Chapter 17 Organization (1921-1927) - new tasks

Everything changed, but after a bit of excitement, everything returned to normal.A meeting in Shanghai will not shake up the political model in Changsha, nor will it make Mao Zedong abandon the cause he loves.After the First Congress of the Communist Party of China, Mao Zedong had new tasks, but he still followed the familiar path of the May Fourth Movement. Mao Zedong was the head of the CCP's Xiang District Party, but there wasn't much to be held accountable for.He can also do his own thing, such as teaching while organizing activities.He tried to pour the new wine of communism into the test bottle of Hunan.

His activities are still centered in Changsha. Between 1921 and 1923, most of his articles were published in Changsha's Ta Kung Pao, rather than in party or national publications. Articles from 1921 to 1922 were all inspired by the spirit of the May Fourth Movement.Mao hadn't even burned his bridges to anarchism yet. His network in the First Normal School still exists, and Mao Zedong, who became a communist, did not stop teaching in the attached primary school.With the support of the No. 1 Normal School, he opened an evening school, which included black lead factory workers, electric light company employees, rickshaw pullers, vegetable vendors, and railway workers.Residents near the First Normal School know "Mr. Mao of the Night School". [1]

Mao Zedong also set up a "remedial class" for rural youth over the age of 18 who wanted to learn arithmetic and Chinese. This made the country's mud legs enter the spacious lecture hall of the First Normal University for the first time.They were dark-skinned, ragged, and smelled of sweat. They chewed sesame seed cakes and oil cakes loudly in class. Some people tried to drive these fish out of the pond of the First Normal University. Mao Zedong tried his best to persuade the principal of his alma mater, but at the same time he said in a contemptuous tone that clothing and eating habits were just "little things."His hard-and-soft tactics proved overwhelming, which enabled him to keep the cram school going.

Among Mao Zedong's educational projects, the most outstanding is the establishment of "Hunan Self-study University".It was established in the "Chuanshan Academy" in the autumn of 1921.In the more than two years since the school was established, there were as many as 200 students at most, and Mao Zetan, Mao Zedong's younger brother, was one of them.Mao Zedong invited friends from the Xinmin Society to give lectures, and Yang Kaihui also helped. Spreading Marxism is indeed one of its purposes.The school published a small monthly magazine "New Era" with very strong rhetoric, in which Mao Zedong published two of his first Marxist articles: "Criticism of Conceptual History" and "Marx Theory and China". [2] Mao Zedong explained that this publication is not a "literary grocery store" like an ordinary school magazine, and it will move in a predetermined direction. [3] The young organizer is trying to bring himself closer to the established rules.

Yet Mao remained a teacher first and a theorist second, believing that education would improve the quality of "common people," the Chinese term for ordinary people.As a teacher he is serious. In the early 1920s, the most interesting article written by Mao Zedong was the Declaration on the Founding of the Self-study University. This article was written in August 1921 and was reprinted by an important Shanghai publication "Oriental Magazine" in early 1923.In the article, Mao Zedong distinguished between academies and schools.The disadvantage of the school is that "Mr. has a money doctrine, and students have a diploma doctrine. 'Take a deal and leave, and each gets what he wants'..." Mao Zedong was strongly dissatisfied with traditional education, so he created the term "scholar".The Chinese word "xueban" comes from the word "warlord".The school boss is ruthless and trades with knowledge. He only knows to instill knowledge in students and ask students to drink.

In Mao Zedong's school, students were not required to take an exam, but were required to "put forward their own criticisms of society" or "clarify their outlook on life."There are very few lectures in the school, and the purpose is to "read and think" by yourself.The learning process has become a collective search for light. Mao Zedong encouraged students to study hard.Chinese history is the main course in self-study universities. [4] Just as the school utilizes quaint buildings for its school buildings, it also borrows valuable things from traditional education.Mao Zedong said that he would combine three good things into one: the root-seeking research methods of old-style academies, the brand-new teaching content of modern schools, and the conventional system for cultivating a sound personality.

The school was successful, but only an elite few knew its true purpose.The party organization in Hunan District has absorbed many new members from the history[5], geography and philosophy classes.However, many "ordinary people" find that reading too much is too difficult to understand. The manual workers in the early 1920s who were able and willing to go to night school to learn world history were by no means ordinary people. Mao Zedong had not yet reached out to ordinary people. In a way, the Shanghai meeting had an effect on Mao Zedong, who paid more attention to the labor movement than before.

In 1922 the Chinese labor movement was on the rise, and a small group of communists did a lot of work in it.They (and the Comintern who supported them) saw this as the trend of China's future.Marx discovered the industrial proletariat, and its adherents in the East followed.Mao Zedong joined in despite his skepticism. When Mao Zedong returned from Shanghai, he wore two hats: Secretary of the Hunan District Party Committee, and Director of the Hunan Branch of the Chinese Labor Organization Secretariat.The labor movement was the focus of the CCP at that time, and Anyuan was Mao Zedong's first battlefield.

Anyuan, a remote town in eastern Hunan, is home to a large coal mine that has been worked by the Germans and Japanese since 1898.With its large coal miners, it became one of the earliest footholds of China's long-overdue Industrial Revolution. [6] There is an oil painting from the 1960s that shows a young Mao Zedong marching fearlessly through thick clouds to mobilize the miners in Anyuan. ［7］The Mao Zedong in the painting is bigger than real person. He wears a white gown and looks dignified. He looks like a priest who is going to bring the gospel to the unbelievers.