The Disgusting Truth About Mao Zedong's Personal Hygiene

May 2024 ยท 2 minute read

Dr. LI Zhisui served as Mao's personal physician for 22 years. He knew where the bodies were buried and what horrors were buried in Mao's body. In 1994, nearly two decades after the despot's death, Li unearthed these icky secrets in a tell-all and decided to tell People all about it. The doctor revealed that the dictator never brushed his teeth, which turned green. His infected gums gushed pus. When encouraged to brush his not-at-all pearly greens, Mao growled, "Does a tiger brush his teeth?" The chairman preferred to rinse his mouth with tea and chew leaves like peasants did. He seemed to revel in his grossness As detailed in King of the Mountain, Mao once reached into his pants "to pick lice off his body deliberately" while being interviewed by a female reporter.

He also considered bathing "a waste of time." And since Mao already spent much of his precious time expelling waste due to constipation, it comes as no surprise that he only occasionally gave people's nostrils a reprieve when he went for a swim and toweled off. Li blamed the chairman's deep-seated opposition to soap and water on a "three-bath philosophy" that Chinese peasants allegedly adopted: "A bath at birth, one before marriage and one at death." However, the Independent mentions one other exception that appears in Li's tell-all. The congenitally filthy dictator claimed to clean his genitals by showering himself with women. Or as the chairman crudely put it, "I wash myself in the bodies of my women."

To make matters more revolting, Chairman Lice Crotch reportedly rivaled China's Yellow Emperor, who allegedly "deflower[ed] 1,000 virgins." In exchange for taking them to bed, he gave some of them a "minor venereal disease." Li urged him to take medication so that his partners didn't keep getting the short end of Mao's disease-infested stick. But true to form, the chairman acted like a massive dictator, dismissively insisting, "If it doesn't bother me, it doesn't matter." And since Mao didn't exhibit symptoms, it didn't bother him.

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