Red Genesis: The Hunan First Normal School and the Creation of Chinese Communism, 1903–1921 by Liyan Liu (review)

At the beginning of her book, Liyan Liu asks a fascinating question: How did Hunan’s First Normal School “foster so many radical intellectuals who became early leaders of Chinese Communism?” (p. 13). Readers will likely already know that First Normal’s most famous graduate was Mao Zedong; however, a number of other faculty and students distinguished themselves. Indeed, First Normal represented the cutting edge of education at the beginning of the twentieth century. This alone makes Liyan Liu’s study important and ambitious. This book helps readers understand how Chinese radicalism fits within the wider scope of China’s modern history. Liu’s work specifically anchors Mao and the early communist movement to its historical antecedents and demonstrates how the evolution of the movement proceeded out of the chaos of the early twentieth century.

Herein lies the ambition of Liu’s book. Besides wrestling with the complexity of intellectual history, Liu has also chosen to analyze a period of dizzying change and monumental shifts in society. As anyone familiar with modern Chinese history already knows, the 1910s and 1920s saw the failure of a republic, the disintegration of the state into warring factions, and the emergence of an inchoate cultural movement that provided the seeds for the Chinese Communist Party. By focusing specifically on Hunan’s First Normal School, Liu is able to capture the vicissitudes of this period and the various intellectual currents that precipitated this change.

Liu’s most important and perhaps surprising contribution is elucidating just how much traditional Chinese culture was a part of the curriculum at First Normal, especially in the school’s early years (p. 37). Western philosophy and political theory were amalgamated with Confucianism and traditional ideas of responsibility and etiquette. As Liu points out, “the educational reforms of the first two decades of the twentieth century and the curriculum and ethos of Hunan First Normal infused in the students a philosophy and an ethics that wedded Confucian values . . . and Western elements . . . with a commitment to social change” (p. 3). This ultimately set Mao and his classmates “on the road to reform” (p. 3). Liu’s work reminds the reader that there was no sudden birth or moment of catharsis for China that marked the end of the old and the beginning of the new (no matter what communist propaganda suggests). Rather, there was a slow fusion of not two but multiple Chinas, both traditional and modern. This was an uneven transition that ebbed and flowed and exposed young people to very different intellectual currents simultaneously.

Liu also argues that what set First Normal apart was not only its revolutionary pedagogy but also the spirit that the institution instilled in its pupils. This is one of Liu’s most fascinating arguments, and one quickly senses the esprit de corps that characterized the lives of those who attended First Normal. First Normal’s faculty, furthermore, led by example and encouraged students to take action against unjust practices. Some faculty members also abandoned outmoded ways of living that were no longer acceptable in the new China (pp. 75, 76). Teachers stressed the “unity of knowledge and action” (p. 175). Many graduates left the school with an inviolate feeling that they needed to take immediate action in order to save the nation. In this way, First Normal was very much a school situated within the radical intellectual milieu of China at the turn of the twentieth century. Like many other radicals and thinkers of the time, the goal of First Normal was to “find the silver bullet that had enabled the West to overcome China” (p. 5). In examining the history and development of First Normal, Liu also redirects the discussion of major political and social events like the May Fourth Movement away from China’s urban centers and toward the...