Mao Zedong - Personal Life

Personal Life

Mao's private life was very secretive at the time of his rule. However, after Mao's death, his personal physician Li Zhisui published a memoir which mentions some aspects of Mao's private life, such as chain-smoking cigarettes, rare bathing or dental habits, laziness, addiction to sleeping pills and large number of sexual partners.

Having grown up in Hunan, Mao spoke Mandarin with a heavy Xiang Chinese accent that is very pronounced on recordings of his speeches. Journalist Clare Hollingworth noted that Mao was proud of his "peasant ways and manners", having a strong Hunanese accent and providing "earthy" comments on sexual matters. Similarly, historian Lee Feigon noted that Mao's "earthiness" meant that he remained connected to "everyday Chinese life."

Biographer Peter Carter described Mao as having "an attractive personality" who could for much of the time be a "moderate and balanced man", but noted that he could also be ruthless, and showed no mercy to his opponents. This description was echoed by Sinologist Stuart Schram, who emphasized his ruthlessness, but whom also noted that Mao showed no sign of "tak pleasure" in torture or killing in the revolutionary cause. Historian Lee Feigon also described Mao as being "draconian and authoritarian" when threatened, but expressed the opinion that he was not the "kind of villain that his mentor Stalin was". Carter noted that throughout his life, Mao had the ability to gain people's trust, and that as such he gathered around him "an extraordinarily wide range of friends" in his early years.