3 “I THINK, THEREFORE, I AM”
Mao, who lived in Changsha for more than seven years, was overwhelmed by the first city he had ever encountered. Never before had he seen urban streets, two- and three-story houses, and countless junks bobbing on the waves at stone wharves. In the early twentieth century Changsha, with a population over 200,000, was considered one of the best cities in China.1 Located on the right bank of the Xiang River, it was surrounded by an impressive stone wall with lofty turrets that towered above seven tunnel-like passageways shut at night with huge gates. Everything in the city amazed Mao: the broad stone-paved streets, the unique long stone embankment, the electric lights in the palace of the governor and other luxurious houses, and two yellow-tiled Confucian temples. But most impressive of all was the railroad, constructed just three years earlier, which ran alongside the city wall on the eastern outskirts of Changsha. Mao saw for the first time that marvel of Western technology, a locomotive. The rows of shops, one after another, with their enormous signboards hanging like banners from long poles along the walls, also impressed him. The stores were filled with all manner of domestic and foreign goods. No wonder Changsha was considered one of the liveliest commercial centers in China. The many people, the noise and din were unbearable. “[T]his city was very big, contained many, many people, numerous schools, and the yamen of the governor. It was a magnificent place altogether!” Mao reported ecstatically to Edgar Snow.2
The city had been founded three thousand years before. During the third century BCE it was conquered by the ruler of Qin, who as Qin Shi Huangdi became the first emperor of China. It was he who bestowed the name Changsha (Long Sands) upon the city. Directly across from the city walls, Orange Island, a long and narrow sandy spit of land, densely covered with orange trees, lay in the Xiang River. In 1664, Changsha became the capital of the newly established province of Hunan.
Beyond Orange Island, on the left bank of the river rises Yuelu Mountain. It is less than 800 feet high, but, like Mount Shao, it is sacred. On the eastern side of the mountain was the famous Yuelu Academy, founded during the Song dynasty, where Zhu Xi (1130–1200 CE), the leading Confucian philosopher, taught. In 1903, shortly before Mao came to Changsha, the academy was reorganized into the Hunan Institute of Higher Education, a modern educational institution.
A small number of foreigners who had settled on Orange Island lived in Changsha. Americans who had founded a branch of Yale University and a hospital there in 1906 made up the largest contingent. Changsha had been opened to foreign trade rather late, in July 1904, and the local inhabitants were not yet accustomed to foreigners in their midst. Anti-foreign sentiments were very strong. This is how Edward Hume, an American physician at the Yale Hospital, described the reaction of the locals to the appearance of foreigners on their streets: “Mothers pushed their little children behind them as they saw us coming, to hide them from the ‘evil eye.' Some held their noses as we passed. The amah told us once that the smell of the Westerner was so characteristic that Chinese recognized our presence without even seeing us. Some of the youngsters …… followed the sedan chairs shouting ‘foreign devil.' ”3
Mao had a kaleidoscope of impressions from the city. The young man was worried that he would be refused entry into this “great” urban school, but to his surprise he was admitted. This time, too, he stayed only a few months. In October 1911, an antimonarchical revolution suddenly broke out. It was rather bloodless, and had almost no impact upon the broad masses of the peasantry.4 It was touched off on the night of October 10 by an uprising of the Eighth Engineer Battalion of the New Army, stationed in Wuchang in Hubei province. A majority of the soldiers in this battalion were members of a revolutionary organization, the Progressive Society (Gongjinhui), which had close ties with the Revolutionary Alliance. By the morning of October 11, the whole city was in the hands of the insurgents. The following day Manchu power was overthrown in the adjacent cities of Hankou and Hanyang. Thus, the tricities of Hankou, Hanyang, and Wuchang, which comprised Wuhan, were at the center of the revolutionary events. This spontaneous occurrence evoked an explosion of anti-Manchu sentiment in many cities throughout the country, but it caught the leaders of the Revolutionary Alliance unawares. Sun Yat-sen learned of the uprising from the newspapers while he was traveling by train from Denver to Kansas City. He went straight to Washington and then to London, hoping that with the help of friends he could collect the financial resources the Revolutionary Alliance urgently needed. In contrast, the local Wuhan constitutional reformers, headed by a thirty-seven-year-old politician named Tang Hualong, quickly sized up the situation. They not only went over to the side of the revolution; they took over its leadership. On October 11, a military government for Hubei province was established, headed by a conservative general, Li Yuanhong, the forty-seven-year-old commander of the Twenty-First Brigade of the New Army. Tang Hualong was named the civil governor.
By the end of November, fifteen of China's eighteen provinces had overthrown Qing authority. In the majority of these, civilian authority had passed into the hands of the former constitutional reformers, who systematically excluded the genuine revolutionaries from leadership roles. Military administration wound up in the hands of the commanders of the local detachments of the New Army. One after another, the newly established provincial governments declared their independence from the central authorities.
