Author: Xie Junzhen served as Deputy Consul General of the Chinese Consulate General in Chicago and Counsellor of the Foreign History Research Office.
In the summer of 1986, David Cruk, a British expert who had been working in China for a long time, a professor at the University of Foreign Chinese in Beijing, and my teacher, David Cruk, and his wife, Isabe, visited relatives in London, England. Their youngest son, Paul, who works for the BBC in London, and paul and his two older brothers, Carl and Michael, were both born in Beijing and grew up in Chinese nannies who spoke fluent Beijing. When the BBC president visited China, Paul acted as Chinese translator.
In the 1950s, when I was studying in the English Department of the Beijing School of Foreign Chinese (the predecessor of Beijing University of Foreign Chinese), Ms. Isabh was the professor of our class. After I went to work at the Embassy in the UK, I found that there were students who graduated from Beiwai in the headquarters of our embassy, the Cultural Department and the Education Department, and there were also students who graduated from Beiwai in the London Branch of Xinhua News Agency and the London Office of civil aviation of China. We were both students of the Kruks. When we learned that Mr. and Mrs. Kruk had come to London, they agreed to hold a small reception to welcome them.
◎ In the summer of 1986, Professor Cruk (fourth from left) and his wife Isabe (fifth from left) of the University of Foreign Chinese in Beijing visited relatives in Britain. The author is the second from the left, and the first on the right is Paul, the youngest son of Kruk, who works in England.
One morning, seven or eight of our old classmates from the north gathered in the small reception hall on the second floor of the new building of the Chinese Embassy in Britain to welcome Mr. and Mrs. Kruk.
At ten o'clock, Mr. and Mrs. Kruk and Paul arrived on time, and we all greeted them and shook hands warmly with the family. Each of us gave our names to the two teachers, and Mr. Isabe remembered me. She said that during an oral English practice in my class, I translated Chinese "time like an arrow" directly as "Time flies like an arrow", which the British did not express. I laughed and admired the teacher's memory.
◎ Isabelle in Nanhai Mountain Village, Hebei Province
Le Junqing, Political Counselor of our museum, spoke on behalf of our old classmates, warmly welcomed the two teachers, and thanked them for cultivating and teaching our students in the school for many years. Mr. Kruk said that he did not expect to see so many of their students in London, and was pleased to see us in important positions in diplomatic and other positions and to serve the new China, indicating that they were willing to dedicate their lives to the cause of the Chinese people.
We warmly applauded, and everyone and the two teachers had a pleasant conversation at the reception and took a group photo in front of the Great Wall painting in the hall. This teacher-student gathering was very meaningful. I also heard that Mr. and Mrs. Kruk used their stay in England to give lectures in London and other places to introduce the situation in China, and to be interviewed by radio and television reporters to publicize China's reform and opening up.
◎ Mr. and Mrs. Kruk
Mr. Kruk was a veteran Member of the British Communist Party, born in London in 1910 and joined the British Communist Party in 1936. In the same year, the Franco coup d'état occurred in Spain, and in solidarity with the Spanish people's anti-fascist struggle, the young Kruk joined the international column and joined the anti-fascist struggle. At the outbreak of World War II, he joined the British Air Force and was sent to South Asia and the Far East.
During Spain's civil war, Kruk read the American journalist Edgar Snow's book "Journey to the West" and had a desire to visit Yan'an to see the Liberated Areas of China. In 1938, Kruk came to Shanghai and taught at St. John's University in Shanghai and Jinling University in Chengdu, but he failed to fulfill his wish to enter the Liberated Areas. In the autumn of 1947, Kruk and his wife Isabé came to China again with a letter of introduction written by The Secretary of the British Communist Party, Bolit, and entered the Jinji-Hebei Luyu Liberated Area and lived in a small mountain village deep in the Taihang Mountains (now Shilidian Village, Wu'an County, Hebei Province). He participated in the local land reform and later published two books, "Revolution in a Chinese Village" and "Ten Mile Shop".
◎ David Kruk and his wife take a group photo in front of the Chinese University in Beijing
In the summer of 1948, just as Kruk was preparing to leave for China, Wang Bingnan, deputy head of the Foreign Affairs Group of the Central Committee, asked him to stay and help train foreign affairs cadres in the future new China. Kruk agreed to stay and began teaching at the Foreign Affairs School established by the Party Central Committee, and from then on he devoted himself to foreign language education in China. Since 1954, Mr. Kruk has organized some foreign friends in Beijing to participate in political studies and care about China's development, which persisted until the 1990s.
Over the past few decades, Mr. Kruk has given speeches in Europe, the Americas, and Oceania many times, interviewed by domestic and foreign radio and television stations, published many articles in foreign newspapers and periodicals, and made a large number of foreign lectures for New China. On the education front, Mr. Kruk worked quietly and trained thousands of foreign affairs cadres. In the early 1960s, Mr. Kruk accepted an offer from the University of Ritz in the United Kingdom to return to China to teach. At that time, relations between China and the Soviet Union deteriorated, and the Soviet Union withdrew its experts, stopped aid, and put pressure on China. In order to show solidarity with the Chinese people, Mr. Kruk resolutely decided to give up returning to China to teach, and stayed with his wife and three children to share the hardships and hardships with the Chinese people.
Mr. Kruk has a deep affection for Chinese people. During the three difficult years of the 1960s, he offered to take a pay cut and only get half of his salary. When he learned that the people in the village could not eat clean water, he wrote a letter to the relevant departments, prompting the Hebei Provincial Government to send an engineering team into the village and drill a deep well, so that the local residents could eat clean well water, realizing their wish for many years.
◎ In 1948, Ye Jianying (first from left) took a group photo with David Kruk (third from left) and Isabé (fourth from left).
Ten years of devastation, Mr. Kruk and his family were not spared, he was innocently imprisoned for five years, and his wife and three children were also affected. Under the personal interrogation of Premier Zhou Enlai, his unjust case was completely resolved. On March 8, 1973, Premier Zhou Enlai rehabilitated him in the Great Hall of the People and publicly apologized to him.
Regardless of his personal grievances, Mr. Kruk returned to the educational post shortly after his release from prison and devoted himself to the compilation of the English-Chinese Dictionary. After the resumption of the college entrance examination in 1977, Mr. Kruk was 67 years old and still undertook to open a new course" "World History", ready to teach himself. This course is a popular course for students.
Later, Teacher Isabhi retired from the front line and served as an adviser to Beiwai, still doing his duty, taking the initiative to make suggestions and opinions to the school party committee and principal, and contributing to the reform of Beiwai.
Mr. Kruk was a communist fighter who served the people wholeheartedly, a true internationalist fighter, a true internationalist. He is an unswerving friend of Chinese people and a loyal teacher of Chinese education. On November 1, 2000, Mr. Kruk died in Beijing at the age of 90 due to illness. According to his will, his body was donated to the hospital for scientific research. This is his final dedication to the people of Chinese.
Although Mr. Kruk has left us, his selflessness, fearlessness and dedication will always inspire us, and we will always miss him!
-End-
Text | From Panmunjom to Chicago
Author | Xie Junzhen
Image | Source network except for labels
Edit | Diplomat says something xiao ha