Chapter 30 "Break and Forward" and "Life Trilogy" - Fission and Transformation of the Educated Youth Group

The long poem "Break and Forward" was circulated in Xi'an, Guangzhou, Shanghai and other places in 1972, and it was still famous in Shanghai until 1975. The whole poem "Break and Forward" is as long as 700 lines, which is the longest "underground poetry" in the "Cultural Revolution".The life scenes and discussion topics involved in the content of his poems were all familiar to the educated youth in 1972, reflecting the ideological conflicts and debates among the educated youth (especially the children of cadres) at that time. Another long poem "Life Trilogy" is very similar to the continuation of "Break and Forward".This poem was widely circulated in Shanghai in the spring of 1974, and in March 1976, this poem and "Break and Advance" were still circulated in Shanghai in parallel.

To understand poems such as "Break and Advance", one must be clear about the background of this poem.Around the movement of educated youths to go to the countryside, since 1969, a series of fierce ideological struggles and theoretical debates have been launched within the educated youth group, resulting in conflicts, disintegration and reorganization of the circle of friends. Combining the two long poems "Break and Advance" (1972) and "Life Trilogy" (composed in the spring of 1974) with the shock wave of Zhong Zhimin in 1974 and the public debate between Chunhuang Yiding and Liu Ning in 1976, we can get a glimpse of the group of educated youth Internal division and metamorphosis process.

In 1974, Zhong Zhimin, a son of a high-ranking cadre who joined the army through the back door, requested to be discharged from the army. After his deeds of returning to rural Jiangxi and jumping in the queue were published in the newspapers, a "storm" hit, and the children of cadres in the army suddenly boiled over.Because the vast majority of them are backdoor soldiers.Rumors are flying all over the sky, rumors that they will be sent back to the countryside.Some people have reported to their superiors and applied for discharge from the army. They were regarded as "criticizing forests and Confucius" and were sent back to the countryside wearing red and hanging colors.The children of cadres in the army split into two factions, and they used the short intervals of life in the military camp to get together and have heated debates behind closed doors.The bell-supporting faction and the bell-criticizing faction argued to the end that "the way is different and they do not conspire with each other", they parted ways, and never communicated with each other again.

Of course, Zhong Shengmin's "feat" cannot arouse goodwill among the "common people" educated youth who have been "rooted" in the countryside.It is said that in 1974, an educated youth who jumped in the queue in Heilongjiang picked up a car to go home. On the train, I heard that the famous Lin Hong (after Zhong Zhimin, an advanced figure who voluntarily asked to be discharged from the army and went to the place where Jin Xunhua jumped in to work in agriculture) also boarded this train. Feeling angry, he went to discuss with Lin Hong.The two debated from the afternoon to the middle of the night in the aisle of the carriage, but it turned out that the male educated youth convincingly conceded defeat, got off the train that night excitedly, and returned to the production team.It can be seen from this that the "Zhigen" school had a strong appeal at that time, and it was relatively systematic in theory. There was still a large market among educated youths, and many educated youths were forced by the environment and were willing to identify with it emotionally.

During the "Cultural Revolution", the most famous debate among educated youths was the "Open Letter" between Huang Yiding and Liu Ning. Huang Yiding and Liu Ning grew up together, from kindergarten to elementary school, then to middle school, and then to the Northeast Construction Corps.After Huang Yiding returned to Beijing at the end of 1975, entrusted by Liu Ning's mother, he wrote a letter to Liu Ning, saying: "Your mother is always sad when she thinks that your health is not good, so I hope you can come back. The matter is being worked on, and it is not very sure whether it will be successful, but after submitting the application this time, it is generally not blocked, just wait patiently. After you get the notice, don’t hesitate, just come back, it’s been six or seven years, I’m worthy of the party, come back to Beijing Start a new life."

Liu Ning is a member of the Propaganda Team of the 54th Corps of the Corps. He has been demanding progress for a long time. In 1975, he was also named an advanced youth.At that time, the 54th regiment was performing the play "Challenge" based on the deeds of Gao Chonghui, an educated youth of the Corps, who took root in the frontier, with Liu Ning playing the leading role.Liu Ning wrote back to Huang Yiding: "I will definitely not go back. No matter what I do at home, I will not leave when the notice comes. The test Comrade Gao Chonghui faced back then will soon appear in front of me. I want to learn from him."

The words I gave to the comrades who acted on the same stage and are also retiring for them at home are: Share with Comrade Wang Shuqin: If we believe that the cause of communism will surely win, then let us tie ourselves closely to this cause.Sprinkle all our blood on that beautiful garden.let us go. Share with Comrade Tan Xia: The red clouds will eventually spread all over the world, and that red clouds are dyed with the blood of tens of millions of communists, including a piece donated by the third generation of our Communist Party of China.definitely is.This is my oath. Liu Ning severely criticized Huang Yiding's thoughts and emotions in his reply letter.

