Chapter 2 upheaval

The serenity in Shaoshan is only temporary, because drastic changes are taking place outside the mountain.In Beijing, China's last dynasty is dying.China is extremely backward.Despite all the glory, when Mao Shunsheng began to venture into the world in 1880, the huge empire did not even have a one-meter-long railway. China is being carved up by European powers. A few months after Mao Zedong was born in December 1893, Japan also launched an attack on China. Japan's victory over China in 1894 caused anxiety and then panic among the Chinese elite. At the same time, some foreign social thoughts also rushed to China with unprecedented momentum by force of force, impacting the hearts of the Chinese people.Just before Mao Tse-tung's birth, China's first ambassador abroad published a book of his experiences in Britain that surprised Confucian elites with its portrayal of the Western world.When the 3-year-old Chairman Mao was a toddler, the first batch of Chinese students studying in Japan had already set sail for the East.

The wave of opposition to Qing rule surged like a flood.When Mao Shunsheng was young, the Taiping peasant uprising nearly overthrew the Qing Dynasty, but the Qing government, with the help of Europeans, quelled the uprising in 1864.In the first ten years of Mao Zedong's life, China saw the first large-scale political reform movement aimed at repairing the edifice of the dynasty.The movement became a squib, because mere improvements were no longer enough. When Mao Zedong was less than a year old, Sun Yat-sen (1867-1925) marked his transition from reform to revolution by writing a petition outlining a package of battle plans to wipe out the old China.The old elite plotted to resist change: Some people privately said that children were used as fuel for train engines, and some people questioned whether the fuel theory was a blasphemy against Vulcan?Chairman Mao was born in such an era when old China was in decline.

Before his conflict with his father, Zedong was raised amicably in the Chinese way.He had never been slapped, wore crotch pants, and was able to defecate without the help of an adult.He catches crickets and plays with knuckles.He giggled, happily took the red eggs given by the adults, and stood aside to watch the adults burn incense to celebrate the birthday of Empress Dowager Cixi (1835-1908). He sometimes glanced at the bronze Buddha statue on the black wooden table in the main room, and stared at the couplets on both sides of the door with puzzled content about family harmony, filial piety and piety.He began to ponder the meaning of Chinese hieroglyphs. The pronunciation of the characters is the flat-tongue accent of Hunanese, and "h" is often pronounced as "f". Therefore, "Hunan" also becomes "Funan".

Like all farmers, Mao Shunsheng was very happy to have a son in his first child.A son is a treasure, and a daughter is a tile.Daughters were not thought to inherit the family business and would not be as good at farming as sons were.Mao Shunsheng received only two years of school education, and at the age of 16 he went to the army to avoid the famine. Although most of the children in Shaoshan could not afford to go to school, it was logical that Mao Shunsheng could be sent to school.Because in Mao Shunsheng's view, with a certain degree of culture, his son can manage the family's accounts and write contracts.At the same time, Confucian education can shape a pampered child into a filial young man.

There is a private school called "Nan'an" in the village. This school is very traditional, and it is impossible for any foreign things to appear here.Like the Bible that everyone must read in Protestant Sunday schools, the "Five Classics" have the highest status in schools and are regarded as classics.Chairman Mao started studying at the age of 8.Many years later, Mao Zedong said coldly: "I hated Confucianism when I was 8 years old." [2] Mao Zedong and his classmates often secretly read banned books in class, and when the teacher came over, they immediately covered them with scriptures.Most of these books describe war or rebellion, such as,,,, and so on.In Shaoshan, these books are the most enriching Mao Zedong's spiritual world.

Although these books did not pose a great threat to the rule of the Qing government, the Manchu rulers still listed them as banned books from time to time.Confucian believers also disapprove of reading these legendary novels, because these books will lead educated people to another literary world-this is exactly the case of Mao Zedong. By the time he left his private school at the age of 13, Mao Zedong had already become very disgusted with the rules and regulations in the scriptures.And he objected to this ancient moral philosophy of order and manners above all because it required nothing but blind obedience.Children were made to parrot obscure clichés aloud; they shook their heads like monks chanting.