Changsha, some 250 miles to the south, learned of the events in Wuhan on October 13, when representatives from Li Yuanhong arrived in town. The director of the school where Mao was enrolled allowed one of these representatives to deliver an incendiary speech to the students. His speech had an electrifying effect on many of the students, including Mao, who by this time had already evolved from patriotic monarchist to confirmed revolutionary. His worldview was influenced by the first newspaper he ever read, the Minli bao (People's independence), one of the organs of Sun Yat-sen's Revolutionary Alliance. From this paper, the young Mao learned about the leader of the Chinese democratic movement and his Three Principles of the People. Mao became an ardent supporter of Sun. Swayed by what he had read, Mao decided to write an article, which he posted on one of the walls at his school where everyone could see it. “It was my first expression of a political opinion, and it was somewhat muddled,” he later admitted. “I had not yet given up my admiration of K'ang Yu-wei [Kang Youwei] and Liang Ch'i-chao [Liang Qichao]. I did not clearly understand the difference between them. Therefore in my article I advocated that Sun Yat-sen must be called back from Japan to become President of a new Government, that K'ang Yu-wei be made Premier, and Liang Ch'i-chao Minister of Foreign Affairs.”5 At this point he really didn't understand anything, neither the reformism of Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao nor the revolutionary thought of Sun Yat-sen. He was drawn to these persons only from his thirst for heroic deeds.
Having chosen the path of revolution, Mao cut off his queue, or pigtail, even before news of the Wuchang uprising. This was an act of rebellion, since every subject of the Qing Empire had to wear a long pigtail as a sign of submission to the Manchus. One fellow student followed his example, but the rest were too frightened. Stirred by the impassioned speech of Li Yuanhong's representative, Mao and several of his classmates soon decided to run off and join the insurrectionists, but they were unable to leave the city. On Sunday, October 22, soldiers of the Forty-Ninth Regiment, quartered not far from Changsha, mutinied. With support from soldiers from the Fiftieth Regiment, the mutineers entered the city and seized all of the strategic points. That same day a military government of Hunan was established, headed by two young extremists, Jiao Dafeng and Chen Zuoxin, who were closely linked to the mafialike Elder Brother secret society. The administration of Jiao Dafeng and Chen Zuoxin did not last long. Just nine days later, on October 31, a coup d'état occurred, again organized by soldiers of the Fiftieth Regiment. Jiao and Chen were killed and power wound up in the hands of moderate liberals led by the former chairman of the Hunan provincial assembly, the thirty-two-year-old millionaire Tan Yankai.
Classes were suspended, so Mao decided to enroll in the revolutionary army and make his contribution to the revolution. Victory was still not assured. The Qing court was negotiating with General Yuan Shikai, commander of the powerful Beiyang Army, trying to convince him to put down the rebellion. However, Yuan Shikai wanted total power and temporized. Meanwhile, thousands of Manchu families, fearing reprisals, fled to their historic homeland in Northeast China. On November 2, the Qing court appointed Yuan Shikai prime minister while Mao Zedong's idol, the constitutional monarchist Liang Qichao, was appointed minister of justice. The new prime minister contacted the heads of the rebellious provinces and several leaders of the Revolutionary Alliance, but negotiations were fruitless, because the military governors and revolutionaries demanded the overthrow of the Qing monarchy while Yuan Shikai sought a compromise with the court. At the height of these events, Sun Yat-sen finally returned to China, on December 25. The leader of the Revolutionary Alliance, not wishing to negotiate with Yuan Shikai, opted for a military showdown. On December 29, in Nanjing, the former capital of the Ming dynasty, delegates of the rebellious provinces declared themselves the National Assembly and chose Sun as the provisional president. On January 1, 1912, Sun assumed his post and proclaimed the founding of the Republic of China.
The country was split. In Beijing, power remained in the hands of the emperor and Yuan Shikai. In Nanjing, Sun Yat-sen was in charge. Civil war appeared inevitable. Eighteen-year-old Mao Zedong, acting courageously, joined the Hunan Army as it prepared to invade the north.
As it happened, the young recruit saw no military action. As the country fell apart, armies rapidly began to play a more important role, but Sun Yat-sen had no professional army and quickly lost any real power. Most of the National Assembly delegates who had voted for Sun sought a compromise with Yuan Shikai and were simply playing Sun as a trump card in a game with the commander of the Beiyang Army. Essentially quite moderate, they wanted a cautious politician as president rather than someone like Sun Yat-sen, who would trample upon tradition. Many of them were powerful oligarchs who feared the implementation of Sun Yat-sen's third Principle of the People (People's Livelihood), aimed at establishing state control of the economy. In their eyes, Yuan Shikai was ideal. They needed Sun Yat-sen as provisional president only in order to exert pressure upon the indecisive general, and they succeeded. Finally realizing that the majority in the National Assembly in Nanjing regarded Sun Yat-sen merely as a transitional figure, Yuan Shikai transmitted his terms for the abdication of the Manchu boy emperor to the court. On February 12, 1912, the six-year-old emperor Pu Yi formally abdicated. The revolution had triumphed! On February 14, Sun Yat-sen submitted his resignation, which the National Assembly accepted unanimously. The following day the delegates, again unanimously, chose Yuan Shikai as the provisional president of the country.