After receiving Liu Ning's reply, Huang Yiding wrote another long letter full of contradictions to Liu Ning.He didn't know that Liu Ning had already handed over a copy of his reply letter to the organization as a thought report.In the second letter, Huang Yiding expressed doubts about "taking root" and "learning from Dazhai", and said: "The nature of human thinking is skeptical." Regarding Liu Ning's severe criticism, Huang Yiding said: Finally, on the issue of grounding... No matter what reasons I can offer to justify my "escape", I can't avoid the core of the matter: I am so hopelessly reluctant to part with the personal benefits I have or will get!When I saw (I was reading "Martyrs' Poems") that revolutionary martyrs were imprisoned again because they refused to betray the revolution, I felt how humble and ugly my soul was.From now on, what face do I have to talk about "ideals"! ... I hope to always watch you hold the torch of the times and move forward bravely.As I once said in a letter to someone: "You are in a remote and backward country, but you are the most heroic vanguard of your time. But be careful! If one day you throw this fire away, see how I will laugh at you !"

Huang Yiding's letter was written with a bleeding heart, reflecting the strong contradictions in his heart and the deep pain he endured.This is the first step for an educated youth who once had an ideal, to doubt and self-denial. He feels that he has nothing and his future is unpredictable, and his spiritual world begins to fall apart. Originally, the debate, criticism and counter-criticism between Huang Yiding and Liu Ning was normal and often happened among educated youth friends at that time.However, after Liu Ning handed in the letter as an ideological report, the regiment party committee reported it to his superiors as a "new trend of class struggle". The situation escalated. Xie Jingyi saw it and thought it was a "counterattack" The Beijing Daily was ordered to publish good materials about "rightist overturning the verdict" and "returning to the city".So far, Huang Yiding and Liu Ning have been involuntarily controlled and commanded by others.

This is the first time the quarrel among the educated youth has been made public. "Beijing Daily" published the first correspondence between Huang and Liu on April 26, 1976 with the headline: "Two Correspondences Confronting".And published editor's note: Huang and Liu's correspondence reflected that the educated youth went to the countryside and insisted on the road of combining with workers and peasants, and there was a fierce struggle between two classes, two lines, and two ideologies.Liu Ning's reply letter was "clear and majestic", which carried forward the anti-trend revolutionary spirit of the Red Guards.

