In Reply to Li Shuyi: A Poem
(May 11, 1957)

Source: Kau & Leung, The Writings of Mao Zedong 1949-1976, Vol. II
Pages 538-540
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538 {/ MAO ZEDONG

“Yuan you” (Far-off wanderings) by the Chu poet Qu Yuan in the Warring States period
and has been developed through the centuries by such poets as Cao Zhi (of the Wei Kingdom
during the period of the Three Kingdoms). Guo Po (of the Jin dynasty), and Qin Guan (Qin
Shaoyou, of the Song dynasty). The most famous of these was Qin’s “Jiaoqiao xian,” which
depicts the legend of the bridge of magpies created on the seventh night of the seventh month
(the legendary qi xi) for the reunion of the two stars in heaven, the Weaving Girl and the
Cowherd Boy. This poem set the pattern for many poems on the same topic for centuries to
come. Although he employed a different set of legends for the imagery structure of his poem
here, Mao appears very much to have retained the spirit of this genre.

5. Banchang village, in Dongxiang xian, near Changsha, Hunan Province, is Yang
Kaihui’s birthplace. According to Mao shici jiangjie, p. 212, Li Shuyi did go to visit Yang's
grave at Banchang as Mao’s representative on July 10, 1958, and wrote a memorial essay
for Yang.

6. Liu Wuting is Liu Zhixun’s father and Li Shuyi’s father-in-law. See text April [8,
1950, vol. I. note 2.

In Reply to Li Shuyi: A Poem
(May 11, 1957)

Source: RMRB (Jan. 7, 1958), 8. Other Chinese Texts: Poems of Mao Tse-tung,
p. 88; Poems, p. 55; Shici, pp. 32-33; Mao shici, pp. 13-14; Jin Fang (1965), p. 50;
Mao shici jiangjie, p. 69; RMRB (Dec. 8, 1976), 2. Available English Translations:
Poems of Mao Tse-tung, p. 89; Poems, p. 54; J. Chen (1967), p. 347; Mao Poems,
p. 33; H. Engle and P. Engle (1972), p. 100.

See text May 11, 1957 (1), source note.

The poem is set in the ci pattern of *Dielianhua’ (Butterflies Courting Flowers),
which originated from a Tang-dynasty ci pattern titled “Jidodauzhr” (Magpies Stepping on a Tree Branch). (For a general discussion of ci patterns, see text Jan. 12,
1957, note 1.)

The poem itself does not seem to have an official title, save the title under which
it is often published, “Da Li Shuyi’ (Reply to Li Shuyi). In fact, according to Mao
shici jiangjie, p. 210, when this poem was first published for a limited readership, in
the Bulletin of Hunan Normal College, it was published with the title “Zeng Li Shuyi”
(For Li Shuyi). It was not until later in the year, after the poem had been published
in a number of newspapers with that title (e.g., in our earlier RMRB source, for
instance, and in Wenhui bao) that Mao made the decision to change the title to “Da
Li Shuyi’ (In Reply to Li Shuyi)—which Li believes is a more appropriate title,
because in the poem Mao actually did write poetically in response to questions and
subjects brought up in Li's poem which Mao had received. In translation, e.g., in the
J. Chen (1967) source, it is sometimes given the title “The Immortals.” This is because
in Mao's letter to Li attending the poem, he mentions it as a “poem about the
roaming immortals” (you xian). (See text May 11, 1957(1), note 4.) This is unquestionably one of the most romantic and elegant poems written by Mao. It has become


the subject of an outpouring of “exegetical” literature, the best known of which are
Zhou Zhenfu’s essay, “A Further Explanation of Chairman Mao’s Poem, Dielianhua”’
in Yuwen xuexi (Language and literary studies), no. 2 (1958); an essay by Zhang
Kejia, the editor of the magazine Shikan (Poetry), in which the poem written by Li
Shuyi appeared in January 1958, and Zhang’ s essay in Beijing ribao (Jan. 10, 1958).
An entire issue of Wenyi bao (no. 7, 1958) was also devoted to the discussion of this
poem.

My proud poplar is lost to me,! Gone, too, your willow.

With gossamer lightness they have wafted to the highest of heavens.
Of Wu Gang? they ask

What hospitality he offers;

Wu Gang brings forth a cask of cassia wine.°

Chang E in her loneliness®

Unravels her billowing sleeves’

As through the vast emptiness of space

She performs her dance for these virtuous souls.®

It is interrupted suddenly by word coming from Earth,

That the Tiger has been subdued.?
And the tears that they shed
Break into a torrent of rain.!®

Notes

1. The Chinese term for poplar is yang, which here clearly alludes to Yang Kaihui, Mao’s
wife during the early years of the Chinese Communist revolution. She was the mother of
Mao’s two sons, Mao Anqing and Mao Anying. She was executed by the Hunanese warlord
He Jian in 1930 when the Red Army pulled out of Changsha. She was a classmate of Li
Shuyi at the Fuxiang School for Girls in Changsha, and when Li was married to Liu Zhixun,
Yang served as their go-between. For more information on Li and Yang’s friendship, and
about the circumstances of Yang’s death at the hands of He Jian, see Mao shici jiangjie, pp.
211-212. Li also explains the proper use of the word “proud” (jiao) by Mao here. She says:
“Some people thought that it was a mistake for the other word jigo, which means ‘beautiful’
[in a cute way]. In my view, this word ‘jiao’ [for “proud’] is really too good! For a woman
to give her life (head) for the revolution; is there anything else for which we can be more
proud?”

