57 Fun Facts About Mao Zedong

Which pop artist began a famous series of portraits of Mao in 1972?

Andy Warhol: he chose Mao after reading in Life magazine that Mao was the most famous person in the world.

What was Mao's father, Mao Yichang?

A poor peasant turned wealthy farmer: he bought grain from poorer farmers and sold it in town at a higher price.

Mao's mother, Wen Qimei, was a devout follower of which faith?

Buddhism: Mao shared her faith as a boy, but his reading turned him sceptical by his teens.

As a teenager, Mao quoted the Confucian classics to win arguments with whom?

His father: accused of being unfilial, Mao answered with passages saying elders must be kind and affectionate.

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

Their queue pigtails: he and his friend then forcibly cut off the queues of several classmates.

Why did Mao quit the rebel army in 1912?

The revolution seemed over, so he resigned and, as he later put it, decided to return to his books.

After dropping out of police, soap-making and law schools, what did the young Mao train to become?

A teacher: at the teacher-training school in Changsha, his ethics professor Yang Changji befriended him, and Mao later married Yang's daughter.

Mao's 1917 article in the magazine New Youth urged readers to do what?

Increase their physical strength: he practised it himself, tramping across the countryside with a friend and begging for food along the way.

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

Assistant to the librarian: Mao signed in the newspaper readers, but most of them, he recalled, treated him as if he didn't exist.

Mao famously said that political power grows out of what?

The barrel of a gun: he first said it at an emergency party meeting in August 1927, after a Nationalist purge had decimated the Communists.

The young Mao backed the May Fourth protests against which treaty's handover of Shandong to Japan?

The Treaty of Versailles: that summer Mao launched a radical weekly, the Xiang River Review, and the local military governor banned it within weeks.

In Shanghai, Mao met which New Youth editor who went on to lead the new Communist Party?

Chen Duxiu: the party's first General Secretary was ousted as its leader in 1927, just six years after the party's founding.

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

He lost the address, he said, and could find no comrades to ask, so he went home and threw himself into organising labour unions.

Which body did Mao run in Guangzhou in 1926?

The KMT's Peasant Movement Training Institute: a Communist could run it because the two parties were then allies, and Mao was also the Nationalists' acting propaganda chief.

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

The Autumn Harvest Uprising: midway through, one of Mao's own regiments turned on another, and his army never took Changsha.

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

It expelled him from its ranks, stripping his Politburo seat, yet he carried on building a rural base in the Jinggang Mountains.

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

Zhu De's: at their mountain base the two fought by rules such as 'When the enemy advances, we retreat; when the enemy retreats, we pursue'.

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

A KMT general had her executed after she refused to renounce Mao, who had already taken up with He Zizhen.

Which Soviet leader's 1956 denunciation of Stalin set Mao on the road to the Sino-Soviet split?

Nikita Khrushchev: by 1960 the rift had grown so deep that the Soviet Union abruptly pulled its experts out of China.

After the Long March, Mao ran the Communist movement for about a decade from which northern town?

Yan'an: Nationalist troops took the town in 1947, and Mao's army won it back the following year.

At which January 1935 conference on the Long March did Mao win back command over the Red Army?

Zunyi: the meeting ended the command of Bo Gu and German adviser Otto Braun, whose tactics were blamed for the Red Army's heavy losses.

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

The Luding Bridge: defenders had pulled up most of its planks, leaving little but its iron chains stretched across the river.

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

Edgar Snow: he spent months with the Red Army in 1936, and in long interviews Mao told him the story of his own life.

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

Zhang Xueliang: Chiang had him placed under house arrest, and he stayed a prisoner for more than five decades.

Which Shanghai actress did Mao marry after divorcing He Zizhen?

Jiang Qing: after Mao's death she was arrested, tried on television and in 1981 convicted and imprisoned.

As Mao's forces won the civil war in 1949, where did Chiang Kai-shek's government retreat?

Taiwan: Chiang's Republic of China kept China's seat at the United Nations until 1971, when Mao's government took it over.

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

The Dixie Mission: its diplomat John Service was later forced out of the State Department, blamed amid the debate over who 'lost' China.

From which Beijing landmark did Mao proclaim the People's Republic of China?

Tiananmen Gate: Chiang Kai-shek's portrait had hung over the gate after 1945, and in 1949 a portrait of Mao took its place.

Which sport opened the way for Nixon to visit Mao, after a US player boarded the Chinese team's bus in 1971?

Table tennis: Chinese star Zhuang Zedong shook the American's hand and gave him a gift, and China soon invited the US team to play in China.

Mao's eldest son was killed by an air strike in 1950 while serving in which war?

