Missing the old principal Yang Zhongjian
Author: Zhang Shu Province
On the occasion of the 120th anniversary of the founding of my alma mater, Northwest University, I miss the respected old President Yang Zhongjian who has a face-to-face relationship with me.
Statue of Mr. Yang Zhongjian on the campus of Northwestern University
The vicissitudes of time have been a nail, and it was the autumn of 1962 in the last century.
Mr. Yang is a native of Huaxian County, Shaanxi Province, and has a good reputation in the county. That should be the last time in the eighty-two years of the old man's career to return to his hometown and relatives.
I am also a native of Huaxian County, I joined the work after graduating from junior high school in 1961, and I went to the Huaxian County Party Committee office as a correspondent, and the county party committee office assigned me the task of mimeographing documents and serving leading guests who came to the county. At that time, there were three rooms in the office's one-slip bungalow, and I had the key; in addition to cleaning and water services, it was to beckon guests to ask for anything to do quickly, like buying a cigarette and finding someone and so on.
I remember that day the leader said that there were important guests, let me get ready, I quickly cleaned the room, also filled the hot water bottle with boiling water, and prepared water for the washbasin for the guests to wash their hands. In the afternoon, it was said that the guests had come, and they went directly to the office of the secretary of the county party committee, and let us go to the canteen of the organ to prepare meals and dishes. At that time, there were still two meals in the county, at 8:30 a.m. and 4 p.m., and there was only one room on the stove where two tables could be set. At that time, it was just after three years of difficulties, and two cold, two hot and four dishes were served, and only the secretary and county governor accompanied the guests to eat, a plate of steamed bread, a bowl of noodles for one person.
That was the first time I saw Mr. Yang, medium, chubby, rectangular face, small eyes but very energetic, and his face was also very kind. I only listened to the secretary very politely say that the county is poor and the hospitality is not good. But the gentleman said, "Very good, very good!" The food in my hometown is fragrant! I've had it all today! "Everybody laughed!
Mr. Yang Zhongjian
In the evening, the secretary and county magistrate accompanied mr. Li to walk five or six miles to the empty field in front of the Xinhua Bookstore on Xiguan Street to see the shadow puppets, and I followed closely behind. When the gentleman arrived at the scene, he did not go to sit down on the bench, but went straight to the back of the shadow puppet table's account, greeted several old artists who were setting up shadow puppet props in the background, he picked up a shadow puppet figure and shook it a few times, saying, How many years have not seen the shadow puppet of our county...
According to historical records, Huaxian (known as Huazhou in ancient times) is the birthplace of the Chinese nation's shadow puppetry, which has been passed down for 5,000 to 6,000 years. Shadow puppets are carved from sun-dried cowhide into a variety of lifelike characters, animals and landscape houses, and the shadows are projected on the white curtain tents with lights, accompanied by musical instruments such as whips, drums, cymbals, erhu xiao flutes, etc., plus the old artists or agitated or gentle singing, which has become the most popular festival of folk people.
The headlights came on, the drums sounded, and after a long burst of erhu music and gongs and drums, with a loud roar, the shadow puppet characters appeared!
The gentleman looked very devoted and serious, and the expression on his face was always fixed on the curtain, and his eyebrows were sometimes locked with the plot, sometimes laughing, and even dancing from time to time. I am a little half to watch the play, most of the time to see Mr. Afraid that Mr. has something to delay the service. But after a few hours, I barely had to do anything.
Back at the county government office, I hurried to open the door of the guest room room with the key, turned on the electric light, and stood outside the door. When mr. Bi's leader left, I hurried into the door and poured hot water from the hot water bottle into the basin that already had a little and a half cold water stored, and then returned to my house with an empty hot water bottle, changed a hot water bottle that had already been filled with boiling water and sent it back to Mr. Mister's room. I told my husband not to go out at night, there was a spittoon under the bed. The gentleman hurriedly replied, "Good, thank you!" ”
At six o'clock the next morning, I stood outside the door carrying a large teapot of warm water and a hot water bottle of boiling water. When I heard the door open, I hurried into the house, put away the hot water bottle, washed the empty washbasin with teapot water, spilled it on the open space outside the door, and quickly poured the warm water in the pot and asked Mr. to wash his face.
The gentleman pulled the spittoon out from under the bed and was about to pick it up, so I hurried over and grabbed it and put it on, saying, "I'll go!" "Sir is a little embarrassed, saying that this should go to me!" I replied busily, "It's all right, this is my job!" As he spoke, he put on the spittoon and ran to the backyard toilet.
I washed the spittoon with the remaining water from the iron pot, and my husband returned to the room from the toilet. I was about to go out when the gentleman said, "What's the little comrade's name, how old is he, is this man of us?" ”
I hurriedly turned around and replied a little timidly: "I am a Chishui Dongzhao person, sixteen years old, my name is Shu Province, and everyone calls me Shusheng." ”
The gentleman smiled and said, "It's good to call the student!" That's not a white-faced student, we are a scholar to save the country, and a bookworm to serve the country! ”
I blushed and looked up at Sir, whose kind smile and kind words were remembered in my mind for the rest of my life!
My husband was sixty-five years old, and I saw that I was already an old man of my father's generation and grandfather's generation, and I was willing to honor the old man, not to mention that this was my job.
I look up to sir because he is very famous in our local area! He is a vertebrate paleontologist, a world-class scientist, and he and Pan ZiliKoklin and others are our contemporary elite figures in Huazhou, and now I not only meet him, but also serve him, can I not be happy! I'm proud of it for the rest of my life!
