The picture shows that on May 1, 2014, Li Lanqing was interviewed by this magazine in Xi'an. Photo / Reporter Zhang Yuan
Li Lanqing: "Meditations" of retired Standing Committee members
Reporter/Liu Ziqian (from Xi'an, Beijing)
(This article was published in the 660th issue of China News Weekly)
Li Lanqing decided to make an interesting "post-80s".
He was 71 years old when he made the decision, having just retired from his post as a member of the Politburo Standing Committee of the Communist Party of China and vice premier of the State Council. Seal carving, calligraphy, music, sketching, he regained the interests of these teenagers, only to step into the threshold of old age, the interesting title of "post-80s" is worthy of the name.
Today, the 82-year-old Li Lanqing still has a steady pace and a clear logic, and when it comes to the past, the details are vividly remembered. "I sometimes wonder how I'm in my 80s." Li Lanqing told China News Weekly with a smile. He sat in the living room of Xi'an, where the sun was pouring down through the glass. This time I came to Xi'an to hold a seal engraving exhibition and participate in a concert that popularized elegant music.
From the participants in the creation of China's automobile industry to the leaders of the foreign economic and trade system, from the core members of the third generation of the CPC leadership collective, to the retired elderly with wide interests in the eyes of outsiders, Li Lanqing has carved many unforgettable experiences in the past 82 years into a party seal. Of course, Li Lanqing is not only trapped in the memory, under the premise of not seeking his own government, he is still willing to pay attention to some things at the moment, for example, he studies Jobs and "Apple", and is willing to talk about Tesla electric vehicles.
"We started developing electric cars many years before Tesla"
In the past, Li Lanqing has visited Xi'an many times, but this time is different. On April 30th, the "Qin Feng Yayun Li Lanqing Seal Engraving Calligraphy and Sketch Art Exhibition" was held in Xi'an. The art exhibition is held at the Mandy Center for Contemporary Art in the City that Never Sleeps. At the opening, as soon as Li Lanqing took the stage, he clasped his hands in his fists and said that he was uneasy: "In many places, the word 'art' has been added to my exhibitions, and compared with the artists here, I really don't have any art." ”
The nearly one-month exhibition is divided into three parts: "Popular Seal Carving", "Poetry Printing Book Love" and "I Paint Sketches for The Master", and more than 400 seal carving works, more than 50 calligraphy and 160 sketches of Li Lanqing are exhibited in the 2,000-square-meter exhibition hall. After the opening of the exhibition, 82-year-old Li Lanqing displayed along the works to introduce the story behind the seals. Many of the visitors tiptoed their phones above their heads and kept taking pictures.
Standing in front of the "Seal of Deng Xiaoping, Director of the Logistics Department of Science and Education" and "The Seal of Deng Xiaoping, Chief Architect of Reform and Opening Up," Li Lanqing said: In the early days of reform and opening up, Comrade Xiaoping said to people in the science and education circles, "I know that you have many difficulties, and I will serve as your logistics minister to help you solve them." As a result, Deng Xiaoping was given the title of "Director of the Logistics Department of Science and Education." Later, Zhu Rongji once said, "Since Comrade Xiaoping is a minister, I am the director of the Science and Education Logistics Department." I said that you are the chief of the department, and I will be the deputy director, and I also talked about this past at a meeting of leading cadres of the science and education system. Although the title of Comrade Xiaoping was not "authorized" by the Central Committee and was self-appointed, it was of particularly important significance, so I carved this 'official seal' for his old man with a feeling of remembrance and reverence. Li Lanqing recalled. The visitors laughed heartily.
Deng Xiaoping was one of Li Lanqing's most revered leaders. Although the two are a generation apart in age, they have a lot of intersections. The first time they met was in Zhongnanhai. May 14, 1958. Li Lanqing, who is only 26 years old, accompanied Rao Bin, director of the Changchun First Automobile Factory and a delegate to the congress, drove China's first domestic Dongfeng brand car into Zhongnanhai during the second session of the Eighth National Congress of the Communist Party of China. In the back garden of Huairentang, Li Lanqing, dressed in a navy blue Zhongshan suit and short hair, stood in front of a polished sedan next to Deng Xiaoping, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and general secretary of the Central Committee, and Peng Zhen, secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee. At that time, this young man who returned from an internship in the Soviet automobile factory was already the backbone of the factory's business and technology, and also served as a researcher at the Economic Research Institute of Northeast Renmin University. He was impressed by several questions about the professional nature of automobiles raised by Deng Xiaoping. He learned afterwards that Deng Xiaoping had worked for Renault during his work-study trip to France.
