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Thirty-seven years ago, in the Hunan Provincial Library at Changsha, a 19-year-old farm lad for the first time in his narrow life looked at a map of the world. He studied it, as he later recalled, with great interest. Last week, the farm lad was redrawing that map with an iron pen dipped in blood. Mao Tse-tung was adding China to the domain of world Communism.
For the West, the event was a major disaster, still incalculable in its consequences. For Communism, it was the greatest victory since the Russian Revolution. For most of the Chinese people, it meant peace—but only in the sense that large-scale fighting would stop. It also meant the kind of war which the Chinese have often known—the silent, constant war which tyrannic governments wage upon their people.
For Mao Tse-tung, the peasant lad, the event meant great face. He was about to be master over the vast land which had bred him, over the cities and libraries, over half a billion tough, tired people, who listened last week as the Communist faithful sang Mao's glory:
Chairman Mao can be compared to the
sun in the east,
Which shines over the world so brightly,
so brightly.
Heigh-ai-yo, heigh-heigh-heigh-yo.
Without Chairman Mao, how can there
be peace?
Heigh-ai-yo.
Of Rice & Faith. Mao Tse-tung was born (1893) in Shao Shan, Hunan Province, where for years his world was the rice paddy, the village school, and his father's cane. Old Mao was a fanner, prosperous enough to hire a laborer. Unlike many another farm lad who later followed him, and died for the rice and the faith he offered, young Mao never knew hunger. Nor did he know abundance. Once every month, old Mao would give his farmhand eggs with his rice, but no meat. Recalls Mao: "To me, he gave neither eggs nor meat."*
As a boy, Mao Tse-tung learned about tyranny. Old Mao was the Ruling Power in the family. Young Mao, his brother, mother and the hired hand were the masses. Says Mao: "My mother, a kind and generous woman, criticized my attempts at open rebellion against the Ruling Power. She said it was not the Chinese way." Mao soon discarded his mother's simple gradualism. When his father bawled him out, he quoted a passage from Confucius, to the effect that the old should be kind and affectionate. Says Mao with sly humor: "The dialectical struggle in our family was constantly developing."
One evening, when Mao was 13, his father, in front of a group of guests, denounced him as lazy and useless. This meant a terrible loss of face for young Mao. He ran out of the house, his father in hot pursuit. Young Mao reached the edge of a pond and threatened to jump in if his father came any nearer. "Demands and counter-demands were presented for cessation of the civil war," Mao recalled. "My father insisted that I apologize and kowtow . . . I agreed to give a one-knee kowtow if he would promise not to beat me. Thus the war ended, and from it I learned that when I defended my rights by open rebellion, my father relented, but when I remained meek and submissive, he only cursed and beat me the more."