Chairman Mao is a great leader of our country, since ancient heroes have always admired beautiful people, he is no exception, Chairman Mao experienced four marriages in his life, He Zizhen is his third wife.
Although the couple's conjugal life occasionally quarrels, it is still quite happy and calm. But this peaceful life was disturbed by a fist from an American outsider, Smedley, which directly led to the rupture of the relationship between He Zizhen and Chairman Mao.
One was an American journalist who came to China to cover the Communists and bring all kinds of new Things from the West into the ranks of the Yan'an revolution; the other was the wife of a great man who bore three sons and three daughters for Chairman Mao, and the first female Party member in Jinggangshan.
What contradiction did Smedley and He Zizhen, who had only Chairman Mao alone, have produced, and why did Smedley swell He Zizhen's eyes with his fists? The misunderstanding also began with a dance that was popular in the army at the time, the ballroom dance.
<H1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > open to female journalists</h1>
At the end of January 1937, the American journalist Agnes Smedley went to Yan'an as a reporter for the Frankfurt Daily as a reporter for more than seven months.
Born in the United States, Smedley, who was deeply influenced by individualist ideas and Western culture, had a very hot personality and a bold style of acting at that time. As soon as he met Judd, Smedley kissed him twice on the cheek, which was reported by some media at the time.
In addition, Smedley also had a series of shocking moves, when she was Song Qingling's bodyguard and secretary, she repeatedly confronted Song Qingling, and the two finally broke up; at a banquet hosted by Kong Xiangxi, Smedley bluntly asked the master for a check to support the Shanxi peasant guerrillas, and actually succeeded.
In Shanghai in the 1930s, her love affair with her Chinese translator Feng Da, the literati Xu Zhimo, and the Soviet agent Sorge was full of storms; when she interviewed Zhu De, she had the intention of "holding on to Qingshan and not relaxing", wanting to monopolize the right to interview Zhu De, and later openly showing love to Zhu De...
Such a woman with such vitality as a flame also lit a fire in Yan'an at that time, and with a light phonograph and a few records, Smedley opened a private party, which also became an opportunity for her to promote ballroom dance.
At the party, Smedley would invite everyone to line up and teach them virginian earth dance, followed by Western ballroom dance. Slowly, ballroom dancing gradually appeared at public evenings.
At that time, there was a small Christian church on the east side of the bell tower in the ancient city of Yan'an, which was opened as the Great Hall of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Almost every weekend evening, there are evenings or dances here. Smedley and her "students" became the "stars" at the ball.
Smedley recalled: "Judd and I broke through superstitions and unveiled the scene of ballroom dancing. Zhou Enlai then danced, but he danced like a man calculating a number study problem. Peng Dehuai likes to watch from the wall and refuses to come down and dance once. He Long danced with the music melody on the green brick paved floor, and he was the only dancer with a sense of rhythm on his body. Among the women of Yan'an, I won the notoriety of corrupting the military style. People were so intimidating that when Zhu De asked me to teach him to dance again, I actually refused him. He accused me of being afraid of things, saying, 'I have fought feudalism for half my life, and I don't want to give up now!' I had to stand up and dance with him once in the name of democracy. ”
Dancing is an entertainment, but it must be carried out in the name of democracy, if you do not dance is "afraid of things", where does this "thing" come from? Of course, it was the voice behind her finger-pointing at these bold actions. The lesbians of the time were critical of Smedley and the dance she introduced.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > bad gay men? Small dances lead to big conflicts</h1>
This criticism is not unfounded, and it is inseparable from Smedley's style at that time. As mentioned earlier, Smedley was a rather bold and pungent woman who openly showed love to the military chief, had a long heart-to-knee conversation with Chairman Mao in his private residence, taught various American songs, and introduced the rat eradication campaign, all of which had a considerable impact on Yan'an at that time.
But it takes time for people to accept new things, and you can't completely ignore the differences in cultural backgrounds, no matter what, Smedley's steps are still too big. At that time, in response to her series of behaviors, the female comrades of the army often spread some bad rumors.
Under the condemnation of public opinion, ballroom dancing has changed from a simple entertainment activity to a corruption of the military atmosphere, a manifestation of impure male and female relations.
Of course, there is no basis for this statement, the dance is innocent, the dance is naturally not a mistake, this criticism is more of a conservative value at work, and it is no wonder that Zhu De accused this kind of rumor of "feudalism". Indeed, elevating dance to moral flaws and denouncing it for being "unorthodox" is also somewhat "feudal" in its sense.
But in any case, criticism and rumors have intensified, including speculation about the relationship between Chairman Mao, Smedley, and Smedley's secretary, Wu Guangwei.
