Library:Mao Zedong, a Biography. Volume 1. 1893–1949

CCCPC Party Literature Research Office

Chief Editors Pang Xianzhi and Jin Chongji

Translated by Foreign Languages Press, edited by Sheng-chi Shu

Originally published by CCCPC Party Literature Research Office,

Chief Editors Pang Xianzhi and Jin Chongji, Volume I and II in

Leaving Home

An age- old legend tells us that 5,000 years ago Emperor Shun, while on an inspection tour of southern China, came to the Xiang river. There, while resting on a hilltop, the emperor ordered the playing of a tune called Shao Yue (Melody of Shao). The music is said to have attracted a flock of phoenixes that danced to its lilt. From this, people began to call the hill Shaoshan (Mount Shao), and to call the narrow valley it embraces Shaoshan Chong (Shaoshan Valley), located in what is now Xiangtan County of Hunan Province.

In this same Shaoshan Valley, on 26 December 1893 (19th day of the 11th lunar month in the 19th year of Qing Dynasty Emperor Guangxu), a boy was born to the family of peasant Mao Yichang. The child was named Zedong, also to be known as Yongzhi and later as Runzhi. Two babies preceding this child had died in infancy and, fearing a likely recurrence, the mother took her new-born son to a small temple of the Stone Statue of the Goddess of Mercy (Guanyin, or Avalokitesvara in Sanskrit). There, she bowed her head to the ground and asked the great rock to be the child’s adoptive mother, so the boy acquired the pet name of Shi San Yazi (Third Kid of the Rock).

This Mao family of Shaoshan was originally from Jiangxi Province. In the early years of the Mind Dynasty, the family moved to settle in Xiangxiang Country, Hunan Province. Two sons moved to Shaoshan Valley, where, in a place some 40 kilometers west from the middle reaches of the Xiang River, three Hunan counties -Xiangtan, Ningxiang and Xiangxiang – come together. It is a narrow valley, surrounded by hills, where inhabitants have lived largely by agriculture, so the Mao family engaged mainly in land reclamation and farming. Some 500 years elapsed before Mao Zedong, the twentieth generation after Mao Taihua, was born.

Despite the lovely legend of its name, the valley’s conditions when Mao Zedong was born were much as in other poor, secluded areas of later imperial China. In Shaoshan Valley were more than 600 households, one being that of Mao Enpu, Mao Zedong’s grandfather, an honest kind-hearted peasant. As he became increasingly hard-up, he had to pawn some of his ancestral lands to sustain the family. He had only one son, Mao Zedong’s father; and when he passed away, Mao Zedong was only 10 years old.

Mao Zedong’s father, Mao Yinchang, also known as Mao Shunsheng or Mao Liangbi, began to help manage household affairs when he was only 17 years old. Pressed by family debts, he had to leave his home village to join the local army of Hunan Province. This broadened his vision and gave him the chance to save some money. When he returned home, Mao Shunsheng first redeemed the farmland pawned by his father. Then he bought a little more land so that his holdings totaled 22 mu (about 1.5 hectares) that yielded about 80 dan (about 4 tons) of grain annually. Mao Shunsheng then turned to buying, selling and transporting rice and livestock to the markets of Xiangtan Country. In this way, his wealth grew gradually to about 2-3,000 Chinese silver dollars. With this accumulated capital, he even once issued a kind of local paper money in the name of ‘Mao Yishun & Co.’, so in his little valley he would have been reckoned a moneybags.

In late imperial China, peasants, who managed to rid themselves of poverty were invariably hardworking, frugal, cleaver, and resolute. These characteristics of the father naturally had an important influence on Mao Zedong from his childhood. Like most peasants, Mao Shunsheng attempted to mould his sons after his own life experience, starting with household chores and field labour. From the time he was 6 years old, Mao Zedong began to do such things as weeding paddy fields, herding cattle, collecting animal dung as organic manure, chopping firewood, and the like. Later, after he learned to read, Mao Zedong began to help keep family accounts. For two years, when he was 14-15, Mao Zedong was ordered to work all day long in the fields with hired farm labourers. His father’s severity made a long-lasting impression on him. Recalling those years, Mao later [in 1936] told the visiting American journalist Edgar Snow that his father was a ‘severe taskmaster who, if he saw me idle or with no account-keeping to do, ordered me to do farm work. He had a hot temper and often beat me and my two younger brothers.’ Mao also recollected: ‘His stern attitude did me good in that I had to do farm work diligently and do the accounts with great care as to avoid his beating or criticizing me.’ In this way, Mao learned the skills of local farm work, including ploughing and levelling paddy fields, rice-transplanting, cutting and harvesting paddy rice, and the like. The young Mao Zedong even offered to compete with hired farm labourers to take on challenging jobs. He thus acquired the finer qualities of mountain peasants: enduring hardships. Defying difficulties, and having an assiduous and down-to-earth style of work. At the same he began to acquire a fairly deep understanding of the sufferings peasants faced.

Mao Shunsheng wanted his sons to become as accomplished at moneymaking as himself, and, seeing that his sons were not quite following his footsteps, he resorted to high-handed disciplinary measures. This led to inevitable confrontations between father and sons, which, for Mao Zedong, served to nurture rebelliousness from his early youth.

On the winter solstice in 1906, Mao Shunsheng hosted a banquet for his fellow businessmen. The father ordered his 13-year-old-son, Mao Zedong, to wait on the guests, but the latter was loath to do so. Angry, his father scolded young Mao for being lazy and good-for-nothing, and lacking filial piety. To this, young Mao Zedong retorted in front of all the guests, ‘A father’s kindness and his son’s filial obedience go hand-in-hand’ – meaning that only when ‘the father is kind’ can there be a ‘filial son’. Enraged, and raising his fist, Mao’s father threatened to beat him, whereupon Mao Zedong ran off to the edge of a huge pond and threatened to jump in should his father come any closer. Through his mother’s good offices, the episode ended peacefully.

However, from this experience, Mao Zedong perceived that to yield meekly under pressure would merely invite more scolding or beating, and that only by resisting resolutely could one protect oneself.

To his father, Mao Zedong’s most striking example of ‘unfilial’ behavior was his refusal to accept his father’s single-handed arrangement of marriage of the 14-year-old Mao Zedong to the 18-year-old daughter of a family named Luo, primarily for the purpose of adding another pair of hands to work in the household. Mao Zedong never accepted that arranged marriage and never lived with the girl as her husband. The father was helpless to do anything more about it than to enter the Luo girl’s name in the formal record of the family tree only as ‘Mao, nee Luo’.

Compared to his father, Mao Zedong’s mother, Wen Suqin, left a much greater impact on him. His mother was the seventh sister in the Wen family and her pet name was Qimei (Seventh Sister). Her parents’ home was in Tangjiatuo, later called Tangguige, in Xiangxiang County on the other side of the mountain and about 10 li (5 km,) from Shaoshan Valley. The Wen family, also peasants, was well-off. At the age of 18m Wen Qimei was married to Mao Shunsheng, to whom she bore five boys and two girls. Four of the children died in fancy, and three brothers survived: Mao Zedong, Mao Zemin, and Mao Zetan.

Like many other country women, Mao’s mother spent her time quietly attending to household chores and bringing up children. She was gentle, kindhearted, and had a strong sense of sympathy. In years of famine, she would send rice to the starving without the knowledge of her husband. She also would often go to Buddhist temples to pray and worship Buddha piously. She instilled her children with beliefs in ‘accumulating virtue and doing good’ and ‘karma and retribution’. Once, when Mao Zedong was about 9 years old, he even discussed earnestly with her how to persuade his father to believe in Buddha. When his mother fell ill, the 15-year-old Mao made a special trip to the holy temple on Mount Heng to pray for his mother’s speedy recovery. This shows the impact that his mother’s teaching by example had in the teenaged Mao, who then had not much understanding of Buddhist doctrines.

Indeed, his mother’s teaching by words and deeds helped make Mao Zedong, from his early youth, sympathetic towards the poor and weak in their sufferings, and willing to help others in times of need.

Once, a nearby peasant, also surnamed Mao, had received from Mao Zedong’s father a deposit of money to buy some pigs at an agreed price. Later, when Mao Zedong was sent by his father to collect the pigs, the price for the pigs had gone up considerably. The peasant sighed repeatedly, blaming his own ill fate, and opined that several silver dollars were nothing to a well-off-man, but that it was a big loss to a poor fellow’s household. Upon hearing this, Mao Zedong cancelled his father’s deal for the pigs.

On another occasion, when Mao was 11, his father wanted to buy 7 mu (about 1 acre) of farmland from cousin Mao Jusheng, who depended on that land for a living and was then faced with great difficulties. Both Mao Zedong and his mother agreed the right thing to do was to help Mao Jusheng ride out his difficulties instead of seizing the chance to buy his only bit of farmland. Mao’s father thought otherwise, insisting it was perfectly all right to buy the land with a cash payment. Efforts at dissuasion by Mao and his mother were to no avail, but the incident left a deep impression. Decades later, when recalling this on various occasions after the founding of the People’s Republic, Mao Zedong told Mao Zelian (son of Mao Jusheng): ‘The private ownership system in old China made brothers and cousins forget fraternity, to such an extent that father refused to listen to any persuasion, insisted on buying the 7 mu of land, and cared only for making money’.

Mao Zedong had a deep affection for mother. In the summer of 1918, on the eve of leaving Changsha for Beijing, Mao was so worried about his mother, who was recuperating from illness at his maternal grandmother’s home, that he obtained a medical prescription and then entrusted his uncle to carry it to his mother. The following spring, after returning to Changsha, Mao brought his mother to the provincial capital for medical treatment. She died on 85 October 1919, at age 52, from scrofula, then customarily referred to simply as ‘herniated neck’. One hearing the sad news, Mao sped back to Shaoshan to keep vigil beside the coffin. On that occasion, Mao Zedong wrong an affectionate ‘Elegy for Mother’ in four-character lines:

Mother’s virtues are many, and

Outstanding is her universal love.

She extended to so many,

Whether acquainted with her or not,

Her kind and sympathetic heart,

That folks are deeply moved.

Her affection is powerful

As it originated in sincerity.

She never boasted, and

Never attempted to

Cheat…. Held in high

esteem

Her integrity is untainted.

In a letter to Zou Yunzhen, a schoolmate, Mao at that time wrote: ‘There are three kinds of people in the world, those who harm others to benefit themselves, those who benefit themselves without harming others, and those who benefit others at the cost of their own losses; and my mother is one of the third kind.’ Indeed, Mao’s mother’s influence on him was keenly felt throughout his life.

After his mother’s passing, Mao Zedong invited his father, Mao Shunsheng, to stay with him for a time in Changsha. His father no longer interfered with his life, but agreed to continued financial support for his schooling. For this Mao Zedong was grateful to his father, who died from acute typhoid at age of 50, on 23 January 1920.

While parental education usually has a great bearing on a child’s growth, schooling invariably has an impact on a child’s future course of development. Mao Zedong spent much of his early childhood at his maternal grandmother’s home in Tangjiatuo in Xiangxiang County, where his maternal grandfather was engaged in farming. His mother’s brother ran an old-style private school and taught local children. Mao often attended classes at that school until 1902, when he was 8 years old and was brought back to Shaoshan Valley, where he began learning at a nearby old-style private school. In the eight years that ensued, excepting the two years when he was required by his father to work at farming the family’s land, Mao attended six different private schools in the nearby localities of Nan’an, Guangongqiao, Qiaotouwan, Zhongjiawan, Jingwanli, Wuguijing and Dongmaotang. In retrospect, Mao summed up those years as ‘six years of reading Confucian books’. Even then, he still helped with farming, collecting animal dung in the early morning and late afternoon, and joining in the work at harvest time.

