Letter to Zhou Shizhao
(October 15, 1949)

Source: Shuxin, pp. 345-346.

Zhou Shizhao (1897-1976) was a schoolmate of Mao’s in the late 1910s when they
studied together at the First Normal School of Hunan Province of which Zhou at the
time of this letter was the principal. He was also a member of the Xinmin xuehui (New
People’s Study Society), which was formed by many of Mao's old friends, such as Cai
Heshen, during the May Fourth period. (Mao was also a member.) For more biographical information on Zhou, see Zhonggong renming lu (/ 967 edition), p. 213.
(For some unknown reason he was dropped from the 1978 expanded edition usually
cited in this translation.)

SEPTEMBER - DECEMBER 1949 / 19

My dear senior classmate Dunyuan:'

I have received your several telegrams as well as your long letter of Sep-ber 28. Your sincere and diligent words made it possible for me to believe
I was actually seeing you in person. When I was in Yanan’ I received a letter
from you. The letter you sent to Chongqing, however, I did not receive.
Although you did not join the revolutionary struggle of the past, my friend,
teaching is itself an occupation that is beneficial to the people. The telegram
from the various friends of the Chengnan xueshe [South City Study Society]
has been received also. Please convey this information to them and thank
them for their good wishes. I deeply applaud the fact that you are now the
principal of First Normal; you are best for the job. I can also see that there is
yet much life in those bones!" If it is possible, I would like you to copy and
send me some of your works and your old poems. The more the better.

With the exception of Taiwan and Tibet, in approximately a few more
months we shall be able to complete the military occupation of the country as
a whole. Even then, with the great calamity just over and the people’s lives
drained and exhausted, it will take several years’ time before the people’s
economy can be restored to health. The tasks of completing the reforming of
the land [-ownership] system and raising the level of the people’s political
consciousness need the cooperation of the cultural and educational work
[circles].

I have received and read Mr. Chen Zetong’s® letter of opinion, and I will
forward it to the industrial [work] organs here for studying. Please convey
thanks to him on my behalf. As for the question of his work, please ask him to
go directly to the authorities in Hunan and ask for a solution, and do not await
my reply.

Sincerely in reply, and respectfully sending my best wishes for your work
in teaching,

tem

Mao Zedong
October 15, 1949

Notes

I. Dunyuan is one of Zhou’s many zi (i.e., an “honorific” which is not the name with which a
hin is born but a name acquired or adopted later on in life, usually within a scholastic context).
term et to address one’s friends by this honorific asa sign of intimacy. Mao also used the
a ddressi,, ang xiong in which xuezhang means “elder in learning” and is used customarily in
tantamous one Ss classmates or schoolmates, and xiong means “brother.” This latter salutation is

2 Thi. to “my dear friend” in letters.

mid-1939, Tefers to the long period that Mao spent in Yanan, northern Shaanxi, from the
Onward s, to the mid-1940s. Yanan was the chief base of CPC activities from the mid-1930s

3 This ee text Oct. 26, 1949, note 1.

iang K Probably refers to the time when Mao went to Chongqing, the wartime headquarters of

4 Masunek and the KMT government, for negotiations. See text Jan. 27, 1957(1), note 5.

8 “the st ee the sentences: jun gu wei diao, shang you sheng qi, which translates literally
gin of thie ton s bones have not yet withered and there is yet the spirit of life.” The classical ori-
Saying could not be traced.



5. According to the source, this refers to a plan that Chen, an engineer in Changsha, Hunan,
submitted to Mao in 1949 in which he proposed that a region some forty /i along the eastern banks q

of the Xiangjiang River in Hunan, a region under the jurisdiction of Xiangtan xian, Mao’s native

district, should be transformed into a model “‘Xiangtan industrial zone.”