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| - Zhou Enlai was born in Huaian, Jiangsu Province. His family, although of the educated scholar class, was not well off. His grandfather, a minor civil servant of the Emperor, was poorly paid. His father repeatedly failed the Imperial examinations, and throughout his life would be employed in low-paying minor clerkships. Lady Chen, his adoptive mother, began to teach him the Chinese ideograms as soon as he could toddle. By the time he was four years old he could read and write several hundred words.
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| abstract
| - Zhou Enlai was born in Huaian, Jiangsu Province. His family, although of the educated scholar class, was not well off. His grandfather, a minor civil servant of the Emperor, was poorly paid. His father repeatedly failed the Imperial examinations, and throughout his life would be employed in low-paying minor clerkships. Zhou Enlai was the eldest son and eldest grandson of the Zhou family. When Enlai was still less than one year old, he was adopted by his father's youngest brother who was dying of tuberculosis. This adoption took place so that the younger brother would not die childless, a serious scandal to a traditional Confucian family of high status. Lady Chen, his adoptive mother, began to teach him the Chinese ideograms as soon as he could toddle. By the time he was four years old he could read and write several hundred words. In 1907 Enlai’s birth mother died of TB, and in the summer of 1908 Lady Chen also died. Enlai was an orphan at the age of ten, so it was arranged that Enlai would leave Huai An and go to the city of Shenyang in Manchuria to live with his Uncle Yikeng. At the age of twelve Enlai was enrolled in the Tung Guan model school that taught “new learning,” i.e. mathematics and natural science, as well as Chinese history, geography and literature. The students were also exposed to translations of western books, where Enlai learned about freedom, democracy and the American and French revolutions. In 1913, at the age of fifteen, Enlai graduated from Tung Guan and in September of that year he was enrolled in the Nankai school, located in Tianjin. For the next four years he was a diligent student of this prestigious school. Throughout the period of his schooling China was in great turmoil. In 1911 the Xinhai Revolution of Sun Yat-sen overthrew the Qing dynasty and established the Republic of China. The outbreak of the Great War in Europe relieved the pressure from European intruders, but presented an opportunity for Japan to push its own dominance. Enlai could see that China was being ruined by foreign intervention. He shared in the wrath, the protest, and the indignation at the plight of China. The next step in Enlai’s education was to attend university in Tokyo. His goal was to become a teacher so that he could have influence on the youth of China. But he found he could not concentrate. He could not study. In Nankai he had written and spoken against Japan’s military and political pressure upon China, and its inexorable slide into anarchy. He challenged his fellow students on what his generation could do to save China. Their answer was to study, to become educated in the sciences and professions. China needed elite, knowledgeable doctors, engineers, and teachers. “But why?” he asked. “If China is to disappear, what is the use of studying?” In early May 1919, dejected and without completing his education, he left Japan. Enlai arrived in Tianjin on May 9, in time to take part in the momentous May Fourth Movement of 1919.
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