By that time, the imperial examination system had in the main been abolished, and modern schools had begun to emerge. Introducing Western literature and going abroad to Japan for studies were in vogue. By the time Mao Zedong began to receive elementary schooling, the two people he admired – Yang Changji, who was to become his teacher, and the great man of letters Lu Xun (Zhou Shuren) – had left for Japan for advanced studies. In Shaoshan Valley, the old-style private schools were then still the only choice for local children’s schooling. By sending Mao to school, his father cherished no high hopes beyond his son’s acquiring enough literacy to keep family accounts and to be prepared for lawsuits if necessary. Following the custom of the time, Mao Zedong began with popular readings of traditional Confucian literature, such as San Zi Jing (The 3-Character Classic), Bai Jia Xing (The Hundred Surnames, in rhythmic arrangement – actually totaling more than 500 surnames), Zengguang Xianwen (Wise Sayings to Broaden One’s Horizon) and Youxue Qionglin (Selected Readings for Children). After these Mao began to study the Si Shu (Four Books) and Wu Jing (Five Classics). The original copies of The Book of Songs and The Analects of Confucius that Mao read are today on display at the Mao Zedong Memorial Hall in Shaoshan.

Though Mao did not find the difficult classical works to his liking, he had an extraordinary memory and comprehension, and was able to learn them well and by heart. Indeed, once committed to memory, what one has learnt in childhood cannot be erased from one’s mind. That is why Mao could apply these works easily long after he grew to manhood. Mao also studied the Zuo Zhuan (Commentary on the Spring and Autumn Annals), and that led to his great interest in studying history. His six-year education in Confucian culture helped cultivate his enthusiasm for ‘taking history as a clue to the present’, and it also helped develop his later approach of ‘making the past serve the present’.

In his yearly youth Mao Zedong did believe in the exhortations of Confucius and Mencius but the old-style, private school teachers’ stereotyped way of instruction had little in it to attract him. In 1908, when attending the private school at Jingwanli, he had a particular interest in reading what the teachers branded as ‘frivolous books; or ‘trash books’ -such famous novels as The Water Margin, Journey to the West, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Biography of Yue Fei (the patriotic general) and Romances of the Sui and Tang Dynasties. As the teacher did not approve of reading these books, he had to read them on the sly, putting a text-book over them as a cover-up when he was in school. At home, since his father did not allow him to reach such books, Mao Zedong had to cover up his window so that his father could not see the lamp light inside his son’s room.

Once he had read these novels and romances, Mao Zedong would recount the stories to other children or to the elderly folks of the village. Much later, in retrospect, Mao told Edgar Snow [in 1936]: ‘It occurred to me one day that there was one peculiar thing about those stories – the absence of peasants who tilled the land. All the characters in those stories were warriors, officials, or scholars; never was there a peasant hero.’ As a peasant’s son, Mao Zedong felt puzzled for some time, and he began to analyse those novels and concluded that the heroes in them ‘did not have to work the land because they owned and controlled the land and evidently made the peasants work it for them’. Mao felt that this was a case of inequality.

Peasants were naturally opposed to such inequality, and the rebellious figures depicted in The Water Margin became real heroes in Mao’s mind. The influence of this notion was meaningful and far-reaching. Later, in the long years of hardship in his revolutionary life, The Water Margin was a book he always kept handy for reading.

The incidents in these novels attracted Mao Zedong’s attention were reflected in events that occurred in real life. A rebellion staged by a starving mob erupted in Changsha in April 1910. It was a year of famine in which food prices soared unusually high, and whose families committed suicide. A large number of hungry people gathered at the gate to the governor’s office to present petitions, but they were shot at, and fourteen of the petitioners were killed instantly, with many more wounded. Such an act of suppression was too much for the masses to tolerate, and they set fire to the governor’s office and smashed the offices of some foreign firms, shipping companies and customs board. The Qing government sent in more troops to suppress the rioters, killing so many that the Shiziling area outside the Liuyang Gate of provincial capital was drenched with blood. (Shiziling was also the place where, twenty years later, Yang Kaihui, wife of Mao Zedong, was executed). Many of the rioters were beheaded, and their heads were displayed over the southern gate of the city as a sort of warning to future rebels.

Several small-time peddlers who had seen the tragedy and managed to escape the shooting spread the news of the hungry mob’s rebellion to Shaoshan Valley, and this evoked much discussion and indignation for several days thereafter. As days went by, and many people began to forget the incident, Mao Zedong continued to be very much distressed at heart, and it took him a long time to calm down. He felt that those who joined in the rebellion were good, ordinary people who had been driven by starvation and had no choice but to revolt. All those innocent people murdered in cold blood! How distressing! Decades later, he said emotionally that that incident’ affected my life’.

In the following year, famine struck Shaoshan Valley. The hungry peasants organized themselves and staged a chi-da-hu (seizure and eating of food in the houses of landowners), and in the process seized a lot of rice that Mao Zedong’s father had prepared for delivery to the country seat for sale. His father was immensely enraged. Mao Zedong did not sympathize with his father, but ‘also thought that the ways employed by the villagers were not right’.

About that time, Mao Zedong learned that Li Shuqing, a teacher of the reformist school, had returned to Shaoshan Valley. Mao thought highly of his teacher, and often called on him to learn about new developments outside his home town, and especially about the constitutional reform in the last years of the Qing Dynasty. It was about this time that Mao Zedong happened to read the book Shengshi weiyan (Words of Warning to a Prosperous Age), written by Zheng Guanying and published some ten years before. Mao particularly liked the book’s idea that society needed reformation. He became acquainted with some major current events in China outside his native village, and he began to feel that China should not remain what it had been.

Nor was Mao Zedong to remain what he had been. Up to the age of 17, he had not gone beyond the area between Shaoshan Valley and Tangjiatuo, his maternal grandmother’s village. He developed a strong urge to continue schooling somewhere outside the secluded area, though his father originally wanted him to be apprenticed to a rice merchant in Xiangtan County. At this point in his life, Mao was told by his cousin Wen Yongchang that modern knowledge was being taught at the Dongshan School, run by the county authorities of Xiangxiang, some 50 li (25km) from Shaoshan Valley. Eager to attend school there, Mao Zedong managed to convince several of his relatives – his mother’s brother, Wen Yuqing, his father’s cousin Mao Luzhong, and his cousin Wang Jifan – to persuade his father to approve such a move. His father finally agreed, thinking there might be some benefit to be gained.

In the autumn of 1910, Mao Zedong left the secluded Shaoshan area and headed for the wider world outside his home town. That was the first turning point in his life. Naturally, he felt excited. On the eve of his journey, and in that mood, he composed a short poem in an old pattern and stuck the poem into the family accounts book that his father examined daily.

Your son has decided to leave home to study

And will not return until he is accomplished.

One needn’t die only in one’s home town,

For there’s good burying ground

Anywhere along the road of life

The Dongshan School was at the foot of Mount Dongtai outside the Xiangxiang Country seat. In addition to teaching traditional classics, like other private schools, the school had new subjects, such as Natural Sciences, Geography and the English language. It was at this school that Mao learned that the Guangxu Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi had both died, and that the Xuantong Emperor had already been on the throne for two years. At that time, Mao still felt the emperor and most officials were good, intelligent men, who needed only the help of reformists such as Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao. Mao had read works on reform, written mostly by Kang and Liang, and had a particular liking for Liang’s impassioned style of writing. He held Kang and Liang in rather high esteem at the time, and he was not aware that Sun Yat-sen’s advocacy of overthrowing the Qing regime with a revolution had become the mainstream of thought, replacing the idea of reformist constitutional monarchy advocated by Kang and Liang. The revolutionists focused their attention on building liaisons among revolutionary elements and on leading armed uprisings, and paid little attention to raising public awareness. Their publications were banned from circulation in the interior provinces. On the other hand, after the failure of the Reform Movement of 1898, the journal Xinmin congbao (New People’s Miscellany), edited and published by Liang Qichao in Japan, which introduced Western bourgeois literature and political thinking, was then widely read in China. Moreover, Hunan Province had been an important base for the reformists, and Liang Qichao had once been chief lecturer at the School of Contemporary Affairs in Changsha. It was quite natural that Mao Zedong received his rudimentary political education from the reformists. The Xinmin congbao had stopped publication in 1907. However, Mao managed to borrow a bound volume of the journal from his cousin Wen Yongchang, which he read and re-read, and he was able to commit to memory many of its articles. While reading that bound volume, he would write notes or comments. About the essay ‘Thoughts on the State’, in Section 6 of Volume 4 of the journal, Mao wrote:

A formally established state is a constitutional state, whose constitution is formulated by the people, and whose monarch enjoys popular support. On the other hand, a state not formally established is an autocracy whose laws are drawn up by the monarch who enjoys no popular support. Countries like Britain and Japan today fall under the former category, while all the monarchs who had usurped power in the dynasties spanning several thousand years in China fall under the latter category.

The above passage is the earliest political commentary in Mao Zedong’s writing discovered so far. It shows his understanding, at that time, of constitutional monarchy and feudal autocracy. From following Confucian classics to admiring the reformist leaders Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, from Zhen Guanying’s Words of Warning to a Prosperous Age to approving of conditional monarchy, with Britain and Japan as models – all this marked the first stage of Mao’s ideological development in his youth. More importantly, Liang Qichao’s Xinmin shuo (On the New People) penetratingly analysed the constituent core of national culture and advocated ‘changing the character of the people’. This way of thinking was the forerunner of the May Fourth Movement that advocated restricting the national spirit, and it had a lasting effect on Mao Zedong. It is quite likely that the title of Liang’s work could be the origin of the name of Xinmin xuehui (New People’s Study Society) – that first organization set up by Mao, later in Changsha.

By that time, Mao had begun to notice events outside China. From a returned student who had studied in Japan and was then a school teacher, Mao learned how Japan had become a strong country through its Meiji Restoration, and he was impressed. Then, after reading a book titles Great Heroes of the World, borrowed from a classmate named Xiao Zizhang (who later became the famous poet known as Xia San), Mao was greatly inspired by the heroes depicted in this book, including George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Napoleon Boneparte, Peter the Great and others. Upon returning the book to Xiao San, Mao said, ‘China should produce such great personalities. We in China should lay stress on making the country prosper and the military strong… Every Chinese must do his utmost.’

In the spring of 1911, Mao’s teacher, He Langang, who received an appointment to teach at the Provincial Xiangxiang Middle School in Changsha, was ready to take Mao along with him because of the latter’s excellence in learning. Mao travelled for the first time by river streamer to Changsha, where he successfully passed the entrance examination to the Provincial Middle School. Changsha was the provincial capital of Hunan. On the eve of the 1911 Revolution, it was also the hub of Hunan revolutionary activity, and it seethed with propaganda against the feudal Qing Dynasty. The new military forces garrisoning the provincial capital were increasingly leaning to the side of the revolutionaries. On arriving in Changsha, the 18-year-old Mao immediately felt his vision was broadened and the social atmosphere was vastly different from that in the countryside. For the first time, he had access to Minli bao (People’s Journal), run by the revolutionists, and he became an ardent reader of the journal. From it, he became acquainted with a lot of revolutionary vies and statements. When he read the report in the journal of Huanghuagang Uprising in Guangzhou, led by Huang Xing, it had a great impact on his thinking. Later, in the Xiangjiang pinglun (Xiang River Review), he wrote: ‘The Guangzhou Uprising led by Huang Xing on the 19^th of the third month of Emperor Xuantong’s reign [27 April 1911] shook the whole of China. When the news spread to Hunan, the revolution-inclined students were very much eager to have a try.’

