Anchee Min - Becoming Madame Mao

It is not that I feel good about Vice Chairman Liu's death in 1969. But it is he who made Mao pull the trigger. Mao simply feels threatened by him. Liu has the power of a politician child. Unlike Premier Zhou, Marshal Ye Jian-ying and Deng Xiao-ping who pretend to be "innocently" making "mistakes" when Mao criticizes them, Liu stands by his belief. Like a shooting star, he fuels on his own life.

Compared to Vice Chairman Liu, Premier Zhou lives to please Mao. I don't understand why he behaves that way. He was educated in France. He doesn't like the dancing floor being spread with powder to protect Mao from slipping during movements, but he never complains. I myself hate the floor too, but Mao and the others love it. Premier Zhou is an excellent dancer, yet he forces himself to breathe the powder dust. He worships Mao. He sincerely believes that Mao's is the hand that sculpts China. He models himself after the famous Premier Zhu Ge-liang of the Han dynasty, the ancient premier who spent his life serving the family of Emperor Liu.

Premier Zhou is a man of genius, but he is incapable of saying no to Mao. He is a janitor who fixes what Mao has broken. He sends warm letters, and food coupons in Mao's name, to Mao's victims. He speaks only to provoke forgiveness. After his death in January 1976 Mao signs an order and forbids the man to be publicly mourned. Yet millions of people risk their lives to fill the streets to mourn him. Personally I admire him and feel sorry for him.

Premier Zhou has chances, but he chooses to ignore the calling of his conscience and lets them slip away. At moments of crises, he closes his eyes to Mao's problems. He fakes his emotion and follows the crowd and shouts, Long live the proletarian dictatorship! During the Cultural Revolution he echoes Mao. He waves Mao's little red book of quotations and praises the Red Guards' destructive behavior. He endures beyond reason. He endures at the expense of the nation. One can't help but question: Is it because he needs the job as the premier? Or is it that he lives to be another kind of immortal, the one who brings himself to the altar?

When Mao finally turns his back on him and persuades the nation to attack him, Zhou removes his services quietly. He is sent to the hospital with cancer of the pancreas in its final stage. During his last moment he begs his wife to recite Mao's new poem "No Need to Fart." It is during the reciting that he permanently shuts his eyes. Does he hope that Mao will be touched by such a performance of loyalty? Does he hope that Mao will be finally satisfied that he is now gone forever? Chinese people wonder about Premier Zhou's performance. Chinese people wonder if it was in peace that Premier Zhou left the world. Or did he realize that he had helped Mao to carry out the Cultural Revolution and buried China's chance of prosperity?

I have reached my limit. I can't stay out of my husband's affairs anymore. This isn't an option and I won't consider divorce. Kang Sheng has promised to help me. But how can I trust the double agent? He says Mao sleeps only with virgins-I am not sure if this is not the message Mao wants him to send me.

One day in February Kang Sheng comes to show his loyalty toward me. There has been a threat, he tells me. There is a unique virgin with a magnificent brain. Worse, Mao has fallen in love with her. A golden bird who sings at the emperor's window every night. Mao is so attached that he is in the mood for divorcing.

Her name is Shang-guan Yun-zhu-Pearl Born from the Clouds. She is a film actress in her early thirties. An actress! Her movies are The Qing Family on the Water-city, In Your Voice I Sing, Lady of the Wei Kingdom, The Sisters of the Stage.

I am talking about a woman who makes my life a joke. A joke at which I am unable to laugh.

I imagine them. My husband and Shang-guan Yun-zhu. I watch them move on my stage. The lust which I used to experience myself. I project them on the screen of my mind.

I say to Kang Sheng that it is time. It is time that I stop weeping for my misfortune. It is time I stop taking morphine to dull my senses. It is time to switch plates and bottles and make others take the drugs that have paralyzed me.

Kang Sheng says it's a good idea. I'll work with you. Let's renew our Yenan contract, let's get down to business. My advice? Start developing your own network of loyalists. Start your business of political management. Go to Shanghai and invest in people whom you know and make them your battle horses.

The secret news begins to spread. The first lady has arrived in Shanghai and invites her old friends. She throws parties in Mao's name. The gathering floor is the city hall. Special guests include the famous actor Dan, her partner in A Doll's House, and Junli, the most-in-demand film director. The two men in her wedding picture at the Pagoda of Six Harmonies. She thinks that they will be flattered and commit to her in no time. She is Madame Mao. She expects eagerness.

But there is no applause when the curtain descends. The parties and the reunions generate little energy. No respect and no friendship. Later on Madame Mao Jiang Ching learns from Kang Sheng that the actor and the director, the men who couldn't get over their friend Tang Nah's sadness, sent a message to Premier Zhou reporting her ambition.

I am back in Beijing, back to the life of stillness. I didn't want to come back. I was ordered back by the Politburo. I have been ridiculed in Shanghai. People gossiped about Shang-guan Yun-zhu and Mao's seriousness in taking her as a future wife. I tried to ignore the rumor. I tried to focus on what I set out to achieve. I met interesting young people, the graduates of the Music Conservatory and the School of Opera of Shanghai. I was looking for new talent and they made perfect candidates. They complained about the lack of opportunities to perform. I understand how frightening it can be for actors to grow old on the sidelines. I told them that I would love to work with them. I promised to give them a chance to shine. I am in a mood to smash chains, I said. I want to renew my dream of a truly revolutionary theater, a weapon and a form of liberation. But the young people were not enthusiastic. They were unsure of my position. They wanted to check out my power first.

This morning I asked my driver to drop me in a place where there are woods to cover me from the rest of the world. I want to stop my mind from spinning. A half-hour later I find myself in the imperial hunting ground. I ask the driver to come back in three hours.

I walk toward a hill. The air feels like warm water pouring over my face. The scene is bleak. Plants have begun to die everywhere in the heat. The grass and bushes are all yellow. Even the most heat-bearing plant-the umbrella-shaped three-leaf goya-has lost its spirit. The leaves dangle down in three different directions.

There is a rotten smell in the air. It is the dead animals. Falcons circle above my head. I suppose the rotten smell rises fast in the heat. The birds smell their food in the air. Besides falcons, there are shit-lovers, cousins of cockroaches, crawling in and out of dead plants. I didn't know that they could fly. The heat must have made them change habits, for the ground is a baking pan.

The sky is a giant rice bowl and I am walking in its bottom-unable to climb and unable to get out.

Helplessness sucks the air out of my chest.

You need the figurehead. You need Mao, Kang Sheng says to me. Your role is to play Mao's most trusted comrade. It is the only way to empower yourself. You have to fake it. No, you don't feel. Go and kiss the corpses of the backyard concubines. They will tell you what feeling means. Get up on the giant's shoulders. So no one can overlook you.