Deng joined the Chinese Communist Party first as a junior staff member at the party headquarters in Wuhan, serving briefly under Chen Duxiu and meeting the young Mao. He developed a closer relationship with Zhou Enlai, following him to the secret party headquarters in Shanghai. From Shanghai, Deng was dispatched to rural Guangxi to help… Read more »
Deng Xiaoping (1904-1997) was born to a gentry family in Sichuan while Empress Dowager Cixi still sat on the throne. His father saw the upheaval coming to China’s society and rather than giving his son a classical education, he enrolled Deng in a program that sent him to France. Deng spent five years working in factories… Read more »
Cixi grew up in Beijing, in a family of Manchurian bureaucrats. She entered the political scene in 1861, when, as a young concubine to the Xianfeng Emperor, she gave birth to a son. When Xianfeng died after the ravaging of the Summer Palace, Cixi’s four-year-old son stood next in line to the throne. The 26-year-old… Read more »