After six months in the Hunan Army, Mao decided to return to his studies to complete his formal education. His request to be discharged was granted and he came away with an excellent impression of the army. For the first time in his life he had had enough of everything. He had received a very respectable salary of seven silver dollars a month. (Recall that in the Dongshan Higher Primary School, he paid less than one dollar for five months of tuition, room, and library fees.) He had lots of free time, and he lived very comfortably. He differed from the general mass of soldiers, most of whom were illiterate paupers who had joined the army because they had nothing to eat. The proud student who knew his own worth could not help but condescend toward such persons. “I spent two dollars a month on food. I also had to buy water,” he later recalled to Edgar Snow. “The soldiers had to carry water in from outside the city, but I, being a student, could not condescend to carrying, and bought it from the water-pedlars.”6
What an interesting revelation from the leader of the working people. How alike they all were—Lenin, Stalin, Mao. Fighting for social equality, they did not think of themselves as on the same plane as others and raised themselves above the crowd.
Mao now found himself at a crossroads. He had a passion for learning, but he didn't know what he wanted to become. He began to read student recruitment advertisements in the newspapers. At first he was attracted to a police school, but he soon had a change of heart and enrolled in a school for soap making. Then, influenced by a friend, he decided to become a jurist, and he registered in a law school, then in a commercial middle school, and then in a higher commercial public school. Mao was young and, like many eighteen- and nineteen-year-old youths, he wanted everything at once. The higher commercial public school required a good command of English, but Mao had no talent for languages. After studying at the commercial school for just one month, Mao left in the spring of 1912 and entered the Hunan Higher Provincial Middle School, which was soon renamed the Provincial First Middle School.
Here, too, he didn't stick it out very long. “I didn't like the First Middle School,” he recalled. “Its curriculum was limited and its regulations were objectionable.”7 Disillusioned with teachers and with schools, Mao decided to study on his own. For half a year he went daily to the Hunan provincial library, where he spent most of his time reading up on geography, history, and Western philosophy. Liberalism, to which he was now attracted, had come to China from Europe and America along with capitalism. The schools he had attended had taught nothing about foreign countries. At the age of nineteen he first saw a world map and was astonished by it. He began studying the foundational works of contemporary Western democracy, including Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, Montesquieu's On the Spirit of Laws, as well as books by John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. He found in the library collections of foreign poetry, ancient Greek myths, and works on the history and geography of Russia, America, England, France, and other countries.
His father had cut him off. Mao Yichang was unhappy with his grown son hanging around in the city without a job, changing schools almost monthly, and demanding financial support. Each time Mao enrolled in a new school, he wrote to his father, imploring this “ancestor” whom he despised to send him money, from which one silver dollar went for his registration fee. Living in Changsha was not cheap. Why did Mao prefer to lean on his father rather than get a job In a big city like Changsha there were many opportunities for work even though many of these jobs were menial. In the provincial capital new homes were being built, streets were being laid out, and commerce was thriving. He probably could not have gotten a job as a coolie (a porter or a stevedore) since mafia-like organizations controlled that kind of labor, but he could have been a private tutor or an ad writer. Mao, however, didn't even consider such possibilities. As a student, a potential member of the gentry, an intellectual, he felt he belonged to a higher class than these soldiers, peasants, and coolies. Of course, Mao was not the only one guilty of such feelings toward labor. His arrogance was endemic to his social group. Not only Mao but other young Chinese intellectuals from commoner backgrounds who had only a primary education felt they were special in a society where virtually everyone was illiterate. Thirty years later, reminiscing about his life in Changsha in a public speech to his comrades in the Communist Party, Mao himself acknowledged,
I began life as a student and at school acquired the ways of a student; I then used to feel it undignified to do even a little manual labor, such as carrying my own luggage in the presence of my fellow students, who were incapable of carrying anything, either on their shoulders or in their hands. At that time I felt that intellectuals were the only clean people in the world, while in comparison workers and peasants were dirty. I did not mind wearing the clothes of other intellectuals, believing them clean, but I would not put on clothes belonging to a worker or peasant, believing them dirty.8
Wandering about the city streets, Mao often came across coolies, construction workers, stevedores, itinerant peddlers, and other unfortunate people. Countless beggars asked for alms from passersby. The revolution had brought no changes to such people. Workers toiled from dawn to dusk till they dropped from exhaustion. From morning to night the streets swarmed with porters dressed in pitiful rags—short pants that came to just below the knee, and baggy shirts. Some carried goods on long carrying poles; others pushed wheelbarrows with small wooden boards strapped to each side. These vehicles were the main form of urban transport. A coolie harnessed himself to the back of the cart, throwing a thick strap around his neck and gripping long bamboo shafts in both hands. Passengers sat on either side of the wheel on wooden planks while the coolie pushed the conveyance forward, straining every muscle in his body. The faces of the porters and transport workers were emaciated from their heavy, stupefying labor. Only now and then could these people take a short break to drink a cup of green tea, eat a small dish of boiled rice, or grab a smoke.
