Reading the Private Life of Chairman Mao - Mao the Man

I recently finished the memoirs of Chairman Mao Zedong's private physician and it was an amazing read. I picked a few quotes about Mao the man and talked about a few thoughts here. This is my partial book review of "The Private Life of Chairman Mao" by Li Zhi-sui.

[sarcasmo]

I'm beginning to think that this Mao guy was a real jerk.

[Dboy]

The excerpts from this book really fascinated me. Just bought a copy. Can't wait to learn more about this character over the weekend!

[dewittbourchier]

There are other aspects of the book, in an addendum to my earlier comment, that make Mao look good in some ways. For example, until late in old age his resilience and physical power - being able to outswim some of his younger guards, while also showing what a risk taker he was, that he risked his own life sometimes for his own exercise gives insight into some of his political decisions. The flippancy for the lives of Chinese is something he sometimes, to his security team's exasperation, displayed for his own. He is also shown as having genuine love and affection for his third wife and Li even notes that the memory of his deceased second wife obviously pains him when it is brought up. But there is also a lot that makes him look bad - Li for example obviously cannot understand why Mao despised the Soviets so much when they treated him like an elder statesman and fawned over him. Mao also increasingly lies as the book goes on, becomes less and less open to criticism. I wouldn't share the opinion that Mao was a sociopath. I think he was a man who had seen a lot of death and suffering, and like you say, had become indifferent to it by the time he was an older man. But I think he did care for certain people as human beings, it's just it became less and less so as he approached his own death - with the unspoken question obviously in his mind of 'what was my entire life for?'

[creatoruser]

"We shouldn't follow Marxist philosophy exactly because it's slavish to just follow the guide." Convenient for him since communism says 'everyone is equal' but he created an offshoot that established himself at the top of a hierarchy.

[InfoSopher]

How many descendants of Mao are alive today? Is that known? What is their standing in society and what is their relation to the CCP?

[louisxix]

have you read Mao the unknown story by Jung Chang it gives you the complete picture of his life

[erbium]

I greatly question the authenticity of this book for the following reasons.

1. Multiple people who knew Mao personally claimed that Li's relationship with Mao is not what he portrayed in his book, accordingly, Li was not as close to Mao and his status of being Mao's personal doctor was inaccurate. Their arguments are backed with documents of Mao's medical records and the fact that having a personal doctor present at high level CPC meeting would be an extreme violation of CPC rules.

2. If Li in fact was making the stories up, for what reasons then? He nearly killed in the Cultural Revolution because Mao's wife's claim of him trying to assassinate her. He hided in Beijing until he defected to the United States and then years after, he published this book.

This book is his revenge to Mao, to spread lies and propaganda against him instead of standing up to him like a real man.