Chapter 15 Section 3 Hu Sidu's death

On the afternoon of February 17, 1957, Hu Shi, who was describing his physical condition at the home of a young doctor in New York, suddenly felt unwell. He was rushed to the hospital and found that it was a sudden gastric ulcer bleeding. After taking the medicine, it didn’t work. He vomited blood in the middle of the night and fell into a coma. rescue. On the 18th, Hu was still unconscious and vomited blood again in the middle of the night. His life was in danger. The doctor decided to perform an operation. As a result, 6/10 of his stomach was removed, and he was not discharged until March 11.

Five days after returning to his apartment, on March 16, Hu Shi, who was in decline, suddenly received a letter from a mysterious person, who was Cao Juren. Cao Juren, who once served as a war correspondent for the Central News Agency during the Anti-Japanese War, moved to Hong Kong alone in 1950 after the Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan to become the editor of "Sing Tao Daily".On the fourth day after arriving in Hong Kong, Cao published an article in the "Sing Tao Daily" column "Nan Lai Pian", sang "I come from the light", and shouted "The CCP has successfully ruled the world". In 1954, Cao left "Sing Tao Daily" to join Singapore's "Nanyang Siang Pau", and secretly went to Beijing many times as a reporter for the newspaper, where he was interviewed by Mao Zedong, Zhou Enlai, Chen Yi and others.According to rumors, the Cao family sneaked from Hong Kong to Taiwan later, and was interviewed secretly by Chiang Kai-shek and Chiang Ching-kuo's father and son. All other issues should be handled with due respect to the opinions of Chiang Kai-shek and Chen Cheng.The Chiang father and son responded with six opinions, including "Chiang Kai-shek and his old troops returned to the mainland, they can settle in any province except Zhejiang, and still serve as the president of the Kuomintang."Cao once suggested that after the peaceful reunification of the two sides of the strait, Chiang Kai-shek could use Mount Lu as a place to take care of his old age.After that, Cao's actions became even more mysterious. His wife and relatives didn't know what he was going back and forth between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, and what he was tossing around all day long.It was such a mysterious and ignorant figure who suddenly sent a letter to Hu Shi nervously in 1957 when the mountain rain was about to come, leading snakes out of the cave, and the "anti-rightist" net was about to be fully spread. .According to Hu Shi’s record on March 16:

Received a letter from Cao Juren.This person often said that Hu Shizhi was his friend, and often claimed that Zhang Taiyan was his teacher.In fact, I have never seen this person. The main idea of ​​this letter is that he went to Beijing and Shanghai "twice" last autumn and "saw the vibrant new China"! "Sir...it's best to go back to Beijing to see...you can tour the country, how about making a judgment after you see it?" He said that he "would like to accompany Mr. to walk together"! Hu Shi, who was recuperating in his bed at home, naturally knew that this "crazy man" was playing a puppet show representing the CCP's united front against him.In this regard, Hu felt that he accidentally swallowed a fly alive, but he was relieved after thinking about it calmly.All flies or other weak animals such as praying mantises and toads, in order to survive, must show their teeth and claws, brag about themselves with a loud voice, or buzzing, pull a big banner, and pull the whole body covered. It is not surprising that the fake tiger skin with bumps is similar to the giant python on the tree or the giant crocodile in the water. It is also a trick used by politicians all over the world, especially politicians among literati or literati among politicians.Therefore, Hu Shi approved the words "no reply" on the envelope of Cao's letter, and then sent someone to transfer the letter to Taiwan's "Investigation Bureau of the Ministry of Justice and Administration" for disposal as research materials on "bandit affairs".