Just as Latin classes are now seen by Western students, the study of Confucian classics must be a chore for Chinese children.The function of Confucianism is counterproductive.Its emphasis on loyalty and filial piety intensified Tse-tung's hatred for the two adults who disciplined him, his private tutor and father. Both of them hit Tse-tung, which annoyed him greatly.Although he has not yet formed any thoughts, he already has a strong sense of fairness.He was wayward before he was a rebel, a passionate teenager before he was a revolutionary. His sense of fairness is first shown in his dealings with people at school.He sympathized with a classmate in the class who couldn't afford lunch because of his poor family, and often shared his meal with him.His mother was perplexed when he saw that he ate so much for dinner. After Tse Tung told his mother that half of the lunch she carefully prepared every day was given to classmates by him, the kind mother asked her son to bring two servings every morning. Go to school for lunch. [3]

The sense of fairness made Mao Zedong never show weakness. When he was 10, he got into a fight with a senior classmate, which worried his mother, who had been a lifelong benevolent. After two years in the Nan'an Private School, Chairman Mao learned the etiquette of reciting in class, that is, to stand up and stand in front of the teacher's desk, face to the side so as not to look at the teacher directly, and then start reciting.However, one morning, when the teacher called his name, he remained motionless in his seat.He began to rebel against these red tape. "Since you can hear clearly when I am reciting while sitting, why do I have to stand up and recite it?" [4] Mao Zedong boldly said to the husband who was about to faint from anger.

The gentleman, pale with anger, ordered Chairman Mao to obey this old rule.The 10-year-old carried his own stool up to the husband, sat on the stool, and looked at him with calm, challenging eyes.The furious gentleman pulled Zedong hard to make him stand up.Chairman Mao broke free and ran out of the private school.Like the rebel in the movie, he hid in the mountains. He headed in the direction of his imaginary "city" (whatever that meant to him at the time).But after walking for a long time, I just circled around Shaoshan and never walked more than 10 miles.People in the family looked for him everywhere, but he dared not go back, because his husband would definitely beat him, and his father would not let him go.

Three days later, a member of the Mao family found him.He went home somewhat reluctantly. Years later, the former schoolboy recalled the trauma more politically than painfully.He said to Edgar Snow: "When I got home, I was surprised to find that things had changed. My father was a little more understanding than before, and my husband was a little softer. As a result of my protests, I was very impressed. It was a victorious 'strike'." [5] Although the clever Mao Zedong hated the content of the Confucian classics, he still learned it very well.Before long, when he was arguing with his father, he was able to deal with him like a schoolboy quoting from the classics.In 20th-century China, exposing children to the Four Books was no longer a guarantee of obedience.

