Word: mao
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...visitors to Yenan described Mao as a heavy-set man (5 ft. 8 in., 200 lbs.) with the humor, the strength and often the manner of a Chinese peasant. He frequently sat with his feet propped on the table, and in warm weather he unceremoniously stripped to the waist. Once, in Yenan in the presence of General Lin Piao, president of the Red Academy, he took off his trousers for comfort while studying a military map. He smokes incessantly and tends his own tobacco patch. In 1938, the Party Central Committee gave him a $5 monthly raise so he could...
...Mao was usually affable toward U.S. visitors. One U.S. authoress-Agnes Smedley-reported this impression: "The tall, forbidding figure lumbered toward us and a high-pitched voice greeted us. Then two hands grasped mine; they were as long and sensitive as a woman's . . . Whatever else he might be, he was an esthete . . . He asked a thousand questions . . . We spoke of India; of literature; once he asked me if I had ever loved any man, and why, and what love meant...
...Yenan's most remarkable form of entertainment was the "living newspaper" in which amateur mimes enacted current events. Sample: General Eisenhower invading Normandy atop a human landing barge (see cut). Sugar-coated propaganda also pervaded the Saturday night dances regularly held in a Yenan apple orchard at which Mao appeared in simple peasant dress to dance with his wife, Mme. Chu Teh, Mme. Chou Enlai, or pretty Communist office girls. For these occasions, the Communists revived (and revised) an old, gay Chinese dance form called the Yang-ko. Sample: a shepherd is asleep by his flock. A girl...
When the Nationalists captured Yenan in 1947, Mao was driven to wander again. He left the capital on the last day before Chiang's men came, withdrew to a small village where he set up headquarters in a straw tent. Once a Nationalist detachment came within ten miles and his staff urged him to leave. "What's the hurry?" asked Mao. "Wait until the firing starts...
...around Hsingsien. By last fall, he was in Shichiachuang, the Reds' administrative center on the western edge of the rich North China plain. Then, following the Red army's advance, he returned home to his Yenan cave. His popularity among his followers was greater than ever. Everywhere Mao went, his words were noted down by breathless disciples. Some observers feel that Mao is getting too popular-and too powerful-for his own good...