Mao was one of those ‘eager to have a try’. This led him, one day, to write an article that he posted on a wall of the school campus. It expressed support for the revolutionists’ programmed to overthrow the Qing Dynasty so as to establish a republic in China. In his article, Mao proposed that Sun Yat-sen be invited back from abroad to serve as president of the republic, Kang Youwei be appointed prime minister, and Liang Qichao foreign minister. Mao sounded rather naïve at that time, not yet capable of discerning the differences in political programmes between Syn Yat-sen, and Kang and Liang. That was the first public expression, however, of Mao’s political views.

As a demonstration of determination to break with the corrupt Qing regime, Mao advocated and took the lead in cutting the queue (the long, single braid of hair worn by mature men by order of the Qing Dynasty). He and some other activists launched a ‘surprise attack’ to cut the queues of a dozen or so schoolmates who had promised to cut theirs but showed reluctance to do the deed. This incident illustrated Mao’s style of saying what he meant and being resolute in taking action.

On 10 October 1911, the historic Wuchang Uprising broke out. The new revolutionary government of Hubei Province soon sent representatives to Changsha, to ask revolutionaries in Hunan to rise up in response to the uprising. A representative, who came to the Provincial Middle School to brief the students on the Wuchang Uprising, made an impassioned speech at the students’ assembly. More than twenty years later, this incident was still quite fresh in Mao’s memory: ‘Seven or eight students rose in the assembly and supported the representative with vigorous denunciations of the Qing regime and calls for actions to establish a republic.’ Mao was then even more excited, and believed that the ongoing acute struggles against the feudal regime needed more reinforcements from the people, so he decided to cast aside his pen to join the army. He was about to leave for Wuhan to join the ranks of the revolutionary armies there, when the revolutionaries in Changsha launched an armed uprising on 24 October 1911 and established a revolutionary military government in Hunan. Mao Zedong immediately joined the new army in Changsha. Disinclined to join its student detachment, Mao joined the regular army as a private in the left platoon of the First Battalion, 25^th Brigade, of the Hunan New Army.

In his army life, Mao had a monthly salary of 7 Chinese silver dollars, and, apart from receiving military training, he would spend most of his time reading newspapers and journals and books, which he managed to subscribe to or purchase with his salary. He became an avid reader of such newspapers and journals, where he followed new political developments in China, and reading newspapers carefully became a habit of his. One day, in reading an article in the Xianghan xinwen (Xianghan News), he happened on his first acquaintance with the term ‘socialism’. It was, in fact, an article advocating social reformism, written by Jiang Kanghu. However, quite interested by what he had read, Mao discussed the subject with his fellow soldiers, and he wrote to several of his former schoolmates, proposing that the subject was worth studying. There was however, little enthusiasm for his suggestion – only one of them responded in agreement.

The revolution developed rapidly. Barely two months after the Wuchang Uprising of 10 October 1991 most of China’s provinces had declared independence from the Qing regime. Then, through a peace arrangement, Yuan Shikai usurped the fruits of victory of the revolution to become provisional president of the republic. Following the abdication of the last Qing Dynasty emperor, people rejoiced, thinking that the revolution had ended successfully. Feeling that his own aims in joining the army had been met, Mao began reconsidering his next course of action, and decided to leave the army in order to continue schooling. By then, he had served in the army for a little over half a year.

Mao began scrutinizing student recruitment advertisements in newspapers. He was for some time unable to decide on a profession, so he registered for the entrance examinations of the police academy, the soap-making technical school, the politics and law institute, and the public high school. By the found none of these to his liking. Finally, after ranking first in the entrance exam, Mao was admitted to the Hunan Provincial Senior Middle School (later called the Number One Provincial Middle School).

Mao Zedong stayed in this Senior Middle School for only half a year, and left behind an essay that Liu Qian, his teacher of classical Chinese, praised as a ‘realistic analysis of society’. The topic was ‘How Shang Yang Established Confidence by the Moving of the Pole’. The essay started with very candid comments:

‘Having read history up to the point at which Shang Yang shifted the pole to establish credibility, I could not help but lament the folly of the nation’s people at that time, lament the painstaking effort of those at the helm of state, lament the lack of enlightenment of the people over several thousand years, and lament the nation’s survival crisis.’

This essay shows that, on the question of national salvation, Mao Zedong was continuing to advocate developing people’s awareness to mould a new generation, as advocated by Liang Qichao. This is the first complete essay we have from Mao’s youth. Totaling only 600 Chinese characters, it won a 150-character comment from his teacher, who wrote that the writer of the essay ‘possesses outstanding intellect that suggests a very promising future’, and ‘the accomplished writing style indicates a quality of future greatness, and with continuous effort he may attain heights beyond imagination’. The teacher asked that the essay be circulated among Mao’s classmates.

Not long after, Mao became dissatisfied with the rigid regulations and limited scope of the high school’s curriculum. Liu Qian had lent to Mao the complete set of 116 volumes of the Imperially Approved and Edited Mirror of Successive Dynasties (Yupi lidai tongjian jilan). Mao read the chronicles and comments assiduously. From this, he felt he benefited greatly, and concluded it was much better for him to read and study on his own than to continue with schooling. Once he made up his mind, Mao was capable of taking steps that would astonish others. Resolutely, he left the Provincial Senior Middle School and took lodgings at the Xiangxiang Guild Hall in Changsha’s Xin’an Lane. From there, he would walk 3 li (1.5 km) daily to the Provincial Library outside the Liuyang Gate for self-study.

Mao Zedong then drew up for himself a comprehensive plan for self-education. He delved into the books pertinent to his study, by both Chinese and foreign authors, and studied them as avidly as a hungry cow let into a vegetable garden eats everything in sight. He took great interest in and benefited much from the then-available Western works of the eighteen and nineteenth centuries on bourgeois democracy and modern sciences. They included such works as Rousseau’s Social Contract, Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, Yan Fu’s translation of Adam’ Smith’s The Wealth of Nations in particular, Montesquieu’s The Spirit of the Laws, Thomas Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics, Herbert Spencer’s The Study of Sociology, and the like. It could be said, then, that Mao had a fairly systematic self-education in modern Western thought and culture. It was also at the Provincial Library that he saw for the first time a huge world map hanging on the walls of the entrance hall, which paused to study daily. It was there that he realized that the world was so big, that China was only a small part of it, and that Xiangtan, his home town was not even on the map. How exciting the discovery must have been to a young student who had left home barely one and a half years earlier!

Thus passed another half-year.

That period of self-education, though ‘very rewarding’ to Mao, as he later told Edgar Snow, was not to last. Firstly, his father refused to give financial support to what seemed to him an aimless way of learning. Second, the Xiangxiang Guild House where he was staying became occupied by disbanded army men from Xiangxiang, who often resorted to fist-fighting, which made it impossible for Mao to stay on longer.

Under such circumstances, Mao had to plan his future course more realistically, though he still hesitated about what to do next. By then, he had become a young man, nearly 20 years old, who had read a lot and was not altogether without experience.

The College Student

Mao Zedong made up his mind to go back to school and resume his studies. A newspaper advertisement recruiting students for the Hunan Provincial Fourth Teachers’ Training College caught his eye. It offered waiving tuition fees, nominal charges for room and board, and a teaching post for each graduate. The year before, when he took the essay-writing test for the entrance examination to the Provincial Senior Middle School, applicants were asked to write on the subject ‘Just at the birth of the republic, when all neglected tasks remain to be done, which is more important, education or industrialization?’ In his essay, Mao had employed the theme of ‘let education be in control’. As advocated by Liang Qichao. After careful consideration, Mao felt he was most suited to being a teacher. In the spring of 1913, Mao passed the entrance examination and enrolled in the five-year programme of the Fourth Teachers’ Training College. The following spring, when this college was merged with the Hunan Provincial First Teachers’ Training College, Mao Zedong became a member of the eighth entering class. He actually spent five and a half years in the college. The Fourth Teachers College enrolled students in the spring term, but the First Teachers College did so in the autumn term. In consequence, as the colleges adjusted their respective curriculum schedules, Mao had to repeat in the autumn courses he had taken in the spring, and so he did not graduate until the summer of 1918. The college campus faced the northward rush of the Xian River, at the foot of the Miaogao Peak, to the south of Changsha’s southern city gate. East of the campus was the Hankou-Guangzhou rail line, to the west, beyond the river, the lush green of Mount Yuelu could be seen. The natural environment of the campus was indeed beautiful. The rumble of trains that raced by the campus brought to it the breath of a new era.

Formally established in 1903, the First Teachers College was called the Hunan Provincial Normal School in its early years. Its earliest predecessor was the Chengnan Shuyuan (City-south Classics Academy), where renewed Confucian rationalist philosophers, such as Zhang Yue of the Southern Son Dynasty had lectured. The academy was neighbour to another renowned academy on the other side of the Xian River, the Yuelu Classics Academy, where the great scholar Zhu Xi (1130-1200) had lectured. Since 1912, the Hunan Provincial Normal School had been called the First Hunan Provincial Teachers’ Training College. Its size and equipment and the academic levels of the teaching staff dwarfed all the other schools Mao Zedong had attended before. According to the educational policy expressed in the college charter, ‘in addition to the objectives of the Ministry of Education, the college adopts an up-to-date educational approach’ that placed great emphasis on ‘cultivation of virtue’, ‘physical activity’ and ‘living in society’, as well as ‘every sort of instruction that should encourage initiative’.  This was very much in keeping with the thorough nurturing of moral character and scholarship. The college consistently engaged a teaching facility noted for the breadth and depth of their knowledge, progressive outlook and fine moral character. The faculty included such important scholars as Yang Changji, Xu Teli, Fang Weixia, Wang Jifan, and Li Jinxi. During Mao’s stint in the college, a number of enthusiastic and progressive young men were also enrolled there, such as Cai Hesen, Zhang Kundi, Chen Zhangfu, Luo Xuezan, Zhou Shizhao, Li Weihan, Xiao Zisheng, and Xiao Zizhang. He Shuheng who was seventeen years Mao’s senior and had earlier passed the imperial examination at the county level, was also enrolled in the college at the same time. The first Teachers College was then rightly regarded as a cradle of progressive youth.

The college undoubtedly exerted a great influence on Mao Zedong’s development. He not only acquired a good foundation of knowledge at the school. It was also there, in the context of China’s evolving situation, that he began to develop his own way of thinking and political views, gained initial experience of social action, and befriended quite a few like-minded people.

When Mao entered the Teachers College, China was undergoing a period pf perplexity and depression that was difficult for people to endure. A republic had replaced the imperial dynasty, yet China had not gained a new life. The hope for national independence, democracy and social progress, cherished by people before the 1911 Revolution, was not realized. Instead, in 1915, Japan forced the Beiyang government to accept its so-called ’21 demands’ for domination of China; the warlord Yuan Shikai restored an imperial regime, followed by the farce of an imperial restoration staged by the warlord Zhang Xun, and the entire country then descended into incessant internecine wars among separatist warlord regimes. In the cultural arena, Confucianism opposed and blocked revolutionary thinking. Deep frustration replaced high hope among the people. The harsh realities, however, did not stop a young generation from searching for a way out.

Having become a full-time student, what objectives did Mao Zedong set for his school years?

Young people love to talk about their aspirations and career goals, such as their hopes to become military strategists or educators. Mao Zedong though that his aspirations should concentrate on searching for the truth. Otherwise, he would merely imitate those who had gone before. He was convinced that genuine aspiration required searching for the truth, and then following its lead. As he wrote to his teacher Li Jinxi, in 1917, ‘If in a decade one fails to get at the truth, it is ten years to no purpose; and if not found in a life time, it is a waste of a life.’ Earlier, in a letter to his good friend and classmate Xiao Zisheng, dated September 1915, Mao proposed ‘to study for the sake of others’, or ‘to study for the sake of the people of our country’, or ‘to study for the sake of the people of the world’. Slightly before this, when writing to the same friend, he had said: ‘to be ready to die a most cruel death for the interests of the nation and the masses is indeed an aspiration for a benevolent gentleman’.

