The early life of Chinese revolutionary and politician Mao Zedong covered the first 27 years of his life, from 1893 to 1919. Born in Shaoshanchong, Shaoshan in Hunan province, Mao grew up as the son of Mao Yichang, a wealthy farmer and landowner. Sent to the local Shaoshan Primary School, Mao was brought up in an environment of Confucianism, but reacted against this from an early age, developing political ideas from modern literature. Aged 13 his father organised a marriage for him with Luo Yigu, the daughter of another land-owning family, but Mao denounced the marriage and moved away from home.
In 1911 Mao began further education in the Hunanese capital of Changsha, where he came under the influence of republicanism, and became an admirer of republican revolutionary Sun Yat-Sen. When the Xinhai Revolution broke out between republicans and monarchists, Mao signed up as a soldier, although conflict subsided and he left the army after six months. Seeing himself as an intellectual, he became heavily influenced by classical liberalism, and began studying at the First Normal School of Changsha, as well as penning his first publications. With Xiao Zisheng he co-founded the Renovation of the People Study Society in April 1918 to discuss and perpetuate revolutionary ideas among students, before graduating in 1919.
Childhood
Mao biographer Lee Feigon asserted that Mao experienced "a relatively typical childhood". He commented that it was for this reason that previous biographers had found it difficult to "find something fundamentally wrong with Mao from an early age" with which they had hoped to explain his later development into "a revolutionary tyrant".
Birth: 1893
Mao was born on December 26, 1893, in his familiar home in the rural village of Shaoshanchong in Xiangtan county, Hunan Province, part of south-central China. Typical of many Hunanese villages, Shaoshanchong was situated in a narrow valley surrounded by mountains. Both the village and the nearest town, Shaoshan, were named for the local Shaoshan Mountain ("Music Mountain"), a prominent feature in the local landscape with sacred associations for the region's Buddhists. The village was inhabited by many individuals with the surname of Mao; the Mao clan traced their lineage back to Mao Taihua, a warrior from Jiangxi Province who had moved to Xiangtan county in the mid-fourteenth century after fighting for Zhu Yuanzhang's military campaign to overthrow the Mongol-governed Yuan dynasty.
Mao's father, Mao Yichang, had been born in Shaoshanchong to a family of poverty before undergoing an arranged marriage to Mao's mother, Wen Qimei, when he was fifteen years old. While Yichang had received two years of schooling and could read and write, conversely Qimei was illiterate. Serving for several years in the regional Xiang Army, Yichang saved up his wages and on leaving the army used these to pay off his family's debts and purchase the lands that his father had sold. By the time of Zedong's birth, Yichang owned two-and-a-half acres of rice paddy, which would have been considered a substantial amount by the standards of the region. Through frugal living and hard work, over the coming years he was able to purchase a further acre and employ two farm laborers, with his farm encompassing a cow shed, a grain storage hut, a pigsty, and a small mill. Expanding the family's wealth, Yichang purchased mortgages on other peasants' land, thus becoming their landlord, while also purchasing the grain from the poorest farmers in the village before selling it on for a profit at the county seat of Xiangtan. In doing so, he amassed a fortune of two to three thousand Chinese silver dollars at a time when the majority of China's peasantry continued to live in poverty. This being the case, Mao biographer Philip Short could assert that the Mao family were "comfortably off" by the standards of the period.
According to the traditional lunar-based Chinese calendar, Mao Zedong's birth fell on the ninth day of the eleventh month of the Year of the Snake. After the birth, Mao's motherwho had previously birthed two sons who had died in infancywas worried for his welfare, and consulted a Buddhist nun who lived as a hermit in the mountains for advice. The nun recommended that prayers be said for the child; doing so, Qimei then prostrated herself at a local temple dedicated to the Buddhist Bodhisattva Guanyin, requesting that the Bodhisattva become Zedong's foster-mother.
Several biographers have suggested it likely that local traditional customs would have been observed after the birth; in this circumstance, a rooster would have been presented to his parents, while Mao would probably not have been bathed until three days after the birth, an event which would have been the first culturally-appropriate opportunity for guests to view the child. The child's father was expected to add onion and ginger to the bath water, symbolizing mind and health, while also providing sacrifices to the spirits of the ancestors. A Daoist fortune-teller was then employed to draw up a horoscope for the child, which revealed that he was lacking in the water element; Mao was therefore given the personal name of Zedong because according to Hunanese custom the character of ze ("to anoint") was deemed to correct this deficiency. The character of ze however had a dual meaning; as well as referring to moisture, it also implied kindness and beneficence. Yichang chose the latter part of his son's name, dong ("east"), so that the child's name would mean "benefactor of the east".
