Conversation with Mao Anying[1]

(February 1946)

You should acquire foreign knowledge, and you must also understand the knowledge of China’s revolution.

You have graduated from a university in the Soviet Union, but what you have studied is only book knowledge, only one half of knowledge—this is incomplete. You still need to attend another university, one that did not exist in China’s past and does not exist abroad either. This is the “University of Labour.” In this university you can learn much knowledge that cannot be found in books.

[1] After Mao Anying graduated from Moscow University in the Soviet Union and returned to China in February 1946, he went to Wangjiaping to report to Mao Zedong on his studies and life in the Soviet Union. This is a passage of what Mao Zedong said to Mao Anying. A few days later, Mao Anying, carrying millet, vegetable seeds, and a cotton quilt on his back, went to Wujiayuan. Mao Zedong also gave him a set of his own grey cloth clothes with patches, repeatedly instructing him to eat, live, and labour together with the peasants, and to learn modestly from the peasants.