(February 19, 1916)
Dear elder schoolmate Zisheng:


I received only yesterday the communication with which you favored me on the
thirtieth of last month; I have respectfully taken cognizance of it and understand your
whole meaning. I want very much to read issues 11 and 12 of the Tiger Magazine and
would still like to ask you to borrow them for me from Mr. Xu when you have time.
Will you be able to make a pleasure trip out of town on Sunday morning? In case you
are able to borrow the magazines, please bring them along. If not, then I will have to
borrow them from Mr. Yang.2 If this Sunday’s weather is fine, would you like to go
1 Mr. Xu’s identity is unknown. Jiayin zazhi, called the Tiger Magazine because the name consists
of the cyclical characters for 1914, a year of the tiger, when it was founded, had in fact ceased publication
in October 1915 with issue no. 10. The two issues which Mao wanted had therefore never appeared.
During its brief existence, the magazine had been in the vanguard of new intellectual trends in China.
The editor was Zhang Shizhao (1881–1973), zi Xingyan, a Hunanese from Changsha. Zhang had edited
the noted newspaper Su bao, and had been imprisoned on suspicion of complicity in an attempt to
assassinate a Qing official in Shanghai. After his release, he went to Japan, and then to the University
of Edinburgh, where he took a degree in law. Though he had participated in the anti-Qing movement
before the 1911 Revolution, and he was an early advocate of a liberal constitutional government, he
did not join Sun Yatsen’s Tongmenghui. The Tiger Magazine was critical of Yuan Shikai’s monarchical
ambitions. In 1916, when the new president, Li Yuanhong, reconvened the National Assembly, Zhang
went as one of the senators from Hunan who had been elected in 1913. In Beijing at this time he also
served as professor of logic in the newly opened graduate school of Beijing University, when Chen Duxiu
was dean of humanities.
2 Yang Changji was at this time living at Mount Yuelu just outside Changsha.