Memoirs of Mao Zedong's Personal Physician (Best-selling classic edition with 400,000 copies sold)

The Private Life of Chairman Mao

[A historical classic revived with a 400,000-copy sales success]
Uncovering the secrets of Mao Zedong's sex, politics, death, and power struggles
Get a close look at Mao Zedong's physiology and psychology, and the interplay between his absolute power and its impact on China and the world.
This book uses absolutely first-hand information to reveal Mao Zedong's politics and power, sex and death.

This is the most profound and insightful book ever written about Mao (and perhaps about any other dictator in history). — Andrew Nathan (American sinologist/Professor of Political Science at Columbia University)

Since being appointed Mao Zedong's personal physician in 1954, Li Zhisui has kept a diary of his daily observations. In 1966, during the Cultural Revolution, during which property was raided, the Li family burned all of the diaries, fearing they would be implicated. After the Cultural Revolution ended in 1976, Li Zhisui's wife urged him to write about his experiences. In October 1994, Li Zhisui, who had moved to the United States, published "Memoirs of Mao Zedong's Personal Physician" through Random House. The book, recounting his personal experiences with Mao and revealing Mao's disgraceful side, sparked outrage among the highest echelons of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

This book recounts Li Zhisui's 22 years as Mao Zedong's personal physician, from 1954 to 1976. Beginning with his final emergency treatment, the book chronicles the bloody power struggles and palace coups that unfolded within Zhongnanhai after Mao's death. Li Zhisui was ordered to preserve Mao's remains permanently. In an era of scarce resources and backward technology, his medical team resorted to drastic manipulation and experiments to preserve the body, ensuring it would appear immortal and worthy of public admiration. Amidst these intertwined struggles, Li Zhisui repeatedly experienced life and death.

Dr. Li Zhisui also details the treatment of Mao Zedong's physical and mental ailments, the physiological and psychological changes in his middle and later years, Mao's sex life and his attitudes toward the people, events, and international affairs, the internal struggles within Zhongnanhai, palace sexual politics, and the mysterious inner workings of the CCP's top leadership. Through Dr. Li's personal observations and meticulously documented accounts, he depicts a series of incredible and absurd dramas, offering an unprecedented, firsthand, and invaluable understanding of Mao Zedong and the Communist Party.

Beyond the incisive details of Mao and the people around him, the book also chronicles Li Zhisui's transformation from heartfelt admiration to complete disillusionment with Mao. He penetrates the secrets of Mao's life, witnessing firsthand his abuse of power, his manipulation of people and events, his debauched sex life, his fabricated cult of personality through propaganda slogans, and, most notably, his disregard for the failures of his policies, which led to the suffering of the masses. Li Zhisui argues that Mao's actions, both behind the scenes and in public, resembled those of China's feudal emperors.

2021-11-16

時報出版

680

9789571393537