The later notorious Mme Mao, Jiang Qing, also learned terror during the Yenan campaign. She had been arrested by the Nationalists years before, and had got out of prison by recanting, and entertaining her jailers — and, according to Kang Sheng (later), sleeping with them. Her past had been a big issue in 1938, when Mao wanted to marry her. Now, although no one dared to denounce her, because she was Mao’s wife, she lived in dread that somebody might, particularly as she too had to perform “self-examinations” and endure criticisms from others. She tried to hide by asking for sick leave, but unlike Lin Biao, who simply told his wife to stay at home, Mao ordered his wife to go back to her unit and experience the scare cycle. Although what she went through was nothing compared with the ordeal suffered by the vast majority, it was enough to make her live in fear about her past for the rest of her life. More than two decades later, when she acquired enormous power, this obsessive fear contributed to the imprisonment and death of many people who knew about her. Above all, Jiang Qing was afraid of her husband. Unlike her predecessor Gui-yuan, she never dared to make a scene about Mao’s womanizing, much less to contemplate leaving him. Whatever squalid jobs he assigned her, she would do.
The terror campaign in Yenan also marked her debut at persecuting others, for which she developed a taste. Her first victim was her daughter’s nineteen-year-old nanny, whom she got thrown into prison, as the nanny revealed fifty-five years later.
Mao and Jiang Qing had one child together, a daughter, Li Na, born on 3 August 1940. By the time Li Na was one and a half, she was on her third nanny, who came from a poor peasant family in Shanxi. The nanny’s father had died humping goods across the freezing Yellow River for the Reds. She herself started making shoes for the Red Army from a young age, and was promoted to her district Communist bureaucracy. She and some other “reliable” women were then selected to be nannies for the leaders.
After a health check and some training, she was taken on as the Maos’ nanny and servant. One of her chores was to wash Mme Mao’s hair. She described how Mme Mao would lose her temper if her hair was not washed exactly the way she wanted. One day in 1943, the nanny was suddenly summoned to appear in front of Mme Mao and two staff members. “You have come here with poison! Confess!” screamed Mme Mao. That night the nanny was taken to the prison in the Back Ravine behind Date Garden.
She was accused of poisoning the Maos’ milk, which came from their own specially guarded cow at the security apparatus’ compound. What had happened was that Mme Mao developed diarrhea. After grilling the chef and the orderly, she told Kang Sheng she wanted the nanny imprisoned and interrogated.
In prison, the nanny shared a cave with a large number of other women. During the day, the main activity was spinning, with a very high quota, which she had to work flat out to fill. The regime had spotted that this was an ideal occupation for prisoners, as they were forced to be stationary, thus easy to guard, while being economically productive. The evenings were a time for interrogations, during which the nanny was copiously abused with remarks like: “Why don’t you simply confess and get it over with, you shit-making machine!” During the night, guards poked their heads into the cave to watch against suicide and escape. After nine months she was released, but the gut-wrenching fear she experienced stayed with her forever.
IT WAS THROUGH the Yenan Terror that Mao accomplished another most important goal: building up his own personality cult. People who lived through this period all remembered it as a turning point when they “firmly established in our minds that Chairman Mao is our only wise leader.” Till then it had been possible to admire Mao while having reservations about him, and to gossip about his marriage to Jiang Qing while still supporting him as the leader. When they were first told to “study” a Mao speech, many had responded with an audible groan: “the same old thing,” “can’t be bothered to go over it again,” “too simplistic.” Quite a few had been reluctant to chant “Long live Chairman Mao.” One recalled thinking: “This was a slogan for emperors. Why are we doing this? I felt creepy and refused to shout it.” This kind of independent talk — and thinking — was killed off by the campaign, and the deification of Mao established. This worship had nothing to do with spontaneous popularity; it stemmed from terror.