This year has been 6 years since he entered the factory. In 1952, the 20-year-old Li Lanqing graduated from university, most of the classmates went to work in metallurgy and other departments, only he was assigned to the Changchun First Automobile Manufacturing Plant, which was still preparing, and the knowledge of business administration, mechanical principles and automobile structure learned in the school was of use.
From 1953 onwards, China began its first five-year plan. As a key project in the "First Five-Year Plan" period, Changchun First Automobile Manufacturing Plant laid the foundation for construction in this year, and in the following years, it produced the first Jiefang brand truck, Dongfeng brand and Hongqi brand car in New China, which opened the history of China's automobile industry. Li Lanqing became a participant and witness of that period of history.
62 years later, Sitting in front of a reporter from China News Weekly, Li Lanqing recalled the past of his youth: "The climate is indeed warmer now, the temperature in Changchun winter was extremely low, I was a southerner, the cold wind blew on my face like needles, and my eyebrows and beard were all knotted white frost." We did not have rice to eat, sorghum rice was still shelled, and although the living conditions were difficult, everyone felt glorious and happy to be able to participate in the key projects of the first five-year plan of new China. ”
Li Lanqing, who sent the car to Zhongnanhai, would not have imagined that 34 years later, he would spend a full ten spring and autumn seasons in Zhongnanhai. For a long time, the car was all he worked for. At the beginning of the reform and opening up, the state originally planned to build a large heavy-duty automobile factory, and appointed Li Lanqing as the second in command of the project. This was also the first project that Deng Xiaoping personally approved to negotiate a joint venture with a foreign country, and he had the opportunity to go abroad to investigate the automobile industry. GM, Ford, Chrysler, Mercedes-Benz, Volkswagen, Renault, Volvo and other automobile companies invited delegations to visit their modern factories and R & D centers, and Li Lanqing also test-drove a new single-door convertible sedan developed by GM.
Seeing the huge gap between China's automobile industry and developed countries, Li Lanqing has mixed feelings, fortunately, after experiencing the wandering in the early stage of reform and opening up, the introduction of technology, the road of Sino-foreign joint ventures, and the improvement of China's automobile industry level have gradually become the consensus of the industry. As the first to negotiate joint ventures with foreign countries, Li Lanqing was transferred to the State Foreign Investment Commission in 1981, bidding farewell to the automobile industry and turning to foreign economic and trade work. In 1983, Beijing Jeep Automobile Co., Ltd., a Sino-US joint venture, was officially signed, becoming the first Sino-foreign joint venture in China's automotive industry.
More than 30 years later, Li Lanqing's attitude toward foreign auto giants has gradually changed. Now China's automobile production and sales have been ranked first in the world for five consecutive years, and in 2013, China's automobile production and sales exceeded 20 million units, once again breaking the world record. In the face of the great achievements made by China's automobile industry, Li Lanqing also has new worries.