Chairman Mao dropped out of school at the age of 13 because Mao Shunsheng was not content with his son just helping out in the fields before and after school.His father once suffered losses in business because of bad calculations; Mao Zedong had learned arithmetic, which can help him in this regard.From the age of 5, Chairman Mao began to do some farm work within his ability, such as pulling weeds, collecting firewood, herding cattle, and picking up beans.Now, by day he is an adult labor force, and by night he is his father's accountant.Mao Shunsheng's investment in his son's "treasure" began to pay off. Because they are often together, there is more friction between father and son.Mao Zedong and his father battled wits, often embarrassing his father, a irascible miser, with gentle but firm resistance.Tse-tung hated having to go around chasing accounts for his increasingly wealthy father.Once he helped his father sell pigs, and on the way back, he gave all his earnings to a beggar. [6] In winter, my father often sat by the fire, or complained about all kinds of wrong actions of Mao Zedong, or sulked with a cigarette pipe in his mouth.He once lost a lawsuit because the opponent impressed the magistrate by citing scriptures properly in court.Chairman Mao can now quote scriptures, is this child filial?But the Confucian classics also require that a father must be loving. One morning, Mao Shunsheng saw Mao Zedong reading a novel by a tombstone on the edge of the field, and he was furious and said, "Are you not going to work?" Mao Shunsheng glanced at the two empty dung baskets in front of Mao Shunsheng while talking. "No! Dad, I just rest for a while." Mao Shunsheng blamed Mao Zedong for not sending a basket of dung from the pigsty to the field all morning.In fact, Chairman Mao has already delivered five or six baskets.That was the end of the matter.But in the evening, Mao Shunsheng discovered that his son was looking at something deviant by the tombstone again. [7] He blamed Chairman Mao for being so badly taught by "bad books" that he ignored his father's warning. "No! Dad, I listened to you. I did everything you asked me to do." When he found out that Mao Shunsheng had delivered at least 15 loads of manure in one afternoon, the unhappy Mao Shunsheng opened his mouth wide in surprise. Mao Zedong said: "I have to do my work as usual, and I have to read books as usual." But Mao Zedong also had faults (no doubt more in his youth than has been disclosed).Once he was fascinated by reading, and the cow ate the vegetables from the neighbor's house. [8] Chairman Mao's mother, Wen Qimei, is physically strong and kind-hearted, in stark contrast to her thin and shrewd husband.She is generous and easy-going, her husband is rough and quick-tempered.In terms of physique and appearance, Chairman Mao is more like his mother.They all have big eyes, cheerful smiles, and they are very generous and even romantic in their gestures. Wen Qimei pampered her eldest son, and Tse Tung loved his mother all his life.During the crucial early years of a child's development, Zedong was the only child in the family, enjoying the love and care of his mother (as did his grandfather, who was 14 years old when he was 14 years old). passed away). [9] Wen Qimei's natal family is an ordinary family in a county south of Shaoshan.Like most people in Shaoshan, she is also illiterate.At the same time, like many others, she is also a Buddhist.Before going to the private school and when he was studying in the private school, Mao Zedong often went to the temple in the nearby Phoenix Mountain with his mother to pray to gods and worship Buddha. Mao Shunsheng never believed in Buddhism, which made Chairman Mao feel troubled. When he was 9 years old, Mao Zedong discussed with his mother his father's non-belief in Buddhism and how to help him.Mao Zedong recalled a few years later: "At that time and later, we tried many ways to make him believe in Buddhism, but without success. He just cursed us." To be sure, my father valued getting rich above all else.But later, Mao Zedong discovered that his father's attitude towards the gods began to change for his own safety—not from the heart.One day, Mao Shunsheng went out to ask for an account, and met a tiger on the way back.The tiger ran away in fright, and Mao Shunsheng narrowly escaped death.Later, Mao Zedong recalled: "From then on, he believed in Buddhism more, and he still burned incense from time to time." [10] In 1905, the birth of his third son caused Mao Shunsheng's temper to change a little.The father treats the 13-year-old Ze Tan better than the eldest son.But the struggle between Zedong and his father has not abated, which has made the family relationship increasingly tense. Zedong and his mother teamed up to deal with his father.They gave the rice to a villager who couldn't open the pot behind his father's back.He also worked with the long-term worker at home to prevent his father's stingy behavior from succeeding.In the end, they (with the help of Mao Shunsheng's relatives) worked together to convince Mao's father to let him continue his studies. The people in Zedong's family were divided into two factions: one was his father (the "ruling force"), and the other was that he was united with his mother, second brother Zemin, and Chang Gong (the "opposition"). [11] However, the "opposition" was divided on tactics.Mao Zedong's stubbornness and cunning made the gentle mother feel that there was something wrong with his strategy.He had a habit of getting into direct confrontations with his father, which his mother disapproved of.She objected: "This is not what the Chinese do." [12] Due to the influence of the books he read; at the same time, what happened outside also impacted Shaoshan, which had always been peaceful, and Mao Zedong's belief in Buddhism gradually weakened, which made His mother was disturbed.