Letter to Shi Cuntong
(March 7, 1923)

Brother Guangliang:¹

I have received your letter of the 24th. As for holding the national examinations² in Hunan, the local Educational Conference³ has passed a resolution to do
so. My only suggestion is that the date would best be postponed until early June
(or the end of May)—that is, after the School Conference.⁴ This is an important
matter. It is hoped that you will give it your consideration.

Your younger brother, Ziren⁵
March 7

P.S. We urgently need four hundred copies of [your] history of labor.⁶ Please
have them sent promptly.

This letter has been translated from the manuscript in Mao's calligraphy reproduced on the
cover of the present volume. Our source is a copy on display at the Mao Museum in
Shaoshan, photographed by the editor in 1986. The letter does not appear to have been
published heretofore.
1. Shi Guangliang is yet another name for Shi Cuntong, the secretary of the Central
Committee of the Socialist Youth League of China. (On Shi, see above, the note to Mao's
letter to him dated June 20, 1922.)
2. "National examinations" is a code word for the forthcoming Second Congress of the
Communist Youth League.
3. "Educational Conference" is code for the Changsha Executive Committee of the
Socialist Youth League.
4. "School Congress" is code for the Third Congress of the Chinese Communist Party,
which was held June 12–20, 1923, in Guangzhou. (See below, the "Resolution on the
Peasant Question" adopted at this congress, and the note thereto.) Mao originally wrote
another character before xiao (school); it appears from the manuscript copy that he crossed
this out, rather than modifying it. In any case, the meaning is clear. It had been decided
that the Second Congress of the Socialist Youth League should be held in Hunan, but in
the late spring the political situation there became very tense as a result of the boycott of
Japanese goods launched to protest against the continuing Japanese occupation of Dairen.
On June 1, Japanese marines disembarked from a gunboat on the Xiang River and killed
and wounded a number of citizens of Changsha. In the aftermath of these events, the Second
Congress of the Socialist Youth League was moved to Nanjing, where it met in August 1923.
5. Ziren was one of Mao's pen names. It means literally "son of Ren," and he had
adopted it to express his admiration for Liang Qichao, whose hao was Rengong.
6. The reference is to Shi Cuntong, Laodong yundong shi (History of the Labor Movement), published in April 1922 by the Labor Secretariat.