16. Of sixteen sheets of paper, seven have been used up. How many sheets are left?
17. Of eighteen pupils, nine (words missing). How many pupils are left?
18. A trip is fifteen li long, and seven li (words missing). How many li are left?
Public Announcement Inviting Students to the
Workers' Evening School 72 (October 30, 1917)


Gather round, all of you, and listen to me say a few words in the spoken language:
What is the greatest source of inconvenience from which you all suffer? Do you
all know what it is? As the popular saying goes, you can’t write what is said, you
can’t read what is written, and you can’t do figures. All of you are men, and yet from
this perspective, aren’t you just like sticks or stones? So all of you demand a bit of
knowledge; you want to be able to write a few characters, recognize a few characters,
and do a bit of arithmetic. Only thus can you rid yourselves of this inconvenience.
Though this is the case, all you workers must toil, and you are also without anyone to
teach you. How, then, can you obtain this really hard to get thing? Now there is an
excellent way to do it, for we of First Normal have set up an evening school. We had a
great many students during the first half of the year. Probably some of you have come
to those classes. This evening school is set up especially for you workers. There are two
hours of classes every evening, from Monday to Friday. We teach writing letters and
adding up accounts — things which all you gentlemen have need of all the time. We
provide the instruction completely free of charge. Attending classes at night will also
not interfere in the least with your work. If there are any of you who want to study,
hurry along to the Normal School in the course of the next week to sign up at the
registry. Think about it, all of you. Why are we doing this?


It is for no other reason than that, thinking of what you workers suffer, we want
all of you to be able to write and do arithmetic. Why don’t all of you gentlemen come
quickly to register and attend our courses? There are those who say the times are not
propitious and fear they might be violating martial law. In this respect, we can serve
72 This announcement was issued by the Students’ Society (Xueyouhui) of First Normal School.
Originally called the Skills Society (Jinenghui), when it was set up in 1913 by the principal of the
Normal School, this society had changed its name in 1915 and at the same time defined its aims as: “to
perfect morality, to study education, to advance knowledge, to prepare for an occupation, to temper
the body, and to unite sentiments.” Mao had played a leading role in it from November 1915, but in
October 1917 the organization of the society was changed so that fourth- and fifth-year students, instead
of teachers, took up positions as heads of the various departments. Mao became concurrently general
affairs officer and head of the department of educational research, and in this capacity he drafted the
text below. For further information about the Students’ Society, see the following text, dated November
1917, that dated May 29, 1918, and Li Jui [Li Rui], The Early Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Mao
Tse-tung, (White Plains, N.Y.: M.E. Sharpe, 1977) pp. 51–65; hereafter Li Jui, Early Mao.