Thus, it may be seen that Mao, then learning to be a teacher, had set for himself a course of action that had Chinese society always at heart and tempered willpower with an assiduous quest for knowledge.

In the First Teachers College, the teacher who influenced Mao the most was his teacher of ethics, Yang Changji, Yang, also known as Yang Huasheng, came from Bancang Village near the city of Changsha. He had been brought up under strong, traditional cultural influences, and he was particularly interested in neo-Confucian ideas advocated by Cheng Yi (1033-1107) and Zhu Xi (1130-1200). When he went to Japan for advanced study, Yang gave himself a new first name – Huaizhong, which meant that, while studying abroad, China was in his heart. After he completed six years of study in Japan, Yang went to England for three more years as a student and then he toured Germany and Switzerland before returning to his homeland. After returning to China, Yang declined several offers of jobs in official posts and turned instead to teaching, since he looked on nurturing the younger generations as his duty. Being a man of much learning and great integrity, he drew students to him like a magnet.

In lecturing on the cultivation of moral character, Yang urged students ‘to set lofty life goals, and once set, both words and deeds should be in keeping with these goals’. He further exhorted them to be ‘hard-working’, full of vigour’, ‘able to think independently’ and to ‘take a firm stand’. In addition, he advised his students to be ‘meticulous’ in everything they might do, for ‘a small negligence could spoil a whole undertaking’. He also advocated that, in pursuing knowledge, one should strive for ‘a thorough grasp of both the past and the present and an effective fusion of Chinese and Western ideas’, and develop an analytical and critical spirit. Above all, he spared no effort to encourage his students to cultivate themselves into men of integrity who could be useful to society.

Mao Zedong enjoyed Yang Changji’s lectures immensely and would often go to his home to discuss issues. During vacations, Mao would frequently seek further enlightenment from Yang by calling on him at his home in Banchang. About this experience, Mao himself noted: ‘I’ve made some progress in recent years, not so much from reading books but much more from analysing problems and seeking enlightenment through discussion.’ In 1914, when Mao and his schoolmates organized a study group on philosophy, they invited Yang to be their advisor. Mao recalled the deep affection that developed between the students and their teacher. In a letter to a friend dated July 1915, Mao wrote: ‘In my view, Mr Yang is a great and learned man of very high attainment, far beyond the reach of my ability.’ This indicates that the influence Yang had on young Mao’s character was both subtle and indelible.

Of the thousands of students he taught at Changsha, Mr Yang liked Mao Zedong and Cai Hesen best. He wrote the following in his diary for 5 April 1915:

My student Mao Zedong told me he comes from a secluded area at the border of Xiangtan and Xiangxiang counties… He’s from a peasant family; his father had been a peasant, though he is now engaged in rice trade; his brothers are still farming; and his mother comes from a peasant family. Too, in Xiangxiang. Yet Mao Zedong is very bright and intelligent: This is something quite extraordinary. I have, therefore, always encouraged him, saying that many exceptional people come from peasant families, citing Zeng Guofan and Liang Qichao as examples. Mao Zedong worked as a peasant for two years, and before coming to the college he served in the army for half a year at the time of the republican revolution, which is quite interesting history for this outstanding student.

Clearly, Mr Yang saw Mao as an ‘exceptional’ person

In addition to his frequent visits to Mr Yang, Mao often called on other teachers, including Xu Teli, Li Jinxi and Fang Weixia, at their homes to seek enlightenment. This, too, is recorded in various passages of Li’s diary, where he notes that issues discussed on such occasions included ‘methods of study’, ‘ways and means to study science in school’ and ‘problems of reforming society’.

Mao Zedong called at Li Jinxi’s home as many as twenty times between April and August of 1915. In September, Li Jinxi was summoned to Beijing by the Ministry of Education to serve as a special editor of college textbooks. Mao continued to maintain friendly correspondence with him. Mao had left a deep impression on Li, who wrote in his journal for 31 July: ‘I read Mao’s diary at his place. I found it very practical. His command of written language is superior to that of Zhangfu, though they are equally earnest in performance and both are quite promising young men.’

Among the courses at the First Teachers College, Mao concentrated on cultivation of moral character, philosophy, Chinese literature, history and geography. He did not devote much energy to mathematics or drawing classes. In July 1915, he wrote to a friend:

Heretofore, I did not have a correct approach, studied courses haphazardly, and did not care for the pedantic and trivial details of classroom teaching. I’ve now grown a little older and have made some progress. I’ve decided on a method of study: to read extensively before intensive study” to read Chinese materials before Western materials on the same subject; and to read the relevant books on fundamentals before taking up specialized works on a given subject.

He was diligent and wasted not even a minute. He would get up before dawn to start reading and would read by dim light of street lamps after the ‘lights out’ bugle call in the dormitory. He read conscientiously a large number and a great range of books, including works of famous ancient figures from before the Qin Dynasty right down to thinkers of the Ming and Qing dynasties, from the Histories of Twenty-four Dynasties (Ershisi shi) to Sima Guang’s Comprehensive Mirror to Aid in Government (Zizhi tongjian), from the Selections of Refined Literature (Zhaoming wenxuan) to the Complete Works of Han Yu (Han Changli quanji), and from the Geographic Annotations on the Study of Chinese History (Dushi fangyu jiyao) by Gu Zhuyu to the local gazetteers of the counties in his home province. In a letter to his good friend Xiao Zisheng, Mao listed seventy-seven ancient classics, histories and philosophical works and collections of writings, and asserted ‘if one wishes to pursue knowledge, these are the works that one must study.

In 1929 when his kinfolk at home heard that Guomindang (GMD) warlord He Jian was to send troops to ransack the home, his family set fire to all the books, notebooks and journals saved by Mao Zedong. A local private school teacher managed to snatch one notebook and two textbooks from the huge heap of burning paper.

The notebook thus saved is a traditional writing page with nine vertical lines on each page. In the first half of the notebook are two great poems by Qu Yuan, Li Sao (Song of Sorrow) and Jiu Ge (Nine Songs), hand-copied by Mao. In the second half of the notebook, headed by the title ‘Classroom Notes’ in Mao’s own handwriting are mainly Mao’s notes on classroom lectures on moral character and the Chinese language, followed by, between October and December 1913, notes he jotted down while reading books.

As a native of Hunan Province, Mao’s selection and study of traditional Chinese culture reflects the prevailing cultural trends of the times in Hunan. The province had a very long tradition of building academies and centres of learning. Many renowned scholars had lectured at Yuelu and Chengnam academies. Both the rationalist Confucian school, which laid stress on the cultivation of moral character, and the practical Confucian school. Which emphasized the art of ruling, had strong influence on the scholars of Hunan. From the centuries of scholarly tradition and constant elucidation, down to the last years of the Qing Dynasty, there emerged a school of thought in Hunan that valued rationalist ethics by stressing practical application and matching words with deeds. Under the influence of this prevailing thought, the students and teachers of Hunan developed great interest in social issues and became enthusiastic participants in political activities. A large number of influential statesmen, military leaders, thinkers and revolutionaries came out of Hunan, making it one of the most dynamic provinces of China in modern history. Before and shortly after the Opium War of 1840, Hunan produced a larger group of noted people such as He Changling, Tao Shu and Wei Yuan, who advocated reforms in both academia and government. Later, Hunan produced staunch advocates for a constitutional monarchy, such as Tan Sitong, Tang Caichang and Xiong Xiling. At the time of the 1911 Revolution, Hunan produced such leaders as Huang Xing, Cai E, Chen Tianhua, Song Jiaoren and Yu Zhimo. Most of these had their schooling in the aforementioned Yuelu Academy.

Earlier, in the late Ming and early Qing dynasties, the noted scholar Wang Fuzhi strongly influenced cultural thought in Hunan. A native of Hunan’s Hengyang County, Wang attended the Yuelu Academy before becoming a renowned scholar and then living as a recluse on Shichuan Mountain. A prolific author, Wang Fuzhi succeeded in developing his own school of thought characterized by a critical approach. He stressed practical application of knowledge, advocating the guidance of ‘rational knowledge by a practical sprit’. He stressed the importance of ‘doing’ in the process of learning, and this was quite an innovative approach.

Yet another renowned figure in the history of modern China came out of Hunan: Zeng Guofan. He and a group of ‘resurgent-China generals and ministers’ that he represented, including Hu Linyi, Zuo Zongtang, Luo Zenan and Zeng Guoquan were all schooled at one or the other of the two (Changsha) academies. They held to the rationalist Confucian school, but followed Wang Fuzhi’s emphasis on the practical application of knowledge. Zeng Guofan had himself spent much energy in disseminating the Literary Legacy of Wang Fuzhi, and in advocating the integration of the two Confucian schools on cultivation of moral character and the art of government. In suppressing the Taiping Uprising, Zeng Guofan raised the banner of ‘preserving the right doctrine’, and he was very strict in strengthening the discipline of troops and improving the efficiency of administration. Zeng was also one of the early representatives of the movement to adapt things from abroad (within the framework of the imperial regime of the Qing dynasty), and he left no small impact.

In his determination to pursue knowledge, Mao Zedong was continually influenced by this cultural environment. Once admitted to the First Teachers College, he was impressed by the atmosphere. He was very impressed at the student assembly, during which they would sing the lines of the school song:

To the west of Hengshan

And the east of Yuelu

Our school is the heart of Hunan. As metal may be melted

So people are moulded.

Fine minds and noble character nurtured here

Have spawned men of achievement through the ages.

Give it your best, young men! Become heroes in our time!

Yang Changji was a graduate of the Yuelu Academy, and under his guidance the research into Wang Fuzhi’s philosophy became popular in the First Teachers College. Mao devoted considerable energy to this school of thought. He often attended lectures at the Chuanshan Academic Society, which was named after Wang Fuzhi and founded by Liu Renxi, a close friend of Yang. Mao also studied the works of Zeng Guofan, including Family Correspondence of Zeng Guofan and Zeng Guofan’s Diary. In his Classroom Notes, Mao jotted down a fair number of Zeng Guofan’s remarks. Some of them, quoted from Zeng’s diary, were to this effect: ‘The diary of Disheng [Zeng Guofan’s style name]: A righteous man aiming at reforming society should attach great importance to the two principles of magnanimity and practicality. To be magnanimous rules out the jealousy of others; to be practical means to refrain from boasting, from seeking undeserved fame, from ostentation, and from high-sounding words that are not practical.’ From this, it seems that Mao favoured a sure-footed, down-to-earth approach to life. At this time, Mao regarded Zeng Guofan as a great man, capable of both ‘spreading enlightenment’ and ‘getting things done’. In a letter to Li Jinxi, Mao listed Zeng Guofan, Kang Youwei, Sun Yat-sen and Yuan Shikai as ‘men of the hour’, adding that among them he held Zeng Guofan in particularly high esteem.

The Hunan way of emphasizing application, manifested as a mode of thought, was simply to reason from fact (shishi qiushi).

This concept (shishi qiushi) is first found in the chapter Life of Prince Xian’ in History of the Han Dynasty written by Ban Gu (32-92). Its original meaning was that only if true facts are emphasized as the basis for research and knowledge can one reach accurate and reliable conclusions. In 1916, the chancellor of the Yuelu Classics Academy erected above the academy’s main gate a large horizontal board with four Chinese characters inscribed on it. Mao Zedong, who during two school vacations attended lectures at the academy at the recommendation of Professor Yang Changji, was deeply impressed by those four characters at the entrance to the school. Twenty years later, Mao gave the phrase a new interpretation and had the same four-character inscription hung up at the entrance to the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in Yan’an.

