Mao Zedong, the first leader of the People's Republic of China, Chairman Mao, is perhaps the most famous politician in China. However, the other side of his life, associated with supernatural forces, still remains in the shadows.
GREAT FEED
If someone set out to compile the hit parade of the most controversial politicians of the twentieth century, then Mao Zedong would certainly take his place in it.
The first leader of the PRC, he united the Chinese people after a long period of turmoil and wars, eliminated illiteracy, doubled the average life expectancy, but during his reign millions of people died from repression and hunger. He strove to return China to its former place in the world - and participated in wars with its neighbors. He often spoke about democracy, but at the same time formed his own personality cult.
Even in the PRC, where the Communist Party is still in power, which considers Mao Zedong its ideological inspirer, they recognize his blunders. With a truly oriental slyness about the results of Mao's rule they say: "70 percent of victories, 30 percent of mistakes."
Mao Zedong was born on December 26, 1893 in the village of Shaoshan. His father, Mao Yichang, was an ardent Confucian, while his mother professed Buddhism. Zedong received his classical Chinese elementary education at a local school. It consisted of studying the philosophy of Confucius and ancient Chinese literature.
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Already at a young age, the future revolutionary showed a rebellious spirit: dissatisfied with the strict rules that reigned in school, he escapes at the age of 13 and has been engaged in self-education since then, spending all his free time reading books.
As a result, Mao was able to independently prepare for admission to the Dunshan Higher Primary School. Here he studies the history of foreign countries, philosophy, imbued with the idea of the need to reform the Chinese state.
In 1911, after the Xinhai Revolution and the collapse of the monarchy, Mao Zedong witnessed the beginning of a bloody struggle between various factions, which split the country into parts. For six months he himself has to serve in the private army of one of the provincial governors who fought for power.
In such a difficult situation, continuing to study, in 1917 Zedong created a circle of revolutionary-minded youth, and since 1918 he got a job at the Beijing Library as an assistant to Professor Li Dazhao, the future founder of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
It is through him that Mao Zedong gets acquainted with the ideas of Marxism and is imbued with them. In July 1921, he took part in the founding congress of the CPC and two months later became the secretary of the branch of the Communist Party in Hunan Province.
During the civil war in China, Mao Zedong was gradually promoted to the ranks of the leaders of the Communist Party. His authority was especially strengthened after the "Great Campaign", which allowed the Chinese communists to break out of the encirclement and avoid defeat. Over time, he becomes the undisputed leader of the CCP.
After victory in a long and difficult war, which ended with the proclamation of the People's Republic of China on October 1, 1949, Mao Zedong became the head of a new state and remained the country's leader until the end of his life, “Great Helmsman,” as the Chinese propagandists called him.
As the leader of the PRC, he carries out reforms, taking the Soviet Union of the Stalinist period as a model. By no means all of them were successful: the policy of the “Great Leap Forward” suffered a tremendous failure, the achievements of the “Cultural Revolution”, which claimed the lives of millions of people, are very doubtful. Despite this, in China, the personality of the former leader is still respected.
THE SECRET OF MAO'S SUCCESS
How did the son of a small landowner, who was born in a remote village, manage to become the head of state with the largest population on Earth? What is the key to the dizzying career of The Great Helmsman?
Even a short biography of Zedong makes it possible to understand that, to a large extent, success was due to the focus on acquiring new knowledge, understanding the value of education and self-education. It is impossible to take away from him an iron will, as well as the ability to convince others of his own righteousness.
But there is another aspect that is usually not focused on: Mao Zedunu was clearly patronized by higher powers that paid attention to him even before birth. On the night before the birth of the future ruler of China, his mother, Wen Qimei, had a strange dream.
In it, she saw a bright red sun, towards which a huge golden dragon was majestically crawling, whose scales sparkled in the rays of the rising star. Driven by curiosity, Wen tried to grab the mythical beast by the tail, but as soon as she touched it, she felt intense pain, like being burned by an open flame. The dragon, all accelerating, reached the sea and, rushing into it, turned into a huge orchid. Interestingly, in Chinese mythology, the dragon is the personification of a good beginning, and the orchid is a symbol of harmony, learning and a perfect person.
But even stranger was that upon awakening, Wen Qimei found redness on her arm from a fresh burn.
The dream told the mother the name of the boy. Traditionally, the Chinese have a baby name given to them at birth and an adult name given to them when they come of age and used throughout their lives. The newborn was named Rongzhi, which meant "orchid irrigated with water." But, since Chinese characters often have several meanings, the name of the future leader could be read as "benefiting all the living."
It is curious that the adult name of the “Great Helmsman” is also close in meaning - Zedong. It is written in two hieroglyphs, the first of which - "tse" - means "good deed", and the second - "dong" - "east". In other words - "the blessed East". What is this if not a prophetic indication of a great future?
