Red Star over China (22 page)

“In my last year in school my mother died, and more than ever I lost interest in returning home. I decided, that summer, to go to Peking.
Many students from Hunan were planning trips to France, to study under the ‘work and learn' scheme, which France used to recruit young Chinese in her cause during the World War. Before leaving China these students planned to study French in Peking. I helped organize the movement, and in the groups who went abroad were many students from the Hunan Normal School, most of whom were later to become famous radicals. Hsu T'eh-li was influenced by the movement also, and when he was over forty he left his professorship at Hunan Normal School and went to France. He did not become a Communist, however, till 1927.

“I accompanied some of the Hunanese students to Peking. However, although I had helped organize the movement, and it had the support of the Hsin-min Hsueh-hui, I did not want to go to Europe. I felt that I did not know enough about my own country, and that my time could be more profitably spent in China,. Those students who had decided to go to France studied French then from Li Shih-tseng, who is now president of the Chung-fa [Sino-French] University, but I did not. I had other plans.

“Peking seemed very expensive to me. I had reached the capital by borrowing from friends, and when I arrived I had to look for work at once. Yang Ch'ang-chi, my former ethics teacher at the normal school, had become a professor at Peking National University. I appealed to him for help in finding a job, and he introduced me to the university librarian. He was Li Ta-chao, who later became a founder of the Communist Party of China, and was afterwards executed by Chang Tso-lin.
^*
Li Ta-chao gave me work as assistant librarian, for which I was paid the generous sum of $8 a month.

“My office was so low that people avoided me. One of my tasks was to register the names of people who came to read newspapers, but to most of them I didn't exist as a human being. Among those who came to read I recognized the names of famous leaders of the renaissance movement, men like Fu Ssu-nien, Lo Chia-lun, and others, in whom I was intensely interested. I tried to begin conversations with them on political and cultural subjects, but they were very busy men. They had no time to listen to an assistant librarian speaking southern dialect.

“But I wasn't discouraged. I joined the Society of Philosophy, and the Journalism Society, in order to be able to attend classes in the university. In the Journalism Society I met fellow students like Ch'en Kung-po, who is now a high official at Nanking;
¹
T'an P'ing-shan, who later became a Communist and still later a member of the so-called ‘Third Party'; and
Shao P'iao-p'ing. Shao, especially, helped me very much. He was a lecturer in the Journalism Society, a liberal, and a man of fervent idealism and fine character. He was killed by Chang Tso-lin in 1926.

“While I was working in the library I also met Chang Kuo-t'ao,
^*
now vice-chairman of the Soviet Government; K'ang P'ei-ch'en, who later joined the Ku Klux Klan in California [!!!—E.S.]; and Tuan Hsi-p'eng, now Vice-Minister of Education in Nanking. And here also I met and fell in love with Yang K'ai-hui. She was the daughter of my former ethics teacher, Yang Ch'ang-chi, who had made a great impression on me in my youth, and who afterwards was a genuine friend in Peking.

“My interest in politics continued to increase, and my mind turned more and more radical. I have told you of the background for this. But just now I was still confused, looking for a road, as we say. I read some pamphlets on anarchy, and was much influenced by them. With a student named Chu Hsun-pei, who used to visit me, I often discussed anarchism and its possibilities in China. At that time I favored many of its proposals.

“My own living conditions in Peking were quite miserable, and in contrast the beauty of the old capital was a vivid and living compensation. I stayed in a place called San Yen-ching [“Three-Eyes Well”], in a little room which held seven other people. When we were all packed fast on the
k'ang
there was scarcely room enough for any of us to breathe. I used to have to warn people on each side of me when I wanted to turn over. But in the parks and the old palace grounds I saw the early northern spring, I saw the white plum blossoms flower while the ice still held solid over Pei Hai [“the North Sea”].
^†
I saw the willows over Pei Hai with the ice crystals hanging from them and remembered the description of the scene by the T'ang poet Chen Chang, who wrote about Pei Hai's winter-jeweled trees looking ‘like ten thousand peach trees blossoming.' The innumerable trees of Peking aroused my wonder and admiration.

