He Zizhen
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Hè Zǐzhēn (贺子珍) (September 1909 - April 19, 1984) was the third wife of Mao Zedong from May 1928 to 1939.
She was born in Yunshan (云山), Jiangxi and joined the Communist Youth League in 1925. She graduated from the Yongxin Girls' School (永新女子学校) and joined the Communist Party of China in 1926. He Zizhen was introduced to Mao Zedong at Jinggangshan by Yuan Wencai, a classmate of her elder brother, in the spring of 1928. An expert in guerrilla warfare and a capable fighter, He Zizhen was also an excellent shooter who was able to use both of her hands to fire guns on horseback, and she saved Mao from certain death several times in battles.
In 1937 she travelled to the Soviet Union to treat a wound sustained earlier in battle, later attending the Moscow East University (?) (莫斯科东方大学). However, like many Chinese communists in the former-Soviet Union, He Zizhen was persecuted during Stalin's great purges and was lucky to survive and return to China in 1948. In the fall of 1949 she became the chair of the Zhejiang Women's Union (浙江省妇联).
He Zizhen had three daughters and three sons with Mao Zedong, but except for their daughter Li Min, all of them died young or were separated from the family. Their eldest daughter, who was left to a local family in Fujian, was found and recoginized by He Zizhen's brother in 1973 [1]. But that woman never got a chance to meet either Mao or He. Two English researchers who retraced the entire Long March in 2002-2003 located a woman who they believe might be a missing child abandoned by Mao and He to peasants in 1935 [2]. Ed Jocelyn and Andrew McEwen [3] hope a member of the Mao family will respond to requests for a DNA test.
