4 THE SOUND OF FOOTSTEPS IN A DESERTED VALLEY

In May 1918, Professor Yang Changji received an irresistible job offer from the rector of Peking University, the well-known educator Cai Yuanpei. Peking University was considered the best and most liberal of Chinese universities. At the beginning of June, Mao Zedong and Yang Changji parted, but by the end of the month, Professor Yang wrote to his favorite student, urging Mao to join him in Beijing. A group of young men and women in Beijing was preparing to journey to France, where they would combine work with study. Professor Yang advised Mao and his friends to take advantage of this opportunity to learn about the world.¹

By then Mao was busy with political and organizational activities. He had already demonstrated his organizational abilities in the autumn of 1915 when he sent a notice to several schools in Changsha inviting young people interested in patriotic work to contact him. In his words, he “ardently desired to make friends.” Mao wanted to widen his circle of acquaintances to include those who “were tempered by suffering and fully determined to sacrifice everything for the sake of their country.” He signed the notice with the pseudonym we have already encountered, the “Twenty-Eight Stroke Student.”²

Five or six people replied, but only three expressed an interest in joining the patriotic circle.³ One was Luo Zhanglong, a nineteen-year-old who introduced himself by the Japanese name Tate Uchiroō (“Knight-Errant”). He had heard of the declaration from a friend, and immediately wrote to Mao. Several years later, Luo became one of the leading members of the Chinese communist movement, but he was expelled from the CCP in 1931 because he opposed its Stalinist leadership. Two other young people who joined Mao's circle subsequently became ultrareactionaries.

Mao received one other reply, or “half a reply,” from Li Longzhi, a sixteen-year-old student at a middle school in Changsha, whom Luo Zhanglong had advised to meet Mao. According to Mao, “Li listened to all I had to say, and then went away without making any definite proposals himself, and our friendship never developed.”⁴ Li Longzhi, who had just come to Changsha from the countryside, later said that Mao seemed so well educated that he simply felt terribly inadequate.⁵ This feeling would fade five or six years later when Li Longzhi, under his new name of Li Lisan, became one of the leading organizers of the Chinese labor movement. In 1928 he became the de facto head of the Communist Party and until late 1930 the dominant figure in the CCP leadership whom Mao himself had to obey.

But that was in the future. Meanwhile, Mao, with the help of Luo Zhanglong and several other classmates, managed to cobble together a group of patriotic youth. There were some amusing incidents along the way. The administration of the local women's college interpreted Mao's declaration as the attempt of a dissolute youth to find a bed partner. However, the leadership of the First Normal School vouched for Mao.⁶ After a while, several individuals had gathered around Mao.⁷ One of them told Mao, “[Your letter was like] the sound of footsteps in a deserted valley; at the sound of your feet my face shone with joy.”⁸

This is how Mao remembered this circle:

It was a serious-minded little group of men and they had no time to discuss trivialities. Everything they did or said must have a purpose. They had no time for love or “romance” and considered the times too critical and the need for knowledge too urgent to discuss women or personal matters. I was not interested in women…… Quite aside from the discussions of feminine charm, which usually play an important role in the lives of young men of this age, my companions even rejected talk of ordinary matters of daily life. I remember once being in the home of a youth who began to talk to me about buying some meat, and in my presence called in his servant and discussed the matter with him, then ordering him to buy a piece. I was annoyed and did not see this fellow again. My friends and I preferred to talk only of large matters—the nature of men, of human society, of China, the world, and the universe!⁹

In June 1917, Mao Zedong was named the best student in the school. This honor was awarded every year at the end of the spring semester. On this occasion a majority—forty-nine people—voted for Mao.¹⁰ Soon afterward he again demonstrated his organizational ability. In September 1917, he founded an association of Xiangtan natives in the school and became more active in the Student Union, which soon chose him as its leader.¹¹

