Chapter 02 Walk out of Shaoshan, enter the new school 1909

Journalist: “When did you leave Shaoshan? Where did you go?”

Mao: “My wife passed away, and my father wanted me to become an apprentice at a rice shop in the county town. But I wanted to go to school. I set my sights on a new school 25 kilometers away from Shaoshan, called Dongshan School in Xiangxiang County. The tuition and boarding fees at the school were relatively expensive. I asked for help from relatives and convinced my father to provide me with five months’ worth of fees to attend school. Dongshan School opened up my horizons. They taught many foreign things there, like world history, geography, science, and foreign languages, which exposed me to the outside world. In my textbooks, I read short biographies of famous figures like Napoleon, Peter the Great, Rousseau, and Lincoln. It was the first time I saw a teacher who had studied in Japan, and my classmates called him the ‘fake foreign devil.’ That teacher taught us to sing Japanese songs and celebrated Japan’s victory over Russia in the Russo-Japanese War.”