(Translator’s preface: Given the extravagant and wasteful
consumption of China’s arrogant new rich, many citizens are remembering the example
of modesty, thrift, plain living and identification with the masses set by
Chairman Mao. I have been to the Shaoshan
Memorial Hall mentioned by the author in this article and seen the patched
clothes, sandals and receipts kept by Mao. No wonder he is so loved by so
many.)
Chairman Mao always advocated a simple and frugal style of
living, and he himself took the lead and practised what he preached, seeing
himself as an ordinary member of the people and never using his position and
power for any personal gain.
During the anti-Japanese war, a patriotic Chinese gave the
party leader two small cars, and it was agreed that the Chairman should be
given one first, as he was the leader of the party and most busy with his
official duties. However, the Chairman strongly disagreed, suggesting,
"First, we should consider the needs of military work, and second, we
should take care of the older comrades." So, according to the Chairman's
opinion, one car was allocated to Zhu Laojun, who was in charge of the
military, and the other car was allocated to the "five old men" (Xu
Teli, Dong Biwu, Xie Juezai, Lin Boqu and Wu Yuzhang). On one occasion, when
returning from a meeting in Zao Yuan, the Chairman was injured when his horse
was frightened and he fell off the horse. Zhu and the "Five Elders"
both offered to let the car go, and even drove it to the Chairman, but the
Chairman insisted on asking them all to take it back.
During his life, Chairman Mao was very simple and never took
the initiative to add to his clothes, and the clothes, shoes and socks he wore
were often patches on top of patches. Shortly after the peaceful liberation of
Beiping[1],
the Chairman once prepared to visit Zhang Lan[2]
at the Beijing Hotel and felt that he should wear a decent outfit to show his
respect. The Chairman had always lived a simple life, and as he had been in the
war years for a long time, there was a shortage of household items, so his coat
was also patched at the time. Li Yinqiao, the chief guard, picked through all
of the Chairman's clothes, but could not find a single one without patches. So,
the Chairman had to visit Zhang Lan in his patched clothes without any
apologies. Later, the Chairman also met with Shen Junru, Li Jishen and other
democrats in patched clothes.
Winter in
Beijing is extremely cold. One night in November 1949, when the Chairman was
tired of working and went for a walk in the courtyard, a cold wind came up and
made him shiver. Li Jiaji, a guard, offered to get a pair of woollen trousers
to add to what the Chairman was wearing. When he returned to the house, Li
Jiaji took out the only pair of woollen trousers that the Chairman had been
wearing since the Long March and found that the patches were on top of each
other, and they were already torn beyond recognition, so he said to the
Chairman, "Chairman, your woollen trousers are really unwearable. I'll go
to the management section and get you a new pair." The Chairman shook his
head and said, "No, I’ll wear the woollen trousers underneath and the
others over the top. I'd rather trouble you to mend them for me." Li Jiaji
continued, " Chairman, you see, these trousers have been mended many
times, so it is impossible to mend them again, so it is better to get a new
one. You are the Chairman of the Central Committee of the Party, so it is only
right to ask the Management Section to buy you a new pair of woollen trousers. Faced
with the guard's strong suggestion, the Chairman sat on the sofa, slowly lit a
cigarette, pondered for a while, and patiently explained to Li Jiaji, "We
are serving the people, we are the people's orderlies, and being the Chairman
cannot make you more special than others, nor can we be detached from the
masses. Now things in our country are very difficult, many people still can't
afford to eat or wear clothes, they don't even have old wool trousers like me!
Better ask you to mend them for me, don't spend money on new ones." Seeing
this, Li Jiaji had no choice but to take out his needle and thread and mend
them carefully. The Chairman wore these woollen trousers until the winter of 1956,
when there was no way to mend them, and only then did he buy a new pair.
The
Chairman's shoes were also mended again and again. A pair of leather slippers
that had been mended many times is on display at the Comrade Mao Zedong
Memorial Hall in Shaoshan. The slippers were worn by the Chairman on his first
visit to Moscow in the winter of 1949, when he first visited the Soviet Union
and had to travel by train for ten days or so, so in order to reduce his
fatigue on the journey, the train staff prepared a pair of leather slippers for
him. The Chairman was so pleased with the slippers that he took them home. From
then on, whether at home or on an expedition, the Chairman always took these
slippers with him. In the early 1960s, the Chairman once visited Hangzhou and
stayed at the guest house of the Zhejiang Provincial Party Committee. The
waiter at the guest house saw that the slippers were too old and worn out, so
he replaced them with new ones from the guest house, and was prepared to keep
the old leather slippers as a souvenir. When the staff around the Chairman
noticed it, they immediately stopped it because they knew that they could not
change anything without the Chairman's consent or they would be criticised. On
another occasion, when the Chairman was visiting Wuhan, the leather slippers
suddenly broke off their uppers because they were too old, and the staff rushed
to a shoe shop to have them repaired. When the shoe repairer saw the leather
slippers, he was very surprised: "They are already so worn out, what is
there to repair?" No matter how much the staff pleaded, he refused to mend
them. The staff had to find a piece of suede from a car to mend it themselves.
