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Although she never met Ho, she pieced together elements of her character from comments by various members of the Chairman's family, and occasionally from the Chairman, who was notably reticent about her. Ho Tzu-chen, Chiang Ch'ing was made to realize, was a stubborn woman who "never came to understand the political world of Chairman Mao." Her problems were linked in part to her family background; birth into the landlord-merchant class had accustomed her to fairly high living standards. When cities were taken during the Long March, Ho announced that she wanted to quit the March and settle down there because she was used to living in cities.
Those temperamental problems were compounded by misfortune, Chiang Ch'ing continued. During the March Ho was wounded several times in enemy attacks, experiences which destroyed her physical and mental balance. By the time the Red forces reached the Northwest in late 1935, she was beyond coping with either the political situation, her children [at least two but total number unknown], or other personal relations. Naturally, the Chairman found her behavior intolerable. When the Party reached the Central Soviet Districts of the Northwest, Ho abandoned the Chairman, vowing never to settle in Yenan. She returned on her own to Sian. With no one to cajole or control her, she took out her frustrations on her two children by beating them compulsively. Even as adults they showed the effects of having been battered, Chiang Ch'ing said. Like their mother and because of her they failed to adjust to the demands of socialist life.
Around 1939 Ho and the two children—the daughter was still tiny—were sent by the Party to Moscow. Depressed in her isolation, she resumed beating her children mercilessly. Eventually she gave up trying to mother them at all. Others took custody and she was committed to an asylum. In the late 1940's (when Stalin was becoming increasingly disenchanted with Mao) she was sent back to Shanghai. Aged now, she still lives there in a mental institution. Periodically she is given shock treatments.
At some point early in her marriage Chiang Ch'ing took charge of [a] son of Mao's (whether he was Ho Tzu-chen's child was unclear). This little boy evidently had been sent to Moscow and later returned to Shanghai, where he was put in the care of a priest, a man with two wives who turned out to be vicious women. They beat the boy so mercilessly that his sense of balance was permanently impaired. How well Chiang Ch'ing remembered his little body rocking crazily left and right. Even years later he still swerved from side to side, often tripping.
Chiang Ch'ing came to love this child, rearing him as her own son until the early 1950's, when she had to undergo radiotherapy for cancer. Naturally, the intensive medical care made it difficult for her to look after him. "Others" (unnamed) decided that she was no longer able to mother him. Against her pleadings "they" tore him away from her, refusing to tell her where he would be placed. The loss was profound, for he was very bright; at the age of three he could sing the Internationale from start to finish. She never found out where his abductors hid him nor did Mao. [Who the abductors were and why even the