Elegiac Couplet for Martyr Luo Zonghan[1]

(October 1926)

A fine heir, with versatile talents in governance and education, has now passed into eternity;

Alas, our Party’s revolutionary vanguard has lost yet another.

[1] Luo Zonghan (1896–1926), courtesy name Chiqian, was a native of Fukou Town, Anhua County, Hunan Province (now part of Lianyuan City). In 1914, he was admitted to the Hunan Provincial First Normal School, where he was a classmate of Mao Zedong for four years. In 1926, when the Northern Expeditionary Army entered Hunan and the Hunan provincial government was reorganized, he briefly served as secretary of the Hunan Provincial Department of Construction. At the time, he was a left-wing member of the Kuomintang, serving as an executive committee member of the Kuomintang Hunan Provincial Party Headquarters. He upheld the cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party and supported the worker and peasant movements. In October of the same year, exhausted from overwork, he entered Tian Qiuming’s clinic for treatment, where agents of the Northern Warlords secretly poisoned his medicine. He died suddenly from oral and nasal hemorrhaging at the age of only 30.

[2] This is the elegiac couplet written by Mao Zedong for Luo Zonghan, a left-wing Kuomintang member and Mao’s classmate and close friend at the Hunan Provincial First Normal School. In October 1926, Luo Zonghan was secretly poisoned to death by the Northern Warlords. In the winter of the same year, a grand memorial service was held in the main auditorium of the Hunan Provincial First Normal School, attended by over 800 people. More than 500 elegiac couplets were presented by people from all walks of life. Mao Zedong sent this couplet from Guangzhou to Luo Zonghan’s father.

[3] Zhe (哲) refers to a person of exceptional talent and insight. Zhe si (哲嗣) is a respectful term for another person’s son, equivalent to “fine heir.” Here it refers to Luo Zonghan. Chang cai (长才) means versatile talent or a person of broad abilities. In A New Account of the Tales of the World, “Appreciation and Praise,” it is recorded: “In the Grand Tutor’s mansion there were three talents: Liu Qingsun, a chang cai; Pan Yangzhong, a da cai; and Pei Jingsheng, a qing cai.” This refers to Liu Yu, Pan Tao, and Pei Miao.