Gen. Xu Shiyou, Loyal Disciple of Mao, Dies at 80

Gen. Xu Shiyou, once a Buddhist kung fu monk and later said to have protected the current Chinese leader, Deng Xiaoping, from the wrath of Chairman Mao Tse-tung, has died at the age of 80, the New China News Agency reported Wednesday.

One of the Communist Party’s best military commanders and a loyal disciple of Mao, Xu died Tuesday in the east China city of Nanjing, his power base during the last years of his life.

His career was one of the most colorful of all the Communist Chinese leaders and a lack of information about him in the last decade led to endless rumors and speculation.

Sometimes referred to by the nickname Ironsides, Xu was born into a poor peasant family in the central province of Henan and entered the famous Shaolin Buddhist monastery at the age of 8 as an apprentice monk.

Rigorous Training

An article in the Shanghai Liberation Daily in 1980 said he spent eight years there learning the monastery’s speciality--kung fu martial arts techniques.

The training involved his sleeping for two years suspended by his arms from a rafter followed by two more years sleeping across a few wooden pegs knocked into a wall, the paper said.

Kung Fu Master

He left the monastery at 16, a master of kung fu, and joined the army of a local warlord. In 1926, he took part in a Communist uprising and joined the party the next year.

In 1935, he led a detachment of the Communist army on the grueling Long March from southeast to northwest China and his immense physical strength and bravery quickly made him a legend. By the early 1950s, he was leading Chinese forces battling U.S. and U.N. troops in Korea.

Politically Powerful

By the mid-1970s, he had become one of the most politically powerful of the People’s Liberation Army commanders. After Deng Xiaoping was temporarily purged in April, 1976, by Mao and his radical allies, he is widely reported to have stayed at a hot springs resort near Canton in southern China under Xu’s protection.

Xu created a sensation at Mao’s funeral in September, 1976, by wearing grass sandals, interpreted as an expression of loyalty to Mao and the revolutionary doctrine he espoused.