Do not go gentle into that good night.
Old age should burn and roar at the end of the day, and
And rage, rage against the dying of the light.
–Dylan Thomas (translated by Wu Ningkun)
- He was homeless because he shed “a tear
On August 10, 2019, Professor Wu Ningkun, a famous Chinese translator who translated The Great Gatsby, died at the age of 99 at his home in the United States.
In 1993, he was once again homeless after he angered some leaders of his unit by publishing his memoirs, One Tear, and his and his wife Yi-kai Li’s pensions were stopped, their housing was repossessed, and “the college leaders ordered the doors to be destroyed and the locks to be broken, and all their belongings to be swept out of the house.
He had no choice but to stay at the home of his children in the United States, where he spent the rest of his life.
What exactly does Woo’s memoir “One Tear” tell us? What is “One Drop of Tear” about, and what are the consequences?
This “One Tear” is a record of the distorted and cruel people and events that he personally experienced, a not-so-distant history that some people are still unwilling to admit and afraid to face.
No one can deny that Wu Ningkun was a patriotic person.
In October 1943, Woo volunteered to be an interpreter for the first group of Chinese pilots who went to the United States for training. He arrived in the United States after sailing for forty-two days at sea on a troop carrier without weapons or warship escort, risking being sunk by a German submarine. Prior to that, he served as an interpreter for the U.S. Flying Tigers, contributing to China’s victory in the war against Japan.
In 1951, when the olive branch of the new China was handed to him, he could have stayed in the United States to continue his education, like his roommate Zhengdao Li, but chose to return to China because of his love for his country.
Wu Ningkun and his wife, Yi-Kai Li (Photo: A Single Tear/book cover) Part
After helping him pack his bags, Lee Jung-do even sent him on his way, and before he left, he asked Lee Jung-do, “Why didn’t you go back with yourself?”
Years later, when Li Zhengdao returned to China as a Nobel Laureate, Ningkun Woo met his long-lost roommate again and found that he had grown up to be a top international scholar, and there was an insurmountable gap between them, living in two worlds.
Looking back, Woo shed “one tear”, which was summed up in three words: “I returned, I suffered, I survived”.
- “I returned, I suffered, I survived”
At the beginning of 1951, Wu Ningkun, who was studying in the United States, received a letter of appointment from Lu Zhiwei, the president of Yanjing University, hiring him to be a professor of English.
After thinking over the offer for several days and consulting with various friends, he finally decided to accept the offer and return to China to teach.
At that time, he thought, “To give up a most affluent capitalist career and return to serve the new socialist China will certainly be warmly welcomed by a patriotic intellectual.
Hearing this news, his sister in Shanghai was very happy that his brother was finally coming back for a reunion, while his brother and sister over in Taiwan expressed their concern, but their urgent admonition did not stop Wu Ningkun’s single-minded enthusiasm to serve his country.
Soon after his return, Wu Ningkun sensed that the atmosphere was a bit off.
One day, while chatting at the home of Professor Chen Mengjia, a colleague of Yanjing University, the radio loudspeaker outside suddenly sounded, informing all the teachers and students to go to the playground for interval exercises. Chen Mengjia said angrily, “This is 1984 coming, so soon!”
George. Orwell’s “1984” was read by Wu Ningkun when he was in the United States, but he was not yet willing to believe that “1984” was going to become a reality and still held on to hope.
But one after another, events came like a flood, and finally broke down the castle built up of fine sand in Woo’s heart.
Things became worse than “1984”.
The Great Northern Wilderness, a wasteland in the northernmost region of China, has been uncultivated since ancient times. In order to “make war on the earth and ask for food from the wasteland”, the new China organized soldiers and youths to carry out diligent reclamation, and also once transferred some labor inmates to work on the farms here.
In 1958, Wu Ningkun, who had been turned from a university professor into a labor prisoner, was brought to the Beidahuang farm on a truck for labor reform. As soon as they arrived at the farm, the farm manager warned the inmates not to try to escape, and that the farm was surrounded by swamps, “Here it is called a grass mat, which looks like flat land, but if you step on it, you will drown”.
Wu Ningkun and his wife Li Yikai (online photo)
Wu Ningkun looked up at the sky, then looked around, the Great Northern Wilderness, cold, desolate, one feels small and desperate. He could not believe that anyone could escape from here.
