Yang Kaihui (1901-1930), the daughter of Yang
Changji, one of Mao Zedong's most beloved teachers, was born in
Bancang, Hunan Province. She married Mao in autumn 1920. Yang was not
Mao's first wife: his first --arranged-- marriage to a woman six years
his senior was said, however, to never have been consummated. Nor was
she Mao's first sweetheart.
Yang's father headed the Hunan First Normal School
where Mao studied and she and Mao met when the latter visited her
father to discuss various issues. When her father accepted a position
at Peking University in 1918, Kaihui joined him there. Once Mao had
arrived in Beijing and found employment in the Peking University
Library, he would often meet with his former teacher. Only after her
father's death, Kaihui started to build up an independent --modern--
life by attending schools. Her marriage to Mao ended her period of
independence. Although she joined the CCP in 1921, becoming one of its
earliest members, she never held an official position and devoted her
time to Mao and their children: Anying (1922-1951), Anqing (1923) and
Anlong (1927). Thus, while Mao did organizational work for the Party
and traveled widely, she rarely accompanied him. Nonetheless, she is
credited with having contributed to the nascent labor, peasant and
women's movements.
After Mao had participated in failed attempts at
revolutionary upheavals in late 1927, she never saw him again. While
Mao hid out at Jinggangshan,
building the Red Army and living with He Zizhen in a new 'revolutionary
marriage', Kaihui remained in Bancang with their children. She and
Anying were arrested in Changsha by the local warlord, and Kaihui was
executed on 14 November 1930, simply because she was Mao's wife. Thus,
she became one of the early revolutionary martyrs, which explains the
presence of an image of the Monument for Revolutionary Martyrs on
Tian'anmen Square in the two posters below.
 |
 |
From 1977 onwards, Yang Kaihui's image, dressed in
the uniform of the modern urban woman that was popular during the May
Fourth period (1919) --a white high-necked jacket and calf-length black
skirt--, appeared on numerous posters. Most of these were designed by newly rehabilitated veteran artists, including
Li Mubai, Jin Xuechen and others. The attention
lavished on Yang was clearly intended to
show that while Mao's last wife, Jiang Qing, had created havoc in the
nation and now languished in prison, Mao had known marital bliss
before. Many traditional and historical pictorial elements (Chang E,
the Goddess in the Moon, and others) surround Yang, a revolutionary
martyr in her own right, in these posters. They can be traced back to
Mao's poem "In Response to Li Shuyi - To
the melody of Die Lian Hua", written on 11 May 1957.
Sources:
Dachang Cong, When Heroes Pass Away—The Invention of a Chinese Communist Pantheon (Lanham MD, etc.: University Press of America, 1997)
Ellen Johnston Laing, Selling Happiness -- Calendar Posters and Visual Culture in Early-Twentieth-Century Shanghai (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2004)
Lily Xiao Hong Lee (ed), Biographical Dictionary of Chinese Women—The Twentieth Century 1912-2000 (Armonk, NY, etc.: M.E. Sharpe Inc., 2003)
Verity Wilson, "Dressing for Leadership in China: Wives and Husbands in an Age of Revolutions (1911-1976)", Gender & History, vol. 14, no. 3 (November 2002), pp. 608-628
Return to the Register of Heroes and Villains
s.r.landsberger@let.leidenuniv.nl
|
search this site!  |
International Institute of Social History