Supernatural forces kept Mao's life, which more than once literally hung by a thread. The uprisings he tried to organize were repeatedly defeated, faced with the numerical superiority of a well-organized enemy. He happened to experience hunger, to find himself in areas affected by epidemics of deadly diseases. But every time, in an incomprehensible way, dangers bypassed him.
Those who knew Mao during the Civil War said that Zedong had a supernatural sense of danger. One of the most striking examples of this is the well-known story in China of the second wife of the leader, He Zizhen. According to her, in the fall of 1934, after a long march on foot, they spent the night in a guerrilla camp in Jiangxi province.
Mao, very tired during the day, almost immediately fell asleep dead sleep. However, in the middle of the night, he jumped up as if scalded, pushed his wife apart and began frantically to collect things. When Zizhen asked what was happening, he briefly said something about the trampling of the enemy cavalry. Despite the fact that it was quiet around and nothing foreshadowed trouble, the spouses still left the camp … And in the morning a cavalry detachment of the Kuomintang army attacked the sleeping camp and killed almost everyone who was in it.
An instinct bordering on clairvoyance did not fail Mao even during military campaigns. Without a specialized education, he nevertheless made strategically correct decisions, which in the end allowed the Chinese communists to defeat the Kuomintang troops, which were led by a professional military man, an experienced general Chiang Kai-shek.
Often Zedong gave orders not only not based on intelligence, but also contrary to them. This happened, for example, in 1943 during the Zayan'an battle against the Japanese troops. At the very last moment, in spite of the available data on the plans of the Japanese command and the disposition of the enemy's troops, Mao takes the sole decision to radically change the plan of the operation.
As a result, the Japanese army was defeated. After the battle, it became clear that the enemy generals deliberately misled the Chinese intelligence service by throwing misinformation on it. If not for Mao Zedong's instincts, the Japanese would have been able to trap and destroy his troops.
Death pursued the revolutionary even after the victory in the civil war - but he invariably avoided it. Since the mid-1960s, feeling inexplicably uneasy, Mao began to constantly move from place to place, not staying in one place for more than two nights in a row. Only many years after his death did it become clear that the secret services of various countries of the world had been trying unsuccessfully for many years to remove the Chairman.
But regardless of who sent the agents - the American CIA or the Soviet KGB (Mao constantly accused the USSR leadership of betraying the ideas of Lenin and Stalin, whom he considered his ideological inspirers), they could not achieve successful implementation of their plans.
MAO ZEDONG - MASTER OF FENG SHUI
In addition to the patronage of some higher powers, the reason for the success of the “Great Helmsman” may lie in mastering the art of feng shui. This Chinese teaching assumes the existence of flows of qi energy, "life force" that permeates everything in the world: man, wildlife, things. It can create harmonious or inharmonious structures in time and space, which have a positive or negative impact, respectively. A person is not able to influence it - but he can grasp where the Qi flows and plan the construction of the building, the situation in it in such a way as to bypass the inharmonious flows.
It is well known that Mao Zedong took feng shui very seriously. For example, he never entered the Forbidden City, the former imperial residence, in his life, believing that his movement along the north-south axis could harm him. The “Great Helmsman” was born in the year of the Dragon, and this sign of the eastern horoscope belongs to the western group and therefore came into conflict with the layout of the imperial residence.
The future ruler of China got acquainted with the ancient teachings in his youth, when, engaged in self-education, he spent days on end in libraries. I must say that Chinese culture is characterized by a reverent attitude towards the written word, which in the eyes of the inhabitants of this eastern country bears a certain stamp of sacredness.
Even small villages try to keep an archive of records whenever possible, and large libraries are often a real treasure trove of rare editions on a wide variety of topics. So it was not difficult for a young curious Zedong to find treatises on feng shui and start studying them on his own.
Undoubtedly, Mao saw ancient wisdom as a way to achieve power. The fact is that feng shui masters are able not only to correctly plan the space of the house, but also, by analyzing the flow of qi energy, to predict the future. One who is capable of this cannot be defeated. It is quite possible that Mao's insights, which were inexplicable in the eyes of a skeptic, often found on him during the civil war and the struggle with the Japanese, were associated with the application of feng shui knowledge.
The active use of ancient art can explain the phenomenal endurance of the "Great Helmsman", which was noted by everyone who has ever worked with him. One of the feng shui techniques, shen chi, helped to amaze others with her inflexibility.
Mao and Khrushchev
Accumulating positive energy with its help, a person can experience the most severe stresses, in any conditions maintaining mental and physical health. And his Chairman was not interested in: what is it worth just one swim across the Yangtze River, made by him at the age of 73.
Unfortunately, Mao's seriousness with feng shui played a cruel joke on the ancient art. Realizing the true power of the teaching, Zedong, having come to power, banned it and began to destroy the ancient manuscripts.
He was afraid that there would be people willing to use secret knowledge to overthrow the power of the Communist Party. At present, only those scrolls have survived that outstanding masters of feng shui, foreseeing persecution, were able to take to Taiwan.
Vladimir ANTONOV, "Anomalnye Novosti" newspaper