30 - Mao Zedong

This week we learn about Mao Zedong and his weird obsession with mangos and murder.

Episode Transcript

(00:09):
Welcome to Mistakes Were Made, apodcast about mistakes made in history, hosted
by a real life middle school historyteacher of me, Bobby Smith. Me.
I am teaching my two wonderful butslightly dimwitted friends, Michael Day and
Robert Bacon about history here today.How are you guys doing all right?
Thanks Bobby, I'm raywitted. Yeah, I appreciate. Oh, I'm sorry.

(00:33):
I thought that was a compliment.I didn't get it. Oh boy,
oh boy, Oh is there eggon your face? All right,
guys, I thought we'd open uptonight with a little pop quiz here.
I hate that. It were alwaysreally feels like I'm backing. I don't
like it. I wasn't. Ihad a late night last night. I

(00:55):
can't believe you're given us a popquiz on homecoming night. Indeed, so
before before we get into it kindof exactly what we're what we're going through,
I want to know, Um,who do you think the person who
is I would say, personally responsiblefor the greatest number of deaths in history

(01:15):
is Wow, that's heavy. GenghisKhan, Genghis Khan, It's great,
that's at It's a great, greatguess Okay, we're putting that one out
there. I love that answer.That and why why Genghis Khan? I
know Genghis Khan uh controlled a lotof territory I heard. I don't know
if this is a myth that likeGenghis Khan had sex with so many people

(01:38):
and had so many kids that likea certain percentage of the population can actually
trace their lineage back to him ofChina. It's bonkers. Yeah, is
that the answer? Is that true? That's not what we're doing tonight.
But I do want to do oneon Gengis Khan. Actually, I do
want to do an episode on GengisKhan. Cool, So that is that
is not tonight. He probably killedlike a tenth of Europe, which is

(02:01):
a lot by percentage wise, butthis might be high. Yeah. Yeah,
we we'll deal with this later,but for tonight, this is the
by numbers I think. Uh,And I'll give you I'll give you a
clue. It is uh. Itis modern. It is in the last
one hundred years or so. Heartdisease. His name is heart disease,

(02:23):
doctor heart Disease. I hate thatguy, not a face. It's ironic
because he's a doctor, right U. I yeah, of course Hitler comes
to mind, God awful. Um, but I don't think he's number one.
So take that Hitler, Um.I I'm remembering an old Eddie Izard

(02:43):
stand up bit where he talked aboutsome like travesties like this is it Paul
Pot old Pulpot's another good guess hewas he was a history teacher and then
killed about two million or so Cambodians. As the issues of the numbers there,
but you know, I don't Idon't want to get be on the
books for what number that's just rememberoff the top of my head. But

(03:04):
I'll give you a clue. Doyou think we have any mistakes were made
history fans in China? Because Ireally bet that this episode gets us banned.
Oh no, no, okay,So it's a Chinese a Chinese man,
I assume, Man, you assumecorrectly. And the me Too movement's

(03:29):
got another like two hundred years agoin China. I think, yeah,
I don't know. I have noidea. Bobby, who is it?
Mao Zadong chairman, Mao, oh, chairman, Mao, Yes, indeed,
yes, And hey, I thinkI want to I want to start
with a couple of a little bitabout his history here and then get into

(03:49):
some of the more interesting mistakes thatkilled just millions and millions of people.
Wait, this is gonna be likea real lighthearted episode. Yeah, oh,
very light hearted, super fun nowokay. Also, can I question
a question? A question? Yeah? My hands raised. You can't see
it in the middle of a popquiz. Yeah, it's I thought the

(04:11):
pop quiz is over. Pop quizis over. I'm going into the lecture
now. Yeah. Were all thepeople that he killed by accident? No,
very very intentional. Okay, althoughthere are many by accidents. There
is some accidental death in the yearwhich I want to talk about. My
cousin's the Titanic. Okay, itwas an accident and it happened. Yeah,

(04:34):
there's always going to be some accidents. If you're trying to do you're
trying to kill millions of people,you're gonna accidentally kill some game. I'm
sure you can't make a country withoutkilling about seventy eight million people. Wow.
Um, what yeah, that's that'sthem. The higher end of the
number. Uh. The lower endof the number is China's official number,

(04:55):
which they say only fourteen million.Um. But it's all a lot more
than that, that's not true China. I'm sorry as going to the officially
banned in China. All right,let's let's go through it. A couple
of interesting things about his early life. Mao was born to fairly well to

(05:16):
do parents in China, which fairlywell to do in China meant like his
family literally owned two and a halfacres of land, and you know,
later on bought another acre to threeand a half acres, but that was
enough for them to do well andafford be able to afford to him.
Send Mao to school, he bouncedaround to a couple of different schools.

