The Private Life of Chairman Mao: The Memoirs of Mao's Personal Physician

From 1954 until Mao Zedong's death 22 years later, Dr Li Zhisui was the Chinese ruler's personal physician, which put him in almost daily and increasingly intimate contact with Mao and his inner circle. For most of these years, Mao's health was excellent. Thus he and the doctor had time to discuss political and personal matters. Dr Li recorded many of these conversations in his diaries as well as in memory. In The Private Life of Chairman Mao he reconstructs his experience. The result is a book that will profoundly alter views of Mao and of China under his rule. Dr Li clarifies numerous long-standing puzzles, such as the true nature of Mao's feelings toward the USA and USSR. He describes Mao's deliberate rudeness toward Khrushchev when the Soviet leader paid his secret visit to Beijing in 1958, and how he came to invite the American table tennis team to China, a decision that led to Nixon's historic visit a few months later. We also learn why Mao took the Great Leap Forward, which resulted in the worst famine in recorded history, and his equally strange reason for risking war with the USA by shelling the Taiwanese islands of Quemoy and Matsu. Dr Li supplies portraits of Zhou Enlai and other leaders. He describes Mao's relationship with his wife and gives us insight into the sexual politics of his court. We witness Mao's bizarre death and the strange events following it. Dr Li tells of Mao's remarkable gift for intimacy, as well as of his indifference to the suffering of millions of his fellow Chinese, including old comrades. Readers will find here an account of Mao's personal life and of such details as his sleeping arrangements and drug dependencies.