The Foolish Old Man Removes the Mountains

The gods in Heaven, impressed with his hard work and perseverance, ordered the mountains separated.

[1] In a speech at Yan'an on 11 June 1945, Mao Zedong recounted the story, re-interpreting it as a call for collective action:[3] Today, two big mountains lie like a dead weight on the Chinese people.

If they stand up and dig together with us, why can't these two mountains be cleared away?Mao's use of the story was intended to convey his strong affirmation of the revolutionary will.

[4] Academic Cai Xiang writes that Mao's usage also illustrates the power of the people to reconfigure their relationship with nature and that the speech can be read as part of the basis for a socialist-era philosophy of the environment.

[5]: 94  Together with Serve the People and Memory of Norman Bethune (紀念白求恩), it was one of the three most-frequently read stories in the Little Red Book of Mao's sayings and was memorized by schoolchildren during the Cultural Revolution.