Mao's Grandson an `Ordinary Student' _ Yet, There's That Limo
By TERRIL JONES
The Associated Press
7 November 1989
BEIJING (AP) _ Mao Xinyu tries to lead a quiet life at a prestigious Beijing university despite being the grandson of Mao Tse-tung, the revolutionary founder of communist China.
"I'm just an ordinary student," says the shy, chubby sophomore, who wears patched clothes and canvas army shoes. "I have 20 classes a week, and play badminton and Chinese chess with classmates."
The 19-year-old history major at People's University has seven roommates in a cramped first-floor dorm room where he sleeps on a bottom bunk and is known simply as "Sixth Brother."
Yet, on Saturdays, a black military limousine glides up to take the grandson of the Great Helmsman to an expensive health club, where he enjoys the sauna.
On Wednesdays, when he doesn't have class, the limo takes Mao home, where he has his clothes washed and an army cook prepares "good food."
And mail pours in from people across the country nostalgic about Chairman Mao, who was virtually deified as a living god by millions of adoring Chinese during his lifetime, and curious about his grandson.
Mao Xinyu is the only child of Mao's second son, Mao Anqing, a retired Russian translator for the People's Liberation Army, and novelist Chen Raohua, who wrote under the pen name Shao Hua.
His home, where his parents and grandmother live, is near the Summer Palace in northwestern Beijing. "I can't tell you more than that," he says with a chuckle. "It's a state military secret."
His favorite class is the history of Sino-U.S. relations, and he spoke excitedly about the recent visit to Beijing by former President Nixon, who paved the way to normalizing ties between Washington and Beijing in 1972 with his historic meeting with Mao Tse-tung.
Not that the elder Mao's place in history is entirely glorious.
Western and Chinese historians alike credit him with the abortive "Great Leap Forward" of 1958-59, a drive to increase production that ultimately plunged China into widespread starvation and poverty. He was also behind the disastrous 1966-76 Cultural Revolution, during which intellectuals and merchants were reviled, schools closed and Red Guards spouting Mao slogans went on a nationwide revolutionary rampage.
"History will judge him as a great man, a leader of great ability, who made great contributions," Mao Xinyu says. "But he had some faults."
Despite his interest in politics, Mao declines to discuss the pro-democracy protests that rocked China this spring, other than to say "of course" he did not participate in the marches and demonstrations.
He does say, however, that vandals' splattering of the portrait of Mao overlooking Tiananmen Square on May 23 "made me mad. It made all Chinese mad. It was just a couple of guys trying to attract attention."
Mao attracts plenty of attention of his own, receiving bundles of unsolicited mail.
"Ordinary people, students, intellectuals, they all write," he says. "Mostly they're nostalgic about Chairman Mao. But a lot of them say they're very happy I've gone on to college."
Some are girls who "just want to be friends."
Mao says someday he'd like to visit the hometown of Abraham Lincoln and see the Lincoln Memorial in Washington. "Lincoln was a progressive capitalist revolutionary, uniting the North and South in the civil war," he said.
Mao also takes some philosophy courses. Asked who his favorite philosophers are, he replies, "Marx. And my grandfather."
