Jiang Qing

Jiang Qing, also known as Madame Mao, was a Chinese revolutionary, actress, and political figure who became the fourth wife of Mao Zedong and a central leader of the Gang of Four. She was born Li Yunhe in Zhucheng, Shandong, in March 1914, though she deliberately kept her exact birth date private. Her father, a carpenter with his own workshop, was abusive, and her mother worked as a domestic servant and sometimes a prostitute. After her father broke her mother’s finger during a Lantern Festival attack, her mother fled with Jiang. They eventually moved to her grandparents’ home in Jinan, where Jiang attended primary school with disruptions, often mocked for wearing outdated boyish clothing. Her mother died in 1928, leaving Jiang an orphan at age 14. Seeking independence, she joined a local underground theatre troupe, and despite her grandparents paying to bring her back, she later enrolled in the Experimental Arts Academy. There, she excelled in traditional opera roles despite a strong Shandong accent, and after the academy closed in 1930, she joined theatrical companies in Beijing. She married a wealthy businessman’s son in 1931 but soon divorced. Jiang joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1933 and pursued an acting career in Shanghai under the stage name Lan Ping, meaning “blue apple,” a name she disliked due to its association with scandals. She went to Yan’an, where she married Mao in 1938. After the founding of the People’s Republic, she wielded considerable influence over the arts, orchestrating campaigns against the film *The Life of Wu Xun* and the Peking opera *Hai Rui Dismissed from Office*, while promoting revolutionary operas. She became a Politburo member at the Ninth and Tenth Central Committees and de facto leader of the Cultural Revolution Group. Following Mao’s death, she was arrested, expelled from the party, and blamed for the upheavals of the Cultural Revolution. In a televised trial, she was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve, later commuted to life imprisonment. She committed suicide in May 1991.