Chairman Mao was very interested in Smedley's arrival, and followed her to learn American songs, and the smooth promotion of ballroom dancing and rat eradication may also contain Chairman Mao's approval. As Chairman Mao's wife, He Zizhen naturally heard some rumors, and this frequent contact also made her suspicious.
One day, she found the cave where Smedley lived, and found Chairman Mao and Wu Guangwei sitting very close, talking face to face, very hot, and smiling. She rushed in angrily, and Wu Guangwei got up to greet and give way, but He Zizhen was full of anger, and he was rude to Wu Guangwei and scolded, and said: "I came for you today." ”
Rushing at the two of them for a while, He Zizhen had not yet lost his temper, raised his hand and greeted Wu Guangwei's face, Smedley heard the sound and came out to stop He Zizhen, the guards also came to pull the rack, the result did not expect the guards to pull He Zizhen, Smedley did not have the intention of stopping, a punch down, He Zizhen's eye sockets suddenly turned blue.
Embarrassed, Chairman Mao quickly told the two men to stop and took He Zizhen away. He Zizhen felt very aggrieved and angry. Zhu De's wife, Kang Keqing, and other female generals strongly supported He Zizhen, and Smedley was also "insulted" because of this. At this step, several people could not stay in Yan'an.
He Zizhen ran away in disgust and gave birth to one of Chairman Mao's young sons, but his unfortunate death, Chairman Mao later married Jiang Qing; Smedley fell shortly after the incident, and after recovering from his injuries, he also left Yan'an with interview materials.
Wu Guangwei was transferred away from Yan'an, when the Kuomintang and the Communists cooperated in the anti-Japanese resistance, she entered the Kuomintang after a lot of wandering, although she always wanted to return to the Communist Party, but the organizational consideration was not approved, and she later went to Taiwan with the defeated Kuomintang and was never heard from again.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" > Why did Smedley punch He Zizhen's eyes swell? </h1>
This ending can be described as "three losses", the revolutionary team lost a popular entertainment activity, Smedley lost the opportunity for long-term interviews, and He Zizhen lost love. What exactly turned a simple question into a fierce contradiction and unhappiness between the three parties? Why didn't Chairman Mao at that time extinguish the signs of the problem earlier?
For fundamentally, the fault lies with the women in the revolutionary base areas. The source of the contradiction comes from the rumors, not what happened to Smedley and the male comrades in the army, and the claim of corrupting the military style is even more ridiculous.
Ballroom dancing is just a form of entertainment, warriors can play allegro, sing, play the accordion for fun, why is ballroom dance so notorious? Today, ballroom dance as an entertainment has long been accepted, there are countless elderly people to learn, this dance is even slightly outdated. Popularized to this point, it can be seen that it does not have the effect of the so-called "corrupt atmosphere".
The mistake is not in the dance, but in the prejudice. But Chairman Mao and these leaders are not easy to deal with these prejudices, because although these prejudices are not correct, it is not difficult to understand why women have such prejudices.
First, Smedley's style of conduct is too bold, very assertive, and does not particularly consider the feelings of others, which naturally causes the dissatisfaction of some female comrades in different cultural backgrounds.
The honey of the other, the arsenic of my, the hot kiss at the first meeting, or the public expression of love, these are difficult to accept in the cultural background of China at that time. It can be said that the female comrades hate The House and the U, first dissatisfied with Smedley, and then prejudiced against ballroom dancing.
Second, the popularization of advanced ideas will take time. It is true that the local women are deeply influenced by revolutionary ideas, but it is not difficult to see from this incident that many of the elements of catching wind and shadows still come from the feudal idea of "men and women are not intimate", because these rumors are basically speculations, and there is no evidence that actually crosses the moral bottom line.
Most of the chiefs' wives sided with He Zizhen and believed that Smedley was the culprit, which was enough to show that this kind of thinking still had a considerable degree of influence.
Therefore, whether the leaders are dealing with Smedley and her ballroom dance, or changing the views of the women in the base areas from the root, it is very difficult and unpleasant. Education in principle, in fact, did not stop, which led to the difficult situation of American journalists waving their fists at the president's wife.
This incident also illustrates another difficulty of the Communist Party's fighting: the difficulty of fighting ideologically. Formally, the feudal forces in the army are easy to solve, but the most difficult thing to get rid of is the little residual rules and regulations in the mind, and even the wisest leaders cannot sweep away this residual prejudice.
Agnes Smedley, female, (1892–1950), born in Osgood, Missouri, usa, is a well-known journalist, writer and social activist.
At the beginning and middle of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, he witnessed Japan's aggression against China and sent a just voice to the world. His representative works include "China's Battle Song" and "The Great Road: The Life and Era of Zhu De". On May 6, 1950, he died of surgery in London, England, at the age of 58. —— Quoted from toutia encyclopedia