"One Man's News Agency" stopped changing.
Cao Jingxing, a veteran media person, constantly forwards Chinese and foreign news and current affairs in his daily circle of friends, just like a news agency. Sometimes Cao Jingxing has to send 400 circles of friends a day, almost reaching the maximum sending limit. Until August 2020, Cao Jingxing found stomach cancer during a physical examination at Changzheng Hospital, and then underwent surgery and chemotherapy, and never stopped working on the "news agency". But it only stopped on the day of treatment, and the next day, the news began to "bombard" the circle of friends.
But even if he is sick, he continues to collect news clues like a radar, he chats with patients, talks to doctors, and makes eleven short videos between treatments, and the number of single episodes on Weibo exceeds 130,000. Engage with your fans non-stop. On February 7, his circle of friends stopped updating.
The bad news of his death came today.
On February 7, his circle of friends stopped updating. Source: Screenshot of Cao Jingxing's WeChat circle of friends
Idle "idleness"
Cao Jingxing is tireless.
In April 2019, when I participated in the event in Shanghai Book City and waited for the opening, from time to time, some people came to think of adding Cao Jingxing's WeChat. Cao Jingxing did not refuse at all, "No problem", and then said as if he were taking a preventive injection, "But I warned first, you will not be able to stand me." Most likely, you'll regret it as soon as you add it, and then you'll block me right away. ”
See the other person's puzzled expression. Cao Jingxing stretched out his phone to display the QR code for the other party to scan, and then retrieved the mobile phone to add new friends, while saying "I want to send two or three hundred WeChat messages a day." The new people connected to WeChat were unbelievable, took back the mobile phone to open Cao Jingxing's circle of friends, and sure enough, the finger brushed twice and did not see the bottom, and then slid hard four or five times, only to suddenly realize: Cao Jingxing's daily circle of friends, uninterrupted forwarding of Chinese and foreign news and current affairs, is like a news agency. Sometimes Cao Jingxing has to send 400 circles of friends a day, almost reaching the maximum sending limit. It was also at the moment of waiting for the scene and the moment when people added WeChat, Cao Jingxing forwarded several news.
Cao Jingxing is also always curious.
At one time, Cao Jingxing taught at Tsinghua University's School of Journalism and Communication, and he often passed through the "New Forest Academy" where Yang Dai lived. It was a small ditch with a stone slab, and it was said that the Japanese devils had killed many warriors and civilians. He remembered that Yang Dai had written, "Alone, how dare you cross that stone slab." Three times I plucked up enough courage to rush over, but like encountering a 'ghost hitting the wall', I felt a large black gas in front of me, blocking my way, and I had to retreat home. Cao Jingxing wants to know what is going on with the "ghost hitting the wall", so every time he rides home alone in the middle of the night, he always wants to go to meet those "ghosts".
If you encounter it, there is a high probability that you will start the interview in the dark of night. I think.
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", for which he crossed most of China, went south to Tengchong, north to Harbin, from Nanjing and Taierzhuang to Wuhan, Chongqing, and Changsha, and for more than two months, he waded through mountains and waters, "In a barren mountain where white bones and shrapnel are still seen, he picked up several skulls, saying that this kind of guilt can never be experienced in the history books." ”
It is hard for me to forget that a male reporter in his early twenties who was with him at that time came back and punched his legs and sighed: "Teacher Cao's energy is really good, and when I can't walk, he said to go forward." When I was so tired that I couldn't open my eyes, Teacher Cao was radiant. "It's hard for me to forget that Cao Jingxing reads the newspaper, reads the bulletin board, looks at the window, and interviews people around him everywhere he goes. It is said that when he was working as a media in Hong Kong, Cao Jingxing was always able to turn over the newspaper, resulting in "the cleaning aunt likes to go to his seat the most, because waste paper can be sold for money at most." His former colleague Chen Luyu described it as follows: "Every day after lunchtime, Mr. Cao appears at the company with a full of newspapers and periodicals. I secretly helped him do the math in his spare time, and he read at least 20 newspapers and periodicals every day and did countless newspaper clippings. He had a habit of photocopying useful information from the newspaper, so he could always be seen next to the company's photocopier. ”
The profound accumulation of learning, the knowledgeable mind and the abundant written preparation in advance allow Cao Jingxing to establish a multi-dimensional thinking reference axis, and when he puts the small things and new things that are inconspicuous in this dimension for consideration, he can see the novelty and depth that others do not have.
Once I flipped through Cao Juren's family letter and found that Cao Juren's love for this young son was "Idle Child". Teacher Cao Jingxing's own WeChat nickname also uses the word "idle". I just smiled, Teacher Cao Jingxing is all over his body, where is there a little bit of "idleness"?
