Chapter 25 Section 1 Nankai Middle School Principal Zhang Boling

After I left my hometown of Xiaoxishan when I was young, I often lived in the midst of illness, transfer of schools and disasters.Although there were happy days by the fireside in Nanjing, the birth of my younger sister and the happy faces of my parents all withered like summer flowers in a blink of an eye.My family followed the exiled students across half of China, and came to Chongqing from the southwest mountain road. As soon as we entered the urban area, five teachers and students from Zhongshan Middle School were killed by Japanese planes, and the threat of war and death followed us everywhere.For the next seven years, the bombing seemed to follow the rising and setting of the sun and never stopped.But Chongqing is the end of our exile. Sun Yat-sen Middle School traveled five hundred miles to settle down and return to school at Jingning Temple, the great temple in Ziliujing. pregnancy.

My father worked in the Northeast Association for the Restoration of the Ancestral House in Sidli, Chongqing (responsible for training the underground anti-Japanese work in the Northeast, funded by the government, and disbanded after the recovery of the Northeast in 1946), but the house was blown up soon after settling down.My father entrusted someone to find two bungalows outside Shapingba Town, one for home use and the other for the office of the association. Later, the editorial department of "Time and Tide" was also located here. After we left Nanjing for a full year and we traveled half of China, one morning in November 1938, my father took me by car from Shangqing Temple in Chongqing to send me to school.

We walked up the Jialing River and drove about 20 kilometers. Not long after passing Xiaolongkan, a group of reddish-brown buildings appeared in the distance on a loess dam, which was quite spectacular among the sparse trees—that is the Nankai of Shapingba. middle school.In the six years here, I have grown into a healthy person with a developed mind and established a lifelong positive character. After the Japanese occupied the Northeast, they used the Tianjin Japanese Concession as a base to actively extend their aggression to North China. For several years, Nankai Middle School and University in Tianjin held demonstrations to call for self-improvement and patriotic resistance against Japan.The principal, Mr. Zhang Boling (1876-1951), knew very well that the situation was critical and war was only a matter of time. Therefore, as early as 1936, he went to Sichuan to find land to establish a branch school, and the land was donated by the Shapingba gentry.Donations from all walks of life were used to build the school building, and 160 students were enrolled in the first year.After the Lugou Bridge war, Nankai was the first school to be bombed by the Japanese, and also the first

The school in the rear was rebuilt with the belief of long-term resistance.After the fall of Shanghai in 1937, the Nationalist government officially moved to the wartime capital Chongqing on December 1.Nankai Middle School was in the most difficult eight years of the Anti-Japanese War.Tens of thousands of young people have been educated, and almost everyone is an extension of Zhang Boling's spirit. Principal Zhang’s entrepreneurship depends on his strong patriotic spirit, and he is the embodiment of “Nankai Spirit” in the school song.During my six years of growing up, it left a very warm impression on me.He is very tall, about 180 centimeters, big and strong, not fat, with broad shoulders, wearing long robes and a pair of colored glasses, we can see tall and strong almost every day He is big and big, walking on the campus with a big chest.No matter how frustrating the frontline battle reports were, or how violent the Japanese bombing was, under the leadership of President Zhang, we firmly believed that China would not perish.

Think about how bitter his life was when he was a child 120 years ago, following his father who wandered all over the country to study in free schools!therefore.He knew the importance of education from an early age. At the age of thirteen, he was admitted to the Beiyang Naval Academy for official fees. He understood the ideals of the Enlightenment thinkers who founded the school: Yan Fu, Wu Guangjian and others of the Qing Dynasty Reform School and some young military officers who returned from studying in the UK introduced Western ideas. With Xinzhi, he hopes to build a powerful modern navy and avenge the shame of the country.This kind of ambition to strive for strength has affected his life.

