Memoirs of Mo Wenhua (1) - "Breaking into the World" in the Era of Storm

The writing of my memoir has received the care and support of Comrade Zhang Wannian, vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, and the leaders of the General Staff Department and the General Staff Department and the Arms Department, and has provided many conveniences. Comrade Chen Xinde spent more than two years helping me to sort out the text, and Comrades Wang Fuli and Yuan Danwu rewrote and supplemented the manuscript, and finally Comrade Wang Fuli was responsible for the overall draft. Comrade Leng Bojun participated in the collection and study of materials and did a great deal of specific work. In this regard, I would like to express my heartfelt thanks.

Mo Wenhua

In Beijing in May 1996

The crystal clear Yongjiang River meanders from west to east through a small village on the southern outskirts of Nanning. Not far to the southeast of the village, there are green mountains and Wuxiu Ridges.

On January 7, 1910 (December 17, the first year of Xuanun Reunification), I was born in this beautiful village on the banks of the Yongjiang River, Tingzi Village, Nanning City, Guangxi.

There is no pavilion in the village, why is it called a "pavilion"?

Legend has it that during the reign of Emperor Renzong of the Song Dynasty, the leader of Guangyuan Prefecture (Zuojiang Province, a Song dynasty) located on the border of the motherland, Guangnan West Road, raised an army against the Song Dynasty, and the Song Dynasty sent the general Di Qing to lead three armies to march south, and escorted thousands of people from Shandong to move south to develop southern Xinjiang. When these escorted people traveled a long distance to the southern outskirts of Yongzhou, they were exhausted, and everyone lay down on the ground and could no longer get up. When Di Qing saw this scene, he felt pity, and he also saw this good place with beautiful mountains and rivers, so he ordered "stop advancing." Those people took root and multiplied on this land. Later, in order to thank Di Qing for his kindness, people named the place "Stop" and built a Di Wu Xiang Ancestral Hall in the village to commemorate it. I don't know when "stop" evolved into a "pavilion".

The origin of the village name can no longer be verified. However, according to historical records, in 1052 AD, Yi Zhi raised an army against the Song, and Song Renzong ordered the deputy envoy of the Privy Council, General Di Qing, to lead an army of 30,000 to the south to conquer. Di Qing captured Kunlun Pass, occupied Yongzhou, and Yi Zhigao defeated Yunnan. At that time, there were indeed many soldiers living in the vicinity of Yongzhou, and my ancestors were among them.

According to the "Mo Clan Genealogy" that exists in the family, wen Yungong, the taizu of the Mo clan, whose original origin was Baima Yi in Shouguang County, Qingzhou Prefecture, Shandong, came with Di Qing in the fifth year of the Great Song Dynasty (1053 AD), and settled on the other side of the Yongjiang River in the "Four Clusters of White Sand Sun of Pingnan Village", that is, the present-day Tingzi Village. From my ancestors to my grandfather, it has been 17 generations.

My grandfather Mo Yushuang, the only one, first opened the Jardine Shop, then learned martial arts, Zhongwu juju, served as a garrison, and was awarded the title of "Wude Knight Lieutenant". But he did not enter the public door, ignored the affairs of the regiment, and continued to do business at home.

My father, Mo Tingjun, was a burly man who deserved to be a warrior. But he loves poetry,

Its study is called the "Weeping Willow Reading Hall" and contains many thread-bound ancient books. His ancient poetry is more profound, he can write poetry, often invites literary friends to sing poems to sentences, and has a collection of poems passed down to his family. Originally, his father wanted to test Xiucai, but because his grandfather died prematurely and the family burden was heavy, he gave up the pursuit of fame and only donated a tribute to succeed his grandfather in business. During the Xinhai Revolution, his father participated in the anti-Qing struggle, and later participated in activities against Yuan Shikai's claim to the throne, and was elected as a senator of Guangxi Province. But he saw that the social and political situation was fickle, "you sing me on stage", so he was not keen on his career, nor did he want to go to the gentleman and celebrity. His father is honest and dutiful, can tolerate people and anger, and is willing to suffer losses, and he has a sigh in the poem "Weeping Willow Reading Hall Yong Sense": "Never rich and noble is not a matter of life, as a floating cloud and a thousand thoughts". When he was 76 years old, he inscribed the following verse on his photograph: "Ermei is too thick, Ermu is too small, a lifetime of goods, passing by." Only learning to suffer losses, endure a lot of anger, bad lucky spirit, old Juju correction. "It shows his lifelong cautious and peaceful ideological character."

