While Chen Duxiu and Li Dazhao set off to organize China’s cities along standard communist terms, Mao returned to his focus on Hunan peasants. He continued to articulate his belief that peasants represented the most viable source of revolutionary support and submitted this idea to the Party in his “Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan,” in 1927.

This report contains one of Mao’s most famous lines, “a revolution is not a dinner party,” or geming bushi qing ke chi fan, (革命不是请客吃饭).