Mao Zedong as yet felt no sympathy toward the sufferings of the working class. He was more concerned about the profound problems of China's national revival. Life without money, however, was not conducive to philosophical ruminations. His implacable father promised financial support only if his son settled down. Finally, Mao decided to become a teacher. In the spring of 1913 he became a student at the newly opened Hunan Provincial Fourth Normal School.
Xiao San, his friend from Dongshan, was already studying there and had convinced him to attend.9 It was a tuition-free educational institution with about two hundred students. One year later, in March 1914, the provincial authorities decided to merge this school with the larger and better-established Provincial First Normal School, which enrolled more than a thousand students. Mao, like the other students, was automatically transferred to the new school. The First Normal School was well-known in Changsha and had been founded toward the end of the Qing dynasty, in 1903. Its building was the most modern in the city, and people in Changsha called it the “Western palace” because it was built in a European style of architecture. The railroad ran right past the campus, and beyond flowed the majestic Xiang River, on whose sandy banks students spent their free time in hot weather.
Mao quickly befriended Xiao Zisheng (Xiao Yu), the older brother of his friend Xiao San. Xiao Yu, in his third year, was considered the best student in the school, but respected the newcomer from the outset. Mao and he were very close for a long time, and not until 1921 did their paths diverge, when Xiao Yu opposed the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party. Later, in 1959, Xiao Yu, an exile in Uruguay, published his reminiscences of Mao's childhood and youth under the title Mao Tse-tung and I Were Beggars.10
Xiao described his initial impressions of the new student: “A tall, clumsy, dirtily dressed” Shaoshan fellow, whose shoes badly needed repairing,
Mao was not unusual in appearance, as some people have maintained, with his hair growing low on his forehead, like the devils pictured by old-time artists, nor did he have any especially striking features. …… To me he always seemed quite an ordinary, normal-looking person. His face was rather large, but his eyes were neither large nor penetrating, nor had they the sly, cunning look sometimes attributed to them. His nose was flattish and of a typical Chinese shape. His ears were well-proportioned; his mouth, quite small; his teeth very white and even. These good white teeth helped to make his smile quite charming, so that no one would imagine that he was not genuinely sincere. He walked rather slowly, with his legs somewhat separated, in a way that reminded one of a duck waddling. His movements in a sitting or standing position were very slow. Also, he spoke slowly and he was by no means a gifted speaker.11
Most of the students at the Normal School, who judged others not on appearance, but on content, immediately took a liking to Mao. It is true that Mao was not a very diligent student. He thought he had earned the right to study only those subjects, like the social sciences and literature, that he found interesting and came easily to him. English, arithmetic, natural sciences, and drawing left him cold. Writing was considered the most important subject, and he always received the highest grades on his compositions. Therefore, in spite of everything, Mao was in good standing. His passion for reading did not desert him. “Mao Zedong was addicted to reading Chinese and European philosophers and writers, summarizing and expanding upon their thoughts in his diaries,” recalled Xiao San. “He wrote quickly as if sparks were flying from his writing brush. His class compositions were posted as examples on the walls of the school. He could read two or three times faster than anyone else. In the library he was always surrounded by a wall of books.”12
Mao became close friends with another student in the school, who went by the name of Cailin Bin. His real name was Cailin Hexian, but he had chosen the pseudonym Bin (“Refined Politeness”) upon entering the school, as something that precisely fit his character. Cailin Bin had a piercing native intelligence. As tall as Mao, with a thick shock of hair and sad, thoughtful eyes, he stood out from the others. Books were his passion. He could go for days without washing his face, and months without shaving or changing his clothes. Later, under the name of Cai Hesen, he would become one of the main organizers of the communist movement in China. There can be no doubt that contact with new and interesting people like Cai Hesen enriched Mao's life. It was Cai who over the course of two or three years convinced Mao of the importance of the “worker question” and explained the need to organize a communist party.
The greatest influence on Mao at the Provincial First Normal School was four of his teachers. The First Normal School was famous for its teaching staff, many of whom had been educated abroad and were fluent in English, French, and Japanese. Several of them were later invited to teach at the best universities in China, including Peking University and Peking Normal University. One of his teachers, Yuan Jiliu (or Yuan Zhongqian), whom everyone called Yuan the Big Beard, taught Mao to write brilliant essays. Others, like Xu Teli and Fang Weixia, members of the Revolutionary Alliance who had taken part in the 1911 Revolution, instilled in Mao faith in republican principles and strengthened his patriotic consciousness. So enthusiastic was Mao that he literally bowed down to Xu Teli. During the struggle to introduce a constitution, Teacher Xu had cut off his finger as a sign of his sincerity and resoluteness, and with the blood trickling out of his wound had written a petition to the delegates of the Qing National Assembly imploring them to persuade the Qing court to hold parliamentary elections. Both Xu and Fang later became important figures in the CCP.13
But the main influence in Mao's student life was meeting Professor Yang Changji, an elegant gentleman just past forty. He impressed his students with his extensive knowledge of Chinese and Western philosophy and ethics. In 1898 he had taken part in the reform movement, and he was acquainted with many well-known Chinese educators. Yang left China in 1903 and spent many years abroad, studying in Japan, Scotland, and Germany. He came to Changsha in 1913 and was immediately invited by Governor Tan Yankai to serve as head of the Department of Education.14 He politely refused, preferring the modest position of teacher in the Provincial First Normal School to high government office. He also taught at the Fourth School, where Mao Zedong first met him in the autumn of 1913, until it merged with the First. Thus began a seven-year friendship between teacher and student that lasted until Yang Changji's death in mid-January 1920.