“Early in 1919 I went to Shanghai with the students bound for France. I had a ticket only to Tientsin, and I did not know how I was to get any farther. But, as the Chinese proverb says, ‘Heaven will not delay a traveler,' and a fortunate loan of ten yuan from a fellow student, who had got some money from the Auguste Comte School in Peking, enabled me to buy a ticket as far as P'u-k'ou. On the way to Nanking I stopped at Ch'u Fu and visited Confucius' grave. I saw the small stream where Confucius' disciples bathed their feet and the little town where the sage lived as a child. He is supposed to have planted a famous tree near the historic temple dedicated to him, and I saw that. I also stopped by the river where Yen Hui, one of Confucius' famous disciples, had once lived, and I saw
the birthplace of Mencius. On this trip I climbed T'ai Shan, the sacred mountain of Shantung, where General Feng Yu-hsiang retired and wrote his patriotic scrolls.

“But when I reached P'u-k'ou I was again without a copper, and without a ticket. Nobody had any money to lend me; I did not know how I was to get out of town. But the worst of the tragedy happened when a thief stole my only pair of shoes!
Ai-ya!
What was I to do? But again, ‘Heaven will not delay a traveler,' and I had a very good piece of luck. Outside the railway station I met an old friend from Hunan, and he proved to be my ‘good angel.' He lent me money for a pair of shoes, and enough to buy a ticket to Shanghai. Thus I safely completed my journey—keeping an eye on my new shoes. At Shanghai I found that a good sum had been raised to help send the students to France, and an allowance had been provided to help me return to Hunan. I saw my friends off on the steamer and then set out for Changsha.

“During my first trip to the North, as I remember it, I made these excursions:

“I walked around the lake of T'ung Ting, and I circled the wall of Paotingfu. I walked on the ice of the Gulf of Pei Hai. I walked around the wall of Hsuchou, famous in the
San Kuo [Three Kingdoms],
and around Nanking's wall, also famous in history. Finally I climbed T'ai Shan and visited Confucius' grave. These seemed to me then achievements worth adding to my adventures and walking tours in Hunan.

“When I returned to Changsha I took a more direct role in politics. After the May Fourth Movement
^*
I had devoted most of my time to student political activities, and I was editor of the
Hsiang River Review,
the Hunan students' paper, which had a great influence on the student movement in South China. In Changsha I helped found the Wen-hua Shu-hui [Cultural Book Society], an association for study of modern cultural and political tendencies. This society, and more especially the Hsin-min Hsueh-hui, were violently opposed to Chang Ching-yao, then
tuchun
of Hunan, and a vicious character. We led a general student strike against Chang, demanding his removal, and sent delegations to Peking and the Southwest, where Sun Yat-sen was then active, to agitate against him. In retaliation for the students' opposition, Chang Ching-yao suppressed the
Hsiang River Review.

“After this I went to Peking, to represent the New People's Study Society and organize an antimilitarist movement there. The society broadened its fight against Chang Ching-yao into a general antimilitarist agitation, and I became head of a news agency to promote this work. In
Hunan the movement was rewarded with some success. Chang Ching-yao was overthrown by T'an Yen-k'ai, and a new regime was established in Changsha. About this time the society began to divide into two groups, a right and left wing—the left wing insisting on a program of far-reaching social and economic and political changes.

“I went to Shanghai for the second time in 1919. There once more I saw Ch'en Tu-hsiu.
^*
I had first met him in Peking, when I was at Peking National University, and he had influenced me perhaps more than anyone else. I also met Hu Shih at that time, having called on him to try to win his support for the Hunanese students' struggle. In Shanghai I discussed with Ch'en Tu-hsiu our plans for a League for Reconstruction of Hunan. Then I returned to Changsha and began to organize it. I took a place as a teacher there, meanwhile continuing my activity in the New People's Study Society. The society had a program then for the ‘independence' of Hunan, meaning, really, autonomy. Disgusted with the Northern Government, and believing that Hunan could modernize more rapidly if freed from connections with Peking, our group agitated for separation. I was then a strong supporter of America's Monroe Doctrine and the Open Door.

