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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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TIME, Almanac of the 20th Century.ISO
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1940
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1994-02-27
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<text>
<title>
(1940s) Mao Tse-Tung
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1940s Highlights
PEOPLE
</history>
<link 07791>
<article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
Mao Tse-Tung
</hdr>
<body>
<p>(February 7, 1949)
</p>
<p> In Yenan, Mao Tse-tung enjoyed a starkly idyllic existence.
In 1939 he had married his fourth wife, a pretty Chinese movie
starlet. The Maos lived simply, in an adobe hut during the
summer and during the winter in caves, which they kept changing
regularly for fear of assassins. For many years, Mao's official
vehicle was an ambulance donated by the American Chinese Hand
Laundry Association. In the early mornings, U.S. visitors
driving past Mao's residence would see him and General Chu Teh,
like any Chinese peasants, in the road with baskets and small
shovels, picking up animal droppings to fertilize the fields.
Said Mao in a lecture to Communist writers: "Once I felt that
only intellectuals were clean, and that workers, soldiers and
peasants were dirty...(Now I fell that) although the hands of
workers and peasants may be black with dirt and their feet
smeared with cow dung, they are still cleaner than the bourgeois
and petty bourgeois."
</p>
<p> U.S. visitors to Yenan described Mao as a heavy-set man (5 ft.
8 in., 200 lbs.) with the humor, the strength and often the
manner of a Chinese peasant. He frequently sat with his feet
propped on the table, and in warm weather he unceremoniously
stripped to the waist. Once, in Yenan in the presence of General
Lin Piao, president of the Red Academy, he took off his trousers
for comfort while studying a military map. He smokes incessantly
and tends his own tobacco patch. In 1938, the Party Central
Committee gave him a $5 monthly raise so he could buy more
cigarettes. Between noisy puffs, he chews melon seeds or
peanuts. Until recently, when his doctors made him slow up, he
used to wash down his heavy meals with kaoliang (grain liquor).
Since then Mao has become something of a hypochondriac.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>