After the "Beijing Daily" published the letters of Liu and Huang, the Party Committee of the 54th Corps of the Corps organized a discussion among the educated youths of the Corps, using Liu Ning as an example to establish a "rooted" idea.Liu Ning joined the Communist Party of China in March 1976 and returned to Beijing as an advanced model. At this time, he had a heavy responsibility on his shoulders.The Political Department and the Organization Department of the Corps also came to look for Huang Yiding, intending to ask him to return to the Corps.Every week, Huang Yiding went to the "Beijing Daily" several times to "talk about thoughts", sometimes once a day, and the pressure became more and more intense.Liu Ning also "helped" Huang Yiding a few times in Beijing, but there was a big gap between the two, and it was no longer a conversation between friends. Huang Yiding felt that the two could not talk normally. Some classmates and educated youth friends persuaded Liu Ning at the risk of being criticized and being a negative example, but Liu Ning pushed them back.For Liu Ning's second letter, the draft was changed several times, and the article was made bigger. Before it was published, I showed it to Huang Yiding, thinking that he would be educated and change his past.Huang Yiding found that Liu Ning sincerely believed in all these theories and really took root in the frontier.How could Liu Ning be "free" at this moment?A discussion among friends was finally "sublimated" and "distorted" into this form, which caused the so-called "skeptic" Huang Yiding to truly have comprehensive doubts. Liu Ning's second reply letter was published in "Beijing Daily" on August 26, 1976: "You are by no means unworthy of ideals, as you say. You do have ideals, but not proletarian ideals, but petty bourgeois ideals. This ideal stems from your bourgeois' realistic outlook on life ’, the core is individualism.” You no longer have "a bit of a smell of Marxism" in you. You have become a "bourgeois echoer" and are on the verge of "falling into the revisionist and bourgeois quagmire." "Where to transform depends on your attitude towards mistakes." Doctrine is beckoning to you, and the bourgeoisie is applauding it! Comrade Huang Yiding, it’s time to wake up and be vigilant!” This public debate between Huang Yiding, a "skeptical faction" and "liberal fighter," and Liu Ning, a "rooted faction," aroused strong repercussions among the educated youth. This "controversy" is unfair in many respects. Huang Yiding's letter is an excerpt, and the second letter has four to five thousand words in the original text, but only an excerpt of less than 2,500 words.Behind Liu Ning, there was obviously a writing team, and the reply letter published in full was more than 10,000 words long. Huang Yiding's "skepticism" of "hair removal" is weak, but it still gives people a taste of joy, while Liu Ning is full of empty words, infinitely high-spirited, driving his friends into "dangerous situations", which makes the educated youth feel disgusted.Huang Yiding's letter style is completely the expression of friends and circles, and there is no lack of sincerity.However, Liu Ning's letters (mainly the second letter) do not use the expression and language habits of the educated youth, but are completely Yao Wenyuan's language and style. This "controversy" has fully exposed how easy it is for some "rooted" advanced models to be manipulated and distorted.One side showed domineering and lack of human touch, while the other side split from the grounded faction showed sincerity, warmth and painful introspection and thinking. The "controversy" ended with Huang Yiding's self-criticism article "My Understanding and Criticism of "Skepticism"".In the article, Huang Yiding claimed that he had received a "deep education" and began to "severe introspection", "seeing the fierce struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat for the youth", and criticized and exposed the five deceiving tactics of "skepticism".This kind of ending was already expected. The author of the long poem "Break and Advance" is Wang Jing, an old Red Guard in Beijing 47 Middle School, and the poem has been passed down anonymously.This poem has a lot in common with Huang and Liu's "Controversy". Both sides of the "dialogue" are old friends, classmates, and comrades-in-arms, and they are both "rooted factions".Huang Yiding is an "echo of the bourgeoisie" who "has no smell of Marxism", while in "Break and Forward" he is a "parasite" and "evil" "big fly".The poet, like Liu Ning, has inherited many theories and language styles of the Red Guards.The difference between the two is that the debate in the poem is carried out within the educated youth circle. This long poem is based on the structure of an educated youth returning from jumping the queue in the countryside, and an old friend's mutual "dialogue" by the fireside in the city. This is a "tit for tat" conversation.The two of them narrated their own lives and different ideal pursuits in the past few years.One side is earnestly persuading and educating, while the other side is self-satisfied and stubborn, and the ending is: a breakup. In the poem, one party advises: Leaving the bustling neon lights of Kyoto to tough places to develop Survive struggle! On the other hand, they indulged in the "spiritual opium" of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—— ah tolstoy Gogol Alexandre Dumas Stendhal Balzac... They follow me day and night; ah sohail Duke of Merikin Anna Karenina Eugene Onegin... How many nights are short and the days are long with me. One party reminded him that "three years ago" you had Heroic and heroic, with yellow uniforms and red armbands, at the head of the Jinshui Bridge, on Chang'an Avenue... The other side said: friend: so what today Today is also "heroic and heroic" on this head With the meticulous care of the "No. 1 Xidan" barber this cashmere scarf can help me high This snowflake jazz suit I cut off the lovely swallowtail keep it in the collar of my china coat exposing the noble stripes The line of "five-inch" trouser legs that I am in my youth although in winter I only wear a pair of fleece pants But this elegant trouser line ironed like a blade It makes me "invincible" in the crowd Shoes, look! it pointed it's flat it warps it's bright Another 120,000-point "OK" Who can imitate? This friend also boasted that in the "elegant sofa living room", the fragrance was permeating, causing "many girls to fall at my feet, and how many troubles were caused, met each other with swords drawn, and had a big fight..." Determined to "bring A finite life, devoted to infinite enjoyment." So when "death comes", "happily covered with alcohol / tobacco and style / instead of throwing / like the pauper / into its skeletal mud pit .” There is a question and answer in the poem: "Do you love your country?" "I love the world!" "You wish to continue "Do you want to inherit the business started by our ancestors?" "I only see the fate of my ancestors today!" "Do you love our emerging age?" "I