Mao
Ze-Dong or Tse-Tung?

What's in a Name?

Kids going to school during the 1960's kept getting confused. When they got their copy of the Weekly Reader and read about the leader of what was then called "Red" China, the name was spelled "Mao Tse-Tung". But the pronunciation - usually enclosed in parentheses - was "(mao dze-DOONG)". And yet everyone on television pronounced the name as "mau tsee-TONGUE". So what the hey was going on?

Well, now that we say Beijing and not Peking, we know the difference is between transcription conventions which in turn are based on different dialects of Chinese. Mao's name - which in Chinese is 毛澤東 - used to be transcribed by the Wade-Giles System. This transcription was an early attempt to accurately write the difficult Chinese language using the English alphabet and was based on the pronunciation around the city of Nanking. So we had Mao Tse-Tung.

Then in 1958 the "Red" Chinese switched to the Hanyu Pinyin Romanization. As this system was based on the Beijing pronunciation - dialect if you will - the name came out Mao Ze-Dong. But in and other English speaking countries the Pinyin Method wasn't adopted until 1979.

Why 1979? Well, that was when President James Earle "Jimmy" Carter - quote - "recognized" - unquote - the People's Republic of China. Up til then the United States had only recognized the Republic of China whose government since 1949 had been run from the island of Taiwan. So with Jimmy the United States began doing what the rest of the world had already been doing for thirty years.

Sing Along with Dick

Chou and Dick
You can sing along.

The truth is Jimmy's recognition of Mainland China was something of an anti-climax. There had, in fact, been de facto normalization since President Richard Milhous Nixon made his famous trip to China in 1972.

It's easy to forget how momentous Dick's trip was. It wasn't just because we were dealing with a country that the US government said was so horrendously evil that everyone should ignore it. But Dick had been also one of the most anti-communistic of the 1950's Anti-Communards. And here he was, the first US President ever to go to Mainland China, much less Red China.

Eventually Dick's trip was made into the grand opera Nixon in China. Among the lyrics - delivered in full operatic voce - was this exchange between the singers portraying Dick and the Chinese Prime Minister Chou En-Lai:

Chou:	You're flight was smooth, I hope?
Nixon:	Yes. Smooooooo-ooooo-oooooo-ther than usual, I guess.
	Yes, it was very pleasant.
	We stopped in Hawaii for a day.
	And Guam to catch up on the time.
	It's easier that way.

Actually the opera is kind of fun to watch - a television broadcast was hosted by television newsman Walter Cronkite who had traveled with Dick on the original trip - and the music is actually pretty good. Unfortunately operatic singing tends to garble the pronunciation. So even though the opera is in English, you really need the libretto to sing along with Dick.

But without doubt the most momentous event of the trip was when Dick actually sat down - and had his picture taken - with Chairman Mao himself.

Mao: Breaking the Fetters of the Well-To-Do

Born in Shaoshan in Hunan Province on September 26, 1893, Mao, despite what some people think, did not come from a poor family. His dad, Mao Yichang, although often called a peasant, wasn't - unless you adopt a most flexible definition of the word. "Prosperous farmer and well-to-do businessman" might be better. Mao, Sr., made most of his money from buying grain from the local farmers and selling it for distribution.

Yes, Mao, Sr., was a middleman.

Far from eternally toiling in the fields, Mao went to school and learned how to do his dad's bookkeeping. But life wasn't just a nice bowl of rice. Mao, Sr., was a no-nonsense father who "disciplined" his kids. It's interesting to note how many of the worst dictators had stern and even abusive fathers. The dads of Hitler and Stalin immediately come to mind.

And how many of the worst dictators adored their mothers. Yes, both Hitler and Stalin come to mind. And Mao.

Mao's mom was Wen Qi Mei. She was a devout Buddhist and raised her son so. And until his teens Mao was quite religious. But the religion, as they say, didn't take.

Later Mao went to school in Changsha, which is the largest city in Hunan. All in all, Mao liked school. He didn't like memorizing and reciting the sayings of Confucius, but he did like studying history and writing poetry.

Poetry became a lifelong hobby, and he kept with the traditional forms. Today some critics shrug off Mao's verses as a nice try but nothing exceptional. But others say his poetry rates among the best in the classical tradition.

Of course the problem when translating any poetry from one language to another is you easily loose the characteristics that make it poetry. So you rarely bother with a word-for-word rendering but instead try to catch the - quote - "spirit" - unquote - of the poem.

Here's a short traditional Chinese poem, not by Mao, of course, but by the ancient poet, Luo Binwang:

咏鹅

鹅, 鹅, 鹅,

曲项向天歌。

白毛浮绿水，

红掌拨清波。

... which can be transcribed:

Yǒng É

É, é, é,

qū xiàng xiàng tiān gē.

Bái máo fú lǜ shuǐ,

hóng zhǎng bō qīng bō.

... and most loosely translated as:

Song to the Goose

Goose! Goose! Goose!

Bend your neck and sing!

With floating feathers on the spring,

Webbed feet will make the clear waves ring!

We emphasize this is not a literal translation but is an attempt to put a short stanza of Chinese traditional verse into English rhyme and meter of the type English speaking kids would like.

And Mao?

Well, the only way to rate the merit of Mao's poems is to let the readers judge for themselves. Here is one of his most famous verses:

长征

紅軍不怕遠征難，

萬水千山隻等閑。

五嶺逶迤騰細浪，

烏蒙磅礡走泥丸。

金沙水拍雲崖暖，

大渡橋橫鐵索寒。

更喜岷山千裡雪，

三軍過后盡開顏。

And for a little Pinyin Romanization:

Cháng Zhěng

Hóngjūn bùpà yuănzhěng nán

Wànshuĭqiānshān zhī děngxián

Wŭlĭngwěi yĭ téng xì làng

Wū měng bàngbó zŏu níwán

Jīnshā shuĭ pāi yún yá nuăn

Dà dùqiáo héng tiěsuŏ hán

Gěng xĭ mín shān qiān lĭ xuě

Sānjūnguò hòu jìn kāiyán

That settles that.

In the end, whether you rate Mao's poems as great or not - or whether you believe he wrote them at all - well, that seems to depend on whether you like Mao or not.

Familial Originatings

To understand what motivated Mao, you need to remember that when he was born, China was still ruled by an Emperor. Ignoring the complication that the word "emperor" wasn't invented until the Middle Ages, the - quote - "Emperors of China" - unquote - had been kicking around since before 2000 BCE.

For convenience historians often divide monarchies into "dynasties". Officially a dynasty is when a particular family is in charge. The first - quote - "Dynasty" - unquote - of the Chinese Emperors was the Xia Dynasty. This started around 2200 BCE and ended in the 1600's BCE.

After that you had the Shang Dynasty (17th century BC-1046 BC), the Zhou (1046-256 BC), the Western Zhou (1046 BC-771 BC), the Eastern Zhou (770-256 BC), and the Spring and Autumn Period (770-476 BC). After that you have Time of the Warring States (475-221 BC).

The Warring States Period is pretty much what it sounds like. A reasonably united China became fragmented into different regions each with their own ruler.

Then in 221 BC we have the Qin Dynasty (pronounced something like "Tcheen" - which gives us the name "China"). It's first ruler, Qin Shi Huang, is considered by some historians to be the first Emperor of a truly united China. Emperor Qin, by the way, is the Emperor whose burial included the famous Terra Cotta Warriors.

Next came the Han Dynasty (202 BC-220 CE) [divided into the Western Han (202 BC-9 CE), the Xin Dynasty (9-23 CE), the Eastern Han (25-220 CE)], the Three Kingdoms (220-280 CE) [the Kingdom of Wei (220-265 CE), the Kingdom of Shu (221-263 CE), the Kingdom of Wu (222-280 CE)], the Jin (265-420 CE) [the Western Jin (265-316 CE), the Eastern Jin (317-420 CE)], the Five Hus and Sixteen States (304-439 CE) which we'll skip enumerating], the Northern and Southern Dynasties (420-589 CE), the Northern Dynasties (386-581 CE) [the Northern Wei (386-534), the Eastern Wei (534-550), the Western Wei (535-557), the Northern Qi (550-577), the Northern Zhou (557-581)], the Southern Dynasties (420-589 CE) [the Song (420-479), the Qi (479-502), the Liang (502-557), the Chen (557-589)], the Sui (581-618 CE), the Tang (618-907 CE), the Five Dynasties and Ten States (907-960 CE) [the Later Liang (907-923 CE), the Later Tang (923-936 CE), the Later Jin (936-946 CE), the Later Han (947-950 CE), the Later Zhou (951-960 CE), the Ten States (902-979 CE)], the Song (960-1279 CE) [the Northern Song (960-1127 CE)], the Southern Song (1127-1279 CE)], the Liao (907-1125 CE), the Western Xia Dynasty (1038-1227 CE), the Jin (1115-1234 CE), the Yuan (1271-1368 CE), and the Ming (1368-1644 CE) which is the dynasty with one with the fancy vases.

