Teng, whose original name was Teng Wen-shu, is described as a native of Hsin-yang in southern Honan in most sources, but others use Nanning, Kwangsi or Kuang-shan, Hopeh. Her father, a bankrupt landlord who had been an army officer during the Ch'ing dynasty, died when she was still a child.
Her mother supported the family as a schoolteacher and governess, earning enough money to send Teng to study first in Peking and then in Tientsin. T'eng was enrolled in the Hopeh First Women's Normal School in Tientsin at the time of the May Fourth Incident in 1919 and it was there that she began her revolutionary career. Before her graduation in 1920 Teng had become deeply involved in the May Fourth Movement.
After the May Fourth Incident, students in the Peking-Tientsin area began to form organizations to agitate for the revitalization of Chinese politics and society. During the 1919-20 period Teng was involved in three of these in Tientsin. Just a few days after the incident Teng helped found the Tientsin Students Union, and she was also a leading figure in the Tientsin Women's Patriotic Association, which was set up about the same time. In both organizations she headed a “speech-making” corps.
In September 1919 the Students’ Union joined with the women’s organization to establish the Chueh-wu she (Awakening society). Chou and Teng were among its most active members. This society was similar to others formed about this time in Peking by Li Ta-chao and his disciples, and it was also spiritually akin to still others which had been formed in Changsha by Mao Tse-tung and in Wuhan by Yun Tai-ying. The students’ union and the women’s organization began to publish P’ing-min (The plain people) in 1919, Teng was among the contributors to this short-lived radical journal, which encouraged general strikes and the withholding of taxes in protest against the government. The journal was soon suppressed, but in early 1920 another one called Chueh-wu (Awakening), which advocated sweeping social changes, was published by the Awakening Society, with both Teng and Chou as contributors. During this period she was jailed on at least one occasion.
Toward the end of 1925 Teng went to Canton where she married Chou En-lai. Canton was then the revolutionary center of China, and by the time Teng arrived there (or soon thereafter), a host of other top Communists were in the city, including Mao Tsc-tung, P'eng P'ai, Su Chao- cheng, Ts’ai Ch’ang, Lin Po-ch’ii, Wu Yii-chang, Nieh Jung-chen, Hsiao Ch’u-nU, Yun Tai-ying, and Yang Yin. In January 1926 Teng attended the Second KMT Congress. Li Ta-chao, Lin Po-ch’ii, Yun Tai-ying，and Wu YU-chang were among the CommuniwSts elected full members of the KMT Central Executive Committee (CEC), and Teng, Mao Tse-tung, and Hsia Hsi were among the alternates selected from the Communist ranks. Teng had the distinction of being the only woman Communist elected to the CEC. At approximately this time she was working in the KMT’s Women’s Movement Training Institute under Ho Hsiang-ning, the widow of the prominent left-wing KMT leader Liao Chung-k'ai. Concurrent with these tasks in the KMT hierarchy, Teng also held alternate membership on the CCP Kwangtung-Kwangsi Regional Committee and was secretary of its Women’s Activities Committee.
At about the turn of the year 1932-33 Teng was put in charge of a special commission to inquire into the execution of the Central Soviet's labor law. In her report on this investigation, published in early February 1933, she took the position that the inadequacy of the class struggle was enabling the rich peasants and small landlords to retain their privileged positions.’’ As one writer has noted, this had the effect of placing Teng at odds with views held by Mao. In particular, Teng advocated a greater stress on the trade union movement and argued that “proletarian hegemony” had been ignored except for lip service in Party documents. She even went so far as to advocate “strikes as a means for fostering development of the class struggle and class consciousness.’’
In 1943 Teng returned to Yenan where she remained for the rest of the war. In 1945 she became vice-chairman of the newly established Preparatory Committee for the China Liberated Areas Womens Federation. This committee, headed by her colleague Ts’ai Ch’ang, was the forerunner of the All-China Federation of Democratic Women established in 1949 (see below). At the CCP's Seventh National Congress, held from April to June 1945, only three women were placed on the Central Committee, Ts’ai Ch’ang was elected a full member, and Teng and Ch'en Shao-min were elected alternates. At this same time, again under Ts’ai Ch’ang, Teng was identified as the deputy secretary of the Party’s Women’s Committee.
Like most of the important Communists in Peking immediately after its fall, Teng was deeply involved in preparations for the establishment of the national government and various “people’s” and professional organizations. In June 1949 she was one of the members of the Preparatory Committee for the China New Legal Research Society. In the same month, representing the women's federation, she was a member of the Preparatory Committee (chaired by Mao Tse-tung) for the CPPCC, the body which, at its initial session in September, created the PRC government (October 1). At the CPPCC Teng served on the presidium (steering committee) and on an ad hoc committee which drafted the Common Program (the equivalent of a constitution), and she delivered a brief address on the role of women in “New China.” At the close of the meetings she was elected a member of the Standing Committee of the CPPCC's First National Committee. Immediately afterwards, Teng was made a member of the Political and Legal Affairs Committee, one of the major organs subordinate to her husband's Government Administration Council (the cabinet). And at the same time she was made a member of the First Executive Board of the Sino-Soviet Friendship Association. She held all these posts until 1954.