They shared a mutual affection and respect. This is what Mao told Edgar Snow about Yang Changji: “The teacher who made the strongest impression on me was Yang Chen-ch'i [Yang Changji], a returned student from England. …… He taught ethics, he was an idealist, and a man of high moral character. He believed in his ethics very strongly and tried to imbue his students with the desire to become just, moral, virtuous men, useful in society.”15 And this is Yang Changji's assessment of his favorite pupil:
Student Mao Zedong said that he comes from a locality on the boundary between Xiangtan and Xiangxiang. …… His hometown is in the high mountains, where people live together by clans. Most of them are peasants. …… His father, too, was previously a peasant, but has now become a trader. His younger brother is likewise a peasant. His mother's family is from Xiangxiang, and they are also peasants. And yet it is truly difficult to find someone so intelligent and handsome [as Mao]. …… [M]any unusual talents have come from peasant families.16
Professor Yang Changji was known at school as “Confucius” because of his education and erudition. In addition to ethics, he taught logic, philosophy, and pedagogy.17 He was an adherent of Western liberalism, which he saw as akin to the teachings of the famous Ming dynasty Confucian philosopher Wang Yangming (1472–1529), and another great Confucian, Wang Chuanshan (1619–1692), two of a small number of Chinese thinkers who regarded the individual as of paramount importance.18
Yang Changji's students were eager to listen and converse with him for days on end. They even gathered at his home on Sundays. Among them were Mao, the Xiao brothers, and Cai Hesen. Such ideas as liberalism and individualism should have opened for Yang's students the path to the liberal-democratic reconstruction of Chinese society. In discussing the ideas of Wang Yangming and Western philosophers, however, what Professor Yang focused on was not the abstract idea of universal freedom, but individualism in a wholly utilitarian manner within the framework of the “hero and the crowd.” What China needed, he asserted, was strong personalities, and he called upon his students to seek to persist in self-cultivation every day. “You spend too much time in self-denial and too little in mindfulness cultivation,” he told them.19 Yang Changji believed that strong individuals had the right to elevate themselves above the morality of the crowd. From the viewpoint of Mao's teacher, ethics should be directed toward one goal: the self-actualization of the individual.
Under the influence of his mentor, Mao read a Chinese translation of System der Ethik, a work by the nineteenth-century German philosopher Friedrich Paulsen, who asserted that the activity of a person who was totally focused on the achievement of a carefully defined goal was the highest and most absolute value. This teaching convinced Mao that the inflexible will of a great person trumped all other ethical principles. Such an ideology, expressed in the familiar slogan “ The end justifies the means,” accurately reflected the inclinations of Mao himself, a proud and stubborn provincial who dreamed of glory. He made an enormous number of marginal notes in his copy of System der Ethik; they total more than twelve thousand words in all. Here are just a few of the more typical notes:
[P]urpose is unrelated to knowledge and is related only to feeling and will. …… Morals are not prescriptive; they are descriptive. …… In the broad sense there is no universal human morality. …… Morality differs with the times, but it none the less remains morality. …… Morality is different in different societies, and with different persons. …… Since human beings have an ego, for which the self is the center of all things and all thought, self-interest is primary for all persons. …… The starting point of altruism is the self, and altruism is related to the self. It is impossible to say that any mind is purely altruistic without any idea of self-interest. Nothing in the world takes the other as its starting point, and the self does not seek to benefit anything in the world that is totally unrelated to the self. …… Paulsen, too, takes individualism as his foundation. This is an individualism of the spirit, and may be called spiritual individualism. …… Blind morality has no value at all. …… In the realm of ethics, I advocate two principles. The first is individualism. Every act in life is for the purpose of fulfilling the individual, and all morality serves to fulfill the individual. Expressing sympathy for others, and seeking the happiness of others, are not for others, but for oneself. …… I suspect that natural instincts are not necessarily false, and that the sense of duty is not necessarily true. …… [W]e have a duty only to ourselves, and have no duty to others.20
Only one conclusion was possible from all this, and Mao drew it: “Some say that we must believe that the moral law comes from the command of God, for only then can it be carried out and not be despised. This is a slavish mentality. Why should you obey God rather than obey yourself You are God. Is there any God other than yourself ”21 A strong individual was not bound by moral principles and strived for the achievement of a great goal. The dictatorship of the will and unlimited power. What a novel interpretation of liberalism. Not freedom for everyone, but everyone a law unto himself.
