>But at some point, you have to wonder if refusing to bathe because you clean yourself on the bodies of teenage virgins, as Mao did, is really done in the belief of the greater good or not.

Idk if Li's book is to be trusted since some of it sounds comical but that's not exactly what it says. I believe it said he received only nightly rubdowns with hot toils and when he said "i wash myself inside the bodies of my women" the context was....well his genitals.