Korean War: news of his death was kept from Mao until January 1951, and he was buried with other Chinese soldiers in North Korea.

The Maoist guerrillas of the Shining Path waged their war in which country?

Peru: its founder, Abimael Guzmán, was captured in a police raid in Lima in 1992.

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

The Hundred Flowers Campaign: when the criticism turned on the party, Mao reversed course, and the Anti-Rightist Campaign 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?

Artemisinins came from sweet wormwood, picked out in a screen of herbal remedies, and Tu Youyou won a 2015 Nobel Prize for the discovery.

In Mao's Great Leap Forward, backyard furnaces melted pots and tools to make what?

Steel: so many peasants were pulled into smelting that crops went unharvested, feeding the famine that followed.

Which birds did Mao's Four Pests campaign target alongside rats, flies and mosquitoes?

Sparrows: partly after a scientist pointed out that they also ate insects, Mao ended the campaign against them in 1960 and put bedbugs on the list instead.

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

Peng Dehuai: he had put his criticism in a letter to Mao; persecuted in the Cultural Revolution, he died in 1974, four years before the party cleared his name.

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

Liu Shaoqi: within a decade Mao's Cultural Revolution branded him the party's foremost 'capitalist roader', and he died in prison in 1969.

Which European country openly sided with China in the Sino-Soviet split?

Albania: the alliance soured after Mao welcomed Nixon, and in 1978 Albania broke with China too.

In 1945, Mao flew to which city for weeks of peace talks with Chiang Kai-shek?

Chongqing: after 43 days of talks they signed an agreement, but it soon collapsed and full civil war returned.

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

In a plane crash over Mongolia: his jet came down as he fled China after what the party called a failed coup plot against Mao.

Who directed the compiling of Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-tung, the 'Little Red Book'?

Lin Biao: the handbook grew out of his practice of having soldiers study Mao's sayings as part of their daily drills.

Which faction was arrested a month after Mao died?

Gang of Four: its fall in a bloodless coup is usually taken to mark the end of the Cultural Revolution.

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

Cremation: he had signed a pledge to be cremated, yet his embalmed body was put on permanent display in a Beijing mausoleum.

Who delivered the 20-minute eulogy at Mao's mass memorial service on 18 September 1976?

Hua Guofeng: pushed out of power between 1978 and 1981, he nonetheless kept a seat on the party's Central Committee until 2002.

Which leader judged that Mao had been '70 percent right and 30 percent wrong'?

Deng Xiaoping: Mao had purged him twice, yet Deng insisted Mao's mistakes came second to his achievements.

In 1968 Mao passed on a gift of which fruit to workers, sparking a craze in which copies were worshipped?

Mangoes: instead of eating them, the workers preserved the fruit in formaldehyde or sealed it in wax so it could be venerated.

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

John Adams: director Peter Sellars pitched the idea in 1983, and Adams was slow to see its brilliance, since Nixon had become a comedy punchline.

In 1950, Mao sent the People's Liberation Army into which Himalayan region?

Tibet: after a failed uprising in 1959, the Dalai Lama fled into exile in India.

The tunic the West calls the 'Mao suit' is named in China after which earlier leader?

Sun Yat-sen: it is known as the Zhongshan suit, after his honorific name, and Mao's fondness for wearing it made it famous abroad.

Mao's first trip abroad, in the winter of 1949–50, took him to which capital for treaty talks?

Moscow: Stalin agreed to hand the Changchun Railway back to China and to grant it a long-term loan.

Nixon's secret channel to Mao's China, which arranged Kissinger's 1971 trip, ran through the president of which country?

Pakistan: in late 1970 Nixon asked President Yahya Khan, who was about to visit China, to pass on word that the US wanted better ties.

Chiang Kai-shek's rings of concrete blockhouses forced Mao's Red Army to abandon which base, beginning the Long March?

The Jiangxi Soviet: the leadership that had sidelined Mao fought Chiang's troops head-on instead of using guerrilla tactics, and lost heavily.

What were the part-time village medics, trained quickly under Mao to farm and treat common illnesses, called?

Barefoot doctors: Mao pushed the scheme from 1965 to bring basic care to villages where city-trained doctors would not settle.

Mao's Red Army set out on the Long March about 86,000 strong; which figure is closest to the number who finished?

About 8,000: more than half the army was lost in the first three months alone, under constant bombing and attack.

Who wrote the 1994 memoir 'The Private Life of Chairman Mao'?

His personal physician: Li Zhisui wrote it in the US by recalling the diaries he had kept while treating Mao and had later destroyed.

In July 1966, Mao made a much-publicised swim in which river?

The Yangtze: the swim showed off his vigour, and on returning to Beijing he attacked the party leadership.