Word: yenan
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Hurley had already failed to make peace between Stilwell and Chiang when he decided to take off for Yenan to make peace between Communists and Nationalists. Hurley was talkative, with the Southwestern garrulousness that marked Lyndon Johnson-his concept being that, if he held a conversation together by his own chatter long enough, he might find out what he himself was talking about. His style was caught best by a young congressman, sent by Roosevelt to China in November 1944, Mike Mansfield, later to be the Majority Leader of the U S 'Senate. Mansfield reported pithily to Roosevelt...
...Nationalist regime, he became Mao's personal bodyguard. He quickly rose to command Mao's entire security force; in a legendary 1947 operation, he managed to save Mao, Chiang Ch'ing and Chou En-lai from capture by Nationalist troops in their cave headquarters in Yenan...
...book offers some fascinating glimpses of Mao and her relations with him. In Yenan he was a kind of rural patriarch. There were many informal get-togethers (dubbed "Saturday night barn dances" by visiting Americans) at which leaders mingled with followers. Women liked to show off their new independence by choosing their own dancing partners, and even Mao might be asked (but "respectfully"): "Chairman, will you please dance with me?" There was obvious humor and tenderness between Mao and his wife...
When Mao was under stress, he would sometimes take his troubles out on her. Once, when the Nationalists had started bombing the Communist strongholds in Yenan, she reported to him that his own aides were afraid. "You are a coward!" he snarled at her. Strain sometimes was caused by their strikingly different backgrounds. She was a city girl. Mao came from a well-to-do peasant family, and rebelled against his conservative father-whom, as Chiang Ch'ing recalled, Mao would still curse even when he was in his seventies...
...Communists-and Chiang Ch'ing-were headquartered at Yenan until 1947, when a Nationalist attack finally dislodged them. More than two years of bitter civil war followed, ending in the rout of Nationalist forces and their retreat to Taiwan. On Oct. 1, 1949, Mao Tse-tung stood atop Peking's Gate of Heavenly Peace and proclaimed the People's Republic of China...