Cao Jingxing, a well-known media personality, died in Shanghai on February 11, 2022 at the age of 75.
Cao Jingxing was born in Shanghai in 1947 to the father of the famous journalist and writer Cao Juren, and his older sister was the dubbing artist Cao Lei. Since 1968, Cao Jingxing has been in the mountains of southern Anhui for 10 years, entering the History Department of Fudan University in 1978 and studying the US economy at the Institute of World Economy of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences in 1982. In 1989, he was hired as a writer for Asia Weekly, became deputy editor-in-chief in 1994, and then served as the chief writer of Ming Pao, writing editorials and reviews. In 1997, Cao Jingxing switched to television and became the editor-in-chief of The Zhongtian News Channel of Hong Kong Communications Television; in 1998, he joined Phoenix TV and served as the deputy director of Phoenix TV Information Station and the director of the speech department. Since February 2009, Cao Jingxing has also been working on the central people's radio news comprehensive frequency Voice of China in the morning prime time, commenting on domestic and foreign current affairs news daily.
Most people know Cao Jingxing because he was a world-renowned Chinese television host and media person. What is less known is that born in Shanghai, he had an almost paranoid obsession with his pursuit of the history of the War of Resistance Against Japan. He once said that every Chinese should make up for the lesson of the War of Resistance, including himself.
For Cao Jingxing, the War of Resistance was the resistance of his family. His father, Cao Juren, a well-known newspaperman, co-authored "The History of Chinese Anti-Japanese War Painting" with photojournalist Shu Zongqiao, and recorded a large number of evidence of the Japanese army's invasion of China and the deeds of Chinese the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression with more than 200,000 words and thousands of precious photos; his mother also reported in the battlefield, and his brothers and sisters were all born in the battlefield; his uncles, uncles, and cousins were all soldiers and participated in the War of Resistance.
In 2015, 70 years after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Cao Jingxing cooperated with the Shanghai Documentary Channel to shoot the 70th anniversary of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, "Walking the Battlefield", which spanned most of China, from Nanjing and Taierzhuang to Wuhan, Chongqing and Changsha, from Tengchong, Yunnan, where the Chinese Expeditionary Force fought, to Harbin, Heilongjiang, where the Northeast Volunteer Army rose up to resist, and finally returned to shanghai's "Four Elements Warehouse" that witnessed the bloody battle of Songhu.
For more than two months, he trekked through the mountains and forests, how many times the sweat soaked the back of his clothes, and in a barren mountain where white bones and shrapnel are still seen, he picked up a few skulls, saying that this guilt can never be experienced in the history books.
At the Memorial Hall of the Compatriots Killed in the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Invasion of China, he was by no means willing to call the visitors "tourists", but "visitors".
In 2017, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the outbreak of the "August 13" Songhu Anti-Japanese War, reporters witnessed a meeting between Cao Jingxing and Xie Jimin, the son of Xie Jinyuan, at the Sixing Warehouse. When the 70-year-old Cao Jingxing and the 80-year-old Xie Jimin held hands together, there was a round of applause in the Sihang Warehouse Memorial Hall. Cao Jingxing sighed: "The 'second generation of resistance' is 80 years old, and it is the responsibility of our generation to let today's young people and children remember the history of 80 years ago." ”
80 years ago, in the Sihang Warehouse on the banks of the Suzhou River, Xie Jinyuan led more than 420 officers and men of the 1st Battalion of the 524th Regiment of the 262nd Brigade of the 88th Division of the Chinese Army (known to the outside world as "Eight Hundred Heroes"), with fewer enemies and more enemies, stubbornly defended, and resisted many rounds of Japanese attacks. In order to publicize the heroic resistance of the Chinese army, Cao Juren, a war correspondent at the time, stayed in the Sixing Warehouse for 44 days and witnessed the battle.
