In 1937, the 15-year-old Wang Heng escaped the disaster.
That year, the war devoured the city of Nanjing little by little. Before the massacre, Wang Heng's family hid in a refugee camp. Later, he watched his father fall to the ground and be punched and kicked by the Japanese army. Before the New Year, he lost his father and worked in various places. His wandering life ended in 1945, when he put on his military uniform and participated in the Battle of Huaihai and the Battle of Crossing the River. In February 1955, he was awarded the rank of Captain of the Navy.
In 1955, Wang Heng was awarded the rank of captain in the navy. Courtesy of respondents
"I will do my best to start my life in the great turmoil in the world, and after participating in the revolution, I will follow the revolutionary army and do my best for the motherland, the people, and the society." Immersed in the cannon fire for half a lifetime, Wang Heng witnessed many changes. At the age of 89, he opened a Weibo with the help of Her Granddaughter Lian, telling history on an account called "The Story of Grandpa Wang Heng".
On April 7 this year, the 100-year-old Wang Heng passed away. At this point, the number of surviving survivors of the Nanjing Massacre registered by the Nanjing Association for the Aid of the Victims of the Japanese Invasion of China has dropped to 57.
On April 13, at the "Lights Out" memorial ceremony held at the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Invasion of China, the lights behind Wang Heng's photo were extinguished. Wang Lian said, "In my memory, My grandfather often said some revolutionary history, like a moving old book. His life has been extremely serious, simple and down-to-earth, which has always affected his family. ”
Wang Lian spoke at the "Lights Out" memorial ceremony. Source: Official public WeChat account of the Nanjing Massacre Victims Memorial Hall of the Japanese Invasion of China
The following is Wang Lian's narration:
"It's not a story, it's history"
Grandpa took death very lightly.
Over the years, he always chanted "Grandpa is going to die", and I was very angry, "Can you not say this kind of thing?" Grandpa thought, "People, after entering old age, die, this is a normal thing, but also a happy thing!" ”
He felt that half of his life was "earned." Fortune tellers once said he didn't live to be 45 years old, and he did come close to death at a more vigorous age.
In the summer of 1922, my grandfather was born in Banbianying (now Madao Street) in Nanjing. His father worked as a clerk in Wuhu, and his mother worked on two looms, so the family was well off. Compared with his older brother and sister, his grandfather was the most favored when he was young, and his mother would always secretly leave a duck gizzard fried rice or egg fried rice for her younger son. Grandpa walked fast and steadily in his later years, saying that it was related to good nutrition when he was a child.
At the age of 12, he finished the sixth grade of primary school and began to apprentice in the printing house, rice shop, and Wuyang shop. Three years later, the Japanese occupied Nanjing. At that time, Grandpa's father was helping relatives take care of the cloth shop. Before the bloody massacre began, the family fled to the Jinling Women's University refugee camp.
Outside is the bleakest city of Nanjing. There were Japanese soldiers everywhere, those who were killed were lying in the streets, and those who were lucky enough to survive could not escape fear.
About a month later, Grandpa followed his father to the south of the city to check the cloth shop, passed by the Chaotian Palace, saw someone on the west wall around the Notice posted by the Japanese, and he also went inside. When he turned to squeeze out the crowd, he saw a Japanese soldier kicking and kicking his father lying on the ground.
At that time, his father was nearly sixty years old, and since then he has been ill, his whole body is swollen, and he has not been affected by the Spring Festival. At the age of 15, Grandpa escaped the disaster, but lost his father.
When I was in middle school, my grandfather told me about it for the first time. He was very serious, but he was neither sad nor angry, and after coughing twice, he recalled what he had just said. Time probably healed the wound, and I stared at him, and Grandpa raised his voice again, waving his hands and sighing, "This is not a story, this is history." ”
When she was a child, Wang Lian and her grandfather and grandmother. Source: Weibo account "The Story of Grandpa Wang Heng"
When I was in the sixth grade of elementary school, I found that my grandfather had a copy of Rabe's Diary, and the black-and-white pictures seemed to smell bloody. The first time I went to the Memorial Hall of the Nanjing Massacre of the Japanese Invasion of China, it was also a primary school, and I still remember the sculptures there, the broken palms rising from the ground, the pits covered with white bones, and the black list of victims carved on the walls.
For decades, a copperplate road of "footprints of historical witnesses" was laid there, where grandpa's footprints were found, and a new wall of survivors' photographs was built. I never dared to look. I can't imagine what forces make survivors try to survive the most painful day.
The second visit to the memorial was on April 13 this year, when staff held a lights-out ceremony for Grandpa and three other recently deceased survivors of the Nanjing Massacre. Standing in front of the photo wall, I looked down from above until the last row and saw Grandpa's calm face.