Eleven years after his retirement, he has remained sensitive to the auto market, telling China News Weekly: "Faced with the deterioration of the atmospheric environment and the shortage and non-renewable oil resources, the world's major auto companies are stepping up research and development of new energy vehicles, and the auto industry is facing a big revolution." At present, China's traditional energy vehicle production capacity has been seriously overcapacitated. What I am more worried about is that foreign automakers are still labeling the production capacity of their traditional cars as 'advanced technology', constantly transferring to China, and we are still rushing to accept and deploy points everywhere, while they are changing cages for birds, making efforts on new energy vehicles, first listing in their domestic markets to seize the market, and then vigorously entering the Chinese market. The 'Tesla' storm is a warning! "Li Lanqing supported the armrest with a serious face." In fact, we developed electric cars many years before Tesla. ”
As early as the 1990s, when Li Lanqing was in charge of science and technology work, he paid attention to promoting the research and development of new energy vehicles in China, and in October 2001, the major special project of electric vehicles that was officially included in the "Tenth Five-Year" National 863 Plan was launched. Li Lanqing, who is very familiar with the automobile industry, once said after listening to the progress report of electric vehicles: "Electric vehicles are fundamentally national energy security issues, and energy security is the most concerned issue of every politician in the world." To solve China's energy problem, electric vehicles are a way out. ”
Li Lanqing told China News Weekly, "At that time, I mainly considered electric vehicles from the perspective of energy strategy, and I did not expect that the development of automobiles was so fast in recent years, and the harmful gases emitted by automobiles have become one of the important causes of air pollution, and the development of new energy vehicles has also become a major livelihood problem." ”
In the eyes of industry insiders, the new energy automobile industry is a good opportunity for China's automobile industry to achieve curve overtaking, but some people believe that the endurance of domestic electric vehicles restricts market popularization. "Battery life is not the key to the problem, now it has reached one or two hundred kilometers, and then install a spare range extender, there is no problem in running long distances." However, there are still some people who say that this is not enough, that it is not clear, these are not aware of electric vehicles, and some are deliberately misleading public opinion created by some interest groups. Any innovative thing cannot be perfected at the beginning, and 'passing' cannot be confused with perfection. Li Lanqing also told China News Weekly: "The direction of the automobile industry must be new energy vehicles, and the current one is mainly electric vehicles." If China's automobile practitioners do not recognize this, when a large number of foreign new energy vehicles pour into china's market, China's traditional automobile industry will face great disasters. ”
Li Lanqing was slightly regretful between his words, but suddenly raised his voice again, "It is still too late for us to grasp the promotion now." ”
In the exhibition hall, a black seal created in 2011 is unremarkable, and the novel content of the seal may represent Li Lanqing's voice: hope in new energy vehicles.
"I have an opinion on Jobs"
There is still a day before the May Day holiday, and the Big Wild Goose Pagoda is already full of tourists, and it takes only five or six minutes to walk from the Big Wild Goose Pagoda to the art exhibition site. The crowd of visitors poured in in the direction of the exhibition.
Each side of the print at the exhibition is accompanied by a note indicating the size, material, edges and time of engraving of the seal. Different from the elegance of traditional seals, some of Li Lanqing's seal engraving works are to some extent a combing and reflection on the experience of self-governance, such as some seals engraved with "borrowing chickens to lay eggs", "promoting reform and development with opening up", "eating large pot rice can not be eaten", "three to make up for the merit is indispensable". In front of the display case, a boy in the shape of a middle school student, with his head bowed, was using the meaning of "three to one supplement" on his mobile phone Baidu.
Since the 1980s, Li Lanqing bid farewell to the old bank of the automobile industry for 30 years and began to serve as a leader in foreign trade and economic cooperation. At the beginning of 1982, Li Lanqing served as the director of the Foreign Investment Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade and visited the Pearl River Delta region. At that time, a new form of trade based on material processing, sample processing, assembly of incoming parts and compensation trade arose in the coastal area, which was called "three to one supplement". Because it does not require investment, increases income quickly, and can also solve employment, it has developed rapidly in the Pearl River Delta.
At that time, some county governments in Guangdong Province also set up foreign processing and assembly offices, implementing "one window to the outside world, one seal to do things.". This simplified and efficient but "unprogrammed" process was already a long way off in China at that time. To the surprise of local officials, after Li Lanqing learned of the situation, he not only did not criticize the local government, but also praised their practices, and even humorously summed up the local "secret", which was to "hang the official seal on the waistband of his pants."
