Daughter-in-law of Chairman Mao Zedong dies in Beijing

(Xinhua)
Updated: 2008-06-25 12:55

General Shao Hua, wife of Mao Anqing, the second son of late Chairman Mao Zedong, died in Beijing on Tuesday.

Shao, born in October 1938 in Yan'an, a former revolutionary base in northwest China's Shaanxi Province, was a major general in the People's Liberation Army (PLA). She also served as vice director of the military encyclopedia department of the PLA Academy of Military Sciences.

Shao Hua (R) and her husband Mao Anqing (L) pose for a photo with late Chairman Mao Zedong. [File Photo]

Shao served two terms as president of the China Photographers Association (CPA). She was first elected CPA chairman in 2002 and was re-elected to the post in November last year, according to the China News Service.

She taught herself photographic skills in the 1950s when she began to take pictures for Chairman Mao with a camera brought from the Soviet Union by Mao Anying, Mao's elder son.

A family photo of Shao Hua (R), her husband Mao Anqing (L) and their son Mao Xinyu. [File Photo]

When acting as a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) from 1988 to 2002, Shao went among the public with her camera.

She traveled through old revolutionary bases, factories, mines, impoverished villages, schools and army units, amassing material for dozens of proposals to improve the lives of the people, which she tabled with the country's top political advisory body.

Shao also chronicled in pictures the life of her husband, Mao Anqing, a Russian linguistic expert, who died in March last year at the age of 84.