The most important undertaking of the Student Union was to revive an evening workers' school that had been started at the Normal School six months earlier, but had shut down by the fall of 1917. Through Mao Zedong's efforts, classes resumed on November 9, with 102 students, most of whom were unemployed laborers who had come to the city to search for work.¹² By this time Mao Zedong had changed his view of ordinary people. He had matured, and although he still felt superior to them in social status, he no longer disdained them. “Plants and trees, birds and animals all nurture and care for their own kind,” he reasoned. “Must not human beings do the same ……Some of them [the worker students] are out of school simply because there is some lack in their natural endowments, or they come from less fortunate circumstances. It is precisely for such people as these that the humane person should show sympathy, rather than shift the responsibility to them.”¹³ In this school the “lover of humanity” Mao Zedong acquired his first experience of teaching by giving lectures on Chinese history.¹⁴

In November 1917, Mao played an active role organizing a student volunteer guard. These were troubled times in Hunan, like everywhere else in China. Civil war raged. Soldiers often occupied the college buildings and behaved improperly toward the students, especially the females. This produced indignation and protests. During the rule of Governor Fu Liangzuo, beginning in November 1917, the Provincial First School was able to stand up to the demands of the army, which wanted to turn the educational institution into a barracks. It was Mao who organized the defense, in the words of Xiao San, taking “charge as though he had received the sanction of the Ministry of War.”¹⁵ Unlike the teachers and the other students, he had some slight military experience. In November the situation grew more tense. After the rout of Fu Liangzuo's army the retreating soldiers terrorized the local population and threatened to attack the school. Mao again demonstrated initiative by contacting the local police, several of whom responded to his call for help. A student self-defense force was organized, although armed only with wooden rifles and bamboo sticks.

As not only an ex-soldier but also chair of the Student Union, Mao took personal command. The students and the police waited until the soldiers had come right up to the school gates; then Mao ordered the police—the only ones with real rifles—to open fire. Then the students began to light firecrackers in empty jerry cans and loudly shout, “If you hand over your weapons there will be no trouble!” The soldiers took fright and surrendered.¹⁶ The school journal for November 1917 contained the following entry: “The fighting in southern Hunan is critical, and there is a great disturbance. The students have organized a garrison force for day and night patrols. Guard duty is extraordinary.”¹⁷

Xiao San recalled that Mao was particularly interested in military issues at this time.¹⁸ Not only China, but the whole world, was at war. Mao closely followed events in the European theater, reading the daily Beijing, Shanghai, and Hunan newspapers, some of which he subscribed to himself. By his own reckoning, he spent a third of the money his father sent him on books and periodicals.¹⁹ He had a strange habit: after reading the newspaper from cover to cover, he cut off the white margins of the pages and sewed them together with thread. Xiao San tells us, “He picked out geographic place names from the newspaper and wrote them down on these white margins.”²⁰

In the winter of 1917, Mao and his friends thought of organizing a tightly centralized group of like-minded persons. “I built up a wide correspondence with many students and friends in other towns and cities,” Mao said to Edgar Snow. “Gradually I began to realize the necessity for a more closely knit organization.”²¹ It was finally established in April 1918, and called Xinmin xuehui (Renovation of the People Study Society). Mao and his fellows obviously borrowed the name from Liang Qichao's journal (Xinmin congbao—Renovation of the people), which the Chinese reformer published in Yokohama. Xiao Yu suggested the name, and everyone happily agreed to it.²²

The founding meeting of the society took place on Sunday morning, April 14, 1918, in Cai Hesen's home in the village of Yingwan on the left bank of the Xiang River. Thirteen men assembled in a small, poorly furnished shack hidden in the shade of dense trees. “The weather was bright and clear,” recalled Mao. “Gentle breezes caressed the azure waters of the river and the emerald grass along its banks. This left an indelible impression on all those who attended the meeting.”²³ In addition to the host and Mao, others present were their old friends: the Xiao brothers, Luo Zhanglong, and others. There were also some new faces, including forty-two-year-old He Shuheng, with whom Mao had entered the Provincial Fourth Normal School in 1913. He Shuheng graduated after just a few months and had been teaching Chinese in a primary school in Changsha since July 1914. He was short and broad-shouldered, very serious and modest, wore large round eyeglasses, and enjoyed the unbounded respect of his younger comrades. They jocularly called him Bewhiskered He, because of his black whiskers, which made him look like a member of the classical gentry. He was actually a rural intellectual who at age eighteen had passed the first level of the old imperial examination system and become a xiucai. Mao and Xiao Yu became friendly with him during summer vacation in 1917, when they visited Bewhiskered He in his native village of Ningxiang during their wanderings through the province.²⁴ This selfless, unusually energetic man with a piercing gaze played a large role in Mao's life. He became Mao's closest assistant in organizing a communist circle in Hunan in 1920, and he took part in the First Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.²⁵ He Shuheng considered Mao an “extraordinary man” and despite their significant difference in age, He always respected Mao greatly and never disputed his superiority.²⁶