This brings us now to the Qing Dynasty (pronounced "Tcheeng"). Deciding who was the first Qing Emperor is mostly a matter of definition. It could be either a fellow named Nurhachi or his son Hong Taiji. What makes things even more confusing is that most historians list the first year of the Qing Dynasty as 1644 when Hong Taiji's son, Fulin, became the Emperor Shunzhi. Fulin was only five years old at the time.

The Qing Dynasty was one of the longer ones. It ended in 1911. As to what happened to the last Emperor ...

We'll we go into that later. But first we'll delve a bit more into actual history of China in the - quote - "modern era" - unquote.

Thoroughly Modern Mao

As late as 1800 China was still mostly a mystery to the West. The rulers had deliberately avoided incorporating European influences into their culture. Or at least they wanted to pick and choose. No foreign merchants could sell items to the Chinese and it was a capital crime to preach Christianity in the country.

On the other hand, the Chinese were more than happy to sell their own goods to Europeans - mostly tea, porcelain and silk. But they were not interested in buying English products in exchange. When a British envoy told the Emperor they would like to introduce British wares to China, he was curtly told that the Chinese had everything they needed. Then when an Emperor was shown a model of a steam engine he snorted it was a fine toy for children.

So you had European merchants who were stationed in the coastal cities but who were limited to shipping Chinese goods to their countries but not the other way around. What really irritated the British is that by 1800, this one-way market was creating a huge trade deficit. British pounds were going into China, but nothing was coming out. This had to change.

But how?

Well, if the British couldn't achieve a favorable trade balance honestly, legally, and morally, they'd do it dishonestly, illegally, and immorally.

First they selected a product they could easily sneak into China and would also find an immediate market. Even better it was a commodity that would get the Chinese people clamoring for more.

And what was this amazing product?

You guessed it. It was opium.

In the 19th century use of opium was widespread. It was the active ingredient in many medicines and could be bought in Europe or America without a prescription. An opium tincture called paregoric could be bought over-the-counter in the United States well past the 1960's.

But in China its use was limited. The Emperors had recognized the drug's dangers and actively worked to suppress it.

So the British merchants realized they could easily sneak the opium in. Those cases? Why those are just empties which we'll put that delicious Chinese tea in for shipping to England. A few bribes would take care of everything.

From the English perspective opium had a particular advantage. The major source was not that far from China. That was India. So shipping costs would be minimal. Better yet they could avoid dirtying their hands in the dirty business of producing it. They simply had the actual manufacture handled by the native rulers of the Indian states.

So England began smuggling opium into China. In particular, the East India Company - which was in effect a branch of the British Government - began making a bundle. But lest this narrative seem too one-sided, there were also plenty of American merchants stationed in ports like Canton that jumped into the business as well. From 1800 to 1850 opium consumption in China increased ten fold.

The Emperor at the time - the Emperor Daoguang - was not pleased. In 1838, he appointed a commission headed by one of his officials, Lin Tse-hsu (or Zehu). It fell to Lin's lot to stop the opium flow into China.

Lin's approach was two-fold. First opium addicts were detained and forcibly weaned from the drug. Next, Lin decided to cut the supply of the drug. Pushers were arrested and dealt with - well, they were dealt with most severely.

Lin then wrote a letter to Queen Victoria. How, he asked, could England rationalize sending something so dangerous and destructive as opium to another country? He got no answer and in all likelihood Victoria, who was then only nineteen, never got the letter.

Then Lin got an idea from the Americans. He went to Canton's harbor, seized all the opium he could find and had it dumped in the harbor.

Naturally, the British didn't like this "Canton Opium Party" any more than the tea-dumping soirée in Boston. Now feeling they were the aggrieved party, Britain sent a war fleet to China with various ultimata. Taken together the demands were for unrestricted rights to trade with China. The Emperor Daoguang told them to take a hike.

The next few years - what we call the First Opium War - were a complex collection of altercations, skirmishes, and confrontations many of which had nothing really to do with opium. They're so confusing that different accounts don't always read like the same war. Probably the true opening salvo was on September 4, 1839, when a British captain fired on some Chinese junks in the Pearl River because they wouldn't let him on shore to obtain fresh provisions. On November 5 another exchange of fire occurred between the British and Chinese.

Naturally more British troops showed up and within a year or so they occupied the major port cities and controlled important trade routes along the coast. Britain lost very few men (some estimates are the total battle deaths were low as 30) but Chinese casualties were in the tens of thousands.

Finally at Nanking on August 7, 1842, Britain and China signed a treaty which basically said Britain could do what they liked - even trade in opium. Lin was booted off to live in a remote region.

A second opium war in 1856 ended in 1860 and was far more international in scale. Now there were even more European soldiers in China and merchants in the cities. Christian missionaries were even permitted the right to preach and convert the Chinese - all while the British were getting more and more Chinese hooked on opium. So things continued for over 35 years.

Then in 1899 some chaps in Northern China looked at all the Europeans in the country and decided to toss them out. Called the "Boxers" - Europeans believed they were Chinese pugilist - these Boxers didn't pull their punches. The rebellion spread through the provinces and many Westerners ended up being surrounded by the rebels.

A coalition was formed of a number of European countries and the Americans. President McKinley authorized the transfer of over 2000 American soldiers from the Philipines to the coalition on the mainland. This was the first time that an American president had on his own and without Congressional approval committed troops into a conflict, thus setting the precedent that we have today.

Unlike the First Opium War, when the Western troops moved into China, they found themselves having to fight real battles. Thousands of European soldiers were killed and the fighting went on from 1899 to 1901.

The problem was that you didn't know who were the good guys and the bad guys. In one remote town a missionary, his wife, and their young daugher were met by a group of Chinese soldiers who said they were going to protect them and remove them to safety. The family loaded their belongings and with the soldiers headed toward Beijing. But after going about 20 miles, the soldiers hacked the entire family to death. All in all the Boxers murdered two hundred missionaries as well as tens of thousands of Chinese Christian converts.

Of course, Beijing wasn't safe either. Eventually all Americans and Europeans were besieged inside the walled area which housed the foreign embassies. Provisions were getting low and a final message was sent that unless troops came in everyone was doomed.

On August 14, the troops arrived in Beijing. After two days they defeated the Chinese and freed the Westerners. The Chinese who were taken prisoners were not dealt with leniently.

After that, the Europeans were not likely to be flexible. They stationed foreign soldiers everywhere. Gunboats - including American - steamed up and down the rivers.

By then the Emperor was a fellow named Guangxu and his aunt was the Empress Dowager Cixi. Originally Guangxu and Cixi had allied themselves with the rebels. Not suprisingly, once the Western coalition won, Guangxu and Cixi quickly did a volte face. They had been on their side all along, of course. Why, feel free to treat Peking (as the city was called then) as your home. Naturally the Westerners were happy to oblige.

With the country now occupied by foreign troops and foreign businesses running the economy, more and more of the Chinese highbrows with university educations began to feel that Guangxu and Cixi were just too cozy with the foreigners. Huh! You'd think that China was a colony of England or a territory of the United States!

So the highbrows decided the Europeans had to go - and with them the Emperors. They were going to make China a republic.

The Last Emperor

The Last Emperor of China was born in 1906. This was when Mao - remember this essay is about Mao - was 14 years old. The Emperor was named Aisin Gioro Pu Yi and he called himself Henry. Henry was only two when he came to the throne.

The manner in which a toddler can rise to be Emperor can be rather complicated. In some of the Chinese Dynasties the oldest son would succeed his father. But in Henry's family - this was the Qing Dynasty - the current Emperor picked his successor. It might or might not be his son.

There's another aspect of the Imperial Dynasties that made it possible for a toddler to be an Emperor. That's the presence at court and the importance - yes, the importance - of eunuchs.

