Dr. Jin remained particularly close to Mme Mao, on whom he had performed an induced abortion and oviduct ligation in summer 1942. When the Communists took power, he became head of the Peking Hospital, which catered for Party leaders and their families. On the night of 30 September 1950, Mao’s daughter-in-law was taken to this hospital with appendicitis. The signature of the next-of-kin was needed to okay the operation. As her husband, An-ying, was not present, it was Dr. Jin who authorized the operation.
On 20 May 1943. This was largely a formality, to mollify Stalin’s Western allies, and it brought little change in the relationship between Moscow and Mao.
This meant that Wang Ming’s explanation of the way he got out of prison was unsatisfactory, and therefore suspicious.
In 1948, when Mao planned to go to Russia, he was concerned about what Wang Ming might get up to in his absence. So Wang Ming was given Lysol, ostensibly for his chronic constipation. Lysol was a powerful disinfectant used for cleaning urinals, and would wreck the intestines. Wang Ming survived because his wife immediately stopped administering it to him after he cried out in agony. No other top CCP leader had so many “medical accidents”—or indeed any serious accidents at all. The possibility of it being an accident can be ruled out by the fact that the doctor who prescribed the Lysol remained chief physician for Mao.
A restricted official circular dated 7 July 1948 and other medical documents acknowledged this “medical accident,” but made the pharmacist the scapegoat. In September 1998, a friend of the pharmacist telephoned her for us. After greetings, the colleague said: “I have a writer here, and she would like to talk to you about the enema.” To this question out of the blue, we heard the pharmacist answer without a second of hesitation or bafflement: “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“What medicine did you give?”
“I don’t know what medicine I gave. I’ve forgotten.”
It seems that for the past fifty years, the matter had remained at the forefront of the pharmacist’s mind.
MAO’S TERROR campaign made him so many enemies, from raw recruits to veteran Party leaders, that he came to feel more unsafe than ever, and redoubled his personal security. In autumn 1942 a special Praetorian Guard was inaugurated. Mao gave up his public residence at Yang Hill altogether and lived full-time in Date Garden, the isolated haunt of his KGB, several kilometers outside Yenan. Surrounded by high walls and heavily guarded, the estate was a place to stay away from. Anyone venturing near could easily draw suspicion as a spy. There Mao had a special residence built, designed to withstand the heaviest aerial bombing.
But even Date Garden was not safe enough. Beyond it, shielded by willows, birch-leaf pears and red-trunk poplars, a path led through wild chrysanthemums into the depths of the hills — and an even more secret lair. There, in a place called the Back Ravine, a group of dwellings was prepared for Mao in a fastness in the hillside. The path was broadened so that Mao’s car could be driven virtually to his door. Only a handful of people knew he lived here.
Mao’s main room here, as in most of his residences, had a second door, leading to a bolthole dug through to the other side of the hill. The secret passage also ran all the way up to the stage of a large auditorium, so that Mao could step onto it without having to go outside. The auditorium and Mao’s caves were so well camouflaged by the hills and woods that one would not suspect their existence until one virtually reached the doorstep. But from Mao’s place, it was easy to monitor the path leading up. The auditorium was designed, like most public buildings in Yenan, by a man who had studied architecture in Italy, and it looked like a Catholic church. But it was never used, except for a few gatherings of the security force. Mao wanted it kept ultra-secret, exclusively his own. Today Mao’s caves nestle in total seclusion, and the grand hall stands in ruins like a dilapidated cathedral, spectral, in a landscape of loess gullies extending as far as the eye can see.
Mao’s security assistant Shi Zhe told us: “I controlled that entrance to the path. No one was allowed in just because they wanted to come.” Few leaders ever came. Any who did could take only one bodyguard in, but “not near where Mao Tse-tung lived.” Mao’s own men escorted the leader, alone, to Mao’s place.