Just as the shadow of the Cao family evaporated in his mind, on March 24, Hu Shi, who was still recuperating in bed, received another ordinary letter from his youngest son, Hu Sidu, from Tangshan City, Hebei Province.Judging from the postmark date, this letter was sent 50 days ago. Hu wrote in his diary that day: "This is the first letter in seven years. The letter is written to 'Mom'. The letter has 4 pages, and the end says , Dad, there is another letter. But that letter has not been received yet. Probably he was "ordered" to write to me first, and the letter was submitted. He thought it had been mailed, so he secretly wrote it I don’t know that the CCP has changed its plan and asked someone else (such as Cao Juren) to write a letter." Hu Shi was a Confucian student, but after all, he had been in the political arena for many years, and he had a great understanding of the Chinese people. I have a relatively deep understanding of various political tactics such as foolishness and deceit, dishonesty, and politicians' usual conspiracy or conspiracy.Although no reliable information has been found to prove whether his guess is correct this time, it is reasonable to infer from the political situation at that time. Cao Juren sent a letter to Hu inexplicably before, which may be another action after the change of this plan.

Thinking back to the day of the siege of Beiping eight years ago, Hu Shi, who was used to eating foreign bread, wanted to live a life of "both bread and freedom", so he decided to flee.Unexpectedly, his junior Hu Sidu was exactly like Wei Yan in the Three Kingdoms era, with rebellious bones growing in the back of his head, and he resolutely did not follow Zhuge Liang's established policy during his lifetime, and completely denied the two "whatevers" on the issue of retreat.Hu Sidu's old drama was repeated, and he also did not follow Hu Shi's established policy. He decided to stay in Beiping, which was about to be liberated, to live for a while.If there is a God in this world, Hu Xiaosan's choice should be an arrangement made by God's hand in the dark, and it is the biggest problem set up by God among the "ninety-nine and eighty-one difficulties" experienced by Hu Shi, a liberal intellectual. , The most heart-wrenching "difficulty" is "a master and ancestor Hu Shi who opened up a new cultural movement for five hundred years" (Tang Degang's words), the most pungent and painful spiritual torment on the road to "obtaining the Tao", And this torment has become more severe and unbearable with the passage of time and political evolution.

In March 1958, Hu Shi was attending the "Oriental Academic Symposium" at Columbia University in the United States. He occasionally received a call from the "Pan Asia News" in Hong Kong and learned that Sidu had been dismissed from the post of associate professor and sent to labor.At this time, Hu Shi murmured in his heart, but he did not think of the worst, and silently said in his heart that God bless this unfortunate son.On May 4 of this year, Hu returned to Taiwan to give a radio speech on the May 4th Movement. The "Pan Asia News" called from Hong Kong to report that Hu Sidu had "hanged himself to death in August last year".Hu Shi was startled at first, and almost fell to the ground.After calming down, he was skeptical and rejected the authenticity of the news psychologically. On May 12, Hu Shi wrote a letter to his student Su Xuelin: "I am very grateful for the news about my son Sidu. I guess the news of his suicide in August last year was a malicious rumor. It was released on the eve of this year. In January of this year, my friend indirectly spread the news that Sidu was sent to the Northeast, so I didn't believe the rumors, so I made a long-distance call to inform my wife on the same day, telling him not to believe the news." From this we can see However, Hu Shi still doubted Hu Sidu's suicide more than believed it.In fact, Hu Sidu is really dead, and he has been dead for more than 8 months, and there are grasses in the tomb.

The exact year of Hu Xiaosansidu's death was September 1957, but the date and details of his death have not been clarified.According to "Hu Shi Chronicle" written by Geng Yunzhi, what the world sees are the following simple records: On September 21st, the second son Sidu committed suicide because he was criticized as a rightist (he was teaching in the Marxism-Leninism Teaching and Research Section of Tangshan Railway College).Before he died, he wrote a suicide note to one of his cousins.There is only a remaining corner of this suicide note, and on it you can still see the words, (I hope they work hard) "Work, study hard, and make some contributions to socialism."There is also the words of "leaving fifty-one yuan to you as well" that I have saved.The date of the Department is September 21.

