What Mao Taught Me About Swimming
By Vanessa Hua
When I first saw the grainy footage, I rewound it again and again, mesmerized by a rare glimpse of mortality in someone who I’d always thought was larger than life. In 1966, Mao Zedong—Communist leader and founder of the People’s Republic of China—was filmed bobbing on his back in the murky Yangtze River, his balding head and flabby belly poking above the waves. He scissor-kicks in an ungainly side stroke before flipping onto his back. I felt a strange ambivalence with how normal it all looked.
My parents were born in China, and even though they never spoke of Mao, his presence reverberated beyond the country’s borders. I don’t remember how or when I learned about him, but his visage—broad nose, high forehead, and full mouth with a hint of a smile—is as recognizable as Einstein’s. It’s been endlessly replicated: a massive painting in Tiananmen Square, on the cover of millions of copies of the “Little Red Book,” adorning Warhol’s kitschy silk screen prints.
The publicity stunt in the Yangtze River would dispel rumors of his ill health and set the stage for the Cultural Revolution, his violent campaign to regain power, which began that same year, and lasted until Mao’s death in 1976. For the next decade, efforts to expel his enemies and burnish his reputation would throw China into chaos. Neighbors would turn on neighbors, children on their teachers. Schools would close and teenage Red Guard would tear apart the homes of the accused and parade the counterrevolutionaries in the streets. Although the death toll remains unknown, it’s estimated that millions died.
My parents watched it unfold from afar in the Midwest, where they’d landed fellowships to attend graduate school in science and engineering in the early 1960s. Eventually, they settled in the suburbs east of San Francisco to raise me and my siblings. In the airy house my father designed, they could provide us with the peace and stability missing from their own childhoods, when they’d been on the run, first from the Japanese in the 1930s, and then the Communists, whose rise to power a decade later prompted my parents’ exodus to Taiwan.
We were one of the few Chinese families living in that tranquil neighborhood nestled in the hills. I grew up in a time with sparse representation of Asian Americans in pop culture. Seeing “Made in China” or “Made in Taiwan” stamped on the bottom of poorly made toys shamed me, as if I were cheap by association. I tried to fit in. In middle school, I pegged my Guess jeans, permed my straight black hair, and slung a canvas Esprit bag over my shoulder. The bullies found me anyway.
At the community pool—a shimmering trapezoid worthy of Hockney—my father taught me and my siblings how to swim. It was my first experience with the notion of escape. I loved the way I felt in the water, free and unencumbered, far from my adolescent world of confusion and insecurity, practicing handstands and somersaulting like a seal.
Meanwhile, my parents spoke little of the past, preferring to put down roots and focus on the future. But the mystery of our history intrigued me and my siblings. For as long as I can remember, I told stories, using my imagination to fill in the gaps of what no one in my family would tell me. Because I felt like an outsider in my hometown, I was always trying to get at the inside of things, of people. And with this childhood impulse sparked my desire to write fiction.
When I first saw the grainy footage, I rewound it again and again, mesmerized by a rare glimpse of mortality in someone who I’d always thought was larger than life.
While working on my novel Forbidden City about Mao’s teenage protégée and lover, I’d grappled with how to portray the Chinese leader, who seemed more like mythology than flesh. It was only after I saw the footage from the Yangtze River that I began to think about Mao in terms that I could understand—as a fellow swimmer, a body in motion, in the water, slipped from earthly constraints.
I’m not alone: He garnered support for the Cultural Revolution in part by engaging in a sport familiar to his people. However, I wasn’t a young idealistic student, aching to carry on the revolution he began. As an author, I had to navigate the tension of including “relatable” autobiographical details while also portraying the horrors he prompted. But I’d argue that villains are all the more chilling when we understand that they’re human, too.
After Mao proclaimed half the Chinese population should be able to swim, local officials organized mass events in rivers and seas, and factories and schools built makeshift pools. Paging through a fascinating paper by historian Shuk-Wah Poon, I was astonished to learn that the swimming fad Mao commenced would end up empowering those who wanted to flee the madness of the Cultural Revolution. After honing their technique, thousands—perhaps tens of thousands—of freedom swimmers set off for Hong Kong and Macau, navigating past sharks and soldiers. Exactly how many survived, how many died remains unknown. Mao surely thought of them as traitors. The sport that once held them in his thrall, that they once considered revolutionary, became the means of their escape. I savored the irony.
Far from my ancestral homeland, I raised children in a country that Mao considered an enemy. Yet, I’m struck by the connection across the decades: how the freedom swimmers pushed back to move forward, the same strokes my family now takes in our neighborhood pool. I’ve been thinking about how it served as an escape for Mao, and the similar ways that swimming has shaped me too: the waters offering much contemplation and ease, but also a chance to feel strong and sure of myself.
I did not become a dedicated swimmer until my mid-twenties, after I’d injured myself from running and needed low-impact exercise. At the local YMCA, I learned to lengthen my arms and rotate my body efficiently and smoothly, and haven’t stopped since. In the years I spent writing Forbidden City, countless laps helped me break free from distraction and worry. It’s an essential part of my creative process: with no access to the internet, no sound except for my breathing and the splash of water, nothing to see but the bottom of the pool and the glint of sunshine, ideas bubble up from my subconscious, untangling narrative dilemmas.
For years, I’ve swum several times a week. During my pregnancy, I hit the pool almost every day, right up until giving birth, to free myself momentarily from the full force of gravity. Walking any distance tired me out, but in the water, I kept up my regular practice. I wanted to keep my strength for the challenges of new motherhood. Every ache and strain disappeared as I glided, my strokes and kicks graceful instead of lumbering. Each breath, a meditation. I floated in the water and my sons floated in me. And even today, when I climb back into the water to escape and clear my head, I can’t help but think of Mao in the Yangtze River, and how the simple act of swimming can symbolize so much about where I’ve come from, and where I’m headed.
Vanessa Hua is the author of the national bestsellers A River of Stars and Forbidden City, as well as Deceit and Other Possibilities, a New York Times Editors Pick. A National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellow, she has also received a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award, the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature, a Steinbeck Fellowship in Creative Writing, and a de Groot Foundation Writer of Note grant, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, the Asian American Journalists Association, among others. A former longtime columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle, her work has appeared in publications including The New York Times, Washington Post, and The Atlantic. A Visiting Writer at Saint Mary’s College of California, she also teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program, Sewanee Writers Conference, and elsewhere. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with her family.