Evil Genes

by Barbara Oakley

  “The hardest thing about being a communist is trying to predict the past.”

  —Milovan Dilas

  Our driver, a small, sprightly man with nary a squeak of English, is named Mao, just like Chairman Mao. Surprisingly, he also looks like Mao, with a “big” forehead (which my Western eyes record as a receding hairline) that bespeaks power and good fortune to the Chinese. Today, riding at eighty miles an hour along a silky-smooth toll road outside Shanghai, I am taking a breather from Machiavellianism. Or at least I think I am.

  It's early September 2005. My friend Wenlei and I, along with two bioengineering grad students, are on our way to Dingshan, about three hours’ drive northeast from Shanghai. We've just come from the annual conference of EMBS, aka the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society. The society holds a yearly bash to help stimulate bioengineering research worldwide. A list of previous and planned conference locations reads like a world atlas: Cancún, Istanbul, Lyon, New York City, Amsterdam, San Francisco, and, this year, Shanghai. The meeting is always a treat for me, not only because I have an opportunity to present my own research to the community and visit with many old friends, but also because I'm able to catch a bird's-eye view of the latest breakthroughs related to biomedical imaging. So much is happening in the field of medical imaging that sometimes it causes a bit of a problem—at the Shanghai conference, a quarter of the conference's two thousand or so presentations were related to medical imaging. Everyone, it seems, wants in on the action.

  But the conference—a nearly weeklong talkfest of sleepless nights and crowded days—has ended. Now I can indulge in my covert passion: teapots. Not just any teapots: Yixing teapots—those of the absorbent, malleable, unglazed zisha purple clay, with shapes that bring to mind Platonic ideals of geometric perfection. Yixing (pronounced “ee-shing”) teapots have been known to inspire a reckless passion akin to a drug addiction. Enthusiasts from Taiwan have sold houses and properties worth hundreds of thousands of dollars to acquire the work of a particular master. Some have given up families and jobs to enable a more complete focus on every detail related to their particular area of focus, perhaps teapots older than 1960, or the works of a particular recent master, or commercial ware.

  Yixing teapots are not actually made in the formless regional city of Yixing but rather in nearby Dingshan, a popular place with Chinese tourists, as witnessed by the hundreds of teapot shops that cling to the edges of the crowded streets throughout the town. Western tourists here are rare indeed—glancing at the sweltering sidewalk crowds, I don't see a single other “big nose.” Strange, because understanding Yixing ware can lead to surprising insights, not only about China but about people in general.

  Our brief stop for lunch at a hole-in-the-wall restaurant immediately after arrival brings us luck—the proprietor, a friendly, open-faced woman of about fifty, takes note of my passion for teapots and agrees to serve as our guide for the afternoon. In the staunch traditions of a true Communist, she refuses any tip. “She's doing this because she has a good heart,” says Wenlei.

  Fig. 9.1. The author “helps” make a Yixing teapot.

  And indeed, the woman's kindness is real. Rather than take us around to the independent proprietors from whom she could continuously pocket kickbacks for the sale of third- and fourth-rate pots, she takes us directly to the source of all the decent clay and much of the best Yixing pottery currently produced—the oldest Yixing teapot factory in China. Strangely for a civilization that's been around for thousands of years, being the oldest teapot factory is not saying much—the uninspired Yixing Zisha Factory Number 1 was opened in October 1958.

  We are taken up an aging elevator on a tour of the potters’ studios above the showroom floor, where bleary-eyed craftsmen are luting together flat sheets of clay, shaping round structures with spatulas, and misting spouts. Our arrival sparks enthusiasm—the potters visibly puff under the attention. Soon we are being offered cups of delicious hong cha—black tea—from an exquisite rectangular teapot that bears an elegant sheen from the frequent pouring of the first rinse of tea leaves over its outside surface. Yixing teapots, like fine violins and classical guitars, are meant to be used. In particular, they are meant to be used with black and oolong teas, as well as the half-rotted tea known as pu'er.a. A special characteristic of zisha clay is that it holds heat for a long time, thus, it can overcook delicate green teas, which need lower temperature water from the outset. And, unlike more ordinary clays, it is remarkably tough. (Seemingly perfect teapots made of clay from Chaozhou, for example, tend to have spouts that break because of the undesirable presence of sand.) Zisha's exceptional malleability allows for a variety of shapes that other types of ceramics simply can't match. But more than that, Yixing teapots that look the same are not really the same; a slight difference in spout size or angle, for example, can give one teapot a smug look, while another might look radiantly healthy, and yet another might sport a pout. Teapots, like people, can be surprisingly moody.