A characteristic of many civilizations which are 1) run by absolute monarchs and 2) have significant social separation of the genders is the employment of men who, well, have undergone a certain surgical procedure. This procedure is what gave the name to certain male vocalists from the Middle Ages down to the late 19th century. The name reflected the surgical procedure and was castrato or in plural castrati.

Now for the singers, the procedure was limited to excising only what was necessary to maintain an upper vocal range. As a result the European castrati were able to have, well, we'll say "intimate friendships" with women. Some castrati even married although they did not, of course, have natural children.

But the Chinese eunuchs had undergone a far more radical (although quicker) procedure. Many died either of the operation itself, shock, or exsanguination. After the operation they might be bedridden for months. But if they survived they could find employment as servants in the private residence of the noble families. They could be guards for the women's quarters, of course, but they could also be assigned to duties for the royal men.

Over time, having such close contact with important families led to an evolution of the eunuchs' duties from being personal and menial servants to functioning as administrative officials. Because they could not produce offspring that might rival the Imperial heirs, they became among the most influential and trusted of the Emperor's advisors.

One reasons for the eunuchs' influence and power was that it wasn't unusual for the Emperor himself to be almost a non-entity. For instance, the Emperor might be more interested in partying with his handmaidens than running the country. Maybe he just wanted to spend his time reading the works of Confucius. Or maybe the Emperor was only two years old. Regardless of the cause, the eunuchs took up a lot of slack in running the country.

But if this was the situation, who was providing the overall direction of the government? That is, who was determining policy?

Well, often those duties fell to the Empress Dowager who was, we said, Cixi.

And what, you ask, exactly is an "Empress Dowager"?

The Empress Dowager was the widow of the previous emperor. She often was - but not always - the mother of the current emperor. And in China great respect and deference is expected toward one's elders particularly if they were family members. The Empress Dowager, if she was of strong will, retained considerable influence. So when Guangxu became Emperor, Cixi kept calling the shots.

Guangxu died on November 14, 1908. Cixi died on November 15. Of course, the sequential dates are unlikely to be coincidental. An obvious scenario is that Cixi - now over 70 - knew she was about to die and decided to make sure Guangxu wasn't around to appoint a doofus as the Emperor. If anyone was going to appoint a doofus Emperor it was going to be her.

So she poisoned Guangxu and managed to hang on just long enough to designate Henry as the next Emperor. With both Guangxu and Cixi gone, Guangxu's widow, Longyu, became the new Empress Dowager.

Henry was born on February 7, 1906, and as he was made Emperor on, yes, November 15, 1908. He was two years old when he assumed the throne. So why do some references say he was three?

The discrepancy arises because in China they count the age at birth as being one year old. After one year, Henry was two. After two years, he was three.

Two years old or three, when you have a toddler in charge of a country, you need some adults around. To keep things simple, usually one adult was selected as a stand-in to make any real decisions. Such stand-in monarchs are called "regents". For Henry, the regent was his dad, the Prince Chun. We also suspect Prince Chun had input in his son's selection.

Working Without the System

The convoluted nature of Henry's family relationships and the resulting infighting reflects the complexity of China's own chronology. Certainly one underlying theme in the country's 6000 year-old history is that of rebellion.

Rebellions could come from anywhere. The buddies of the emperor might get irritated with him. Or the peasants in some remote province might get tired of having most of their food taken away as taxes. Then maybe one of the provincial governors decided he wanted to be Emperor. So they'd rise up.

But in Henry's case, the rebellion came from students and educated adults. You see, the beginning of the 20th century was a bad time for kings. Ever since the Americans had managed to kick out a monarchy in 1776, it seems everyone wanted to have a democratic and freely elected government.

By 1800 the idea had really caught on. In Europe the whole 19th century became one long struggle, if not to get rid of the monarchies, then at least to make them constitutional. This had worked fine in places like England, Sweden, and Norway. But in countries where the kings were heavy-handed, the rulers showed little interest in giving up even a little of their power. So the attitude of the people was to throw the rascals out.

The Sun Has Never Set On Dr. Yat-Sen

But was anyone going to throw the Qing Dynasty out? After all, they had been ruling China since 1644.

Well, in the mid-1890's a Chinese physician named Sun Yat-Sen decided to do just that. Not only would they toss the Dynasty out, but they would replace the whole government with a republic.

Dr. Sun had graduated from the Hong Kong College of Medicine in 1892. The purpose of the school was to teach Chinese students western medicine and it granted the students a Licentiate in Medicine and Surgery. Among the founders was the Scottish surgeon, Sir James Cantlie. Naturally Sir James got to know the fledgling Dr. Sun.

Because a licentiate is not an MD, sometimes people rant that we should really say Mister Sun Yat-Sen. After all, without an MD, you ain't no "Doctor".

However, if you check out "Dr." Cantlie's own biographies, his titles are listed as LL. D., KCB, and FRCS. The latter initials stand for "Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons". But nowhere do we see the "MD" affixation. And yet everyone, including "Dr." Sun - still spoke of "Dr." Cantlie.

Strictly speaking, the ranters are correct. The "Doctor" title properly applies only to someone with an actual MD. But in the 19th century the MD degree was far less prestigious than today. Some "doctors" in England obtained their degree with (to quote one scholar) "minimal effort". And if you didn't want to expend even minimal effort you could buy an MD for £20 from the Universities of Aberdeen or St Andrews. That was about $100 at the time or about $3000 today.

For surgeons, then, far from thinking of "Mr." as being a slight, it was a mark of distinction. Even today, male surgeons in England are properly styled as Mr., not Dr., and are proud of it.

Nevertheless it became and is still quite common to address surgeons as "Dr.". Even Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (an MD) addressed the "humble MRCS" James Mortimer as "Dr." So if it's good enough for Sherlock and Dr. Watson it's good enough for us. We will continue to address Dr. Sun Yat-Sen with courtesy.

Originally Dr. Sun seems to have wanted to bring about the change from monarchy to republic by peaceful means. But he quickly found that getting rid of an Emperor by working - quote - "within the system" - unquote - didn't get you anywhere.

So in 1895 Dr. Sun planned an insurrection to start in Canton. When nothing came of the plan, Dr. Sun decided he'd better go elsewhere particularly since neither the Emperor nor the Empress Dowager looked kindly on people trying to drive them out.

Dr. Sun became a world traveler. He lived in Hong Kong, Japan, England, Canada, Thailand, and Singapore. Although not really an activist in the sense of leading armies into battle, he did travel around telling people that China should have a republic.

Nevertheless, history might have forgotten Dr. Sun except that when he was in London, he dropped by the Chinese Embassy. There he was seized and held captive. Soon plans were underway to send him back to China to be dealt with appropriately.

Fortunately, Dr. Sun's former teacher, "Dr." Sir James Cantlie was in town. So Dr. Sun was able to get two of the English employees in the embassy to inform Sir James of his predicament. Sir James then contacted a reporter of the London Globe and soon London was a-buzzing with the news that an opponent of oppression had been kidnapped on British soil.

The British Foreign Office quickly stepped in and the embassy released Dr. Sun. This event had the effect of turning Dr. Sun from a figure of mild fame to an international celebrity. Support for his cause grew.

Dr. Sun returned to Asia but knowing that entering China was impossible (or at least ill-advised), he set up his operations in Japan. There he formed the United League, an organization officially agitating for a Chinese republic. The United League also published a paper, the People's Journal. Now everyone knew about Dr. Sun Yat-Sen and his call for a Chinese republic.

The problem was all the rebellions - even when he had nothing to do with them - kept falling flat. Finally, the European governments realized that the brouhaha caused by Dr. Sun was interfering with their doing business with China. They persuaded Japan to boot Dr. Sun out, and when he went to what was then called French Indo-China, he was also told to beat it.

So where could Dr. Sun go?

Well, where does anyone go who has one failure after another and can't seem to get anything right?

Yep. To the good old USA.

First, a bit about Dr. Sun's background. For years no one doubted he was born in Xiangshanin, "Mainland" China across the bay from Hong Kong. But recently you'll see stories that he was an American citizen and born in Hawaii. The US Government has documents to prove it.

Or rather the US Government has documents affirming Dr. Sun was a citizen. Not quite the same thing as proving it.