(05:41):
I'm sorry, what time is thishe was born in and I'm forgive me.
I am really awful with pronunciation here, especially, but he was born
in the Hunan province. I believeShaoshan. Okay, yeah, yeah,
I've had their chicken Shaoshan mountain musicmountain. I'm sorry. What year eighteen

(06:03):
ninety three? Eighteen very cool,it's good to know the year when this
is taking place to Okay, eighteeneighty three, so um so Mal grows
up in an area that is veryrural around farmers, and his dad sends
them to school to get an education, very specifically a Confucian education. A

(06:26):
lot of schools at the time andkind of still today teach Confucius's teachings as
like this is kind of how youshould be. Like if you if you
know enough of confucius As sayings andbeliefs, you'll get an education by just
kind of being able to recite hisum his his sayings and his his wisdom.
There. That is like saying youyou don't need an education. Hey,

(06:48):
kids, instead of going to school, I'm going to send you inside
a t J Max and I'm goingto have you read all these those little
like postery things, little knickknacks thatsay like eat, pray, love,
Home is where you make it.Yeah, yeah, like just and don't

(07:10):
don't sink another Uh, everything happensfor a reason. Actually, I'm just
I'm just listing off shitty tattoos.Uh. Yeah, it just just memories
a bunch of inspirational posters and tattoos. And that's kind of your education.
Okay, that's really but I guessit's eighteen it's the eighteen nineties, so
yeah, a lot of things goat this time, and that was that

(07:33):
was one that that really went welland even though he ended up kind of
hating that educational style. He useda lot of confuciuses sayings a bunch of
times. Well he had all stuff. Yeah, he he had some things.
I imagine that most of Confucius wasvery peaceful, is it not?

(07:55):
Largely? Largely? It's not likeSunsu where he's talking about the art of
war and stuff. It's a lotof you, I'm kind of very calm
and flexible stuff. So yeah,I mean, first the first stuff goes,
let's do that. So yeah,so far I'm not killing anybody.
We'll see exactly. Yeah, okay, Um, but he ended up one
of my favorite little facts, buthe ended up bouncing to a bunch of

(08:15):
different schools a couple of months andkeep moving. Yeah you said he had
to bounce to a bunch of differentschools. Um, how many kids did
he kill at each of these schools? I mean murdering students because it's the
early nineteen hundreds. Okay, itappears to be zero. It appears to
be zero. Okay, okay,all right, so far, so good,
let's go all right. Although myfavorite fact about one of the schools

(08:37):
he bounced into, uh, heended up going to one called the normal
School. Okay, yeah, thatwas actually an old Wow. I can't
believe I know this. Uh.They used to call like a lot of
schools in America, like universities,like normal schools. Time my old college,

(08:58):
University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, itwas originally called like Wisconsin Normal School.
Oh, it's funny. It's suchsuch a weird uh, such a
weird thing, just to make youguys feel normal for rooting for a badger,
eating so much cheese. Yeah,it's all normal, guys, h

(09:20):
yes, how people live. Sobasically at the normal school, he started
to get exposed to other kinds ofeducation, so specifically Western education. Uh.
He really believed that, you knowthat a lot of in a lot
of ways, China should look tothe West, but he had this kind
of China should maintain its cultural identity. So he was really conflicted about it.

(09:43):
Uh, and then kind of startedto get into the communist wing of
of thought process. Yeah. Yeah, and we're going to kind of just
kind of glaze over his early yearsbecause that that rise to power is always
kind of like it's it's weird andconfusing, But basically he ends up and
that's where I am right now.And oh yeah, yeah, my rise

(10:07):
to power. Yeah, yeah,exactly. We'll check back in in ten.
Yeah. He has a real weirdplan where he just wants to sell
like a bunch of sunflower seeds andbecome the sunflower seed king of the America.
Keep I'm rising right now. Justleave. It's a dumb idea,
Mike, and I think you're wastingyour time. And honestly, I think

(10:30):
it's a filthy habit. So no, no plant is taller. That's a
fact. That's a lie. Continue, Bobby, thank you. So we
fast forward to uh like uh likenineteen twenty seven. There's a lot of
uprisings, uprisings, communist uprisings,and then they, the Chinese Army under

(10:58):
Shanghai Shack makes a very specific effortto start and kind of eradicate these these
uprisings. UM So Maw and abunch of other you know leaders of the
time basically pulled everybody up out oftheir you know roots, and kept going
further and further north and further andfurther west for a little while. UM

(11:20):
at a certain point he's basically surrounded. The entire his entire army is surrounded.
UM and they they they somehow theydo this like eight thousand mile march
to this really arid and hard toget to the region. Uh. And
he I think he left with likeone hundred thousand troops and and thirty thousand
made it to this new uh youknow base. Um, it's it's going

(11:46):
really poorly for him. Uh.You know, he's staying around, but
he's you know, fighting with ShanghaiShack and the rulers of regular China.
But he keeps getting more and morefollowers. They keep coming to his side.
Uh. And then in nineteen thirtyfive, Um, I'm gonna miss
us up, it's not I thinkthere's free nineteenth, the Japanese invade the

(12:11):
coast of China. This is thatwhole um you know thing where they're still
not real happy about the what theJapanese did there. Um. And so
Shanghai Check, the leader of kindof regular China, reaches out to Mao
and says, hey, can youhelp me because we need to kind of
join forces and kick the Japanese outof here. Wow. Yeah, yeah,

(12:37):
the enemy of my enemy is myfriend exactly exactly and now absolutely a
bit at that, and together theykind of swept east and kicked the Japanese
with you know, us help outof the provinces there um and eventually and
we don't have to go too farinnoce. Eventually he kind of took pa

(13:00):
hour and forced Shanghai shack you know. They America actually came in and tried
to set up a government that wouldyou know, have both leaders in charge.
But it didn't go well, andhe just kind of consolidated power.
And then of course Shanghai Shik andhis army retreated to the island of Taiwan,