At that time, China was in the period of “Great Leap Forward” and planned to “catch up with the United States and surpass Britain” within 15 years. The propagandists on the farm said, “The whole country is working hard outside, what should you guilty people do to redeem yourselves?”
In the past, no matter who came forward to expose the accusations, Wu Ningkun did not think he was guilty, but after a long period of rehabilitation in prison, he actually felt that the propagandists were right.
In order to “redeem himself”, he, a professor who had never done hard work before, put his life on the line, picked more dirt than others, and ran faster than others. So much so that he was praised and used as a typical example of propaganda.
But only Wu Ningkun knew that he was on the verge of collapse every day.
In addition to the ravages of heavy physical labor, the most unbearable thing for him was hunger.
After being transferred to another farm, the food was even worse and the inmates were so hungry that they puffed up. One of the hopes of not being starved to death was for the family to send some food. One time, when Wu Ningkun received some pancakes from his wife, a roommate who studied Chinese classics handed over a note with a beautiful Liou font that read, “Professor, I beg you to lend me a pancake, and when my wife sends me food from Hunan, I will return it twice as much, saving a life is better than building a seven-level pagoda.
Looking at the beautiful Liou font, Wu Ningkun’s heart softened and lent the roommate a pancake, but not long after, the roommate still died of hunger, and his in-laws, who were far away in Hunan, did not come to bring him food.
Only when one has personally experienced the years of suffering will one understand the preciousness of surviving, and only when one has personally experienced suffering will one understand how important it is to not let it come back.
In 1979, Wu Ningkun was rehabilitated and his 30-year “rightist” label was finally lifted. He felt it was his duty and obligation to record the 30 years he had experienced.
- The “Conscience of China” lived out the rest of his life in the United States
In Wu Ningkun’s memoir “One Tear”, we see the perversion of black and white and the degradation of human nature in society at that time.
An old professor who was once beaten as a “rightist” was transferred back from the decentralized place because of his good performance, and as soon as he came back, he became the most active one in exposing others.
The seniors, who once spoke in a civilized manner and had an “elderly demeanor,” changed their faces overnight and came forward to denounce others by shouting and cursing as if they were shrews.
The students who were once full of admiration for knowledge forced their teachers to kneel at the drop of a hat, treating ignorance as an ideal.
I don’t know how many people have been killed because they said the wrong thing, or because someone deliberately misinterpreted their words.
During the brief period of the “Hundred Flowers and Hundred Schools of Thought”, Wu Ningkun once said naively, “Preventing the mouth of the people is more important than preventing the river, and preventing the mouth of intellectuals is more important than preventing the flood. We should encourage them to act as the conscience of the nation, instead of continuing to be the groveling scholars of the feudal dynasty, and give intellectuals the freedom of speech without losing anything, but gaining the priceless treasure of collective wisdom from countless open minds.”
After saying these words, instead of getting the “freedom” he wanted, Wu Ningkun became one of the crimes for which he was criticized and taken to prison.
But he did not regret saying such words, and in 1993, he published A Drop of Tears, a record of the history he wanted to remember and said what he wanted to say, and because of this, he had his pension suspended and his house repossessed.
At that time, he and his wife were living in the home of their children in the United States, and the school leadership, because the memoir “hurt the feelings of some old comrades,” had the door of his house smashed in broad daylight and swept all the belongings inside, just like the “house raid” of that year. The “house raid”.
Wuningkun complained year after year to get justice for himself, until 1999 when Premier Zhu Rongji visited the U.S. and received Wuningkun’s letter of complaint, which was restored.
Woo Ningkun knew that this small hardship was nothing compared to those who did not survive.
As the preface of “The Gulag Archipelago” says: “To those who did not survive, there is nothing they can do to tell the story. May they forgive me for not seeing everything, for not remembering everything, for not guessing everything.”
Solzhenitsyn, who recorded the mistakes of the Soviet Union in the past, became the “conscience of Russia”. And we, who have “one tear”, although this tear is so rare and weak, but it will one day be able to move China and become a sea, warning us not to make the mistakes of the past again.
May Wu Ningkun in heaven be free forever.
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