Now as a teenager Dr. Sun did work in Hawaii - no one doubts that. This was where his brother had moved. But at that time America was going through a bad case of Immigrationaphobia. In particular, the Chinese Exclusion Act was in full force. That means as a native Chinese, Dr. Sun couldn't get into the Continental United States.

There was one solution. If Dr. Sun was a US Citizen, he could get in. So he had someone finagle him up a birth certificate which he presented to the immigration officials. That was good enough for the US who accepted Dr. Sun as an .

In America Dr. Sun kept advocating the overthrow the Qing Dynasty. Finally in 1910, his efforts led to an uprising in Canton.

And .....?

Yep, the rebellion fell flat.

This was pretty much the pattern. With rebellion after rebellion, the Qing Dynasty just couldn't be shaken. So what was there to do?

Well, nothing, but it didn't matter. In the end what brought down the Qing Dynasty was the Qing Dynasty.

You see, the Emperor and the Empress Dowager knew that Dr. Sun's efforts at rebellion, regardless of how limited, really did reflect the people's discontent. So they had been implementing reforms to stem the tide of revolt. Both elected provincial legislatures and a National Assembly were formed which in principle would direct or at least advise the Emperor and the Empress Dowager's actions. The fact that the rebellions had fizzled out or weren't even launched indicates that these reforms were having some effect.

But then everything fell apart due to railroads.

Yes, railroads.

The Emperor and Empress Dowager had been trying to tie their country together as had America. Railroads would permit travel and shipment of goods in a matter of days when it used to take months. And to build the railroads the Emperor and Empress Dowager was letting the governments of the individual provinces handle the construction using a number of independent companies.

But finances of the Empire were getting more and more shaky and the Emperor and the Empress Dowager decided to get foreign loans. And to consolidate their control, in 1911 they nationalized the railroads.

Although these actions seemed of no concern to the ordinary Chinese subjects, the nationalization was done without approval of the provincial legislature or the National Assembly. The arbitrary action told everyone that the royal family wasn't really serious in their popular reforms. A rebellion broke out in the province of Szechuan.

Ho-hum, that was just one more rebellion. After all, from 1908 to 1911 there were more rebellions in China than you could shake a revolutionary banner at. Most had gotten nowhere and had little to do with Dr. Sun.

But the Szechwan Rebellion kicked off another revolt in the town of Wuhan in nearby Hubei Province. What made this rebellion different was the importance of Wuhan's location at the confluence of the Han and Yangtze Rivers. From Wuhan you can sail upriver to the interior of the country and you can go downriver to Shanghai which is a major international port. So whoever is in charge of Wuhan can control a large part of the traffic into and out of the country. A Wuhan rebellion could affect everyone.

And where was Dr. Sun when the country was throwing off the chains of oppression?

Denver, Colorado.

What was that town again?

Denver, Colorado.

But at least he didn't stay there long. He returned to Shanghai, and in December 1911, a group of the local political leaders elected him President of the Republic of China. That there was still an Emperor didn't seem to bother them.

And with good reason. Finally the Empress Dowager Longyu decided enough was enough. She decreed that Henry would abdicate. On February 12, 1912, the six-year old Emperor officially stepped down.

So now things could only get better. China became a republic and everyone lived happily ever after.

Well, didn't they?

Soddy, old chaps. Not - as Eliza Doolittle said - bloody likely.

You see, rebellions were becoming too popular. Uprisings against the new republic began almost immediately. And these were clamoring to restore the monarchy.

We said Henry abdicated on February 12. Dr. Sun resigned the Presidency the next day. He had been President of the Republic of China a total of three months. He handed the reigns to Yuan Shikai, a general who had led armies for the Qing Dynasty. Dr. Sun never really was involved with politics after that.

Dr. Sun's popularity began to wane. His rather confusing marital status - where he appears to have been married to two women at once - didn't help matters. Multiple wives were not unusual in the traditional Chinese culture, but Dr. Sun had converted to Christianity. The Chinese Christian missionaries (including Dr. Sun's second father-in-law) took exception with the practice.

Still, in China the sun has never set on Dr. Yat-Sen. When he died in 1925 in Beijing he was quickly hailed as a hero and the Father of the Modern Chinese Republic. Today his high reputation remains undiminished either on the Mainland or in Taiwan.

The Mao the Merrier

From 1912 until 1949, all of China was officially the Republic of China founded by Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. But that's a bit of a simplification of what really was going on.

General Yuan's tenure as President, although longer than Dr. Sun's, was brief. By 1915 he had decided the Republic wasn't working and declared himself Emperor. Naturally this declaration led to new uprisings, but that didn't really matter since Yuan died the following year.

Rebellions kept springing up and in 1917, General Zhang Xun, a supporter of the Qing Dynasty, stormed into Beijing and restored Henry, now eleven, to the throne. The reinvigorated regime lasted until troops of the Republic attacked the city. That took about ten days. In less than two weeks Henry again stepped down.

During all this turmoil, there was, of course, a war on. World War I, that is.

During this War to End All Wars, a large number of Chinese workers went to work in factories in Europe and Russia. But because China had officially remained neutral, it was pretty much left out of the Treaty of Versailles which divvied up the world to the future global powers. Japan, on the other hand, did quite well and began their rise to dominate the Pacific.

Although we said the official government of China was the Republic of China, some historians refer to the time after Yuan as the Warlord Era. The Warlords were essentially landowners and provincial rulers who controlled certain regions and operated independently of the Republic. Most Warlords were in the South while the Republic itself operated out of Beijing in the North.

Despite all the rebellions, establishment of the Republic, restoration of the monarchy, and reestablishment of the Republic, there was still a strong foreign presence. British troops were stationed in the towns and cities and American gunboats floated up and down the rivers. The age of the American gunboats - represented quite accurately in the novel and film The Sand Pebbles - were ostensibly to protect American interests. This "Age of the Gunboats" was also quite lengthy, with the boats first showing up in the mid-1850's and the last not leaving until 1949.

There may have been foreign soliders in Beijing, but there were also lots of students - Chinese students - there as well. And as we know, students like to demonstrate against injustice.

So on May 4, 1919, a group of students started the (what else?) May Fourth Movement. The injustices they were protesting were the presence of the foreign troops and the Treaty of Versailles. And among the students protesting the troops and the Treaty was - yes - the young Mao Zedong. Mao and the other students held meetings, demonstrations, and pretty much raised a ruckus.

Unrest continued and in 1921 Mao and his friends got together and founded the Chinese Communist Party. Standing against the CCP was the Nationalists Party founded by Dr. Sun and called the 國民黨 or Kuomintang (KMT for short and pronounced "kwo-min-tahng"). The current leader of the KMT had been one of Sun's leading protégés. This was, of course, General Chiang Kai-Shek. Chiang, by the way, was also married to the sister of Dr. Sun's second wife.

Chiang was a career military man and had his military training in Japan where he had also served in the Imperial Army. A personally cheerful man - most photos show him smiling - after Dr. Sun died, Chiang became the leader of the KMT and later the President of the Republic of China.

Mao's Rules of Civil(War)ity

Although early on there was some attempt to get both the CCP and the Nationalists together in one happy family, their ideas for the future just did not mesh. Although both Mao and Chiang wanted a united independent China free from foreign control, Chiang looked to the capitalistic West as the way for China to forge its future. Mao, though, turned to the Russian model which was being run by a former theology student turned bank robber named Iosif Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili. Fortunately for English speakers, Iosif - we'll call him "Joe" - changed his name to Stalin ("Steel").

By the mid-1920's things between Mao and Chiang were getting quite tetchy. In Shanghai in 1927, fighting broke out between the Communists and the KMT. One of the more extreme of pro-KMT groups - known as the "Green Gang" - rounded known Communist suspects - largely labor leaders. They then took them out into the streets and with movie cameras rolling had them shot.

And where was Mao? Well, you see for all his study and interest in history, Mao was seen by his fellow Communists as a country bumpkin. They had suggested he go into the countryside and preach the Marxist Doctrine to the hedges and the highways. That sounded fine to Mao as he had begun to think that Marx and Lenin had been wrong - at least in China. It was not the factory workers that would form the basis of the revolution. It was the peasants.

Working in the countryside, Mao began to amass a quite formidable army. And with the executions of the Communists in the cities, after a while the last Communist leader left standing was Mao.

By the 1930's the CCP and KMT were in a full-blown civil war. The problem was Mao had no weapons, no supplies, and no uniforms. Up against Chiang's well equipped troops he could do nothing but retreat.

