(December 1,1919)
For several years now I have been dreaming about life in a new society, but I did not
know how to go about it. In the spring of 1918,1 had intended to invite some friends
to found a work-study society of comrades on Mount Yuelu opposite the provincial
capital, and to spend half the time tilling the land, and half the time studying. Since
most of them could not stay in Hunan longer, and I was also going to visit Beijing,
this plan was not carried out. Such a thought came to me once again this spring when
I returned to Hunan. I have a proposal to build a new village at Mount Yuelu. The
first step will be to start a school, which will apply an educational doctrine based
on the principles of social thought. The fundamental ideal of this new village is to
fuse together new families, new schools, and other new social forms. I have drafted a
proposal concerning the methods for running this school. Now I am going to reproduce
the chapter on “The Work of the Students” from the proposal and ask the comrades
to comment on it. I think we can take the building of a new village at Mount Yuelu
as a problem for consideration. If any comrades have detailed plans, or any practical
ideas for resolving this problem, I will sincerely welcome their suggestions.
(I) Teaching time at the school should be reduced as much as possible, so that
students may do independent research and work. The daily schedule should be divided
into six parts. The time allocations are as follows:
sleep
2 parts
relaxation
1 part
study
2 parts
work
1 part
185 There is an apparent contradiction between Mao’s observation here and the statement, not only
in all the other sources on the suicide of Miss Zhao, but in Mao’s own article of November 18, to the
effect that the victim cut her throat in the sedan chair while being carried to her future husband’s
house, so that Orange Garden Street was “splashed with blood.” The explanation apparently lies in the
account published in the Dagongbao on November 16, 1919, according to which Miss Zhao was still
bleeding and did not appear to be dead when the chair was opened in front of the Wu family home,
and medical attention was sought. In a macabre twist to the tale, she was taken first to the Red Cross
infirmary, and then (because they had no woman doctor to treat her) to the Hunan- Yale Medical
College outside the north gate, where it was too late to save her. This version is compatible with Mao’s
statement, in paragraph (5) above, that when she arrived at the Wu family home, she was already
“about to expire.” Assuming it is accurate, Miss Zhao did indeed live to complete all but the last of the
marriage ceremonies.

The two parts devoted to study consist of one part of self-study and one part of
lectures. In terms of hours, the distribution is as follows:
sleep
8 hours
relaxation
4 hours
self-study
4 hours
lectures
4 hours
work
4 hours
The four hours of work is one of the essential requirements for putting this workstudy concept1 into practice.
(II) Work will be purely agricultural in nature. For example:
(A) Gardening
(1) Flowers and trees
(2) Vegetables
(B) Farming
(1) Cotton
(2) Rice and other crops
(C) Forestry
(D) Animal husbandry
(E) Mulberry-tree planting
(F) Poultry and fishery
(III) The work must be productive and practical. The handicraft courses offered
nowadays in the schools aim at training students to be agile with their hands and
eyes, training them to think precisely, and stimulating their concern with order and
their appreciation of beauty. These are the merits of the handicraft courses, but most
of them are unproductive — the things made (e.g., of paper, clay, plaster, and the
other materials) can only be played with but cannot be used. They are also irrelevant
to real life situations. The things students learn in school and the reality of society
are inconsistent. As a result, the students are not familiar with the inner workings of
society, and society also loathes the students.
At present in our country, there is yet another bad practice, which is that once the
students have graduated, the great majority prefer to live in the cities rather than in
the rural areas. They are not used to village life and therefore do not like it. (There are
other reasons why they do not enjoy rural living, but I won’t discuss them now.) This
is linked to the establishment of local autonomy. If most of the students are scattered
among the villages, either as initiators, or as interpreters and executors of ideas, they
will constitute the nucleus of local autonomy, and it will be carried out. If there are no
students in the villages, local autonomy will lack a nucleus and there may be trouble
in carrying it out properly. [The fact that students do not like living in the villages]
also has implications for politics. Today’s politics is representative politics, based on
elections. Neither of the two elections held since the founding of the Republic has truly

