Letter to Xiangsheng7 (June 25,1915)
Esteemed Xiangsheng:
I received your letter on the first of the month, and today is the twenty-fifth. I
haven’t answered until now because I had not decided on where I would be spending
the summer vacation. A friend has invited me to Liuyang, but I do not want to go.
Since I haven’t any money to stay in the provincial capital, there is no alternative to
going home for a spell. The school’s examinations are over today; I have been very
neglectful of my courses. In the past, I had some mistaken ideas, and I was confused
regarding my studies. I was especially wearied by the burdensome details of science
classes. Now I am learning from my teachers and friends, and moreover having grown
up a bit myself, I have made some advances in my knowledge. I have come to the
conclusion that the path to scholarship must first be extensive and later intensive, first
Chinese and later Western, first general and later specialized. What is your opinion?
What is past is past, and today I make a new start. Formerly, I favored an independent
route, but now I know that approach to be wrong. I was especially contemptuous of
the vanities of school grades and prizes, but now I know myself to have been in error. I
5 Yi Yongxi, also known as Yi Changtao, was a student at First Normal School who had died
of illness in March 1915. The school held a memorial meeting for him on May 23, 1915, and Mao
contributed two of the 256 couplets contained in a pamphlet published on that occasion: this one, and
that quoted in his letter of June 25,1915, below.
6 There are many mountains in China called Longshan (Dragon Mountain), including one in Hunan,
but Mao was probably thinking of that in Shandong, which would be crossed by Japanese or Russian
invaders.
7 The editors of the Wengao have been unable to identify this individual. Xiangsheng could be a
personal name, or it could be a pseudonym meaning “Hunanese student,” “Hunanese scholar,” or “bom
in Hunan.”

once saw in the family letters of Zeng Wenzheng a passage which says, “When reading
the Neo-Confucian works,8 I also like to write essays; when writing essays, I must also
attend to other duties. Thus, I have not accomplished anything to my satisfaction.”9
Are these words not equal in worth to gold and jade? If today I give up the sciences
and don’t strive for good grades, what else should I do? Perhaps others will say I have
regressed, but I shall say I have progressed. When I read the study program you have
arranged for yourself, and of the results achieved in your scholarship, I am amazed
and ashamed. I don’t know whether you have already fixed your plans both for school
and for independent study. Judging from your wish to study English and mathematics,
it appears that you are preparing to enter school. If you are considering independent
study, let me suggest two men as examples. One is Kang Youwei.10 Kang once said,
“Before I was forty, I studied thoroughly Chinese works; after forty, I absorbed the
essentials of Western knowledge.” The other example is Liang Qichao.11 Liang was
assuredly a child prodigy. According to his own account, he too concentrated first on
poetry and essays and only later applied himself to all the other subjects. Most likely,
literature is the origin of all disciplines; I could not have been more mistaken when I
previously said that poetry was without use. Do you have any ambitions in this regard?
The difficulties which China faces in the future will be a hundred fold those of the past,
and we will have no chance of saving her without extraordinary talents. Fortunately,
you have not despaired. My classmate Mr. Chen12 is a person of aspirations, a rarity
among the others. In the midst of butchers, wine merchants, peddlers, and braggarts,
there must be some extraordinary men. Pay attention to that! Except for the sages,
men cannot be successful in isolation and, besides maintaining good relations with
teachers, choosing one’s friends is of primary importance, is it not? I have read your
poetry: the tone is lofty and the meaning is profound, beyond my own capacities.
Another classmate, Yi Changtao, has died of illness. He was an excellent calligrapher
and a talented writer; we were very close. His death is truly to be lamented. I composed
a poem for the school memorial service.13 I beg you to correct it freely.
8 Xingli shu.
9 From a letter by Zeng Guofan dated the fourteenth day of the twelfth month of the seventh
year of the Xianfeng era (January 28, 1858), in Zeng Guofan, Family Letters. The passage in quotation
marks is, for the most part, not a direct citation, but Mao’s summary of Zeng’s message. As indicated
above (note 17 to the “Classroom Notes”), Mao had referred to this same letter in 1913.
10 Kang Youwei (1858–1927), zi Guangxia, hao Changsu, alternative hao Gengsheng and Zuyi, a
native of Guangdong, was the organizer and leader of the 1898 Reform movement. A jinshi of 1895, he
had written on Confucius as a reformer and on the concept of datong or “Great Harmony.” Mao had
long been familiar with his ideas.
11 On Liang, see note 58 to Mao’s “Classroom Notes” of 1913, and the many references to him in
that text.
12 Chen Chang (1894–1930), zi Zhangfu, from Liuyang, Hunan, was to become a member of the
New People’s Study Society and of the Chinese Communist Party. He graduated from First Normal in
1915 and in 1917 began teaching at the attached primary school.
13 l.e., in addition to the previous text.

As time goes by, I am still absorbed in my thoughts of you, I think of you, but you
do not come;
As a friend of your youth desperately saddened, I lament and sigh with boundless
grief. The Hengyang geese cry piercingly, Spring silently returns to the shore of the
Xiang River; The things I see recall past joys, And I pace back and forth at the bend of
the southern wall. At the bend of the wall the grass grows luxuriant, And tears course
down my two cheeks;
Splendid remains the lonely scene,
When the sun sets in the clouds west of Hengyang.
We were just planning to travel across the great expanse,
And never imagined we might be thus torn apart.
Our endless separation starts today,
And in the dead of night, I am startled by the crowing of the cock.
When I hear the cock’s first crow,
It carries me across the eastern plateau;
I watch you gradually approach,
As we take each other’s hands, the tears well up in our eyes.
Like a lame steed, I walk the mountain pass,
And a gust of wind blows up the spectral curtains;14
The feelings I hold in my breast are like fire,
Leaning against the rocks, I give vent to song.
The mountain ridge is green and luxuriant,
We pledged to try long swords;
The eastern sea holds island savages,
In the northern mountains hate-filled enemies abound.15
Together we denounced the licentious,
But how shall we purge the evils in ourselves?
When Ziqi died an early death, [Bo] Ya stopped playing his lute.16 The halting of
the lute causes extreme pain. And this spring no red flowers will thrive; There are a
thousand days yet to come, But with whom will I share this life?
I offer a cup of wine to the spirit,
And despondently watch the funeral streamers;
To what can I consign my desolation?
An eternal pool is left in nature.
15 The “island savages” referred to are the Japanese; the “hate-filled enemies” are the Japanese and
Russians on China’s northern frontier.
16 Bo Ya was a famous lute-player of the Spring and Autumn period. He formed a friendship with
a woodcutter named Zhong Ziqi, who had such an understanding of music that he could visualize the
scenery evoked by each piece. When Zhong died, Bo Ya broke his lute and never played again. The
sense of these four lines appears to be that Mao valued the criticism of his essays by Yi Changtao as
Bo Ya did Ziqi’s appreciation of his playing.