In October 1976, when the “Huairintang Incident” took place, I was working as a worker in a ravine on the Longhai Line. Every day, I saw military vehicles going east, heading straight to Shanghai; documents coming west, denouncing the “Shanghai Gang” plotting a riot that must be completely resolved. Before that, I had been hoping for the collapse of the Cultural Revolution for several years. But listening to those documents, I couldn’t change the accent of the Cultural Revolution, and I couldn’t see much hope to negate the Cultural Revolution with the Cultural Revolution.
Later, when I listened to the second batch of documents – how the “counter-revolutionary riots” were “crushed” – I felt that the local leaders who stayed in Shanghai were a bit like local people. The army was pressed, and they were immediately recruited to review, expose, and lose sincerity, and give whatever they wanted, which had a little bit of violence? It is very much in line with the vulgar habits of the ordinary citizens of Shanghai. It can be seen that the leftists have been operating in the city for many years, but even if they grasp the power, they are still in suspension, either underground or above ground, but they cannot stand firmly on the ground. Is the revolution transforming the city, or are the citizens softening the revolution? In the midst of all the disturbances, more and more documents were conveyed, and my mind was drowsy. Suddenly I heard a big black word, which made me shake in front of my eyes and heart. The document said that after the arrest of Wang Zhang Jiang Yao, the “Shanghai Gang” had no leader, and someone actually advocated in the conference room: “We should resist with arms, and if we resist for a week, Shanghai will become another Paris Commune!” This statement became the ironclad evidence of the “riot” and has been repeatedly quoted in documents since then, and has been in my heart for 30 years, like a knife carving, and cannot be forgotten. It is important to know that the speaker was not a soldier, but a scholar, a middle-aged historian promoted from Fudan, who probably read too much history and quoted “Paris Commune in 1871” in 1976. After saying that, Beijing did not move and allowed him to visit Japan according to the original schedule. When he returned to Hongqiao Airport, he was arrested and imprisoned for 14 years.
Fourteen years later, it was my turn to study for a PhD at Fudan, and I had the misfortune to study history, a subject similar to the Paris Commune. Generally speaking, those who collapsed during the Cultural Revolution had a bad reputation in their own units, either by engaging in privileges or by killing people, but he seemed to be an exception, and I couldn’t hear any gloating, and most of those who spoke were sorry, and occasionally there was sympathy. He was originally an expert in Ming history, joined the party in 1948, and was the secretary of the general branch of the history department of Fudan. In 1964, he organized several young lecturers in the department to discuss “Li Zicheng’s late infidelity”, “the history of peasant wars”, “the emergence of capitalism in the Ming and Qing dynasties”, and “the history of peasant wars”. In 1964, he organized several young lecturers of the department to discuss “Li Zicheng’s late infidelity”, “the history of peasant wars” and “the sprouting of capitalism in the Ming and Qing dynasties”, and named them “Luo Siding” (screw). The East China Bureau was about to organize an anti-revisionist writing class, so they merged the group and moved into the “Lilac Garden” purchased by Li Hongzhang for his concubine in the western part of Shanghai, with the collective pen name “Ding Xue Lei” and the Lilac Garden to learn from Lei Feng. He headed the history group in “Ding Xue Lei” and was in charge of Shanghai’s literature and education during the Cultural Revolution, equivalent to today’s propaganda minister, but did not move into Shanghai’s West Side, living in an old Fudan house and receiving a lecturer’s salary. When Yao Wenyuan had an urgent matter in Beijing, he called the family area of Fudan, and the old man at the concierge went to his door to shout, so he rushed over to pick up the phone and almost missed the job. In 1974, when Zhou Enlai formed the cabinet of the Fourth National People’s Congress, he was named as the head of the science, education, culture and health group in Beijing, equivalent to today’s Minister of Culture, but Zhang Chunqiao refused to let him go and took Yu Huiyong as his replacement, who died after the “Huairentang Incident”. The latter “Huairintang incident” after the death of himself, can be described as a death for him. He himself has been in Shanghai as a member of the Standing Committee of the Municipal Revolutionary Committee, in 1976 was revealed to have “Paris Commune speech”, increased sentence. During his career in Qincheng, he once visited a doctor outside of prison, and when the door opened, he bumped into Chen Boda, so he knew Chen was his next-door neighbor. The company’s main goal is to provide the best possible service to the public. At that time, it was agreed that this would be the cap, no more increases, prices have doubled several times in a dozen years, can not be increased, so far, the living expenses are less than 1,000 yuan. He was released from prison that year I myself is not convenient, have the intention to see each other, the margin is stingy. After another 11 or 12 years, he was concerned about some of the things I published, and asked someone to bring word, asking if he would like to meet. This is the opportunity. I remember it was a hot day, he wore a thin old man’s shirt, holding a fan, his head full of white hair does not show old, there is a faint atmosphere between the eyebrows, is indeed a senior, can afford to let go of the senior.