“T'an Yen-k'ai was driven out of Hunan by a militarist called Chao Heng-t'i, who utilized the ‘Hunan independence' movement for his own ends. He pretended to support it, advocating the idea of a United Autonomous States of China, but as soon as he got power he suppressed the democratic movement with great energy. Our group had demanded equal rights for men and women, and representative government, and in general approval of a platform for a bourgeois democracy. We openly advocated these reforms in our paper, the
New Hunan.
We led an attack on the provincial parliament, the majority of whose members were landlords and gentry appointed by the militarists. This struggle ended in our pulling down the scrolls and banners, which were full of nonsensical and extravagant phrases.

“The attack on the parliament was considered a big incident in Hunan, and frightened the rulers. However, when Chao Heng-t'i seized control he betrayed all the ideas he had supported, and especially he violently suppressed all demands for democracy. Our society therefore turned the struggle against him. I remember an episode in 1920, when the Hsin-min Hsueh-hui organized a demonstration to celebrate the third
anniversary of the Russian October Revolution. It was suppressed by the police. Some of the demonstrators had attempted to raise the Red flag at that meeting, but were prohibited from doing so by the police. The demonstrators pointed out that, according to Article 12 of the Constitution, the people had the right to assemble, organize, and speak, but the police were not impressed. They replied that they were not there to be taught the Constitution, but to carry out the orders of the governor, Chao Heng-t'i. From this time on I became more and more convinced that only mass political power, secured through mass action, could guarantee the realization of dynamic reforms.
^*

“In the winter of 1920 I organized workers politically for the first time, and began to be guided in this by the influence of Marxist theory and the history of the Russian Revolution. During my second visit to Peking I had read much about the events in Russia, and had eagerly sought out what little Communist literature was then available in Chinese. Three books especially deeply carved my mind, and built up in me a faith in Marxism, from which, once I had accepted it as the correct interpretation of history, I did not afterwards waver. These books were the
Communist Manifesto,
translated by Ch'en Wang-tao and the first Marxist book ever published in Chinese;
Class Struggle,
by Kautsky; and a
History of Socialism,
by Kirkup. By the summer of 1920 I had become, in theory and to some extent in action, a Marxist, and from this time on I considered myself a Marxist. In the same year I married Yang K'ai-hui.”
^†

Mao was now a Marxist but not a Communist, because as yet there did not exist in China an organized Communist Party. As early as 1919 Ch'en Tu-hsiu had established contact with the Comintern through Russians living in Peking, as had Li Ta-chao. It was not until the spring of 1920 that Gregori Voitinsky, an authorized representative of the Communist International, reached Peking, in the company of Yang Ming-chai, a member of the Russian Communist Party who acted as his interpreter. They conferred with Li Ta-chao and probably also met members of Li's Society for the Study of Marxist Theory. In the same year the energetic and persuasive Jahn Henricus Sneevliet,
¹
a Dutch agent of the Third International—Ti-san Kuo-chi, in Chinese—came to Shanghai for talks with Ch'en Tu-hsiu, who was conferring with serious Chinese Marxists there. It was Ch'en who, in May, 1920, summoned a conference that organized a nuclear Communist group. Some members of it became (with Li Ta-chao's group in Peking, another group set up in Canton by Ch'en, groups in Shantung and Hupeh, and Mao's group in Hunan) conveners of a Shanghai conference the following year that (with the help of Voitinsky) summoned the first Chinese Communist Party congress.

When one remembered, in 1937, that the Chinese Communist Party was still an adolescent in years, its achievements could be regarded as not inconsiderable. It was the strongest Communist Party in the world, outside of Russia, and the only one, with the same exception, that could boast an army of its own.

Another night, and Mao carried on his narrative:

“In May of 1921 I went to Shanghai to attend the founding meeting of the Communist Party. In its organization the leading roles were played by Ch'en Tu-hsiu and Li Ta-chao, both of whom were among the most brilliant intellectual leaders of China. Under Li Ta-chao, as assistant librarian at Peking National University, I had rapidly developed toward Marxism, and Ch'en Tu-hsiu had been instrumental in my interests in that direction too. I had discussed with Ch'en, on my second visit to Shanghai, the Marxist books that I had read, and Ch'en's own assertions of belief had deeply impressed me at what was probably a critical period of my life.