One of the 'Guidelines for Educating Students' of the First Teachers College stated that education  should emphasize a practical approach so that students might understand major events of the contemporary world correctly, and so that they might gain sound knowledge of the actual conditions  of society. In following this approach, Mao studied the fine works of Chinese cultural heritage and was much impressed by the works and views of a number of great  thinkers. These included: Gu Yanwu of the Qing Dynasty, who advocated 'practical studies' in place of 'rational studies'; Wang Fuzhi, who initiated the idea of 'practice first, then knowledge'; and Yan Yuan, who advised 'having a myriad  abstract thoughts and discussions is not equal to doing one righteous act'. In his Classroom Notes, Mao jotted down a number of sayings and comments  in this vein. These included: 'Whatever you do, do it in earnest; whatever you study, put your whole mind to it; . . . The  right learning process since ancient times is to practise what one has learned;  ... It is useless to study behind closed doors; one should integrate one's book­ learning with relevant affairs of state and a multitude of things and issues in the world.' Mao particularly singled out Gu Yanwu for praise: 'He carefully relied on experience to analyse important matters one by one, so as to get at the root causes of the conditions  of people's lives and the nation's fate. He travelled widely to see things for himself, and relied on actual conditions  to get a good grasp of the land, the sufferings and hardships, and the good and the bad together.'

Clearly influenced by these great thinkers and having absorbed the essence of such a fine heritage in his jotted notes, Mao believed in the crucial importance of studying the actual conditions of society. He often told his school­ mates that they should not only study 'books with words', but also 'books without words' - by which he meant the real conditions of society.

In the summer vacation of 1917, Mao Zedong invited his good friend Xiao Zisheng, who had just graduated from the First Teachers College and was teaching in Chuyi Elementary School, to go with  him on a field trip. Each carried only an umbrella, a bag of simple clothes, and a writing case. In the local parlance of Hunan, to take such a 'field trip' was referred to as 'to raise the autumn wind'. The penniless scholars relied on composing poetry and writing a few lines for the local gentry in exchange for coins to buy food at each stop, very much  as if they were beggars. They travelled in this way for more than a month and covered more than 900 li (450 km). They observed the social life of the many towns and villages in the five counties of Changsha, Ningxiang, Anima, Yiyang and Yuanjiang. On their journey they got acquainted with and chatted with all sorts of people, such as peasants, boatmen, local gentry, county magistrates, an elderly member of the Hanlin Academy, a director of an education publicity centre, and abbots of Buddhist and Daoist temples and shrines; and they took many notes. After he returned to the First Teachers College, Mao Zedong's classmates read the notes of his field trip, and they referred to him as 'one who travelled with no money but the fate of the nation in his heart'. To have a memento of this study tour' Mao invited Xiao to have a photo taken at a photo studio, with both of them wearing the same straw sandals and shorts they had worn on the tour. Later, Mao made more such field trips. He made a second tour with Cai Hesen in the spring vacation of the following year. That tour, which lasted for more than a fortnight, covered several other counties along the southern and eastern banks of Dongting Lake, including Xiangyin, Yueuang, Pingjiang, and Liuyang counties. This was the beginning of what was to become Mao Zedong's way of concentrating on investigation and study in his later life.

Chinese society was at that time in the midst of great upheaval and turbulence. Mao felt this keenly, and he spent about one-third of his college allowance (more than 160 Chinese silver dollars during five years of schooling) in subscribing to journals and buying books. He read the journals and newspapers daily, and often consulted maps or reference works and jotted down notes. Thus, when discussing current events with his school mates, he was able to analyse events and issues rationally and logically, and he would offer his comments with conviction, so he was given the nickname 'expert on current events'. This, in turn, further enhanced his sense of duty to Chinese society.

Nor were the college classrooms tranquil.

In January 1915, the Japanese government tempted Yuan Shikai with 'support for ascending the throne' and then put to him the '21 demands'. They issued ultimatums to Yuan on 7 May, and on 9 May Yuan's government replied indicating a basic willingness to accept the demands. The whole nation was indignant at the revelation of Yuan Shikai's move. The students of the First Teachers College compiled and printed a collection of statements and articles condemning the imminent acceptance of a treaty of national betrayal. They titled it Essays on the Sense of Shame, and on its cover Mao Zedong wrote a four-line Pledge:

The seventh of May,

The Republic suffered

extraordinary shame;

How to achieve

revenge?

Through our

generation!

About this time, Yi Yongqi, Mao's close friend and classmate' died of illness. On 23 May, for the memorial service held by the students' association, Mao Zedong wrote a long elegy in classical poetic style' which contained the following lines:

Deeply grieved, I intone this elegy

By the hills, lush and green,

And one day I'll take up the spear.

To the east lies an aggressive island nation

And to our north, those who owe us debts of blood.

We people are destined to wipe out national

humiliation, Though we come from humble stock!

This elegy is Mao's first work in the old forty-line five-character style, and it is the oldest surviving piece of poetry in Mao Zedong's own hand. The elegy, together with his inscription on Essays on the Sense of Shame, indicates the young Mao's heavy heart at a time when the nation was in misery and danger, and it also shows his desire to avenge the nation's honour.

National crises imposed from abroad were invariably linked to internal politics of old China. Yuan Shikai launched frenzied covert activities to restore an imperial regime. To that purpose, his assistant Yang Du began recruiting prominent figures for a 'preparatory committee for national security'. In Hunan, it was rumoured that Professor Li Jinxi, Mao Zedong's former teacher, then seeking a job in Beijing, had been dragooned into that preparatory committee. On hearing this, Mao wrote to Li on 9 November 1915: 'Evil forces are increasingly rampant and justice is being suppressed. At this critical juncture, righteous men should refrain from being dragged into the evil forces, and wait for the moment to take proper action. It is advisable not to seek a job just now.' He further advised Li to quit Beijing, 'that stinking, rotten place', and hurry home without delay'. Later on, however, when the rumour about Li proved groundless, Mao felt relieved and instantly wrote a letter of apology to Professor Li.

The waves of protest against Yuan Shikai's attempt to restore an imperial regime surged so high across the country that even Kang Youwei, Liang Qichao and Tang Hualong, who had been prominent advocates of constitutional monarchy before the 1911 Revolution, joined the protests against Yuan. Mao Zedong, who was then secretary of the students' association, took the lead to compile the statements of protest by the three noted statesmen into a pamphlet entitled Penetrating Statements on the National Situation by Tang, Kang and Liang and to circulate the pamphlet among the students. One of his schoolmates, Chen Chang, who had just graduated from the college, wrote in his diary of 28 April 1916: 'Received a letter from Runzhi (Mao Zedong) at 8:00 this morning. It contained a copy of Penetrating Statements on the National Situation by Tang, Kang and Liang, which Mao kindly gave to me.'

Yuan Shikai died on 6 June 1916, only eighty-three days after his proclamation as 'Emperor'. He was succeeded as president by Li Yuanhong, who proclaimed restoration of the provisional constitution of the first year of the republic. Duan Qirui became prime minister and assumed political authority in Beijing. Fearing that prolonged confrontation could induce a revolution, Liang Qichao, who had helped organize the 'battles against Yuan in defence of the republic', began to advocate reconciliation between the warlord regime in northern China and the forces in southern China. Mao Zedong who was staunchly opposed to Yuan's restoration of the imperial regime, did not then see the true colours of the northern warlords, who had Yuan's blessing and on whom Yuan had relied, so at that time Mao favoured Liang's strategy of reconciliation. At the end of June, Mao hurried back to Shaoshan to visit his ailing mother, but he was not able to reach his hometown because of disturbance caused by some southern troops. He felt all the more that the political situation should not remain unsettled any longer.

On 18 and 25 July, Mao wrote twice to Xiao Zisheng, his former school-mate, giving his views on the current situation. In the letters, Mao analysed the situation:

Following resolution of the three major issues of the constitution, parliament and the cabinet on 30 June, the southern provinces have rescinded their earlier proclamations of independence and abolished military councils. The national situation seems to be moving towards reconciliation. This I attribute to the wisdom of the revolutionary southern leaders having the nation's larger interests at heart, to the crucial role of the good offices of Duan, and to the sincerity of His Excellency Li, who has made exceptional contributions... These measures taken by the central authorities are praiseworthy.

One can see that Mao then put Duan Qirui and Li Yuanhong on a par with the southern provincial parliamentary leaders in his esteem.

The people of Hunan then expelled Tang Xiangming, the provincial inspector-general appointed by Yuan Shikai. In his letters to Xiao mentioned above, Mao reported some of the adverse circumstances that followed Tang's expulsion. These included: 'opportunistic revenge by violent mobs', 'presumptious appointments', defying central authorities, and the like. [He further noted:] 'These mishaps in Hunan surpass those following the 1911 Revolution . . . Once killing begins, the vicious cycle of revenge will continue. Though the terror following the French Revolution was dreadful, these mishap have unfortunately occured here in this province.' From these letters it appears that Mao's views on state and government were still in tentative evolution, and that there was in his views an ingredient of the 'bloodless revolution' that he favoured for a while.

It was also around this time that the chinese press published reports of an imminent reshuffle of the Japanese cabinet headed by Okuma Shigenobu. Since Okuma was the arch-criminal who had crafted the '21 demands', many people hoped that with Okuma stepping down Japan might improve its policy towards China. Mao Zedong thought otherwise. In a letter to Xiao Zisheng on 25 July 1916, Mao stated:

'No matter who takes over the post of Japanese prime minister, there will be no change in Japan's China policy. Pondering the matter repeatedly, I cannot but think that Japan is our nation's menacing aggressor.' Mao went on to say that, between China and lapan, 'within 20 years, war cannot be avoided, and we will have to fight against their aggression for national survival, yet our people are not awakened to the danger and pay little attention to the Japanese moves. To my mind, we must steel ourselves to face Japan if we wish to protect future generations.'

The Chinese People's War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression broke out in 1937. The words of the 24-year-old teacher-training student were right on the mark.

If we view Mao Zedong's education at the First Teachers College as being in two stages, the year 1916 was the turning point. In the first stage, he focused more on studying classical works; and in the second, he laid greater stress on studying philospphy and ethics, together with more experience gained in closer contact with society. The purpose of his study remained a search for truth to address national crises, but the content of his learning changed.

This change had a relationship to the evolving situation in the nation's intellectual world of that time.

The distressing experiences in the few years following the 1911 Revolution had a salutary effect on China's progressives. If the old ways no longer worked, new paths had to be discovered. Yuan Shikai's proclaiming himself emperor and Zhang Xun's attempt to restore an imperial regime served to awaken many people. A good number came to realize that the crucial reason why a republican system could not be realized and consolidated lay in the lack of a thorough criticism of the feudal old ideology, old culture and old ethical code; and that another key reason for the repeated failures of the struggles for national salvation waged by the nation's progressives was that the Chinese people looked at the incidents 'as if watching a fire from across the river, looking on with indifference'. Progressive elements of the nation began to shift their attention to ideology and culture, and to advocate fundamental transformation of the national mentality. It was in this context that Chen Duxiu, who had been general secretary of the Anhui provincial government at the time of the 1911 Revolution, in September 1915 launched the publication of Youth magazine (renamed New Youth one year later). Chen wrote in the journal, 'Ethical consciousness is our ultimate awakening.'

That marked the origin of the early stages of the New Culture Movement. It was not long before a large number of progressive young people rallied arround New Youth. The journal and its contributing writers helped foster the political convictions and moral character of a new generation - young people distinct from the old-style scholar-officials who had been brought up under the old feudal culture.

In those days, Mao Zedong was one of the many readers and followers of New Youth, which his teacher Yang Changji had recommended to his students and to which Professor Yang contributed articles for publication. As his friend and classmate Zhou Shizhao recalled, once Mao began to read New Youth regularly, 'he showed less interest in classical works such as Han Yu's essays and Du Fu' s poems'. Later, Mao Zedong himself said, 'I first began to read that journal when i was a student at the First Teachers College I very much appreciated its articles written by Dr Hu Shi and Chen Duxiu.. For a while they became my role models.'

