15 Facts About Mao Yichang

Mao Yichang or Mao Rensheng was a Chinese farmer and grain merchant who achieved notability as the father of Mao Zedong.

The nineteenth generation of the Mao clan, he was born and lived his life in the rural village of Shaoshanchong in Shaoshan, Hunan Province.

Around ten years later, two sons moved to Shaoshanchong in Xiangtan county; Mao Yichang was their descendent.

Mao Yichang was born on 15 October 1870, the only child of Mao Enpu and his wife Liu.

Mao Yichang was betrothed to Wen when she was thirteen and he was ten; the wedding took place five years later when he was fifteen.

Mao Yichang managed through hard work and frugality to become a significant village landowner.

Mao Yichang grew rice, two-thirds of which fed his family with the remaining surplus sold at market.

Mao Yichang hired two laborers and became a grain middleman for urban markets.

Grain middlemen like Mao Yichang were a feature of rural markets, and as an adult, Mao Zedong would describe their economic role as "parasitic".

Mao Yichang was a usurious lender, obtaining mortgages on the other peasant's farms as a result.

Mao Yichang Zedong described his father as a strict disciplinarian who brutally beat him and his siblings.

Mao Yichang's father called him lazy because Mao preferred to read books over doing manual labor.

Mao Yichang Enpu, with his courtesy name Yinbin and nickname Yichen, was a Han Chinese farmer born in Xiangtan, Hunan, Great Qing.

Mao Yichang was born in the 26th year of the reign of the Daoguang Emperor.

Mao Yichang married a woman the same age as him, named Liu, with whom he had one son and two daughters.