Yangcheng Evening News all-media reporter Deng Qiong
The pictures are all infographics
On October 1, 2021, Mr. Yang Qi, a 99-year-old famous newspaperman in Guangdong and Hong Kong, passed away. When he was critically ill, the medical staff prepared a small national flag and a party flag, and planted them on the left and right sides of the hospital bed, hoping to bring him strength.
In 1941, when the 19-year-old Yang Qi secretly joined the Communist Party of China in Hong Kong, he was unable to fly a party flag due to environmental compulsions; on October 1, 1949, he organized the employees of the China Business Daily to raise the first national flag of the People's Republic of China in Hong Kong. These two flags record the life of this legendary newspaperman who traveled through Guangdong and Hong Kong who took risks and was loyal to his faith.
Bidding farewell to Mr. Yang Qi in the autumn rain, we commemorate his contributions in every journey, and remember that as a communist, no matter what position and situation he is in, he always has faith and loyalty. As Luo Tao, a media personality and author of the preface to the book "Guangdong-Hong Kong Feihong Stepping on the Slush - Selected Articles of Yang Qi's Newspapers", wrote for Mr. Yang Qi:
In Hong Kong, he was in charge of the Grand Duke of Chinese Businessmen, and in Guangdong, he was a great man in the newspaper industry; he was a journalist and publisher, and he made meritorious contributions to the United Front, which is often the storm of the times.
He personally spawned two big newspapers
October, for Yang Qi, is particularly special. The "Southern Daily" and "Yangcheng Evening News" that he personally spawned were all born in this golden autumn month.
On October 20, 1949, Yang Qi arranged for the Hong Kong "Huashang Bao" to be suspended and his colleagues to withdraw internally, returned from Hong Kong to Guangzhou, which had just been liberated for a week, and rushed to the Aiqun Building to report to the Propaganda Department of the South China Branch of the CPC Central Committee. Waiting for him was the appointment of the deputy director of the Nanfang Daily, an organ of the South China branch, and the "hard task" that must be published three days later.
Having previously had experience in founding the "Forward Newspaper" in the Dongjiang Liberated Area and the "Zheng Pao" in Hong Kong, Yang Qi's work of creating the newspaper this time was orderly, and he cooperated seamlessly with the cadres zeng Yanxiu and Zhao Dongyu who went south, as well as the colleagues of the former "Huashang Bao". On October 23, the inaugural issue of Nanfang Daily was launched with the warmth of a printing press.
The busy days continued until 1957, when an even more challenging task was handed over to Yang Qi: the Guangdong Provincial Party Committee decided to create the Yangcheng Evening News, and Tao Zhu, the first secretary at the time, clearly instructed that "it should be done differently from the Southern Daily." This is also the first large-scale evening newspaper created after the founding of New China.
This time, Yang Qi, Wu Weizi and Liu Yisheng, the former "old partners" of Huashang Bao and later the backbone of Nanfang Daily, took up the burden of preparation. They conducted in-depth investigations and combined some experience in running newspapers in the Hong Kong market environment, laid down the principle of "Yangcheng Evening News" as "the main attack on the news, the main defender of the supplement" and "the common appreciation of elegant customs", and bravely practiced for the new Chinese newspaper to inherit the fine tradition of "attaching importance to readers" and breaking through the shackles of the Soviet "Pravda" model.
After six trial editions, the inaugural issue of Yangcheng Evening News was finally born on October 1, 1957, and the number of copies circulated on the first day exceeded 80,000 copies, and has been steadily rising ever since. Its style was obviously different from that of other organ newspapers at that time: on the daily page, there were as many as one or twenty local news of "fast, short, fine, and many", exuding a fresh breath of life; "Under the Five Floors" became a red and black list of citizens praising and devaluing social affairs. The two daily supplements of "Huadi" and "Evening Party" are also unique to national newspapers, Feng Zikai made a masthead design for "Evening Party", and the title inscriptions of "Flower Land" and "Evening Party" were mao dun and Shen Yinmo's handwriting, respectively, and this garden attracted famous writers from all over the country.