Mao accordingly began an exploration along the lines of the early stages of the New Culture Movement. He felt 'the Chinese people are weighed down by the ills of feudal culture, their thoughts outdated, their moral character eroded'. To change such an attitude, people had to 'Begin with reformation of philosophy and ethics through studying philosophy and ethics, and then use them to bring about a fundamental change in national ideology.' He felt that philosophy would encourage the sudy and exchange of of ideas, and that ethics would contribute to cultivating moral character, for 'thought rules the mind, but virtue regulates action'. In this way, reform of philosophical thinking and ethical codes was closely linked to reforming the country and society. Such a view was quite common among the intelligentsia of that period.

Around 1917, Mao Zedong read manyworks on philosophy and ethics. Of the two, he took greater interest in ethics. In his view, 'Ethics is a science which determines one's life goals and also provides the means for attaining those objectives.' In his diary for 26 September 1917, Luo Xuezan noted: 'I have just finished reading the seven books on Western ethics that I borrowed from Mao Zedong in the sixth month of the old lunar calendar'. In fact, these were the History of Western Ethics, as translated by Yang Changji, and Mao Zedong had hand-copied the whole thing. In the second half of 1917, Yang Changji lectured to students on ethics, and the text he used was A system of Ethics by Paulsen, who belonged to the school of the nineteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant. That textbook, totalling about 100'000 Chinese characters, was translated from the Japanese by Professor Cai Yuanpei, and published by the Commercial Press in 1913. Mao Zedong not only listened attentively to Professor Yang's lectures, but also studied the textbook assiduously. He used the colours red and black to put in symbols such as circles, triangles and crosses, as well as underlining and double-underlining for emphasis. Moreover, Mao wrote a lot of comments and marginal notes, totalling more than 12,000 Chinese characters. These mainly Mao’s own philosophical thinking, his own concept of history, and his outlook on life, as well as his interpretations and criticisms of the original work. Only a small portion of these notes were comments of approval or terse summaries or gists of chapters or sections of the book. This very copy of the book was later borrowed from Mao by one of his schoolmates, who did not return it until 1950 via Zhou Shizhao.

Why did he spend so much time and energy studying this book? When he got the book back from Zhou Shizhao, Mao explained:

The views expounded in the book were not quite correct, not pure materialism but rather a dualism of mind and matter. Since what we had been reading up to that time were all works of idealism, once we came into contact with materialist works we found them to be new and original and also quite reasonable, and the more we read the more we were intriqued by them. It inspired me to criticize other books I had read earlier and to analyse problems I came across at that time.

The basic views contained in his marginal notes and comments on A System of Ethics seem to be philosophical dualism. He noted clearly:

Human life and death are based on the conservation of spirit and conservation of matter (spirit and matter are not absolutely two separate things, but actually one thing, two coexisting as one)." He felt that some things occured naturally and others were fashioned by man. In later years, he said that in his early youth he had once believed in Kant’s duality of mind and matter, and he was doubtless then referring to these early views.

Dualism tries to reconcile idealism and materialism. In his earl youth, Mao’s inclination towards materialism found expression largely in his outlook on nature, so he then noted: “All natural laws are inexorable laws.... Human beings, as part of nature, are governed by laws of nature ... Our minds are based on nature, so they are limited in scope and there is little room for originality. This was the bridge whereby he moved gradually away from his previously accepted idealism towards accepting Marxist dialectical materialism. Yet the usual shortcomings of dualism creep into the domain of history because ideal explanations are convenient. Mao Zedong was no exception. He noted: ‘In reality, the history of world civilization has been governed by perceptions; ... perceptions created civilization; true; very true.’

It was not merely accidental that the young Mao Zedong stressed so much the role of subjective perceptions. At a time when intellectual circles were embracing revolutionary ideas, it was only natural that the role of consciousness was exaggerated and that the subjective ability to reform was overemphasized. This also had something to do with Mao's fairly long exposure to the works of Confucius and Mencius, and to those of Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, Zhu Xi, Lu Jiuyuan and Wang Shouren of the neo-Confucian school and to works of neo-Kantian and neo-Hegelian schools of philosophy. Mao’s teacher Yang Changji, in commenting on his use of A System of Ethics as his textbook, also noted: ‘While teaching this course, I did not confine myself to ethical theories of the West, but associated these with the teachings of China’s ancient masters, including Confucius, Mencius, and the neo-Confucians such as Zhou Dunyi, Cheng Hao and Cheng Yi, Zhang Zai, Zhu Xi, Lu Jiuyuan, Wang Shouren (Wang Yangming) and Wang Fuzhi. Yang's lectures particularly highlighted the role of subjective intitiative advocated earlier by Lu Jingyuan and Wang Shouren. All of this influenced young Mao Zedong, who discussed the philosophical thought of the Song and Ming dynasties at length with schoolmates Cai Hesen and Zhang Kundi. Mao had also studied the works of Zhu Xi, including his Reflections on Things at hand (Jin silu), Annotations to the Four Books and Sayings of Master Zhu etc. Mao held both Zhu Xi and Wang Shouren, the noted neo-Confucianists, in high esteem. Mao often made comparisons, and his comments include : 'Whereas Mencius emphasizes inner righteousness, Wang Shouren rationalism as the core of perception, and both stem from intuitionism;.... the theories of our scholars of the Song Dynasty are similar to those advanced by Immanuel Kant of Germany.'

At that time, Chinese society was in the course of great change. The old traditional order was collapsing; foreign aggression and internal fighting were recurrent; and the nation’s political scene was fraught with turmoil. This led to an important trend of seeking a way out by 'taking action' and 'effecting change’. Such a feature of the times was also reflected in Mao's efforts, blended with a touch of dialectics.

In 1917, he asserted: ‘The universe has always been active.' In his marginal notes to A System of Ethics, he wrote: ‘The world is filled with innumerable changes.’ He further applied this to human history, noting that history is a process whereby order and disorder have occurred alternately, and added that he was particularly fond of the times of 'hundreds of changes and outstanding people’ as in the eras of the seven contending powers of the Warring States (475-221 BC), the strife between Chu and Han (about 206 BC) and the Three Kingdoms (200-80). He considered: ‘It is not because I live discorder, but leisure and tranquility cannot last long and they are not life’s purpose, and human beings seem inclined to rapid change.’ He likewise applied this viewpoint to the national situation of China at that time, and wrote: “The country is changing, and this is essential for national renewal and social progress.’ With respect to Chinese society, he meant 'We must reconstruct’, and the method of reconstruction was ‘to create from destruction, as a child breaks away from his mother’s womb’. He further added: “We people want such destruction, for only by the destruction of the old world can a new world be constructed.’ In these words, one can see his optimism and strong passion for transforming society. This seems to be an early indication of his later concept of achieving great order by overcoming great disorder.

What, then, was the inherent basis for this search for change and renewal in ‘action’? At this stage, Mao particularly emphasized two concepts. One was ‘difference’. He wrote: “Everything in the human world is manifested by difference and comparison’, such as yin and yang, up and down, large and small, good and bad, beauty and ugliness, right and wrong, positive and negative, brightness and darkness, victory and defeat, and so on. “Without such differences and comparisons, historical life is devoid of content. Evolution is the explanation of the conditions of successive change.’ The other concept was ‘resistance’, namely the stress and resistance brought about by differences. Mao Zedong particularly endorsed Paulsen’s perspective that all human endeavour and civilization ‘can come about only through decisive victory over resistance’, and praised Paulsen’s assertion that ‘without resistance there is no dynamic’ as ‘most true’ and ‘most thorough’. Mao wrote emotionally in his marginal notes: 'The Yellow River, having rushed through Tongguan and confronting the resistance of Mount Hua, gathers greater momentum and flows on furiously. The wind, having reached the Three Gorges and being blocked by Mount Wu, reinforces itself and roars on with added rage’; “A sage is one who gains success through resisting major evils.’ By that time, a great change from his earlier aspiration for ‘great harmony’ was apparent. He felt that, even if human society were in a state of ‘great harmony’, there still would be various ‘waves of competition and resistance, making it impossible for people to rest at ease in the great harmony’. Moreover, linking the concepts of ‘difference’ and ‘resistance’ with his advocacy of ‘action’, ‘change’ and ‘creation from destruction’ reveals Mao Zedong’s world-perception as evolving towards the dialectical viewpoints of contradictions and transformation of contradictions, and that he was beginning to integrate these concepts with his analysis of historical developments in society. This could be seen as the beginnings of his later theory enunciating the universality of contradictions.

‘The most outstanding fundamental point in Mao Zedong’s thinking in the period just before the May Fourth Movement of 1919 was that of grasping the ‘essence’ or the ‘fundamental and essential elements’. His idea was that, when faced by all sorts of objects and events, one should proceed from the overall context and strive to grasp the essence; and, that once the essence was grasped, non-essential issues could readily be solved. Later, he also stressed the importance of grasping the main points, grasping the main contradictions, ‘focusing on the key link so everything else falls into place’, and that ‘minor principles must be subordinated to larger ones’. However, what he regarded then as ‘essence’ or ‘essential elements’ seems to be similar to concepts advanced by philosophers of objective idealism, ideas such as ‘dao’ (Lao Zi), ‘rational form’ (Plato) or ‘absolute essence’ (Hegel), as basic principles of universal creation and development. In the same vein, Zhu Xi stressed that all events and things have their origin in ‘one source’, and ‘if the essence is not established, then the specifics cannot be accurate’. When lecturing on ethics, Yang Changji emphasized: ‘All phenomena in the universe originate in an essential law, and we must devote all of our attention to grasp it; this is what is meant by having a thorough knowledge of the essence.’

In a long letter of 23 August 1917 to Li Jinxi, Mao Zedong elaborated on his views on ‘essence’. In plain language, Mao described ‘the essence’ as ‘the law governing the universe’ and said he felt that it also governs the historical development of society. He went on in the letter to say that he felt that national salvation must begin with seeking to grasp the essence of the problem, and that for some time to come he would ‘concentrate on exploring the essence of the problem, and once the essence is grasped, other issues may be readily addressed’.

In the same letter, Mao also wrote down his prescription for national salvation:

Up to now, reform measures have all been intended to deal with non-essential issues such as those relating to parliament, the constitution, the presidency of the republic, the cabinet, military affairs, industrialization, education and the like. Not that these are inconsequential, but rather that efforts should be made to trace the essence and origin [of all of them]. If we do not grasp the essence, these measures are merely cumbersome, incoherent, fragmented and piecemeal.

He added emphatically, ‘If we awaken the people with the essence of the problem, wouldn't their hearts be moved? If their hearts are all moved, wouldn’t the issues be solved? If the issues are thus properly solved, wouldn’t our country become strong, prosperous and a happy place to live?’

This letter is a precious informational relic about Mao Zedong’s early thought. When he got the letter, Li Jinxi wrote in his diary on 31 August: ‘Have just received a letter from Runzhi [Mao Zedong], which contains some bright ideas; he is truly out of the common run.’

Linking the ‘essence’ with ‘the hearts of the people’ reflected Mao’s outlook on life, his sense of values, and his advocacy of moral and ethical cultivation. In his marginal notes to Paulsen’s A System of Ethics, Mao summed up his approach at that time as having two aspects: one was ‘individualism in spirit’, and the other was 'realism'.

