Chapter 10 Burying the graves of the ancestors and changing customs

One evening before the Spring Festival in 1965, Premier Zhou Enlai, who was busy, called his nephew Er Cui, who was a pilot in a certain air force unit, and was about to go home to visit relatives, and solemnly told him: You are a member of the Communist Party, go home for the New Year Therefore, we must take the lead in destroying the old and establishing the new, changing customs and customs, and leading the whole family to celebrate a revolutionary Spring Festival.I am now assigning you a "special task": when you go back this time, you have to flatten the ancestral grave at home and hand over the cemetery to collective cultivation.After finishing this matter, we will celebrate the new year.

As with the former residence, Premier Zhou Enlai has repeatedly expressed clear opinions on the handling of the ancestral graves.As early as the spring of 1953, Zhou Enlai had done ideological work for his aunt Zhou Batai in Beijing, and when he sent guard Wang Yubo to escort the eighth aunt back to Huai'an, he also asked Wang Yubo to convey his opinion on the handling of the ancestral cemetery to the county party committee: "There are A few acres of old cemetery can be cultivated collectively by the local people. If those burial mounds hinder farming, they can be flattened.” Later, the county party committee received a letter from Premier Zhou Enlai, reiterating that the coffin of his ancestral tomb “please use the deep burial method immediately.” ", and then the cemetery will be handed over to the public.In 1958, Deputy County Magistrate Wang Ruxiang went to Beijing, and in 1960, Liu Bingheng, member of the Standing Committee of the County Party Committee, went to Beijing. When reporting to Premier Zhou Enlai on the work in his hometown, Premier Zhou also mentioned the issue of the ancestral grave.Every time Premier Zhou’s opinions were discussed at the Standing Committee of the County Party Committee, almost every time there was a unanimous opinion: this way, not only the masses but also the party members would not be able to understand it, and even the county party committee members would not be able to figure it out.Could it be that the increase in agricultural production in Huai'an County is so short of a cemetery?Can't flat!It is also willing to be criticized; this is the wish of the people.Premier Zhou Enlai knew very well that there was a lot of "resistance" to the removal of the ancestral graves. In the autumn of 1964, he emphasized to his relatives in Beijing that "the problem of the cemetery must be resolved."Therefore, this time he wants to explain the truth to Ercui patiently: our country has too little arable land.When a person dies, he stops working and still occupies a piece of land. This is a manifestation of the concept of private ownership.Flattening the ancestral graves not only expands the area of ​​cultivated land, but is also a revolution that destroys old customs and establishes new styles.To do a good job in this matter, it cannot be simplified. You must do your mother’s work well, do a good job in the work of the county party committee, and do a good job in the work of the local people.Then, Premier Zhou Enlai explained some specific requirements to Ercui: the coffin should be sunk below one meter in the ground so as not to affect the mechanical farming; the cemetery should be used collectively;Zhou Ercui knew the weight of this "special task" entrusted to him by his uncle, and expressed his position to his uncle without hesitation: "I promise to complete the task!"

After Er Cui returned to Huai'an, he first persuaded his mother Tao Hua with his brother and sister-in-law, and unified the ideological understanding in the family.In order to persuade the comrades of the county party committee, Zhou Ercui also specifically mentioned the details that Premier Zhou sent people to Chongqing to deal with his father's cemetery: Zhou Enlai's father, Zhou Shaogang, was a small civil servant in the old society. He died in Chongqing in 1942 due to illness. .After liberation, the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee buried his coffin in the Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs.After Zhou Enlai knew about it, he asked them to move out the coffin immediately.The Chongqing Municipal Party Committee considered that Zhou Enlai's father had done work that was beneficial to the revolution, and since he had been buried in the cemetery, he did not move out.In 1964, Zhou Enlai sent a comrade in charge of the State Council Office to Chongqing to supervise the Chongqing Municipal Party Committee to carry out this matter according to his own intention. He moved Zhou Shaogang's coffin from the Cemetery of Revolutionary Martyrs and buried it in a remote hillside. superior.According to Zhou Enlai's repeated instructions, no tombstone was erected.Later, Zhou Enlai took the lead in cremating the remains of his father and Deng Yingchao's mother, and buried the ashes deeply in jars.When Zhou Ercui introduced these details, the eyes of the county party secretary and standing committee members were all filled with tears. They were deeply moved by the revolutionary spirit of Premier Zhou who took the lead in changing customs and implementing the reform of the funeral system, and finally made a decision: follow Premier Zhou instructed the office to send cadres to assist Ercui to go to the countryside to persuade and mobilize the masses, and to get this matter done before the Spring Festival.On Lunar New Year's Eve, Zhou Ercui and his sister-in-law Sun Guiyun, accompanied by a cadre of the county party committee, invited more than 30 neighbors, carrying "oil gourds" and digging tools, to the cemetery to bury the coffin.

Zhou's ancestral cemetery is located in the Xiazhuang Formation of Zhakou Village in the eastern suburb of Huai'an County, covering an area of ​​less than one mu.This ancestral cemetery was bought by Zhou Enlai's grandfather Zhou Panlong when he moved from Shaoxing to the northern Jiangsu area in the middle of the 19th century as an official.There are seven tombs here, where the remains of thirteen relatives, including Zhou Enlai's grandparents, stepparents, biological mother, and eighth aunt, are buried. The special task of burying the coffin and leveling the grave was completed without compromise before the Spring Festival, and Premier Zhou Enlai was very satisfied.Within a few days, he sent 70 yuan to the production team, which was used to pay the wages of the laborers who buried the grave and the compensation for a small piece of young crop that was trampled on.After that, due to Zhou Enlai's repeated insistence, it took more setbacks and more ideological work, and finally the tomb of his great-grandfather Zhou Qiaoshui in Shaoxing was finally buried.

Zhou Enlai's glorious deeds in dealing with the issue of ancestral burials are related to his broad and selfless revolutionary mind and proletarian outlook on life and death.As early as 1922, Zhou Enlai, a young man, wrote a vernacular poem "Life and Death" in which he wrote: "A heroic death is a life of mediocrity. If you are greedy for life and afraid of death, why do you value death and despise life!  … …Life and death have been understood, if you work hard to live, and you still have to work hard to die, then you will say goodbye forever, so what is it?” In the 1960s, Zhou Enlai said many times: China’s treatment of the dead is all burials, and the graves are erected. monument.In the 1950s, under the initiative of Chairman Mao and the Party Central Committee, cremation was implemented.From burial to cremation, this is a revolution, a revolution against thousands of years of old customs in China; from keeping ashes in cremation to not keeping ashes, this is another revolution, a revolution that completely breaks with the old traditional concepts!He not only said so, but also made an oath with Comrade Deng Yingchao to supervise each other's implementation.In accordance with Comrade Zhou Enlai's last words, his ashes were evacuated to the rivers and land of the motherland.This kind of Zhou Enlai's spirit of "can really penetrate life and death. Live for the people, and death is more important than mountains" has been carried forward in the new era.Zhou Enlai's spirit of completely breaking with traditional customs on the issue of life, death and burial has set a new trend for a generation and is a model for all.Huai'an, the hometown of Zhou Enlai, has maintained a 100% cremation rate for 12 consecutive years since it took the lead in the province's funeral reform in 1984, becoming an advanced county (city) in Jiangsu Province's funeral reform.