Mao Matters: A Review Essay

FEATURES Mao Matters: A Review Essay David E. Apter and Tony Saich. Revolutionary Discourse in Mao's Republic. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1994. xviii, 403 pp. Hardcover $49.95, ISBN 0-674-76779-9. Paperback $24.00, isbn 0-674-76780-2. Li Zhisui. The Private Life ofChairman Mao: The Memoirs ofMao's Personal Physician Dr. Li Zhisui. Translated by Professor Tai Hung-chao. Foreword by Andrew J. Nathan. Editorial assistance by Anne F. Thurston. New York: Random House, 1994. xxii, 682 pp. Hardcover. $30.00, isbn 0-679-40035-4. The two books under review here are obviously ofvery different kinds—so different , in fact, that some readers may find it odd to find them paired in a review essay . David Apter and Tony Saich are academically trained political scientists who have joined forces to create an often insightful but sometimes difficult-to-follow scholarly studybased on the collection and analysis ofa variety ofsource materials , ranging from famous writings by Mao to interviews with survivors ofthe crucial Yan'an period in the history ofthe Chinese Communist Party (CCP), and this study makes use of theories and methodologies associated with such fields as anthropology and literary criticism. The recently deceased Li Zhisui, on the other hand, was trained as a physician rather than an academic, and his book is a straightforward, accessible, and deeply personal narrative based almost exclusively on the author's memory ofhis own encounters with Mao and conversations with members of the Chairman's inner circle. It should also be noted that each book focuses on a different time and place: Yan'an during the early 1940s in the first case, and Beijing between 1954 (the year Li began serving as Mao's doctor) and 1976 (the year the Chairman died) in the second. Even though these books—which for convenience I shall refer to below as Mao's Republic and Private Life—are by different kinds of authors, take different forms, and deal with different periods, there are two reasons why it makes sense to place them side by side. First, each in its own way is among the most important contributions to date to what might loosely be called "Mao studies." Second,© 1996 by University eacn directs our attention to one ofthe two main, diverging directions in which ofHawm 1 Presspeople attempting to come to terms with the Chairman's life and legacy are currently being pulled. 2 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 1996 This is because one of the themes that is stressed in Mao's Republic is that the man once referred to as the "Great Helmsman" needs to be understood as a multidimensional and extremely complex figure. Apter and Saich's theoretically sophisticated analysis ofthe rhetorical dimensions ofYan'an politics leaves us with a picture ofMao that is nuanced and shaded. At some points, the authors remind us that Mao tended to view certain ends as justifying even the most brutal of means, but in other places they insist that we see this same man as a prophet with an unusual talent for giving voice to collective dreams and aspirations. In still other instances, they stress Mao's significance as both the central subject in and a skilled creator ofpowerful mythic tales about the heroic redemption oflost patrimonies —tales that would retain their potency long after the People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded in 1949. By contrast, Private Life presents us with an essentially monochromatic image ofMao. According to Li Zhisui, ifwe strip away all ofthe mythical images that have surrounded his famous (or infamous) patient's life and theories, the man we are left with is nothing more than a tyrant. The Mao that Li describes is a man who was driven above all else by an unbridled lust for absolute power, an extreme paranoia that made him doubt the loyalty of even his most sycophantic allies, and an unquenchable desire to satisfy a variety ofhedonistic urges. Official propaganda may have presented the Great Helmsman as infinitely compassionate, but according to Private Life, the Chairman was actually an unfeeling dictator who never showed the slightest concern for the misery suffered by others as a result ofhis...