represented the will of the people. As for the local preliminary elections, only the bad
gentry, the bullies, and the military cast their votes, while most of the villagers did
not even understand what the elections were all about, so there was no popular will
worth speaking of. The reason lies in the lack of
participation by people with an elementary grasp of politics. If there were students
to offer guidance and supervision, the incidence of giving up the right to vote in this
way could gradually be reduced.
In order to do away with the defects mentioned above (activity which is unproductive and unrelated to real life, preference for cities, and dislike of rural areas), what
is needed, first of all, is economic work directly linked to production, so that the energy exerted, no matter how much or how little, no matter how great or how small,
will bear visible fruit. Second, the product of this work must satisfy a general need
of present-day society. Third, this work must be performed in the villages; such work
must be agricultural in nature.
The first aspect mentioned above leads to direct production; the second links the
work to practical living; and the third fosters a taste for village life.
1. Apart from what has been mentioned above, there is one more important point,
which I shall now discuss. It is well known to all who advocate world reform
and progress that all this starts from popularizing186 education and equipping
people with knowledge. In order to popularize education, one needs first to establish schools. This is indeed true, but establishing schools is only one aspect of
conducting education. The educational process as a whole is not confined to the
schools. At one end, there is the family, and at the other, there is society. If the
members of a student’s family are illiterate (and as a result the organization and
habits of the family are poor), the knowledge he acquires in school will be incompatible with that of his family. This can only lead to one of two consequences:
(1) He will be absorbed by the family and molded to be a hypocrite who is a filial
son and obedient grandson and, at the same time, a strange mixture of the new
and the old value systems. (2) He will break off entirely from his family. That is
why we have heard so much about “family revolutions” and “father and son conflicts” recently. It is the same with society. On leaving school, the student enters
society. If the members of society are ignorant (and as a result the organization
and habits of the society are poor), there will be conflict between society and
what the student learns in school. This also leads to one of two consequences:
either fusion or rupture. All the weaklings and sly crooks of the past are the
products of the former. All the hermits of the past are the results of the latter.
(Most hermits withdraw from society because their ideals are incompatible with
those of society.) Therefore, if we only talk about the reform of education in the
schools, but not about reform of the family and of society at the same time, that
186 Literally, “love-ism” (Hari aizhuyi).

is like picking up something from the middle but leaving the upper and lower
ends untouched. You gain one but lose two.
Is it going to get us anywhere if, given the present situation, we aim at reforming
families and society by the power of the schools, if those who run the schools try at the
same time to be the reformers of the family and the society? I can tell you right now
that it is impossible. Because, given the present situation, the relationships among the
family, the school, and society are not organic but inorganic; they are not relationships
of the spirit, but purely formal ties. Although formally they are completely united, on
the spiritual level there are often clashes. The aim of today’s schools is to raise “persons
of independent and sound character.” But the aim of the family as regards its children
is “to raise persons able to provide for the family.” (For example, the father and older
brother merely expect the son or younger brother to make money to provide for them,
but never ask where the money comes from.) Similarly, society’s aim for the individual
is not that society should be a place where the individual can develop, but that the
individual is a thing to be sacrificed for society. (For instance, the factories enslave
the laborers, and most lower-ranking staff of organizations of all kinds lead miserable
rather than happy lives.) Isn’t this clear proof of spiritual conflict? Given present ways,
and no change in present customs, families, schools, and society will grow farther and
farther apart. Where, then, is the hope of reform?
Now let us explain what we mean. Those of us who truly want to help families and
society to progress cannot merely talk about “reforming what is old,” but must resolve
to “create the new” and then to improve upon it. For what is called reforming the
family or reforming society is nothing but reforming “life,” but the old family life and
the old life of society cannot in the end be reformed. Old forms of life were suited only
to the former era. The times have already changed, so we need a new and different
life, adapted to these new times. Have there ever been instances since ancient times of
old things truly reformed? Yes, but they have all involved the creation of something
new. We have known for some time that old plays187 cannot be reformed to produce
new ones, but we do not seem to know that the various kinds of old life can none of
them be reformed to produce new life. On the basis of the evidence presented here
about the facts of the family and society, we all know that it is impossible to discuss
with present-day patriarchs the personal independence of their offspring, or to seek
for the workers an equitable distribution of the fruits of their labor from the current
factory owners. Therefore, the toilers will not be able to win a completely equitable
distribution of the product of their labor until the social system is reformed, and sons
will not be able to attain full personal autonomy until the family system is reformed.
187 “Popularization” is the term commonly used for the Chinese expression puji in Mao’s Selected
Works and elsewhere, and we have so rendered it here. Actually, the literal sense of puji is “universalization,” and popularization should therefore be understood as making learning (or literature) widely
available, rather than as “vulgarization.”

