Text/Xiong Kunjing
The masterpiece of Li Yingru, a famous contemporary writer in China, "Wildfire Spring Wind Fighting Ancient City", was written based on the writer's personal experience in the Baoding underground workstation during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. Since its introduction in late 1958, it has been translated into more than ten languages such as English, Japanese, Russian, Bulgarian, and Korean and published abroad. In 1963, it was made into a feature film of the same name by bayi Film Studio, and in 1995 and 2005, it was twice adapted into a TV series of the same name, which swept the country after its release. In addition, it was choreographed into plays of the same name, operas and various local plays, which had a great influence on the masses.
So, how did this red literary classic with vivid plot twists, ups and downs and legends was born?
Experience the underground struggle against Japan
Li Yingru was born in 1914 in a middle-class peasant family in Lijiaqiao Village, Qingyuan County, Baoding City, Hebei Province. He lost his father at an early age, his family was poor, and in order to share the burden of family life, he began to cut grass and collect firewood at a young age. At the age of 7, he entered a private school to read the Four Books and Five Classics, Tang and Song prose, etc., and was influenced by a certain degree of literature.
In the early 1930s, Li Yingru was admitted to Baoding Zhicun Middle School. During his time at the middle school, he used his holidays to do library management for the school and earn some money as a subsidy for tuition and food. At the same time, he read revolutionary books such as the Communist Manifesto, accepted progressive revolutionary ideas, actively participated in the student movement, and began to try to write, publishing some poems and essays in the supplement of Youyan, Hebei Minsheng, and Xinghua, the journal of Zhicun Middle School. In 1930, he published the first work he published in a collection of essays compiled by the Anxin County Education Bureau.
In 1935, Li Yingru joined the anti-Japanese National Vanguard Organization, an advanced youth organization led by the Communist Party of China. After graduating from high school in 1937, he was sent to Peking Yenching University for further study because he achieved the first place in the Hebei Provincial Capital Examination. However, the July 7 Incident completely shattered his dream of studying, and he gave up his studies and resolutely returned to his hometown to devote himself to the cause of resisting Japan and saving the country. At that time, the Kuomintang Baoding Military Academy tried to hire him to work with very generous treatment, but he resolutely chose the Communist Party unit, joined the guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army in the spring of 1938, and worked as an editor, reporter, and editor-in-chief of the "Martian Newspaper" run by the guerrilla political department.
◆ Li Yingru
Soon, Li Yingru was assigned by the local party organization to return to Qingyuan County to organize anti-Japanese armed forces. He heard about a veteran named Zhang Leopard who had returned from Zhang Xueliang's army, who was not only accurate in marksmanship, but also knew martial arts, and was a notoriously good player. Therefore, Li Yingru first did his ideological work, using the history of the fall of the three eastern provinces and the tragic situation of the local people being enslaved by the Japanese and living in the depths of the water to stimulate his patriotic enthusiasm. He immediately agreed to follow Li Yingru against Japan and later became the first company commander of the Independent Regiment. Li Yingru went from village to village, extensively mobilized the masses, and soon gathered an anti-Japanese contingent of hundreds of people in his hometown -- the independent regiment of the anti-Japanese advance detachment of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region in the north.
The independent regiment continued to grow and develop, becoming a combative unit of the Jin-Cha-Ji Military Region. The unit was successively ordered to undertake heavy tasks such as escorting cadres, sabotaging railways, and attacking Yixian and Laishui.
Li Yingru led his troops to fight in Jizhongdi and fought dozens of battles against the Japanese puppet army. At the same time as he was born and died, he also let his wife Zhang Shuwen participate in the dangerous work of sending intelligence, and set up an underground party transportation station in his home.
In addition to his life on horseback, Li Yingru worked diligently and wrote down the battle stories and touching deeds he personally experienced, such as "Night Touching the City" reflecting the attack on Wu Qiang, "The Night Attack on Anping City" reflecting the attack on Anping, "Attacking Wen'an" and "The City Without the Sun", which reflected the capture of Wen'an County, which were all published in the "Jizhong Herald" and "Jin-Cha-Ji Daily" at that time.
