"Seven Laws to Shaoshan": A Red Poem Full of The Spirit of Struggle

　　"Seven Laws to Shaoshan" is the poem that Mao Zedong returned to his hometown to chant for the first time after the founding of New China, and it is also the only poem written by Mao Zedong for his hometown.

　　On December 26, 1893, Mao Zedong was born in Shaoshan, the birthplace of Shaole, a Shaoshan Chong. In 1902, under the arrangement of his father Mao Shunsheng, Mao Zedong went to a private school on the south bank less than 200 meters away from home to receive enlightenment education; after becoming literate, his father began to let Mao Zedong learn abacus and help the family keep accounts; in the autumn of 1904, he went to Shaoshan Guangongqiao Private School to study; in the spring of 1905, he successively studied at Shaoshan Qiaotou Bay and Zhongjiawan; in the autumn of 1906, he entered the Private School in Shaoshan Jingwan; in 1907, Mao Zedong temporarily suspended school, helping long workers in the field during the day and keeping accounts for his father at night. When Mao was 17 years old, his father promised him to go out to study. In 1910, when Mao Zedong left Shaoshan to go out to study at the Dongshan Academy in Xiangxiang County, before leaving, he rewrote a poem written by a Japanese monk named Yuezhi, which was sandwiched in his father's daily must-read account book: "The child is determined to go out of the countryside, and he will not return the oath if he does not become famous." Buried bones why mulberry land, life is everywhere green mountains. ”

　　Mao Zedong, who lived in Shaoshan for 17 years, left his hometown and went to Changsha to study. In January 1925, Mao Zedong returned to Shaoshan from Shanghai to establish the Shaoshan branch of the Communist Party of China, and later organized a peasant association to lead the people's revolution in his hometown. In January 1927, Mao Zedong returned to Shaoshan during his inspection of the peasant movement in the five counties of Hunan and investigated for five days. On this expedition, he walked more than 1400 miles, lasted 32 days, and had a lot of information. In February of the same year, Mao Zedong returned to Wuhan and wrote the "Report on the Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan" at No. 41, Wuchang Capital, enthusiastically praising the great pioneering work of the peasant movement. In the autumn of the same year, after Mao Zedong led the autumn harvest uprising to Jinggangshan, he never returned to his hometown of Shaoshan.

　　After the founding of New China, although Mao Zedong visited Hunan many times to inspect the work, because New China had just been founded, everything was in ruins and waiting to be rebuilt, and he never returned to his hometown of Shaoshan. It was not until June 25, 1959, that Mao Zedong returned to Shaoshan, where he had been absent for 32 years. This was also the first time that Mao Zedong returned to his hometown of Shaoshan after the founding of New China, a full 32 years after returning to Shaoshan in early 1927 to investigate the peasant movement. 32 years of wind and smoke years, 32 years of hometown feelings, 32 years of folk faces, 32 years of hometown changes, let him think and have mixed feelings. At dawn on the 27th, Mao Zedong chanted the famous poem "Seven Laws to Shaoshan Mountain".

　　Seven Laws to Shaoshan

　　Don't dream of faintly cursing the passing river, the old garden thirty-two years ago.

　　The red flag rolled up the serf's halberd, and the black hand hung high over the overlord whip.

　　In order to have the courage to sacrifice more, dare to teach the sun and the moon for a new day.

　　Happy to see the rice and the thousand heavy waves, heroes everywhere under the sunset smoke.

　　This poem "Seven Laws to Shaoshan" was originally titled "Return to the Hometown". The poem was first published in the Poems of Chairman Mao published by the People's Literature Publishing House in December 1963. Mao Zedong used the method of recollection to artistically summarize the singable and weeping revolutionary course that the people of Shaoshan had gone through under the leadership of the party, sang with deep affection the great aspirations and heroic spirit of the people of Shaoshan, showed the beautiful prospects for socialist construction, and revealed the truth of the people's creation of history. The poems contemplate, transform and recast myths, characters, objects, history, geography and classical poetry, expressing the new spirit of the times; integrating narrative, discussion and lyricism, using anthropomorphic techniques, with a clear and cheerful melody, the realm of the poem is greatly broadened. Throughout the poem, the first verse begins with "Don't Dream", suggesting a return to the hometown, and then swings to "thirty-two years ago"; at the end, it ends with "Happy To See" and praises the positive image. Every sentence is directly expressive, and the joint reading is just a powerful revolutionary epic.

　　On September 13, 1959, Mao Zedong said in a letter to Hu Qiaomu: "Write thirty-two years of history in the first place. 'Hegemon' refers to Chiang Kai-shek. This joint writes about the class struggle of that period. In 1961, Guo Moruo asked Mao Zedong who was the black finger of the "black hand hanging high over the main whip" in Mao Zedong's "Seven Laws to Shaoshan", because some people interpreted it as the people and some people as reactionaries. Mao Zedong replied that he was referring to the reactionaries. On December 29, 1978, Guangming Daily published an article entitled "Reading by Chairman Mao's Side": "For some time in 1975, Lu Di, a lecturer at the Department of Chinese at Peking University, was transferred to Mao Zedong's side to help Mao Zedong who suffered from eye diseases read. Once, Mao Zedong asked Lu Di to read Wang Yue's "Climbing the Building", and when analyzing the thoughts and feelings of Wang Yue's nostalgia for his homeland, the chairman said: People always have deep feelings for their childhood, their hometown, and their friends in the past, and it is difficult to forget. It's easier to reminisce and miss these in old age. Later, he said that when he wrote "Seven Laws to Shaoshan", he deeply remembered many past events from 32 years ago and was very nostalgic for his hometown. ”

　　"In order to have the courage to sacrifice more, dare to teach the sun and the moon to change the new heavens", under the suppression of the counter-revolutionary black hand, the peasant revolution failed. But as Mao Zedong said: "On August 7 [1927], the emergency meeting of the Party decided to fight back with arms, and since then found a way out. "The party's decision to resist armedly means to be ambitious, dare to struggle, dare to revolutionize, dare to win victory, and the revolution finally triumphs, so that the sun and the moon are replaced by a new heaven and a new society." Happy to see the rice and the thousand heavy waves, heroes everywhere under the sunset smoke. "Seeing that the serfs of the past have now become heroes of labor, and the fruits of their labor are in sight, and they have become a thousand-weight wave in the evening wind." The masses are the real heroes", this is Mao Zedong's famous saying, Shaoshan this land, like the whole of China, it is precisely by relying on the pursuit and struggle of generations of people that the old appearance of the mountains and rivers has been changed.

　　"Seven Laws to Shaoshan" was written on the 62nd anniversary of the present, and revisiting the poems of Mao Zedong who returned to his hometown for the first time after the founding of New China, you can feel that it is countless martyrs and proletarian revolutionaries of the older generation who have thrown their heads and spilled their blood to have today's happy life. (Mu Junsheng)