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Mao Zedong translated, with an Introduction and Notes, by Roger R. Thompson Report from Xunwu, Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1990, pp. 1-1x. 1-278.
This is Professor Thompson's translation of a social enquiry report compiled within the short space of ten days in a small Chinese county town on the borders of Guangdong, Fujian and Jiangxi in 1930, not in peaceful times but in a period of turmoil as the Communists took over towns and villages in the surrounding countryside. Eleven persons including Chairman Mao as chairman and secretary produced the Report (p. 47).
The translator has also provided a most helpful introduction (pp. 3-41). This sets the scene and explains why the report was not included in the 1941 edition of Mao's Rural Investigations and had to wait until Chairman Deng Xiaoping sponsored its publication in 1981.
Professor Thompson calls the Report "an extraordinary document, far exceeding in scope and depth the other investigations Mao made in Jiangxi and Fujian 1930-34", which were published in 1941. The high degree of care taken with the text prior to eventual publication involved the editors in spending 51 days in retracing Mao's steps of half a century before. In all, they travelled 5000 li (1600 miles), talked to 35 organisations and 14 families, and conducted discussion sessions, making, all told, 800 textual emendations of information in categories like proper names, place names and the names of goods and products. As Thompson puts it (p. 37), there was an "intense scholarly effort to prepare the text for publication". He supports the authenticity of the text and explains how Chairman Deng found the report a useful vehicle to demonstrate his own legitimacy and to underwrite his call for accurate fact-finding to help solve the problems of the present (pp. 31-32).
The long Chapter 3 dealing with shops and commerce in Xunwu is especially interesting. It is almost as long (67 pp.) as the chapter on Traditional Land Relationships, Chapter 4, indicating the importance Mao attached to the subject. Mao's frankness is engaging. He says in the Report (p. 64) that he lacked "understanding of what a market town is". He had recognised the problem, but had never found people who could supply sufficient data. "Two old gentlemen" had been introduced by Comrade Gu Bo (the local communist leader). "Many thanks to these two gentlemen", he continued, "for allowing me to become like a young