That day was also Grandpa's "first seven". I watched as the light behind the photo went out.
A moving history book
When Grandpa was 89 years old, I opened a Weibo for him, named "The Story of Grandpa Wang Heng", and wanted to tell netizens about the history he experienced. Grandpa dictated, I'll edit. Within 5 days of opening, it had nearly 3,000 followers.
Wang Heng in his later years. Courtesy of respondents
Grandpa experienced many major events in his life. After escaping the Nanjing Massacre, he was introduced by relatives to a sewing needle factory in Shanghai as an apprentice. Until 1942, after the outbreak of the Pacific War, the factory closed down, and Grandpa returned to his hometown of Moling, working and farming. After the Surrender of the Japanese Army, he joined the army with his co-workers, joined the Communist Party of China, participated in the Battle of Huaihai, the Battle of Crossing the River, and also went to Korea, and was later awarded the rank of captain in the navy.
"I was conceived, born, and raised in the revolutionary years when the proletarians sought liberation. Seventy years of life experience, from living in the war chaos of semi-feudal and semi-colonial and occupied areas, to declaring war on them and entering a new democratic and socialist society. When Grandpa was 70 years old, he summed up most of his life in this way.
To me, he was like a moving history book. Those revolutions, he not only loved to talk, but also loved to test me. When I was a child, he often came up with questions: the years of the Xinhai Revolution, the time of the founding of New China, the time period of the Liberation War...
In the 1960s, my grandfather retired from the army and was assigned to the Jiangsu Mechanical Science Research Institute. Until his retirement in 1980, he maintained some of the habits he had developed in the army. He never slept late, got up at six, called his son up before seven, and either exercised or studied. Where he could walk, he never took a car, and poor my dad, sometimes he walked dozens of kilometers with a breath.
Wang Heng in the 1960s and 1970s. Courtesy of respondents
Grandpa was frugal all his life. When I was eating, the rice fell on the table or on the floor, and he asked me to pick it up one by one. Bring a bag of fruit back, reluctant to wash with running water, even wash your hair with a basin of water. The rice was sticking to the pot, so he poured in a little boiling water, shook the rice down, and drank it. The hanger that had been thrown in the trash can, he looked at it with pity, and also picked it up. To buy soap, he likes to buy more, because this has a discount, can be a few dollars cheaper. Grandpa came from a barren age, and he often said that he should cherish the good times now.
I think he's not old. Once, I saw him on the balcony on a stool, half leaning out of the window to collect clothes and sheets to dry, I hurriedly said "I come", he waved his hands and said "no". When he was in his 90s, he stepped on the table under the sewing machine to fiddle with the knotted curtains, only to fall and knock a large bag on his head.
He does have a younger side. Sometimes, Grandpa sat there, suddenly hummed softly, and when he found the tune, he began to sing, "Majestic, angry, across the Yalu River." To safeguard peace and defend the motherland is to protect the homeland. The voice was loud, but these words were repeated over and over again, and the hands swung up and down like a conductor, swinging up and down to beat the rhythm, and the head was dangling back and forth.
He has always been a steady, little talker, grandma saw him like this, also happy, called me to take the phone to record it.
"I am your eyes, you are my ears"
In addition to revolutionary history, Grandpa talked most about his encounter with Grandma.
When he was young, his grandfather was stationed in Dalian with the troops, and through the introduction of others, he met his grandmother. On the day the two met, Grandma Ben wrote a blackboard newspaper in the village. She put down her chalk, wore a pair of torn shoes, and ran over the hillside. Grandpa can't forget that picture, Grandma is very thin, with two twisted braids, and her face is frozen red.
Within a few months of knowing each other, the two were married. Marriage in that era was somewhat of an element of luck. Grandma's family conditions are poor, and her stepfather either fights or scolds all day, and she thinks of marrying someone.
Wedding photo of Wang Heng and his wife Yu Huirong. Courtesy of respondents
Grandma was right. Although the two also love to talk, either Grandpa picks up the garbage again, or Grandpa does not wash his hands again, and Grandma will chant a few words. But Grandpa could bear it, especially later, he had bad ears and couldn't hear what Grandma was counting.
On weekdays, Grandma cooks and washes dishes, Grandpa chooses vegetables and pans for rice; Grandma washes clothes and Grandpa comes to wring them out; Grandma cleans at home, and Grandpa goes to the supermarket to buy things and goes to the hospital to get medicine for Grandma. They will go to the morning exercise of Bailuzhou Park together and listen to health lectures together.
