Regarding the Two Poems "To Shaoshan" and "Ascending Lushan"
A Letter to Zang Kejia and Xu Chi [1]
(September 1, 1959)

Comrades Zang Kejia and Xu Chi:
Letter received. Recently I wrote two seven-character regulated verses [2], transcribed here for your review and correction. If deemed suitable, they may be submitted to Poetry Journal.

Lately, the Right-leaning opportunists have launched frenzied attacks, claiming that the people’s cause is bad in every way. Anti-China and anti-communist elements worldwide, along with bourgeois and petty-bourgeois opportunists who infiltrated our proletarian ranks and the Party in the past, are colluding from within and without to mount a joint, rabid assault. What audacity—they practically want to topple the entire Kunlun mountain range! Comrades, hold your horses. That handful of opportunists within the country, flaunting the signboard of "communism," are merely picking up a few chicken feathers and garlic skins to wave as banners while attacking the Party’s general line, the Great Leap Forward, and the people’s communes. Truly, it is a case of "a mayfly trying to shake a mighty tree, laughable in its self-delusion." Since last year, the reactionaries worldwide have been cursing us with venomous fury. In my view, this is excellent. It would be incomprehensible if the great cause of 650 million great people were not fiercely and relentlessly reviled by imperialism and its lackeys in every country. The more viciously they curse, the happier I become. Let them curse for half a century! Then we shall see who triumphs and who falls. These two poems of mine are also a reply to those bastards.

Mao Zedong
September 1

[1] Zang Kejia was then editor-in-chief of Poetry Journal. Xu Chi was then deputy editor-in-chief.
[2] The two seven-character regulated verses refer to "To Shaoshan" and "Ascending Lushan," neither of which was published in Poetry Journal at the time. They were later included in Chairman Mao’s Poems, published by the People’s Literature Publishing House in December 1963.