear is about to show in a day or two-the fabric has melted.

Damn.

I'll fix it for you if you like.

His smile returns.

THE VILLAGE TAILOR IS GLAD to have Lan Ping as her sewing companion. Lan Ping is working on Mao's pants, which have been brought to her by Little Dragon. She doesn't know where the sewing is going to take her. She is aware that he is lonely and is fascinated by pretty women from big cities, places that rejected him as a student and as a young revolutionary. Later on she finds out that he calls her type of people bourgeois, but he pursues them. He calls Americans imperialists and paper tigers and says they should be put off the face of the earth, but he learns English and prepares himself to one day visit the United States. He tells his nation to learn from Russia, but he hates Stalin.

In 1938 Lan Ping finds herself falling in love with Mao Tse-tung. Falling in love with the poet in him, the poet his heroine wife Zi-zhen tries to kill. Although Mao later on will establish himself as an emperor and take many concubines, in 1938 he is humble. He is a penniless bandit and tries to catch the girl by selling his mind and vision.

One morning his guard comes and leaves me a piece of his scribbling-a new poem he composed the night before. He wants my comment. I unfold the paper and hear my heart singing.

Mountain

I whip my already quick horse and don't dismount

When I look back in wonder

The sky is three feet away

Mountain

The sea collapses and the river boils

Innumerable horses race

Insanely into the battle

Mountain

Peaks pierce the green sky, unblunted

The sky falls

Down the clouds my men are home

She reads his poems over and over. In the next few days the guard will bring more for her. Mao copies the poems in ink in the elegant calligraphy of Chinese ideograms, lucidly arranged.

His scribbles become her nightly treat in which passion speaks between the lines. Gradually a god steps down from the clouds and shares his life with her. He expresses his feelings for his lost love, his sister, brother and his first wife, Kai-hui, slaughtered by Chiang Kai-shek. And his children, whom he was forced to give away between battles and only later found dead or lost. She receives his tears and feels his sadness. What grabs her heart is that she discovers there is no anger in his poems; rather, he praises the way nature shares its secrets with him-he embraces its severity, enormity and beauty.

The tailor gives me a piece of gray rag, which I cut into two large round patches. I stitch them around the rear. The tailor suggests that I thicken the fabric. She says, Make it durable so that it will serve as a carried-around stool.

We sew quietly for a while and then suddenly the tailor asks me what I think about Zi-zhen.

Trying to hide my awkwardness I say that I respect Zi-zhen a great deal. The tailor stops her work and raises her eyes. There is suspicion in the look. Pulling a thread she says slowly but clearly, Mao Tse-tung belongs to the Communist Party and the people. He's no ordinary man to be chased around. He has suffered the loss of his first wife and he is not about to lose his second.

Before I have a chance to respond she goes on. The late Mrs. Mao's name is Kai-hui, for your information. Have you heard of her? I am sure you don't mind me mentioning her, do you?

Please, go ahead.