Quite probably influenced by Professor Yang Changji, who taught taught them ethics and self-development, these progressive young people liked to discuss the topics of virtue and character development. In August 1915, Mao mailed an essay he had written in his diary, titled ‘Self-criticism’, to Xiao Zisheng, who was known for his bombastic style of declamation. The essay was written in succinct classical Chinese, which could be interpreted as follows:

One day a friend of mine came, and asked if I knew a kind of wild gourd which grows sturdy like wild grasses, and catches little attention. But when autumn falls, it produces rich fruit. A sharp contrast to this are the fragile garden plants like peonies, which vie with each other for beauty in springtime, when their brilliant blossoms attract people’s attention and appreciation. But when the cold wind blows in autumn, they wither and their petals and leaves are all blown away by the wind. Nothing is left on them then. 'As a student, my dear Mao’, he asked me, ‘on which of them will you model your conduct?’ I answered, ‘Naturally, I want to be the gourd, because it leaves behind much fruit' But my friend said frankly: Your deeds don't match your words at all. I find you are very eager to show off once you've achieved something. And you love to assemble people and be their leader. As to your style of work, I find you hanker a lot after fame and publicity, instead of remaining indifferent to what others think of you. You are strong in appearance but weak in reality. And you are quite complacent. Aren’t you just like a peony? If you go on like this will you score any concrete achievement in the end? Just now you said you wanted to model your conduct on that of the gourd. Isn’t that dishonest? Isn’t that an insult to the gourd?’ To this criticism, I could find no reply. It put me to shame, and I felt very uncomfortable. I left in an agony of embrassment.

No one knows whether Mao did have such a bosom friend who once had this serious talk with him, or whether Mao himself fabricated the incident for the sake of self-criticism. But one thing is sure: Mao’s act of strictly, even relentlessly, examining his own shortcomings, and honestly informing his friend is a typical example of how Mao and his group of progressive youth pursued ‘a bright and positive’ personality. It’s hard to imagine that a person who pays little attention to tempering his or her own outlook on life will be able to chart a course in life towards the ideal of communism, and work to turn himself or herself into a selfless and devoted proletarian revolutionary. It was a brilliant, lifelong characteristic of Mao Zedong to undertake constant self-examination and pursue lofty morals. In the early days of party building, Mao wrote a sincere letter to mediate between two members of the New People’s Study Society, in which he examined his own strong points and shortcomings, as well as those of his two friends. Even in his late years, Mao time and again mentioned that he appreciated Lu Xun’s way of criticizing himself more deeply than others.

As an antithesis to the feudal shackles of the ‘three cardinal guides’ and the ‘five constant virtues’, advocating ‘individualism’ was at that time quite prevalent and had positive implications. As Mao Zedong noted: ‘Heretofore, I was inclined to self-abnegation, feeling that the universe is there, with or without my presence; now, I tend to think otherwise, and feel that the universe and I are at one.' He felt that the aim of mankind was self-realization. However, by linking ‘spirit’ with ‘individualism’ he added his own special characteristics to the concept. His sort of individualism stressed ‘giving full play to both mental and physical capabilities’ in order to attain the highest possible selfdevelopment to ensure that ‘both inner contemplation and overt actions are on the right track’. By ‘right track’, he meant not mere ‘self-benefit’ but rather the realizing of ideal and moral values. For instance, [he wrote that] when considering loved ones in critical difficulties: ‘It is better to die one’s self than to let your loved ones die; and only in this way can I express my affection and have peace of mind.’ Otherwise, one’s life will be flawed, and then one ‘cannot be on the right track’. Accordingly, he praised ‘all those in both ancient and modern times, the dutiful sons, upright women, loyal statesmen, chivalrous friends, those who are self-sacrificing, patriots, those who love the world, and those who are dedicated to their beliefs, who value the spirit’. Mao even went as far as writing: ‘For humans, it is the spiritual life, not the corporeal flesh, that lives on.’ His view went beyond the original implications of individualism advocated by the bourgeoisie of the modern Western world, and contained rudiments of a new sense of morality.

With respect to ‘realism’, Mao felt that, given the shortness of life, one should not stray from reality to seek illusory ideals or abstract values, but rather should strive to realize achievable goals within the limited lifespan. He wrote: ‘We must be practical and realistic. Once we take a course of action that is practical and achievable, we must pursue it with all our might. Once committed to a course which is appropriately formulated after careful consideration, we must put it into practice, leaving no stone unturned.’ On the one hand, he was opposed to empty talk, saying ‘Whatever one has set one’s mind to, one should be committed to carrying it out.’ On the other hand, he laid great stress on subjecting all actions to the guidance of correct thinking, adding that he was opposed to acting blindly.

Mao Zedong wrote: ‘I am a lofty man, and at the same time I am a lowly man.’ ‘Lofty’ meant seeking independence and freedom from bondage. ‘Lowly’ indicates that, after all, we ‘cannot transcend our own world to the least degree’. Mao did, therefore, perceive a contradiction, but he did not then provide an explanation.

Mao Zedong wondered about, and explored, the realms of philosophy and ethics. He drew on both the Chinese and foreign cultural heritages, and sprinkled them with his personal sparks of wisdom that emanated from his own independent analysis and judgement. At that time, it was, of course, impossible for him to get at ‘the truth governing the universe’. Indeed, idealism’s characteristic of over-rating the power of the mind or spirit still had a fairly important place in his thinking. It was at that time he wrote an essay titled ‘Power of the Mind’, which won high commendation from Yang Changji, and it was given a mark of‘100’.

However, Mao Zedong’s ideology had not yet formed. While reading A System of Ethics, he wrote a letter to Li Jinxi, in which he said: ‘I do not believe I have achieved my life’s goal. I have not yet arrived at a conclusion as to how to perceive the universe, life, the state, and matters relating to education.’ Since he had ‘not yet arrived at a conclusion’, Mao had to explore further, which was a common phenomenon among the young intellectuals of the time. Thanks to his sticking to the line of taking national salvation and transforming society as his points of departure, the positive aspects of his thinking evolved in line with the progress of the times, and they gradually gained the upper hand. Moreover, thanks to his lifelong style of matching words with deeds and of seeking steady progress, he was able to pay great attention to his own ideological and moral cultivation as he continued his theoretical explorations.

Mao had felt that reading ‘books without words’ was more important than reading ‘books with words’. Perhaps the record of his extra-curricular activities may be more expressive of his personal characteristics and youthful vigour than the few still-surviving essays he had then written. They seem to have had greater bearing on the later development of his thinking [than ‘books with words’].

It is interesting that the very first published essay by Mao Zedong, who later became a great revolutionary, statesman and thinker known to the whole world, was on the topic of physical culture. The essay was ‘A Study of Physical Education’, and it appeared in the 1 April 1917 issue of New Youth. It consisted of approximately 7,000 characters, and Mao used the pen-name ‘28-Stroke Student’ for ‘Mao Zedong’. The essay was recommended to Chen Duxiu by Yang Changji.

At the beginning of the essay, Mao linked physical education with national strength, saying: ‘It is disquieting to note that the physique of the Chinese people gets increasingly weak, that martial arts are neglected, and that the nation’s strength is diminishing.’ He went on to say ‘One’s body is the carrier of knowledge and moral values’, and that from middle school onwards, equal stress should be laid on the cultivation of moral character, intellect and a strong physique. Furthermore, against the then-prevailing trend of overemphasizing knowledge from books and belittling physical training, Mao said emphatically in the essay: ‘To attain intellectual refinement, one must first train oneself to acquire a body as strong as that of a barbarian.’ This is because physical training has the benefit of strengthening one’s muscles, widening one’s scope of knowledge, regulating one’s feelings and tempering one’s willpower. And ‘willpower is a prerequisite for attaining success in one’s career’. It can thus be seen that this essay, though titled ‘A Study of Physical Education’, is not a study of the forms of physical culture. Rather, the essay seems aimed at advocating a valorous spirit in one’s outlook on life.

It was about this time that Mao wrote the following words in his diary, words that later became very popular: ‘There is boundless pleasure in struggling against adverse elements, whether of nature, of the land, or of men.’

In ‘A Study of Physical Education’, Mao recommended to his readers a set of gymnastic exercises he had choreographed. He also listed the various kinds of physical training he was practising at the time: sun-bathing, wind-bathing, rain-bathing, taking cold showers, swimming, mountain climbing, camping, long-distance walking, gymnastics and shadow boxing.

With regard to the ‘wind-bathing’, Zhang Kundi (one of Mao’s classmates) had this to say in his diary of 23 September 1917:

Early this morning, Cai [Hesen], Mao [Zedong], and I climbed Mount Yuelu. We went on along the ridge until we reached the slope behind the academy. A strong wind came up, and the air smelled exceptionally cool and fresh. We were all taking a cool-air bath and a wind-bath, and felt so refreshed, as if we were remote from the hustle and bustle of the vulgar world.

With respect to the ‘rain-bathing’, Mao once climbed alone to the top of Mount Yuelu on a summer night when a rain storm ran wild with thunder and lightning. He said he then experienced the delight of ‘ascending to a lofty mountain without losing his bearings despite a thunder storm’, as depicted in Book of History. Of all physical exercises, young Mao liked swimming best. As was known to many people later, it remained his favourite exercise until the last years of his life. In those days, the Xiang River, known for its width and depth at that point, served as a natural swimming pool, where Mao would often swim with several of his friends. He organized a college swimming club of almost 100 schoolmates for evening swims in the Xiang River. Luo Xuezan, one of his classmates, wrote in his diary of 22 September 1917:

Today we swam in the Xiang River towards Shuiluzhou inlet. Though some said the north wind was too strong and the weather too cold, we didn’t mind. We didn’t feel the cold once we got into the river, and we did not catch cold after the swim. In fact, we benefitted a lot from the physical exercise; it made our skin tougher, promoted blood circulation, strengthened the lungs and other internal organs, and increased our energy and stamina. This is the best among all sports. Is other people’s saying trustworthy?

Mao himself also recollected the experience later, when he wrote in 1958:

In those years, most of our schoolmates had just started to learn to swim, and because of the rising water level in summer a few were drowned. However, a lot of us persevered and kept swimming in the Xiang River even into the late winter. Once we chanted a poem, which I have by now almost forgotten except for these two lines, ‘believing that one can live up to 200 years old, we should swim no less than 3,000 li (1,500 km) in a lifetime’.

Swimming strengthened not only his body, but also his confidence and will.

Mao Zedong always stressed that one should have strong willpower. In his Classroom Notes, for example, he wrote: ‘If one remains steadfast and grasps the essentials, one is sure to succeed’; ‘If one is not perplexed by fame, one will remain sure-footed, and if one refrains from chasing what is fashionable, one will maintain one’s integrity’; ‘Lu Xiangshan [of the thirteenth century] said: “One should always press forwards, breaking all shackles, clearing a path overgrown with brambles, and sweeping away the filth and mire [so one can remain open and above-board]”.’ Mao’s later life testified to his extraordinary willpower, which kept defying obstacles and hardships. Basing his willpower on the solid ground of‘grasping the essentials’ seems to have been an important factor that contributed to his achievements in his lifetime.

While at school, Mao often told his friends that a real man should in a sense be eccentric - reading unusual books, making unusual friends, doing unusual things, and being an unusual man. His schoolmates nicknamed him ‘Odd Mao’ (pronounced ‘Mao-ki’ locally), which was taken as a homonym for the famous Prussian strategist and general Moltke. In June 1917, the First Teachers (College held an all-round contest among the students, covering altogether some twenty items in three areas: morality, intellect and physical culture.

About 400 students participated, and there were 34 prize-winners. Mao won the highest number of votes in the contest, winning ‘votes of commendation’ in all three categories. He was the only one who also won positive votes for ‘courage’, and received the citation: ‘courageous and enterprising, fully aware and observant, and quick to perceive and to act’.

Mao Zedong’s courage found singular expression in an incident that occurred half a year later, of which all his schoolmates thought very highly.

