This farm was specially set up to grow rice for Mao, as the water there was supposed to be the very best. In the olden days the spring had supplied drinking water for the imperial courts. Now it fed Mao’s rice paddies. The vegetables Mao liked, as well as poultry and milk, were produced in another special farm called Jushan. The tea Mao chose was the one renowned as the best in China, Dragon Well, and the very best leaves were picked for him, at the ideal time. All Mao’s food was put through a meticulous medical check, and the cooking was supervised by his housekeeper, who doubled as taster. Stir-fried dishes had to be served immediately, but as the kitchen was located at a distance, so that no smells would waft Mao’s way, servants would race all the way to his table with each dish.
Mao did not like getting into baths, or showers, and did not have a bath for a quarter of a century. Instead, his servants rubbed him every day with a hot towel. He enjoyed daily massages. He never went to a hospital. The hospital facilities, along with the top specialists, came to him. If he was not in the mood to see them, they would be kept hanging around, sometimes for weeks.
Mao never fancied smart clothes. What he loved was comfort. He wore the same shoes for years, because, as he said, old shoes were more comfortable; and he got bodyguards to wear in new shoes for him. His bathrobe, face towel and quilts were heavily patched — but no ordinary patching: they were taken specially to Shanghai and mended by the best craftsmen, costing immeasurably more than new ones. Far from being indications of asceticism, these were the quirks of the hedonistic super-powerful.
It was perhaps not unreasonable for a leader to enjoy villas and other luxuries, but Mao was gratifying himself while he was executing others for taking a fraction of what he was burning up. And doing so while preaching and imposing abstinence and having himself portrayed as “Serving the People.” Mao’s double standards had a comprehensive cynicism that put him in a league of his own.
In no area of life did these double standards cause more misery than in the sphere of sexuality. Mao required his people to endure ultra-puritanical constraints. Married couples posted to different parts of China were given only twelve days a year to be together, so tens of millions were condemned to almost year-round sexual abstinence. Efforts to relieve sexual frustration privately could lead to public humiliation. One patriotic Chinese who had returned to “the Motherland” was made to put a sign up over his dormitory bed criticizing himself for masturbating.
And all the while, Mao was indulging in every sexual caprice in well-guarded secrecy. On 9 July 1953 the army was ordered to select young women from their entertainment groups to form a special troupe in the Praetorian Guard. Everyone involved knew that its major function was to provide bed mates for Mao. Army chief Peng De-huai termed this “selecting imperial concubines”—a complaint that would cost him dear in time to come. But his objection had no effect on Mao, and more army entertainment groups were turned into procurement agencies. Apart from singers and dancers, nurses and maids were handpicked for Mao’s villas to provide a pool of women from which he could choose whoever he wanted to have sex with.
A few of these women received subsidies from Mao, as did some of his staff and relatives. The sums involved were petty cash, but he made a point of authorizing each transaction personally. Mao was very aware of the value of money, and for years checked his household accounts with a peasant’s beady eye.
Mao’s handouts came from a secret personal account, the Special Account. This was where he stashed the royalties from his writings, for on top of all his other privileges he cornered the book market by forcing the entire population to buy his own works, while preventing the vast majority of writers from being published. At its peak, this account held well over 2 million yuan, an astronomical sum. As a yardstick of what this was worth, Mao’s staff earned on average about 400 yuan a year. A peasant’s cash income, in a better year, could be a few yuan. Even privileged Chinese rarely had savings of more than a few hundred yuan.
Mao was the only millionaire created in Mao’s China.
Mao claimed that the total number executed was 700,000, but this did not include those beaten or tortured to death in the post-1949 land reform, which would at the very least be as many again. Then there were suicides, which, based on several local inquiries, were very probably about equal to the number of those killed.
The number of people in detention in any one year under Mao has been calculated at roughly 10 million. It is reasonable to estimate that on average 10 percent of these were executed or died of other causes.