After that, I often went there to ask questions about the history of the Cultural Revolution. When Lin Liheng and his party came to Shanghai, I invited the old gentleman out for a dinner and jokingly said, “Let’s forget our grudges once we meet and let you two enemies meet?” The guests and hosts enjoyed themselves, and all the white heads talked about Tianbao back in the day. At that time, in Siping Road, not far from the headquarters of the Air Force, the old gentleman recalled that he had a student who graduated from the history department during the “Cultural Revolution” surnamed Li, who did not care about revolutionization but advocated modernization, and had a reputation in the jianghu, Lin Liguo heard this and summoned him to the headquarters of the Air Force. After listening to some modernization, the “prince” was pleased, and ordered a special recruitment, into the command. The uniform just on the body, “9-13” incident, the man stripped off the uniform into the isolation room, since then disappeared. Mr. Song Dejin graduated from the history department of Jilin University in 1962, had been transferred to Maojiawan as secretary, “9-13” after the isolation of 10 years of investigation, out of the editor-in-chief of “historical research”, then retired, along with the trip to Shanghai. Heard the old gentleman said, adding that: he called into Maojiawan just read the document, Lin said little, the depth of the unpredictable. His longest interview with Lin is to comply with his orders, prepare a pile of British, American, German, French and Japanese historical materials in advance, and report on the topic of how to modernize the big country. I heard Song’s words then have a complement of the complement: 30 years later today, Nanjing University, British history experts into Zhongnanhai lecture history, to the fourth generation of leaders to speak on the same topic, the People’s Daily just issued news, the front page of the headlines.
Another time was in the “Lilac Garden”, the former forbidden garden has now been opened as a business restaurant, the doors are full. The old gentleman revisited 30 years later and had his own feelings: which building Liu Yalou died in; how Dai Houying was nicknamed “Little Steel Cannon”; Xiu Cai worked overtime and his night meal was a bowl of light noodles; the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and Japan, Zhou Enlai came to Shanghai to convey Mao Zedong’s conversation with Tanaka Kakuei and suddenly said he wanted to treat everyone present to an ice-cream lollipop. Xu Jingxian was also there that day, and the two of them corrected each other’s oral history, which was also interesting. The old man said that around 1974, Mao Zedong wanted to read Yu Xin’s “Fugue of the Dead Tree” and instructed “Ding Xue Lei” to proofread it and submit it. He worked overtime in the building, and when he got to the line “If the tree is like this, how can people be ashamed”, he already felt that Mao’s heart was bleak, that everything was not as it should be, and that the future of the Cultural Revolution was not good. Xu Jingxian said, after the “9-13” incident, Zhang Chunqiao in Shanghai to try to “break the bourgeois legal rights”, Xu asked the financial group of the Municipal Revolutionary Committee to come up with a plan, found that the economic viability of the matter: the number of cadres, living conditions compared to the supply system at the beginning of the city, has developed If you want to restore the supply system, the financial burden will be several times higher than the salary system, which is unbearable. So it was quietly shelved. The last time Xu went to Beijing to see Zhang, the latter deeply lonely, there are the following words: “Sometimes I sit here to read documents, the whole day only six words, the morning waiter to bring breakfast, I said ‘thank you’, noon is ‘thank you’, the evening is also ‘thank you’. In the morning the waiter brings me breakfast and I say ‘thank you’, at noon it’s ‘thank you’ and in the evening it’s ‘thank you’. In this way, the whole day passed with 3 sentences and 6 words. Not many people came, it was really a ‘door to door’.”
I asked him more than once whether and how his views on the Cultural Revolution had changed. He was a historian and had been imprisoned for the dismissal of Hai Rui and the “historical problems” of the Paris Commune, so if he had reflected on it, he would have been able to understand the past and the present. The third time I asked, he was recalling the “Paris Commune” in the “Cultural Revolution”, dipped his hand in tea and gestured on the table: “One is the ideology of the West, one is the old ancestors left behind the local ancient system, both lines can not be missing. The intersection can find the ‘Cultural Revolution’ positioning.” After deepening the relationship, I could also ask some sensitive personal questions, such as why did the phrase “Paris Commune” come up? My view of history does not like the Paris Commune, nor do I agree with the extension of the Paris Commune in the Cultural Revolution, but I still respect his courage to speak up at that time. He looked back at the psychology of 1976, pondered a little, and replied, “I was not treated badly! I was shocked again by this statement. It turns out that a man who knows himself dies for his own sake. No wonder he came to my seminar to give a lecture on the Qin and Han system to graduate students, bringing a blue cloth package into the room, and after sitting down, he uncovered one layer after another, and the innermost layer was the lecture notes, and the students asked about the origin of the Cultural Revolution, and he wanted to start from Yin and Zhou. A graduate student marveled afterwards: “This is an ancient man living in the present, with the style of the ancients!”
