Battle for China's Past : Mao and the Cultural Revolution

was written by Li himself. In an Open Letter (for the English text of the
Open Letter, see DeBorja and Dong 1996) published in the Asian American
Times in New York, Wen hui bao in Hong Kong and the Straits
Review in Taiwan in February 1995, the signatories of the letter
denounced the book and pointed out the discrepancies between the
English and Chinese versions. In the Chinese version, claims such as
that the memoirs were based on Li’s diaries, that Li was the best doctor
in China, and that Li could recall Mao’s words verbatim are absent.
Absent in the Chinese version are also claims about Mao’s womanizing
behaviour spreading venereal disease, statements like ‘I [Mao] wash
myself inside the bodies of my women’ or Mao was ‘devoid of human
feelings’. Absent also were some of Thurston’s notes.
Some of the omissions in the Chinese version indicate the awareness
by the production team that such outrageous claims may be ‘sexy’ to
the English readers but cannot be included in the Chinese version since
they are too obviously false to the Chinese insiders. Other omissions
are due to political reasons. For instance in the English version, when
talking about Deng’s absence from the 1959 Lushan Conference, it
asserts that when in hospital for foot trouble Deng Xiaoping made a
nurse pregnant and the nurse was forced to have an abortion. That was
taken out in the Chinese version. Deng had not only ‘reversed the
verdict’ of the Cultural Revolution but also made China part of the
capitalist world. The Taiwan publisher might feel that such a capitalist
roader, though the real butcher of the 1989 Tian’anmen Massacre, was
not to be offended. Or more likely the publisher knew that the Chinese
readers could not be fooled so easily by such an unsubstantiated claim.
Who is to be fooled and why?
THE BATTLE FOR CHINA’ S PAST
Other discrepancies pointed out in DeBorja and Dong (1996) are also
revealing, for they again indicate an understanding by those who were
involved in the production of this book that a Western reader is easily
and willingly deceived, or has to be fooled. For example in the English
version there is this statement: ‘As Mao’s doctor, I was allowed unimpeded
access.’ Compare this with the Chinese version: ‘As Mao’s
doctor, only I, when performing a medical examination, have some
opportunities to see Mao and have a few words with him’ (DeBorja
and Dong 1996: 48). And there are more. In English it is, ‘When Mao
returned from Beidaihe [in the summer of 1955], I began seeing him
every day, the excuse we often used was his study of English’ whereas
in Chinese the second part of the sentence starting with ‘excuse’ is
absent. ‘The study of English’ bit is absent in the Chinese version
because among the readers of the Chinese version there would be
Chinese insiders who would know that Li was not Mao’s teacher of
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