By Xhevdet Shehu

The well-known translator Myfit Mushi, together with two others, was the official translator of the Albanian People's Party delegation led by Enver Hoxha at the meeting of 81 communist parties in Moscow in 1960. And from that meeting, so important for the time, he can tell endlessly. But, although in his old age, he remembers with admirable clarity everything about another meeting in China...! In August 1967, right at the height of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the two Albanian translators are unexpectedly invited to a secret meeting with the chairman of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong, in a secret region of Southern China, near Shanghai, where he lived far from the noise of Beijing.

During the time of the ardent, yet absurd, friendship between China and Albania in the 1960s and 70s, many Albanians visited the People's Republic of China, but few were able to meet the Chairman of China, Mao Zedong. One of these is Myfit Mushi.
In this interview, Mufit Mushi recounts the details of this unexpected and unforeseen meeting with the leader of communist China. He and his colleague listened with surprise and shock to Mao Zedong's idea that his quotes, which they had been translating for months, "were of no use to the Albanian people at all."

A stance that was in complete contradiction to the position of communist Albania and of Enver Hoxha himself, who had ordered the urgent translation and publication of Mao Zedong's quotes.

– Mr. Myfit, you have been to China several times during the famous Albanian-Chinese friendship. Can you tell us something about these visits and what marked their peak?

– It is true that I have been to China several times and I have many memories of those visits. I have been to the great Asian country, with whom we suddenly found ourselves bound by a very strong friendship, in the capacity of a Russian language translator, and during my stay there at different times, 1956, 1960, 1963-1964 and 1967, I was able to form some idea of ​​this country with a very vast space and this very large people.

I first became acquainted with China in 1956, as a translator for the delegation of the Labor Party, led by Enver Hoxha, which participated in the proceedings of the 8th Congress of the Communist Party of China.

In 1960, I had the opportunity to accompany, also in the capacity of translator, the parliamentary delegation of our country, headed by the Chairman of the Presidium of the People's Assembly, Haxhi Lleshi, who paid a visit to China, the Democratic Republic of Vietnam, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, and Mongolia.

I made my third trip to the People's Republic of China in mid-1963 and it lasted until March 1964. My task this time was to publish in Albanian, in one of the printing houses in Beijing, the works of Mao Zedong in 5 volumes.

And the fourth visit I made in 1967, when my colleague, Vangjel Moisiu, and I received from the Party Central Committee the task of publishing there quotations from the works of Mao Zedong...! I think the latter marked the culmination of my visits to China...!

– Because during this visit you met Chairman Mao, right? Can you tell us briefly how that meeting happened?

– Yes, I have that meeting indelibly etched in my mind. It was not easy, not to mention it was a blessing to meet a leader like Mao Zedong, worshipped as a god by about a billion people. Very few Chinese people even managed to shake hands with him. In fact, we had met Mao Zedong on May 1 of that year.

Mao was going to come out to the podium. But he was delayed for almost half an hour. Everyone started to worry. Meanwhile, we saw several ambulances moving at high speed with sirens. What's going on?, we asked our Chinese friends. Chairman Mao is coming, they told us. When people see him, they faint with joy. This was the reason for his delay in the podium.

He arrived late and we two Albanian translators have a photo with Mao Zedong from that day. It was more of a greeting, a handshake that was immediately captured by photographers and took place in all the Chinese newspapers the next day. But, in this episode that I will tell now, which happened in August 1967, it is worth stopping and telling you about the newspaper 'DITA' which I read with particular pleasure.

This period, the second half of the 1960s, was very important for communist China and was known as the peak of the Cultural Revolution. During this time, I witnessed such events that deeply shocked the whole of China, attracted the attention of international opinion, during which one side of the political forces, which also had the armed forces on its side, settled scores with the other side and strengthened its power in all areas of life.

And precisely, at the height of this revolution, in August 1967, my colleague from Beijing, Vangjel Moisiu, and I, completely unexpectedly, found ourselves in Mao's secret villa.