In the two years after 1940, Li Yingru first served as an editor in the journal "Literary and Art Studies", and then participated in the preliminary review of "One Day in Jizhong" and edited the fourth series of "One Day in Jizhong". In the first half of 1942, he gloriously joined the Communist Party of China and achieved a major turning point in his life.
On May 1 of the same year, the Japanese army invading China gathered tens of thousands of Japanese puppet troops, and with the cooperation of aircraft, dispatched hundreds of tanks and cars to launch a crazy "dragnet" sweep of the anti-Japanese revolutionary base areas in central Hebei, and implemented the barbaric policy of "three lights" (burning the light, killing the light, and robbing the light). For a time, Jizhong became an enemy-occupied area with watchtowers in villages, bunkers everywhere, and blockade ditches, and the situation of the guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army was extremely difficult.
In order to smash the frenzied sweeping of the Japanese puppet army, the Party Committee of Jizhong District decided to send Li Yingru into Baoding City and open a safe underground communication line from Jizhong to the anti-Japanese revolutionary base area in the mountainous area. When talking to him organizationally and assigning tasks, he said: "In the early days of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, you were the regimental commander of the Independent Regiment of the Eighth Route Army, had war experience, and had culture, you were particularly familiar with Baoding, you had studied here, you had a mass base, and you were a local, you had no lack of courage, and you had certain interpersonal relations, and I believe that you could adapt to changes at random and seek victory in danger." ”
In view of the extremely strict blockade of the Pinghan Line by the Japanese troops stationed in Baoding at that time, many comrades of our Party were arrested and sacrificed when crossing the Pinghan Line. Therefore, in order to let Li Yingru go to the city to carry out work as soon as possible, the organization did not have time to apply for a "legal certificate" for him to apply for a "legal certificate" with a steel seal on the photo, and only got him a certificate without a photo in the area where he was close to the enemy. After the certificate was technically processed, it was filled with a false name and stamped with a handprint. Putting his personal safety at risk, he bravely broke into Baoding City with a certificate and found a grain store with links with the guerrilla underground party, and after some mediation between the grain store owner and the head of the pseudo-Hebei Provincial Government Manager Section, whom he knew, he placed Li Yingru in the Manager Section. In order to make himself stand firm, Li Yingru bribed the section chief with all but a part of his meager monthly salary to maintain his minimum living standard. Because of the convenience of his work, Li Yingru was able to witness and understand many shameful and hateful insiders such as the traitorous governors Wu Yi and Du Xijun. Later, when he wrote the long novel "Wildfire Spring Wind Fighting Ancient City", he vividly wrote into it the evil deeds of this gang of traitors and their ugly souls. And the manager section chief is the prototype of Li's crooked nose in the novel.
◆ Manuscript of "Wildfire Spring Wind Fighting Ancient City".
In an extremely sinister environment of struggle, Li Yingru lived up to the expectations of the people, and soon developed a group of his own people, strengthened the underground organization, and established two underground working groups. On this basis, he set up the Baoding underground workstation and served as the station director and secretary of the general branch of the party. Since then, a party underground communication line has been established under the eyes of the enemy. Subsequently, he was instructed by his superiors to shift the focus of his internal work to the work of winning education and disintegration of the enemy and puppet armies in order to cooperate with our Party's military struggle.
Li Yingru also used some painstaking political and ideological work to plot against a man who was working as an errand boy in the Japanese military stronghold, so that he could constantly send out the internal intelligence of the Japanese Kou. This move was of great significance, and Shi Lide, the head of the enemy's ministry who sent Li Yingru into the city, said to Bruce Lee, his daughter Bruce Lee, many years later: "It was your father who set a precedent for the first case in the country to place the internal line into the Japanese army." We hastened to report this case to the Party Central Committee, and only then did the later Southern Enemy Works Department follow suit. Your father opened up several firsts, and we thought of everything, but we didn't expect that he would be able to write a long novel of underground struggle that sensationalized the whole country after liberation. ”
After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Li Yingru served as the chief of the first section of the Enemy Engineering Department of the Political Department of the North China Military Region in 1946, and the first director of the Liaison Department of the North China Bureau of the CPC Central Committee the following year, until the peaceful liberation of Peiping.
