Word: tzu
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That spring, she remembered, some friends who knew nothing about what was happening to her in a political way started calling her by the nickname Erh Kan-tzu, literally Two Stalks, because her legs were skinny and she strutted about on them in brave style. She had lost weight because she was subsisting on very little, eating almost nothing, just two shao-ping (wheat-flour pancakes common to North China) a day. And she cut corners in other ways. Why was she so concerned about saving money? "To pay off Li Ta-chang!" she responded brightly, refusing to elaborate...
...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...
...divorce procedure? Ho Tzu-chen-not the Chairman, she said pointedly...
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...
...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...