Wen Qimei (13 February 1867 – 5 October 1919; born Wen Suqin) was the mother of

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also Romanization of Chinese, romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the List of national founde ...

Life

Wen was born in 1867 in the valley of Sidutaiping, in Xiangxiang county of

Hunan Hunan (, ; ) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China, part of the South Central China region. Located in the middle reaches of the Yangtze watershed, it borders the province-level divisions of Hubei to the north, Jiangx ...

. Her father, Wen Qifu, was a poor shoemaker who was a heavy drinker. Her mother was a 14 year old

concubine Concubinage is an interpersonal and sexual relationship between a man and a woman in which the couple does not want, or cannot enter into a full marriage. Concubinage and marriage are often regarded as similar but mutually exclusive. Concubi ...

of Qifu's when she was born. She had two brothers and two sisters and attended the local Buddhist nunnery for education until she was 10. Her father would beat her mother, so they fled to Shaoshan, Hunan. There, Suqin's mother remarried a 60 years old landowner, which was quite unusual in mainland China at that time. Suqin attended a Baptist school there and passed with honors. At the age of 13, her stepfather arranged her marriage to 10 year old Mao Yichang, who came from a long line of

peasant A peasant is a pre-industrial agricultural laborer or a farmer with limited land-ownership, especially one living in the Middle Ages under feudalism and paying rent, tax, fees, or services to a landlord. In Europe, three classes of peasa ...

s. At the age of 26, Suqin gave birth to

. After the birth of Mao Zedong, his parents were presented with a rooster, as was the local custom. Wen was concerned for her baby's health, having had two sons previously died in infancy. She took the baby to see a Buddhist monk who was living in the mountains, and asked the monk to take care of him. The monk refused, believing that baby Zedong appeared healthy. From there, she traveled to her father's house in a neighboring district, along the way stopping at a temple devoted to the

bodhisattva In Buddhism, a bodhisattva ( ; sa, 𑀩𑁄𑀥𑀺𑀲𑀢𑁆𑀢𑁆𑀯 (Brahmī), translit=bodhisattva, label=Sanskrit) or bodhisatva is a person who is on the path towards bodhi ('awakening') or Buddhahood. In the Early Buddhist schools ...

Guan Yin Guanyin () is a Bodhisattva associated with compassion. She is the East Asian representation of Avalokiteśvara ( sa, अवलोकितेश्वर) and has been adopted by other Eastern religions, including Chinese folk religion. She w ...

, where she prayed that the deity would become Zedong's foster mother. She died of lymphatic cancer on October 5, 1919.

References

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* * * * * * 1867 births 1919 deaths People from Xiangtan Mao Zedong family Chinese farmers Chinese women farmers Deaths from lymphoma Deaths from cancer in China {{China-bio-stub