🌿 Folk Prescriptions

Mao Zedong was born in Shaoshan, Xiangtan, Hunan Province. His dietary habits throughout life remained simple and plain, reflecting the characteristics of a farmer, with a strong local flavor, essentially staying within the scope of Hunan cuisine tastes. Nowadays, many restaurants in Shaoshan, Changsha, Shanghai, and Beijing offer "Mao Family Cuisine," some ingredients of which were once consumed by Mao Zedong, but the prices are very high, and the dish names are exaggerated to near luxury delicacies—this is a distortion of Mao’s simple diet. We must restore its original nature and examine what Mao actually ate and his dietary habits.
Mao spent his youth and adolescence in Shaoshan, Xiangxiang, and Changsha. His father was a middle peasant, and the family was not wealthy. During his youth, Mao never tasted fine wines or exquisite dishes; he ate only common foods that ordinary people in the region usually consumed. Even after becoming Chairman of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, according to recollections from those around him, he never indulged in extravagance, still eating home-style dishes.
People from Hunan and Sichuan enjoy spicy food. Mao also loved it. Chili peppers are rich in nutrition and have health benefits such as disease prevention and longevity. Mao always had a plate of red chili peppers at every meal, preferring them spicier, and could not eat without them. In winter, when he sweated profusely from the heat of the spice, that was truly the peak of enjoyment. Mao once humorously said: “A person who dares to eat chilies has nothing to fear. None of the Red Army rebels who rose up in revolt ever avoided chili peppers.” This shows how deeply Mao felt about chili peppers.
Mao also enjoyed braised pork belly. The preparation method is: first cut fresh pork into small pieces and stir-fry until the fat is rendered out, then add salt, monosodium glutamate, soy sauce, chili powder, and other seasonings. The result is greasy, fragrant, and delicious. In old society, people in Hunan would only eat this “luxury dish” during the first and fifteenth days of each lunar month. Now it is eaten regularly. Mao did not eat it every day; he would only ask the chef to prepare a bowl when celebrating a victory or feeling a lack of fat in his body, just to satisfy his craving.
Mao also liked steamed fish head soup with a few slices of tofu, fresh and delicious, especially popular in areas like Xiangtan and Yiyang in Hunan during winter. Mao once joked: “Eating big-head fish will surely make your brain more developed and increasingly intelligent.” Of course, the main part of eating big-head fish is drinking the soup.
Mao loved side dishes, especially bitter melon. Bitter melon can be stir-fried with duck or meat. Once, while enjoying bitter melon, Mao told his staff nearby: “Bitter melon is common in my hometown. Some people dislike its bitter taste and won’t eat it. But I’ve liked it since childhood. Actually, the bitterness of bitter melon does no harm to the body—it helps clear internal heat and improves eyesight.”
Mao always had four dishes and one soup per meal: two meat dishes, two side dishes, and one soup. All dishes and soups were ordinary items. Main meals were mainly rice. After meals, he sometimes ate a baked sweet potato or boiled corn. Of course, he occasionally ate expensive delicacies like bird’s nest or shark fin, but that was merely to change his taste.
Mao’s food was simple, yet nutritionally adequate, thus maintaining excellent physical health. In the 1950s, a severe flu outbreak hit Beijing, spreading rapidly. Several of Mao’s guards were unfortunately infected. The guards urged him to get a vaccine, but he refused, trusting his own immunity. Indeed, he survived without catching the flu.
Mao rarely fell ill under normal circumstances. When he did catch minor illnesses, he often refused medication. Despite this, he lived to be 83 years old.