Which is what he did. In 1934 Mao began what is called the Long March. For over a year Mao and his army walked at least 8000 miles, looping west from Jiangxi Province in the south and then moving north to Shaanxi. There in the small town of Yenan and with only about 10% of the troops he started out with, Mao set up his headquarters.

However, it's not correct to see the Mao's forces crammed into one small area. The country was now filled with pockets of Mao's followers. The total area was by no means insignificant. Because Mao's followers were in fact confined to pockets, Chiang and the KMT forces had to be dispersed fairly thin. Still, Chiang felt that it was only a matter of time before he wiped out Mao's rag-tagged army.

But in 1937 the Japanese invaded China.

Mao and Chiang: Together Again

With the Japanese now in China, Mao and Chiang made an agreement to put aside their disagreements and fight the common enemy. This Second Japanese-Sino War eventually blended into World War II and both Mao and Chiang began to get assistance - weapons and supplies - from the Allies. Of course, eventually Japan lost, and in 1945, Mao and Chiang smilingly met to toast their victory and get their picture taken.

Of course immediately afterwards, they put aside their agreement to put aside their disagreements. They started fighting again.

But now Mao had weapons and he had men. One of the Allies had been the Soviet Union and seeing that they might have a new member of the worldwide Communist Revolution, the Russians began sending weapons to Mao. Naturally the United States, now finding Communism an implacable foe, began helping Chiang.

During another four years of fighting, Mao and his troops gradually edged toward the east coast. The United States attempted to mediate with the opposing sides. But why should Mao mediate when he was winning?

Eventually Chiang was cornered in Canton. By then most of own troops, wearied of nearly a decade of fighting, either abandoned their regiments or - which to Chiang was worse - joined Mao. Realizing all was up, Chiang crossed the Straits of Formosa and set up his government - which he said was the real Republic of China - on Taiwan.

So now with Mao in charge and the people triumphant, peace, harmony, and prosperity would prevail!

Not, as Eliza Doolittle said ...

The Man Ain't Got No Culture(al Revolution)

When Dick met Mao, China was undergoing what was called the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution or more commonly just the Cultural Revolution.

The Cultural Revolution shows that what is Good for General Bullmoose is not necessarily good for the USA. In other words what is good for individual politicians - like getting paid $200,000 by a group of Wall Street bankers for reading a 45 minute speech they didn't even write - is not necessarily what's good for the average voter. In this case, what was good for Mao was certainly not very good for China.

Amazingly for someone who was the veritable personification of Modern China, by the mid-1960's Mao's position had become shaky. The problem was that the hero of the revolution, the leader of the Long March, and the victor of the Civil War had made a monumental blunder that almost destroyed the country.

Mao, like all politicians, made promises without worrying if they could be kept. While he was fighting Chiang, he had said he would take the land from the Warloads and distribute it to the small farmers. The farmers believed him and for a while that seems to be what was happening.

But in the late 1950's Mao embarked the country on what he called the Great Leap Forward. Inspired by Joseph Stalin's massive industrialization of the Soviet Union - the "Five Year Plans" - the Great Leap was intended to bring China from languishing as an impoverished agricultural country to being a vibrant modern industrial state.

The primary strategy was to combine the villages into collective farms or communes. Farmers would no longer own and sell their produce. Instead they had to turn everything over to government distributors, and the workers would receive a fair government wage.

Of course, this new system mandated changes in lifestyles. For one thing, the farmers ate in large communal cafeterias. Now that isn't necessarily a problem - a lot of companies have cafeterias for their employees - but soon these "mess halls" began to have very limited and sparse menus.

And in truth the Great Leap Forward was a Major F[oul] Up. As Stalin found in Russia, having politicians with no farming experience dictating changes from agricultural methods that had succeeded for thousands of years was guaranteed to flop. Agricultural yields plummeted.

The situation was made worse when the government bureaucrats told Mao the harvests had been great. To prove their point, they made sure the cities received copious shipments leaving the rural population with virtually nothing.

How many people actually died in the subsequent famine is somewhat tainted by the fact that virtually everyone writing about it has some political axe to grind. That said, numbers bandied about are something like 30 - 50 million.

Even though such numbers represented "only" about 5 % of the population, it wasn't something that you could hide from either the people in China or from the world. It was during the late 1950's that the Chinese refugees began to appear in the West telling their horrifying stories.

Part of Mao's problem was the ubiquitous problem that when trying to fix one problem you can cause another. For instance, he knew that flies, mosquitoes, and rats spread disease. So he called on everyone - men, women, and kids - to declare war on vermin.

Oh, yes. There was a fourth "pest" - sparrows. The birds were eating the rice crops. Get rid of them, Mao thought, and China would have more food. So war was declared on the sparrows, too.

Now getting rid of flies, mosquitoes, and rats was not a bad idea. But getting rid of sparrows was something else. Yes, sparrows ate grain but they also ate insects.

And with the birds gone the insects had a fine time. They gobbled up the grain. Harvest yields fell even further.

By 1962, the Major FU - or rather the Great Leap - had ended. Even Mao had to admit it was a failure. The communes were not abandoned but scaled back. The communal cafeterias were discontinued, and the basic work unit - the village - was restored. The sparrows were given a reprieve.

Finally Mao delivered a speech where he at least half-heartedly acknowledged some fault for what had happened. Mao's example naturally started a new hobby of self-criticism for the Chinese workplace. Everyone wanted to criticize themselves to be like Mao. Whether this new fad helped or not, at least as the mid-60's approached, agricultural production was returning to what it had been ten years before.

At this point we need to point out a little-known characteristic of Communist governments. Usually viewed as being run by a single totalitarian strongman, the governments are really set up to be run by committee. The point, of course, is to prevent a single individual from getting too much power.

Then how do you end up with the governments being run by a single totalitarian strongman?

Weeeeeellllllll, there was a bit of a loophole. Although there were a number of offices spreading the power around, there was nothing forbidding one man from wearing multiple hats.

This was not a new idea. That one official could hold a number of jobs went back at least to Ancient Rome when Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus put on the hats of consul, tribune, and censor. And to fill any other offices - holding too many would look tacky - you appointed your friends.

And in the Communist system you'll have separate offices for the First Secretary, Premier, and President. But they can all be held by one person. And that's usually what happens.

On the other hand, to get one person in all three jobs can take some time. So after Lenin died in 1924, it actually took a few years before Russia ended up with Stalin alone. And when Stalin died in 1953, it wasn't until 1957 that Nikita Khrushchev finally emerged as the Full Blown Honcho of the Soviet Union.

There is also a less tangible factor than the offices a politician holds that gives him his clout. It's what Augustus Caesar called auctoritas. Sometimes called authority, it actually meant "ruling by prestige". And from 1949 that's pretty much what Mao did.

But in 1965, Mao was 72 years old. His health wasn't great. He smoked way too many cigarettes and preferred fatty foods. He was also taking sleeping pills in large quantities (including the so-called "Mickey Finn"). He also suffered from "irregularity" (便秘).

So some of the other leaders like Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping (physically diminutive but large in political acumen) felt that Mao needed to step down. He was too old and the country needed new direction and ideas - and not from a constipated chain-smoking insomniac.

Then on last day of the 1964 World Series, the world learned that Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had been deposed. In Moscow a Soviet minister, somewhat in his cups, babbled to a member of a Chinese delegation that since they had gotten rid of Khrushchev, "You ought to follow our example," he advised, "and get rid of Mao Zedong."

The move was on to replace Mao. Liu gave a speech which trashed the Major FU - sorry, that's the Great Leap Forward. The implication, of course, was it was Mao's fault.

So what do you do if you're a dictator of 700,000,000 people and there's talk about booting you from power?

Well, you can sit down and talk with your colleagues. You can get their opinions and work out the difference between you. Then you can come to a consensus on how to move forward.

Or you can turn the country over to the kids.

In 1968 there a movie called Wild in the Streets. It was about what would happen if the kids were to take over America. The nation's institutions would be turned on their heads, the adult leadership would be toppled, and utter chaos would reign.

And that's pretty much what really happened in China. On May 25, 1966, Mao gave a speech before a meeting of the Young Communists League. He congratulated them on how well their conferences had gone and told them now to "unite and struggle firmly and bravely in the cause of the great socialist enterprise."