Shape the unique style of the sheep night
When Yangcheng Evening News was founded, Yang Qi served as deputy editor-in-chief, and became editor-in-chief the following year. From The time of Si Shi to the nine years before the Cultural Revolution, he presided over the work of the newspaper, taking into account the leadership of the editorial board and the managerial department. Yang Qi distilled the practice of his newspaper colleagues during this period into a theory, and published it in the fourth issue of "News Front" magazine in February 1960 under the title of "Changing Customs and Guiding Life--Talking on the Style of Yangcheng Evening News". The article firmly conveys the courageous practice and summary of the Yangcheng Evening News: "To run an evening newspaper well, we must create our own unique style; the more distinct and prominent the style, the more it will make readers like it, and thus the more conducive it is to the realization of the common principles of the party newspaper." ”
By 1965, the Yangcheng Evening News could be seen in all provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions across the country (except Taiwan Province), and the daily circulation of newspapers was nearly half a million copies, reaching the peak before the "Cultural Revolution". The newspaper became a favorite reading for the general public from the party and state leaders down to all strata.
Yang Qi is a newspaper person who came from the bottom of society and attaches great importance to serving the people all his life. During his tenure at Nanfang Daily, he presided over the change of the "Social Service Group" to the "Mass Letter Group" and directly listened to the voices of readers. As vice president and special correspondent of People's Daily, he personally wrote an article criticizing the failure of the construction of an organic fertilizer factory in Guangzhou from 1950 to 1951, which led to huge losses to state property, and the vice mayor with leadership responsibility made a profound written review in the Southern Daily. During his presidency of the "Yangcheng Evening News," Yang Qi conducted a series of explorations on the "people's nature" of newspapers, and clearly advocated that news should change the "organ style," that the use of materials should touch the "itch" of the masses, and that reporters should earnestly "go to the factory and go to the countryside." A series of reports starting from the reader's personal "buying leather shoes", "vegetable supply", and even re-evaluating the "Eight Views of the New Yangcheng" have established the spiritual background of "people-oriented" for the "Yangcheng Evening News".
In that era when the "Left" trend of thought was spreading, Yang Qi insisted that "the Yangcheng Evening News is both the mouthpiece of the party and the government and the mouthpiece of the people" and pursued the unity of party spirit and people's nature, which not only boldly expanded the development space of the socialist newspaper industry in a peaceful environment, but also penetrated the fine tradition of the communists running newspapers in the period of democratic revolution and the capitalist social environment, loyal to their own revolutionary ideals, returning to the people, and supervising power.
Carry a pen from rong guerrilla newspaper
Born in Zhongshan, Guangdong Province, in early 1923, Yang Qi came to a poor family, went to Hong Kong to earn a living as a teenager, starting from a clerk and proofreader, and completed his studies at the "China Journalism Institute" in 1940. In 1941, he secretly joined the Communist Party of China, and in the same year he was arrested by the British government in Hong Kong and had to be transferred to the Dongjiang guerrilla zone led by the anti-Japanese guerrillas in Guangdong.
Yang Qi took a pen from Rong and began a journalistic career of more than half a century. He was a newspaperman and a warrior.
At the age of 20, Yang Qi became the president of the "Forward Newspaper", the organ of the Dongjiang Column. It was an unusually turbulent period of newspaper running. The newspaper did not have a fixed address, so Yang Qi had to lead his colleagues around, born into death. When the fighting was at its most intense, they had to temporarily go to sea in a boat, writing and editing on the dinghy, and only returning to the nearby village at night to transcribe wax paper and mimeographs. Yang Qi once used the Taoist Temple in the depths of Luofu Mountain as the editorial office to hold the "100th Exhibition of "Qianjin Bao"; he also experienced being searched by the puppet army on the way to raise funds for running the newspaper, and once moved the site of the company to a large house separated from the wall of the puppet army's Dongguan Houjie station, and sent out the printed newspaper disguised as processed and cut "cigarette paper"...
After Japan's surrender in September 1945, Yang Qi and others were sent to Hong Kong with Rao Zhangfeng, secretary general of the Dongjiang Column, to continue running newspapers. After founding the "Zheng Bao", they completed the re-publication of the "Huashang Bao" in January 1946, and took a clear stand of "uniting the people and fighting the enemy". In particular, after Chongqing's Xinhua Daily was shut down by the Kuomintang reactionaries in February 1947, Huashang Bao became the only newspaper outside the Liberated Areas that could directly disseminate the voice of the CPC Central Committee, and was also a two-way hub for the Communist Party of China to establish a united front and for progressives to contact the Liberated Areas.
