Back in 1937, when the Japanese occupied much of Northeast China, a young woman who called herself Lan Ping followed this trend and came to Yenan, the Communists’ base after the Long March. Like many young people, Lan Ping was frustrated by the situation of Japanese occupation and the seeming inability of the Nationalists in power to do anything about it. And like many of her contemporaries, she ran away to join the Communists. She bravely crossed half of China during those perilous times, travelling over a thousand kilometers from the coastal city Shanghai to reach the center of the Chinese Communist revolution.
Before arriving in Yenan at the age of 23, she was already an actress of some note working under the stage name, Lan Ping. She had starred as Nora Helmer in a Chinese adaptation of Ibsen’s Norwegian drama A Doll’s House and appeared in several other anti-Japanese films made by the left wing movie-makers in Shanghai. Besides her show business career, she had several marriages under her belt and had caused a number of scandals in Shanghai. The gossip about her filled the tabloid newspapers. She divorced three times in her previous life. People admired her courage to stand up for herself, for Lan Ping had been the daughter of a concubine, abandoned by her father and she also had her feet bound as a child. This strong-minded personality was simultaneously denounced by the conservatives and envied by millions of women. The parallels between the real life story of Lan Ping and the Nora Helmer character in A Doll’s House weren’t wasted on the Chinese audience. If she had kept her movie career as her public platform, who could tell what kind of star she might be?
Once in Yenan, Lan Ping wasted little time starting her new career in the Communist base. Compared with many other female fighters, Lan Ping appeared a worldly, sophisticated and urbane young woman. As soon as she arrived, she started to cause stir by appearing on Yenan theater stages. Multi-talented, she could sing Beijing opera and also act in modern dramas. She joined the Yenan Marxist and Leninist Academy and became a member of the drama faculty, eventually working as its director. Entertaining the troops was evidently taken very seriously in Yenan.
Even more strangely, ballroom dancing became popular at the Communist base in Yenan. While the war was waging on, the Communist leaders seemed to be very relaxed and fell in love with ballroom dancing. Extraordinary! The few foreign journalists there became their teachers. Many male comrades, including Mao and other top leaders certainly enjoyed it, but not their wives. The liberal atmosphere of the encampment, as evidenced by ballroom dancing with various partners and glamorous actresses in propaganda plays, fell victim to the envy and jealousy of many of the wives. In this tense atmosphere under the serene surface, Mao’s second wife, Zizhen He, became very unstable mentally and was sent to the Soviet Union for treatment.
And Lan Ping stepped in to fill the gap. Within months she didn’t just catch the attention of Mao, she became quite intimate with him. They met frequently after her stage performances and soon became lovers. Mao gave her a new name, Jiang Qin, meaning “river clear”.
Before long the rumor mill started cranking out the story of the new, young and alluring film actress Jiang Qin and the revolutionary leader Mao who had soon become inseparable. The public nature of their affair was a propaganda nightmare for the Communist leadership. No one personally disliked Jiang Qin. But “family values” was at the foundation of the Party’s platform, and Mao was already married. In fact, some effort had been made to portray his mentally unstable wife as a martyr to the cause, losing her mind due to the horrors of war and suffering brought on by the Nationalists and Japanese. Because of his position, Mao’s personal life was also an issue for the Party.
Mao however was smitten, and blind to this criticism. Chen Yun, one of the most influential and powerful men in Yenan and Chairman of the Party’s important Organization Department had a private chat with Mao about his affair with Jiang Qin. Despite their close working relationship, this infuriated Mao, who accused Chen of trying to interfere with his private life. Mao hinted that he and Jiang Qin were to marry.
Greatly disturbed by this news, a letter was circulated and sent to Mao with signatures of numerous military officers and Party officials opposed to the marriage. The letter didn’t stop the marriage, but instead provoked Mao to speed up his plans. When Jiang Qin soon fell pregnant, Mao’s critics relented and allowed him to quietly divorce his wife, still confined to a mental hospital in the Soviet Union, and marry Jiang Qin.
On the 20th of November 1938, one year after Jiang Qin arrived at Yenan, a simple wedding of sorts took place. The new couple, Mao already 45 and the 23 year-old film actress Jiang Qin, were the hosts. The occasion was not announced as a wedding, but rather a dinner party. Mao had invited some guests for a very quiet meal. The exact sequence of events in terms of divorce and marriage is unknown, but soon the couple had a baby girl, and their relationship was sealed. But one thing is known, the Central Committee made it clear that Jiang Qin was to stay out of the public eye.
And so she did. Jiang Qin had remained quiet for nearly 30 years, largely leading a separate life from her husband, hidden from public view. But the Cultural Revolution which Mao had started now needed her and her strength of character evidenced so clearly all those years ago. Mao needed his wife to tackle his many enemies that the Cultural Revolution was aiming to sideline or eliminate altogether. Jiang had already started to position herself for this opportunity. Slowly emerging from the shadows, she had spent some time in Shanghai quietly rebuilding her acting connections there and working with youth groups. She fed Mao’s paranoia, reporting to him that certain plays were subversive and aimed at ridiculing him. She convinced him that under her direction, appropriate cultural vehicles using the country’s youth could be mobilized in his favor to combat those already in power who were trying to subvert Communism and destroy him personally. The seeds of a new Red Guard variety were already being sown by Jiang Qin.
High on Mao’s “to do” list was the current Chinese President Liu Shaoqi and some of his generals. Mao was not happy about the power they seemed to have amassed in the inner circles of the Party. He wanted that power back into his hands. Liu had also been one of the first and most vocal critics of the doomed Great Leap Forward policy, and that alone was enough to make him suspect as a subversive element. Since Mao didn’t trust any of his generals at this point to deal with Liu Shaoqi, he had to use the one person he trusted implicitly, his wife, Jiang Qin. As Comrade Jiang Qin said: “I am a dog of Mao and I will bite the ones he wants me to.”
School Daze
Jiang Qin was ready to bite. None of those impressionable young Red Guards of high- ranking backgrounds really knew what was going on. For them the Cultural Revolution seemed like a “Gap Year”. In the name of the revolution, they were leaving Beijing to do good works. The fanatic ones went to Vietnam to spread the “revolutionary” seeds and many were killed there. But many of them were just travelling. So it was for Xi Jinping and his mates. While millions of rural Chinese were desperately trying to get to Beijing in order to have a glimpse of Mao, these youngsters were leaving Beijing for anywhere they thought could be more attractive.
For a short time travel on the Chinese railway system was free-of-charge to encourage the people making revolution to also make a pilgrimage to Beijing to see Mao. Revolution can be portrayed as a holy matter, even in an atheist society. Many took advantage of this free travel scheme, whether on holy pilgrimages or not, and the Chinese trains were never so fully packed, coming to resemble the stereotypical Indian railways. Travel chaos could not be avoided!
Many years later Xi Jinping revealed that he went to Guilin, a top tourist city in southern China. For a thirteen year-old boy it was a brave adventure and also a luxurious one. Not many poor Chinese dared to even imagine such a trip for their young children, especially on their own. Yet here was a boy from an elite family in Beijing, barely a teenager, taking such a jaunt. He was going against the tide in more ways that just the direction of his travels.
While they were travelling, the situation in Beijing had changed dramatically. Jiang Qin was fully aware her new position gave her the chance to say what Mao couldn’t; if it was proved wrong, she would take the blame for him. For this