Robinson became Li Dazhao’s teacher in Tokyo, who would later become the co-founder of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.
As a class assignment during 1914-15, Li Dazhao wrote his autobiography by hand and gave it to Robinson. Robinson was struck by Li’s talent and ambition, and kept the handwritten autobiography carefully for the next 50 years. Before his death in 1964, Robinson passed it to his daughter, Marianne Maloney, with instructions that the family should return it to Li Dazhao’s family in China whenever they had the chance.