Twenty-six years later, when Li Lanqing was ready to compile a book on the process of reform and opening up that he had personally experienced and rethink this historical fragment, he kept "judging" himself: Was the practice at that time correct? Is it appropriate to make your statement? I still studied business administration, isn't it important to follow the rules and regulations? In the end, he gave himself a "verdict": "From today's point of view, there may be something wrong, but if it is not done at that time, nothing will change, there will be no breakthrough, and it will only continue to cause a large number of people to smuggle out of the country." Moreover, at that time, there were no clear regulations on new things, the original rules and regulations were completely out of touch with reality, and the grass-roots leaders along the coast were still calling for the relaxation of restraints and decentralization. If you don't let this, you are not allowed to do this, not only can you not change anything, but you can't know what new problems will arise in the new things of reform and opening up, how do you know how to get rid of the advantages and eliminate the disadvantages, and carry out reasonable standardization and management? ”
Li Lanqing also clearly remembers that after working in the central government in 1992, he had the opportunity to meet Deng Xiaoping directly. At one point, Deng Xiaoping said to him, "We must reform and open up." If you don't reform and open up, you will die! Although Deng Xiaoping said this many times, Li Lanqing regarded this face-to-face conversation as a political exhortation to his generation and became his motto in the future.
Looking back, at the beginning of reform and opening up, Li Lanqing's feelings were stronger than those of ordinary people. In 1979, the great debate on the standard of truth continued, and the focus of the central government's work shifted to economic construction. The introduction of foreign capital and the establishment of Sino-foreign joint ventures are also on the agenda. However, the real dilemma makes it difficult to deepen the Sino-foreign joint venture negotiations. As one of the main responsible persons of the project negotiations, 47-year-old Li Lanqing directly wrote to Deng Xiaoping: To do one thing, there are several "layers" on the vertical side, and there are several "temples" on the horizontal side, and all have "veto power", just like many ropes, binding you and making it difficult for you to move forward.
In this "complaint letter," Li Lanqing mercilessly named several functional departments, "We prepared materials and suggestions a few months ago, and repeatedly asked the relevant departments, but we did not get a reply." The leaders of the Foreign Investment Commission also held a special meeting to urge them to quickly come up with their opinions, and so far there has been no reply," Li Lanqing even lamented in the letter, "such problems abound, and I simply do not know how to do it well." ”
Li Lanqing's handwritten letter was quickly fermented under Deng Xiaoping's instructions. The CPC Central Committee agreed in principle to the "Report on Several Issues Concerning Sino-Foreign Joint Ventures" issued by the Party Group of the State Foreign-Funded Investment Commission, and with the promulgation of the Law on Sino-Foreign Equity Joint Ventures and other relevant laws and regulations, the negotiations on several Sino-foreign joint venture projects that are in a state of anxiety have continued.
Among Li Lanqing's many seals reflecting his experience in the 1980s, there is a particularly eye-catching one, with no words on it, a long knife engraved on the upper part, and a pair of horns on the lower square.
On May 1, 2014, at the Zhongnan Concert Hall on the Chang'an Campus of Shaanxi Normal University, Li Lanqing pointed to the seal on the big screen and told the teachers and students present about a past event when he worked at the State Foreign Investment Commission in the early 1980s. The returnees of the Shenzhen Guangming Overseas Chinese Livestock Farm are very difficult, and they have used loans to import more than 1,000 cows from New Zealand to prepare to produce fresh milk for export to Hong Kong. However, China's animal and plant quarantine department determined that nearly 700 runny cows suffered from foot-and-mouth disease and must be killed. The leader sent Li Lanqing south to Shenzhen, and after his investigation, he found that New Zealand's export quarantine was qualified, and the possibility of being infected with foot-and-mouth disease at sea was very small, and then asked whether it was possible to first sentence the cows to "death delay" and isolate and observe before dealing with them. After a few days, the quarantine was again, and all qualified were released.
"You think, from New Zealand to Shenzhen by boat, the road is far away, the sea is windy and waves, can they not run their noses?" Li Lanqing's voice just dropped, and the teachers and students burst into laughter. This incident greatly touched Li Lanqing, who was good at summing up experience. In addition to sighing, he carved this seal called "Leaving Cattle Under the Knife".
At the exhibition hall site on April 30, Li Lanqing walked and said that a number of seals with the theme of the 1980s integrated his work in the field of foreign trade and economic cooperation. One of the seals, given to the Party School of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, was engraved in 2013 and is 11.5 centimeters high, which is quite eye-catching. The 12 characters on the seal are perhaps the best summary of this period of time - "practice is the only criterion for testing truth".