(13:22):
and that is still a disputed region. Right. Taiwan thinks it's its
own independent country because it is neverformally kind of surrendered to China, and
China says no, Taiwan is definitelystill a part of China, and that
is still a thorny issue. Youlived there, you want to talk about
that, Yes, when I livedin Taiwan, they are not fans of

(13:43):
China or the Chinese. They saysome pretty mean things and during like soccer
games and stuff, they're like ChinaThey're terrible. No, not really into
sports like that. It's not it'seven they're more of a base ball they're
more Japanese and they are Chinese.I mean, they all speak Mandarin Chinese,

(14:05):
but the culture is very more leaningtowards Japan. They really like Japan.
One funny thing about this though,I when I lived there, there
was a festival called There's not alot of festivals, not a lot of
holidays that you actually get off,but one that you do get off is
the moon Pie Festival. And Idon't know if this is part of it.

(14:28):
Where Like as legend goes, Ithink when Taiwan and China were fighting,
they in order to communicate, theylike put messages in pies and then
that but like pies that only likeTaiwanese people liked, and like the Chinese
didn't like, or it might havebeen like this might be a Japan Taiwan

(14:52):
fight thing. I'm not the historyteacher here, don't hold me to this
pipe. But basically there's a wholefestival based upon this one side winning because
they communicated through pies. Wow.Yeah cool. And I'm sitting there and
I'm like, this is silly anyway. Thanks Giving and then and I'm like,

(15:13):
oh, yeah, Thanksgiving stupid too. I guess they're all real weird.
Yeah yeah, so far, I'mblown away that somebody with a name
is cool as Shanghai Check is gotbooted here. I just believe that up,
you guys, it's me. Sharegoes on for like nine years and

(15:33):
then his his asses on an islandand they're still fighting over who owes it
Boom Shanghai Check. But now Mousein charge and he can finally put his
you know, communist plan to work. But what he really wants to do
is basically industrialize the nation and start. Yeah, definitely, these are good

(15:56):
goals, these are good goals.So far, so good, so so
far. I mean, Mao hasbeen a military leader and had a civil
war and definitely killed people in attacks. But you're still like under the heading
of general. So so far thedeath count, I'm going to leave it
at zero, even though there arestill plenty of people that Mao was,

(16:18):
you know, responsible for. We'regonna we're still leave at zero here,
Okay. And then starting in nineteenfifty, he basically started taking land away
from people who owned it and givingit to the people. I'm kind of
making them. Basically, he said, every let let me see every single

(16:41):
town at least one landlord, andusually set him quoting here, at least
one landlord and usually several in virtuallyevery village save for public execution. Whoa
what? And when you're talking aboutevery village in China and you do that,
the death's estimate for that range betweentwo five million. Hold on time,

(17:03):
and this is this is the warmup murder. This is insane.
You jumped to murder. You jumpedto murder so quick. I don't know
what has happened. Hold on,you said this guy just walked into like
a snocco who was buying a gatorade, and then all of a sudden,
two million people are dead. Somethinghappened, Yeah, hold on, hold
on, yes, hold on,go back. You said that they need

(17:26):
to give up land and then justwent right into murder. How dare you
saying in order instead of just takingtheir land, he killed all of them
a lot of times, so youknow he didn't usually get he asked of
donating their land. I think hejust went and murdered them and said,
hey, guess what Greg's did?You all owned Greg's farm? Now?

(17:47):
But I liked Greg? Yeah,but we didn't. Greg was secretly stealing
from you. Greg's got a prettynice farm. Well, now we have
a pretty nice farm. Well waitI'm getting part of it. I like
farms. Yeah, you see,you see how people kept him in power
there? Right? Oh okay,yeah, well fuck Greg? Then hey,
did what did he actually carry outthe murders or did what I thought

(18:12):
you said? No? What Ithought you said was that somehow like because
of the structure that he's put inplace, the town ended up killing some
of their own to to divide things. But that didn't happen, did it?
Is that? Well? I meana little bit sort of you know,

(18:32):
like I mean he'd send out,you know, delegates of you know,
his government to make sure that peoplewere following his orders and doing you
know, and then it was becamelike a one upping thing of how to
impress the inspectors. Right, solike hey, we killed Greg God right,
yes, right, that's right,that's what so hold on, check

(18:56):
this out. So then this meansthat there's probably like let's just say,
for for make things easy, thatthere's like ten people in a village,
right, and they get word fromthe village over hey they're sending they're sending
over people to murder other people too, so we could have their land so
instead of just sitting here waiting forthem to show up and pick who they

(19:19):
want to kill. Maybe we shouldall, you know, vote somebody off
the island sucks. Okay, Steve, Hey, st Paul? Have you
have you talked to Steve Paul?Steve is like Stevel drone on about how
he's working on his farming tools.He makes them by hand, and they're
they're terrible. It's a it's astick. It's basically a stick. He's

(19:40):
farming with a stick. I think, come on, guys, guys boring,
Okay, Paul, I just wantto know. I just want everybody
to know that we're going to vote. Okay, So that's so that's one
vote for Steve. Yeah, Iwould like to vote Paul. Okay,
Steve has voted for Paul. Sothat's one wheld that come from Steve.