2. The Chinese term for willow is liu, and, like yang here, alludes to a person—Liu
Zhixun, Li Shuyi’s husband who is the subject of her poem sent to Mao. See text May 11,
1957(1), source note, on Liu’s life.

3. The Chinese here reads cong xiao jiu, which literally translates as “ninth heaven.” It
refers to a concept in the daojiao religion that the heavens are divided into nine strata of
which the ninth, i.e., the highest, was occupied by the Jade Emperor alone. The saying itself
seems to derive from the poem of the Tang-dynasty poet Li Gao, “To the Fairy Master.”
(See also, however, text Sept. 16-18, 1953, vol. I, note 8.) In Chinese folk religion, it is
believed that after death, the soul of a person (disembodied by death) is allowed to roam free
of its previously corporeal confinements for a short period of time, until religious ceremonies
are performed to summon the soul back to the grave where it should be. This practice was
known as zhao hun, and is the subject of a famous poem by the Warring States period poet,
Qu Yuan. Again Li Shuyi, in her remarks in the interview report in Mao shici jiangjie,
provides a deeper meaning for this line. She reminds the reader that in her own poem
lamenting Liu Zhixun (a copy of which she sent to Mao, and which then elicited Mao’s


response)—see text May 11, 1957(1), source note—she had written: ““Where shall I find
thee, my knight errant? For six years now there has been no news of you!” Mao’s lines here,
saying that it is to the highest of heavens that these revolutionary martyrs have gone, is
therefore, Li says, to be read as an answer to Li’s own query. They thereby make this poem
by Mao a true “reply to Li Shuyi.”

4, Wu Gang is the subject of a legend which, according to Li Shizhen, the author of the
famed Chinese pharmacopia Bencao gangmu, emerged from the novellas of the Sui and
Tang dynasties. Wu is reputed to be a man of the Xihe district during the Han dynasty. In
studying as an apprentice under some mage to become immortal, he commits a grave error
and is punished by being banished to the moon, with the “labor” of cutting down the cassia
tree on the moon, which was 5,000 feet in height. Since the tree grows back instantly every
time it is chopped, even before the next blow of the hatchet can be administered, Wu Gang’s
banishment is eternal. The legend can also be found in the book of folk tales, Yaoyang zazhu.

5. Mao seems to be making a rather deft literary link here. As noted in note 4, Wu Gang is
banished to cut down the cassia tree. In another setting, the Wei poet Cao Zhi (192—232), in his
poetic essay Xianshen bian (The Immortals), wrote that “cassia wine” was the drink of the
immortals. Cao’s poem obviously antedates the legend of Wu Gang, but both may be derived
from an even older, but by now untraceable, legend that a cassia tree existed on the moon.

6. Chang E was originally known as Yun E. Hers is the legend of Hou Yi, the famous
archer of the Xia period (2205-1766 B.c.,) who obtained from the Western Mother-Goddess
(X1 Wang Mu) the elixir of everlasting life. Chang E, his wife, stole it and fled to the moon
with it. The irony of the lesson is that while she had gained eternal life through theft of the
elixir, Chang E had no one to spend this life with, for she found herself intensely lonely on
the moon. (The legend of Chang E and the legend of Wu Gang are, of course, entirely separate
from one another, although they are confused when Mao brings them together here.) The
legend of Chang E plays many roles in Chinese romantic literature—as the fairy goddess
who has a deep caring for the love affairs of people in the human world and yet is unable to
experience real love herself, or as the remote and unapproachable object of romantic desire.
The most famous of such poetry involving this legend is the poem “Chang E” by the
Tang-dynasty poet Li Shangyin. The legend itself can be found in the book Huainan zi.

7. Mao here invokes yet another legend, that of the Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang
dynasty (reigning 712-756), who, according to the story in Yuefu shiji (Collection of the
Yuefu Poems), was led on a tour of the moon by the mage Luo Gongyuan. There, at the
moon palace, he was treated to the vision of several hundred fairy goddesses dancing to the
tune of “The Coat of the Rainbow-Colored Feathers.” Emperor Xuanzong, associated with
the story of Yang the Imperial Concubine (see text Sept. 16-18, 1953, vol. I, note 7), was
himself an oft-discussed romantic figure in Chinese literature. The most famous literary
allusion to this legend was the poem “Chang hen ge” (Ballad of the Eternal Remorse) by the
Tang-dynasty poet Bai Juyi, written about Yang the Imperial Concubine.

8. “These virtuous souls” refers, of course, to Yang Kaihui and Liu Zhixun. However,
in an article written in the collection of exegetical essays on this poem (published in Wenyi
bao, no. 7, 1958), the critic Xie Sijie argues that there was an obvious literary intent on Mao’s
part here to blend the legends of Chang E and Wu Gang with the experience of Yang Kaihui
and Liu Zhixun, to the extent that Yang becomes identified as Chang E and Liu as Wu
Gang, both as Communists, pursuing tasks whose value cannot be requited. For example, Xie points out, the elixir that Chang E is supposed to have stolen is an allusion to
Communist truth, for whose possession Yang was persecuted to death, when all around
her were reactionaries.

9. The “tiger” refers to the enemies of the revolution (and to the KMT in particular). This
is not the first time Mao has used the term “tiger” to describe the forces of reaction in China,
albeit a “‘paper tiger.” (See text July 14, 1956, note 1). Here Mao uses the words renjian for
what we have translated as Earth. More strictly speaking, the term has the meaning of “the
realm of men,” or, in an even more deeply poetic sense here, “the world of those that yet
live.”