This letter will be brought to Hankou to mail by someone I trust. Because the
censorship is extremely severe, please address me as Mao Shishan¹¹ instead of
Mao Zedong when you write.

Poem to the Tune of "Congratulate the Groom"¹
(December 1923)²

A wave of the hand, and the moment of parting has come.³
Harder to bear is facing each other dolefully,
Bitter feelings voiced once more.
Wrath looks out of your eyes and brows,
On the verge of tears, you hold them back.
We know our misunderstanding sprang from that last letter.
Let it roll away like clouds and mist,
For who in this world is as close as you and I?
Can Heaven fathom our human maladies?
I wonder.

This poem was first published in Renmin ribao, September 9, 1978. We have translated it
from Shici duilian, pp. 10–13.
1. The title of this poem is what is called a "tune title" (cipai), conventionally attached
to this type of classical poetry, and has nothing to do with the theme or expressions in the
particular poem. Mao wrote it for his first wife, Yang Kaihui, as he left Changsha for
Shanghai at the end of 1923, en route to the First National Congress of the Guomindang in
Guangzhou. Nothing is known about the nature of the quarrel evoked in the poem. Yang
Kaihui (1901-1930), zi Mingjun, a native of Hunan, was the daughter of Mao's ethics
teacher at First Normal School, Yang Changji. (On Yang see, in Volume I, pp. 487-89, the
obituary notice signed by Mao, and the many other references to him scattered throughout
the volume.) Mao had married her in late 1920, after her father's death. Their eldest son,
Mao Anying, had been born in October 1922, and the second son, Mao Anqing, in
November 1923. Yang Kaihui joined Mao in Shanghai in June 1924, but from this time
on, much of their time was spent apart. Yang Kaihui had joined the Chinese Communist
Party in 1921, and in Hunan she engaged in revolutionary activities even after the break of
1927 between the Guomindang and the Communists, when she was living secretly in
Changsha. In October 1930, following the unsuccessful onslaught of the Red Army
against the city in the summer, she was captured by the authorities, and subsequently
executed when she refused to renounce her marriage with Mao. Mao dedicated a moving
poem to her memory in 1957, and in 1976-1978 her image served as a powerful symbol
for mobilizing opinion against Jiang Qing.
2. In the Chinese text the poem is dated simply 1923, but all sources agree that it was
written at the end of December. We therefore give that date.
3. Like most of Mao's poems, this one contains many classical allusions. The first line
is taken from "Bidding Farewell to a Friend" (Song youren) by the celebrated Tang
dynasty poet Li Bai, with the alteration of only one character.

11. Shishan ("Stone Mountain") is the pseudonym under which Mao had written the
long article of July 1, 1923, "Hunan under the Provincial Constitution."


This morning frost lies heavy on the road to East Gate, 4
The waning moon lights up the pond 5 and half the sky—
How cold, how desolate!
One wail of the steam whistle has shattered my heart,
Now I shall roam alone to the uttermost ends of the earth.
Let us strive to sever those threads of grief and anger,
Let it be as though the sheer cliffs of Mount Kunlun collapsed,
And as though a typhoon swept through the whole universe.
Let us be once again two birds flying side by side,
Soaring high as the clouds.

4. East Gate is commonly used in classical Chinese poetry to denote a place to see
someone off on a journey. In addition, the train station in Changsha was located outside the
East Gate of the city.
5. The term Mao uses here for "pond," hengtang, originally referred to a causeway
built in the state of Wu during the Three Kingdoms period. It is commonly used in
classical poetry to mean the place where a woman lives, or a place where lovers part. It so
happens as well that Mao and Yang Kaihui lived at the time on a pond at the eastern edge
of Changsha.