The main feature of a social system is its economic system. The main feature of a
family system is the marriage system.
How can a systemic transformation on such a grand scale be achieved by partial
measures such as “reforming the old”?
To create new schools and to practise new education must be closely connected with
creating new families and a new society. The main theme of the new education is to
create a new life. The “productive work,” “practical work,” and “village work” referred
to in the previous section are salient features of the new life.
Each and every student in the new schools will be a member of the new family he
creates. As the number of students in the new schools gradually increases, the number
of new families created will also gradually increase.
Several new families joining together can create a new society. There are so many
kinds of new societies that I cannot name them all. To mention some notable examples,
there are: public childcare centers, public nursing homes, public schools, public libraries,
public banks, public farms, public factories, public consumers’ associations, public
theatres, public hospitals, public parks, museums, and autonomous associations.
The combination of such new schools and new societies will give rise to a “new
village.” I consider the area around Mount Yuelu to be the most suitable location near
Changsha for establishing such a new village.
France is the exemplar of a political revolution, and Russia is the exemplar of a
social revolution. They are the so-called “model countries.” Berlin is famous for the
cleanliness of its streets, and Paris for being a magnificent commercial city. They are
the so-called “model cities.” Our own Nantong xian is much admired for its autonomous
education, and can be called a “model locality.”188 The reason lies in its outstanding
results in training excellent students, which have attracted everyone’s attention. In
order truly to transform morality, a certain force needs to be cultivated, a force that
should be tightly controlled, with no room for laxity. It needs a clear-cut stand and
yet needs to be pragmatic in implementation. If today we scarcely venture to talk of a
“model country,” “model city,” or “model locality,” but rather of a “model village,” it is
because modest plans are easier to implement.
In order to spread their socialism, many Russian youth have gone to the villages
to live among the peasants. Among Japanese youth, there has recently flourished
a so-called “New Village Movement.” The United States of America and one of its
colonies, the Philippines, also have popular “work-study programs.” Our students studying abroad have also followed suit: They have formed the “Work-Study Club” in Amer188 The Chinese is ju, which can refer to any theatrical form; presumably he means that, for example,
Beijing opera (Jingju) cannot easily be transformed into Western-style spoken drama (huaju).

ica,189 and the “Work-Study Association” in France.190 Therefore, if we are truly sincere
about creating a new life, we should not be afraid that we will not have supporters.
(V) The various gardening and husbandry programs given in section II have all
followed conventional farming practices, and are not a new way of life. But if we carry
them out with a new spirit, then it will be a new way of life. In the old days, scholars
never participated in gardening. Now, if we study and work simultaneously, regarding
work as sacred, then this is a new way of life. Most of the class of intellectuals known
as scholar-officials191 pursue their careers in business and official circles and do not
breathe the fresh air of the villages, or enjoy the beautiful scenery. If we breathe this
fresh air and enjoy this beautiful scenery, it will be a new way of life.
There are two kinds of gardening: (1) To plant flowers and trees, i.e., flower gardens.
(2) To plant vegetables, i.e., vegetable gardens. Combined, they are equivalent to what
are now called school gardens. If further expanded, they will be botanical gardens.
Cotton and rice will be the major crops in farming, and barley, wheat, sorghum, and
corn can also be planted between times. If some rough work is too hard for the students,
hired hands should be employed to assist them.
Forests should be planted in the hills. The trees a student plants on one occasion
will remain even after he leaves the school, thus increasing his remembrance of and
love for his alma mater.
Cattle, sheep, and pigs can all be raised within the available limits.
To raise silkworms, one needs to plant mulberry trees. When mulberry trees are
grown, their leaves can be fed to the silkworms. This work can be done by both male
and female students.
Raising poultry and fish is also a line of production, one that students will enjoy
doing.
1. Not every individual is required to do every type of work. There should be a
division of labor. Each person may do only one kind of work, or several kinds.
The students will regard the school as their family, and the crops, gardens, and
forests as their private possessions. All of the students’ private possessions and private
189 The reformer Zhang Jian was engaged at this time in an effort to turn his native xian of Nantong
in Jiangsu Province, where in 1902 he had established China’s first normal school, into a national model.
For more details, see the note to the text “What Kind of Talk is This?” of July 14, 1919.
190 The Work-Study Club was organized by Chinese students studying in America. It was formed
in 1914 and was initially called the Diligent Study Society (Qinxuehui); its name was changed to the
Work-Study Club in 1916. It advocated the idea of part-work part-study as a way of helping students
lessen expenses, and thereby facilitating studying abroad.
191 This organization, called Qingong jianxue hui (literally, Diligent Work and Thrifty Study Association), was organized in France in 1915 by Cai Yuanpei, Wu Yuzhang, Li Shizeng, and others, with the
aim of “promoting knowledge among the toilers,” including the coolies who had been brought to France
during the First World War to dig trenches, etc. The Association called on Chinese students to come
to France on the work-study program, and in March 1916 the Sino-French Educational Association was
set up, with Cai Yuanpei as president, to administer the program.