A classmate from another school told me that the administrators and teachers at our institution, fearing we might learn new ideas they themselves had not yet embraced, had locked up the library. Any magazines, newspapers, or books that arrived from outside—so long as they were even slightly current—were kept from our eyes. Upon hearing this, I could only nod in admiration. What a clever stratagem! And it was not confined to just one school; across Hunan, institutions seemed to have formed an unspoken alliance.  Some bureaucratic educators, swept along by the tides of the modern world, risked having their livelihoods swept away if they remained complacent. They quickly transformed themselves, casually discarding their old, stale official jargon. Those who genuinely felt compelled to change deserved great respect; others, however, merely went through the motions, their true colors soon betraying them. Such individuals filled me with deep, deep resentment…

We young people shut within the “gate” of Dongting Lake were truly starving—not only in body, but even more so in mind. The cooks charged with providing us nourishment simply lacked the means to do so. We were powerless. Our only recourse was to rise up and feed ourselves. This is the plaintive cry of our utter hunger! Let no one mistake its meaning.

On July 14, 1919, an administrator at a girls’ school treated her students as if they were mere chattel, sequestering them to prevent them from venturing out and encountering “dangerous” influences. Publications like New Youth were strictly forbidden. Yet during that earth-shattering student movement, female students in Beijing gathered before Xinhua Gate, while little girls from an orphanage volunteered to go to prison in place of their male peers. Only the students of that particular girls’ school remained stubbornly shut inside, refusing to step beyond the school gates—as though walking were an exclusive privilege reserved for men.

Ha ha! When the Qingdao issue erupted, Hunan’s students were greatly stirred, and new-style dramas and speeches suddenly became all the rage. A friend once recounted how an elderly gentleman, enraged because his son had been acting in a costume play, stormed into the school and confronted the headmaster, exclaiming, “How perverse must my fate be? The son I raised has resorted to such indecent behavior!” Hearing this, I burst out laughing without being able to contain myself.

On July 14, 1919, one might ask: if women’s heads are essentially no different from men’s, and their waists likewise, then why must women wear those ostentatious, wind-prone coiled hairstyles? Why are they expected to cinch their waists with trailing, cumbersome skirts? I would reply: from time immemorial, women have been regarded as sinners. The high coiffure and long skirt are punishments imposed upon them by men; the makeup on their faces is akin to branding, the jewelry they wear serves as shackles, piercing ears and binding feet constitute physical torture, and the home and school function as prisons. They endure these burdens in silence, daring neither to speak out nor to escape. As for how to break free from this bondage—my answer is simple: we must raise a Women’s Revolutionary Army.