Becoming Madame Mao - Anchee Min [0]
Anchee Min
A Mariner Book
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
BOSTON • NEW YORK
To Lloyd with all my love
First Mariner Books edition 2001
Copyright © 2000 by Anchee Min
All rights reserved
For information about permission to reproduce selections from
this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Company,
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Min, Anchee, date.
Becoming Madame Mao / Anchee Min.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-618-00407-6
ISBN 0-618-12.700-3 (pbk.)
1. Chiang Ch'ing, 1910—Fiction. 2. Spouses of heads of
state—China—Fiction. 3. China—History—20th
century—Fiction. 4. Married women—China—Fiction.
5. Statesmen—China—Fiction. I. Title.
PS3563.14614 B43 2000
813'.54—dc21 99-058520
Printed in the United States of America
Book design by Robert Overholtzer
QUM 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12
You are what your deep, driving desire is.
As your desire is, so is your will.
As your will is, so is your deed.
As your deed is, so is your destiny.
—Brihadaranyaka Upanishads iv.4.5
Madame Mao
as Yunhe (1919–1933)
as Lan Ping (1934–1937)
and as Jiang Ching (1938–1991)
Author's Note: I have tried my best to mirror the facts of history. Every character in this book existed in real life. The letters, poems, and extended quotations have been translated from original documents.
Contents
Title Page
Dedication
Copyright Page
Madame Mao
Author's Note
Prologue
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
Acknowledgments
References
Prologue
What does history recognize? A dish made of a hundred sparrows—a plate of mouths.
Fourteen years since her arrest. 1991. Madame Mao Jiang Ching is seventy-seven years old. She is on the death seat. The only reason the authorities keep postponing the execution is their hope of her repentance.
Well, I won't surrender. When I was a child my mother used to tell me that I should think of myself as grass—born to be stepped on. But I think of myself as a peacock among hens. I am not being judged fairly. Side by side Mao Tse-tung and I stood, yet he is considered a god while I am a demon. Mao Tse-tung and I were married for thirty-eight years. The number is thirty-eight.
I speak to my daughter Nah. I ask her to be my biographer. She is allowed to visit me once a month. She wears a peasant woman's hairstyle—a wok-lid-cut around the ears—and she is in a man's suit. She looks unbearably silly. She does that to hurt my eyes. She was divorced and remarried and now lives in Beijing. She has a son to whom my identity has been a secret.
No, Mother. The tone is firm and stubborn.
I can't describe my disappointment. I have expectations of Nah. Too many perhaps. Maybe that's what killed her spirit. Am I different from my mother who wanted the best for me by binding my feet? Nah picks what I dislike and drops what I like. It's been that way since she saw how her father treated me. How can one not wet one's shoes when walking along the seashore all the time? Nah doesn't see the whole picture. She doesn't know how her father once worshiped me. She can't imagine that I was Mao's sunshine. I don't blame her. There was no trace of that passion left on Mao's face after he entered the Forbidden City and became a modern emperor. No trace that Mao and I were once lovers unto death.
The mother tells the daughter that both her father and she hate cowards. The words have no effect. Nah is too beaten. The mother thinks of her as a rotten piece of wood that can never be made into a beautiful piece of furniture. She is so afraid that her voice trembles when she speaks. The mother can't recognize any part of herself in the daughter.
The mother repeats the ancient story of Cima-Qinhua, the brave girl who saved her mother from a bloody riot. The model of piety. Nah listens but makes no response. Then she cries and says that she is not the mother. Can't do the things she does. And should not be requested to perform