Marching with Mao

The "Book of Lists" ranked Chairman Mao as the most hated man in the world in 1980. Sixteen years after his death, China could have buried the memory of the Cultural Revolution by putting Mao six feet under. On the contrary he remains six feet above in a monolithic mausoleum. William Lindesay, whose wife is Chinese, benefits from being both insider and outsider, and has been able to discuss the Long March with its veterans, and provides an interview with the mortician who embalmed Chairman Mao. He travels over a period of a year to Mao's birthplace, to the roots of the CCP and the first base area of the communist guerrillas. The 1993 publication of the book coincides with the centenary of his birth. William Lindesay is the author of "Alone on the Great Wall".