That seemed mild enough. But other speeches and editorials followed. Mao with more and more vigor began calling on the youth of the country to actively take charge. They should, he said, purge the country of the anti-socialist reactionaries that were destroying the Revolution.

That's all the kids in Beijing needed. On August 18 they got together in Tiananmen Square. Other kids from the rest of the country also joined in. Calling themselves the Red Guard they decided to follow Mao's advice and go after those who were destroying the Revolution.

But remember. These were kids. And who do you think kids would go after?

Well, anyone who was destroying the Revolution.

And who was destroying the Revolution?

Clearly whoever was giving the kids a hard time.

And who gives kids a hard time?

Yes, their teachers.

So the Red Guard stormed into schools and universities, attacked the teachers, tearing their clothes, dousing them with ink, and even splashing them with boiling water and hot tar. The now-former educators were dragged through the streets. They had to admit their "crimes" while kneeling on broken glass. "Never trust anyone over thirty" had acquired a whole new meaning.

Not all older people fared poorly. For instance if you were a "worker", particularly a farmer, you might be all right. But things were particularly bad if you had a job that was tainted with the whiff of foreign culture. Such "enemies of the people" had to be "rehabilitated".

College professors, doctors, and other professionals were hauled to the countryside to work as farm hands. One lady remembers being separated from her immediate family for two years and only being allowed to visit them one month a year. Even members of the Chinese scientific institutes - some of which had been organized in the early 20th century - were among "draftees" working in the fields.

Those who remained in the cities were forced into menial jobs. One of China's most prestigious composers was forced to sing "The Song of the Cow Headed Monster".

I am a cow-headed monster.

I have sinned. I have sinned.

I must come under the people's dictatorship

Because I am an enemy of the people.

I must be very frank.

If I am not, smash me to bits!

No one was safe. Even parents were reported as being against the Revolution. Some were hauled away never to be seen by their kids again.

Liu and Deng were forced to give speeches admitting their errors and that they now supported Mao. One of Mao's allies, Lin Biao (or Lin Pao as some preferred), urged the searching out and rejecting of old customs, old ideas, old habits, and old culture (called the "Four Olds"). Throw out the old and bring in the new.

But Lin's greatest legacy (if you want to call it that) was that he also ordered the publication of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung. Owning the Little Red Book became de rigueur for everyone in China. It also appeared in English where in America it became, like James Joyce's Ulysses, one of the most bought but least read books ever printed.

But who, as they say, was in charge here?

True, the kids were having the fun trashing their teachers, but if you don't count Mao, there were actually four real leaders of the Cultural Revolution. They weren't kids either but adults: Wang Hongwen, Yao Wenyuan, Zhang Chunqiao, and Jiang Qing.

Three of the Gang had been centered in Shanghai. Wang was only 31 when the Cultural Revolution began. He had been too young to take part of the actual Civil Wars between Mao and Chiang, but he had been active in the Communist Party since the 1950's. An early member of the Red Guard in Shanghai, Wang emerged as one of its leaders.

Yao was a few years older than Wang and had been a writer and journalist in Shanghai. When the Cultural Revolution was launched he saw an opportunity to promote his talents and began to write articles egging the kids on. Better yet, he could write articles against people he didn't like.

Zhang was the oldest - nearly 50. He, too, was a writer and newspaperman from Shanghai and had worked with Wang and Yao.

Jiang Qing (the name means "Green River") is the one most people remember. She was the only woman in the bunch. A former actress - she starred on stage and screen - she was either Mao's third or fourth wife depending on how you count them.

But as the kids continued to go crazy, Mao soon realized that he had unleashed a typhoon that had to be reigned in. If everyone was marching or being marched through the streets, then they weren't working and producing food or necessary goods. The situation was ripe for another Major F[oul] Up for which he would really be blamed.

Fortunately, Mao had a resource that the kids had forgotten. He had the Red Army. So he sent in the troops.

And surprise! surprise! surprise! By golly, it seems that some of the Red Guard were not True Revolutionaries after all. Instead they were nothing more than reactionary anti-Communist hooligans and thugs. To their surprise, the more zealous of the Guards found themselves being rounded up and sent to the countryside to work alongside the "gangsters". And that's if they were lucky. Gradually order began to be restored.

Morley Pays a Visit

The question is how gradually?

Recent documentaries of Mao (at least those made in the West) tend to take a most uncharitable view of his accomplishments. From what you see, you might think that from 1966 to 1976 China was in total chaos. Businesses and schools were shut down by the fanatical Red Guard Worshippers of Chairman Mao. Riots and mayhem killed tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, maybe millions. Historical relics and even entire sites and buildings were destroyed. Such, we learn, was the Cultural Revolution.

There are, of course, millions of people still alive who remember the Cultural Revolution. Overall their stories are consistent. Among the chief targets were teachers and school administrators. But anyone with even a hint of connection to the West - such as veterans of World War II who fought as part of the "Flying Tigers" against the Japanese - were labeled "historical counter-revolutionaries". If you had photos or mementos indicating you had contact with the Western countries, you would be attacked and your home might even be destroyed.

And yet in the 1960's and 70's many countries in Europe and Asia continued doing business with Mainland China. Estimates by Western experts for the years 1966 to 1976 show absolutely no break in the then exponential growth in the population. So what actually went on?

The remaining groups of Mao's fans say the tales of destruction from the Cultural Revolution where nonsense and the casualties fabricated. It's pure counter-propaganda from the decadent West. Surely you don't expect an objective view from the capitalistic Western journalists.

Well, there is at least one objective and interesting - albeit brief - look at Mao's China during the Cultural Revolution. And it was a peek from America. Journalist Morley Safer - yes, Morley Safer of 60 Minutes fame - and cameraman John Baxter Peters took a tour through China in 1967. Yes, that's in 1967 - right smack dab in the middle of the Cultural Revolution.

Now we have to point out that normally Morley wouldn't have been allowed in. At that time the US had long severed any diplomatic contact with Mainland China and US citizens were forbidden to enter the country. But Morley was a Canadian and so could get in with a Canadian passport. John was British.

On the other hand Morley realized the Chinese authorities might be hesitant in letting one of America's leading news correspondents in, Canadian citizenship notwithstanding. So he decided to tell the Chinese that he was a rich amateur archeologist interested in Chinese history (rich no, amateur archeologist, sort of). He said he particularly wanted to see the National Museum (which was indeed true).

Morley needed to keep everything at a low profile. So rather than going through high level diplomatic channels, he decided to book a trip via a Chinese travel agency. Yes, Cultural Revolution or not, China had travel agencies. After some back and forth, Morley and John got their visas.

When they arrived in Beijing, Morley and John were struck with how loud everything was. Loudspeakers blared out adulation to Chairman Mao. There were streams of parades where the people sang songs and chanted Mao's praises. Every morning his guide would read to him from the Little Red Book. Even when flying from one city to another, the stewardesses would read Mao's quotations and dance to Mao's words set to music. Morley was given a book so he could read along.

Although schools and universities had been shut down, the classrooms were available for meetings and to study the words of Mao. It was at an agricultural college that Morley managed to sit down with a group of the Red Guard.

First they read in unison one of Mao's favorite quotes:

A revolution is not a dinner party or writing an essay or painting a picture or doing embroidery. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.

When asked about Mao, the kids said that he was the best leader in history and everything he said was true. When Morley asked one of the Guards what he thought of the United States, they replied that the US imperialists were the top enemy of the people of the whole world. As far as what they wanted to do for China, they replied with only two words: "Make Revolution!"

The odd thing was how normal and clean cut the kids looked. There was also a surprising amount of real work was getting done. Morley and John visited a commune where production had increased 9 fold in a few years. Of course, he was told that the reason for the improvement was not because of the better farming techniques. Instead it was because they studied the Thoughts of Mao. "Fatter pigs through greater study."

But Morley noticed something a bit disquieting. Among those hauling fodder from the fields were ten year old kids. The guides didn't like Morley seeing this. But neither, he pointed out, did they stop John from filming it.

His guides were quick to point out that Mao believed that recreation was important to productivity. So they took Morley and John to a public pool where the scene could have passed for any large municipal pool in the United States. Everyone was splashing around and having fun like kids do everywhere.

Businesses were operating although they were small and without automation. This was not necessarily a negative. At one truck factory all parts were individually machined and everything assembled by hand. John was a car aficionado and noted that the work was first-class and on par with what you would see in a Rolls Royce plant. The workers had doubled their output - from one truck a day to two.