Those assembled in the woods discussed the bylaws of the organization, a draft of which Mao Zedong and another member of the society had drawn up in March. It said, in part, “The main goals of the society are to reform academic studies, to temper the character of its members, and to ameliorate the human heart and customs…… All members must abide by the following rules: 1. Do not be hypocritical; 2. Do not be lazy; 3. Do not be wasteful; 4. Do not gamble; [and] 5. Do not consort with prostitutes.” Anyone could join the society upon the recommendation of five or more existing members, payment of a one-silver-dollar membership fee, and approval of his candidacy by more than half the members of the organization. Everyone was required to pay annual membership dues, which were also one silver dollar.²⁷

After the bylaws were adopted the leadership was selected. Xiao Yu was named general secretary. According to his younger brother Xiao San, the position of general secretary was first offered to Mao, but he declined, and agreed only to serve as one of two deputies to Xiao Yu.²⁸ Eventually about seventy to eighty persons joined the society, including several girls: Li Si'an, a student at the Canye School in Hunan; Tao Yi, a student at the First Normal School and one of Professor Yang Changji's favorites; Cai Chang, who was Cai Hesen's younger sister; and Xiang Jingyu, a female friend of Cai's. Many members of the organization later became leading figures in the Chinese communist movement, and most of these laid down their lives in struggles for a new China.²⁹

All of the members tried to achieve the following dream: “To improve the life of the individual and of the whole human race.” This is why they called their society the Renovation of the People Study Society. Although they rejected “romance,” they were romantics themselves. “[A]t that time the new thought and new literature had already sprung up in the country,” wrote Mao Zedong, “and we all felt that in our minds the old thought, the old ethics, and the old literature had been totally swept away. We came to a sudden realization that it was all wrong to lead a quiet and solitary life, and that on the contrary it was necessary to seek an active and collective life…… [W]e formed a view of life that emphasizes continual striving and improvement.”³⁰

The members of the society soon introduced changes in the organizational goals. They were no longer satisfied with the restructuring of academic studies and moral education. Now they wanted nothing less than the “transformation of China and the whole world,”³¹ and they sincerely desired to begin by transforming themselves. Apart from the noble intentions of becoming better, purer, and smarter, and the desire to bring joy to humankind, for the time being they had no concrete ideas at all. “We started out as members of a petit bourgeois intellectual organization, striving for ‘self-improvement' and ‘mutual assistance,' ” recalled Li Weihan, one of the members of the group. “A majority of the members were young people who believed in reform, and ardently desired progress. But how should we bring about these reforms? How should we achieve progress? Groping our way forward, we still had not even come to this point.”³² In Xiao San's words, the program, on the whole, “was a mixture of Confucianism and Kantianism.”³³ Mao Zedong's assessment was essentially the same. “At this time,” he said, “my mind was a curious mixture of ideas of liberalism, democratic reformism, and Utopian Socialism. I had somewhat vague passions about ‘nineteenth-century democracy,' Utopianism and old-fashioned liberalism, and I was definitely anti-militarist and anti-imperialist.”³⁴

In June 1919 Mao graduated from the Normal School. As his daughter put it, he was at a crossroads.³⁵ There was either no work or he didn't want to look for a job. Along with several friends, among them Cai Hesen, he settled on the left bank of the Xiang River and dreamed about creating a commune there, some sort of “work-study society of comrades,” to work the land together and grasp the nature of science.³⁶ He was almost broke, but this didn't bother him. His friends teased him, saying “not a penny in his pocket, a concern for all the world!”³⁷ He spent whole days in thought, wandering around the environs, and feasting his eyes upon nature.

