Anchee Min
Becoming Madame Mao
Copyright © 2000 by Anchee Min
To Lloyd with all my love
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.
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.