Also, as to mention her:

While 20 million starve to death during the two years following his Great Leap Forward, Mao eats lobsters flown live to his palace on military planes and sleeps with a virgin every night to achieve longevity. To the virgins, he leaves the syphilis he refuses to treat. To China, he bestows a legacy of intrigue and betrayal. To Jiang Ching, he bequeaths a place in his coffin: “You will be pushed and nailed into my casket,” he tells her.

And so it might have come to pass, but for the woman who, not satisfied with being a forgotten concubine, “becomes” Madame Mao. Thirty years after her husband condemns her to oblivion, Madame Mao will rise to rule China with as much power and authority as any of her husband’s generals. In her hands, the country turns on itself, shedding innocent blood and cultivating fear and treason. Feeding on the slaughter, Madame Mao becomes a monster of unspeakable proportions. She will be despised by her only child and ultimately overpowered by the very government she has tried to destroy. Imprisoned after Mao’s death, she will spend the last 14 years of her life in the death seat, sewing dresses onto plastic dolls for export to the West.