(20:03):
Sorry, what are you going tosay about the amazing voice? I was
gonna say that it's just that wholelike we're going to go into a place
and kill a whole bunch of people, and every town has been done throughout
history. The word, you know, the origin of the word decimate,
I do not DECKI is a Romanfor ten and decimate was the Roman legion

(20:26):
going into a town and as punishment, killing one of every ten people.
Just doing that. Wow, Okay. It's also done to legions that were
cowardly, just as punishment, youright away from battle, so you will
be decimated. Which wasn't like ahey, general destroying you. It was
a we're going to kill one ofevery ten of you. Yes, But
this was in the nineteen indeed,this was in the nineteen fifties. I

(20:51):
got so much more. I gotso much more. I want to I
want to keep going. I wantto get out of exists. I'm sorry.
So after this, and after he'salready you know, killing some people
and getting his getting his murder warmedit warmed up, he launches his first
five year plan from nineteen fifty three, I got a five year plan.
It was a fighter plan with theassistance of the Soviet Union. He wanted

(21:12):
to build a whole bunch of newindustrial plants and shift from this agricultural production
to industry. Well that turned out, you know, I mean, especially
this first five year plan was okay. I mean, he's still killed more
millions of people, but it wasgoing our you know, all right,

(21:34):
Ish, A lot of people weren'thappy about what he was doing, and
you know, like kicking people offtheir land to build factories. Kieopleh Greg
they hated this and then possibly oneof the most amazing and uh just cunning

(21:56):
moves of all times after the fiveyear Plan, which went eh. But
you know, some people liked itand a lot of people didn't, especially
the educated elites, especially the cities, did not like this. He had
something called the hundred Flowers campaign.Have you ever heard of it? No?
Yeah, this is this is somethingpeople refer to. Has still in

(22:18):
politics today. So the hundred Flowerscampaign was was MoU said, Hey,
I think that we should have alot of different a lot of different voices,
a lot of different thoughts and waysto do things. I want to
hear from you right to me.Tell me all the things I'm doing wrong

(22:38):
so that I can fix them andput your dress on there. And we're
not going to kill you. Iprobably we will not come to your house
and kill you. I dys tomake sure you spell it out how many
people live in that house? Thankscomplaint the complaint box at like a work
or something. Yeah, yes,yeah, just like from the office us.

(23:00):
Having Michael is not ever going tobe a good thing. Totally anonymous
we promised. Yeah, about abouthalf a million people or so who wrote
in and criticized him, he straightup murdered and then put millions more in
re education camps. My god,I told you not to send that letter,

(23:22):
Jeremy, I told you not tosend that letter. No, nothing
gets through to a dictator like astrongly worded letter. Oh my god.
Wait, But the bigger question isdid he take any of those criticisms and
implement like change, you know,I kind of That's the biggest I think

(23:45):
there's there's some debate on this asto whether this was his plan all along,
or whether he was just shocked atthe reaction that he got and then
decided to kill everyone. Was helike, was he expecting all compliments and
no, nobody's saying anything bad,and then all of a sudden he was
not expecting the number of replies thathe got. I my agy. The
analogy of my head is a guyis in the middle of robbing a bank

(24:08):
and everyone is on the floor andhe's like, Okay, everyone, I'm
gonna pass around slips of paper.I want you to write what you think
of this bank robbery so far andhow I'm doing. How do you feel
all right. So the big mistake, the big mistake that we're covering tonight

(24:29):
is the great leap forward. Thegreat leap forward is what he called the
next the second five year plan thathe started in nineteen fifty eight, and
there were there were a number ofdifferent tenants and each one was just a
colossal disaster. First was he cancontinued to take a land away from people

(24:52):
and in fact not just the landownersbut just about everyone, and forced farmers
to live on communes to get otherand it kind of took over all of
their took over all their land,of the stewardship of their land, and
told them what they were going togrow if they weren't going to grow,
and in fact, a lot ofpeople what he wanted to do was he

(25:15):
really was desperate to equal the productionof America and the Britain and Soviet steel.
So he was all about having peopleproduce as much iron as possible.
Now, the problem was that oneof the ways in which he went to
did this was he asked people tolike just like smell in their backyards and

(25:41):
like build small furnaces and if youdidn't meet the quota for a certain percentage
of like iron and steel produced.You know, they might kill your town.
So so people ended up like,well, we got to come up
with more steel and like their toolsand melting their walks and pots and cooking

(26:03):
utensils to try to come up withenough iron. And then they just couldn't
farm and they couldn't do everything else. Um, stop, Bobby, Stop
fucking Christ Bobby. You can't.You can't tell us that he forced people
to live on communes. Then heforced them to become iron miners and smelters.

