Spurred on by the promise of a new future for China and himself, Mao reveled in the political and cultural change sweeping the country. Led by Chinese statesman Sun Yat-sen, the Kuomintang overthrew the monarchy in 1912 and founded the Republic of China. In 1911, the Xinhua Revolution began against the monarchy, and Mao joined the Revolutionary Army and the Kuomintang, the Nationalist Party. When he turned 17, he left home to enroll in a secondary school in Changsha, the capital of Hunan Province. By age 13, he was working full-time in the fields, growing increasingly restless and ambitious.Īt the age of 14, Mao Tse-tung's father arranged a marriage for him, but he never accepted it. While Mao attended a small school in his village when he was eight years old, he received little education. His authoritarian father, Mao Zedong, was a prosperous grain dealer, and his mother, Wen Qimei, was a nurturing parent. Life was difficult for many Chinese citizens at the time, but Mao's family was better off than most. Mao Tse-tung was born on December 26, 1893, in the farming community of Shaoshan, in the province of Hunan, China, to a peasant family that had tilled their three acres of land for several generations. In the late 19th century, China was a shell of its once glorious past, led by the decrepit Qing Dynasty. Mao's "Great Leap Forward" and the Cultural Revolution were ill-conceived and had disastrous consequences, but many of his goals, including stressing China's self-reliance, were generally laudable. Mao Tse-tung served as chairman of the People's Republic of China from 1949 to 1959, and led the Chinese Communist Party from 1935 until his death.
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