Some of the enlightening reading materials of our generation were internal books published in Shanghai during the Cultural Revolution, known as the “Grey Book”, and some magazines, such as “Study and Criticism” and “Extracts and Translations” (divided into natural science and social science editions). Later, I learned that he was responsible for all these publications, and that the 12 copies of the “Self-education Series on Mathematics, Science and Chemistry”, which had been compiled and printed before the Cultural Revolution, were also reprinted at that time, and when Zhou Enlai heard about them in Beijing, he asked his secretary to call Shanghai to send them by post. Knowing these circumstances, I asked him how he could think of publishing these things in that situation at that time. His answer was: “The old man had instructions at that time, saying that we should ‘oppose rampant metaphysics’, which were arranged to me through Zhang and Yao, and the instructions could not be disobeyed. I myself did want to produce a little cultured and knowledgeable books, and if there were selfishness, just think of so many secondary school students in the countryside, more than 10 million people have no books to read, how can it be?” The latter words touched my heart, and I went home and said to my wife, “The ‘Cultural Revolution’ things that the old man did positively did not bear good fruit, but the seeds of reading sown on the side sprouted in our generation. The flowers planted with intention do not develop, and the willow will become shade, we can break the ground, is not to forget him, this is his harvest.” My wife, who also read those books back then, advised me to reveal this meaning to the old man, so that he could have a comfort. I did not expect him to listen to nothing, it seems nothing strange.
The company’s main business is to provide a wide range of products and services to the public, such as the “B” and “B” products. ” Previously, he ruled the history for the revolution, or for the great leader to proofread poetry, no time to read the twenty-four histories, this time there is time, but can not afford to buy. So the mother of the “exploiting class” offered to buy the “Twenty-four Histories” for the “rebellious son of the revolution” with the “RMB” returned from the “implementation of the policy”. “The “twenty-four histories” were purchased and mailed to the prison. The twenty-four histories were so heavy that they were transferred from Shanghai’s Tilanqiao to Qincheng, and the jailer moved the books with a grumble: “You’re Confucius moving, except for the books, or the books!” More comical is that he entered Tilanqiao that year, the old professor of Chinese Department of Fudan Jia Shifang was rehabilitated for the Hu Feng case, one in and one out, actually the same cell, Mr. Jia specially asked the jailer he was familiar with, to be kind to the prisoner who had just entered. These events took place in 1976, comparable to the beginning of “Monte Cristo”, one after another, one after the other, upside down like a play. I have always thought that the history of the last century in my country is the most vivid, and that by telling the true story, without fiction, I can beat the little fictional abuse of the 19th century Parisian literati. He was distracted, as if all the cells of his mind had been historicized, leaving no room for literature.
The tender side of his humanity is what I saw by chance in the summer. It was hot, and there was a tree in front of his door, and he was sitting under it reading books and newspapers, a square stool, a bamboo chair, a pot of water, and a pair of old light glasses. The shadows of the tree swayed, three or five wild cats came to his feet looking for food, he had the patience to get up and feed, and murmured under his breath. I look at the pot of cat food, is cooked, see him day after day, every afternoon waiting for this group of old friends to see. When I went in winter, the wild cats were gone, the humble room was full of ancient volumes, the old house was in disrepair, the wooden structure left by the Japanese in the 1930s, and the doors and windows all leaked. There are only two old-fashioned student beds in the room, the lower level left the edge of the bed as a seat, the upper level of books stacked books, rickety. The host and guest sit opposite each other, also across a student table, green lamp and yellow scroll, cold wind swishing. I couldn’t bear the cold, I couldn’t take off my coat, he wore cotton pants and shoes, and didn’t say it was cold. He counted the ancient books he had just finished, and smiled with satisfaction: “This is “Huainanzi”, 600,000 words, that is “Tang Six Classics”, 1 million words, and 200,000 words long preface. Is that enough? Yes, it’s much better than then!” When he said “then”, did he mean learning from Lei Feng in Clove Garden and proofreading the large-print books for the leaders, or reading the Twenty-four Histories for himself in Qincheng Iron House for 14 years and finally getting a taste of the depths of history?
The year before last, he had a heart surgery and the medical bills were heavy. Before that, I had many times thought of asking him to come to seminar to give a lecture on his history to graduate students, full of knowledge and experience. Every time I mentioned it, he refused, fearing that it would cause trouble for me. This time he finally agreed, and we were happy to pick up the father and son. Passing by the barracks where he was first imprisoned in 1976, I asked my son to wait and accompanied him to pace past the fence for nostalgia. Across a small river, he recognized the house and said with a smile, “Isn’t that the row of gray barracks? No change, no change. At that time from Hongqiao Airport into this compound, they want to keep it a secret, I recognized it at a glance, the good eight companies on the Nanjing Road regimental headquarters! Every ‘August 1’, I have to lead a team to come to condolences, familiar with the way. Shanghai I was the first to shut in, number 01,” said with his index finger in the air to draw circles, circles painted “1”.
The original turned out to be another layer of history, where there is history, always abruptly end. Scheduled to speak for a semester, the result was only once. But it left a trace: after the lecture on the ancient system of the Qin and Han dynasties, the students received the lecture fee, and I signed it, and I also had to ask the old man to sign it, but he was worried about me: “I’m afraid it’s not appropriate to sign, it will leave you in trouble.” I said, “I don’t care how many pen names you have, the “01” I mentioned earlier is good, how about a new one? The old gentleman smiled, wrote with a big brush, and signed two words: – “Ling Yi”.
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