Create novels to recreate history
Before and after the founding of the People's Republic of China, Li Yingru successively served as political commissar and secretary of the party committee of a certain military hospital in Tianjin, deputy director of the Cultural Department of the Political Department of the General Logistics Department of the People's Liberation Army, and deputy director of the Propaganda Department. In 1954, based on his revolutionary experience before liberation, he created and published his debut novel "Fighting on the Tuotuo River", which was well received by readers and critics and praised as one of the excellent novels in the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China. From 1955 onwards, he felt his personal experience of carrying out underground struggles in Baoding City during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the experiences of other comrades-in-arms, and conceived and created a long novel "Wildfire Spring Wind Fighting Ancient City". The novel was originally intended to be written in 200,000 words, but when it was unscripted in 1958, it was 340,000 words long. It was first published in Harvest, No. 6, 1958, and in November of the same year by writers' publishing houses.
Regarding the theme of this novel, Li Yingru explained in the article "On the Ancient City of Wildfire Spring Wind Fighting" - From Creation to Revision: "Before this novel was written, the theme idea was not very clear. Because I am more familiar with this aspect of life, I always want to record the characters and events of the internal struggle. Later, it occurred to me that the Work of the Party's inner line was a hidden front (it was proposed to be titled "The Other Front" in the novel), on which, thanks to the strong leadership of the Party, as on other fronts, we developed and strengthened ourselves, and attacked or destroyed the enemy, and this consciously wanted to express the Victory of the Party on this front. Therefore, I use wildfire as a metaphor for the enemy's fierce flame, and the spring wind as a metaphor for the strength of the party, and let the fierce flame of your enemy be no matter how high, burn inexhaustible Chinese the living force of the people's revolution. After the party's spring wind and rain, the suffering Chinese people will finally win the struggle, and the ravaged land of China will finally disappear and the sky will be clear, showing a thriving scene. ”
◆ Stills from the movie "Wildfire Spring Breeze Fighting Ancient City".
In the character shaping of this novel, Li Yingru has made great efforts to create a number of characters that shine in the history of modern Chinese literature, such as Yang Xiaodong, Yang Mu, JinHuan, and Silver Ring. In his article "On the Ancient City of Wildfire Spring Breeze Fighting"- From Creation to Revision, he recalled the birth process of the character of Mrs. Yang: "I have studied the image of mother in some Chinese and foreign works. I analyzed and compared them, got a lot of inspiration, and absorbed a certain amount of nutrition, but I think that learning from others is only a wide idea, and the most important thing is to create according to real life. So I recalled and imagined many images of rural mothers. For example, the image of Mrs. Ma, the mother of the leader of the Muslim detachment, and the image of several landlords and old ladies who covered us before and after the 'May Day' sweep in Jizhong. In some plots and personality characteristics, as Comrade Shi Lide said at the symposium of this book, there is also the image of the author's mother. Mrs. Yang's temperament and story are also gradually enriched. In the first draft, Mrs. Yang occupied very little space, and did not even let her participate in the work, and later added content. After the finalization, it was occasionally seen that the Qingyuan County Chronicle contained the story of his mother's martyrdom, which was enlightening, so he added the plot of Yang Xiaodong's mother's mother's balcony meeting and his mother jumping off the building. When revising the novel, I felt that Mrs. Yang should be stronger politically, and her self-consciousness and political opinions were appropriately improved. ”
Excellent novels are praised