The civil war in November 1917 was fought by the southern provinces to defend the constitution against troops of the northern warlords. The northern troops were suffering defeats and had to withdraw northwards along the railroad from the Hengbao area in southern Hunan, towards Changsha. The inhabitants of Changsha were in a panic. The First Teachers College, located in the southern suburbs of Changsha, was close to the railroad, so the retreating troops of the northern warlords would probably come to it and perhaps loot it. The college authorities were thinking of temporarily dispersing the students to areas east of Changsha. Mao Zedong, who was then director of general affairs of the students’ association, proposed that the schoolmates who were then undergoing military training could be mobilized to form a volunteer corps to defend the campus. The proposal won the approval of the college authorities, and detachments of the volunteer corps were formed to stand guard. The stragglers of the retreating troops loitering nearby did not dare to intrude into the campus. On 18 November, however, a battalion of some 3,000, who had little knowledge of the military deployment of the Changsha garrison, were hanging about the Houzishi area to the south of Changsha. Mao organized several hundred students into three detachments, armed mainly with wooden rifles used in training, and they took up positions on hilltops in the Houzishi area. An arrangement had been made with the local police force, so that at a signal the police would fire live ammunition and shout loudly, while the student detachments would light strings of fire crackers. The retreating troops, who were already demoralized and edgy, were taken completely by surprise and were incapable of firing back. Mao then sent some armed volunteers to have the troops disarmed, thus saving Changsha from the scourge of looting by the troops.

This could be regarded as the very first military engagement of Mao’s life. Thereafter, he was praised as being ‘an embodiment of valour’. His valour, however, was not reckless and not mere boldness. It was based on his prior, indepth analysis of the specific situation and on his careful planning, and on refraining from taking action until completion of the planning. He was actually asked by his schoolmate Zou Yunzhen: ‘Wasn’t there a big risk the troops would fire back?’ To this, Mao replied, ‘If the troops had really meant to loot the provincial capital, they would have forced their way into the city the very first evening they approached Changsha. They did not dare to do so, but kept loitering about instead, thereby revealing fatigue and demoralization. Such a situation dictated their surrender in response to our order following our surprise attack.

The First Teachers College paid much attention to its students’ extracurricular life. Mao Zedong’s social activities increased steadily. In October 1917, following an annual election among the students’ association, Mao was elected director of general affairs and concurrently director of the association’s education and research department, both posts previously filled by teachers of the college. The acting chairman of the students’ association was Fang Weixia, the college’s supervisor of education, but it was Mao Zedong who specifically organized its activities. The association sponsored many events such as exhibitions, speech contests, debates, sports meets and the like. In the first half of 1917, the college started an evening school for workers, to whom the college teachers gave lectures, but the effort was unsuccessful, and the evening school had to close down before the end of the semester. Should the evening school be continued? Who should run the evening school? For a time, there were divergent views on these issues. Mao, who saw the evening school for workers as an important means to maintain contact with society, supported continuing and running it well. Fang Weixia agreed with Mao. He proposed that the evening school should be run by the third- and fourth-year students of the college, and that the education and research department of the students’ association should undertake the practical responsibility.

On 30 October 1917, Mao drafted a ‘Public Announcement Inviting Students to the Workers’ Evening School’, using ordinary language understandable to most workers and expressing readiness to share in the difficulties of illiterate workers:

For anyone who will listen, I have a few words to say. What is your greatest disadvantage?

Have you ever thought about this? To put it simply: You can’t write down what you say; you can’t read what is written by others; and you can’t calculate numbers. All of us are human beings, but if we can’t do these things, we might as well be bits of wood and stone! So everyone should learn something - to write a few words, to read a few words, to calculate some figures. Now that would be to everyone’s advantage.

But, you are workers and must work all day, and you have no one to teach you, so how can you learn these things? It’s not an easy matter, is it?

Now, there is a good way to do it. Our college has just started an evening school ... teaching you to read, write and calculate, all things that are useful to you every day. We will provide the teaching materials free to you. The classes are in the evening, so they will not affect your work during the day ... Come and sign up, and do it right away!

Copies of the notice were posted in the streets with the help of some cooperative police. The result, however, was not as good as hoped for. Why? As usual, when faced with a problem, Mao Zedong relied on research and study to take stock of the situation. He called a meeting of the students involved to analyse the matter. Mao and the others began to understand that: first, the workers did not believe there could be schooling without fees; second, since they were illiterate, workers would not read the notices in the streets; and third, the fact that it was policemen who posted the notices could not but raise suspicions or even fears in the workers’ minds. Once they discovered the reasons for the poor response from the workers, Mao and his schoolmates determined to improve their method of work. They organized themselves into small groups, armed themselves with clear copies of the notice, and went to workers in their dormitories and poorer residential areas, where they showed them the notice and carefully explained it to them. This method worked. Within five days, more than 100 workers went to the First Teachers College to enrol in the evening school. In the Evening School Journal, Mao recorded the experience this way: ‘The workers were very eager to have some schooling, almost “like nestlings crying for food from the bill of a mother bird”. They welcomed the students who went to see them enthusiastically, vying with each other in asking questions, and then shouting together, “Let’s go to the evening school right away!”’ Indeed, all this seemed to make Mao realize, as a first experience, that when doing grassroots work among the masses, one cannot be too careful or too considerate. By and by, a group of progressive young people gathered around Mao. They were like-minded youths, aspiring for social progress, and were mostly Mao’s schoolmates or other graduates from the same teachers’ college. Most had attended the lectures of Yang Changji. Among them were also students of senior middle schools in the provincial capital, such as Luo Zhanglong and others who were attending Changsha’s Changjun Senior Middle School, and who got acquainted with Mao after reading his posted advertisement ‘Searching for Like-minded Friends’. These young people were mostly from the countryside, and they were aware of the sufferings of the peasants. Without the ostentation that characterized the sons of the rich, these young people were honest, vigorous, and filled with a sense of their duty to contribute to national salvation. On weekends and holidays, they would assemble at nearby scenic spots - such as Mount Yuelu, Juzizhou and Pinglanggong - to discuss the strengths and weaknesses of historical figures or current events, or to chant poems on hilltops, or to compete in poetry composition. It was understood, however, that they were not to engage in trivial chat or discuss personal matters. As Mao later described it:

I was there with a throng of companions;

Vivid yet are those crowded months and years.

Young men we were. Our lives all flowering, Filled with student enthusiasm. Boldly, we cast restraint aside, Pointed to our rivers and hills, And set them afire with our words. The mighty lords of the time

Were to us no more than muck and mud.

From the beginning of 1916, their discussions concentrated on ‘how to develop progress in the lives of individuals and of people as a whole’. [As Mao recorded it:] ‘Some 15 of us discussed this issue regularly. Whenever we got together, we would continue talking about it. We were quite serious, and we must have had more than 100 sessions on it.’ Gradually, they came to the decision ‘to assemble more comrades and like-minded people to create a new environment and to act in concert’. At the same time, they began to feel the strong impact of the New Culture Movement, and a radical change took place in their thinking: ‘We realized it is wrong to lead a life detached from society, and our thinking took a sudden turn to longing for a life of action, and a collective life at that.’ Naturally, Mao was one of those who experienced this ‘sudden turn’ in thinking. In the winter of 1917, when Mao Zedong, Cai Hesen, Xiao Zisheng and others began to discuss the idea of setting up an organization, others responded favourably to the idea.

To establish an organization requires a charter at the outset. In March 1918, Mao Zedong and Zou Dingcheng began drafting a charter for this purpose. Xiao San’s diary contains these entries:

March 31st: My second elder brother [Xiao Zisheng] came and stayed quite a while. He showed me the constitution of the society as drafted by Mao. He agreed that the new organization be named New People’s Study Society ... April 8th: Received a letter from my elder brother, who strongly recommended that I should go abroad for study. He also enclosed in the letter a copy of the constitution of the New People’s Study Society, as rewritten by Mao ... April 13th: In the evening, Mao came by and told me that the inaugural meeting of the New People’s Study Society would be held tomorrow.

On Sunday 14 April 1918, the inaugural meeting of the New People’s Study Society was formally convened at the house of Cai Hesen in the Liujiataizi District at the foot of Mount Yuelu. Present were Mao Zedong, Cai Hesen, Xiao Zisheng, He Shuheng, Xiao San, Zhang Kundi, Chen Shunong, Zou Dingcheng, Luo Zhanglong and four others. Not at the meeting but joining later were Li Hesheng (Weihan), Zhou Shizhao, and others. Thus, the founding members were more than a score of students. After some discussion, they adopted a constitution, voted to name the organization ‘Xinmin’ (New People), and set its purposes as ‘to reform learning, sharpen moral behaviour, and reform the customs of the people’. The charter also included several regulations: 1. No hypocrisy; 2. No indolence; 3. No extravagance; 4. No gambling; and 5. No whoring.’ It seems to have been a very disciplined organization. The inaugural meeting elected Xiao Zisheng as the society’s director-general, and elected Mao Zedong and Chen Shunong as directors. Soon afterwards, when Xiao Zisheng went to France for advanced study, Mao was elected to replace him as director-general of the society.

The New People’s Study Society was the earliest newly formed society of the May Fourth Movement era. Its constitution stressed cultivation of good individual qualities, though it was lukewarm politically, which certainly reflected the slow-to-develop ideological formation of Mao and his friends at the time, who were clearly influenced by Yang Changji. The society’s constitution seemed to have fallen short of Mao’s expectations. As he wrote later:

The draft constitution prepared by Zou Dingcheng and Mao Zedong covered more ground. In the discussion, Xiao Zisheng did not approve of including sections on activities which could not be carried out immediately, and proposed that they be deleted. Since most of those attending the meeting agreed with Xiao, and after voting to agree to his deletions, the agreed-upon constitution is as follows.

As became apparent later, Xiao Zisheng was not inclined to support radical changes and instead favoured moderate reform. The sections he coonsidered ‘could not be carried out immediately’ and proposed to ‘be deleted’ seem to have been sections reflecting Mao’s more ambitious objectives at the time. Three months later, Mao Zedong and Cai Hesen began to think beyond the framework of the society’s constitution. On 26 July 1918, Mao wrote a fairly long letter on the society’s activities to Cai. The latter wrote back: ‘Despite Professor Yang Changji’s hard work over the past ten years, he could only teach from books, and what else has he achieved!’ He added,

In the society’s affairs, I completely agree with your statesmanship and experience of the world in the draft constitution and your interest in the main essentials since the founding of the society; furthermore, you have not even avoided the suspicion of standing between the political party or society party on the one hand and the timid non-partisan figures on the other. I think the non-partisans are hopeless, and, likewise, those whose hearts are not pure are incapable, so unless those like us exert every effort, who will do anything? This relatively trivial notion seems somehow enlightening.

Cai Hesen also stated: ‘Within three years, we should make our society a force Io be reckoned in China.’ It seems that they were no longer satisfied with Professor Yang Changji’s path of devoting one’s whole energy to teaching and academic learning. Nor did they avoid political involvement to remain ‘in the clean stream’. Thus, Mao and the other members of the New People’s Study Society continued to seek for a way out for China before the birth of the (Communist Party of China.

By this time, most of the society’s members had graduated, or were graduating, from college. The question of what professions could fulfil their aspirations, which was discussed at the inaugural meeting of the society, continued to occupy their attention. Many of the society members were unwilling ‘to concentrate’ in one place, Hunan, and wanted to disperse throughout China or go abroad for more learning or study tours. Mao favoured this idea, saying that such dispersion would allow every member to open up a new area of activity, and this would be good for future developments. ‘Reach out for development’ became the consensus of the New People’s Study Society membership.

Two months later, Mao graduated from the Hunan Provincial First Teachers’ Training College, ending five and a half years as a student learning Io be a teacher. He was now 25 years old.

By then, a political hurricane was looming over China.

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