Wang kept her dignity, telling her persecutors that it was the wrong time of year for summer clothes. She was seized and draped with a necklace of table-tennis balls that mocked her fondness for pearls. At a rally in June of 1966, 300,000 students gathered in the university's main square for a "struggle session" aimed at Wang. Wang was denounced as a counterrevolutionary, and there were also accusations that she was an American spy. When Mao returned to Beijing, he let it be known that student gangs would face no punishment if they attacked Wang's team. The move was disastrous, for it soon transpired that Mao was using the Cultural Revolution movement to eliminate his political rivals. She was part of a work team that investigated corruption in the Chinese countryside, and in the early days of the Cultural Revolution of 1966, when Mao left the reins of government in Liu's hands during an absence from Beijing, Liu deputized Wang to head a team attempting to restore order at Quinghua University. At Liu's urging, Wang became involved in political activities. The implications of incidents such as these went far beyond mere celebrity gossip, for China in the early 1960s was turning into a power struggle between Liu's moderate faction and the radicals, led by Mao but temporarily suffering in prestige due to the catastrophic failure of Mao's Great Leap Forward program of collectivization and the famine that resulted, killing some 28 million Chinese. On her trip to Indonesia she wore a tight-fitting dress to a banquet hosted by the Indonesian leader Sukarno, well-known as a womanizer, and on Sukarno's return visit to Beijing she was seen lighting his cigarette. Wang resisted the drab military-style clothing favored in Communist China, and sometimes wore strings of pearls despite a specific request not to do so from Jiang Qing. The last of these trips caused controversy in China, instigated partly by Mao's wife, Jiang Qing, who was said to be jealous of Wang's sophisticated ways. She accompanied Liu on trips to Pakistan, Afghanistan, Burma, and Indonesia. Wang, often described as sophisticated and glamorous, took naturally to her new role as first lady. Mao, as chairman of the Chinese Communist Party, was supreme leader, and the right-hand men from his long military campaign were installed in top positions in the government, with Liu becoming president in 1959 and frequently undertaking diplomatic missions to foreign governments. In 1949 the Communists seized power from Chiang Kai-shek's government. Soon after that the two were married in a ceremony that consisted of the sharing of a wedding cake among Liu, Wang, Mao, and future Chinese premier Zhou En-lai. He asked her to come and talk to him at his hideout in a cave, suggesting that she become his secretary. Liu was nearly twice Wang's age and had already been married four (or five) times. While there she met Liu Shaoqi, a close associate of Mao who had been with the Red Army on its Long March retreat of 19. George Marshall, between Mao and Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek. Wang accompanied Mao to the Communist Party headquarters in remote Yan'an, where she served as an interpreter in unsuccessful peace talks, mediated by U.S. After the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution in the 1960s and 1970s, Wang's brother, Guangying, returned to the business world as an executive at Hong Kong's Everbright electronics firm.Īs an educated and idealistic young person in the 1940s, Wang supported the revolutionary Communist forces of future Chinese leader Mao Tse-tung, which waged guerrilla warfare against the Chinese government. She was one of the first people in China to do advanced study in the field of atomic physics. After studies at an American missionary school, she attended Fu Jen Catholic University in Beijing, gaining a master's degree in physics by 1945. Wang became a fluent speaker of English, French, and Russian. Her family was old and distinguished, and her father, Wang Huaiquing, was a business executive who served as a senior official in the government of the Republic of China. Wang Guangmei (in Chinese names, the family name is given first) was born in Beijing on September 26, 1921. Former Chinese first lady Wang Guangmei (1921–2006) lived through many of the most turbulent events of twentieth-century Chinese history.
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