As soon as the novel "Wildfire Spring Breeze Fighting Ancient City" was published, it immediately won the praise of the majority of readers and literary and art circles, and people wrote articles to give high praise. In his article "Talking about the Ancient City of Wildfire Spring Wind Fighting", Hu Jingzhi discussed from the four aspects of "arduous and complicated times", "thrilling struggles", "plump and moving images" and "simple and true style", and held that "Wildfire Spring Wind Fighting Ancient City" has many advantages such as true content, novel themes, twists and turns, fascinating plots, full characters, vivid and vivid characters, and simple, concise and powerful language, "it is indeed one of the excellent novels that appeared in 1958." It truly depicts the events of underground struggles and heroic figures that make people 'feel excited'. Comrade Li Yingru has hung a precious painting in the gallery of heroes of our people's revolutionary struggle. Fang Ming, in the article "Wildfires Burn Endlessly, Spring Wind Blows and Grows Again- Reading the Ancient City of Wildfire Spring Breeze Dou", affirms that it is "a novel of educational significance and an attractive novel." This was a gratifying harvest in the literary creation of 1958." Ye Shengtao, a famous modern writer, educator and literary publisher in China, wrote in the article "Reading the Ancient City of Wildfire Spring Wind Dou": "After reading this "Wildfire Spring Wind Dou Ancient City" in one breath, I feel that the last sentence of the 'content description' 'This is an exciting and excellent work' is not excessive. ”
In 1960, during a delegation of Japanese writers headed by the famous Japanese writer Hiroshi Noma, Li Yingru happened to be the leader of the team. One day after dinner, everyone chatted in the hotel where the guests were staying, and when Noma Hiroshi learned that Li Yingru had served as the head of the Hebei Central Anti-Japanese Resistance League during the War of Resistance Against Japan, commanded battles and experienced hundreds of battles, and had a long-term magical experience in underground work, he said to him with great excitement: "It is precisely because you have such brilliant and colorful experience, accumulated rich literary materials, and put them into creation that you can write some moving novels, essays, and reportages such as "WildFire Spring Wind Fighting Ancient City." ”
However, the excellent novel "Wildfire Spring Wind Fighting Ancient City", which was praised by the public, was not tolerated by Lin Biao and the "Gang of Four" during the "Cultural Revolution". In the name of the workers and peasants, they concocted "Is it a fight, or a surrender?" -- Commenting on Li Yingru's big poisonous grass "Wildfire Spring Wind Fighting Ancient City", "Not a revolutionary mother, but a coward who is greedy for perfection -- Commenting on Old Lady Yang in "Wildfire Spring Wind Fighting Ancient City", "Dirty Deals -- Looking at Yang Xiaodong's Opportunist Face from Guan Jingtao's "Welcome Meeting", and "Liu Thief's Pawn -- Commenting on Yang Xiaodong in "Wildfire Spring Wind Fighting Ancient City"" and other articles, wielding the stick of "human nature theory" and slandering the work as a "big poisonous weed" and a "reactionary novel". His "critical" firepower was particularly concentrated on the heroic image of Yang Xiaodong's mother and son, believing that the "revolutionary" heroes must be pure and pure "revolutionary" factions, and cannot and should not have any "personal" wishes and feelings. According to this, Yang Xiaodong's mother hoped to "see her son come back without disaster or illness", hoped to please a daughter-in-law, and when she saw her son who had been reunited for a long time suddenly leave, her "heart ached", and she was identified as "a drowning person who has no revolution in her heart, no people in her eyes, and a person who is full of people playing in circles around individuals", such a person is categorically "not the mother of the revolution", but can only be a "coward who is greedy for life and afraid of death". Obviously, such criticisms and assertions are completely inconsistent with the ethics of human feelings in real life, and thus completely violate and distort the reality of life reflected in the novel. In addition, the depiction of the pseudo-regimental leader Guan Jingtao in the novel, and the depiction of Yang Xiaodong and others who fought and promoted the uprising of Guan Jingtao, were also unreasonably attacked by the "great criticism" article.
As a result, Li Yingru suffered more brutal criticism and persecution, and was thrown into Qincheng Prison in early 1970 and lost his freedom for eight years. However, the writer, who was already sixty years old at the time, was tenacious and indomitable, and with perseverance and perseverance, overcame unimaginable difficulties, and created millions of words of novels "Female Guerrilla Captain" and "The Last Generation" in the iron window.
After smashing the "Gang of Four", Li Yingru was rehabilitated, "Wildfire Spring Wind Fighting Ancient City" was reprinted and reprinted, and "Female Guerrilla Leader" and "The Last Generation" were also published and distributed.
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