As in Descartes's formula, “I think, therefore, I am,” Mao placed his emphasis on the pronoun “I.” He was just a step away from “class morality” and “class struggle.” He already sensed his own greatness. Thus, he wrote,
The truly great person develops the original nature with which Nature endowed him. …… This is what makes him great. …… The great actions of the hero are his own, are the expression of his motive power, lofty and cleansing, relying on no precedent. His force is like that of a powerful wind arising from a deep gorge, like the irresistible sexual desire for one's lover, a force that will not stop, that cannot be stopped. All obstacles dissolve before him.22
Mao had no doubt that the masses must blindly follow the directions of the great man. He supposed that people in general and Chinese in particular were stupid and ignorant. In June 1912, Mao had written a short essay referring contemptuously to the “ignorance” of the Chinese people, who were unable to judge properly the merits of what Mao deemed the progressive actions of Lord Shang, a fourth-century BCE minister of the ancient Chinese state of Qin, and founder of the Legalist school of philosophy. “Shang Yang's laws were good laws. …… How could the people fear and not trust him. …… From this, we can see the stupidity of the people of our country.”23 Mao was not the least bothered by the fact that Shang Yang was one of the bloodiest ministers in ancient China and established a cruel dictatorship. What mattered to Mao was that Shang Yang had elevated himself above the crowd, had been able to achieve power, and that his drastic reforms had strengthened the state of Qin.
The idea of self-improvement, of physical and spiritual training, likewise occupied Mao in these years. He and his classmates were ardent nationalists who were seeking to save their country and were animated by a thirst for struggle and heroic self-sacrifice. Seized by an abnormal self-conceit, they believed in the unrestricted priority of the will and of reason. They denied the existence of God, and were convinced that they had a right to do whatever they pleased. He and his friends trained themselves for future battles.
“We also became ardent physical culturists,” Mao said to Edgar Snow.
In the winter holidays we tramped through the fields, up and down mountains, along city walls, and across the streams and rivers. When the sun was hot we doffed shirts and called it a sun-bath. In the spring winds we shouted that this was a new sport called “wind bathing.” We slept in the open when frost was already falling and even in November swam in the cold rivers. All this went on under the title of “body-training.”24
It was no accident that the first article Mao published was called “A Study of Physical Education.” It was published in the leading Shanghai journal Xin qingnian (New youth) in April 1917 under the pseudonym “Twenty-Eight Stroke Student,” referring to the number of strokes it took to write the three characters of his name, Mao Zedong. Yang Changji had submitted it to the journal.25 Mao asserted: “Our nation is wanting in strength; the military spirit has not been encouraged. The physical condition of our people deteriorates daily. These are extremely disturbing phenomena. …… If our bodies are not strong, we will tremble at the sight of [enemy] soldiers. How then can we attain our goals, or exercise far-reaching influence ”26 Mao offered his readers a program of physical training he himself had devised. He believed that sports would not only make the nation healthy, but also temper the will of the people. “The will,” he emphasized, “is the antecedent of a man's career.”27 After reading Paulsen's book in early 1918, Mao wrote another essay. This one was called “ The Energy of the Mind.” Unfortunately, this work has not survived, but we know that Professor Yang loved it.28
Mao's desire to become a strong, willful, and purposeful hero, not bound by any moral chains, is understandable. The examples of great men made his brain whirl. But this is not a sufficient explanation for his beliefs. Intellectuals of his generation experienced the degraded condition of their country as tragedy. Not only Mao, but many of his peers, too, dreamed of themselves as giants smashing the greedy foreign powers and local tyrants that were exploiting China. How they yearned to defeat the haughty British and Americans, to put an end to the arbitrary rule of the corrupt officials, militarists, and oligarchs, in order to provide a better life for the people.
Overcome by patriotic zeal and wishing to learn more about the life of the people, in the summer of 1917 Mao set off with his friend Xiao Yu to travel around Hunan. They roamed more than three hundred miles on foot along dusty rural roads, meeting peasants, local officials, gentry, and merchants. Mao wore an old, light-colored robe and carried an umbrella and a small pack in which he kept a change of underwear, a towel, notebook, a writing brush, and ink. These last items were indispensable, as students were able to earn money along the way by writing signs, announcements, and poetic inscriptions at the request of local people. By this time, Mao's attitude toward work had changed. The peasants fed and sheltered him and Xiao Yu. Closely observing the joyless life of the rural folk, Mao probably recalled his own difficult childhood. Of all the great heroes of the past the one that he now wanted to emulate was Liu Bang, the peasant's son who had organized poor people to rebel and founded the great Han dynasty. Many years later Xiao Yu recalled that while wandering the roads of Hunan he and Mao talked about Liu Bang.
“Liu Pang [Liu Bang] was the first commoner in history to become Emperor,” he continued thoughtfully. “I think he should be considered to be a great hero!”
“Oh no,” I remonstrated. “Liu Pang was a bad man. …… He was too selfish, too self-centered to be an emperor.” I explained, “He was really nothing more than a man with political ambitions who was successful. …… [H]e got rid of one despot only to become another himself. …… Remember the friends and generals who risked their lives fighting for him When his armies were successful, these men became famous leaders and he became afraid that one or another of them might try to usurp his throne; so he had them all killed. …… ”
“But if he hadn't killed them, his throne would have been insecure and he probably wouldn't have lasted long as Emperor,” said Mao.