"Shanghai was also a media war, the Japanese controlled most of the media, including the international media, how to make the heroic resistance of the Chinese army known to the world?" Cao Jingxing said that his father, Cao Juren, lived on the 3rd floor of the Sihang Warehouse through the relationship of Sun Yuanliang, the commander of the 88th Division, and witnessed the whole process of heroic perseverance. Cao Jingxing also accompanied the late famous film screenwriter Shen Ning to visit the Sihang Warehouse Memorial Hall. In 1937, when the then 14-year-old Shen's family lived at Xinzha Junction, through a telescope, he saw a soldier with explosives strapped to his body fly down from the warehouse floor and die with the Japanese soldiers. "At the end of the visit, I saw the silent old man silently weeping next to him. For those who have experienced all this, the feeling is indescribable. And we can only go back to that year through words and the narrative of the previous generation, so that this history and memory can not be interrupted. ”
Professors Jin Guangyao and Cao Jingxing of the Department of History at Fudan University were colleagues at the Huangshan Tea Forest Farm. In 1978, the two were admitted to the Department of History of Fudan University. "Not only is he older than us, Cao Jingxing is particularly strong in all aspects of his study and life, so we call him 'old guy' behind his back, and he accepts it calmly." Jin Guangyao once recalled this.
In that year, cao Jingxing and his wife and Jin Guangyao were admitted to Fudan from the Huangshan Tea Forest Farm. The farm pays wages, and Jin Guangyao rides a bicycle to collect it together. Cao Jingxing and his wife have a combined salary of 84 yuan per month, which is considered a "rich man" among the same students, leaving 40 yuan to buy meal tickets, 20 yuan to do living expenses for their daughter, and the remaining 24 yuan is almost used to buy books. Some books are difficult to buy in general bookstores, so go to used bookstores to slowly shop. The Shanghai bookstore on Fuzhou Road can often find the beloved book, which has become one of Cao Jingxing's favorite bookstores. Cao Jingxing brought a copy of "Zizhi Tongjian" to the bedroom every week, a total of 20 copies, read one book a week, and slowly read the whole set. Later, when he bought a book, his classmates followed suit. For Cao Jingxing, who was 31 years old when he entered college, learning English is a bigger challenge, relying on word by word.
"On the farm, there is very little to read and no one can teach us. But we all acquire knowledge by all means and constantly improve ourselves. Cao Jingxing's method is to "copy books", for him, copying books can not only deepen the impression, but also practice the words well, "I remember that the paper for copying books has such a thick stack, very thin paper, and copied several books." "Later, as a media person, Cao Jingxing's ability to learn and remember strongly may not be unrelated to the copying of books in his youth.
"We were like having a thirst for reading. One year when I returned to Shanghai for the New Year, I went to a friend's house and saw that her family had a set of previously published "The Vengeance of Monte Cristo". After I borrowed it, I didn't leave the house for the whole Spring Festival and read a set of four books in one breath. Cao Jingxing said, "There are also traditional Chinese novels and classical masterpieces that are also read on the farm, and the most impressive is "Liaozhai". Later, when I talked about news writing with young people, I said that I would carefully read "Liaozhai", and write a complex story clearly in a few hundred words, and the characters were vivid. This is the skill, as long as you are familiar with it, the news reports written will not be boring. ”
Cao Jingxing has loved journalism all his life, and on weekdays, his WeChat circle of friends is like a small media that aggregates news at home and abroad. Suffering from cancer, the 73-year-old returned to the streets shortly after surgery. And his obsession with the history of the War of Resistance was no less than his love of journalism. Cao Jingxing said that his father was not only a journalist, but also a historian, and his vision, ideas, and sense of mission prompted him to review the historical materials as a historian a hundred years later when compiling the historical materials of the War of Resistance, striving to be fair and true, worthy of the soldiers on the battlefield, and even more worthy of the next generation of readers. This is also what Cao Jingxing once did.
On the morning of February 8, Cao Jingxing's active and rich WeChat circle of friends stopped updating. On February 11, when the news of his death came, many viewers who had benefited from his news program sighed.