Chapter 12 do not want to go abroad

In March 1919, the Universal Chinese Student Association took a group photo to send off the students studying in France in Shanghai.The one from the right in the back row is Mao Zedong. In addition, there may be Miss Yang Kaihui's concerns.Mao Zedong met Miss Yang when he visited Professor Yang's mansion and at the journalism research meeting. Yang was a student of journalism and she had no intention of going to work in a French factory. Fundamentally speaking, the reason why Mao Zedong stayed in China was because he didn't want to go abroad.In addition to all the difficulties mentioned, it was also because Mao Zedong did not really believe that the key to the future of himself and China as a whole could be found in the West.His mind has been occupied by his country's long history, its magnificent landscape and its recent disgrace.

We can use Mao Zedong's own modest and reserved explanation to explain his reasons for not going to Marseille: "I feel that I don't know enough about my own country, and it would be more beneficial to spend my time in China."[7] This This decision is the result of the attitude he has formed, and we can also see the tendency of future foreign policy. At the same time, 120 miles east of Tianjin, a young man named Zhou Enlai made the opposite decision and set sail for Europe.In Chongqing in the northwest, another young man named Deng Xiaoping also started his trip to France as a work-study program.

The Chinese revolution started in the library.There was a need for a theory to guide the resistance to the old system, and there was a theory that already existed.When Mao Zedong's grandfather was a child, it was proposed by Karl Marx in another library, the British Library.Before the First World War, only a few words of Marxism were introduced into China, and it was only after the Bolshevik Revolution in the Soviet Union that it gradually entered the hearts of the Chinese people. Marxism is one thing, it is mainly a theory summed up based on the realities of advanced Western countries.Leninism is different.If a Marxist revolution could be carried out in backward Russia, and if the logic of imperialism's own development would lead to socialism (as Lenin thought), shouldn't China carry out the same revolution?Perhaps Marx's esoteric treatise needs more careful study?Thus, after 1917, some sharp-minded Chinese in the library where Mao Zedong was working at the time began poring over Marx's articles and pamphlets.

Mao Zedong didn't need to spend money to read enough --- this was a boon for him who was already struggling. Here he read the books of Marx and Lenin for the first time. However, Mao Zedong that winter did not grasp Marxism, and what dominated his mind was anarchism.He read Kropotkin more than Marx, and he knew more about the passionate Russian than the serious German. Like any other anarchist, Mao knew what he was against but not quite why.At the same time, he has not mastered the ideological weapon against warlordism and imperialism.In terms of personal circumstances, anarchism was also quite suitable for Mao Zedong, who had no life in that winter.

In the spring of 1919, student demonstrations broke out in Beijing—later known as the May Fourth Movement—a movement that brought the main ideas of New Youth to a climax.But Mao Zedong stayed out.At this time, he was depressed and had not yet recognized the direction of his struggle.When the students in Beijing were enthusiastic about the survival of the country, he ignored it, left Beijing alone, and went to a place that no one could think of. On May 4, 1919, the student anti-imperialist patriotic movement broke out in Beijing.This is a demonstration by Peking University students. When the students in Beijing smashed up the Confucian shop, he went to Shandong to visit the tomb of Confucian.

He recalled: "I saw the stream where Confucius' disciples washed their feet and the small town where Confucius lived as a child." [8] He climbed Dongyue Taishan, visited the birthplace of Mencius, and then he went to Liangshan, this is the place where heroes gather together. While radicals in Beijing professed to abandon all that was old in China, Mao Zedong was indulging in ancient wellsprings.The May 4th Movement was the first large-scale intellectual movement in Chinese history—to change traditions and resist Japan's encroachment on China.At this moment, Mao Zedong was in the mountains and rivers of China.

After staying in the holy land of Confucianism, Mao Zedong came to Xuzhou by train (he met a friend from the same class on the road and borrowed money to buy a train ticket).In Xuzhou, he lingered in places where he became famous.After arriving in Nanjing, he walked around the ancient city wall.His only pair of shoes was stolen, so he had to borrow money again to buy a ticket to Shanghai. The trip itself seems to go beyond the purpose of going to Shanghai.Mao Zedong said that he went to Shanghai to see off the students who went to France for work-study programs. He must have gone to the Shanghai Wharf.However, he did not travel with anyone when he set off from Beijing. He was alone among the historical sites and places of interest, looking for ancient traces, which lasted for several weeks.

In any case, it is clear that after half a year in Beijing, Mao Zedong did not want to stay any longer. Since World War I, Shanghai, China's largest city (2 million people), has been the gateway to the West, with commerce in its blood.Mao Zedong didn't like staying in Shanghai, because there were no historical sites, scenic spots or famous mountains to attract him. He went to meet his second model, Professor Chen Duxiu, whom he had met through New Youth, a scholar of literature who had moved from Beijing to Shanghai in 1917 under pressure from warlords.This meeting sowed the seeds for further contact, although this first meeting was not yet ready.

