60 Fun Facts About Mao Zedong

In which Chinese province was Mao born in 1893?

He grew up near Shaoshan village and kept a marked Hunanese accent all his life.

What was Mao's father, Mao Yichang?

Mao described him as a stern disciplinarian who beat his children.

How old was Mao when his father put him into an arranged marriage with the 17-year-old Luo Yixiu?

He refused to recognise her as his wife and became a fierce critic of arranged marriage.

Which two classic novels did the young Mao prefer to the Confucian texts he was made to study?

He also read translations of Adam Smith, Rousseau and Darwin on his father's farm.

What did Mao and a friend cut off in 1911 as a symbol of rebellion against the Manchu monarchy?

The queue was a sign of subservience to the emperor.

How long did Mao serve as a private soldier in the rebel army during the Xinhai Revolution?

He never saw combat and resigned in 1912 once the monarchy was abolished.

Which of these schools did the young Mao NOT enrol in and drop out of, according to his biography?

He also tried an economics school and Changsha Middle School before deciding to become a teacher.

Mao's first published article, in New Youth in April 1917, urged readers to do what?

He was a keen advocate of physical endurance and went on begging walking tours of Hunan with a friend.

What job did Mao take at Peking University in 1918 that introduced him to Marxism?

The librarian, Li Dazhao, was writing articles on the October Revolution; other students snubbed Mao for his accent.

Why, perhaps, did Mao decline to join his friends on the work-study programme in France?

He raised funds for the movement anyway; his spoken English never got beyond a few phrases.

How did Mao describe Woodrow Wilson after Versailles let Japan keep Germany's possessions in Shandong?

The May Fourth protests of 1919 grew out of that betrayal.

What manual job did Mao do in Shanghai in 1920 while meeting Chen Duxiu?

Chen's adoption of Marxism 'deeply impressed' him at what he called a critical period in his life.

How many delegates, Mao among them, attended the first National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921?

When a police spy turned up, they moved to a boat on South Lake near Jiaxing to finish the meeting.

Why did Mao claim to have missed the party's Second Congress in Shanghai in July 1922?

The congress agreed an alliance with the Kuomintang, which Mao enthusiastically backed.

Which body did Mao run in Guangzhou from May to September 1926?

His time in Shaoshan in 1924 had convinced him of the revolutionary potential of the peasantry.

Which failed revolt did Mao lead against Changsha in September 1927 before retreating to the Jinggang Mountains?

On its eve he wrote 'Changsha', the earliest of his poems to survive; the Fourth Regiment deserted to the KMT.

How did the Central Committee punish Mao in 1927 for his 'military opportunism' and rural focus?

He ignored them and built a base of five villages at Jinggangshan.

Which general's forces did Mao's troops unite with in 1928 to become the core of the Red Army?

A Fifth Red Army under another commander joined them later that year at Jinggangshan.

What happened to Mao's second wife, Yang Kaihui, in November 1930?

His sister was executed at the same time; He Zizhen, whom he had married in 1928, was already his partner.

How many dissenters did Mao's loyalists execute during the Futian incident of December 1930?

Members of the Jiangxi Soviet had accused Mao of being too moderate and tried to overthrow him.

How large was the force that broke out of the Jiangxi Soviet to begin the Long March in October 1934?

Only 7,000 to 8,000 reached Shaanxi a year later.

At which January 1935 conference was Mao elected Chairman of the Politburo?

His candidacy was backed by Stalin; he set the destination as the Shaanxi soviet in the north.

Which crossing of the Tatu River did the Red Army fight for in May 1935 during the Long March?

After that came the grasslands, a quagmire where many died of famine and disease.

Which American journalist wrote Red Star Over China, publicising Mao's base in the late 1930s?

Agnes Smedley also visited the 'Border Region' and wrote about it.

Which general arrested Chiang Kai-shek in the 1936 Xi'an Incident, forcing a united front with the Communists?

Mao had proposed an alliance against Japan weeks earlier, a course Stalin favoured.

Which Shanghai actress did Mao marry after divorcing He Zizhen, who was sent to Moscow for treatment?

Born Li Shumeng, she had been married twice before; she later led the Gang of Four.

How many troops joined the Red Army's Hundred Regiments Offensive against Japan in August 1940?

It killed 20,000 Japanese and disrupted railways across five provinces.

What was the name of the US envoy group sent to the Chinese Communists in 1944?

Its soldiers found the party less corrupt and more vigorous against Japan than the KMT, but little came of it.

On what date did Mao proclaim the People's Republic of China from Tiananmen?

Chiang Kai-shek fled to Taiwan that December; Mao spent the winter in Moscow negotiating with Stalin.

Which city did the PLA starve out in a 1948 siege that a PLA officer later compared to Hiroshima?

At least 160,000 civilians are believed to have died between June and October.

At least how many Chinese troops died in the Korean War after Mao sent in the People's Volunteer Army?

