Reduce your expenditures, lessen your desires, and even unprovided you will have
enough. May my lord ford the river and drift out over the ocean, gaze into the distance
beyond sight of shores, go farther and farther in ignorance where there is an end. Those
who come to see you off will all turn back from the shore. You will be far indeed from
here.
26 This letter is undated. In the light of Mao’s statement that he had decided to go to Beijing by
boat, it must have been written during the first half of August 1918, before he went to Beijing for the
purpose of organizing the young people from Hunan to join the work-study program in France. (See
also note 3 below.)
27 The seventh uncle (on the mother’s side) is Wen Zhengxing (1853–1920), zi Bosheng, hao Yuduan.
The eighth uncle (also on the mother’s side) is Wen Zhengying (1859–1929), hao Yuqin. Both of them
were farmers in Tangjiatuo Township, Xiangxiangxian, Hunan.
28 In August 1918, Luo Xuezan wrote a letter to his grandfather, saying: “Your grandson bid farewell
to you on the sixth day of the seventh month … , and arrived in Changsha early in the morning of
the seventh day. I stayed in Changsha for a day and joined Mao Zedong and twenty other people. On
the morning of the ninth day, we left by boat” for Beijing. The date on which Mao Zedong and others
actually went to Beijing can therefore be taken as the ninth day of the seventh month of the lunar
calendar, or August 15.
29 Runlian is the zi of Mao’s brother Mao Zemin (1896–1943), also called Yonglian.