Yang Kaihui - Death

Death

In October 1930, the local KMT warlord He Jian captured Yang Kaihui and her son Mao Anying. Her captors wanted her to publicly renounce Mao Zedong and the CPC, but she refused to do so. Even under torture, she is reputed to have told her captors that "You could kill me as you like, you would never get anything from my mouth," "Chopping off the head is like the passing of wind, death could frighten cowards, rather than our Communists," "Even if the seas run dry and the rocks crumble, I would never break off relations with Mao Zedong," and "I prefer to die for the success of Mao's revolution career." Yang was executed in Changsha on November 14, 1930 at the age of 29. Her son, Mao Anying, who died twenty years later in the Korean War, was forced to watch his mother being shot.