Just ten years later, in 1972, when I went to study at the Chinese Department of Northwest University, I learned that mr. Mao had also been the president of Northwest university before and after the birth of the republic, and later I learned about his contacts with Mao Zedong and other leading figures when he was studying at Peking University. I saw two letters from the chairman to Mr. Mao Zedong in the collection of letters and manuscripts: the first one said that he had intended to teach at The Xianlin Middle School in Huazhou at the invitation of Yang Zhi and had returned to Hunan to mourn his grandmother, and the latter said that he had filled out the form to join the Young Chinese Society, with Yang Zhongjian as the director of the executive department.
After another thirty years, when I was on a provincial television station, I accompanied the governor's Delegation from Shaanxi to visit Britain, and when I visited the British Museum, I paid special attention to looking for the portraits of five world-class scientists such as Einstein Yang Zhongjian hanging in the museum. The translator said, we didn't bother to go there, and there was no time to go back!
After lunch that day, the gentleman was said to have returned to his ancestral home, Longtan Village. Later, he said that he would return to Xi'an and then return to Beijing on the same day. He was also the director of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Old photo of Mr. Yang Zhongjian
Longtan Village is at the foot of the Qinling Mountains in Nanshan, Huaxian County, more than ten miles away from the old county town at that time, due to the dense mountain forest at that time, here is the layers of green bamboo, which is particularly deep and mysterious.
The mystery is because the name of this village is Longtan Village, and it is really a place where dragons and crouching tigers are hidden. More than ten kilometers east of Zizi is the Huayin region at the foot of Mount Hua, "the Yang clan of the world out of Huayin", since the Qin, Han, Wei, Jin, southern and northern dynasties, to the Sui Dynasty Yang clan people became emperors. Ancient Chinese can not speak the word dragon lightly, the dragon is the true dragon Tianzi! This village dares to be called Longtan Village, it must have a historical origin, but Shi Hai has not clearly examined it.
I am not far-fetched, the locals all know that the Yang family has been a rich gentry since ancient times, cultivating and reading heirlooms, and all generations are readers. By the time of Yang Zhongjian's father, Yang Songxuan, at the beginning of the last century, in the early Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China, he set up a school in the county seat of Huaxian County, and soon set up the only middle school in the eastern part of Guanzhong, Xianlin Middle School, which led to yang Zhongjian's recruitment of talents for his father's school at Peking University, and also invited Mao Zedong to teach here.
Mr. Yang Zhongjian's handwritten inscription
The birth of Xianlin Middle School has blown a spring breeze of new Western culture, new ideas and new ideas for the ancient Chinese hinterland! From 1921 to 1923, the early communists Wei Yezuo, Wang Fusheng, and Wang Maoting successively taught at Xianlin Middle School, spread Marxism among teachers and young students, and launched the student movement and peasant movement. Since then, the underground party organization and student movement of Xianlin Middle School have continued for a long time, flourishing, and giving birth to a large number of new party forces. It also laid a solid cultural, ideological and social foundation for the subsequent Weihua Uprising.
The times have entered the new century, the national fortunes are rising, the people are getting richer, and the localities have also had the economic strength to attach importance to the cultural heritage of the nation. A few years ago, the Huazhou district government built a cemetery for Mr. Yang Zhongjian's father, Yang Songxuan, just next to Longtan Village and less than a kilometer from the new 310 National Highway. The mausoleum is lined with stele stones, like a forest of steles, including inscriptions for Mr. Yang Songxuan singing praises and praises, including the inscriptions of Mr. Li Dazhao, Mr. Cai Yuanpei, Mr. Yu Youren, Mr. Qi Gong, etc., as well as handwritten inscriptions and inscriptions for his father such as "Striving to Climb the Peak of Science" and "The Great Husband Can Only Move Forward", as well as the inscription of Xu Deheng, "Transferring The Waves and Taosha to Remember Comrade Yang Zhongjian", and even the inscription on one stele is "Striving to Climb the Peak of Science" and "The Great Husband Can Only Move Forward" and the inscription to his father. Full text of the Resolution of the Council of the American Museum of Natural History on the Decision Made After the Death of Professor Yang Zhongjian. In recent years, I have accompanied the guests of Xi'an and Kyoto to the cemetery many times, lingering and lingering, and I have always flowed from the bottom of my heart to admire and commemorate mr. Li.
Mr. Yang Zhongjian's handwritten inscription
If I had a relationship with Mr. Sixty years ago, and only literally remembered the phrase "Shusheng saves the country and Serves the Country", after more than half a century of study and practice and life experience, I have gradually realized the deep meaning of what Mr. Li said at that time, and it is not precisely the awakening of intellectuals that has allowed Marxism to sow seeds and blossom in China! Isn't it precisely a large number of intellectuals and communists armed with Marxism who have led the Chinese nation to open up a new era in history? Isn't it the new knowledge and revolutionary patriotic intellectuals who lead us to constantly create the splendor of the new world?
Inscription in the Huazhou Memorial Park
I suddenly realized that a scholar, saving the country and serving the country, saving the country in the early years, serving the country through science, mr. Inadvertently, this sentence is actually the most perfect portrayal of his lifelong dedication!
I miss Mr. Yang Zhongjian deeply! Miss our old headmaster!
Source: 3 recommends Northwestern University Alumni Association
Original author: Zhang Shu Province
Editor: Northwest University Alumni Association, Huazhou Literature and History Collection