Sailing Across the Ocean, We Rely on the Helmsman

Sailing Across the Ocean, We Rely on the Helmsman is the line that appears on the envelopes of Rong Jinzhen’s letters home after the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Its arrival replaces an earlier Chairman Mao slogan, while the letters’ distinctive, unexplained journey through the post remains the same.

Appearance on the Letters

The first letter Rong Jinzhen sent after leaving was written three days after his departure and reached home twelve days later. The envelope gave no sender’s address; in its place was the slogan “Who Dares to Make the Sun and Moon Shine in New Skies?”, written in Chairman Mao’s calligraphy in red ink. The receiving family could not establish where Box No. 36 was located, and the delayed delivery led them to suspect that the local address was a decoy.

A Repeated Postal Pattern

Later letters retained the same peculiar features: the same kind of envelope, no postmark from the office where each letter had been sent, and only a frank from the receiving sorting office. They also took roughly eight or nine days to arrive. The repeated markings made the slogan part of a larger pattern of communication that revealed little about Rong Jinzhen’s actual whereabouts.

Replacement During the Cultural Revolution

At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, the earlier slogan was replaced by “Sailing Across the Ocean, We Rely on the Helmsman”, a line from a widely popular song of the era. The envelope’s visible wording changed, but the lack of a sender’s address, the missing outgoing postmark, and the journey time remained. The substitution therefore marks a change in the political language displayed on the letters without resolving the mystery of where they came from.