There was a magnificent view of Changsha from the summit of Mount Yuelu. The curved golden roofs of the Confucian temples shimmered under the hot sun; the eight towers of the fortress thrust majestically upward. Below, the Xiang River flowed unhurriedly at the foot of the mountain. Mao felt happy. He had many friends who viewed him as their leader. Several years later, in the autumn of 1925, Mao, who liked to write verse, would revisit these haunts and, recalling the past, would write the following lines:

Standing alone in the cold autumn,

where the Hsiang [Xiang] River flows north,

on the tip of Orange Island,

looking at thousands of hills,

red all over,

row after row of woods, all red,

the river is green to the bottom,

a hundred boats struggling,

eagles striking the sky,

fish gliding under the clear water.

All creatures fight for freedom

under the frosty sky.

Bewildered at empty space,

I ask the great, gray earth:

who controls the rise and fall

Hundreds of friends used to come here.

Remember of the old times—the years of fullness,

when we were students and young,

blooming and brilliant

with the young intellectuals'

emotional argument,

fist up, fist down,

fingers pointing

at river and mountain,

writings full of excitement,

lords of a thousand houses merely dung.

Remember still

how, in the middle of the stream,

we struck the water,

making waves which stopped

the running boats ³⁸

During this period of relative inactivity Mao Zedong received the letter from his teacher concerning the recruitment of a group of young men and young women to travel to France. He shared this news with Cai Hesen, the Xiao brothers, and other friends. Cai Hesen and the older Xiao brother—Xiao Yu—were particularly excited by this opportunity. They had long dreamed of traveling abroad to study and considered France an ideal destination. It was a democratic country with solid revolutionary traditions. A meeting of the society was quickly called, at which “it was considered essential to have a movement to study in France and to make every effort to promote it.”³⁹ The vast majority of those present expressed a desire to go to France.⁴⁰ Xiao Yu wrote to Yang Changji right away to find out more about the group in Beijing. One week later a reply arrived. Professor Yang said that he had met with the rector of Peking University, Cai Yuanpei, who had approved the participation of the young Hunanese in the work-study program.⁴¹

This program, first developed in 1912, was conceived by two anarchists, Li Shizeng and Wu Zhihui, who were among the first to receive an education in France. They were followers of the French anarchist theorist élisée Reclus, who believed in a dialectical connection between education and revolution, as did his Chinese disciples. With good reason they supposed that revolutionary progress in society was impossible without the broad development of science and education. In 1905 Li Shizeng and Wu Zhihui established the first Chinese Anarchist Group in Paris, and in 1912 they organized the Chinese Society for Frugal Study in France, whose objective was to promote inexpensive means of receiving an education. They proposed that newcomers would pay their expenses by working in French enterprises and fund their own education on the principle of “one year of work, two years of study.”

The society shouldered the task of attracting young Chinese to study in France and helping them find work. The core idea was to take advantage of the superiority of the Western educational system to educate a “new” man and a “new” woman, both workers and intellectuals. Only such persons, the anarchists thought, could regenerate China. Over the course of two years, 1912 and 1913, they sent one hundred Chinese students to France. At the end of 1913, however, the Chinese Society for Frugal Study in France was forced to cease operations. Yuan Shikai asserted that it made no sense for Chinese students to study in Europe.⁴² The movement received a new lease on life in August 1917, however, when China entered the world war on the side of the Entente. The Chinese did not take part in the fighting, but per an agreement with the French, China sent 140,000 laborers to France, most engaged in digging trenches.⁴³ This reenergized the Chinese anarchists. Li Shizeng began to devote all his efforts to organizing a mass Chinese youth work-study movement in France. He contacted Cai Yuanpei, the rector of Peking University, and public figures in France, and soon established the joint Sino-French Study Society to facilitate the development of a system for educating Chinese in France as well as strengthening Sino-French cultural ties. The anarchists wanted to attract Chinese students to Europe in order to promote an amalgamation of “intellectuals” with the workers' movement. Branches of the organization were established in Beijing, Canton, and Shanghai. Preparatory schools for those intending to go on work-study to France were established in Beijing, Chengdu, Chongqing, and Baoding in 1918 and early 1919. The schools enrolled students from fourteen years old and up.⁴⁴

