【Editor's Note】
September 30, 2022 is the ninth Martyrs' Day in China.
Looking back at history, thousands of revolutionary martyrs, embracing the ideals of their homeland, put their lives and deaths between heaven and earth, and exchanged their blood and indomitability for light and peace. The sonorous righteousness they carry is precisely the faith that Chinese will not fall.
At that time, through the flames of war and smoke, a family letter arrived at ten thousand gold. Today, across time and space, revisiting one letter after another, the spirit of heroism still inspires us between the lines.
On this special day, the surging news published some letters from heroic martyrs and letters from young people, which were literally written and passed on from one soul to another.
Chen Qiaonian. Shanghai Longhua Martyrs Memorial Hall Courtesy photo
Chen Qiaonian (1902-1928), a native of Huaining, Anhui, was the second son of Chen Duxiu.
At the end of 1919, Chen Qiaonian went to France to work and study, and in 1922 initiated the establishment of the Young Communist Party of China in Europe, and in the same year became a member of the Communist Party of China, one of the leading members of the CPC European branch. In 1923, he went to the Soviet Union to study and returned to China the following year.
In 1926, the Northern District Committee of the Communist Party of China organized the masses to denounce the crimes of Britain, the United States, Japan, and other eight countries for unreasonable ultimatum against China, and the procession marched to the front of Duan Qirui's government, Chen Qiaonian was stabbed in the chest by the enemy's bayonet, but he still endured the pain of organizing the masses to evacuate.
In 1927, Chen Qiaonian was elected a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China at the Fifth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and in May of the same year, he was appointed deputy director of the Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee. After the defeat of the Great Revolution, he secretly went deep into factories, institutions and schools, restored the Party organizations destroyed by the Kuomintang reactionaries, and regathered the revolutionary forces.
In 1928, Chen Qiaonian was arrested, tortured in prison, preferred to die, and finally walked barefoot in blood and muddy water, scaled and injured, and calmly died, only 26 years old.
Before the sacrifice, the comrades in prison were very sad that Chen Qiaonian was about to be killed, but he said optimistically: "Let our children and grandchildren enjoy the happiness of the predecessors who have cut through the thorns!" ”
Chen Qiaonian's resume. @CCTV National Memory Map
The following is a young man's remembrance of Chen Qiaonian:
Born under the red flag and raised in the spring breeze, I am a new youth of the 21st century, a loyal Communist Party member, and a staunch materialist.
The summer vacation after the college entrance examination ushered in the centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China. The prosperous world is peaceful, the mountains and rivers are silent, the drums are beating the ground, and the brilliant fireworks outside the window reflect the happy faces of the people, and I fall asleep in the sound of celebration.
I was awakened by the rush of footsteps and the mixed whispers.
In the dark alley, a column of officers and soldiers with guns on their backs rushed past me.
"Catch them... None of them can stay! A fierce whisper exploded in my ears.
As I glanced behind me, two vague figures appeared in the backyard of a family, and stopped in front of the high wall, as if hesitant and unprepared.
The body moves one step ahead of the brain, and the subconscious mind tells me that I should help the two people behind me who seem to be in crisis.
"Step on my shoulders, you go!" Someone is coming to arrest you! I squatted down and held back the weight of my shoulders in pain, feeling the burly young man first use his shoulders to help the relatively thin other person climb the wall.
"Brother, come up." The young man who was already standing at the head of the wall pulled a handful of people who stepped on my shoulders, and the two were about to successfully escape.
As they were about to leave, the relatively thin boy turned his face and looked at me with sincere eyes: "Thank you." ”
I was stunned, his young and beautiful face seemed to be only in his early teens, how could he be hunted down and killed with such a malicious intention?
A dizziness struck and I fell into darkness.
When I woke up again, I was in the crowded streets of the city. The familiar and unfamiliar sights of old Shanghai all announced that I had come to the Republic of China a century ago.
A rickshaw passed by me, raising a cloud of yellow dust.
My eyes were drawn to a thin figure in front of me, his back hunched over, almost ninety degrees, his back stacked with two sacks that were larger and heavier than his, walking slowly and heavily, step by step.
When he unloaded the goods on his back with the assistance of others, it was finally time to rest.
Only to see him turn his face, a familiar face stained with gray-black dirt on his face, but he did not care to wipe the sweat from the corners of his forehead with his ragged clothes, and nibbled on a dry and hard cake with a taste of tap water, and from time to time revealed a clear and satisfied smile to the older youth next to him...
For some reason, Xu was in front of the boy's bitter smile too contagious, Xu was sad that he was shouldering the responsibility and burden that he should not have borne at his age, and tears couldn't help but fill my eyes.
Then, in the alternation of darkness and light, I went to many places and saw many teenagers at different times and on different occasions.
In the small bookstore on the streets of Paris, he shouted in fluent French books selling books propagating socialism and communism, he was full of spirit when the founding congress of the Chinese Communist Youth Communist Party took a group photo, and he was more and more stable in his work after night fell in Beijing and Shanghai. Until before his execution, he was still smiling and saying to his fellow inmates, "Let our children and grandchildren enjoy the happiness of those who came before them."
When I woke up in tears and was greeted by the warm layout of my room in the 21st century, I realized that what I had experienced was nothing more than a dream.
But is it really just a dream?
There is indeed a man in history, and he is a heroic revolutionary martyr who the Chinese should never forget, Chen Qiaonian.
When he was young, he was hunted down and killed because of his father Chen Duxiu, and his brother Chen Yannian fled to Shanghai, work-study came to France, and the change of revolutionary faith took place, and he was elected as a member of the Fifth Central Committee of the Communist Party of China at the Fifth National Congress of the Communist Party of China, and after the sacrifice of his brother-in-law, he still took over his brother's job until he died at a young age at the gunpoint of the Kuomintang reactionaries...
He is never mentioned in the history textbooks, only a few words of his record are left in the biography of the heroic martyr, and only a few vague photographs and his handwriting on the "Revolution" in the "Career" column of the "Occupation" column are left in the long river of history...
I can't accurately recount which memory of him impressed me the most, but I can never tell others that I have "seen" him with my own eyes, accompanied and witnessed his difficult but also extremely glorious revolutionary years...
In this life, as he wished, the old man looked at Jiangnan and folded the "peach blossom" to remember each other.
I think it's time to visit this little hero at the Longhua Martyrs' Cemetery.
Wu Shuang respected
Zhao Guanqun design