Until August 2020, Teacher Cao Jingxing found stomach cancer during a physical examination at Changzheng Hospital, and then underwent surgery and chemotherapy, and never stopped working on the "news agency". But it only stopped on the day of treatment, and the next day, two or three hundred news began to "bombard" the circle of friends. I greeted him for his health, and he sent me a picture of him in his hospital gown. A silver hair known as the "Milk Killer" was gone, with a bare head, "like a brine egg", the person was thin, had a white beard, but the spirit was very good, "thank you", he said, the backhand sent me a bunch of news, so we discussed the article, no longer talk about the disease.
Don't forget to work when you are sick. Source: Cao Jingxing Weibo
It wasn't long before the "news agency" was working as usual. Only by chance in Cao Jingxing's circle of friends and Weibo self-Chen, you can find that he is a patient: walking in the ward, seeing the poster of Shanghai Overseas Chinese University students collecting wigs for cancer patients, he captured news clues; chatting with the nurses and accompanying family members at night, he also searched for countless news topics; even in communication with his attending doctor, he "handily" produced eleven episodes of "Intestinal Long-term" interviews, Cao Jingxing confessed his physical condition to the camera. These short videos interviewing doctors as both senior hosts and cancer patients have more than 130,000 views on Weibo.
He started by asking the doctors very simple questions, such as why the doctor's uniform was white. Two lifetimes, two births, three, until it involves the forefront and depth of doctors' lives and medical science popularization.
On his weibo, Cao Jingxing summed up his colorful career in a simple line: a veteran media person and news commentator.
True media people are destined to never be idle. Constantly entering knowledge, constantly capturing news, and constantly outputting messages constitute the side of Cao Jingxing. If a young journalist or writer sometimes feels that "there is nothing to write" or "no topic to be found", then he should go to Mr. Cao for a day. Just follow a day to understand what is called the source of living water continuously.
The scholar has a pen like a knife
On the shelves of my childhood, there is a copy of "Ten Thousand Miles" published by the Fujian People's Publishing House in 1983. The author, Cao Juren, is a famous modern writer, scholar and journalist.
Born in 1900, Cao Juren went to Shanghai to teach in 1921, and later became a professor at Shanghai University, Jinan University, Fudan University and other universities, and engaged in writing. At the beginning of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in 1937, he went from shuzhai to the battlefield, covering the Battle of Songhu, the Battle of Taierzhuang and the Southeast Battlefield. In 1950, he went to Hong Kong and wrote op-eds for several newspapers and periodicals. After 1956, he returned to the mainland several times to conduct interviews, and devoted himself to the great cause of the reunification of the motherland, writing more than 40 million words in his lifetime.
Around the time I started reading, my father pointed to the book and said, "This is a war correspondent." Thus, an image of traveling in all directions, reading a wide range of books, talking about the ancient and modern, and entering the discourse as far as the eye can see, constitutes my first imagination of this profession. When I grew up and saw Mr. Cao Jingxing talking on TV, and heard people talking about "the son inheriting the father's business", I realized that mr. "Jingxing", the signature "Jingxing" in the last page of the "Ten Thousand Miles" in the bookcase at home, was the same person as the person on the TV.
"In the 1930s, my father, Mr. Cao Juren, was a scholar who was studying in a study and teaching at several universities in Shanghai, but the July 7 Incident and the august 13 cannon fire shocked him, and from then on, he took off his robe, put on his short clothes, and rushed to the battlefield. He traveled all over the south of the river, replaced the knife with a pen, and played his part in the War of Resistance Against Japan. 'The scholar has a pen like a knife', which is the verse he wrote at that time. ”
But it wasn't until I became a reporter myself and began to interview Cao Jingxing that I understood that this father, who seemed to be famous in the industry, was manifested and absent in his son's life.
Cao Juren was the first reporter to report on the great victory of Taierzhuang, and later he wrote a long report on the "Records of the Tour of Taierzhuang" based on various sources of information, which was published one after another by major newspapers, which invigorated the whole country and strengthened the confidence of the military and people of the whole country in persisting in the War of Resistance. In the summer of 1946, Cao Juren's family struggled to end their upheaval and finally settled at No. 5, Lane 1335, Liyang Road, Hongkou District, Shanghai. Cao Juren wrote "The History of Chinese Anti-Japanese War Painting" all night, and at a rate of five or six thousand words a day, he wrote articles on the first-hand information obtained in the fourteen years of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression that still smelled of gun smoke. In 1947, the first page of the History of Chinese Anti-Japanese War Painting, written by Cao Juren and photographed by Shu Zongqiao, was launched and sold out. The book was later used as supporting material for the trial of Japanese war criminals in Hongkou.