During a visit to Hunan, the
Chairman stayed at the Rong Yuan Hotel in Changsha. The guard on duty saw this
pair of tattered leather slippers in the corridor of the Chairman's residence
and, not knowing that they belonged to the Chairman, threw them away as
rubbish. When the Chairman returned from his trip, he was ready to change his
slippers, but the staff could not find the leather slippers, so they asked the
sentry on duty and found out the reason. Seeing this, the sentry was very
puzzled and aggrieved: "Who would know that such a tattered pair of
leather slippers belonged to the Chairman? Even ordinary people would have
already thrown them away." In June 1966, when the Chairman returned to
Shaoshan and stayed at the Dripping Water Cave, his slippers were again thrown
away as rubbish. It took the staff a lot of effort to get them back. One day,
the Chairman's slippers were broken again, but no master could be found in
Shaoshan to fix them, so the staff had to send them to Changsha on the way. In
Changsha, as soon as the shoe repairer saw the slippers, he shouted,
"What's the point of bringing them in to be repaired when they're in such
a state? It took a lot of persuasion to convince the shoe repairer to fix the
slippers. From then on, the staff never dared to take the slippers out for
repair again. When the slippers sometimes broke, the staff had to do it
themselves, and the patches on the slippers, which were of various sizes, were
the "work" of the staff around the Chairman. In the 1970s, no matter
how hard you tried, the slippers really couldn't be repaired. It was only then
that the Chairman agreed to say goodbye to his "old friend" who had
been with him for more than 20 years.
Not only was he not fussy about
what he wore, but Chairman Mao was also not fussy about what he ate. During the
three years of hardship[3],
Chairman Mao insisted on sharing the hardships with the whole nation. He said
to his staff, "Many places in the country are suffering from disasters,
and many people are starving, so should we stop eating meat and drinking tea?
Shall we take the lead?" "People are forcing debts (referring to the
Soviet Union's broken contracts), let's eat a little less meat and try to pay
off our debts in three years." The year 1960 was the most difficult year,
when the Chairman did not eat a single morsel of meat for seven months. Due to
the lack of nutrition for a long time, the Chairman, like many other people,
got a swelling disease and the muscles of the back of his feet and calves lost
their elasticity, and the muscles could not recover for a long time. Seeing
this, Premier Zhou urged again and again, " Chairman, have a bite of meat,
for the sake of the whole party and the whole nation!" The Chairman shook
his head and said, "Aren't you also not eating? Let's all eat and tide
over the difficult times together." Led by the Chairman, the whole nation
scrimped and scrimped and struggled hard to tide over the difficulties.
The Chairman liked to smoke, which
was the only "luxury" in his daily life, but he never used a lighter,
he always used matches. The Chairman's habit of rubbing matches was also
different. While most people use matches by rubbing the phosphorous on both
sides of the match, the Chairman intentionally rubbed from both ends of the
phosphorous, so that after a box of matches is rubbed, the middle part of the
phosphorous may still be as good as new. At this point, the President asked his
staff to buy loose matchsticks from the Beijing Match Factory and refill them
for further use. An empty matchbox was often used many times in his hands until
it was completely unusable before it was thrown away.
Chairman Mao once said, "If the
conditions aren’t right, don’t worry about it; this is easy to do. It is difficult
to do when conditions are right, and we Communists are the ones who have to do
the difficult things!" This is what Chairman Mao said, and, even more so,
this is what he did.
【from the red culture network website (www.hswh.org.cn)】
[1] Beijing (“northern capital”) was
known as Beiping (“northern peace”) during the Guomindang era.
[2] Zhang
Lan (1872- 1955), a scholar in the late Qing Dynasty, and a great patriot of
China. An activist, a well-known democratic revolutionist, educator, one of the
country’s highly respected leaders, the founder and leader of the China
Democratic League, and a close friend of the Communist Party of China. In
September 1949, he attended the Chinese People's Political Consultative
Conference and was elected as the Vice Chairman of the Central People's
Government. In 1954, he was elected as the Vice Chairman of the Standing
Committee of the National People's Congress and the Vice Chairman of the
National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
On February 9, 1955, he died in Beijing at the age of 83.
[3] During 1959-1961, there was famine
in some parts of China.
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