Grandpa likes sweets, eats a piece of mung bean cake, gives him a second piece, and he will give it to Grandma. After the meal, the two want to drink milk, and Grandpa unscrews his own bottle and then unscrews Grandma. In the past two years, Grandma had cataracts, and for a while her eyes were almost invisible, and when she ate, Grandpa stared at Grandma as she ate, always afraid that she did not send food into her mouth.
He said to Grandma, "I am your eyes and you are my ears." ”
In his later years, Wang Heng and his wife Yu Huirong. Courtesy of respondents
I posted the story of my grandfather and grandmother on Weibo and sent them wedding photos. Some netizens said in the comments, "Golden Boy Jade Girl" and "Lang Cai Female Appearance", I read it to them, and the two of them smiled and nodded.
In fact, I think netizens are not wrong. In my heart, Grandpa's appearance is very "able to fight", his eyes are energetic, the bridge of his nose is very straight, and he is a warm appearance. He was born with tender skin, so he always liked to wear clothes backwards, otherwise the label of the collar would tie his neck. Even if I get old and have some spots and wrinkles on my cheeks, I always look very energetic.
Grandma's health was not very good, and a few years ago, I cared more about Grandma and talked to her more than Grandpa, but I was also used to the atmosphere of Grandpa doing things on the side. When I helped my grandmother call grandpa to dinner, I went to the balcony and saw him quietly packing his things, folding newspapers, and watering flowers, and I was relieved.
"That was the last time Grandpa tested me."
At Grandpa's house, except for newscasts and weather forecasts, other TV shows cannot be watched. He loved to read newspapers, and as soon as he wore reading glasses, his fingertips touched the title, and when he encountered small print, he had to hold up a magnifying glass. Before dinner, Grandpa would often point to a certain paragraph of the newspaper for me to read, test my strange words and the gist of the article, and sometimes ask me to write a post-reading feeling.
Wang Heng, who was carefully reading the newspaper. Courtesy of respondents
He was serious and more genuine. When he encountered words he didn't recognize, he flipped through the dictionary. If he found a typo, he went straight to the newspaper. In the closet in the bedroom were his books and the newspapers he had read. Each newspaper was stacked side by side, corner by corner, and arranged in the same direction, and the page was rolled up in a corner, and he had to complain.
When I was in elementary school, I couldn't do math application problems, and my father told me to "think for myself", but my grandfather would write the process and answers one by one and neatly on small pieces of paper. When he goes out on the bus and sees young people smoking, he also has to stop and educate. He was serious about even eating. Handing him a bag of bean paste, Grandpa always looked left and right first, "What is this?" Then read the words on the bag word by word, and chewed intently, small pieces.
Grandpa didn't always look at it like this. When I was a child, on a rainy day, my grandmother asked him to bring me an umbrella, and he walked to the school gate and quietly stood behind me, observing me. I was like him, curious about everything, and had to look at everything, either playing with puddles and throwing mud on my pants, or crouching in front of a roadside stall and watching people sell things. Grandpa didn't call me, he just suddenly bounced a brainball on the back of my head, I turned back, he handed me the umbrella, turned around and walked away quickly, I followed in small steps behind.
Grandpa condensed this family. In the past, Chinese New Year's Eve, Chinese New Year's Eve had eaten almost enough, he would tap the table, stand up, and we knew that "Grandpa is going to speak." He would sum up the past year, tell everyone to take care of their bodies, and sometimes talk and talk, and he didn't know where the focus was, but there was always a ritual.
I can't remember when it started, but at New Year's Day, Grandpa stopped talking. He became more and more silent, and after the TV broke, he did not read the news again, and then the newspaper did not read, the story was no longer told, and he always lay on the table, shrugging his eyelids and sleeping. He said the most, that is, "old, there is no use for the country, living for one more year is a burden." The year before, we had given him a birthday, and his eyes rolled around and he looked at each of us quietly.
Before he was hospitalized last year, he basically stopped talking. Only one day, I was suddenly asked "what is the full name of the country". I was a little confused, "What's the problem?" I asked again to hear it. After answering, Grandpa nodded. The next week, when I went again, he asked again. That was the last time Grandpa tested me.
Grandpa was born in Nanjing and died in Nanjing. For the city, it has lost a witness to the catastrophe and a witness to the times. One by one, they gradually drifted away over time.
What I lost was Grandpa. But to me, he's always there like a math answer on paper. He is not in the "big winds and waves" of history, just sitting on the wooden chair in the living room, whether it is biting a bean sandbag or sleeping on his stomach, the image of Grandpa is always there.
Beijing News reporter Peng Chong intern Wang Yexuan
Edited by Li Binbin Proofreader Li Lijun