During her underground work in Changsha was when she met
Mao Zetan, the younger brother of Mao Zedong. In the autumn of 1925, Mao Zetan went to
Guangzhou as part of underground communist work and in July of the following year, Zhou and her mother also went to Guangzhou where Zhou met Mao Zedong. In the spring of 1928, she was arrested by the Kuomintang and while in prison, she remained steadfast despite threats and torture, and her son was placed in a prison clinic to die. After several months, Zhou's mother managed to retrieve Mao Chuxiong and place him under her care. In 1930, Zhou was freed from prison after Red Army unit led by General
Peng Dehuai entered Changsha. After being freed from prison, she briefly stayed in Changsha before joining Peng's army and then followed the army to the
Jiangxi Soviet. There, she was arranged to study at the Military and Political School of the Third Army. After graduation, she was assigned to the political department of the Sixteenth Army to do propaganda work. In October 1934, the Red Army left Jiangxi as part of
Long March while Zhou stayed in Jiangxi and engaged in guerrilla warfare at the
Luoxiao Mountains. In the spring of 1935, during a guerrilla operation in
Lianhua County in Jiangxi, she lost contact with the troops and was captured by local Kuomintang forces. However, she was quietly released during her transfer to a district office. In the winter of 1936, Zhou Wennan lost contact with the CCP and returned to Changsha where she lived in seclusion. In the winter of 1937, the CCP discovered her whereabouts and arranged for her to work in the CCP Hunan Provincial Working Committee. Her mother and son were moved to
Shaoshan. Soon after, in
Yan'an, Mao Zedong learned about Zhou's conditions and wrote a letter to a relative, asking him to pass it on to Zhou. In the letter, he urged her to travel to Yan'an to study and to bring 20 silver dollars funded by the CCP for travel expenses. In 1940, after saying goodbye to her mother and son, Zhou went to Yan'an with
Zhou Enlai through the
Eighth Route Army office in
Chongqing. At Yan'an, she was assigned to work as a teacher at the Central Nursery School. During this time, she gradually fell in love with Wang Yingqiao who worked with her. In order to remarry, Zhou had to request permission to do so from Mao Zedong and Mao granted her permission on the condition that Zhou would remember his brother Mao Zetan. In 1942, Wang and Zhou married. In 1943, Zhou was transferred to
Suide Experimental Primary School to continue her work as teacher. Following the end of the
Second Sino-Japanese War after
Japan surrendered in 1945, she and her husband went to
Northeast China to continue with their communist underground work. At that time, Zhou never knew the fate of her son and it was not until 1984 with the help of Revolutionary History Editorial Committee of the
Henan-
Hubei-
Shaanxi Border Region, the Party History Office of
Shangluo City and the Ningshan County Party Committee that the fate of Mao Chuxiong was uncovered. ==Later life==