In September 1950, because Hu Sidu scolded "Hu Shi, the running dog of American imperialism" for his meritorious service in the way of "destroying relatives with righteousness", he was once praised by the school leaders, and after finishing his studies at North China Revolutionary University, he was assigned to the Marxist-Leninist Department of Tangshan Railway College ( Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong Thought Basic Theory Teaching and Research Section) as a history teacher.At this time, Hu Sidu worked actively and hard, wanting to "atone" for his father who accidentally became a "dog", and at the same time wanted to join the Communist Party of China.It's just that the organization has been under test, and the whole country is criticizing Hu Shi's reactionary ideas, which made him suffer, and his dream was delayed for several years.In 1957, the "Anti-Rightist" movement rose up across the country. Hu Sidu, who didn't know what was going on, began to actively and proactively put forward teaching reform suggestions to the leaders of his college and department. Wiping dung on the Buddha's head, he immediately decided to use color in his anger to combat Hu Sidu's arrogance.

On May 20, 1957, "People's Daily" published a "Newsletter" under the title "Professors of Hebei Colleges and Universities Criticize Educational Leadership Work", reporting that Sun Zhusheng, director of the mechanical department of the school, and Hu Sidu, a teacher, "used despicable means to seize the leadership of the school in vain," the article specifically indicated that the content was said by "Hu Shi's son" Hu Sidu.Since then, Hu Sidu has changed from an activist supporting the CCP to a "traitor", "running dog", "traitor" Hu Shi's remnant and a class dissident who tried to usurp the leadership of the revolution.With the unveiling of the "Anti-Rightist" movement, Hu Sidu was pulled out many times to show the public and accepted the criticism of the revolutionary masses. Before long, he was designated by the academy as a "bourgeois rightist who attacked the party."Hu Sidu, who was hit hard suddenly, believed that he had publicly announced that he had drawn a clear line with his father a few years ago. Why did he tie himself up with this "enemy of the people" in public and criticize him at this time?Amid a series of puzzles and fears, Hu Sidu had a mental breakdown and hanged himself on the night of September 21, 1957, at the age of 37.

Previously implicated in politics by Hu Shi, the "enemy of the people", Hu Sidu never found a girlfriend, and was still a bachelor until his death.Before committing suicide, Hu Sidu left a suicide note under his pillow. Since he had no immediate relatives in mainland China, the suicide note was written to a distant cousin named Hu Simeng who was at the printing factory of the Ministry of Railways in Beijing.After Hu's death, the staff of the unit found the suicide note, so they called Hu Simeng to the college to deal with the funeral.When Hu Simeng arrived, he saw that the college was covered with big-character posters criticizing Hu Shi and Hu Sidu. The leader of the college told Hu Simeng, saying that you, Hu Xiaosaner, an unbelievable cousin with a dou style, really has rebellious bones like Wei Yan in the back of his head. , His practice belongs to committing suicide in fear of crime, severing himself from the party and the people.As for what crime he was afraid of, the specific time of suicide, and the specific details before and after his death, the leaders of the college did not say.All Hu Simeng saw was a small white wooden coffin in a small dark room, with many flies flying around the coffin, and a white cloth inside the coffin. It looked like he had been dead for several days.The main content of Hu Sidu's suicide note is: Now I have no relatives, and only you.You come and I must be gone.Don't be sad, I leave you with a little money and bonds to support your children in school, and a watch for you as a souvenir.