Zhou Enlai had overall command; the US kept a trade embargo on China until Nixon.

What total did Mao give for those killed in attacks on 'counter-revolutionaries' between 1950 and 1952?

Other estimates run to 2 to 5 million, since virtually every village had to select at least one landlord for public execution.

How many opium addicts were forced into treatment as Mao's government wiped out the drug?

Dealers were executed and remaining production shifted south to the Golden Triangle.

What was the brief 1956–57 period of liberalisation, when Mao invited criticism of the party, called?

He then reversed course; the Anti-Rightist Movement persecuted at least 550,000 people.

Which US president's nuclear threats in the First Taiwan Strait Crisis prompted Mao's atomic programme?

The 'Two Bombs, One Satellite' programme produced atomic and hydrogen bombs in record time.

A 1967 military project launched under Mao to fight malaria in Vietnam discovered which class of drugs?

Project 523 analysed traditional Chinese medicine; Tu Youyou later won a Nobel Prize for the work.

In what year did Mao launch the Great Leap Forward?

Peasants were pulled off the land to make iron and steel; grain output fell 15% in 1959 and 10% more in 1960.

According to the article, how many Chinese peasants died in the Great Chinese Famine of 1959–62?

Officials at every level exaggerated harvests, so requisitions were based on grain that did not exist.

Which defence minister was purged for criticising the Great Leap Forward at Lushan in 1959?

The CCP later concluded that as many as six million people were wrongly punished in the campaign that followed.

To whom did Mao hand the presidency of China when he stepped down from it in April 1959?

He kept the party chairmanship; Liu later died in the Cultural Revolution.

Which European country was the only one to openly side with China in the Sino-Soviet split?

Khrushchev withdrew Soviet technical experts and aid from China.

What was Mao's programme to build defence industry deep in China's interior after the Gulf of Tonkin incident called?

It built the Chengdu-Kunming railway and Panzhihua Iron and Steel, and slowed after Nixon's 1972 visit.

In what year did Mao launch the Cultural Revolution?

He declared it over in 1969, though many historians date its end to his death in 1976.

How did Mao's designated successor Lin Biao die in September 1971?

He was presumably fleeing China ahead of arrest; the party expelled him posthumously.

Who edited Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the 'Little Red Book'?

First published in January 1964, it was known in Cultural Revolution China as the 'Red Treasure Book'.

How old was Mao when he died on 9 September 1976?

He had suffered three heart attacks that year; his death was kept secret until a 4 p.m. radio broadcast.

What did Mao request be done with his body, a wish that was ignored?

Instead his embalmed body went on permanent display in a mausoleum in Tiananmen Square.

Who delivered the 20-minute eulogy atop Tiananmen Gate at Mao's memorial on 18 September 1976?

Hua briefly succeeded Mao before being eclipsed in 1978.

Which leader coined the verdict that Mao was '70 percent right and 30 percent wrong'?

The 1981 party resolution said his contributions 'far outweigh his mistakes'.

How many wives did Mao have in total?

They bore him ten children; the first marriage, at 14, was arranged and he never recognised it.

Which American composer made Mao a principal character in the 1987 opera Nixon in China?

Nixon's 1972 visit had ended more than two decades of US embargo.

Which actor portrayed Mao 84 times on screen over a 27-year career?

Han Shi was the first actor ever to play Mao, in a 1978 drama.

From the mid-1990s, Mao's portrait went on all new Chinese renminbi banknotes for what official reason?

A 2006 proposal to add two other leaders' portraits went nowhere.

Which Peking University librarian, an early Chinese Communist, took Mao on as his assistant?

Li's New Youth articles on the October Revolution introduced Marxism to the Chinese revolutionary movement; Mao was snubbed by students for his Hunanese accent.

What did Mao found in Changsha in August 1921 to give readers access to revolutionary literature?

It was housed in the premises of a society devoted to Wang Fuzhi, a Qing-era Hunanese philosopher who had resisted the Manchus.

Which two Comintern-backed leaders were denounced at the Zunyi Conference of January 1935?

They had taken control of Party affairs in 1933; after Zunyi, Zhou Enlai became the most powerful figure with Mao as his assistant.

How many li did Mao claim the Long March covered, a figure Edgar Snow repeated?

Two British researchers who retraced the route in 2003 estimated it at about 6,000 km, and Mao's own 1935 poem said 20,000 li.

Roughly how many of Mao's First Front Army troops reached the end of the Long March in 1935?

Fewer than 7,000 were among the original 100,000 who set out; fatigue, hunger, cold, sickness and desertion took the rest.

Which German adviser helped Chiang Kai-shek plan the blockhouse encirclement of Jiangxi in 1933?

Chiang's slowly built rings of interlinked blockhouses captured several Communist strongholds and forced the Long March.

Mao's distinctive calligraphy gave rise to a style known by what name?

Competitions specialising in Mao-style calligraphy exist, and his handwriting can still be seen across mainland China.