At the time when Fuck 2020 was about to pass, many of you may be like me, with the past vividly in your mind and a thousand words clogging up your heart, but in the end, you can’t say a word.
In the flurry of emotion that followed Dr. Lee’s death, we thought for a moment that that was the worst possible moment and the most hopeful. But apparently, this unprecedented pandemic, which affected the course of human history, eventually taught us that life is like A-shares, and that bears do not talk about the bottom. After bad, there is worse; after hope, there is hardly any new hope.
The great whistle blower, if only a lone person, whistle even if piercing the clouds, I am afraid that also like a glimpse, eventually buried in the later surge of a chicken feather.
A great era, after all, not by a lone whistle to open, it needs countless brave followers, conscience response.
I always think of some fragments of the girl Qiu Jin. More than a hundred years ago, in addition to the heroic heroine of history, there are actually many warm characters. In the ancestral shrine of Qiu Jin, there was also a man who arrested Qiu Jin, Li Zhongyue.
Before Qiu Jin was arrested, she actually received wind of it long before. Although Li Zhongyue, the magistrate of Shanyin County, who was in charge of arresting Qiu Jin, was a gentleman of great conscience. He admired Qiu Jin so much that he resisted the pressure and delayed again and again, deliberately leaving time for Qiu Jin to escape. But Qiu Jin’s thoughts were similar to Tan Sutong’s. She had already made up her mind to kill herself and was determined not to escape.
This kind of saintly sacrificial sentiment had actually been revealed by her a few years earlier. She had already written in her previous “Message to Xu Xiaoshu”, “Though I die, I will live, I will sacrifice to fulfill my duty; I will say goodbye, and the tide will take his head.” Li Zhongyue admired this so much that he resisted the pressure and insisted not to torture Qiu Jin and not to convict her. The governor of Zhejiang ordered him to bring Qiu Jin to justice immediately, but he disliked him with a loud voice: “If there is no evidence, how can you kill!” But his words were too weak to change the outcome. Even under the pressure of losing his official position, he did not break through the bottom line of his conscience and protected Qiu Jin in every way, preserving the last dignity for Qiu Jin who walked to the execution ground.
Before her death, Qiu Jin said to Li Zhongyue, “I am deeply grateful to him, and I want to repay him in the next life”, and the familiar phrase “Autumn wind, Autumn rain, and sadness” was written to Li Zhongyue. Li Zhongyue was impeached and removed from office after Qiu Jin’s death for “inaction”. Although he did his best, his inner conscience still made it difficult for him to face Qiu Jin’s death and he finally hanged himself.
This kind of bright and open-minded scholar’s sentiment in the pre-Qin Dynasty was so warm and eye-catching in the dark atmosphere of the late Qing Dynasty. Not only Li Zhongyue, but also those old guard within the Manchurian Qing Dynasty who hated the revolutionary party to the bone at that time did not approve of killing Qiu Jin. Because they thought that killing a revolutionary party who ran a school and was a woman was too uncouth and despicable.
The public opinion at that time was not afraid of the Qing court’s blockade, and was overwhelmingly in revolt. In Shanghai, which was the center of Chinese public opinion at that time, all the newspapers of all sizes sent out their lamentations and protests in a series of articles. Wen Wei Po, The Times, Shenzhou Daily, etc. even went out of their way to open fire on all the officials involved in Qiu Jin’s case, all of whom were cited and spat upon by name.
Zhang Zeng Yang, the Zhejiang governor who killed Qiu Jin, was forced to be transferred to Jiangsu by the Qing court because of public opinion. When the people of Jiangsu heard the news, they were furious and resolutely resisted Zhang Zeng Yang’s appointment to Jiangsu, so he had no choice but to go to Shaanxi ……
Perhaps we are hard to imagine, in the end of that dynasty, there are still so shiny people and things. At that time, both inside and outside the system, there are so many people, for a lady who killed herself, set off a tsunami of public opinion no less than any event in later times.
The Manchus probably did not expect that the threat of killing the chicken to make an example of the monkeys would not only fail to scare off the monkeys, but really inspire them to rise up and become human. The death of Qiu Jin really ignited the endless beacons of events everywhere and rang the final death knell for the Manchu. After the Xinhai Revolution, the commemoration of Qiu Jin really began. In West Lake and Changsha, Qiu Jin Shrine was established to do justice to this great woman who did not fear life and death and shone in the darkness.
In fact, after Qiu Jin, there were many more Qiu Jin. But unfortunately, these great women, in the struggle with darkness, but no longer have the glory of Qiu Jin, more silent annihilation. The whistle they blew with their lives did not ring, and no one heard it.
Not everyone needs to be Qiu Jin, and not everyone needs to be on par with Li Zhongyue. But a hundred years later, can we be as courageous as those in the last days, in the midst of the siege, giving encouragement to those who walk forward and calling out to the martyrs? To the extent that we can, branding the conscience in our own way? If everyone is waiting for the brave to sacrifice for the bright future, while they only want to hide in the sinking shadows and watch, then even if there are a thousand Qiu Jin, it is only a thousand tragedies that will eventually be forgotten. It has no other meaning than to prove that we do not deserve the noble freedom.
In the new year, I wish those girls who are as great as Qiu Jin will be warm as the sunshine, and I wish I am worthy of this light.
In the square where blood dripped in the old days
There are some indistinct echoes
Your blurred back
I am trying to imagine
Dear girl, let me sing for you
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