Mr. Sima Lu, an expert on the history of the Chinese Communist Party who was known as a “witness to the history of the Communist Party,” died in New York on March 28. Born in 1919, Sima Lu was 102 years old. A memorial service for him is scheduled to be held in Flushing, New York, on April 7, according to his Family and friends in New York.
Sima Lu, formerly known as Ma Yi, was a native of Hai’an, Jiangsu Province, China. He joined the Communist Revolution at an early age. He joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1937 at the age of 18, became the librarian of the Yan’an Anti-Japanese Military and Political University at the age of 19, and became the director of the Yan’an office of the Xinhua Daily at the age of 20.
Fleeing from the brutal struggle of the Chinese Communist Party
The brutal political struggle within the Party caused Sima Lu to flee from the CCP. He said he had been instructed by Zhou Enlai to curate the KMT-backed Korean Volunteer Army to the Communist Party, but “when the KMT pursued the matter, Zhou Enlai shrugged it off and said he didn’t know the man,” Sima Lu thus concluded, “This politics is terrible; after he uses you, he quickly He uses you and then quickly gets rid of you.”
“Sima Lu quit the CCP in 1943, continued to fight for freedom and democracy, joined the Democratic Alliance again, founded the magazine Freedom East, organized the Chinese People’s Party, and fled to Hong Kong in 1949 when the CCP established its political power.” said Hu Ping, editor-in-chief emeritus of Beijing Spring.
After settling in Hong Kong, Sima Lu made a living by selling literature. With his knowledge of the CCP and access to information in the free world, he published “Eighteen Years of Struggle,” “Essence of CCP History and Documents” and “Biography of Qu Qubai” and founded “Prospect” magazine.
He said the CCP also recognized him as the person with the most original CCP materials outside of the CCP patriarchs Wang Ming and Zhang Guotao. During the late Cultural Revolution after Deng Xiaoping’s comeback, the CCP bought party history materials from Sima Lu.
Independent contributor Gao Valin said that when he interviewed Sima Lu, then 92, in 2011, Sima Lu said he had published a book in Hong Kong, “Quotations from Chairman Liu,” modeled after the popular “Quotations from Chairman Mao” in mainland China during the Cultural Revolution.
Chairman Liu is Liu Shaoqi, the biggest party powerbroker on the capitalist road that Mao knocked down during the Cultural Revolution. “The cover layout was as identical as possible,” Sima Lu said. “It was a big hit when it was released in Hong Kong, and he was so pleased with it that it was printed and published in many languages, English, French and Japanese. For that he made a fortune.” Govarin says.
A living dictionary of contemporary Chinese political figures
In 2004, at the age of 85, Sima Lu completed his nearly 400,000-word memoir, “Witness to the History of the Chinese Communist Party”. “Mr. Sima Lu’s Life is a living history of contemporary China,” Hu Ping said. “His extraordinary experience and experience, his years of accumulated knowledge and insight, as well as his advanced age and the pampered and unperturbed state of mind of a man who has experienced many vicissitudes in his old age, make his memoir unique, irreplaceable by others and valuable in many ways.”
Sima Lu said it is absurd to think that the Chinese revolution was a peasant revolution. Govarin said that Sima Lu told him in the interview that “the Chinese Communist Party cares the least about China’s peasants, and the Chinese leadership has the fewest real peasant origins; the Communist Party has always discriminated against peasant cadres, considering them selfish, short-sighted and unreliable; the Communist Party leaders, including Mao, have repeatedly said that the decentralized small-peasant economy is a breeding ground for the resurgence of capitalism; Mao also said that the serious problem is the Education of the peasants.”
Sima Lu also believes that China’s land reform is a big scam, “thinking that the land belongs to the peasants after the CCP has distributed it to them, but in fact it becomes collectively owned before it is warmed up in their hands.” He believes that the fact that the CCP is so anxious to wipe out the small-peasant economy “shows that its concern for the peasants is false.”
“Mr. Sima Lu has been called ‘a living dictionary of contemporary Chinese political figures,’ ” Hu Ping said. Sima Lu once said that a special experience in his life was that he was probably the person who had met the most contemporary Chinese political figures.
“He cherished that,” Govarin said. “He knew the important people inside the Communist Party, the Kuomintang and the democratic parties like the back of his hand, and no matter how much close contact he had with these people, he could at least talk about the impressions,” Govarin said.
Zeng Huiyan, a retired reporter from World Journal, said that Sima Lu’s life can be summed up in eight words: “He is a 100-year-old longevity star and his achievements are in history. He is a living dictionary of Chinese political figures and a witness to the history of the Communist Party.”
The “fairy tale” of Sima Lu and Go Yang
Sima Lu emigrated to the United States in 1984, and after the Tiananmen democracy movement in 1989 he met Ms. Go Yang, who had joined the anti-Japanese movement more than 50 years earlier and was also in New York, “I was very sick twice, and it was Go Yang who often took care of me at that Time,” Sima Lu said later.
He was a veteran of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and was editor-in-chief of the New Observer magazine from 1950, but in 1957 he was branded a rightist and sent to labor for 22 years. “He was rehabilitated and reinstated after the collapse of the Gang of Four, and was invited to visit the United States during the 1989 pro-democracy movement.
In 2002, 83-year-old Sima Lu and 85-year-old Go Yang announced their Marriage in New York City.
“This karmic relationship, full of legends and romance, is just like what the famous scholar Zhou Cezhong said in his congratulatory poem: ‘Searching all over the ancient and modern world, I can’t find your kind.'” Hu Ping said.
On her birthday Sima Lu announced that the birthday gift would be used to establish a forum for the exchange of cultural people from both sides of the Taiwan Strait, the Chinese Scholars Association, and appointed Wang Dan, the leader of the 1989 academic movement, as its president.
Ms. Go Young died on January 18, 2009 at the age of 94 in a nursing Home in Flushing. Sima Lu had also lived in a Flushing nursing home for over 10 years before her death.
True and false centenarians clearly identified
On July 7, 2018, Sima Lu, who had just turned 99, spent his 100th birthday celebration in Flushing, New York, amidst the warm congratulations of his family and friends. In an interview with the Voice of America, he said that now “a lot of people are kissing the ass of the Communist Party in Beijing, and that’s not true, not really from the heart.”
Li Yong, former interview director of World Journal, said that no one knows the Communist Party better than Sima Lu, “They cover up and falsify history and make up rumors, and Mr. Sima Lu can expose their rumors and crimes of falsifying history one by one, which is Sima Lu’s greatest achievement.”
Su Xiaokang, a dissident Writer from the mainland and one of the contributors to River Elegy, said, “I wrote a line for him, called ‘A lifetime of breaking through the revolutionary drama, a hundred years old to cross but the will of exile’.”
In a condolence message on Sunday (March 28), Wang Dan said, “We will follow what Mr. Sima Lu asked of us during his lifetime, continue their philosophy and continue to work for the advancement of democracy and Culture in China.”
Zeng Huiyan said a “funeral committee for Sima Lu” has been set up, and that after the funeral cremation on April 7, Sima Lu’s ashes will be buried with his wife, Ms. Go Yang, “to rest together forever,” Zeng Huiyan said.
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