Coming from a business administration class and many years of experience in foreign trade, Li Lanqing pays more attention to the innovation of Chinese enterprises after the introduction of foreign capital and technology. In his eyes, entrepreneurs can be divided into three categories, good at selling their own goods and services in the existing market, which is the average entrepreneur; developing potentially expanding new markets for their own goods and services, which is a relatively successful entrepreneur; the most intelligent entrepreneur is to develop innovative products and services that are not in the original market to develop and create a new market.
Li Lanqing admired Jobs and also paid attention to Apple products, not only studying relevant materials, but also watching Jobs's biographical movie of the same name. "He combined technology with art, from 16G to 64G tablets, from iPhone 1 to iPhone4s phones, he 'made something out of nothing' to create a big market, and countless 'Apple fans' appeared around the world, queuing up to buy it." Li Lanqing suddenly paused, his face darkened, "However, I also have an opinion on Jobs, who continues to launch more perfect products from generation to generation, forcing users to constantly update and making us a lot of money." Many Chinese enterprises lack this spirit of innovation and lack of self-confidence in innovation, and always run behind others. So I'd love to see China's electric cars lead the way for once. Now that Tesla has arrived, some of us have comforted ourselves that it is just a 'noble toy' and don't worry. Let me tell you a story, during World War II, the major aircraft factories built propeller aircraft, and then came out a small factory that invented and made jet aircraft, called 'Boeing', and the big factories at that time did not pay attention to it at all, thinking that it was just a 'toy'. As a result, it is this play to eliminate all these behemoths and turn them into Boeing's world! ”
"Don't look at the leader of the country, sometimes you have to use extraordinary methods"
May 1st, the first day of the holiday. In the Zhongnan Concert Hall of the Chang'an Campus of Shaanxi Normal University, Li Lanqing gave a lecture on "Public Seal Carving and Defending Chinese Characters". In the decade since his retirement, he has given more than 100 lectures at colleges and universities across the country.
At 9:30 a.m., Li Lanqing stepped up to the podium and made a brief opening statement, "In 2001, I came to Shaanxi Normal University, but it was an old campus. I am sincerely pleased to see that you have made new developments, new progress, and new improvements. "13 years ago, Li Lanqing visited Shaanxi Normal University. In the same year, China achieved the goals of basically universalizing nine-year compulsory education and basically eradicating illiteracy among young and middle-aged people as scheduled. At this time, Li Lanqing had been in charge of education for 8 years.
Although the theme of this lecture is seal engraving and Chinese characters, education is naturally inseparable. In 1993, when the leaders of the State Council were dividing up the work, Li Peng, then premier of the State Council, asked Li Lanqing to discuss the division of labor, hoping that he would be in charge of education in addition to being in charge of economic and trade work. "I was surprised, I said I didn't know education, I was a layman. Comrade Li Peng asked rhetorically: Among the several vice premiers, who do you think is suitable? Comrade Zhu Rongji is executive vice premier and assists the premier in grasping comprehensive work; Comrade Zou Jiahua is an expert in macroeconomics and industry; Comrade Qian Qichen is a diplomat, and they may not be able to take care of education, and I cannot do their work. Premier Li Peng said, yes, so you are in charge of education. Li Lanqing recalled the details of that year.
Looking back on the connection with education, Li Lanqing was extremely frank, "At that time, I did not want to manage education, first, because I had never managed education and had no experience in this area; second, because there were too many difficulties in education; third, at that time, the masses had many opinions on education, and they were tongue-in-cheek, as if everyone was an educator. Indeed, around 1993, there was a resurgence of business going to the sea in China. At that time, the average annual salary of primary and secondary school teachers was only about 3,000 yuan. The teaching staff was very unstable, and an associate professor at a university in Beijing sold pies on the street, which became the focus of public opinion for a while.
What troubled Li Lanqing was that as soon as he took office, what was on the table was that primary and secondary school teachers across the country were owed more than 1.4 billion yuan in salary bills. "The three big issues that urgently needed to be addressed at that time were teacher salaries, teacher housing and education investment." Li Lanqing said. In addition, there are a large number of private teachers with seriously low salaries that need to be solved urgently. In 1994, when Li Lanqing went to the grassroots level to investigate, he met a private teacher in his 50s who had worked for 17 years in Ji'an, Jiangxi Province, with a monthly salary of only 56 yuan. Due to historical reasons, in the mid-1990s, there were still 2 million private teachers in China, and Li Lanqing held several meetings to discuss the regularization of private teachers, but the opinions of all parties were very inconsistent. Ji'an's trip strengthened his determination.
