Guide
How to read this site
Notes on the edition, the reading aids, and navigation.
About this edition
This reading edition is based on the text carried by the public Chinese archive (the marxists.org Chinese archive), containing all one hundred and sixty-two canonical essays and excluding six [unabridged] variants. The base text is Chinese and is presented here in traditional characters; simplified forms are generated on the fly by the traditional/simplified toggle. The editorial stance is that of an archive: describing, quoting and dating — never speaking for the documents, and passing no judgement on present-day positions. The English edition's essay bodies come from the Foreign Languages Press Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung as carried by marxists.org; where an essay has no standalone rendering there, the Chinese original is shown with a notice.
Reading aids
① Glossary: shows the term explanations annotated in the text (hover to view). ② Background note: the 'Background note' panel in the right column of each essay page records the essay's context and can be switched off with one click. (The traditional/simplified toggle applies only to the Chinese edition.) The aids are independent and your preferences are remembered.
How to navigate
The home page offers three routes: by chapter order, by theme, and by figure. The Contents page lists all one hundred and sixty-two essays by volume; every essay ends with 'Previous / Next' links for continuous reading. The theme and figure pages carry a left-column index on the same page.
About the images
All images on this site are symbolic imagery of the period (mountain silhouettes of the base areas, a mimeograph, woodcuts, wheat fields, the star emblem of the founding, and so on) — not realistic portraits of any particular person; they aim to convey the atmosphere of an era, not to depict individuals.
Scale
Essays collected: 162; volumes: 4; time span: 1925–1949; themes: 6; categorized figures: 13; timeline periods: 8. Every theme page carries at least eight hundred characters (Chinese edition) of body text.
Verification of quotations
All notable-line cards and excerpts are taken from the base text word for word; anything not verified against the base text is never presented as a quotation. In the English edition, quotations come from the Foreign Languages Press translation word for word. The essay numbers linked from timeline events all correspond to actual chapters of the book.