Because Hu Sidu was a reactionary who "excluded himself from the people", Hu Simeng didn't dare to ask the college leaders for details, so he had to dig a pit with the college's handyman in a wild field outside Tangshan with grief, and put Hu Sidu in a hurry. Bury it, and take the money and things mentioned in the suicide note, as well as an old leather jacket, a woolen clothes, and some books and periodicals back to Beijing. After the "Cultural Revolution" broke out, the Red Guards ransacked the house. Hu Simeng was afraid of being implicated by Hu and his son, so he burned most of Hu Sidu's books and periodicals, and tore up his suicide note, except for a corner that was pressed on the bottom of the box and remained intact.Many years later, when Hu Simeng was cleaning out the box, he found a corner of the suicide note and handed it to Yan Zhenwu, vice chairman of the Political Consultative Conference of Jixi County, Anhui Province, Hu Shi's hometown.Later, Geng Yunzhi, a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences who was compiling "Hu Shi's Chronicle", heard about this, found Yan Zhenwu, copied the text on the fragment, and compiled it into "Hu Shi's Chronicle".Later, Geng Yunzhi and Shen Weiwei, a Nanjing University professor and Hu Shi research expert who visited Hu Simeng’s home, jointly estimated that the specific time of Hu Sidu’s suicide should be after he wrote his suicide note on September 21, but the exact date is difficult to ascertain. We can only tentatively set the date on the suicide note as the date of Hu Sidu's death. On January 6, 1942, because Hu Shi missed his son Hu Sidu who left to study in the United States, he wrote in his diary: "Xiao San passed away a year ago, and I miss him a lot. I wrote with a brush that I traveled with him five years ago. Suiyuan wrote a doggerel on the train at the same time and sent it to him: Father and son beat flies, each sweating. A good man, don’t be a self-made man.” Unexpectedly, 15 years later, Hu Sidu became a free man with a rope, which is considered a hundred and one.With its unique cruelty and absurdity, history threw Hu Shi's liberal banner into a pessimistic black hole where there were predecessors but no successors.According to Jiang Dongxiu’s cousin, Jiang Zehan, a professor of mathematics at Peking University, recalled: “Sidu’s older brother, Zuwang, wrote to us from the United States in the late period of the Cultural Revolution, around 1974-1975, and we acted as his uncle and aunt. , also lost contact with him for a long time." "The content of Thaksin's letter is mainly to understand our recent situation, and at the same time asked whether his brother Sidu is still alive. He probably heard the news about Sidu's suicide overseas. Because Hu Shi’s will mentioned the property division between the two brothers, and he wanted to confirm whether Sidu was still alive. At that time, because of our relationship with Hu Shi, our whole family was punished for decades. I wrote back to Zuwang, fearing that there would be trouble again because of "overseas relations" and "Hu Shi relations", so I handed this letter to the school leaders to ask for their opinions, but they didn't answer us. We didn't dare to be careless Write a letter back to Zuwang. It was not until 1976, when the situation in China changed greatly, that we resumed contact with Zuwang.” That is to say, it was not until this time that Hu Zuwang finally confirmed the news that his younger brother had passed away. At this time, it had been 19 years since Hu Sidu committed suicide. The will of Hu Shi mentioned by Jiang Zehan refers to a series of vicious and strange events in 1957, such as hematemesis in the middle of the night, gastric ulcer surgery, Cao Juren’s letter urging him to “go back to Beijing and Shanghai,” and Hu Sidu’s letter. , Hu Shi felt that his body was extremely weak and his spirit was extremely depressed, and that he might die soon, so on June 4th, at Nolinger, Ligman, and Ben, 420 Rexington Avenue, 17th District, New York City, New York State Nita and Chaney Law Firm made the last will in the presence of three friends including lawyers and witnesses Liu Kai, You Jianwen, and Harold Riegelman to testify and sign.The will consists of eight articles, of which: Article 2 Convinced that there will be a day when academic freedom will be restored to Peking University in Beiping, China, I will leave all the 102 boxes that I left behind when I had to leave Peking in December 1948 and ask the university library to keep all of my The books and documents are delivered and bequeathed to the University. Article 3 I deliver and bequeath all my manuscripts and documents and all printed books at my residence in New York City to the National Taiwan University in Taipei, Taiwan, and request and not specify Professor Yang Liansheng of Harvard University and Professor Mao Zishui of National Taiwan University The being of the two arranges for the safekeeping, editing, and publication of my manuscripts and documents as they see fit. Article 4 I deliver and bequeath my property, whether movable or immovable, wherever it exists, and all other parts, remnants, remnants, to my wife Jiang Dongxiu, if she survives my death.But when she died before me, my sons Hu Zuwang and Hu Siduping shared the property, and if any of the two sons passed away before me and had a son, his share would belong to the son; If I die before me, without an offspring, his share will go to my other son, and if he