Mao Zedong strolled the streets in Shanghai, read newspapers, and visited friends in Hunan. His vast mind returned to the affairs in Changsha.A good thing happened. The organizer of the work-study program in France allocated him a sum of money, which enabled him to return to Hunan. In April 1919, Mao Zedong packed his bags and returned to Changsha on foot and by car and boat. Mao Zedong's situation at that time was very difficult.He found a bed in a dormitory for applicants at Hunan University.Soon, he taught some history classes in the primary school affiliated to the First Normal School of his alma mater.Mao Zedong had too many things to do, and he really couldn't do a regular job.

Mao Zedong lived a poor material life, although his thoughts wandered in a world beyond the reach of ordinary people.He wears straw sandals on his big feet, which are cheap and more practical in summer; his meals are mainly broad beans and rice.In daily life, he often has to rely on others. The trip to the Northland had visibly left its mark on him.While he was quiet in Beijing, he had a lot to say in Changsha.His first venture was to speak openly of the novel idea of ​​Marxism, though he knew little about it, and only that little. In the second half of 1919, Mao Zedong became the vanguard of the New Culture Movement and the anti-imperialist movement in the Changsha area—two themes of the May Fourth Movement.At that time, the main spearhead was Zhang Jingyao, the warlord ruler of Hunan. This semi-feudal pro-Japanese faction made the May Fourth students pay the price in blood.

Mao Zedong led the May 4th Movement in Changsha, making both aspects of the movement's main theme excellent.In the scorching June, he established the "Hunan Student Union" in Changsha. The enthusiasm of the student movement is unprecedented, which is second to none in the country, even if the student riots in the United States in the 1960s are slightly inferior.Schools are closed half the time (ideal "truth" trumps reality).A manifesto can lead to a larger demonstration by students the next day.With toothpaste in their bags and umbrellas wrapped in towel bags on their backs, the students headed out of Changsha to connect with like-minded people elsewhere.Almost everyone has conflicts with their own family.Roughly printed small magazines kept popping up, all with high-spirited titles: "Enlightenment," "Women's Bell," "New Culture," "Boom," "Up," "Struggle," "New Voice" . By 1960s standards, the students were anything but modern.Most of them are gentlemen in long robes and mandarin jackets, who are used to dictating servants.They stand with one foot in the threshold of tradition, but speak fiercely against tradition.Like some evangelicals in the United States, they live like those around them, but they say that those around them pollute their pure hearts. There was a college student who chopped off two of his fingers to protest the brutality of the warlord Zhang Jingyao. Ding Ling, 13, who would go on to become one of China's most famous novelists, led a class that stormed the chamber of the Hunan provincial council, demanding women's right to inherit property.The younger they are, the more carefree they become. Mao Zedong delivered a speech at a "use domestic products, boycott Japanese products" rally, without paying attention to the fact that Chinese products still cannot meet people's needs.He organized a group of female students—he had absorbed them into the core of the Hunan Student Union from the very beginning—to inspect shops on the streets of Changsha and warn the bosses to destroy Japanese goods. Mao Zedong later recalled: "At that time there was no time to talk about love." This is indeed the case. After an hour or two of rest after the evening political activities, there will be no sex between men and women without evil thoughts.Mao Zedong, Cai Hesen, one of the "Three Heroes", and his smart and beautiful sister Cai Chang once made a three-person covenant: vowed never to marry. [9] But all three of them violated this oath, and Mao Zedong violated it three times. This does not suggest that their vows were a jest, but that they once thought—like American evangelicals—that they were not shy about living in contradiction.They don't think they have time for romance, but it creeps in and often brightens their careers. The students' social situation puts them in a series of contradictions, and they are a generation of shame and humiliation.The shattering of ancient traditions made them lose their foundation, and the precariousness of the country brought them to the verge of despair. Being a rebel in old China requires a lot of guts to act.A blatant rebellion against the old China, which is majestic on the outside but corrupt on the inside, is like stabbing a watermelon with good skin but rotten like shit inside, and the people will burst into laughter.Now that the spell was broken, the rotten watermelon began to grow young again.It was not difficult to arouse popular resistance in China in 1919. In that stormy summer, Mao Zedong was busy working for the student union. He founded a weekly magazine, which he acted as editor and editor-in-chief, and named the publication "Xiangjiang Review" after the place name.The first issue of "Xiangjiang Review" printed 2,000 copies, which were sold out within a day, and each subsequent issue printed 5,000 copies (this was a large printing volume in Hunan in 1919).