“So in order to be successful in politics, one must kill one's friends ” Xiao Yu exclaimed in astonishment. But Mao did not wish to prolong the conversation. “We both knew,” Xiao Yu concluded, “that he was identifying himself with Liu Pang in his ambition.”29
Back at school, Mao again immersed himself in the social sciences. He continued to read newspapers and magazines very closely, especially New Youth and The People, Sun Yat-sen's journal.
The situation in China was growing ever more tense. On June 6, 1916, Yuan Shikai died. This general- turned-politician had tried to rule China the old way, relying upon his loyal Beiyang Army. He was a stranger to new and democratic ideas. Soon after he had been chosen as the provisional president of the Republic of China, he began to institute an openly dictatorial order in the country. He was opposed not only by Sun Yat-sen's revolutionaries but also by local military oligarchs who did not wish to disband their troops and submit to him. In the winter of 1912–13, Sun Yat-sen's Revolutionary Alliance, which was renamed the Guomindang (Nationalist Party), won a resounding victory in parliamentary elections. Yuan Shikai felt threatened. Having secured the support of the Western powers, which had extended him an enormous loan of 25 million pounds sterling (around 100 million U.S. dollars), Yuan Shikai began to prepare for civil war. In March he ordered the assassination of Song Jiaoren, the Guomindang leader in parliament. Beiyang Army troops began to be redeployed to strategic centers in central China. An anti–Yuan Shikai uprising, the so-called second revolution, flared up in the eastern province of Jiangxi, with Guomindang members playing an active role. A number of other provinces supported the revolt, but troops loyal to the president suppressed it. In November 1913 Yuan Shikai outlawed the Guomindang, dispersed the parliament, and suspended the constitution. Sun Yat-sen was again forced to flee to Japan. A new constitution effectively placed all power in the hands of the president, and parliament, which reconvened in December 1914, bent to Yuan Shikai's will, and declared him president for life.
By 1915, however, Yuan Shikai's authority had been substantially undermined as a result of his capitulation to Japan's increasingly aggressive policy toward China. Soon after the start of World War I, Japan, as a member of the Entente, occupied Germany's colony in China, the port of Qingdao and the Jiaozhou Bay district on the southern coast of the Shandong peninsula. At the same time, the Japanese seized a railroad built by the Germans that linked Qingdao with Jinan, the capital of Shandong province, as well as mines belonging to the Germans. On January 28, 1915, Japan presented an ultimatum to Yuan Shikai, the so-called Twenty-One Demands, acceptance of which would have turned China into a Japanese colony. News of this impudent demand infuriated the Chinese intelligentsia. On May 7, Yuan Shikai, fearing that Japan might dispatch troops, accepted most of the demands, but even the usually supine parliament refused to ratify the agreement. Thus, on May 25, 1915, Yuan Shikai affixed his own seal to the agreement. An anti-Japanese movement began in China. Young people were especially indignant. Mao Zedong expressed his feelings in the following sentences: “The 7th of May dishonors our Motherland. How can we students take revenge With our very lives!”30
In late December 1915, on the advice of his American adviser Frank Goodnow, Yuan Shikai announced the restoration of the monarchy and proclaimed himself the new emperor. This action further incensed public opinion. The three southwestern provinces of Yunnan, Guangxi, and Guizhou declared their independence. Civil war flared up, and in the midst of it Yuan Shikai unexpectedly died of uremia at the age of fifty-six. He was succeeded by General Li Yuanhong, who had taken part in the Wuchang uprising of 1911.
All these events impacted social and political conditions in Mao's home province of Hunan. The provincial governor Tan Yankai joined the Guomindang in 1912, thinking to strengthen his position as a member of the most popular political party in the country. In 1913 he supported the “second revolution” by proclaiming the independence of Hunan, but he miscalculated. Yuan Shikai dispatched troops, which occupied Changsha and relieved Tan Yankai of all his posts. He barely escaped with his life. Yuan's protégé, the conservative general Tang Xiangming, was installed in power in Changsha, where he established a reign of terror in the province and tried to eradicate the weakly developed roots of democracy. He banned every kind of political activity, including student meetings in schools and colleges.31 During the three-year reign of Butcher Tang, as he was known in Hunan, from five to ten thousand people were executed for political reasons. The terror stopped temporarily only after Li Yuanhong came to power in Beijing. In June 1916, Butcher Tang fled to Shanghai disguised as a peasant.32 Tan Yankai briefly returned to power, but after a year he was replaced by General Fu Liangzuo. Soon after a new regime of terror was instituted in Changsha by General Zhang Jingyao, whom the Hunanese called “Zhang the Venomous.”33
After the death of Yuan Shikai, as central power imploded, Hunan, like all of China, became mired in chaos. The armies of numerous militarists, their ranks filled with déclassé peasants and other unemployed men, ignited fratricidal civil wars. The Western powers, interested in selling China arms and receiving additional economic privileges, encouraged this development.