Coincidentally, at that time, Tianjin made a movie "Phoenix Qin" that reflected the current situation of private teachers, and he was very touched by it. "Hey, this time this time comes." Li Lanqing told China News Weekly that he gave copies to each leader of the State Council and attached a handwritten letter asking them to take a moment to read it. "After a while, I still have to 'check' and ask them if they have seen it, and they all say that they have seen it, which is very touching." Li Lanqing finally went to ask the premier. Li Peng replied very crisply: "Look. Li Lanqing hurriedly asked, "What do you think?" "Oh, I'm in tears as I watch."
"I thought to myself that this is good, the prime minister is moved, and there is a way." Taking the opportunity of the central meeting, Li Lanqing invited all the delegates attending the meeting to watch the film. In the end, through the method of knowing the reason and then adding emotions, the consensus of all parties was obtained, and the private teachers could be regularized after passing the examination. Li Lanqing laughed and said, "This is to solve a big problem with the power of culture and art." ”
Afterwards, he also specifically instructed the heads of relevant departments, "The problem of 2 million private teachers has been solved for you, and you must not give me any more private teachers in the future." Li Lanqing turned to China News Weekly and said, "Later, they were not called private teachers, and they changed their names to substitute teachers." In Li Lanqing's view, it is necessary to reform the rural school-running system, from the peasants who raised funds to run the school in the past to the government, and at the same time, the personnel power to hire teachers was transferred to the county government. Counties with real financial difficulties are transferred by the provincial and central finances, and the national treasury sends salaries directly to the teachers' bank accounts. He also personally wrote to local leaders asking them to check the implementation of teachers' salaries.
In Li Lanqing's view, in running schools in rural areas, the teaching business should be entrusted to the principal of the most educated central primary school in the countryside, and people who understand education should be allowed to run education. He has always feared that if uneducated people continue to lead education in rural areas, there will be big problems. After retirement, he gave a seal of "ignorance and fearlessness" for this moment, writing on the side paragraph: "People should be in awe." Due to ignorance, often heaven is not afraid, lawless, such people are not available also. ”
In China, which is in a period of transition, Li Lanqing knows that to promote some things, sometimes it is necessary to adopt some unconventional practices. For example, at that time, the National Museum was too small, and the Ministry of Culture asked for the expansion of the museum opposite the Great Hall of the People. This matter has been planned for many years, but there are two departments and bureau-level units of the China History Museum and the Museum of the Chinese Revolution, and it is difficult to unify opinions. Li Lanqing said to them: "Doesn't your history museum include the history of the revolution, and isn't the revolution in your museum also part of history?" Therefore, it is proposed that the two museums be merged to form a national museum and implement the expansion project in a unified manner. "But for various reasons, this recommendation is still difficult to implement." Li Lanqing told China News Weekly that on one occasion he reported to Jiang Zemin on his work, explaining the importance and urgency of establishing a national museum and expanding it, and the general secretary expressed his support. "Then please write the name of the museum." Li Lanqing's request was immediately granted by the then general secretary.
Li Lanqing told the Ministry of Culture to notify the heads of the two museums to hold a meeting, displayed the inscription of "National Museum of China", and announced the merger of the two museums, and the National Museum was officially established. "If you don't do this, you may still be pulling the strings and delaying your work." Li Lanqing lamented to China News Weekly, "Don't look at the leader of the country, sometimes you have to use extraordinary methods to solve problems." “
Education also needs to deepen reform
In the lecture of Shaanxi Normal University, Li Lanqing once again turned the topic to the recently popular "Chinese Character Dictation Conference". The word "toad" is actually difficult for 70% of people, our culture is passed down by Chinese characters, if you often do not write it will forget. This is the second time in two days that Li Lanqing has given the example of a "toad." At the opening of the art exhibition a day ago, he also expressed his concern about young people learning Chinese characters. Li Lanqing once carved a large seal with only two big characters on it: "Writing.".