(26:26):
You can't tell us that then becausethey couldn't come up enough, they
just started melting their tools. Sothen then they couldn't use tools to smelt
and make things, to kind ofjust cannibalize themselves and move on to a
new point. You have you haveto stop at some point and let my
brain understand what this man I've done. I got one more than then your

(26:49):
brain can catch up. Oh mygod. He made a part of this
um was that he had a wantedto eradicate uh four great pests. He
wanted to destroy all the mosquitoes andflies and rats and sparrows. Whoa hold

(27:15):
on one of these is not likethe other? Yep, don't you don't
you need the sparrows to eat theflies and mosquitoes. Oh, I know
how an ecosystem works. Where wereyou when Matt was discovered? Was figuring
out this plan? Well, somebodyshould have instead of colossal disaster. I

(27:37):
mean, the sparrows ate the bugsthat were keeping the crops down. He
thought that they were eating the seedsand the fruit and to they killed about
two hundred million sparrows. Cool,Oh my god, So how did they
do that? Then you tell theenergized, and you tell you, you
tell your you know, your millionsof followers to kill sparrows, and they,

(27:57):
you know, have stopped arrows stompingparties in the streets and they destroy
their nests and they bang pots tokeep them from resting, and they just
have a heart attack and die.Basically. Yeah, there's estimates about two
hundred million sparrows were very nearly eradicatedin China. So can I just say
that Steve does not find enough wormsfor all of us? Can I just

(28:21):
say that he really does it?I think we should get rid of him.
If we're getting why are we tryingto find worms? But is that
what we do? That's what wedo. We're sparrows. We should be
eating mosquitoes. You're the reason whywe're in trouble. No, I've been
doing it wrong the whole time.I've been looking for worms. I think
we should kill Paul. No,God again, it's me. It backfires

(28:42):
every time. So instead of sendingthis guy notes on things that he should
have improved, someone should have senthim a biology book or any kind of
science book that has ecosystems in it. This is I mean, the mosquitoes
I get, But what were thefour again? Mosquitoes, mosquitoes, rats

(29:06):
and sparrows, Rats and sparrows,mosquitoes, flies, rats and sparrows.
I would have got rid of wasps. I don't like wasps. Uh spiders.
Oh, spiders freaked me out.Um oh, I don't think maybe
maybe something. What's a centipedes?They're gross? I don't need those?

(29:26):
And uh, what's a bird?I don't like? What's a dumb?
The dodo? I would to getrid of the dodo? Oh, well,
it was already way gone by nineteenHe realized that you're well too late,
and that changed it to bed bugs. Wow, yeah, why not?
I would have picked bed bugs mosquitosleeches uh and um uh people who

(29:52):
people who walk in the middle ofthe sidewalk the worst. Second side,
Okay, there's a great propaganda propagandaposter of you know, a Chinese sword
being sliced through all four of thesecreatures at once, like a giant mosquito
and a fly and a spare ona rat. Anyway, so the result
of this, in addition to alsodeclaring that they were going to be doing

(30:18):
some new um uh harvest techniques,They're going to do some new agriculture techniques
like plowing the fields six feet deepfor root growth, which didn't do anything,
and planting crops close together so theycould lean against each other and support
each other up, which also wasbad. Oh my god, yes,

(30:41):
anything, all of this change isthat over. They canceled the five year
plan three years in because and betweenthirty and seventy million people died. Wow,
and was did mouse still have didmoose still have that mission accomplished banner

(31:03):
behind him? Fifteen three years?Basically a day one. Now, so
many people were obviously so hard upfor food that cannibalism became a problem.
No are you serious? China atthis time literally produced propaganda posters basically instructing

(31:26):
families to not kill and eat theirown children. Oh my god. Yeah,
first of all, hold on,time out. Again. This is
if you were in the position whereyou have to kill and eat your own
children. Do you think that peoplewere like, all right, I guess

(31:48):
it's time to eat little billy here. Oh wait, hold on, let
me read this poster first. Yeah'ssee what it's. Oh, apparently I
shouldn't be eating my own children.I think everybody knows that. But I
think we ought to make up animage to help us. Remember why.
Yeah, they spent resources on postersinstead of just getting food for these people.

(32:13):
Yeah, and again that this,this desire to please the communist leaders
in the village made their situation evenworse because you had to have a certain
amount of food produced, and youdidn't want to be under that, so
you lied, trying to say asa farmer, you said, oh,
I've I've grown a hundred tons ofgrain, and you really grew ten.

(32:37):
So they said, oh great,give us ten you know, ten million
pounds, and they ran off withall your food, thinking you had more,
when of course you didn't. Allright, so I've got some I've
got some individual kind of little anecdoteshere, because the other thing that happened
is when the people are starving.One of the groups of people that gets

(33:01):
the most um a little cruel andunusual and brutal treatment are prisoners. Anybody
breaking the law is in for atough time here. So many of the
people that were arrested for the slightestin fact in fraction were executed or just
left to starve. Um. Thereare lots of million, thousands and thousands

(33:24):
of examples of them being mutilated orfording forcing people to eat their own excrement.
Oh yeah, oh yeah. Soif um they didn't just like arrest
people to use them for like,uh, free labor, did they like

(33:45):
that that practice? Oh that wasabsolutely around. Yeah, I mean,
and they would literally be worked,you know, to death. On one
report dated November thirtieth, nineteen sixty, UH tells of a man named Wang
Xiao who had one of his earschopped off, his legs tied up with
iron wire, and a ten kilogramstone dropped on his back before he was

(34:07):
branded with a sizzling tool. Whatdo you think his crime was, Oh,
standing in the middle of the sidewalk. Oh yeah, he would have
deserved it. That was what itwas. But it's probably much worse.
Did he write a letter basically,I know, digging up a potato?

