Letter to Seventh and Eighth Maternal Uncles and
Aunts (April 28,1919)1
Respectfully submitted for the perusal of Seventh and Eighth Uncles and Aunts:2
One year has quickly elapsed since your nephew bade farewell to you last summer.
Since then, I have written you a letter to express my regards. I am sure that your
days have been full of happiness and good fortune. Thinking of your many blessings
gives me joy and comfort. My mother lived with you for a long time, and you looked
after her well. I am most grateful. Now her illness has reached a turning point; her
throat has largely recovered, but the treatment of her gastric ulcer has not produced
any effect. As she has long been suffering from this disease, it will certainly take some
time before we see any results. I had a position in Beijing as a staff member of Beijing
University3 when I heard that my mother’s illness had become serious, and had to
rush back home to look after her. I set out on March 12, by the Western calendar,
and arrived in Shanghai on the fourteenth. I was detained there on business for twenty
days, and arrived in the province from Shanghai only on April 6. I have been waiting
on my mother, giving her draughts, and have not left her side. I hope this will allay
your worries. I send you my respectful good wishes. Please give my regards to my
cousins and their wives.
Please give my regards to Fourth, Fifth, and Tenth uncles,4 for I shall not write to
them separately.
Your nephew, Mao Zedong
1 I.e., the Cultural Book Society.
2 This letter carries no indication of the year in which it was written, but the references to the
passage of one year since Mao parted from his uncles and aunts, and the information about his return
to Changsha from Beijing, make plain that it should be dated 1919.
3 The uncles are those to whom Mao’s letter of August 1918 was addressed. The seventh and
eighth aunts were both née Zhao; they were peasant women from what is now the Shaoshan district of
Xiangtan in Hunan.