Mao Zedong

Seven Killings is revealed in the year and Direct Resource in the month. In traditional destiny analysis, “Killings and Resource generating each other” signifies accomplishment in both letters and arms and the capacity for great undertakings. Looking back over a life with the dual identity of “military strategist plus poet”: On Protracted War and “Snow, to the tune of Qinyuanchun” came from the same hand, mirroring the mutual generation of Killings (martial strategy) and Resource (the literary mind).

Ding (丁) Fire is the Fire of lamps and sparks, and “a single spark can start a prairie fire” quietly echoes the imagery of how his revolutionary career began, an interesting observation at the cultural level; strong Fire governs propriety and the spread of ideas. In the Zi (子) month Water is strong, and Ding Fire needs Wood to kindle it and Fire to support it; his long-haul strategy of “encircling the cities from the countryside” also fits a temperament of “overcoming hardness with softness, the weak defeating the strong.” This is a retrospective perspective, not a fatalistic judgment.