Chapter 54 Section 4 Student Movement

The victory of the Anti-Japanese War was achieved by China's eight years of blood and tears, but the sudden arrival of the atomic bomb caught the government by surprise, and the expectations brought by the word "victory" were not immediately realized. .Beginning in North China, the Communist Party has rapidly expanded behind the front lines with the power of the Turkish Communist Party and rural propaganda. It has a strong infiltration and persuasion charm for intellectuals who are dissatisfied with the status quo and full of enthusiasm for reform.Three months after the victory, on November 29th, students from Southwest Associated University, Yunnan University and other schools in Kunming "Jianjin" launched a student uprising in the name of opposing the civil war and U.S. military interference in internal affairs. Some radicals threw grenades and injured students Thirteen people.Four people were killed.The professor decided to strike. Dozens of people issued letters to all walks of life, sympathizing with the anti-civil war students. Classes did not resume until December 17.

Student protests spread across universities across the country. From 1946 to 1948, university campuses were full of political turmoil and clamor. In 1949, the Communist Party took over the country. For the next 40 years, university education in mainland China became a political tool. Academic delivery and professional standards are on the verge of cutting off. Among the student movements I experienced personally, the most influential one was Professor Wen Yiduo (1899-1946) of Southwest Associated University.He is a famous poet.His time-sensitive work "Dead Water" and the funeral song "Maybe" mourning the death of a young girl were the works that young literary and artistic youths contended for. I can still remember the full text of the sixteen lines of "Maybe", and I am still very moved:

Maybe you're really tired from crying, maybe, maybe you need to sleep Then tell the nightingale not to cough, Frogs don't honk, bats don't fly. Don't let the sun dazzle your eyelids, Don't allow the breeze to brush your eyebrows, No one can wake you up, Hold an umbrella in the shade of the pine to protect you from sleeping. Maybe you listen to this earthworm turning mud, Listen to the roots of this grass absorbing water, Maybe you listen to music like this, More beautiful than that cursing voice. Then close your eyelids first, I'll let you sleep, I'll let you sleep

I lightly cover you with loess, I told the paper money to fly slowly. Wen Yiduo has literary talent since childhood.At the age of thirteen, he was admitted to Tsinghua School, the predecessor of Tsinghua University, from his hometown of Hubei. After completing middle school and university courses, he also laid a foundation in Western learning.He has strong patriotism, participated in the "May 4th Movement", and organized the "Dajiang Society" with his classmates when he was studying art in the United States.Pursue the nationalism of Chinese culture.After returning to China, he engaged in art education and actively participated in cultural activities. His rich poems made him a famous poet.At the beginning of the Anti-Japanese War, he and students from Tsinghua University, Peking University, and Nankai University trekked from Hunan to the newly established Southwest Associated University in Yunnan to teach in the Faculty of Arts.The study of "Chu Ci" is quite successful.During the wartime in Kunming, the life of the professor was poor, and Wen Yiduo had five children, and his salary was engraved to subsidize his living needs.The bombing of the Japanese army, the hardship of people’s livelihood and the active infiltration of intellectuals by the CCP made Wen Yiduo start to study the Communist Party system by reading Edgar Snow’s "Westward Journey" in 1944. His friends persuaded him to join the China Democratic League, which would be more conducive to the democratic movement. It is mentioned in "Wen Yiduo" (authors Wen Lipeng and Zhang Tongxia, son and daughter-in-law of Wen Yiduo).He embraced the new life of struggle with the spirit of "If I don't go to hell, who will go to hell".His old friend Luo Longji said: "Yiduo is fickle. He becomes fast and fierce."

Wen Yiduo began to write articles and speeches, fiercely criticizing and attacking the government and all conservative traditions, such as calling Qian Mu and others stubborn.On July 15, 1946, in the afternoon after a commemorative meeting for the martyrdom of Li Gongpu, Wen Yiduo was assassinated, leaving behind five minor children. The death of Wen Yiduo became the driving force for the national student unrest. For the CCP in Yan'an, his help is more powerful than thousands of troops.It has a more long-term impact on China's destiny.Because what he influenced was the attitude of intellectuals towards politics, it is more worthy of study by cultural historians. However, in the current academic circles on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, it is rare to have retrospect and forward-looking beyond their own scope.

I remember often hearing my father say that an intellectual who has never been obsessed with communism before the age of twenty is a lack of enthusiasm, and it is naive to become a member of the Communist Party after the age of twenty.I often want to hear that Yiduo didn’t read books on communism (not doctrine) until he was forty-five years old. He believed that overthrowing the Kuomintang regime and replacing the Communist Party can save China. How could his two-year radical change of government remarks come from a middle-aged professor? calm judgment?But our generation of young people, after eight years of suffering, were called by his impassioned and impassioned cries in various cities with unrepaired bullet wounds. They marched, did not attend classes, were not allowed to think freely, and almost completely abandoned their studies. Most of them fell into various hate movements, and finally The Cultural Revolution....As a youth idol, has he ever thought of the consequences of impulsive passion?

The book "Wen Yiduo" records that one of his relics is an unfinished stone seal with the words "It's so stupid"! No matter how you interpret it, it is said that he was at the critical moment of life and death, "the darkest moment before dawn", Leaving this "self-encouragement chapter" to express his determination, he is determined to make his last words with "a solemn expression of pursuing the traces of Qu Yuan and Byron". It is hard for normal readers not to think of remorse and self-condemnation; A good poem with deep meaning and clear meaning has deeply studied the essence of the text, and the five characters that are about to be engraved on the stone should have pondered its meaning in the heart first.Although, during those frenzied two years, he may not have foreseen his own death, and failed to bring happiness to his beloved country and family.

If the central government in 1945 had been able to take a breather after the war, the people's livelihood could be recuperated, and China had been rebuilt with the attitude of uniting the whole people and protecting the country and the country, would it have prevented tens of millions of people from dying in the liquidation struggle and generations of people from being trapped in a long-term struggle? It takes pain to achieve the situation of "China has stood up"? This is the biggest confusion and grief I feel when I recall being forced to participate in demonstrations in Sichuan and Wuhan many times over the years.