Delanceyplace.com 08/09/06-Mao's Mother

n today's excerpt, the mother of Chairman Mao, the dictator who for decades held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world's population, and was responsible for well over 70 million deaths in peacetime, more than any other twentieth century leader. In this excerpt, we see that in the late 1800s, many Chinese girls did not receive names, had their feet bound, and in the case of Mao's mother, chose not to live with the husband:

"The valley of Shaoshan (in Hunan) measures about 5 by 3.5 km. The 600-odd families who lived there grew rice, tea and bamboo, harnessing buffalo to plough the rice paddies...Mao's father, Yi-chang, was born in 1870. At the age of ten he was engaged to a girl of thirteen from a village about ten kilometres away, beyond a pass called Tiger Resting Pass, where tigers used to sun themselves. This short distance was long enough in those years for the two villages to speak dialects that were almost mutually unintelligible. Being merely a girl, Mao's mother did not receive a name; as the seventh girl born in the Wen clan, she was just Seventh Sister Wen. In accordance with centuries of custom, her feet had been crushed and bound to produce the so- called 'three-inch golden lilies' that epitomised beauty at the time...

"Mao was the third son, but the first to survive infancy...Mao loved his mother with an intensity he showed toward no one else. She was a gentle and tolerant person, who, as he remembered, never raised her voice to him...

"Mao had a carefree childhood. Until he was eight he lived with his mother's family, the Wens, in their village, as his mother preferred to live with her own family...Mao only came back to live in Shaoshan in spring 1902, at the age of eight, to receive an education, which took the form of study in a tutor's home. Confucian classics, which made up most of the curriculum, were beyond the understanding of children and had to be learned by heart. Mao was blessed with an exceptional memory, and did well." Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao, The Unknown Story, Vintage Books, 2006, pp. 3-5