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Her past political frustrations kept haunting her.
Long after she left Shanghai, she remembered in anguish, she could not rid her mind of the personal enemies she had made there, for many had resurfaced in Yenan. They let her know that if she refused to comply with their propositions (which she did not spell out here, though they probably included being forced to work in politically compromising films), they would kill her. [By "politically compromising," Chiang Ch'ing meant emphasizing national unity with the Nationalists against the Japanese rather than class struggle against landlords and capitalists.]
Then, after she became wife of the Chairman and still found herself alienated from the work she wanted to do, she feared that misconceptions about her personal history were still unresolved. With no one to defend her (apparently not even Mao), she made another special appearance before the Party organization just to impress upon these ostensibly fair-minded men her plight in Shanghai.
"We were clear about your history," they responded.
[But] continuing blandishments from the Party organization could not dispel her suspicion that some of the present leaders continued to oppose her and were responsible for cordoning her off, for not allowing the masses to know her.
MAO'S OTHER WIFE
At one point, an extraordinary incident occurred. As Witke tells it:
Restless, Chiang Ch'ing arose, beckoned me to follow, and motioned her bodyguard to lead the way through the tall doors that opened in to the pitch-black night. Obviously perplexed, [the aide] reached for his flashlight and plunged ahead into the humid night air and faint moonlight. She followed him and I her. Chiang Ch'ing had deliberately led us out of reach of the indoor microphones [two had been placed before each of them to record the interviews].
As she walked along, Chiang Ch'ing spoke briskly and excitedly. We had to pick our way gingerly to avoid being impaled on the glinting bayonets held by young PLA guards hidden in the bamboo thicket lining the narrow pathway.
"There are certain things I want to tell you, but not the world." With these words Chiang Ch'ing opened a torrent of talk. She knew of the international gossip about the circumstances of her marriage to Mao, but was not unduly concerned by it. [According to the gossip, Mao was so smitten with the young actress that he banished his third wife * Ho Tzu-chen. Also banished was another actress, Lily Wu, who had been close to Mao before Chiang Ch'ing arrived. Rumors also claimed that Mao's marriage to Chiang Ch'ing was opposed by other party leaders who agreed to it only on condition that she stay out of politics.] Most of this was rubbish, malicious rumors possibly started by Mao's rival Wang Ming and his ilk. Nevertheless, she had something to say about it.
By the time the Party arrived in the Central Soviet Districts (she probably meant Yenan in January 1937), Chairman Mao and [his wife Ho] had been separated for over a year. By the time she herself arrived in Yenan straight from Shanghai in the late summer of 1937, Mao and Ho were divorced. Ho had left the Northwest and was already convalescing from illnesses in the Soviet Union. Who initiated the