In the early years of the Republic of China, warlords were in a scuffle, killing and killing, and the place was restless. My father was very fond of the turbulent society and often warned us not to go to the society to run into trouble. In order for our brothers not to be bullied, when I was 5 years old, my father also asked a boxer to teach our three brothers to learn boxing and practice knives and sticks for self-defense.

When I was a child, my family was still well-off, my family had some fields, and my father opened a "Suzhou and Hangzhou Shop" in the city that sold cloth. Later, the family grew more populous, and both uncles died prematurely, and the burden of life fell on the father. At that time, there were 19 people in the family eating, and the days became more and more difficult, and slowly declined. By 1925, my father went bankrupt in business, the cloth shop was sold, and later the fields were sold. In 1943, before the second Japanese occupation of Nanning, the 82-year-old father starved to death because there was no one to take care of the family and had no food or clothing.

My mother, Huang Wanqing, of Zhuang ethnicity, came from a poor background and was a kind, hard-working, and ambitious rural woman. She was born in a Trojan horse village near Guangxi in Vietnam and was abducted and sold to my family at the age of 14. After the death of the eldest bride, she married her father. In the old family, the mother was a bought maid and a step-in, so naturally she had no status. The mother, who had two girls, was criticized by the family and the clan, and was very annoyed, and I don't know how many tears were shed. Later, she gave birth to several boys, and her status gradually improved.

In addition to taking care of the housework, my mother often stayed up late to weave cloth, and also went to a place several miles away from home to grow vegetables for a little money to maintain the family's declining plight. She was superstitious and was often exploited by witches. The mother gave birth to a total of 9 children, 6 boys and 3 women, and the eldest bride gave birth to 2 boys and 1 girl. I was sixth among the boys. When I was 7 years old, I went to the Village Mongkan and later went to a private school surnamed Lei. At that time, the Mengguan was a small class of private schools, a place for children's enlightenment education, usually invited by a certain family to recruit children from nearby to study. He began to learn the "Three Character Classic", "Five Character Classic", "Thousand Character Text", and later learned "Early Learning Qionglin", "Rhyme to Jade" and so on. The teacher only read incomprehensibly, and the students memorized by rote. My parents have very strict requirements for my studies, especially mothers always hope that their children will study well, and they will be a bit out of the ordinary in the future. When I came home from school, I sometimes played greedily, and my mother often sat next to me with a whip in her hand, tearful, watching me read and write, "Looking forward to Jackie Chan."

At that time, there were already new schools (running foreign schools), and it was more rustic to enter private schools, and it was possible to eat at foreign schools. None of my brothers went to foreign schools. When I went to private school for 4 years, my mother supported me to go to a foreign school, go outside to study, and break into the world. But my father did not intend to send me to the city to school, he thought that the child could know some words and write letters. Fathers are more timid and conservative, always want to keep their children around, afraid that we will go out and run into trouble. For this reason, my mother quarreled with him very badly, she once said, I gave birth to five boys (the eighth brother died prematurely), to go out and break into the world, always have to break out of one, do a career, that is, to become a soldier, not afraid. My mother's words impressed me deeply. In the case of family decline, letting children go out and break through is her only hope for changing the predicament, and it is also her struggle against the fate of the social family.

After many struggles by my mother, when I was 14 years old, my mother took me to the city to enter the Nanning Model Higher Primary School, becoming the first person in the family to attend the Foreign School. Since then, I have learned the name of Mo Wan, the word Liuqin.

The school is seven or eight miles away from my home, and there is a Yongjiang River in the middle. Every day, I got up at dawn, hurriedly ate a bowl of porridge, and took the 4 copper plates prepared by my father in advance to go to school. Two copper plates were used to cross the river to cross the river, and the remaining two copper plates were eaten at the street stalls at noon to fill their hunger. Waking up early and returning home late, it is still very hard to go to school every day. I know that it is not easy for me to go to school at home, so I dare not be lazy in reading, and my grades are good.

