A Couplet Playfully Presented to Zhou Xiaozhou[1]
(August 1936)

Rivers and streams he shifts beneath his crotch[2];
Ants he makes into wave-subjects[3].

[1] In August 1936, Zhou Xiaozhou set out from Yan’an for Xinjiang to propagate anti-Japanese resistance. The Xinjiang warlord Sheng Shicai was ruthless and hard to deal with. At their parting, Mao Zedong saw a child urinating, and the scene moved him to compose this couplet as a gift, encouraging him to scorn difficulties and press forward courageously. Zhou Xiaozhou (1912–1966), a native of Xiangtan, Hunan, originally named Huaiqiu, with aliases Yuancheng and Xiwei, was given his current name by Mao Zedong in 1937. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1935 and once served as Mao Zedong’s secretary. After the founding of the People’s Republic, he served as First Secretary of the Hunan Provincial Committee of the Chinese Communist Party. In 1966, during the “Cultural Revolution,” he committed suicide as a result of persecution.

[2] Crotch: the part of the body between the sides of the waist and the thighs.

[3] Wave-subjects: refers to aquatic creatures. The ancients imagined that among the aquatic creatures of rivers, lakes, and seas there also existed a division between sovereign and subject; the ruled servants and slaves were called wave-subjects.