  Arriving at the showroom, I'm faced with row after row of gorgeous pottery. I feel like a kid with a hand in the cookie jar—after all, there are only so many of these singularly beautiful treasures that I can pack in my luggage and stuff into carry-on bags. In the end, I choose a smooth, round teapot with a lovely purple sheen by master craftsman Chen Le Lin, and a rectangular teapot with green and yellow swirls by Fan Yu Lan, along with some less expensive but still exquisite commercial pieces. These pots will add to my caffeinated pleasure collection at home: tea ware purchased at reputable teashops during previous work-related travels to places like Beijing, Harbin, Qiqihar, Dalian, and Kaifeng.

  Among all the lovely gems in my cabinets at home is one clunky oddity—a “revolution” teapot I purchased in Hong Kong. This pedestrian teapot was manufactured sometime in the decade following 1966. The bottom of the pot is stamped with the characters symbolizing “Yixing, China,” after the name of the district. There is no maker's mark.

  Revolution teapots are distinctive, in fact, for their lack of distinction. These plain-looking teapots were manufactured during Chairman Mao's Cultural Revolution, when even the faintest whiff of creativity was suspect. Workers were not allowed to put personal marks on individual pieces—it was the factory or the unit, not the individual, that was important. Walls at factories were filled with slogans demanding that literature and art serve the people and the cause of socialism; the state exercised complete control over everything, including arts and crafts.1 Master potters had no incentive to pour their souls into their craft, since a well-done creative work would attract envy and enemies and in any case wouldn't earn the potter any more money. Many revolution teapots cannot even pour water in a straight line. Some smell of mud from being baked at the wrong temperature, and others have caps that are not level.

  Not only did the manufacturing quality of virtually everything suffer during the Cultural Revolution, but nothing was sacred. Nien Cheng, a fluent English speaker who worked for Shell in Shanghai, describes the beginning of her travails during the Cultural Revolution, when youngsters known as Red Guards were encouraged to break into houses and destroy for the sake of an imagined greater good:

  I was astonished to see several Red Guards taking pieces of my porcelain collection out of their padded boxes. One young man had arranged a set of four K'ang winecups in a row on the floor and was stepping on them. I was just in time to hear the crunch of delicate porcelain under the sole of his shoe. The sound pierced my heart. Impulsively I leapt forward and caught his leg just as he raised his foot to crush the next cup. He toppled. We fell in a heap together. My eyes searched for the other winecups to make sure we had not broken them in our fall, and momentarily distracted, I was not able to move aside when the boy regained his balance and kicked me right in my chest. I cried out in pain. The other Red Guards dropped what they were doing and gathered around us, shouting at me angrily for interfering in their revolutionary activities. One of the teachers pulled me up from the floor. With his face flushed in ang
er, the young man waved his fist, threatening me with a severe beating.2

  Cheng was eventually to suffer six and a half years of cold, hunger, disease, terror, and humiliation in solitary confinement in a Shanghai jail for the crime of having worked for a foreign company. Upon release, she would discover that her only child, her beloved daughter, Meiping, had been beaten to death.

  It was Mao who had encouraged the formation of the Red Guards.

