Zhang Zhizhong
In the 1930s Tao wrote children's literature, started the Life Education Association, and started a Work Study Movement. He was in the United States when war with Japan broke out in 1937, but returned to China, where he was made a member of the People's Political Council. In 1939, he moved to Beibei, just outside Chongqing, to found the Chongqing Yucai Middle School (School for Nourishing Talent). Tao received monthly stipends from Feng Yuxiang and Zhang Zhizhong, both fellow Anhui natives. A leader of one of the two CCP cells at Tao's school later recalled that Tao and his patron, Feng gave help to party workers when they were hunted by the secret police, and that Tao professed interest in Mao Zedong's "On New Democracy." One of the pupils at the school was Li Peng, the adopted son of Zhou Enlai and future premier of China.