Word: wente
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...father wanted to apprentice him to a rice merchant, but Mao again rebelled. He went to study in Changsha, where he hoped to find answers to many questions...
Feeling the need to share his new knowledge with others, he inserted advertisements in newspapers inviting correspondence with fellow idealists. Four answered. Three of them later turned out to be "reactionaries." The fourth, a skinny youth called Li Lisan ("who listened to everything I had to say and then went away") was soon to become Mao's rival for the leadership of Chinese Communism...
...second biggest star of Chinese Communism. A Yunnan officer and police commissioner, Chu Teh lived in a palatial home, smoked opium and kept several concubines. In 1922, to the indignation of all his friends, he sent his harem packing, broke himself of the opium habit. He went to Europe, studied in Moscow at the Eastern Toilers' Institute. In 1931, he was made commander in chief of the Chinese Red army, while Mao became political commissar. Chinese peasant legends, gleefully fostered by Communists, attribute superhuman powers to Chu-he could fly, he could see 100 li (33 miles...
...forced for months to live on squash. The soldiers adopted a slogan: "Down with capitalism and squash-eating!" Chiang Kaishek, by then China's dominant figure, sent his armies against the southern Soviet "republics" and all but finished them in a series of "extermination campaigns." Once, when Mao went to the front to assume personal command, he exclaimed: "Aiya, how daring these bullets are! Don't they know that Chairman Mao is here...
...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...