(34:28):
What? Oh my god. Thatwasn't for him, it was for the
irishman. I put that. Onlyone Irish person in China was like,
it's my potato. Wow. No, we just drifted into racism there a
little bit. Um. There's anotherawful story. A boy village and the

(34:52):
local you know, communist boss thereforced his father to bury his son alive
on the spot because why because hestole a handful of grain. Oh my
god. They went back in anineteen sixty nine to interview the survivors of
the famine, and they found outthem the father died of grief about three

(35:13):
weeks afterwards. Can you die ofgrief? I think that you can.
I think that you can just beso depressed that your body just shuts down.
How come, l how come CharlieBrown still alive? That's a great
question. That is he is resilient? Yeah, I think Charlie Brown somehow
works in here. I think it'sbecause he's he's more, he has more

(35:35):
of a good grief. Oh yeah, that's the difference. Get out get
out of the podcast. You're welcome. Yeah, so I'm not an infraction.
So again, MoU's got all theseu you know, his he had
a lot of meetings where his thoughts, he wanted his thoughts recorded all the
time. So he's got a lotof like really awful cruel quotes about this

(35:58):
that are attributed to him, likein nineteen fifty nine and apparently in a
meeting he's said he said, whenthere is not enough to eat, people
start to death, it's better tolet half the people die so that the
other half can eat their phil OhI know this guy, his name's Thanos.
Yeah, yeah, but that wasn'teven was happening, right like that,
That's not what was happening. Therewas no who was thriving the higher

(36:23):
ups. If you're a higher upin the government, imagine if you're one
of the owners of said in industriesthat they're changing over to. Where Bobby
were those communist leaders in the townswere they doing? Okay? I mean
you know, Ish, yeah,Ish, you gotta figure that you know
better to be you know, kidking of the dump here than you know,

(36:45):
at the bottom. But I mean, if you have a hand,
they were also just as afraid alot of times, you know, as
if they were in charge of one, you know, tiny region that wasn't
producing as much grain. You know, they go they started going out there
and cracking the whip, you know, because they didn't they didn't also want
to get punished or sent to aconcentration camp. And it sounds like to
me, you couldn't have done aworse job running a country. It's like

(37:08):
he was he took over somebody's business, but instead of a business, it
was a very large country, andhe did it, made every wrong decision,
and it just ran it into theground and everyone suffered. It's just
awful. I like that on youranalogy, Mike. You made it a
business for two seconds and then youswitched it to a country. Well,

(37:30):
yeah, it was. It wasa business. We were making money,
and then wow, we were justa bankrupt casino. And the end result
of this is that it was acolossal failure and people hated it, and
he kind of fell out of powerfor a while. And yeah, people
realized that this was awful and hestarted to lose political influence, and another

(37:53):
kind of you know group in theCommunist party there took over um and then
um, he took it back acouple of years later in nineteen nineteen sixty
nine, nineteen seventy. It's uh, it's really it's a truly bonkers story

(38:14):
about exactly how um basically he kindof ingratiated himself with the youth of the
country and then um called people likehe started like saying like, oh,
the these old leaders of the enemyof the people, even though he was,
you know, one of the oldleaders until very recently, it was

(38:34):
only two years apparently you just saidit was not any I think he really
fell a power power in nineteen sixtytwo, sixty three. Uh, and
then he started gain power again andwas the leader again, I think in
sixty nine. I'm oh my god, it's too recent. It's scary recent.
Yeah, it's scary recent. It'sscary recent. Well, let's go,

(38:57):
let's go to some truly bonkers facts. Okay, now here to to
bring us a close it would bea little bit later, lighter hearted.
Um, it has to be.Yeah, all right, So um Mal
never did this kind of his quizfor you guys. Okay, never did
this. He just drank tea andchewed the leaves instead. Oh, let's

(39:22):
say you get you got it.He never drank alcohol. I like that,
guess, but that's not it.You wait, I was I was
gonna I was gonna say he neverhula hooped. Okay, he just chewed
the leaves instead of drank tea.What about opium? Never did opium?

(39:42):
Oh, I had to mention thathe actually kind of eradicated opium and fifties
Yeah, he was all about that. Yeah, so he did one good.
He never brushed his teeth. Why, rarely, if ever showered.
He was he would just go swimmingall the time and have people tel Dryan.
I can't imagine how many of those, uh, those letters that people

(40:05):
filling out the survey mentioned that heyman, maybe you should shower otherwise everything's
cool. He got like sent likea bunch of toothbrushes. He uh.
In a nineteen sixty two, hehad a sexual relationship with a fourteen year
old girl. Of course he did. She was a member of the Chinese

(40:30):
Air Forces cultural troops, like adancer, uh, and Mao would invite
her backstage and the girl, yeah, she's a fourteen year old girl who
is a who whose job is todance in front of the Air Force Air
Force. Yea, that's her job. Yeah, okay, yeah, you

(40:52):
know what, there are families eatingtheir own children. You're happy for any
job. You're happy to dance.You would would absolutely dance. I mean
yeah, I mean my first jobwhen I was fourteen was I worked at
a canoe rental. But okay,so uh. When this girl told her

(41:12):
parents that she was having, youknow, an affair with Mao, her
father wrote an angry letter to him. No, no, no, yeah,
it's actually has a happy ending.The letter was returned by a postal
worker who opened it and read itand said, this is man that he

(41:34):
will act, actually be. Youwill be put to death for this,
ye did he? The rage thata father has for his daughter is so
great that he when he wrote that, he had to have known that,
like he was basically signing his owndeath, like he was gonna get murdered,
right, right? He think heknew that it's sixty two, it's

