Cultural warrior Jin Jianxiao

Jin Jianxiao (1910-1936), the pioneer of the northeast revolution in literature and art in the 1930s, a heroic and fearless anti-Japanese fighter, and an outstanding Communist Party member. Formerly known as Jin Zhong, Peiyuan, also known as Mengchen, once used the names Jianxiao, Jianshuo, Jian, Jilai, Liu Debt, etc., Manchu, Shenyang City, Liaoning Province. Famous novelist, poet, painter, playwright and director.

In December 1910, he was born in Shenyang city to an ordinary family of engraving workers, moved to Harbin with his family at the age of 3, lived in Daowai South Sixteen Dao Street, and then moved to No. 39 Taohua Lane, at the age of 8, he entered Daowai Zhengyang Primary School (now Daowai District Sanyu Primary School), entered the Sanyu Middle School run by the Daowai Christian Church, and was admitted to Harbin Medical College to study medicine after graduating from middle school. During this period, a revolutionary storm swept through China, and Harbin had established the secret organization of the Chinese Communist Party, the North Manchuria Prefectural Committee. Party organizations went deep into factories and colleges and middle schools to carry out anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary propaganda activities, and Jin Jianxiao was influenced by it to devote himself to the revolution. Although he studied medicine, he felt that the use of literary works could better awaken people and wage a resolute struggle against the enemy. As a result, he often wrote poems for publication in newspapers and periodicals.

In August 1927, Jin Jianxiao abandoned his medical career and became the editor of Jiangbian, a literary and art supplement of the Starlight Newspaper. During this period, he published two essays, "The Enemy's Pocket" and "The Diary of the Eight Eggs of the King", expressing his melancholy and strong dissatisfaction with reality, the former being against the warlord melee, awakening some young people who also had old mothers and wives and young children, not to blindly sell their lives to the warlords, to kill each other, as cannon fodder for the warlords to fight for territory, and the latter to expose the criminal activities of the exploiting class. In the summer of 1930, he left Harbin for Shanghai and was admitted to the Xinhua University of the Arts in Shanghai to study painting, and after strict training, he was good at oil painting, watercolor, pastel painting, sketching, and woodcut. During this period, he read a large number of works by Lu Xun, Mao Dun, Jiang Guangci and other writers, often participated in revolutionary activities organized by the party and group and left-wing writers, joined the Chinese Communist Youth League in the winter of the same year, and has since embarked on the revolutionary road. In the spring of 1931, Jin Jianxiao transferred to the Art Education Department of Shanghai University of the Arts and continued to study painting, and soon after, he joined the Communist Party of China.

In August 1931, sent by the party organization, Jin Jianxiao returned to Harbin. After the September 18 Incident, he quickly threw himself into the anti-Japanese rescue activities and organized an "anti-Japanese drama club" to publicize the anti-Japanese salvation of the country. After the fall of Harbin, he worked as an "anti-Japanese meeting" in Harbin's literary and art circles and a painting of the anti-Japanese salvation tabloids secretly published by the Manchurian Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China. In May 1933, he undertook a large number of paintings in the Manchurian Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China," the Manchurian Red Flag (later renamed "Northeast Red Flag" and "Northeast People's Revolution Daily"), and worked for half a year. In July of the same year, the anti-Japanese group Star Theater Troupe was founded. Xiao Jun, Xiao Hong, Shu Qun, Luo Feng, Bai Lang and others all participated in the performance and work of the troupe.

In order to expand the revolutionary literary and artistic propaganda front, through the relationship between the puppet Manchukuo government organ "Datong Bao" in Changchun, they set up a "night whistle" literary and art weekly on the supplement of the newspaper, and published many works exposing the darkness of japanese and pseudo-rule. His short stories "Sunday", the play "Poor Teacher" and "The Artist and the Coachman" were published in the newspaper, after which "Night Whistle" was ordered to be suspended. In January 1934, through the party organization, he ran a weekly magazine called "Literature and Art" in the "International Association", and continued to publish a large number of literary and artistic works, which used tortuous and suggestive brushwork to describe the oppression of the Chinese people and their lives in misery, awaken the patriotic enthusiasm of the people, call on the people to rise up and fight against the aggression of Japanese imperialism.