4 years of high school, it is a solid reading of books for 4 years. I love and work hard with English. Later, I lived in the city and attended an off-campus English cram school at night. After joining the revolution, I have always insisted on learning English, often reading some English books and English newspapers. I love sports, I am more active, sprinting and hurdles often get first place. I also liked basketball and I was elected Minister of Sports.

Probably related to my father's influence, I also prefer ancient Texts, and I am quite interested in the famous works in the "Ancient Literature Guanzhi", and I can recite the famous passages such as "Yueyang Lou", "Buried Room Ming", "Drunken Pavilion Record" and so on.

Going out to study has enabled me to increase my knowledge, broaden my horizons, and gradually understand and understand society.

As I grew older, I also began to think about things encountered in my family and society, which made me slowly understand some "human feelings". There were a few things that stimulated me a lot and made a deep impression on me.

I remember that my neighbor had a widow named Ray, and her family had some fields and was planted by hiring a long-term worker.

Widow Ray had a 16-year-old daughter who was very beautiful, and I called her Seventh Sister. The long-term worker hired by the Lei family is a strong man and can work very well. But after a long time, this long worker and the seventh sister had an improper relationship, and after the matter was discovered, it could break into a catastrophe! One night, the family surnamed Lei gathered hundreds of people, led by the leader of the clan, to catch the girl to sow bay, forcing the seventh sister to jump into the river and commit suicide! And her mother was at the scene, tearfully watching the "punishment" of her daughter. The next day our brothers learned about this matter, very angry, and I had a hazy consciousness of social darkness and patriarchy eating people in my heart.

At that time, one of my father's siblings was very poor, and in order to help them, my father let my aunt's cousin come to the cloth shop to be a buddy, and then slowly trained my cousin to manage the account as a master. Later, in order to let the eldest brother Wenju and his cousin make a living on their own, his father gave them a part of the family property, each of whom had a share of the gold, and opened a "Hongzhang" cloth shop, and the business was still good. But my eldest brother was not angry, and he spent his shares in less than two years.

At this time, the cousin kicked him out, and the cloth shop was all owned by the cousin. As life at home became more and more difficult, my father had to turn around and borrow money from my cousin and pay interest, and after a few years, my father went bankrupt in business and sold his cloth shop and house to his cousin. His father was poor, and his cousin didn't care about him. One year Chinese New Year's Eve, 3 of our brothers (fifth brother Wen Qi, seventh brother Wen Qi and me) accompanied my father in the city for the New Year, in the evening we made a meal and waited for my father to return, but we did not come back at more than 7 o'clock, we were very anxious. At this time, my cousin came to my father breathlessly. We knew that he had come to collect debts, and the fifth brother was very angry and wanted to beat him, and I said not to fight him, so as not to cause other things to come. After waiting for a while he was gone. My father didn't come back until after 9 o'clock, his face gloomy, asking our cousin if he had ever been here, and saying that he was hiding from debt outside and didn't come home until now. Chinese New Year's Eve night, thousands of lights, firecrackers near and far sounded, but we were relatively speechless, silently drinking wine and eating New Year's dinner. It's really hot and cold, and people are like paper! It left the mark of pain on my young mind.

Every year during the rainy season, the Yongjiang River rises, and British warships sail to Nanning, and these domineering British sailors are the first foreigners I have seen. The impressions of foreign warships casually invading the mainland's inland rivers to demonstrate, along with new terms such as "great powers" and "imperialism", which I had just come into contact with, were put into my mind. At that time, the economic power of imperialism was also very large in Nanning, and a pound of wheat in the local area was worth a few cents, but a jar of barley that came in was worth a dollar; A few dollars a cowhide, a basketball from Hong Kong to come in is more than 10 yuan. Foreign goods invaded, and local goods went bankrupt. My mother also bought a wooden loom, but the home weaving soil cloth is not as good as foreign foreign cloth, so they are all bankrupt. This made me initially aware of the economic aggression of imperialism, which aggravated the suffering of the Chinese people.

