Liu Siqi

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Liu Siqi, also known as Liu Songlin, was born on 2 March 1930 in Shanghai. She was the wife of Mao Anying, Mao Zedong’s son. Her father, Liu Qianchu, was a Communist who was killed by the Kuomintang in 1931, and her mother was Zhang Wenqiu.

In 1938 Mao Zedong named her a goddaughter in Yan’an. In 1939 her family moved to the Soviet Union, but near Xinjiang they were detained by warlord Sheng Shicai and spent eight years in prison. In 1946, with help from Zhou Enlai, she returned to Yan’an, where she met Mao Anying. They became lovers in Xibaipo in 1948 and married at Zhongnanhai in Beijing on 15 October 1949. Mao Anying died in November 1950 during the Korean War.

She studied at Moscow State University in 1955, then returned to China in 1957 to study Russian at Peking University. In early 1962 she remarried Yang Maozhi, a PLA Air Force Academy faculty member, and they had four children. Liu Siqi died on 7 January 2022 in Beijing, aged 91.