In 1934, in order to better carry out the party's work, he opened the "Tianma" advertising agency in Harbin Daoli, contracting various painting advertisements to cover up revolutionary activities. Later, he went to the "Great North New Pictorial Newspaper" as an editor, and used his pen name Ba Lai to continue to publish very combat articles, calling on his comrades-in-arms to summon up their fighting spirit and fight the enemy to the end. In the spring of 1935, he and other progressive youth founded the "Harbin Harmonica Society" in Daoli China Sidao Street (now Xisi Dao Street) to unite and attract a group of literary and artistic youth and patriots. Because of Jin Jianxiao's revolutionary activities, the "Great Northern New Pictorial" also dismissed him. The party organization was constantly damaged, the political situation was more sinister, Jin Jianxiao could not find a job in Harbin, and with the consent of the party organization, he went to Qiqihar's "Heilongjiang Minbao" in June 1935 as a supplement editor. The supplement of "Wutian" was founded, and the weekly magazine "Yiwen" and "Ripples" were added.

During his work in Qiqihar, he continued his revolutionary activities in the northeast literary circles under the control of Japanese and puppet reactionary rule with exuberant revolutionary energy. In the winter of 1935, Jin Jianxiao took advantage of the opportunity of the 2,000th publication of heilongjiang Minbao to organize the "White Light Drama Society" and personally direct the program, setting a precedent for the first time in the history of Qiqihar City for men and women to perform a drama together. In January 1936, the newspaper learned that Jin Jianxiao had attracted the attention of the secret agents, so they dismissed him, and Jin Jianxiao returned to Harbin.

Jin Jianxiao clearly knew that he had aroused the vigilance of the enemy and could be arrested and sacrificed at any time, but he still continued to look for a propaganda position for the anti-Japanese struggle regardless of his personal safety. In April 1936, they bought the host of the "Great Northern New Pictorial", with Jin Jianxiao as the editor-in-chief, and used the japanese name as a cover to carry out our propaganda. On 1 May, a special commemorative issue was also published, introducing to readers in various forms such as poems, texts, photographs, and cartoons, and constantly firing at the enemy, including the Long March of the Chinese Workers' and Peasants' Red Army, the northeast anti-Japanese coalition army's attack on Xingjing County, and Chiang Kai-shek's encirclement and suppression of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army. In addition, he also published quotations from the famous Soviet writer Gorky, portrait poems by the poet Mayakovsky, and articles introducing revolutionary writers such as Lu Xun and Guo Moruo, as well as some progressive literary works and reviews.

On June 10, 1936, Jin Jianxiao published in the picture magazine the news that Gorky, the great proletarian writer of the Soviet Union, was seriously ill, which attracted the attention of the enemy. On the afternoon of the 13th, he and his colleagues were arrested and imprisoned by Japanese plainclothes agents and imprisoned in the basement of the secret service of the Japanese Consulate General (now the Harbin Railway Public Security Department on Red Army Street at the railway station). When the enemy learned that he was Ba Lai, a supplement to qiqihar's "People's Daily," he was escorted to the dungeon of Qiqihar Prison on June 20 and tortured him severely: he was made to sit on a tiger stool, filled with pepper water, hoisted his head down, and whipped him with a whip. After his arrest, Jin Jianxiao was unusually strong, showing the noble qualities of a communist who was strong and indomitable.

At 10:00 a.m. on August 15, 1936, Jin Jianxiao was secretly executed by the military law of the pseudo-Third Military District. Before his execution, Jin Jianxiao did not have time to say goodbye to his wife, did not leave a last word for his wife and daughter, and calmly became righteous, only 26 years old at the time. After Xiao Hong heard the news of the heroic sacrifice of her division commander and comrades-in-arms, she wrote a poem "A Grain of Soil Mud" mourning Jin Jianxiao with deep affection.

Jin Jianxiao, one of the pioneers of revolutionary literature and art in Northeast China, an outstanding revolutionary writer, painter and artist, although his life was short, his revolutionary deeds and his great works are eternal and immortal.