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Mao's Wife—Chiang Ch'ing1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

Hao-Jan Chu
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Extract

Chiang Ch'ing was born Li Yun-ho in 1913 in Chiucheng, Shantung Province. When she was very young her parents separated and her mother took her with her elder sister to the provincial capital of Tsinan. At the end of her primary education Chiang was sent to the Provincial Vocation School for Performing Arts in Taian, a boarding school with tuition provided free by the government as her father was no longer contributing to the support of the family. In Teturn for free education the students were obliged upon graduation to join the experimental troupe as unpaid apprentices for an unspecified period. While a student at the school Chiang had an affair with the principal, Chao T'ai-mou, who in 1930 took her to Tsingtao when he went to teach in the newly-founded National Tsingtao University. Unqualified for acceptance as a student, Chiang found a post in the university library as a junior assistant copying index cards.

Type
Research Article
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 31 , July 1967 , pp. 148 - 150
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1967

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References

2 Taian is 31 miles south of Tsinan and Chiucheng is 56 miles west of Tsingtao, the most important seaport of Shantung.

3 There was no fixed period of apprenticeship in traditional China, not only for theatrical troupes but also other vocations.

4 In winter 1933 Huang was arrested for inciting railway workers. After a few months in jail, his release was obtained by his uncle, Yü Ta-wei, a high Nationalist official.

5 T'ang Na was a graduate of St. John's University in Shanghai. At the time he married Chiang Ch'ing, known publicly as Lan P'ing, he wrote film critiques for newspapers. After their separation, he worked in Chungking, for the British among others, and returned to Shanghai when the war ended. In 1947 he went to the United States. Last year he was known to run a Chinese restaurant in Paris, but at present he may be in South America.

6 All four marriages later broke up. T'ang and Chiang quarrelled even on their honeymoon, and T'ang once confided to an intimate friend that his wife had a tremendous temper. However, when Chiang left him for Tsinan in 1935, he followed her to her mother's home. Apparently he failed in his bid to win her back, so he attempted suicide in the hotel where he was staying. This also failed, but at least Chiang agreed to return with him to Shanghai after this episode, which because of T'ang's connection with the newspapers made headlines.

7 The trip to Yenan in war time was something more than an adventure. From Shanghai one had first to cross the Japanese-occupied area, then the Kuomintang-controlled territory where people were sent to a Kuomintang training camp for attempting to go to Yenan. Finally, the Communists were most suspicious about receiving outsiders, wary of Kuomintang agents trying to infiltrate the revolutionary base. Apart from cadres of good standing like Huang Ching, newcomers were interrogated repeatedly and admitted only after thorough screening.

8 With the abolition of bourgeois customs for the new proletarian morality went the need for formal wedding or registration of marriage in Yenan. If two people wanted to live together they simply did, and called each other “lover” instead of husband or wife.

9 People's Daily, May 16, 1967; Peking Review, May 19, 1967.

10 Both daughters are married. Mao also had two sons: Mao An-ying by his second wife, Yang K'ai-hui, died in the Korean War while Mao An-ch'ing by Ho Tze-chen is now an engineer in China.

11 According to the circular the new special committee was directly responsible to the Standing Committee of the Politburo. One reason for appointing Ch'en instead of Chiang as head is that Ch'en is a member of the Standing Committee while Chiang is not even a member of the Central Committee.

12 Slides brought back by a group of 55 Australian and New Zealand students who toured China for three weeks from January 22nd this year revealed big signs on the stages of theatres in Shanghai, Nanking and Wuhan welcoming Chiang Ch'ing to the cities.