What Morley did not see were people slaving away to the point of never ending exhaustion. On Sundays the people even took picnics up in the mountains and Morley, like a lot of tourists, visited the Great Wall. In general, living costs were low and everyone Morley saw appeared to have an adequate, if not lavish, diet. Perhaps that was indeed, Morley said, a great leap forward.

Then suddenly Morley was told their itinerary had been changed. They had to skip Nanking and two other cities. These towns were, they said, off limits for "reorganizational" purposes. But nevertheless their plane had to land in Nanking where they spent the night.

There they saw that slogans and banners praising Mao had been knocked down and replastered with anti-Mao sayings. And in another city they were able to film a statue that had been painted with anti-Mao slogans. Obviously the tranquil life they were being shown was not the whole story.

Morley also found that some grade schools had been reopened. Of course, the classes only taught the reading of the Words of Chairman Mao. But at least the kids were learning to read. Morley heard some grade-schoolers reciting Mao's saying, "Power grows out of the barrel of a gun." And today you'll hear similar sentiments from citizens of other countries such as ...

Well, no names.

In Sian, Morley and John went to the countryside to see the farms. Here there were "draftees" helping the farmers. They all had their Little Red Books, and even in the fields they proudly displayed the omnipresent pictures of Mao. Then for Morley's edification, the harvesters all stood in a row and sang a song in praise of the Chairman.

In the towns and cities, what struck Morley was the absence of beggars or petty thieves so common in the days of the foreign occupation. All cities he visited were remarkably clean. He didn't even see any mosquitoes or bugs. He didn't say anything about sparrows.

In Yenan, Mao's old stronghold during the Civil Wars, there was one of the few functioning museums. Of course, it was dedicated to the Life and Times of Mao, and there you could see the very cot he slept on during the Great March. If this seems strange, remember that one of the most popular attractions at Mount Vernon is George Washington's false teeth.

Alas, life was not just Singing Praises of Chairman Mao. Shanghai was tense and still reeling from events when the Cultural Revolution did not run smooth. As a major port with international influences, the city had been one of the major targets of the Red Guard.

But the dock workers - who really were the working class - resented what they saw as over-educated hooligans trying to tell them what to do. As longshoreman have never been noted for being meek and mild, they called a general strike and had no hesitation in fighting back. But by the time Morley got there the city was more or less functional although among the workers hauling items to the dock were young girls.

As a journalist Morley naturally asked questions which didn't always meet with official approval. Once his guide at a tractor factory - a Mr. Tao - said that they had to make everything themselves because America would not sell them the needed equipment. Morley pointed out that although America didn't trade with China, there were some of America's allies - Canada, Britain - who did. They would be happy to sell machinery to China. Mr. Tao went into a spittle-flinging diatribe and the conversation ended.

The next morning Morley was summoned to a reception room in his hotel. Mr. Tao, three women, and two men were there, all wearing red armbands. He was told this was a "Revolutionary Court" and he was guilty of crimes against the Chinese people, insulting the Thoughts of Chairman Mao, insulting the people's "machines", and guilty of spreading "the poisonous weeds of bourgeois democracy." The head judge - a woman - said he must admit his crimes quickly.

Morley started to say the charges were due to a misunderstanding. At once all judges hit the tables with their fists. These were not charges, they shouted, but CRIMES. Morley was reminded of the courtroom of the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland ("Suppress him! Pinch him! Off with his whiskers!"). If he did not confess, the judge warned, he would come to a bad end. After giving a generic confession for his "crimes", Morley was allowed to continue his trip.

Later Morley provided additional details. He said that the tractor which had been passed off as a Chinese product curiously had a Massey-Ferguson logo. Pointing this out to Mr. Tao, Morley said the "Chinese" tractor was actually of Canadian manufacture. This is what sent Mr. Tao into his conniption fits. And rather than being summoned to a private room the next day, Morley said he was literally frog-marched to the trial in the hotel lobby.

The rather formidable lady judge said he was guilty of crimes and had to confess. Each time Morley tried to give an explanation, he was told to shut up and confess. Finally the judge warned Morley that he would be given one last chance.

At that point Morley's guide leaned over and whispered just to confess, say he regretted his crimes, and promise he wouldn't do it again. Morley did so and after he gave a rather long and elaborate "confession", everyone smiled. The judge shook his hand and said, "That was very good!".

Morley and John moved on to Canton. The atmosphere was more relaxed than at Shanghai, and the city was more westernized. The local farmers - as on the collective farms in Russia - were also allowed to cultivate their own private gardens. Any surplus they could then sell at the local market - a market that was being run in a completely capitalistic manner. There was still a lot of Mao in Canton, though.

Morley realized that telling his story could be dangerous for people who tried to help him. So some things he just had to leave out, and it wasn't until fifty years later that he gave the details of his visit to the National Museum - ostensibly his primary reason for visiting China.

Naturally the Cultural Revolution had closed the museum and when he got there it was locked tight. So the guide went to get the key. After some time, two teenagers showed up escorting an older man. The man, who had clearly been beaten, was the curator.

After the men held some discussion of which Morley, of course, couldn't understand, the guide told him that the curator was going to ask questions about the pieces they saw. This was, of course, a test to see if Morley was really the amateur archeologist he claimed to be.

Fortunately Morley did have enough knowledge of Chinese history and - we suspect with a little indulgence from the curator - he managed to bluff his way to the satisfaction of the Guards. He said he could tell that the curator was scared out of his wits the whole time.

For some, life under Mao - Cultural Revolution or not - had improved. During his tour, Morley spoke with a man who had lived on a farm during the time of the Warlords. He said that once his mother couldn't pay the rent. So she had to sell her younger daughter to the landowner. Selling their children to pay the debts was common in the days of the Emperor. But the practice ended under Mao.

We hear today that between 500,000 and 2,000,000 people died in the Cultural Revolution. There were tales of unbelievably brutality and chaos. So how do we reconcile the eye-witness accounts of mass killings with the country in relatively good order that Morley found?

Accepting these numbers (which we must be honest and say many people do not), with a country as large as China there could be regions of sheer chaos where tens of thousands or more could have been brutalized and even killed. But in other cities and towns the effect was mostly the social disruptions. And even today there are cities and towns where Mao has never lost his fans because both the Great Leap and the Cultural Revolution passed them by.

Correcting the Errors

The date of the end of the Cultural Revolution is somewhat arbitrary. So in want of better criteria, most historians just cite the date of Mao's death.

By the time Mao died, virtually everyone knew the Cultural Revolution had been a disaster. Within a month the leaders - Wang, Zhang, Yao, as well as Mrs. Mao, Jiang - were dubbed the Gang of Four. They were arrested.

Here is where the Westerners scratch their heads. How in the space of a few weeks can someone go from being the de factor rulers of the world's most populous country to being universally reviled criminals? We'd really like to know how this is possible.

I thought you would as Captain Mephisto said to Sidney Brand. It's very simple really.

Premier Chou Enlai died in early 1976, and Mao appointed a new prime minister. This was Hua Guofeng, one of Mao's long time supporters but a relative unknown in the West. Thus when Mao died, Hua became the boss.

During the Cultural Revolution there had always been the two major factions - those who sided with the "Gang" and the "Other Side". The Gang was Mao's wife and her friends, of course. This Other Side included Deng Xiaoping and his friends. Deng had long thought China needed Westernization, so during the Cultural Revolution he and his friends had been shoved aside.

Hua, though, wasn't seen as being part of either group. So each faction spent the next few weeks trying to schmooze him to join up with them. Hua stayed mum for a while and then made his decision.

All the members of the Politburo were told that there was going to be an important meeting on October 11. Thinking this could be the announcement that Hua was siding with them, Jiang and her Three Friends happily showed up. But to their surprise when each walked in the room they were - to quote Arlo Guthrie - "immediately arrested - handcuffed". They were then hauled off to the hoosegow. And as there is no provision for a speedy trial in the Chinese Constitution, they sat around for four years. They went to trial in 1980, and all ended up sentenced to life in prison.

The Marvelers and the Mashers

Today you'll find that the people who write about Mao can roughly be divided into the Marvelers or the Mashers. Marvelers say he was the greatest leader in the history of the world and his amazing accomplishments have been hidden by the lies of Western propaganda. The Mashers say he was the worst mass murderer in history and only yahoos go around with his picture on their expensive capitalistically produced t-shirts.