Li Lanqing was born in Zhenjiang to a family of intellectuals, although he was already in the era of foreign schools in his childhood, he had to go to private schools to study ancient books such as writing and the Four Books and Five Classics during the winter and summer vacations. When he was in middle school, even his science textbooks were in English. In addition to English, he also studied Japanese, Russian and German. However, his self-assessment is that "the only things that have achieved a little success are English and Russian." In 2001, at the 112th plenary session of the International Olympic Committee in Moscow, li Lanqing made a three-minute presentation in English for Beijing's bid for the Olympic Games, and the public learned that the vice premier in charge of education could still speak fluent English.
Fluent in English and in charge of education, he has always been outspoken about the problems existing in English teaching. "Chinese have been learning foreign languages for the longest time, from primary school to college, more than ten years, what is the effect?" Compared with the study time, it is half the work. He also had a first-hand feeling of what "dumb" English was. In 1982, Li Lanqing was appointed director of the Foreign Investment Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Foreign Trade and Economic Cooperation, and when he went to the United States to investigate, a translator who had just graduated from the English Department could not communicate with foreign parties because he did not understand the business, or Li Lanqing gave him a "translator".
During his tenure as vice premier, Li Lanqing initiated and held an English training course for ministers, with the participation of ministerial officials from various ministries and commissions. Li Lanqing recalled to China News Weekly that after three months of intensive training, the English level of ministers, especially speaking, has improved significantly.
Ten years after retirement, Li Lanqing still pays attention to hot topics in education. In 2013, it was called "the most difficult employment season in history" by the media, and in 2014, the scale of graduates of colleges and universities in the country will reach 7.27 million, a record high, the pressure on the total number of graduates will further increase, the structural contradictions in employment demand will become more prominent, and the teaching content and methods of our colleges and universities will be improved, which means that the employment concept of graduates also needs to be changed.
Li Lanqing recalled his situation when he was studying and working. After 1949, Li Lanqing was admitted to Fudan University majoring in business administration. "We were different from now, although the main course was finance and management, the course was to learn engineering and business, in the department's practice workshop, starting from taking a file to learn to do vices, mastered the operation of various machine tools." Internship research in textile factories is not only to manage the business of internship management, but also to study the best operation methods for workers. In the classroom to learn about the car structure, the professor talked about the rear axle differential used for car bending, and everyone listened to it half-understanding, until the internship class dismantled the car, and the steering differential principle was clear at a glance. Now teaching seems to be mostly from theory to theory, which is relatively empty. The hands-on ability of science and engineering is poor, and the ability to solve practical problems in liberal arts is poor, which also increases the difficulty of employment.
When the deputy prime minister became a retired elderly man
In the more than 100 college lectures that Li Lanqing has given, almost all of them are related to music, seal calligraphy, painting and other cultural arts. He vigorously promoted elegant art into the campus, and also advocated attaching importance to the learning and application of Chinese characters. If we take retirement as the node, his keynote speech after retirement is more like a certain extension of his educational concept at that time, especially aesthetic education, which is a weak link in Chinese education.
On the evening of April 30, 2014, a concert called "Elegant Art entering the Campus" was held at the Xi'an Concert Hall. On the stage, the oldest is Wu Chengkang, an 84-year-old principal violinist and academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, sitting opposite him is Ye Xiaowen, the chief cellist and secretary of the party group of the Central Socialist College, while Li Lanqing, who watches the performance offstage, is counted as the principal audience of the symphony orchestra.
The concert begins with a overture to Carmen. Li Lanqing looked at the stage attentively, his right hand occasionally played twice with the tune, and after playing the "Char Dash Dance", the orchestra conductor announced that the next program was for the school teacher to sing Mr. Zhao Yuanren's famous song "Teach Me How not to miss him", and the conductor heard Li Lanqing sing this song and invited him to the stage. In the applause of the audience, Li Lanqing wore a light suit, a purple and blue tie, and a pair of gold-rimmed glasses, walked onto the stage, and said humorously: "The old man after the 80s is still performing." At the end of the performance, the band conductor invited Li Lanqing to play a piano song while the iron was hot. Li Lanqing touched the piano in the applause and said: "It is said outside that Li Moumou can play the piano, I want to clarify here, in fact, this is a misinformation, I just play the piano randomly." There was a lot of laughter in the audience.
