He Zizhen

He Zizhen (20 September 1910 – 19 April 1984) was the third wife of Chairman Mao Zedong from 1928 to 1937.

She was one of the few female soldiers in the First Front Red Army that went on the Long March.

He Zizhen was born in Yunshan (云山, now Yongxin County), Jiangxi, in 1910, as He Guiyuan (贺桂圆), the second of four children.

He's family were impoverished scholar-gentry that ran a tea house and sent He to a free Protestant missionary school in her youth.

When they married, Mao had not divorced his second wife Yang Kaihui, whom he had wed in 1920.

She joined the Communist Youth League of China in 1925 along with her siblings.

He Zizhen later graduated from the Yongxin Girls' School and became a full member of the Chinese Communist Party in 1926.

As a party member He Zizhen was made head of the county's Women's Bureau and worked as a traveling propagandist.

She fought in the Yongxin uprising of 1927 and began serve as a communist partisan.

An expert in guerrilla warfare and a capable fighter, He Zizhen was also an excellent shooter who earned the nickname of "Two-Gunned Girl General".

He Zizhen was introduced to Mao Zedong at Jinggangshan by Yuan Wencai, a classmate of her elder brother, in the spring of 1928.

She and Mao married in 1928.

Yang was arrested and executed in 1930 by the Kuomintang.

While with Mao, He Zizhen restricted herself to clerical work and served as Mao's secretary.

Despite this, she was still severely injured by shrapnel in 1935 and needed to be carried by stretcher on parts of the Long March.

He Zizhen was one of around only 35 women on the Long March, and was pregnant for most of the march.

He Zizhen had three daughters and three sons with Mao Zedong, but except for their daughter, Li Min, all of them either died young or were separated from the family.

This was partially due to the constant movement of the communists as they worked to evade the Kuomintang.

In 1937, Mao had allegedly begun an affair with Wu Lili, the interpreter of journalist Agnes Smedley.

After a confrontation with Mao, He Zizhen traveled to the Soviet Union for treatment of a wound suffered earlier in battle, later attending the Communist Eastern University, under the pseudonym Ven Iun.

In Moscow, in 1938, He Zizhen gave birth to a boy, who died shortly of pneumonia.

Her daughter, Li Min, also suffered pneumonia after arriving in Moscow with Mao Anqing and Mao Anying to accompany He.

According to Mao Anying, He Zizhen suffered severe depression after losing yet another child.

While He Zizhen was in Russia, Mao courted Jiang Qing, who would become his fourth wife.

He Zizhen was reportedly "dispatched to a mental asylum in Moscow to make room for Jiang".

He Zizhen was labeled schizophrenic and confined in a sanitarium between 1942 and 1946.

Upon her return to China in 1947, she found she could not hope to fulfill any sort of political role in Beijing, and moved to southern China, staying variously in Shanghai, Nanchang, and Beijing.

She later became the chair of Zhejiang Province Women's Union.

Their eldest daughter, who was left to a local family in Fujian, was found and recognized by He Zizhen's brother in 1973, but never had the chance to meet Mao or He.

In April 1984, He Zizhen died alone in a hospital in Shanghai.

Two English researchers who retraced the entire Long March in 2002–2003 located a woman whom they believe might be a missing child left in the care of others by Mao and He in 1935.

In 2007, a memorial hall was opened in Yongxin for He Zizhen with her daughter, Li Min, present as a guest.