Aside from her duties in the government and women’s organization, Teng was also involved during the early PRC years with organizations dealing with questions of social welfare and peace. From October 1950 to July 1958 she served on the Standing Committee of the China Peace Committee, and in November 1950 she was a member of Kuo Mo-jo's delegation to the Second World Peace Congress in Warsaw. In November 1951 she became a vice-chairman of the newly established Chinese Peopled Committee for the Protection of Children, and in December she went to East Berlin for the 11th Council meeting of the Women’s International Democratic Federation. In October 1952 Teng was one of the delegates to the Asian and Pacific Regions Peace Conference in Peking (see under Liu Ning-i), and since at least the mid-1950's she has been an honorary chairman of the Chinese Association of Nurses.
During the early 1930's, in response to unremitting efforts by the KMT to root out the CCP underground in Shanghai, most of the major Communist leaders there left for the base which Mao Tse-tung and Chu Te had developed on the Kiangsi-Fukien border. By the time Teng arrived (no later than mid-1932) she was clearly one of the most important women in the Communist Party, Hsiang Ching-yii, the top woman in the early years of the Communist movement, had been killed in 1928, and thus only Ts’ai Ch’ang was of comparable stature. Teng’s arrival at Juichin, the Communist capital, coincided with a period of considerable intraParty feuding among various factions, particularly the Russian-returned student group headed by Ch’in Pang-hsicn and the founders of the base area led by Mao. Teng was immediately involved in some of the doctrinal feuds, as indicated by her key role in denouncing a group of would-be Trotskyites who were allegedly in control of a newly founded theatrical troupe attached to the Red Army. In her capacity as director of the Women's Department of the Central Bureau of the Soviet Areas (see under Hsiang Ying), Teng presided over a “struggle conference,” which attacked the theatrical troupe leaders, and her report on these events appeared later in the year in one of the Party's leading organs.
She was a member of the Nii hsing she (Women’s star society) and the NQch’lianyun-tung t’ung-meng-hui (Women’s rights league), and in 1923 she is known to have contributed articles to newspapers published by the former organization. During this same period, according to an official English-language biographic sketch of Teng, she founded the “Society of Progressive Women” and published a newspaper in Tientsin “dedicated to the welfare of women.’’
In January 1934 the CCP held the Fifth Plenum, which Maoist writers have characterized as the peak period of the “third left line” of the Russian-returned student leadership. Teng was reportedly elected an alternate member of the Party Central Committee at that time. Immediately afterwards (January-February), the Second All-China Congress of Soviets was held, and on this occasion Teng was named to membership on the Central Executive Committee, the highest political organ of the Chinese Soviet Republic. In the fall of that year the Communists were forced to abandon the Central Soviet base and begin the Long March, which ended a year later in north Shensi. Teng was one of the few women who made the arduous trek, hut because she had contracted tuberculosis, she had to be carried on a stretcher for much of the way.
In January 1934 the CCP held the Fifth Plenum, which Maoist writers have characterized as the peak period of the “third left line” of the Russian-returned student leadership. Teng was reportedly elected an alternate member of the Party Central Committee at that time. Immediately afterwards (January-February), the Second All-China Congress of Soviets was held, and on this occasion Teng was named to membership on the Central Executive Committee, the highest political organ of the Chinese Soviet Republic. In the fall of that year the Communists were forced to abandon the Central Soviet base and begin the Long March, which ended a year later in north Shensi. Teng was one of the few women who made the arduous trek, hut because she had contracted tuberculosis, she had to be carried on a stretcher for much of the way.
Physical Characteristics: In the above-mentioned 1960 speech, Teng noted that she suffered from a serious case of diabetes in 1953, but she also stated that she had been completely cured and that her earlier tubercular condition had not been a problem for more than 20 years.
Quotes from others about the person
After her arrival in Shensi in the fall of 1935, Teng was active organizing women. In mid-1936, at Pao-an, Edgar Snow first met her, and a year later in Peking he saw her. immediately after the war began and the Japanese had occupied the city. Teng had gone to Peking in early 1937 for medical treatment, but fearing arrest by the Japanese, she sought out Snow to secure his help in escaping to Shensi. Snow, who said that Teng “possessed one of the most astute political brains” he had “encountered among Chinese women disguised her as his servant and escorted her to Tientsin where she took a ship for Tsingtao. From there she reached Sian in September where she met Snow's wife, Nym Wales. Miss Wales described her as a “competent-looking matronly woman” who spoke “beautiful clear Mandarin.”
In political terms, Chou En-lai and Teng are probably the most redoubtable couple in the history of the Chinese Communist movement. The only other couples of roughly comparable stature are Ts'i Ho-sen and Hsiang Ching-yii, and Li Fu-ch’un and Ts’ai Ch’ang. The Chous are childless.