  Learning from their fathers and friends that Mao was encouraging violence, the Red Guards immediately embarked on atrocities. On 5 August [1966], in a Peking girls’ school packed with high officials’ children (which Mao's two daughters had attended), the first known death by torture took place. The headmistress, a fifty-year-old mother of four, was kicked and trampled by the girls, and boiling water was poured over her. She was ordered to carry heavy bricks back and forth; as she stumbled past, she was thrashed with leather army belts with brass buckles, and with wooden sticks studded with nails. She soon collapsed and died. Afterwards, leading activists reported to the new authority. They were not told to stop—which meant carry on.3

  MAO AS BORDERPATH

  Mao was the most Machiavellian leader of the many Machiavellian leaders of the twentieth century. For three decades, he held absolute power over the lives of one-quarter of the world's population. As historian R. J. Rummel writes: “For perspective on Mao's most bloody rule, all wars [worldwide] 1900–1987 cost in combat dead 34,021,000—including WWI and II, Vietnam, Korea, and the Mexican and Russian Revolutions. Mao alone murdered over twice as many as were killed in combat in all these wars.”4 He also killed nearly four times as many as are thought to have died in four hundred years of the African slave trade, from capture to sale in Arab, Oriental, or New World markets.5

  Therefore it is perhaps surprising to find that psychologists, psychoanalysts, and psychiatrists of the time, and even today, rarely make serious efforts to address the possibility of serious mental illness in motivating Mao's behavior. But MIT political scientist Lucian Pye, who published an early biography of Mao in 1976, the year of Mao's death, provides a lucid explanation for the reticence: “[B]ecause I knew that I was already going out onto thin ice by psychologically interpreting the near-sacred Mao, I decided that it would not be prudent, indeed that it would be counter-productive, to use any technical terminology. Therefore, I did not go public in announcing that Mao Zedong was probably a narcissist with a borderline personality, a combination that is not rare. I suspect that if I had stated that this was the case, it would have brought many people's blood to the boiling point.”6

  Indeed, perhaps even more so than Milosevic, Mao showed strong tendencies related to all four of the dimensional symptoms of borderline personality disorder; he also used many borderline-like coping strategies. As Mao biographer Ross Terrill writes: “The evidence…that Mao was a borderline personality mounts by the year. It includes his youthful loneliness and fascist ideas, the neurasthenia [nervous system exhaustion] to which his doctor testifies…his treatment of family members, his addiction to barbiturates, his lack of give-and-take with colleagues, and his suspiciousness.”7

  But Mao also showed evidence of psychopathy, the deepest form of antisocial personality disorder, which is often diagnosed alongside borderline personality disorder. “Borderpath” does, in fact, seem to be an appropriate term for the fused set of pathologies that propelled Mao on his infamous trajectory, although it is difficult to find any term that truly encompasses Mao's drug-addled mixture of characteristics. In this sense, then, virtually all of the medical studies mentioned about both borderlines and psychopaths so far may shed light on the neurological mechanisms underlying the deeply Machiavellian emotional traits that Mao displayed. And, of course, that little-understood trait of narcissism plays a role as well.

  The Early Years

  Mao was born in 1893 in the Hunan province—the heartland of China. His ancestors had lived in the same temperate, misty valley for five hundred years. Unlike most of the other villagers, Mao's father, Yi-chang, could read and write well enough to keep accounts. Yi-chang had a quick temper and firm views. Through his hard work and thriftiness, he became one of the most prosperous men in the village. Mao's mother was an exceptionally gentle and tolerant woman from a neighboring village.

  Mao was the third son but the first to live past infancy. Later, two more sons—Mao's younger, milder-tempered brothers—were born into the family. Mao had a carefree early childhood living with his mother and her family in their village, where his mother preferred to live, and where his grandmother, uncles, and aunts doted on him. At the age of eight he returned to his native village of Shaoshan to receive an education. Rote learning of the Confucian classics was de rigueur. Mao, blessed with an extraordinary memory, excelled.

  Early Antisocial Tendencies

  Although a bright student, Mao clashed frequently with his teachers, and at the age of ten, he ran away from his first school. He was expelled from or asked to leave at least three more schools for being headstrong and disobedient—strong evidence of the early behavioral problems often seen in antisocial personality disorder. (Milosevic, in contrast, was a model, if unctuous, child.)

