Wen | Lin Wenying
A few years ago, the mainland had a film that won the box office, set against the backdrop of the Southwest United Congress, the largest school relocation during China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
The title of the film "No Question West East" is taken from a lyric of Tsinghua University" "Li De Li Yan, No Question West East". It is reported that Zhang Ziyi and Huang Xiaoming, who starred in the main role, were in tears before they finished reading the script.
Not long ago, the author wrote "probably the oldest calligraphy teacher on the earth", yu Jifu, a Hakka predecessor who is more than 100 years old, which triggered nearly a thousand messages. The author is actually not familiar with calligraphy, and the most profound feeling from the conversation with Elder Yu that day was a period of relocation that occurred in eastern Guangdong that was almost lost in the dust of history.
It is said that this calligraphy teacher Yu Jifu was gifted and intelligent, and did not study in the first and second years of high school that year, but was admitted to the third year of high school and attended South China Middle School. Hong Kongers have almost never heard of the school, and some may even mistake it for the Catholic South China Secondary School in Sham Shui Po. In fact, the former was founded in Hong Kong in the 1930s by Tai Po Hakka li dong sing and Kwok Siu Wah, while the latter was founded in 1946 by the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong.
Because of Japan's invasion of China, the "South China version of the no-question West", was also staged. In order to avoid the flames of war, the teachers and students of southwest United University have the same experience, and a large number of colleges and universities in Guangdong are also in turbulence and displacement, continuing the spark of Chinese education in the years of gunfire.
According to incomplete statistics, the schools relocated to Meizhou during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression include 8 colleges and universities, including National Sun Yat-sen University, the private Guangzhou University, and Lingnan University, as well as 3 middle schools in Guangdong Province, Zhongyuan Middle School in Guangdong Province, South China Middle School in Hong Kong, and Guangzhou Private Guoguang Middle School, with a total of 20 old school sites, mainly distributed in Meijiang District and Xingning City, and the rest are scattered in Luofu Town, Xingning City, Qiling Town, Wuhua County, and Wenfu Town, Jialing County.
Yu's alma mater was the first school to relocate to the mountains of eastern Guangdong to resume classes after the fall of Hong Kong. The school site was located in Dalangkou, Meixian County, and was moved to Guangzhou after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War. In 1948, in order to move back to Hong Kong, after the school board registered with the Governor's Office of Hong Kong, it rented a school building on Wai Ching Street, Jordan Road, Kowloon, and Yu Jifu's long-cherished compatriot and mentor, Kwok Siu Wah, remained the principal.
In the face of the Japanese army's siege of the city and the indiscriminate bombardment of aircraft, moving the school to a remote place with lofty mountains and mountains is obviously the best choice. Similar to the north China universities that traveled to Hunan and Yunnan, the migration destination of the provincial and Hong Kong institutions was guangdong.
Meizhou, in particular, has more conditions for resuming schools, because the war had not yet ignited in Meijiang at that time, which was relatively safe, followed by Meizhou, as an important Hakka town, with a deep tradition of chongwen and re-education. Xiao Wenjuan, a good friend of the author for many years and dean of the Hakka College of Jiaying College, did a research report, and there were only more than 3,000 students in Sun Yat-sen University at that time, and there were more than 500 students from Meizhou. That is to say, one out of every seven middle school students is from Meizhou.
Meizhou is also the hometown of overseas Chinese who have been connecting overseas for a long time. "Sun Yat-sen University in the Flames of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression" records that "the overseas Chinese in Meixian County did not forget their hometown after becoming rich in Nanyang, and they built big houses and schools in their hometowns. Meixian has more than 30 middle schools and more than 600 primary schools, ranking the highest in the country. After the school headquarters was moved to Meixian County, it benefited from the favorable school conditions in Meixian County and had to settle down temporarily." Zou Lu, a kuomintang elder and the first president of Sun Yat-sen University, wrote more about the school song, and he was also a native of Tai Po, Meizhou. The campus buildings of Sun Yat-sen University in different periods were donated by many overseas Chinese from Meizhou, such as Zhang Bishi Hall and Yongfang Hall.
Mei Yiqi, president of Tsinghua University during the Republic of China period, has a classic famous sentence, "The so-called university is not only a building, but also a master." This phrase is used to describe the colleges and universities far away in the Hakka mountains during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, which can be described as appropriate. The world-famous Hakka Dragon House, in the years of wolf smoke, has become a classroom for groups of teachers and students with the dream of education and national salvation.
For example, Sun Yat-sen University moved its headquarters to Meicheng in early 1945. The school site is the "three halls, four horizontal and one lane" of the Dragon House. Each was available for one of the fewer colleges at the time. Some teachers and students from the Graduate School, the Faculty of Arts, the Faculty of Science, the Faculty of Medicine, the Preparatory Course, and the Attached Middle School of the Teachers' College all attend classes at The Dragon House. Other colleges are temporarily located around Meicheng, such as the Law School in Jiaoling Road Pavilion, the Agricultural College in Wuhuaqiling, and the College of Engineering in Xingning Dongba.
Guangzhou University moved to Chaotianwei in Xingning in the autumn of 1944. This is a typical traditional Hakka Dragon House, with a construction area of nearly 4,000 square meters, with 6 halls and 98 rooms. Guangzhou University holds admissions examinations here twice a year. The spacious Hakka-style houses and mottled loess walls bear witness to the glorious years of books. The poetry of the gate is a pair: Shi Gengtang Ishuai for love, and the president of the court, Zhilan Ruyifen; and the qi can first produce ruiqi, and the sound of the book can vibrate the family. Readers, in their own way to save the country and save the dead.
After graduating from South China Middle School, Yu Jifu was admitted to Guangdong Provincial College of Arts and Sciences (the predecessor of South China Normal University). He came to Hong Kong in 1948 and has been engaged in education for more than 70 years, including more than 30 years in the School for The Children of Labor and the School for the Use of Ming, and has been a calligraphy teacher for more than 40 years in the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, the Open University of Hong Kong, and the Hong Kong Calligraphy Enthusiasts Association for more than 40 years.
Professor Ma Chujian of the University of Hong Kong, the last disciple of the Hakka scholar Taidou Luo Xianglin, read the article and told this writer that Mr. Yu was studying at the Provincial College of Arts and Sciences, and the president at that time was Luo Xianglin. The author deeply feels that between time and space, there are too many precious historical materials that need to be excavated, sorted out and preserved by future generations.
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