According to traditional custom, the child was also given a second, unofficial name to be used on specific ceremonial occasions; this was Runzhi. His mother gave him a third name, shisanyazi ("the Third Child Named Stone"), which reflected that he was her third child while also protecting him from misfortune and linking to the protection offered by Guanyin. If traditional Hunanese customs were adhered to, the baby's head would have been shaved after four weeks, with a small tuft of hair left on the crown and at the nape of the neck; it was at this point that the child would have been officially given its name. According to tradition, visitors probably would have gathered for this ceremony, bringing gifts of money, pork, fish, fruit, and decorated eggs.
Growing up: 1893–1900
The Mao family lived in a clay-brick farmhouse constructed in 1878, although Yichang expanded it during Zedong's boyhood. They occupied the eastern wing of their house, with the neighboring Zou family living in the western half. The building was large enough for Zedong to be allocated his own room, a rarity at the time. In front of the house was a pond and a rice paddy, while pine and bamboo groves grew behind the building. The household included his paternal grandfather, Mao Enpu, who died when Mao was ten. His paternal grandmother, Liu, had died in 1884, nine years before Mao's birth. When Zedong was two years old, his mother gave birth to another son, her fourth child, Mao Zemin, and still another son, Mao Zetan, was born when Zedong was eleven. She also gave birth to two daughters, both of whom died in infancy, although soon after Zetan's birth the couple adopted a baby girl, Zejian, the daughter of one of Mao's paternal uncles.
As was common at the time, Mao began to help on the farm at age five or six, watching over the cattle and tending ducks. Mao's habits were formed by his farm background; biographer Stuart Schram suggested that this took the form of a "lack of social graces and of a concern either for comfort or appearances." In later life, Mao would never become accustomed to the use of a toothbrush, instead retaining the habit of washing his mouth out with tea. Similarly, he continued to prefer cleaning himself with a steaming towel than with soap and water, again reflecting his upbringing. Further, the Hunanese cuisine of his youth gave him his lifelong love of spicy food.
Qimei was a practising Buddhist, and encouraged her sons to follow Buddhist teachings; embracing this faith, Zedong often accompanied her on visits to the local Buddhist temple, influencing her hopes that he would become a monk. Conversely, Yichang was largely irreligious, although after surviving an encounter with a tiger, gave offerings to the gods in thanks. According to Mao's account, Yichang was a staunch disciplinarian, and would beat his children as punishment for disobedience and a perceived lack of filial piety, with Mao describing the beating he received on one occasion when he humiliated his father in public. He added that his mother would often try to protect her children from these beatings.
During the 1930s, Mao would claim that he resented his father, viewing him as stingy and unaffectionate. He contrasted this with the affection he received from his mother, thus adopting a Marxist dialectical perspective by dividing the family into two camps: his mother and himself on one side, his father on another. Biographers have interpreted this filial relationship in different ways; while Jung Chang and Jon Halliday stated that "Mao hated his father", conversely, Schram pointed out that even in Mao's accounts of Yichang, his description is nuanced, and "not simply one of unremitting hatred". Ross Terrill suggested that "Behind Zedong's expressed hatred of his father was an unacknowledged identification; he was driven to become an authoritarian like his father, and on a far grander scale." Feigon has questioned the veracity of Mao's account of this issue, suggesting that the alleged bad relationship between the two was "probably overstated"; highlighting that Yichang clearly went to great efforts to financially support his son, Feigon also noted that the anti-father trope was "wildly popular among young Chinese intellectuals" during the 1930s, and that Mao's account hence may well be a reflection of this rather than reality.
Shaoshan Primary School: 1901–1906
Yichang was keen for his eldest son to gain a basic education rooted in Confucianism, the dominant moral ideology of Chinese society; he deemed a knowledge of Confucian teaching to be essential in allowing his son to develop key business and administrative skills. His hope was that Zedong would gain an apprenticeship with a Xiangtan rice merchant before taking over the family business and supporting his parents during their old age. Yichang was particularly adamant on the need to learn about Confucianism after losing a lawsuit over a parcel of land; he believed that his opponent had been victorious in the dispute as a result of their ability to quote the sayings of ancient Chinese philosopher Confucius throughout their argument.
Thus, from the age of eight, Mao was sent to gain a basic education at the private Shaoshan Primary School. Adopting a traditional syllabus and method of education, the school emphasised the copying and recitation by rote of a series of classical Chinese texts preaching Confucian morals: the Three Character Classic, the Book of Names, the Thousand Character Classic, the Odes for Children, the Filial Classic, and Filial Learning. Perceived failure or disobedience resulted in beatings with a bamboo rod from the teacher, who like Mao's father was a stern disciplinarian. Disliking this mode of education, Mao later asserted that "I hated Confucius from the age of eight." Although expressing his dislike for them, Mao nevertheless accepted the utility of learning these texts, finding himself able to win arguments – including those against his father – by the selective use of Confucian quotations.