Mao Zejian (; 5 October 1905 – 20 August 1929) was a cousin of

Mao Zedong Mao Zedong pronounced ; also Romanization of Chinese, romanised traditionally as Mao Tse-tung. (26 December 1893 – 9 September 1976), also known as Chairman Mao, was a Chinese communist revolutionary who was the List of national founde ...

who was executed by the

Kuomintang The Kuomintang (KMT), also referred to as the Guomindang (GMD), the Nationalist Party of China (NPC) or the Chinese Nationalist Party (CNP), is a major political party in the Republic of China, initially on the Chinese mainland and in Ta ...

. She was the daughter of Zedong's paternal uncle Weisheng Mao () and aunt Mrs. Chen (). However, Zejian lived with Mao Zedong's parents from the age of 5 as her father could not afford to feed her. After Zedong's parents died in 1920, Zejian unwillingly married a fruit seller in Changsha at the age of 15, as a child bride, where she was maltreated in the new family. In 1921 she divorced her husband and followed Zedong Mao to Changsha, where she attended women's polytechnic school. She joined the Communist Party in 1923, and changed her name to Daxiang Mao (). In the same year she was admitted to Hengyang Provincial Third Women's Normal School. She married a communist member Fen Chen () in 1925. In 1928 she joined the Hunan uprising led by De Zhu and Yi Chen in Leiyang. Since then she led uprising activities as a female guerrilla soldier around Hunan Province. In May 1928 she was caught in a guerrilla activity together with her husband Fen Chen. She was tortured in prison. Her young child born in prison was killed by Kuomintang authorities shortly after birth. She was executed at Hengshan, Hunan Province () on 20 August 1929.

References

1905 births 1929 deaths People from Xiangtan Mao Zedong family Chinese guerrillas {{China-bio-stub