(41:54):
nineteen sixty two. Stuff's been badfor long enough that he should have known
exactly what was going to happen.People are eating babies like yeah, breakfast.
In nineteen seventy three, when malmet with Richard Nixon, actually he
earlier met with kiss Kissinger, andthis is when he had this, um

(42:16):
uh, this idea. He wasworried about Chinese overpopulation all the time,
which is why he did a lotto kind of keep that in check.
But he still considered his country tohave an excess of women, and he
offered to ship ten million women tothe United States in nineteen seventy and Nixon
was like, go on. Theyinitially kind of laughed like he was making

(42:40):
a joke, and then realized thathe was serious. Oh my god,
we're gonna look into that kind ofthing. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get
back to him up with his offer. Yeah, can we send you a
letter? I mean what you callus? You call us when Nixon is
like, wow, man, thisguy's corrupt. Yeah right, it's crazy.

(43:00):
Okay. Right, So when youthink of when you think of Mao
and you if you studied him oryou've heard of him once or twice,
you probably can imagine the portrait ofhim. Right. He's got that kind
of like bald guy haircut with theedges you know, coming out just a
little bit wing dingy kind of thingfrom the head. He's got that gray

(43:22):
suit on. It's a picture.It's a big portrait that's hanging in Tianament
Square. Yeah. And because it'sit's outside all the time, you know,
like anything else that is you know, outside all the time, it
fades due to you know, thesun bleaching. But for years it would
appear every so often to be freshlypainted, and the Chinese government would basically

(43:44):
insist that it was a miracle.And then they finally confessed that, uh
no, there were two paintings andthey switched them back and forth and repaint
them. And the artist is onlyallowed for the rest of their life to
paint that. Are you serious?Yeah, they're they're like, they're only
allowed to paint I think communist figures. Uh. And they they've the workshop

(44:07):
is a metal house with no windowsto prevent there from being any kind of
fire. Wait wait wait wait Bobby, Bobby still oh still what still wait?
We still we still keep a portraitup of this guy and there's still
an artist who's only allowed to painthim and other um as far as I

(44:30):
know, yes, as as Iunderstand it. Yeah, oh boy,
Oh they've they've they've got a lotbefore that, me too. Movement,
You're right, yeah, we getways to go. They have to Jesus
China. Google Square for more information. Well Square, I know about but
that, Oh I did not knowthat that's what they did with the paintings.

(44:51):
All right, just just a couplemore here, uh he one the
last thing, one last thing.Have they thought about getting, you know,
a big screen imbotron and then youdon't? Yeah, it would be
quite the saving. They've seen theJumbotron's right, they've seen like with a
Cowboys. I think he should meetwith Jerry Jones. Yeah, maybe,

(45:12):
yeah, Jerry Jones probably as anlike Jerry Jones. You know, Jerry
Jones should donate just like part ofthat giant screen and they could just use
that and then whoever's painting can youknow, live their normal life? Um,
what did Mao believe that he neededto do or that he was doing
all the time that would help himlive longer? Oh, drinking mercury?

(45:35):
I know that was big. Ohno, but I love that answer.
Wait, he was doing it orhe's doing this all the time and he
believed to help him live longer.Okay again, I'm gonna go with hula
hooping. I'm already sure that thisis a thing here. I mean,
you're gonna be right one time whenI think so keep it was, of
course sex with young women. No, no, we never want the answer

(46:00):
to be that. Come on,ye yep, yep, his declining yang
he required the waters of yin meaningvaginal secretions. Yeah, that's oh god,
damn it. I mean, Idon't know why. I'm surprised.
The guy's a fucking awful, awfulhuman being. Oh and what since we're
an awful human being? Uh?He he had a sexually transmitted parasitic disease

(46:27):
that his physician told him was easilycured, but he said it doesn't affect
me, and the women that Isleep with are proud to be infected.
Ah, it's apparently a direct quote. Wow, that's like a drunk,
idiotic frat boy thing to say,all right, yeah, I got media,
but it's easy to clean up andI can have this one shot.

(46:52):
But no thanks, yea rather painSo the last factor happy about maw uh
well um is one of the mostbizarre or hard to explain. So there's
a lot of imagery and paintings ofhim and he's holding a mango and it's

(47:14):
so bizarre to explain. But innineteen sixty eight, the Pakistani Foreign minister
presented now with some mangoes, anda lot of people in China, most
of China had never seen a mangobefore, and so he weirdly used it
the fruit as a propaganda tool tobe like, you know, like they

(47:35):
have delivered me this rare and amazingfruit. And it became like a weird
symbol of mouth support for the workersbecause he'd like go to a factory and
bring them a mango and like,hey, guys, the mango conservative and
like not like prey to the mango, but put it up on an altar.