European education appealed to Chinese youth for several reasons. Cai Yuanpei explained that there was a dearth of higher educational institutions in China and the level of existing ones left much to be desired. Second, there was not enough highly qualified teaching staff in China. Third, the Chinese Ministry of Education and associated institutions lacked the resources to organize effective practical studies for students, because of the paucity of libraries, museums, and botanical and zoological gardens.⁴⁵

After receiving the letter from Professor Yang, Cai Hesen set off for Beijing, where he met with Yang Changji, Li Shizeng, and Cai Yuanpei. On June 30, he sent a letter to Mao Zedong and other members of the society confirming the possibility of traveling to France. He urged his friends to hurry to Beijing.⁴⁶

Mao, however, first had to attend to some family matters. His mother, Wen Qimei, had been seriously ill since 1916. She had long suffered from stomach ulcers, and now she had contracted inflammation of the lymph nodes. Mao loved his mother very much and felt sorry for her. While studying in Changsha he periodically visited her. Over the past few years his parents had had a falling-out, for reasons unknown. Rumors circulated that Wen Qimei could not forgive her husband for having taken his son's wife as his concubine, but the disagreement may have been about something else. Mao's father became more cantankerous as the years passed, and she may simply have found living with him unbearable. Finally, she gathered up her belongings and moved in with her older brothers in her native village of Tangjiatuo. Mao Yichang, a traditionalist, probably found it hard to bear his spouse's rebellion, which violated the canons of Confucian morality.

As always, Mao was wholly on his mother's side. In early August 1918, he paid her another visit, this time at his uncles' house. He tried to persuade his mother to go with him to the provincial capital for medical tests. However, she refused, probably because she didn't want to burden her beloved son. Back in Changsha, Mao wrote to his uncles, again expressing the hope that his mother would still come to the city. He counted on her coming in late autumn, accompanied by his brother Zemin. In this same letter, he informed his relatives that he intended to go off to Beijing. He said nothing about traveling to France, assuring them that “sightseeing is the only aim of our trip, nothing else.”⁴⁷ In reality, he simply didn't want to upset anyone. He had no reservations about traveling to France with his comrades and was excited at the prospect of the forthcoming adventure.⁴⁸

On August 15, Mao left Changsha for Beijing with twenty-five of his comrades. They traveled to Wuhan on a small riverboat, then continued their journey by rail. It was Mao's first train ride, and a long one, some eight hundred miles.

They were delayed for two days in the small city of Xuchang in Henan province because the Yellow River was in flood. Mao was actually quite pleased. Xuchang was the site of the ancient Chinese kingdom of Wei, founded by Emperor Cao Pi, one of the persons who figured in his favorite novel, Romance of the Three Kingdoms.⁴⁹ At Mao's suggestion, the friends decided to explore the old city. They learned that the ruins of the ancient settlement were beyond the fortress wall. It's easy to imagine how excited Mao must have been. He was on his way to subdue the world, and a chance visit to a historic place that was steeped in the glory of past centuries was naturally full of symbolism. It was as if the famous heroes of antiquity were spurring him on to achieve great things for the glory and power of his country.

¹. Liao, Mao Zedong baike quanshu (Encyclopedia of Mao Zedong), vol. 5, 2663; Li, Moi otets Mao Tszedun (My Father Mao Zedong), 99.

². Snow, Red Star Over China, 144; Schram, Mao’s Road to Power, vol. 1, 81–82, 84; Li, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, 74.