Warlord wars, invasions by great powers, feudal oppression, family paths, hardships in life, aroused indignation in my heart, hated the great powers, hated the warlords, and wanted to eradicate the unfairness of the world, which was my original idea that germinated in that turbulent era.

Beat up the "Piglet" mp

Nanning students have a glorious tradition of revolutionary struggle. When the revolutionary storm of the "May Fourth" patriotic movement swept into Nanning, students from all schools responded one after another, vigorously expressed their solidarity with the students' patriotic and just struggle in Peiping, immediately established the Nanning Students' Federation, held rallies and marches, actively carried out propaganda and boycotts of Japanese goods, and set off a vigorous anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolutionary mass movement, forcing the Guangxi authorities to stop the import of Japanese goods and strike at the aggressive forces of Japanese imperialism. Elementary school students often go to the streets to publicize, inspect, and oppose Japanese goods.

With the in-depth development of the "May Fourth" movement, there was a new idea and new culture of "democracy" and "science."

It has also been continuously introduced to Nanning, which has had a profound impact on the students of various schools and inspired us to further plunge into the rapids of the struggle of the times.

In October 1923, the Beiyang warlord Cao Xi held a congress of parliamentarians in Beijing, at which he openly used bribery to be elected president, which aroused strong criticism and condemnation from public opinion throughout the country, and public resentment boiled over, condemning Cao Kun's bribery and perverting the law, but also scolding the lawbreakers for taking bribes, calling the parliamentarians "piglets" parliamentarians.

On October 9, the Office of Grand Marshal Sun Yat-sen of Guangdong Province ordered a crusade against Cao Kun and wanted to bribe the elected parliamentarians, and students in many provinces were indignant and beat up his "piglet" parliamentarians. When the news reached Nanning, teachers, students, and employees of various schools shook their fists and waited with their fists for the return of the "piglet" parliamentarians of the province.

Soon, Three people, including Lei Yingchuan (a native of Yongchun County, now part of Hengxian County), Tang Renjie (a native of Binyang County), and Zhan ×× (a native of Wuming County), who attended the congress of the National Assembly in Guangxi to participate in the bribery election, quietly returned to Nanning and stayed at the Yongnan Hotel on Cangximen Avenue.

After the teachers and students of the school received a message from the masses near the hotel, the progressive teachers Zhao Bingshou and Deng Zhe (both of whom were later Communists) led forty or fifty students to carry flags, beat gongs and drums at about 10:00 a.m. that day, and went straight to the Junan Hotel. I'm one of them. Students from the Provincial Third Normal School also heard the news and came to participate in the parade, and everyone shouted in front of the hotel:

"Bring down the Piglet Councilor!" "Oppose bribery in elections!" "Down with the traitor Cao Kun!" The public on the street also came to watch, and the hotel was surrounded by water.

Then, Teacher Zhao and Teacher Deng sent people into the hotel, found the house of the "Pig Boy" parliamentarian, and ordered them to come out and ask the crowd for their guilt. These bad guys, scared to hold their heads, closed the door tightly, and did not dare to come out. At this time, everyone was extremely angry, broke through the door, and pulled them out of the mosquito net or under the bed.

I squeezed up desperately, raised my fists, and punched them. In the end, they had to bow their heads and beg for their lives to be spared, to confess their sins to the people. Everyone was angry, and they triumphantly closed the team and returned to the school.

I sweated and went home (I was living in a city store at the time), it was past lunchtime, and my father asked me what I was doing? I told the MPs who participated in the beating of the "piglets" truthfully. My father was honestly afraid of things, and after listening to it, he sighed and said, "You are now so young to participate in political activities in society, and when you grow up in the future, you don't know what to do!" ”

This was my first time participating in political activities, and although I was a bit reckless, I felt very happy to teach the villains who harmed the country and the law a lesson. As for whether these actions will cause trouble for myself and my family, I have not considered it at all. I think that as long as our actions are just, we will take some risks and do them. Afterwards, many people praised us as primary school students as "newborn calves are not afraid of tigers"!