The Mao Case

example of revolutionary romanticism. In a flight of imagination, Mao described
     Kaihui’s loyal soul flying up to the moon, where the Moon Goddess danced and served of osmanthus-fermented wine to her, and
     she shed tears in a pouring rain upon learning of the victory of the Communist Party. Mao missed his first wife very much —”
    “No, his second wife,” Old Hunter cut him short. “Mao actually had a first wife, Luo, at his old home in Hunan. According
     to Mao’s official biography, Luo and Mao got hitched through an arranged marriage. So he didn’t acknowledge Luo as his wife,
     though he had lived with her for no less than two or three years. Of course, no detail of their married life ever appeared
     in official publications. Then he fell in love with Kaihui and married her. This time, the marriage was seen as a revolutionary
     act, under the circumstances.”
    “Old Hunter, you are a Mao authority. I should have known that earlier.” Chen raised his cup. “I’m sorry that it’s only tea,
     but cheers to your expertise.”
    “Damn my expertise!” Old Hunter said, waving his hand. “Getting back to the case in question. According to Teng, he was trying
     to show his students what great sacrifices Mao had made for the revolution. His younger brother, his wife Kaihui, their children,
     and then the children by his next wife, Zizhen, all of them either died or were lost to their parents for the sake of revolution —”

    “There’s nothing wrong with that,” Chen cut in again.
    “That’s what I thought too. So I had a hard time straightening things out. Teng had been in isolation interrogation for days
     and was already a broken man only capable of repeating his statement over and over like a robot, ‘I just put together information
     from several books. The books must have it wrong.’
    “So I interviewed his colleagues. They all declared that Teng did a conscientious job — at least on the surface. There was no
     copy machine in schools in the seventies. He had to work his butt off cutting stencils, copying passages from a number of
     books, proofreading all of it by himself, and paying for it out of his own pocket. I gathered together the information he
     had collected, including that concerning Mao’s second wife, Kaihui, and third wife, Zizhen. The material Teng distributed
     to his students was from official publications — and all written in an effort to eulogize Mao’s revolutionary spirit, no question
     about it.
    “But here was the problem. One of the students read through the material and said in the class, ‘Teacher Teng, there’s a mistake.
     Chairman Mao couldn’t have married Zizhen that year.’ Now Teng was a very bookish and stubborn man. He happened to have the
     original book in his bag, so he took it out and double-checked the date in front of the class. ‘That’s correct. Study hard
     and don’t bother me.’ The student, being exasperated by Teng’s response and overly influenced by Mao’s theory of class struggle,
     reported him to the Mao Thought Propaganda Team in school, saying that Teng represented Mao as having married Zizhen when
     Kaihui was still alive.
    “Now, in most official publications, there was no mention of the date of Mao’s marriage to Zizhen. It was taken for granted
     that he married her after the death of Kaihui. But in the sources Teng assembled, one text had a paragraph mentioning the
     date of Mao’s marriage to Zizhen, and another had a sentence containing the date of Kaihui’s death. The overlap of dates was
     unmistakable.”
    Old Hunter paused for dramatic effect, picking up the teapot, but to his dismay, no water was left. He decided to go on without
     asking for more hot water. It was a crucial juncture in his story.

    “It became evident that Mao was guilty of bigamy. And that meant a disaster for Teng. If he hadn’t been so devoted to accurate
     scholarship, he could have claimed that it was a typo. But confronted with the Mao Thought Propaganda Team, he insisted that
     he had carefully proofread all the material. What’s more, he produced the very book that gave the date of Mao’s marriage to
     Zizhen.”
    “Who wrote the book?”
    “Someone who had worked under Mao — Mao’s personal orderly. So the Mao Thought Propaganda Team had to put Teng in isolation
     interrogation, lest he keep blabbing. They sent a report to the police bureau, passing the problem on like a burning hot potato.
     And then the case came