It was also in this year that Cao Jingxing was born.
Cao Lei, who later became a famous actor and director, remembers that because "the younger brother Cao Jingxing was born, his father would bring back children's picture books." Dad really didn't care about money, but he couldn't live without books. So much so that later, if my father didn't bring home a new book after work, I would feel very strange... The younger brother is also a book lover. Dad used the manuscript fee of "History of Chinese War painting" to build a study on the patio of Liyang Road, which was full of books, which became the paradise of the little brother. As soon as we turned our heads to find the little brother, we found him hiding in the gap between the rattan bookshelf and the wall, quietly reading a book. The family always has to repeat this conversation: 'What about the little brother?' ''Read in the corner!'' ’”
But the reunion didn't last long. In 1950, Cao Juren left his wife and children and went from Shanghai to settle in Hong Kong, in addition to making a living, he hoped to find opportunities to do another career. Before leaving, Shao Lizi also advised him to wait for the change of the situation. What remains in the vague impression of Cao Jingxing, who is only 3 years old, is that he accompanies the elders to Shanghai North Railway Station to send off his father. It was not until 6 years later that Cao Jingxing and his mother saw his father Cao Juren again in Beijing. After learning that the 9-year-old Cao Jingxing had already seen "Water Margin", Cao Juren was very happy, went to the Dong'an Market in Beijing to buy "Water Margin" as a birthday gift, and compensated Cao Jingxing, who generally allowed stamp collecting, to buy all the Chinese stamps sold in the post and telecommunications store department in the hall of the Xinqiao Hotel. One day at breakfast, my father talked to Cao Jingxing about Mozi's "Non-Offensive" and exchanged views on war and peace. In the bathroom of the guest room of the Xinqiao Hotel, Cao Juren took a bath for Cao Jingxing, and his father took a towel and wiped it from the little boy's back, saying over and over again, "Idler, you are so thin, really thin." ”
This was July 1956, cao Jingxing accompanied his mother from Shanghai to the capital, and his father was from Hong Kong to Beijing, cao Juren would attend the dinner hosted by Zhou Enlai at the Summer Palace, conveying the message that the Kuomintang and the Communist Party could cooperate for the third time. After that, until the age of 25, Cao Jingxing rushed south for three days and three nights from the Huangshan Tea Forest Farm in the mountains and the countryside to pay his father's funeral, and during the long years of growth, Cao Jingxing and Cao Juren's relationship added up to less than a month. And on this last side, all he saw was his father's remains.
On December 4, 1969, Cao Juren wrote home, writing: "You must not think too naïve about the affairs of the world... It's really cute, but it's not just about falling in love... Others thought that when I went overseas, I would definitely go far away and fly high. I longed for Beijing wholeheartedly, and I slowly embarked on the road of serving the motherland, which is by no means the same as other people's ideas. My articles have created an authoritative position overseas, which is the basic condition for my survival. The social revolution is the ideal of our youth, and I serve the motherland, that is, to realize my own ideals. Although I broke my promise to your mother to never leave, in such a great era, can I naively make my own jokes()? Until January 31, 1972, the last day of his life, Cao Juren, who was looking forward to promoting cross-strait reunification, wrote a letter to the children, still worried about state affairs: "Lei Daughter, idle child, I really have no time to get sick, but I want to have a protracted illness, I really can't be anxious, cry, and laugh." I can't go back to Beijing before Nixon goes to Beijing..."
In 1978, after ten years of life in the Huangshan Tea Forest Farm, Cao Jingxing was admitted to the History Department of Fudan University. After graduation, Cao Jing went to work at the Institute of World Economics of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. In the late 1980s, Cao moved to Hong Kong, working first for Asia Weekly Chinese and then for Phoenix TV. Invisibly, he inherited the role of his father. At an event, Cao Jingxing met director Wong Kar-wai. In the gossip, Cao Juren lived in the Kim Bali Road area of Kowloon, which was the gathering area of Shanghai's cultural people at that time, and it was also where Wong Kar-wai lived when he was a child. I had looked for it in Hong Kong: the location of No. 7 Nostradae, where Cao Juren lived, is now one of the bars in The Street, hidden on a hill on the side of the observatory. It's an uphill ramp.
In the years when the situation in the Taiwan Strait changed, the back of my father who walked alone up this uphill was superimposed on the figure of my father in the courtyard study of Liyang Road watching my father leave a collection of books. It is also the figure of Cao Juren, who appeared clearly in the future when Cao Jingxing continued to sort out manuscripts and letters with his family. And in the earliest memories of his father, Cao Jingxing still retains such a picture. It was before my father went to Hong Kong, writing books in the study room at home in Shanghai, holding his small body with one hand, and giving himself a gold coin chocolate during the break.