In sum, Mao had more than sufficient reason to be concerned about the fate of his country. He pondered the great and invincible rulers of antiquity, owing to whose energy and will his motherland had inspired fear and trembling in its neighbors and earned the proud name of Zhongguo, or Middle Kingdom. Mao became convinced that only force merited respect and only a despot would be able to unite and revive China. It is striking that Mao respected not only the emperor Liu Bang, but also the hated Hunanese tyrant Tang Xiangming. After Tang's downfall, Mao wrote a bitter letter to his friend Xiao Yu:
I still maintain that Military Governor Tang should not have been sent away. …… Tang was here for three years, and he ruled by the severe enforcement of strict laws. …… Order was restored, and the peaceful times of the past were practically regained. …… The fact that he killed well over ten thousand people was the inescapable outcome of policy. …… Without such behavior the goal of national protection would be unattainable. Those who consider these things to be crimes do not understand the overall plan.34
Later, Mao would note, “This …… does not mean that all homicide is wrong. …… What we call evil is only the image, not the essence.”35 Such reasoning sends shivers down the spine.
It was now the autumn of 1917. Mao Zedong was in his twenty-fourth year and so far he had not accomplished much of anything. He greedily devoured his books, seeking to find the truth in their pages, but it was now time for action. Finally, he grasped what he needed to do. His soul thirsted for battle, for war, for revolution. “[A] long period of peace, pure peace without any disorder of any kind, would be unbearable to human life,” he wrote,
and it would be inevitable that the peace would give birth to waves. …… [H]uman beings always hate the chaos and hope for order, not realizing that chaos too is part of the process of historical life, that it too has value in real life. …… When they come to periods of peace, they are bored and put the book aside. It is not that we like chaos, but simply that the reign of peace cannot last long, is unendurable to human beings, and that human nature is delighted by sudden change. …… The destruction of the universe is not an ultimate destruction …… because from the demise of the old universe will come a new universe, and will it not be better than the old universe!36
It was then he confessed his desire to burn all Chinese anthologies of prose and poetry that had been written since the Tang and Song dynasties. Evidently he thought they were not progressive enough. He passionately informed his friends of the need to smash traditional family ties and to effect a revolution in the relations between teachers and students.37
Many years later he translated these youthful feelings into a formula that the entire world took as his political credo: “To rebel is justified.” Meanwhile, he continued to dream with his friends, but his dreams were acquiring ever clearer shape. On a warm September day in 1917, when his friends, who were picnicking with him on a hill behind the school, began to argue about what should be done to save the nation, Mao said firmly, “Imitate the heroes of Liangshanbo!”38 These were the rebellious peasants in his favorite novel, Water Margin.
1. See William Edgar Geil, Eighteen Capitals of China (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1911), 273.
2. Snow, Red Star Over China, 136.
3. Edward H. Hume, Doctors East, Doctors West: An American Physician's Life in China (London: Allen & Unwin, 1949), 35.
4. For more details, see Joseph W. Esherick, Reform and Revolution in China: The 1911 Revolution in Hunan and Hubei (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1976).
5. Snow, Red Star Over China, 136.
6. Ibid., 139.
7. Ibid., 141.
8. Mao Tse-tung, Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung, vol. 3 (Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1967), 73.
9. See Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 1, sheet 291.
10. Siao-yu, Mao Tse-tung and I Were Beggars (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1959).
11. Ibid., 31.
12. Emi Hsiao, Mao Tszedun, Chzhu De: Vozhdi kitaiskogo naroda (Mao Zedong, Zhu De: Leaders of the Chinese People) (Moscow: Gosizdat, 1939), 7; Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 1, sheet 292.
13. Snow, Red Star Over China, 138, 143.
14. Liao Gailong, ed., Mao Zedong baike quanshu (Encyclopedia of Mao Zedong), vol. 1 (Beijing: Guangming ribao chubanshe, 2003), 37.
15. Snow, Red Star Over China, 143.
16. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1, 60.
17. Siao-yu, Mao Tse-tung and I Were Beggars, 38–39.
18. See Li Jui, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung (White Plains, NY: International Arts & Sciences Press, 1977), 17.
19. Quoted from ibid., 17.
20. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1, 181, 185, 187–89, 200, 208, 211, 251, 255, 277.
21. Ibid., 273.
22. Ibid., 263–64.
23. Ibid., 6.
24. Snow, Red Star Over China, 145.
25. Li, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, 18.
26. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1, 113.
27. Ibid., 120. Emphasis (bold) in the original.
28. Snow, Red Star Over China, 143.
29. Siao-yu, Mao Tse-tung and I Were Beggars, 129–30, 132.
30. Quoted from Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 17.
31. See Hume, Doctors East, Doctors West, 239.
32. Ibid., 241.
33. Li, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, 47.
34. Schram, Mao's Road to Power, vol. 1, 94, 95.
35. Ibid., 199, 241.
36. Ibid., 237–38, 250.
37. Ibid., 139.
38. Quoted from Liao, Mao Zedong baike quanshu (Encyclopedia of Mao Zedong), vol. 5, 2662; Stuart Schram, Mao Tse-tung (Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin, 1974), 43.