Li Zhisui

▪ 1996

      (LI CHIH-SUI), Chinese physician (b. 1919, Beijing, China—d. Feb. 13, 1995, Carol Stream, Ill.), was the personal physician and confidant of Chairman Mao Zedong and author of The Private Life of Chairman Mao (1994). Li received his medical degree from the West Union University Medical School in Sichuan province in 1945 and five years later was named director of the private medical facility that treated China's top leaders. Beginning in 1954, when Mao chose Li as his personal physician, the two men began to develop a close relationship that lasted until Mao's death in 1976. During those years, Li compiled a series of diaries. Following Mao's death, Li held several medical posts before joining his two sons in the U.S. in 1988. Li's biography of Mao honoured the memory of his late wife, who had urged her husband to share his knowledge with the rest of the world. Relying partly on memory (some 40 diaries were deliberately destroyed during the perilous Cultural Revolution), Li set forth a detailed account of the man he had served for 22 years. Li's unflattering portrait of Mao characterized him as ruthless, uncaring, treacherous, corrupt, intolerant of dissent, unwilling to acknowledge failures, indifferent to personal hygiene, addicted to barbiturates, and enamoured of young mistresses. The book, which was banned in China as slanderous but became a best-seller in English and several other languages, also provided important details, previously unknown, about many of Mao's colleagues and of pivotal events that occurred during Mao's rule.

* * *