– You weren't previously informed by the Chinese about this meeting?

– No. Everything happened quite suddenly and in a flash. We had gone to Shanghai to spend a few days of vacation, after an exhausting work, which often continued even after midnight. Suddenly, Fani, the Albanian translator who worked with us, arrives from Beijing, a very clever guy, who had graduated from the State University of Tirana and who knew Albanian relatively better than all the other Chinese who had studied with him in Tirana.

At that time he was working in the International Relations Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. One day, while we were having lunch, Fan told us that he had come urgently from Beijing in a fighter plane, with a very important mission that also had to do with us, but, well, what this mission was, we would learn later.

After we had lunch he told us that we were going somewhere. “You’ll find out what it’s all about there,” he told us. The car left the big, noisy city of Shanghai behind and soon turned off the main highway. Then we entered a forest area, a real forest jungle. It was an abandoned, unpaved road, on which we walked for over an hour…

– Did you sense or have a premonition that you would meet Mao?

– At first it was impossible to understand. But traveling for miles through the woods, I sensed something, while Vangjeli did not. “We will meet Mao,” I say in Vangjeli’s ear. He shakes his head in denial as if to say: “What are you doing?” I repeat that we will definitely meet Mao, and he in his: “Sleep on that side.”

The car stops in front of a villa surrounded by greenery. Someone comes out of the villa and opens the car door for us. We get out of the car and follow the escort. In a simple living room, Mao Zedong was standing. Astonished at the top, we shook hands with him. He invited us to move into another room that looked like a reception area.

We took our seats on the couch, Mao, me, Vangjeli, and Yao Wen Yuan (the youngest figure in the Cultural Revolution headquarters) and Fan, our translator, who many years later would represent his country in Albania, in the capacity of ambassador.

– Why was that meeting organized, and specifically with two Albanian translators?

– First of all, we must decide on the time. It was the Chinese style of that time to issue an announcement, proving that Chairman Mao was healthy and well, and in this way at the same time refuted the words of the world press, regarding him expressing suspicion that Mao was dead.

Chinese companions had told us in confidence that many attempts had been made to kill Mao, and that strong measures had therefore been taken to protect him. They even discovered, according to them, an attempt to kill him on the Tiananmen Square with a rocket. Since Mao's appearance at the May Day celebrations, I do not remember any official announcement being made about him. I think that this was precisely why our surprise meeting was organized.

In this meeting, which took place on August 16, 1967, at 6 p.m., and lasted a full 90 minutes, something unusual for Mao, the Chinese leader spoke in detail about the goals and tasks of the Cultural Revolution that was taking place in China, about its progress, but also the shortcomings that had been noticed and about its prospects. He also spoke about the different attitudes of the forces operating within this movement and the positions of various political personalities.

At one point he interrupted the conversation and turned to our translator, Fan: “You come from Beijing. Can you tell me what happened at the meeting where Chen Yi was supposed to self-criticize?” (a high-ranking military officer with the rank of marshal, Minister of Foreign Affairs, and one of the most important leaders of the Chinese Communist Party). Fan explained that on the appointed day, in the packed hall, Chen went to the podium, bowed before the portrait of Mao, and said: “Maoist, I apologize to you.”

Then he bowed to the portrait of Lin Biao and repeated the same thing. He bowed to the portrait of Zhou Enlai and apologized again. Finally, he bowed to the public and apologized again to a student who had been arrested on his orders for writing a letter against Zhou Enlai. This was, in general, the information that Fan gave Mao about Chen Yi.

– How did Mao react?

– Based on what he heard, Mao told us that Chen Jia had made serious mistakes during the Cultural Revolution, but he was also a very capable man, and at the moment they had no one to replace him. Therefore, Mao said, he would continue to remain in the post of Foreign Minister.

He expressed similar thoughts to us about a number of other personalities, mainly ministers. Continuing the conversation with us, Mao focused on the perspective of the Revolution, spoke about its four main phases, about the closest and most distant objectives, and about the great difficulties encountered./ Memorie.al