Chapter 9 Reflections after reading "Revisiting the Past 1942"——Tian Xiaoming

1. There is no hope for a nation that only knows how to eat its own family. I read a novel a few days ago—by Liu Zhenyun.In it, he told the story of the drought in Henan in 1942.This novel quoted some news reports at that time, so that we can understand the objective situation at that time. Those news reports mentioned the situation of cannibalism at that time.The drought caused the crops to fail, and people were so hungry that they began to eat people.Some adults eat their own children.Among some people who can't bear to eat their own family members, there are also cases of changing sons and eating, and changing wives and eating.Liu Zhenyun said: A nation that only knows how to eat its own family has no hope.

The inertia of the Chinese is really too great.When they have no food to eat, they eat vegetables, when they have no vegetables, they eat bran, when they have no bran, they eat dirt, when they can't stand eating dirt, they eat people, and they dare not eat other people's people. I have to eat my own family, and I still can't bear to eat my own family, so I can change it with another person who can't bear to eat my own family but wants to eat others.This process is called "didling along".It's a constant process of second best.Go back until you can no longer go back.In this process, people who are struggling to survive can never rush forward.

Once a person in a difficult situation abandons the lifestyle of surviving, he will face two ways to get out of the difficult situation: one is rational and the other is irrational.What is rational is to use political means, economic means, and technological means to solve problems.What is irrational is to steal, rob, kill, and set fire.People who are hungry cannot take either of these two roads, so Liu Zhenyun said that such a nation has no hope. The Chinese nation is suffering a lot.For more than 2,000 years, people have been living on an ignoble existence for most of the time.The Reform Movement of 1898 more than a hundred years ago really opened the door to reform.More than a hundred years have passed, who dares to say that China has completely completed the reform?However, we are not far from success.The economic foundation upon which the bureaucracy rests is crumbling.As long as we can establish a democratic political system, we have laid the foundation for reform.

2. People who have no use value can only rely on democracy to get relief. The Henan disaster area in 1942 was under the jurisdiction of the Chiang Kai-shek government.Chiang Kai-shek did not provide enough food to the victims.However, the Japanese army later gave some of its own rations to the victims, so that these people temporarily survived the difficulties.The Henan people who were about to starve to death ate Japanese food and immediately became hostile to the Kuomintang army.During the Battle of Henan, farmers fought against the Kuomintang army with farm tools and sticks. Why did the Japanese save the disaster victims in China?Is it moved out of compassion, or is it trying to buy people's hearts with food?In the absence of real evidence, the vast majority of Chinese people will think that the purpose of the Japanese to save people is to buy people's hearts, which is beneficial to the Henan campaign they launched, which means that the Henan people are being used of.

At this time, we can also ask another question: Why didn't Chiang Kai-shek use grain to buy Henan people?This utilization is also beneficial to their military operations. A person only uses others when he feels that others are of value.He will not use a stone, because a stone has no ability to move.Chiang Kai-shek believed that ordinary people in China were worthless, so he didn't use them.The rulers of all ages in China did not feel that the common people were of any value.They call the common people fools.They yell at the common people at every turn, and never regard the common people as their equals.Democracy will change that.Therefore, we call for democracy and strive for democratic politics.