The 62-year-old widow of Chairman Mao was sleeping at home on Tuesday, October 5, 1976, when Chinese agents knocked on the door. When she opens the door, they hand her an arrest warrant.
“How dare you rebel when Chairman Mao’s body is not yet cold,” she shouts angrily. But First Lady Jiang Qing’s protests no longer make sense.
Jiang Qing met Mao in 1937, shortly after the 23-year-old beauty gave up her promising acting career in Shanghai due to the Japanese invasion.
She fled to Yan’an, where Mao led the communists’ fight against the invasion force. Love blossomed and Mao divorced his second wife. His party comrades only agreed to the new marriage on the condition that Jiang Qing would not interfere in politics.
But the new Mrs. Mao was a staunch communist and could not resist. Under Mao’s rule it became increasingly powerful.
Jiang Qing herself claimed that on his deathbed, Mao gave her permission to continue the revolution with three others – together they are known as the Gang of Four. But that seems unlikely, because Mao’s relationship with his wife was very tense.
As she is taken to a cell, the security service arrests the other members of the Gang of Four, who are suspected of trying to exploit the power vacuum created by Mao’s death.
The future of China is at stake, the leaders of the Communist Party know. If the Gang of Four is not stopped, Mao’s communist experiment will turn into a bloodbath. But the days of revolution are over. It’s time for change.
Fate will set the course for the China that is now the world’s largest industrial country and a superpower.