This is a mission that is not imposed on oneself by the outside world. But in a sense, starting with Cao Juren, this has become a mission that two generations of the family have continued to undertake.
Cao Jingxing revisits the old residence on Liyang Road. Photo by Shen Yilun
"Embracing new ways of communicating"
On October 3, 2015, I witnessed The "high school graduation" of Teacher Cao Jingxing.
For historical reasons, Cao Jingxing, a high school student at Shixi Middle School who was supposed to graduate in 1966, was first assigned to the Shanghai Eight Yards 802 Convoy as a porter, and in 1968, he went to southern Anhui. Nearly half a century later, he was invited back to the middle school classroom. On the same day, Shixi Middle School reissued graduation certificates for the 66th class of junior high and high school graduates. The signature office also used the signatures and seals of zhao chuanjia, an old principal in the 60s, and Jiang Li, vice president.
In the auditorium of Shixi Middle School, Cao Jingxing also recalled the students' criticism of the old principal of Zhao Chuanjia. An old classmate also sent a WeChat message to Cao Jingxing, saying that there was a music teacher named Cao Yunfen, and the students rushed to her home and smashed and broke her collection of records in front of the teacher. "I'll never forget the look of horror and humiliation on the teacher's face," the classmate said. "And what I will never forget is the crunching sound of those records when they are broken," Cao Jingxing said, "we should apologize to the teachers, who gave us a lot of guidance and laid a good academic foundation, and we were once wrapped up in the trend of the times." ”
On January 13, 2020, I accompanied Teacher Cao Jingxing back to my childhood.
After leaving Hongkou to live in Jing'an District in 1959, Cao Jingxing did not return to Lane 1335, Liyang Road, Hongkou District. After a long time, I returned to the old house where I stayed with my parents as a child. We "archaeologize" these buildings left by the Japanese overseas Chinese in the past, counting the celebrities who lived on Liyang Road. The house has been very old after being blown and sunburned. We knocked on the door and interviewed the current residents, it is hard to imagine, in the past, about twenty square meters, not only lived Cao Juren and his wife and three children, but also the grandmother from hometown. "The thatched eaves are low, and the grass on the creek is green", Cao Juren once said to the children in his hometown dialect. Cao Jingxing asked the question politely. His daughter and team members filmed and recorded for him.
I am nostalgic for this scene, but at this time, Teacher Cao Jingxing is passionately involved in the production of the short video "Lao Cao Gossip Shanghai". All along, from print text to TV commentary, from screen to pulpit, to opening Weibo, WeChat public account and actively embracing new media, Teacher Cao Jingxing has embraced the new things in the media world with his trademark tireless enthusiasm. The short video of Liyang Road that he produced once ranked first in the number of plays in his short video.
At the end of 2020, Mr. Cao took a screenshot to show me his Weibo data: the number of blog posts read exceeded 130 million times, the interaction was 94,000 times, and the videos created were played 13.149 million times, influencing more than 96% of users.
"You also have to embrace new ways of communication," he said.
Teacher Cao Jingxing, who originally planned to travel the world and embrace more new things, stayed in Shanghai because of the epidemic. Also because of the detention, he went to the hospital for a physical examination and found the disease.
In the last few conversations on WeChat, Mr. Cao Jingxing and I talked about topics, including several hot news comments, shared several books, and recommended to me a film about the life of TV celebrities and its collapse and refraction of social difficulties. The only time I was involved in my own illness was to describe my impression of staying at a nearby guesthouse in order to facilitate treatment in a cancer hospital. A flower and a tree, the sunrise and the moon setting, all make him feel cute and novel. Because he found a familiar side of Shanghai that he was not familiar with. I think if I give him some more time, Mr. Cao will be able to produce a new interview program about the surrounding area of the hospital.
Last autumn, Cao Jingxing, who "felt pain in his heart when he heard this bad news, and didn't know what to say for a while," sent me essays in his tribute to the famous journalist Jiang Xun, and when writing about this old friend who had known and struggled in the media since the time of the Huangshan Tea Forest Farm, Cao Jingxing wrote that seven of the latest two issues of Asia Weekly, published before Jiang Xun's death, were written by Jiang Xun, and "he could not stop writing because he was Jiang Xun."
This sentence also applies to Cao Jingxing.
Just as the phrase "I feel pain in my heart when I hear this bad news, and I don't know what to say for a while", it applies to readers who have heard the news of Cao Jingxing's death today.
Column Editor-in-Chief: Wang Xiao Text Editor: Wang Xiao Title Image Source: Xinhua News Agency Photo Editor: Shao Jing
Source: Author: Shen Yilun