Yang organized many movements among peasants, labor, women, and students. After the National Revolution failed, Yang returned alone to Bancang to organize underground revolutions and lead fights against the Kuomintang (KMT) in Changsha, Pingjiang, and the borders of Xiangyin. Amid the great difficulties and dangers, Yang wrote many letters to her cousin Yang Kaiming, asking him to take good care of her children and mother if she met a sudden death. Because of the great distance and spare communication with Mao over the next three years, Yang often only saw news about her husband in the KMT's newspapers and worried greatly about his safety. In early 1928, Mao began a relationship with He Zizhen without ending his marriage with Yang Kaihui. Death In October 1930, the local KMT warlord He Jian captured Yang Kaihui and her son Mao Anying. Her captors wanted her to publicly renounce Mao Zedong and the CPC, but she refused to do so. Even under torture, she is reputed to have told her captors, "You could kill me as you like, you would never get anything from my mouth... Chopping off the head is like the passing of wind, death could frighten cowards, rather than our Communists... Even if the seas run dry and the rocks crumble, I would never break off relations with Mao Zedong"... "I prefer to die for the success of Mao's revolutionary career". Yang was executed in Changsha on 14 November 1930 at the age of 29. Her children with Mao Zedong were effectively orphaned, and were rediscovered years later. Mao Anying later died early in the Korean War, and Mao Anqing became a translator for the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China. Influence of Yang Kaihui's death on Mao Although he would have relationships with other women, Mao mourned Kaihui for the rest of his life. In summer 1937, he conversed with the American reporter Agnes Smedley, reciting to her a poem that he had written in memory of Kaihui. In spring 1957, Li Shuyi, a friend and comrade of Mao and Yang's, wrote a poem in memory of her own husband, Liu Chih-hsün, a member of the Red Army who had been killed in 1933. Sending her poem to Mao, he responded by composing his own poem commemorating both Liu and Kaihui, titled "The Immortals", which he would subsequently publish: The allusion to poplar trees is a reference