Yang Changji, also known as Huaizhong, courtesy name Huasheng, was a native of Changsha County, Hunan, an ethicist and educator. He went to Japan and the UK to study. He cared about a group of progressive young people such as Mao Zedong, Cai Hesen, and Xiao Zisheng, and encouraged them to work hard and establish a correct outlook on life, which eventually led to the establishment of the Xinmin Society. When he was a professor at Peking University, he assisted Cai Hesen and others in raising travel expenses for work-study studies in France, and introduced Mao Zedong to work in the Peking University library. He expressed his ambition with the poem "I want to plant big trees to support the sky." He has written articles such as "Encouraging Learning" and translated books such as "History of Western Ethics". His two favorite students: Cai Hesen and Mao Zedong realized his ambition of "planting big trees to support the sky".