(47:57):
When it started to rot, theyboiled it and then made like a
soup. They would all drink fromit. It was like people would cry
about being able to like like touchthe mango that Mao brought to them.
It's very strange. Hey guys,I know a lot of people have died.
I know that we don't have anyfood. Yes, I'm having sex
with tons of underage girls, butwe do have mangoes. What does that

(48:24):
never say that before? Exactly isthat there's so snata fruit that's magic.
Mangoes were such a symbol of mousesupport that you couldn't even like talk shit
about a mango. A dentist froma small village compared a mango to a

(48:45):
sweet potato, and he was executedfor malicious slandero. What did he say
about the mango? I don't knowwhat I did? He was he just
like similar shapes and they kind ofI've no idea. Was he just eating
it? Was he just eating it? And he went, I mean it's
not that good good? Maybe thatwas enough. I'm sure his final words

(49:08):
were like, but I like sweetpotatoes. Yeah. Uh So, any
questions from you guys, anything wecovered the number one question? Uh if
your quiz that you gave us isanything like what you give your seventh graders,
please change it. That is,you can't talk for two straight minutes

(49:30):
about the mango and expect me tonot have this deep desire to interrupt you,
to like, I want to stop. I want to talk about the
first mango bit and then you couldtell me more about it. It's it's
too much to find out that notonly was there a painting of him with
the mango, but then Jimmy Buffettfan for the last mango in Paris.

(49:52):
It's a big, awesome god hewas. He was super groovy yeah,
no, no, he kind ofhe kind of knew that he was dying
towards the end. There. Ihave a question, actually, yeah,
how how did he die? Pleasetell me it was a painful, awful
death. Oh it was not,Come on, ye sadly. Uh,

(50:14):
this guy never get his that's justawful. I forget what he was dying
up. But he loved a smoke. He smoked all the time, and
you know, had a sexually transmitteddisease. Kind of forget, but I
mean his body was he died inI think nineteen seventy six, and his
body was preserved and you can stillgo and see it in Tianamen Square.
Oh many in that communist leader legacyof will in intomb and embomb you and

(50:39):
put you on display for all time. Is there a mango in the case
with it? I bet. Imean there's a lot of there's a lot
of mango imagery related to him,just all over the place, and it's
just, you know, it's reallystrange. But I'm gonna be honest.
Mangoes aren't that good. Yeah,they're they're they're good. They're good.

(51:02):
They're like a right, mangoes great, But they are a lot of worberry.
Yeah, I'd rather have a strawberryor a banana. A peach.
Mangoes just kind of a big peach. I want mango in a smoothie with
strawberry. Strawberry mango is great,but like, I don't want to make
it myself. I want something tocut that mango up. Yeah, I

(51:22):
guess. I guess what I'm sayingis if I had to choose between like
the work involved to eat a mangoor like eating my firstborn son, I'd
probably just see my kid. Yeah. I mean it's easier, it's just
yeah, they're softer. Yeah,just roast him. Wow. Um,
So you don't know what he diedof. When did he die? I

(51:45):
believe it was nineteen seventy six,and you can see his crystal coffin at
the mausoleum in Oh my god,damnon square crystal crystal. I don't know
if it's actually made a nineteen seventysix. September ninth, nineteen seventy six,
he was five nine. Uh yeah, I just looked him up.

(52:07):
Wow crazy wow. Well yeah,any other questions, guys, I mean,
was there any mistakes for him?I mean just that he killed you
know, there's a lot of differentestimates, but if you kill on the
high sight of all the different estimates, you're talking like one hundred million people,
and even even like the lowest estimatesby the Chinese government trying to make

(52:31):
it as rosy as possible, talkabout unless I said only fourteen million people.
Um, but it really is thelargest death toll by a single person
in human history. So with witha lot of sparrows was definitely a mistake.
Man. That was Yeah, that'sinsane. You know, you're trying
all these unproven agricultural techniques at thesame time you're relocating every farmer in your

(52:54):
country. At the same time you'regonna kill all the sparrows. Yeah.
Yeah, it was a disaster.I'm going to say a big problem is
to say five years to do allthat is really a lot. I mean,
if you want to switch overitious togo from being a mostly agricultural economy
to an industrial economy, five yearsis not enough time. It's y ambitious.

(53:20):
Yep, it was. One mightsay too ambitious. Yeah, I
mean most people it takes it takesa lot of people five years to finish
college. This is true. You'reasking a whole country to change whole country,
change in less time than it takesfor somebody to become a doctor.
What gets me about it is thatno point did we see something terrible happened

(53:45):
to him that he that influenced hisbehavior. Like with Hitler, I think
the thing that you always hear aboutit is like, oh, well he
was a painter and he was rejectedas a painter and as an artist,
and so like that's kind of spurredhis his you know, rage um.
But like with this guy, yousaid, he grew up in a in

(54:07):
a decent household and plenty of land, he went to school. He why
why did you do what you did? There was no when you find a
way to justified that the end thatthe ends justify the means, there's an
awful lot that you can do topeople and call it progress. And he
was all about it, you know. He you know, he knew that

(54:28):
he he millioned, he knew thathe killed all these people. And I
think he, you know, Idon't know, might privately admit to like
things like the sparrow you nonsense,being a mistake, but you know it's
uh, he thought that he reallyhelped his country. Wow, my favorite,
my hero in this story is thatmailman was, Hey, dude,

(54:49):
I just started opening every letter that'sgoing to the emperor, and yeah,
here you go. I'm gonna givethis one back to you checking in your
friend. Yeah. I think thatwas the right call to Um. Well,
I think we learned. There's agreat takeaway from this, obviously about
what you just said, Bobby,and how uh you shouldn't make these mistakes

(55:10):
just because you're you're trying to makethese these moves for the greater good and
you believe that that is the wayto go. Um And I hope that
we learned something from this. China. I hope that China learned something.
Do you guys think mistakes were made? Yeah, mistakes were made.