His initial interest in music came entirely from family upbringing. Li Lanqing has been living in his grandfather's house since he was a child, and his uncle loves music, playing the piano and playing the violin, which has also become Li Lanqing's earliest musical enlightenment. His uncle also taught him to play the piano, but he was later "expelled" because he did not follow his uncle's teaching regulations, and he began to "play the piano indiscriminately" from then on. In the following decades, there were no conditions for contact with the piano. After the reform and opening up, the economic conditions gradually became more and more comfortable, and Li Lanqing made a request to his wife to buy a piano. "Madame approved." Only occasionally did he play twice. The audience laughed again, and Zhang Suzhen, the wife of Li Lanqing, who was sitting on the stage, also laughed and shook her head. Finally, he played his own composition of "Jian Zhen Dongdu Capriccio" on the piano.
Since Li Lanqing was in charge of education, he found that China's music education was very weak, and he sorted out the materials and notes he had collected for a long time, and wrote an easy-to-understand music popularization book, which was retired when the book entitled "Li Lanqing's Musical Pen Talk" was published.
For many years, he has been promoting high music into the campus. In his view, people who do not understand aesthetics and lack cultural and aesthetic cultivation, including music, cannot be regarded as high-quality intellectuals. Li Lanqing told China News Weekly that he is not opposed to young people's enthusiasm for popular music now, but "entertainment is not equal to culture, as college students should pursue something more elegant, it is not only to improve sentiment, it is very helpful for the development of intelligence."
In fact, compared with the hobby of music, the story of Li Lanqing's seal carving is more familiar. In fact, the seal engraving is more of a return to his childhood interests. After retiring, before learning seal carving, the famous painter Pan Gongkai once "warned" him, "Seal carving is easy to be addicted, and my father was addicted to it that year, and he couldn't stop for a moment." "Pan Gongkai's father, Pan Tianshou, was a master of Chinese painting and a master of seal engraving." I am a person who can afford to take everything and put it down, how can I be addicted. Li Lanqing didn't think so at first. Unexpectedly, the carving knife was ten years old when it was picked up, and the seal was engraved in more than a thousand directions. Sometimes, when madame told him to eat and rest, his hands shook, the seal was broken, and he would lose his temper with madame. Each seal of Li Lanqing is a piece of life past, a record, but also a memory, but Li Lanqing has set a rule for himself, in addition to family and diplomatic exchanges, do not engrave the seal of the living Chinese people.
Nowadays, Li Lanqing's daily life is very regular. Get up at six or seven in the morning, work and study for an hour after breakfast, if there is no smog, he will also choose to walk, insist on swimming four times a week, swim a thousand meters each time, sometimes play bridge with friends, after lunch, after a short lunch break, or read or meet guests, or continue to engrave, draw, until more than ten o'clock in the evening, flip through the newspaper of the day, and then go to bed.
Li Lanqing still remembers the scene when he first went to Tsinghua University in 2003 to give a lecture, when a classmate asked him how he became vice premier from a young college student. Li Lanqing humorously replied with a sentence: I never dreamed of it. He told China News Weekly that this was his heart's work, and that in his life, he had never planned his personal future except to do his best to do his job. Before 1949, his ideal was to have a job and food after graduation. After 1949, I was bent on participating in nation-building. As for the current plan, he smiled and told China News Weekly, "Fitness, brain health, reading, writing, strengthening exercise, maintaining physical and mental health, so that they are not guilty, their families are not tired, save medical expenses, benefit the whole society, do not prematurely become the negative energy of society, and add burdens to society and families." ”★
(The material of this article is based on the follow-up and interview with Li Lanqing for several days, and some of the content refers to "Breakthrough - The Years of the First Opening of the National Gate" and "Interview with Li Lanqing's Education", thanks to Wang Jianping's strong support and assistance to this article)
China News Weekly, No. 660, has been listed.
Mega Star Micro Signal: bwzdxxx
Million Zhuang's Little Stars: Self-cultivation of Editorial Board Articles of China News Weekly