just love to uncover the ups and downs of history." "Are you still ready for a revolution?" "I long only for the bloody madness of war!" "what do you need?" "The worker's wages, the peasant's liberty, "The life of a student, the mind of a small bourgeoisie." When one party sternly declares that the other is hopeless, declares that he is: The maggots that live in our bodies, From then on, you and I can no longer be friends and comrades, and we can no longer grow together. The other party said in a mocking tone indifferently: That being the case Why do you pull me, talk earnestly He viciously declares: no matter my current life Or entered the prison of desperation still die in sin I shall all be ugly— but free endlessly happy-- A big fly! At the end of the long poem, the poet announces that he has broken with his old friends, parted ways, and then continues to "forward". "Forward" is the second major theme of this long poem. ah dear comrade three years What to do and what to do with this generation of youth How creepy and shocking! The poet recalled his childhood—— their names Write down the step by step mileage of the revolution They are called: Dongjin Nan Zheng go north Their name is: Bayi eleven east. He recalled the "Cultural Revolution" Red Guard Movement—— thunder in june storm in august A series of journeys! And looking into the world: how many mountains Can't bury the dead black people Filled the top of the Rocky Mountain. In the end, the poet said: He did not hesitate to "stain the water of Sanyang with blood / buried Wuzhou Mountain", and vowed to "level down the top of the White House / focus on the Lenin lamp." The spread of this poem is partly because he learned from satirical poetry.It is the only satirical poem seen in underground poetry. The old friend "Big Fly" mixed with the children of the "Four Types of Elements" and the overthrown capitalist roaders, read the "Yellow Book", cursed the "Cultural Revolution", and made the "new era pioneers" who came back from "remote villages"— —The poet was extremely astonished and could not agree.This "break" is quite complete, and the two sides cannot reconcile.However, the poet did not publish this kind of internal contradiction in the newspaper to force the other party to "return to the shore". "And Jiang Qing.Instead, use the form of poetry to criticize, curse, satirize, and mock according to the rules among the educated youth and among friends. From 1973 to 1974, among the educated youth, they also debated "Couple", "theory of family background", and "43 faction" and "44 faction" as in the early days of the movement, splitting into different groups of ideological factions. After three years of going to the countryside, most of the educated youth who went to the countryside have a serious sense of frustration and pain. "Break and Forward" simply summarizes all kinds of strange phenomena and practical problems encountered in the past three years into one conclusion: "In the struggle, you find life. In the struggle, you find eternal life." This simple "struggle "Prescriptions, of course, do not solve any problems.However, for the group of sent-down educated youths, abandoning their "flags" and "slogans," they will be penniless. That would be an extremely terrible situation, and they dare not even think about it.The only feasible thing seems to be to stick to it, and hope, look forward to, wait, stick to it, and strive to continuously sublimate yourself to cope with the increasingly severe reality.For the educated youth group, self-motivation, self-affirmation, and self-sublimation have become an urgent need.This is the profound ideological background for the creation and spread of the poem "Break and Forward". The poem "Break and Forward" ends: we will raise the red flag high forever revolution Be the Red Guards that completely bury the old world A faithful and unrepentant— red guards red!red!red! As long as the integrity of this ideal is preserved, "loyalty without regret" can avoid the rupture of the inner world, fully affirm the value of self-sacrifice, and become a spiritually rich person. The author of the long poem "Life Trilogy" is Yang Dongping from Shanghai Middle School.The poem was circulated anonymously.The poem describes the inner activities of an educated youth on the side of the Northeast Corps who returned to the city to visit his family.The trilogy consists of three parts: the city - on the train - the Great Northern Wilderness. The second part may have been written by the author on his way back to the Corps. "I can't sleep, I don't want to sleep / I can't cry, I don't want to cry / Ten thousand goddesses are dancing, / I can only record my thoughts calmly and faithfully." The whole poem is like a long inner monologue, whispering in the night. The author reveals his deep nostalgia for his hometown and city. (In "Break and Forward", the city is just a hotbed of evil.) "Farewell, our paradise/Tenderness, friendship/Drip talk, Girls' songs and laughter,/Poetry and waves of love." However, the author believes that this is nothing more than: "The sea of ​​intellectual minds / There will always be foaming algae" This "is not the permanent destination of soldiers." House/bread, milk/that's an ugly perversion of the bourgeoisie." Although this poem still repeats the empty high-pitched tone, it is difficult to suppress the sadness, hesitation, doubt, and bewilderment in the heart. life for us forever a mystery I don't know who it is Steering our destiny-- Oh, no! In this solemn moment, How wrong to think about these things, Can you still hesitate now? However, from the beginning to the end of the "Life Trilogy", there is sadness, desolation and confusion between the lines. This is a poem full of contradictions and sadness: My feet are stained with the soil of my hometown The bright moon illuminates the night road for eight thousand miles The author seems to break away from the extreme left thinking pattern in an instant, standing in a confused blank spot, "the moonlight radiates light and distant light / the glorious memory is like in the last century." The author "seems to see the other side of the sea / and can't help but lack confidence." Finally, the author set foot on the land of the Northeast, surrounded by a world of ice and snow, "the air at minus 30 degrees / like thick smoke, like strong wine", he "surrounded by fellow villagers in black and colleagues in green uniforms. "The harsh reality was immediately placed in front of him: This is my "turbulent distance" Hometown, battlefield. I'm going to be on this land again Breathe, grow... I stubbornly search ahead, and the unseen power... The new year lay before my eyes, Bitter and strong. The earth is silent white snow ... This is a long poem full of sadness and confusion.It delicately reflects the vacillation and doubts of the educated youth in the process of spiritual transformation.It made us realize how long, tortuous, and painful the mental journey of the educated youth in the era of "going to the mountains and going to the countryside" was.