The age of Principal Zhang in Beiyang Naval Academy was exactly the age I was in Nankai Middle School. I have been in school for six years, and the stories he told many times in the weekly meetings have become my lifelong memories. When he graduated from the Naval Academy in 1894, during the Sino-Japanese Sino-Japanese War of 1894, the Beiyang Navy was almost wiped out, and there was not even a single ship for students to practice on.A year later, he was reluctantly sent to the "Tongji Ship" as an intern. He actually witnessed the scene of the Sino-Japanese War in Weihaiwei being handed over from the victorious Japanese to the British.He watched the national flag change three times in the territorial waters of his country. First, the flag was cleared, then the Japanese flag was raised, and the British flag was changed to the next day.

In his later years, he recalled that time, "I was filled with grief and indignation, and I was deeply stimulated... Thinking that the country is so weak, if you don't want to be self-improving, how can you survive? The way to self-improvement lies in education." (Forty Years of Nankai School in 1944 Review)) He recalled angrily that "soldiers wore a waistcoat with the word "soldier" written on the front and the word "courage" written on the back. With a gun in his waist (a bong, used for smoking opium), he came out slowly and lowered the Yellow Dragon Banner (Qing Dynasty). The Xuanying army came out in a whole team, with neat steps. They were full of energy, and by comparison, victory or defeat can be seen."

This kind of shame made him deeply stimulated, and because he saw the lazy and ignorant ordinary people, who had no discipline and professionalism and did not know the national crisis, he thought that the only thing that could cheer up the people was education, teaching modern knowledge and patriotism.He resolutely left the navy and devoted himself to education. In 1908, he expanded his family hall to Tianjin Nankai (the donated school site is in the southwest corner of Tianjin, named Nankai) Middle School.Before the establishment of the school, he went to Japan twice to visit various schools, especially private schools. He was under 30 years old at the time, full of enthusiasm, and vowed to devote himself to educating the children of New China.

What is even more surprising is that in 1917, at the age of 41, he decided to study at Columbia University in the United States to study Western educational concepts.Many people advised him, "You have achieved great success, why go to study with those foreign children!" They even said, "You can afford to lose face, but we can't afford to lose it." He still went, studied hard, practiced, He has done many exchange activities, and Dewey, the master of experimentalism, is also his teacher.After returning to China, he founded Nankai University. At the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, the Japanese hated him for launching patriotic activities and bombing Nankai.At that time, Generalissimo Chiang publicly declared that Nankai had sacrificed for the country, and if there is China, there will be Nankai. "Nankai, Peking University and Tsinghua University in Peking were combined into the Southwest Associated University.

Kunming established a school and became the best university during the Anti-Japanese War. After the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Columbia University awarded President Zhang an honorary doctorate in 1946. In 1948, Hu Shi and eleven American scholars co-authored the book There Is Another China to celebrate his achievement at the age of 70.This book was compiled by Leighton Stuart, President of Yenching University, and published by Crown Press of Columbia University. It is translated as "A China with Other Expressions" in Chinese, which means that in the era of political and military turmoil, there is another China in the era of political and military turmoil through the spirit of Nankai. Progressive day by day, full of far-sighted ideals.

From 1904 when there were only 75 students until his death in 1951, President Zhang has been giving speeches with great passion, encouraging the ambition of "the country will not perish, there is me!", and promoting the ideal of saving the country through education , He talked about it for half a century! During those fifty years, the disasters in China took on various new features.External aggression and internal debauchery coexist.Anti-Japanese victory, Returning to his hometown of Tianjin from Chongqing, he was still suffering from old illness and calling for peace and cooperation to build China in the war between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.When he died at the age of seventy-five, the greatest consolation at the end of his life was seeing Nankai Middle School and University restored to their original location in Tianjin. The figure of Principal Zhang will always remain in the hearts of the students.During the eight years in Shapingba, he lived in the dormitory on campus. Every morning, he hung up his stick and went out for a walk. When he saw students studying by the side of the road, he would come to pat his shoulders, touch his head, and ask if he had enough clothes and enough food.The students in Nankai had to live on campus. In his mind, these children were entrusted to him by their parents and they had to be taken care of.He didn't know at that time that his hard work was not in vain. What he said was deeply remembered by tens of thousands of students scattered all over the world, and his torch was passed on in their respective fields, which will never die.