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.
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.
This article is Mr. Cao Jingxing's account of his father Cao Juren, from which we can also see the pursuit and persistence of two generations of intellectuals, and hereby remember Mr. Cao.
What the hell did my father give me
Text | Cao Jingxing
Source | Towards the flower time text
According to today's account, I am a left-behind child, my father Cao Juren has been working outside for many years because of work needs, and my mother has brought her brother and sister to live with me. The year my father left Shanghai for Hong Kong, I was only 3 years old.
■ Cao Juren and his family were photographed in January 1959, after which his father, Cao Juren, never returned home
Finally, when I met my father, he was already dead. One day in 1972, we suddenly received a telegram saying that he was critically ill and that when I arrived at the Gongbei Pass in Macau from Guangzhou, I still could not see my father for the last time. My father had never seen my wife or his granddaughter in his life, and I hadn't even had time to greet him on Father's Day.
But what exactly did my father give me in my life? This question has always been in my mind. Today, I'm trying to answer that question.
First of all, like many families, my father is the pillar of our family. Together with my mother, he held up the house and sheltered us from the wind and rain. Why did he go to Hong Kong to work in the first place? Although there are many statements, he wrote very clearly in his letter to the family that he was to support the family. There are old and young people in the family, and they have to live a life, so he goes to Work in Hong Kong, and this job is writing.
■ In the 1950s, his father Cao Juren went to Beijing for state affairs, passed through Shanghai on the way back to Hong Kong, and photographed jingzhong and Jingxing in the People's Park
Later, when I met Mr. Li Ao, he said to me: In this life, your father and I can't compare. Because my father published 40 million words of works in his lifetime, even Li Ao's writers who produced so many products have not yet written 40 million words. My father once mentioned in an article that this kind of writing day is called "hand stop stop", a day without writing, there is no food. For the sake of the whole family's life, he had to write all the time.
The last photograph of him before his death in 1972 was taken from a hospital bed when he was critically ill. When the others could not sit up and were so thin that they were not like them, he took a board and held his hand up to write a manuscript, because the newspaper column was still waiting for his words. I was very distressed to see this picture.
Although his time with me was very short, he always cared about my growth. I remember when I was 9 years old, I followed my mother to Beijing to visit my father, which was the first time he came to Beijing after leaving Shanghai for Hong Kong for 6 years, and later I learned that he came for cross-strait communication. When my mother and I arrived in Beijing, it was very hot, and we went to the hotel where my father was staying, and when he saw that I was sweating, my father came to help me take a bath. While in the shower he suddenly said a sentence, which I still remember very clearly to this day. My nickname was "Idle", and he said, "Why is Idle so thin?" ”
When I learned that I would later go to the countryside to farm, my father wrote me a letter, which read: "Idleness and returning to the peasants is our wish." However, the new agriculture has to learn a lot, and improving seeds, chemical fertilizers, and improving soil are all important things. This means that we have to step over the old farmers and step by step. "He said that our family had come from a farmer background and encouraged me to be a new farmer.
■ During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Cao Jingxing's father Cao Juren (left) and his wife Deng Keyun took their two daughters, Cao Lei and Cao Ting
Secondly, my father left me with an environment to read. The house is full of books, and all of us in the family love to read. Therefore, I have also loved to read since I was a child. I remember on my 9th birthday, my father bought me "Water Margin" in Beijing. Because I finished reading "Water Margin" in the first grade of elementary school, I began to read "Water Margin" in the second grade of primary school, followed by "The Complete Biography of Yue Yue".
In this environment, reading became the most important thing in my life, I could skip eating, but I couldn't stop reading. Until later, when I did news commentary, I had to thank the reading for the broad vision that brought me.
Again, my father taught me to have a big picture. Because of my father's existence, I grew up watching adults do big things and talk about big things, so I paid more attention to things. My father made me feel that we should care about the big things in the world, not just dwell on the small things, but also look at the long term.
Throughout my father's life, I always had a sense of mission. The Polish writer Henrik Szynkowski had a short story called "The Lighthouse Keeper", and his father often compared himself to the lonely old man who watched the lighthouse. He resigned from the university teaching position, took off his robe, walked out of the study, took a pen from Rong, marched and retreated with the army, braved the rain of bullets and bullets, was born into death, and continuously wrote field newsletters for newspapers and periodicals. He once wrote such a poem: "The sea is leisurely and difficult to make wine, and the student has a pen like a knife." The battlefield is covered in rainbow shadows, and the origin of life is laughed at. "For the sake of the country, for the sake of the nation, he really doesn't care about anything. Such a spirit of his has had a great impact on me throughout my life.
■ Mr. Cao Juren
I hardly lived with my father, and I told me many things about him as a person and through others. When I was just entering Fudan University, one day, a classmate suddenly said to me that his father greeted me and my mother. It turned out that his father had gone from Shanghai through Jiangxi to go to the interior during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and when he fled to Gannan Province, my father received him, let him live, and helped him find a job. So, his father came to thank us through his son.
There are many such things, and I later came to work in Hong Kong, and I often heard people sincerely thank my father. Father has helped a lot of people, as long as he can help, even if he suffers losses, he will also help others. Father also said that as long as it is a matter entrusted by a friend, it must be done well. He was such a person.