I mean, c'mon, say the Mashers. Anyone who creates a famine that kills 50,000,000 people has to be a first class jerk. Some Great Leader!

Hold, on, say the Marvelers. Let's see how you came to that number - and don't give us the number is "estimated" by the Mao Mashers. Notice, the Marvelers say, that the number of Mao's "victims" keeps creeping up. In the Great Leap Forward some say it was 30,000,000. Then other "scholars" up it to 50,000,000. And even recently a learnéd article in a prestigious publication said Mao did in 70,000,000 of his own countrymen!

Before long we'll be reading that Mao annihilated not only the Earth's population, but that of the entire Galactic Empire!

Besides, the Marvelers sneer, if you need any more evidence of the disinformation campaign from the - quote - "Enlightened West" - unquote - look at what Morley reported himself. In Canton he had been allowed to wander around at least part of the time without a guide. He decided to cross over the Shenzhen River via the Lo Wu Bridge to Hong Kong. Picking up some Western newspapers Morley read about how in Canton there were riots, general strikes, and even shootings in the streets. But in the Canton he just left, Morley said he saw nothing of the kind.

And, the Marvelers say, if you want to blame Mao for the millions who died in a famine, why don't you say the same for Winston Churchill. In 1943 there was the Bengali Famine which occurred in British India where 3,000,000 died.

And what did Winston say about it?

"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion. The famine was their own fault for breeding like rabbits."

And what's worse, he even diverted shipments of grain away from India and sent them to Europe. As he said:

"The starvation of underfed Bengalis is less serious than that of sturdy Greeks."

So quit admiring Winnie with his pink silk underwear before you start trashing Mao.

Don't be ridiculous, say the Mashers (joined by Winnie's fans). It's been documented that Winnie did all he could to relieve the Bengal. The famine was caused by many factors, not the least that the Japanese stopped shipment of food to India once the war began. It was impossible for the allies to make up the difference in such a short time.

As far as diverting grain shipments, there was a war on. You couldn't abandon other countries' needs in the middle of a war against the greatest tyrant in history. And don't judge a man by words taken out of context.

And just what, the Marvelers sneer, are you doing with Mao's quotes? You go through the Little Red Book and pick and choose what you want to make Mao look bad.

We're making Mao look bad? hoot the Mashers. Why just look what he did himself when ....

Well, you get the idea.

And Henry ....?

You may be wondering what happened to Henry, the Last Chinese Emperor. When he abdicated, remember, he was only six years old.

Actually, Henry didn't notice. When Cixi signed the order for his abdication, the government of the Republic of China agreed to let him keep on living in the Imperial Palace in Beijing. He even kept his eunuchs as servants. For a while the kid still thought he was the Emperor.

It doesn't seem that he was particularly happy. His arranged marriages - all four of them - weren't happy ones and every one of his wives eventually divorced him. Yes, they divorced him. As you may have guessed from the power of the Empress Dowagers, women in the Imperial Chinese society had considerable clout. As to the reasons for the matrimonial discord, we don't really know the details. But the fact that Henry never sired any kids may have had something to do with it.

Eventually, though, the truth sank in and Henry finally realized he wasn't an Emperor. In 1924 and at age 17, he was forced to leave the Imperial Palace. Some sources tell us that he left because the KMT ordered him out; others that a "warlord" temporarily seized the city. In any case Henry fled Beijing and headed to Tientsin (now Romanized as Tianjin) about 65 miles to the southeast.

Henry remained in Tientsin until 1932. By then communications between Henry and the Japanese led to the understanding that Henry could continue being Emperor. Not of all China - not just yet, anyway. But if he would go to Japanese-occupied Manchuria they would set him up as the - quote - "Emperor of Manchukuo" - unquote. Henry left Tientsin and stayed in Changchun throughout World War II.

Of course, Japan lost the war, and Henry was taken prisoner by the Russians. So you can figure out what happened.

And you'd be wrong. True, the Russians kept Henry prisoner for five years. But he was not mistreated - in fact he lived a pretty cushy life - but there was the constant worry that he would be tried as a war criminal and executed.

But the Allied War Crimes Tribunals weren't really interested in proceeding against a phony emperor who had just sat on his emporedic 屁股. He was, though, called as a witness and gave six days of evidence against his Japanese contacts. Then in 1950 the Russians handed Henry over to the Mainland Chinese government which was now, of course, run by Mao.

Well, that was pretty much it, wasn't it?

But no. You see, there was a reason the Bolsheviks were not seen as liberators of the poor and oppressed but as a murderous band of thugs. That's because when they overthrew the Tsar's government, they ended up killing not just the Tsar, but also the Tsarina, their children (tsardines?), and their dog. In world opinion, the murder of the Tsar and his family was, as Talleyrand probably didn't say, not just a crime. It was a blunder.

But what about a reformed Emperor? Imagine what the World would say for the Chinese Communist System - not to mention Mao himself - if Henry should be "rehabilitated" and made into a Good Little Happy Smiling Communist.

So Henry was shipped off to the countryside for - quote - "rehabilitation" - unquote. His life was not particularly cushy, but neither was he mistreated. Mostly he worked in the gardens and cleaned the streets. The main problem was he was a klutz. As Emperor - either in China or in Manchuria - he had literally done nothing for himself. He didn't even know how to tie his own shoes or brush his own teeth.

In 1959 Henry was formally pardoned. He was as surprised as anyone and even more surprised when he was cordially received by Chou En-Lai. Finally he got his picture taken with Chairman Mao himself. Although it's true that Henry worked as an employee at Beijing's Botanical Gardens this was actually a part-time occupation. His real job was being a reformed Emperor.

Henry said this was the happiest time of his life and it probably was. He was allowed to travel throughout the country, he met people who had been his former subjects, and he even served on a government committee.

He also remarried, this time happily. Henry wrote his memoirs which were well received not only in China but in Western countries as well. In the good capitalist tradition he was permitted to keep his royalties.

Henry died at age 61 in 1967, shortly after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, not from any violence, but from age related health problems. Henry's younger brother - who had been his aide-de-camp - had also been "rehabilitated". He lived through the Cultural Revolution and beyond. He died, age 87 and still living in China, in 1994.

And Mao ....?

By then Mao was long gone. After Dick's trip, Mao went into a quick decline and his last public appearance was May 27, 1976. He looked terrible.

According to Mao's personal physician, Dr. Li Zhi-Sui, that's no surprise. For years Mao had suffered from high blood pressure and his constant smoking had injured his lungs to where air pockets had formed and made it hard for him to exhale. Then in 1974 specialists diagnosed amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). By fall 1976 Mao often had to breathe with a respirator which, by the way, had been given to him by the United States.

By September 2, Mao had experienced a total of three heart attacks and was confined to a hospital. At midnight on September 9, Mao asked Dr. Li if there was hope. Dr. Li assured him they would be able to help him. Mao died ten minutes later.

Although Mao had originally asked to be cremated, the Chinese Politburo said he had to be preserved forever á la Lenin. To Dr. Li's consternation, he found there wasn't the needed materials for such a task in the country. As an alternative, someone suggested they could make a wax model and use that instead. There were artists in the country who could do even better than Madame Tussaud. So if the Real Mao was not available, they could sneak in the Wax Mao. But after considerable difficulty - and some scary moments - the scientific team managed to get the Real Mao looking - if not very natural - then natural enough.

Later Dr. Li wrote a tell-all book about Mao's private life. Dr. Li said that once in power Mao became totally self-centered. He couldn't have cared less about the welfare of the average Chinese citizen, and he lived the life of an Emperor. He pushed through laws and regulations that he himself ignored. He got up when he wanted, slept at any time, and had plenty of beautiful babes around for his pleasure.

Yes, Mao turned into a modern politician.

It's How You Say It

OK. Let's get back to the name. It's difficult on the various "How to Pronounce Mao's Name" pages to find one that is unambiguously from a native speaker. Some of the soundbytes are clearly computer generated speech which, to be frank, has little to do with natural pronunciation.

However, by listening to actual documentaries made in China and even if you don't speak Chinese, you can - if you listen carefully - pick out Mao's name.

And with all due respect to modern linguists, to the imperfect ear of the author and illustrator of CooperToons, it certainly sounds like they're saying Mao Tse-Tung.

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