How Mao Died

HOW MAO DIED A Chinese love-story by David George and Yin Wei Synopsis In 1976, the year Mao died, there were only 37 Westerners living and working in Peking (as it was known then). Foreign experts, working for press agencies, universities, institutes, they all lived in the 'Friendship Guesthouse' along with Venezuelan Marxists and Palestinian terrorists, rode around on bicycles in blue cotton suits with a special badge on the collar saying "Friend of China" - in Mao's own handwriting. David George was one of them. A Cambridge Ph. D., he gave up a professorship to go with his young family to learn the truth about China and write about it. His hero and model was Ed Snow, author of Red Star Over China (the "greatest journalistic scoop of the century") who had created the original legend of Mao, interviewing him up in the cave dwellings of Yenan - and falling in love with a young Red guerrilla fighter. A delicate, fragile but in the end hopeless infatuation - like his affair with China as a whole. David wanted to follow in his footsteps but not, he hoped, repeat the intense disillusionment Snow went through as Mao the charismatic revolutionary morphed into the unpredictable ruler and the revolution bogged down in infighting and incompetence - like every other revolution before it. David hoped that the Cultural Revolution - the next phase of which was supposed to break out in 1976 - was everything it was meant to be: a brand new kind of revolution, one which would change human nature itself. It was a mistake: by the end he had gone on strike, was accused of being an anarchist, threatened with six years imprisonment. One of his students in Peking - Yen Wei - had been through the first Cultural Revolution, as had her daughter. More: she knew "where the bodies are buried" including - astoundingly - the truth about how, when and why Mao was to be assassinated. She gave this story to David and he got it out when he found a way, at last, to leave. Fascinating characters, historical characters, remarkable people, adventures worth re-telling... This is dramatic history: all these things happened, though dreams always look strange when they put on street clothes.