Ai Siqi was born on March 2, 1910, in Henshun,
Tengchong,
Yunnan. His grandfather, Li Derun, was a merchant from western Yunnan. His father, Li Yuegai, graduated from the Department of Economics at
Peking University and was a member of the
South Society and
Tongmenghui. His uncle was Li Genyuan, a veteran of the
Kuomintang. Ai Siqi started attending private school at the age of 7. Ai was educated in Hong Kong. In 1923, due to
Tang Jiyao, Ai's family moved to Hong Kong and he transferred to a high school affiliated with
Lingnan University. In 1925, after returning to Yunnan, he was admitted to Provincial Kunming No. 1 Middle School. He soon organized a reading club in school, which started his interest in
Marxism. He met individuals such as
Nie Er and Li Guozho and published articles against Tang Jiyao in
Yunnan Tide. In the winter of 1926, the military and police started a manhunt for Ai, leading him to flee to
Suzhou to seek refuge with his father. When the
Northern Expedition became increasingly fierce and the political situation turned unstable, Ai's father decided to send him to study in
Japan, where he studied briefly for a year in 1927 and lived with Zhang Tianfan and others from Yunnan. In Tokyo, Ai met Tong Changrong,
Wang Buwen and others from the Tokyo branch of the
Chinese Communist Party. In May 1928, he returned to
Kunming because of stomach problems. In 1930, Ai returned to Japan and was admitted to the Department of Metallurgy of Fukuoka Industrial High School. However, after the
Mukden incident in 1931, he gave up his studies and returned to Kunming. In the spring of 1932, he left home and went to
Shanghai to live with his fifth uncle, Li Yueji, hoping that his uncle could support him to study in
Germany. However, Yueji criticized Ai's abandonment of school and did not agree. Later, he was introduced by a classmate to teach at Shanghai Quanzhang Middle School. In 1933, Quanzhang Middle School was closed down, but he continued to work for the school. Later, he was introduced to the Chinese Social Scientists Association by Du Guoxiang. Ai began to host the magazine
Reading Life and work for the Shenbao library, working with Li Gongpu, Xia Zhengnong, Gao Shiqi, and Liu Xi. This gave him the opportunity to write
Popular Philosophy. In October 1935, introduced by
Zhou Yang and
Zhou Libo, Ai joined the Chinese Communist Party. During the 1930s, Ai wrote extensively on Marxist concepts, particularly
dialectical materialism. In the small tourist town of
Heshun,
Tengchong County, Yunnan, China, there is a small museum dedicated to Ai. It is based in his former house, where he lived for two years. It contains pictures, personal items and a statue of him in the yard of the compound. ==Secondary literature==