³. See Schram, Mao’s Road to Power, vol. 1, 84.

⁴. Quoted from Snow, Red Star Over China, 144.

⁵. See Alexander V. Pantsov’s interview with Inna Li in Beijing, June 14, 2010; Tang Chunliang, Li Lisan zhuan (Biography of Li Lisan) (Harbin: Heilongjiang renmin chubanshe, 1984), 8.

⁶. Li, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, 74–75.

⁷. Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 1, sheet 294.

⁸. Li, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, 75.

⁹. Snow, Red Star Over China, 144–45.

¹⁰. Liao, Mao Zedong baike quanshu (Encyclopedia of Mao Zedong), vol. 5, 2661; Li, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, 52–53.

¹¹. Liao, Mao Zedong baike quanshu (Encyclopedia of Mao Zedong), vol. 5, 2662.

¹². Ibid.

¹³. Schram, Mao’s Road to Power, vol. 1, 146.

¹⁴. See Liao, Mao Zedong baike quanshu (Encyclopedia of Mao Zedong), vol. 5, 2662.

¹⁵. Quoted from Robert Payne, Portrait of a Revolutionary: Mao Tse-tung (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1961), 54.

¹⁶. Li, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, 50–51; Schram, Mao Tse-tung, 43.

¹⁷. Quoted from Li, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Tse-tung, 48.

¹⁸. See Payne, Portrait of a Revolutionary, 54.

¹⁹. Snow, Red Star Over China, 147.

²⁰. Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 1, sheet 292.

²¹. See Snow, Red Star Over China, 145.

²². Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 40.

²³. Stuart R. Schram, ed., Mao’s Road to Power: Revolutionary Writings, 1912–1949, vol. 2 (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1994), 20.

²⁴. Li, Moi otets Mao Tszedun (My Father Mao Zedong), 97; Li, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Zedong, 71–72.

²⁵. Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 1, sheet 298.

²⁶. Zhou Shizhao et al., Wusi yundong zai Hunan (The May Fourth Movement in Hunan) (Changsha: Hunan renmin chubanshe, 1959), 38.

²⁷. Schram, Mao’s Road to Power, vol. 2, 20.

²⁸. Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 1, sheet 295.

²⁹. Snow, Red Star Over China, 145–46.

³⁰. Schram, Mao’s Road to Power, vol. 2, 19.

³¹. See Li Weihan, Huiyi yu yanjiu (Reminiscences and Studies), vol. 1 (Beijing: Zhonggong dangshi ziliao chubanshe, 1986), 3.

³². Ibid.

³³. Lichnoe delo Mao Tszeduna (Personal File of Mao Zedong), RGASPI, collection 495, inventory 225, file 71, vol. 1, sheet 295.

³⁴. Snow, Red Star Over China, 146.

³⁵. Li, Moi otets Mao Tszedun (My Father Mao Zedong), 99.

³⁶. Schram, Mao’s Road to Power, vol. 1, 4 .

³⁷. Li, The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao Zedong, 78.

³⁸. Mao Zedong, Poems of Mao Tse-tung, trans., introd., and notes by Hua-ling Nieh Engle and Paul Engle (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1972), 32.

³⁹. Schram, Mao’s Road to Power, vol. 2, 21.

⁴⁰. Siao-yu, Mao Tse-tung and I Were Beggars, 164.

⁴¹. Ibid., 165.

⁴². For more details, see Marilyn A. Levine, The Found Generation: Chinese Communists in Europe during the Twenties (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1993).

⁴³. See Daria A. Spichak, Kitaitsy vo Frantsii (Chinese in France) (manuscript), 13–14.

⁴⁴. Ibid., 23–24.

⁴⁵. Ibid., 23.

⁴⁶. Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 174.

⁴⁷. Schram, Mao’s Road to Power, vol. 1, 174.

⁴⁸. Siao-yu, Mao Zedong and I Were Beggars, 165–66.

⁴⁹. Pang, Mao Zedong nianpu, 1893–1949 (Chronological Biography of Mao Zedong, 1893–1949), vol. 1, 174.