has died at that time, it will go to his offspring. It took more than three months for Hu Shi to complete this will, and Hu Sidu committed suicide by hanging himself. His inheritance was no longer needed.And the collection of books, manuscripts, documents, etc. that he left at home in Peiping had already been torn apart, scattered, and some of them were missing. On December 15, 1948, before Hu Shi left Peiping in a hurry, he only picked up his father’s posthumous manuscripts and the manuscripts of his most important works, and took a Jiaxu edition with him to fly to Nanjing. A large number of other precious books and manuscripts, letters, Almost all personal data such as diaries and photos are stored in the apartment in Dongchang Hutong, Beiping. In 1950, this batch of "goods" was brought into the library of Peking University. With the launch of the campaign to criticize Hu Shi, the letters, diaries and other materials left by Hu Shi happened to become the most direct and powerful shells for criticizing Hu.In 1954, under the instructions of the high-level CCP, this batch of treasures, which were Hu Shi's "anti-Party and anti-socialist" materials, experienced a mysterious division on a dark and stormy night of one month without anyone noticing. In 1964, it was again mysteriously and brutally split by the black box operator.In addition to being damaged, lost and stolen, Hu Shi's collection of books, manuscripts, diaries and other treasures have since been "dead in three places", that is, some ordinary books in Hu Shi's collection are stored in the Peking University Library; The other 15,000 Hu Shi letters, manuscripts, documents and other secret books were preempted by the Institute of Modern History of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.It was precisely because of the dissemination of Hu Shi's secret books that many people who were related to these letters and documents and remained in various social strata in the mainland were implicated, and it was bad luck for this.Wu Han, who later became the deputy mayor of Beijing, was discovered because of his private correspondence with Hu Shi in his early years. During the "Cultural Revolution", these letters became spears thrown at Wu, until Wu went to the altar of death.In a series of struggles criticizing Wu, although the "revolutionaries" believed that Wu Han's letter was "ironclad proof of taking refuge in Hu Shi", Hu and Wu had "reactionary political relations" and walked "an anti-communist and anti-people road". Wu is a "minion of America's minion" etc.But among Hu Shi's most valued disciples who remained in the mainland, the only one who died without a Buddha's head to wipe dung——Wu Han wrote articles criticizing Hu Shi.This point was not thought of by Hu Shi back then, and it was also puzzling to many people.As for Hu Shi's will, although it was later spread to the mainland and attracted the attention and echo of Peking University, its fate is no different from that of a piece of waste paper wrapped with fried dough sticks and pancakes scattered on the roadside. What about the next piece of waste paper with "will" written on it? Similar to the fate of Hu Shi’s will, in 1949, Jiang Zehan returned from the National Institute of Advanced Mathematics in Zurich, Switzerland, and visited the president of National Taiwan University Fu Sinian via Taiwan. I told Deng Guangming that all these books were given to him." According to Deng Guangming's recollection: "After Mr. Jiang returned to China, he dared not say that he had been to Taiwan, and of course he did not dare to say this. Later he told me in private, and I said: 'How dare I want his books? His books can only be confiscated by the Academy of Sciences or what to do with it.'” How to deal with Fu Sinian's collection of books, and where they are located, no one seems to be able to explain clearly. The only thing that can be said clearly is that Hu Shi and Fu Sinian, two "pawns crossing the river", are really a pair of lovely scholars. When I couldn't help but wandered on an isolated island, I still thought that "the carved railings and jade masonry should still be there in my homeland, but it's just a change of Zhu Yan", and I naively thought that my pile of letters and documents still belonged to private property and were subject to public international law and Chinese laws. The protection of the law should have been lying in the old house in Peiping without a lamb. Although the owner of the book is living in the end of the world or the corner of the sea, he still has the right to deal with this batch of collections.Don't you know that the country has changed hands and the color of the earth has changed, so where is the protection of private property, public international law, and human morality?It can be said that he is so bookish and so confused.Hu and Fu, two well-educated people, may not understand until their death that their piles of letters, documents, and books should be disposed of at will in the eyes of the occupiers, and these personal properties can only be used to fight against themselves. In addition to the cannonballs of relatives, friends, disciples and disciples, other so-called rights and public laws will naturally disappear under the new regime, and at most it will add a sigh to later historians.This reality echoes what Oswald Spenglar said: "We are allowed to choose only between victory and destruction, not between war and peace, and the victim of victory is belongs to victory."