  Although Mao's mother remained understanding, the problems with school became one more source of tension between father and son. His father would strike him when Mao would not comply—typical behavior for a Chinese paterfamilias of the time. As with Hitler and Stalin, Mao frequently fought with his father. Mao biographers Jung Chang and her husband, Jon Halliday, report:

  He would tell his father that the father, being older, should do more manual labour than he, the younger—which was an unthinkably insolent argument by Chinese standards. One day, according to Mao, father and son had a row in front of guests. “My father scolded me before them, calling me lazy and useless. This infuriated me. I called him names and left the house…. My father…pursued me, cursing me as well as commanding me to come back. I reached the edge of a pond and threatened to jump in if he came any nearer…. My father backed down.” Once, as Mao was retelling the story, he laughed and added an observation: “Old men like him didn't want to lose their sons. This is their weakness. I attacked at their weak point, and I won!”8 (italics added)

  Such behavior was unspeakable according to Chinese cultural traditions.b.9 As Francis Fukuyama notes in his book Trust, in China, there is “no counterpart to the Judeo-Christian concept of a divine source of authority or higher law that can sanction an individual's revolt against the dictates of his family. In Chinese society, obedience to paternal authority is akin to a divine act, and there is no concept of individual conscience that can lead an individual to contradict it.”10

  Markedly Disturbed Relationships

  A common characteristic of both borderline and antisocial personality disorder involves markedly disturbed relationships—Mao could serve as a model in this area. While in his teens, Mao was able to coerce his father into paying for further education. But Mao found his education difficult to deal with. He preferred to spend his days reading whatever he wanted rather than pursuing a degree, and his father had to threaten to cut him off to get him to enroll in a professional program. In the spring of 1913, at age nineteen, Mao enrolled in the teacher-training program at the Hunan Fourth Provincial Normal School. He would graduate five years later, but his first years were especially miserable—he liked neither the teachers nor the students.

  But Mao's disturbed relationships during this period were not all-pervasive. He came to deeply admire Yang Changji, the head of the philosophy department and an ardent fitness fanatic who organized long hikes and a Spartan physical regime for his students. “When I think of [his] greatness,” Mao confided to a friend, “I feel I will never be his equal.” Yang felt the same way about Mao, who was one of his favorite students. “It is truly difficult to find someone as intelligent and handsome [as Mao].”11 Mao began meeting regularly with a small group of other students at Yang's home to discuss “the cultivation
of personal virtue, will-power, steadfastness and endurance.”12

  Mao became keen on Yang's daughter, Kaihui. Winning her over with his poetry and letters, they became lovers, but Mao continued to see other girlfriends as he served on the outer circles of the budding Chinese Communist Party. Kaihui was shattered when she discovered Mao's infidelity. But Mao explained the affairs were simply due to his uncertainty about Kaihui's feelings. She believed him, and at the end of 1920, the two were married. (Kaihui was actually Mao's second wife—Mao appears to have rejected his first wife, from an arranged marriage. This first wife died young—long before Mao met and married Kaihui.)

  Kaihui was an early feminist and while pregnant with their first child, she worked among the peasants pushing for women's rights and better educational facilities. Meanwhile, again bowing to internal quirks that fueled his disturbed relationships, Mao embarked on several more affairs, one with Kaihui's cousin. Kaihui was again devastated, but because she still loved Mao, she eventually decided to simply let him be. A hint of their tempestuous relationship survives in a love poem Mao wrote to her after a quarrelsome departure following the birth of their second son.

  A wave of the hand, and the moment of parting has come.

  Harder to bear is facing each other dolefully,

  Bitter feelings voiced once more.

  Wrath looks out from your eyes and brows,

  On the verge of tears, you hold them back.

  We know our misunderstandings sprang from that last letter.

  Let it roll away like clouds and mist,

  For who in this world is as close as you and I?13

  But after the last of their three sons was born, the Communist Party was outlawed by the Nationalists, and Mao, now in jeopardy, left Kaihui in the city of Changsha and headed off to usurp his first armed force. Only four months after having left Kaihui, he married another woman, He Zizhen, who was his local interpreter.14 Mao told Zizhen that he had not heard from Kaihui and thought she might have been executed—although in a later mention of Kaihui in a letter to a friend, he was well aware of the fact that Kaihui and their children were still alive.15 Mao's life in bandit country was often quite pleasant—he lived in luxury with his sizable personal staff in the various mansions he commandeered.