Luo Yixiu

Luo Yixiu was the first wife of the later Chinese communist revolutionary and political leader Mao Zedong. Most of what is known about their marriage comes from an account Mao gave to the American reporter Edgar Snow in 1936. Mao said that he was unhappy with the marriage, never consummating it and refusing to live with his wife. Socially disgraced, she lived with Mao’s parents for two years until she died of dysentery.

About Luo Yixiu in brief

Summary Luo YixiuLuo Yixiu was the first wife of the later Chinese communist revolutionary and political leader Mao Zedong, to whom she was married from 1908 until her death. Most of what is known about their marriage comes from an account Mao gave to the American reporter Edgar Snow in 1936. Mao said that he was unhappy with the marriage, never consummating it and refusing to live with his wife. Socially disgraced, she lived with Mao’s parents for two years until she died of dysentery, while he moved out of the village to continue his studies elsewhere, eventually becoming a founding member of the Communist Party of China. Mao’s experience of this marriage affected his later views, leading him to become a critic of arranged marriage and a vocal feminist. He would marry three more times, to Yang Kaihui, He Zizhen and Jiang Qing, the last of whom was better known as Madame Mao.

According to a number of Mao biographers, the ceremony followed traditional rural Hunanese custom. The bride would have been dressed in red, with a red veil over her face, carried by red palquinan family to the groom’s home. There, her veil would have removed and she would have expected to express unhappiness with the groom by publicly insulting him. The wedding would have taken place on the day before the ceremony, with friends and relatives invited to the altar, a display of fireworks, and a kowtow to each groom’s ancestral home. According tradition, both bride and groom would probably take place before the next day’s ceremony, when the bride would be taken to the ancestral altar and the groom to the bride’s. The ceremony would have likely begun with a feast, in which friends and family were invited.