Chapter 48 Zhang Shenfu (Part 2): The Color of Truth

Until his later years, Zhang Shenfu still remembered the prison guards yelling his name viciously: "Zhang Songnian! Zhang Songnian!" From those days in 1936, he began to hate his own name. After he was released from prison, he no longer used it. Use your own words: Shen Fu. So few people associate him with a prominent name in Chinese philosophy: Zhang Dainian.The latter wrote in the article: "My brother Shenfu, formerly known as Songnian...was arrested and imprisoned by the reactionary authorities for participating in the '12.9' Movement as the commander-in-chief of the parade, and was later released on bail by General Feng Yuxiang."

Undoubtedly, this is a pretty honorable resume. On May 25, 1980, Zhang Shenfu recalled his role in the "December 9" Movement in 1935 to a visiting American female historian, Vera Schwarcz.He raised his head, facing the sunlight coming in through the curtains, and described how he "inadvertently" participated in this "spontaneous event". On December 9, the day of the student parade, Zhang Shenfu, Yao Keguang (Yao Yilin), a student from Tsinghua University, Sun Sunquan, the principal of the No. 1 Girls Middle School, and Guo Mingqiu, a student, went to the Xidanya North Café to drink tea together, forming a temporary Command.He just quietly sat upstairs with the three young men, watching the parade pass by peacefully, slowly marching towards Tiananmen Square.

In Shu Hengzhe's view, this fragment of Zhang Shenfu's memory is "black and white", which is very different from another kind of memory "with fiery red color". On May 26, 1983, Shu Hengzhe interviewed a party involved in the "December 9th" Movement in a huge conference hall in the Great Hall of the People. He was going to recall to her his role in the movement.Some newspaper reporters also came and took pictures around the old man. "Probably noticed the presence of reporters and the possible impact of his words on the future," Shu Hengzhe wrote, "He made a heroic description, and the whole picture was full of communist heroism: We organized this movement, and I and My wife is in charge of the leadership. My wife is from Hunan and was an early member of Chairman Mao’s Xinmin Society. On December 9, we led the demonstrators to start a big march, and the police chased us with water cannons. But we won..."

Shu Hengzhe listened to the client telling his story, the light from the camera made her unable to concentrate.She knew that the client had written countless times about his role in the May 4th Movement in 1919 and the December 9th Movement in 1935, and that his recollections flashed with many officially recognized heroes , these heroic colors are not in Zhang Shenfu's narrative.Unlike him, Zhang Shenfu was only willing to admit that he was a bystander, he was just unconsciously dragged into it by a spontaneous student demonstration. "He didn't think it was necessary to add police, water cannons and other thrilling plots."

Yu Hao, a retired Tsinghua teacher who pays close attention to the history of Tsinghua University, told the reporter that he consulted the "National Tsinghua University Journal" No. 707 dated December 23, 1935, which published a letter jointly signed by the presidents of six universities including Peking University and Tsinghua University. "After a few days of on-the-spot investigation," the principals told the students, "No girl was injured or fatally injured during the student demonstration in Beiping on the 9th. As for the rumors that there were student casualties at Tsinghua University in various schools in the city, it was also found to be untrue."

Combined with the memoirs of various Tsinghua old alumni he saw, Yu Hao began to question the long-accepted "December 9th" narrative.In his view, the statement that individual student leaders "heroes create the current situation" with their fearless spirit may not be so accurate. Regarding revolution, Zhang Shenfu once said this: "Revolution has been misunderstood by people. Revolution is a man-made and natural thing. Revolution is a last resort. But people think it is valuable. But people think it is famous." After seeing too many distorted historical narratives for various reasons, Zhang Shenfu was regarded as a truly valuable "survivor".He is one of the survivors of the founding of the Communist Party of China, one of the survivors of the "December 9th" movement, and one of the survivors of the pluralistic pattern that once existed in the Chinese ideological circle.So some people lamented: "This outstanding figure has been neglected in the political and ideological history of modern China, it is incredible!"

After Shu Hengzhe wrote the "Interview with Zhang Shenfu" titled "The time to tell the truth is running out", she once talked about the philosophy of history that guided her to complete the interview. She quoted such an appeal——History Scholars should stop didactic historiography and listen to survivors: "The historian is the doctor of memories, and it is his honor to heal wounds, real wounds. As a doctor, he must act regardless of medical theory , because the sick are sick. Therefore, historians should act under moral pressure to restore the memory of a people."