Beginning in August 1947, Yang Qi successively served as general manager and acting editor-in-chief of Huashang Bao, painstakingly resolving the huge economic and distribution difficulties encountered by the newspaper due to the encirclement of reactionary forces. On the one hand, he cooperated with the "rescue campaign" initiative issued by Fang Fang, then secretary of the Hong Kong Branch of the CPC Central Committee, and accepted donations from progressive people from all walks of life and readers, but also continued to expand the distribution work in various parts of Guangdong, and used a series of "tricks". For example, he asked the railway workers to take the "Huashang Bao", published on the same day, on the Kowloon train to Guangzhou, and when passing through the agreed place, they wrapped the newspaper and threw it out of the car, so that the underground party members waiting there could quickly pick it up and distribute it to all parts of Guangzhou.
It was also in Hong Kong that Yang Qi began to earnestly assume responsibility for the Chinese Communist Party in building a democratic united front. In addition to busy running newspapers, under the command of the "five-member group" composed of Pan Hannian, Xia Yan, and Lian Lian, he personally threw himself into the major operation of escorting famous democrats north to participate in the "New CPPCC" in batches, thus "secretly promoting" the founding of the People's Republic of China. Especially in December 1948, when He covered mr. Li Jishen's departure by boat, Yang Qi disguised himself and "picked up" this "important guest" from the banquet monitored by the British agents in Hong Kong.
Cultural and educational achievements are a good story
Mr. Yang Qi received a full-time education, and he did not even graduate from primary school, but throughout his life, he had an extremely enthusiastic love for the cause of culture and education and the promotion of traditional Chinese culture.
After the mid-1970s, Guangdong was able to successfully lead the revision and publication of "Ciyuan" in the whole country, and was able to take the lead in throwing "creative olive branches" to Liu Haisu, Li Kuchan, Guan Liang, Qian Junzao and other "newly liberated" art masters... All of them reflect yang Qi's courage in serving as president of the Guangdong People's Publishing House and director of the Guangdong Publishing Industry Administration after his return to work. Mr. Liu Haisu once said: "The first invitation I received after the Cultural Revolution was sent by Yang Qi from Guangdong..."
In late December 1976, Yang Qi received a telegram from Beijing from Yu Guangyuan, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a well-known economist, saying that he had presided over the writing of a new book criticizing the fallacy of the "Gang of Four" criticism of the "theory of only productive forces." Yang Qiluo thought about it for a moment, not only should he accept the book, but also promised that he would "concurrently be a responsible editor, omit several editing and review links, and ensure that it would be printed in a month." Under The Careful Deployment of Yang Qi, the new book, finally titled "Criticism of the Gang of Four" and "TheOry of Only Productive Forces"," came out at a record publishing rate of 28 days. When the first batch of books arrived in Beijing, it coincided with the work conference of the secretaries of the provincial party committees and municipal party committees held by the CPC Central Committee, which immediately attracted everyone's attention and was considered to be the first theoretical work to criticize the "Gang of Four" from the economic aspect, which opened the prelude to the rectification of a series of ideological and theoretical problems that followed.
From 1983 to 1987, an unprecedented exhibition of Chinese paintings, "Zhao Shaoang, Li Xiongcai, Guan Shanyue, Yang Shanshen Collaborative Painting Exhibition", was held in Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Beijing and other places, as well as Singapore, the United States and other countries. The four outstanding figures of the Lingnan School of Painting, who lived in Guangdong and Hong Kong, were difficult to meet in leisure, but each of the works on display was painted by four people successively, and the pearls were combined, which was called a good story at home and abroad, and also created an artistic treasure for Chinese culture.
Zhao Shaoang and Yang Shanshen lived in Hong Kong and did not return to the mainland for a long time; Li Xiongcai and Guan Shanyue lived in Guangzhou and rarely had the opportunity to go to Hong Kong... How can we work together on such a large scale? It turns out that behind these 130 collaborative paintings, Yang Qi is an important promoter. In 1980, working in Hong Kong for the third time, he proposed this "groundbreaking" cooperation initiative to these old friends in the field of calligraphy and painting. After the agreement, in the next three years, Zhao, Li, Guan, and Yang cooperated unremittingly, no matter who wrote first and who painted later, each work could reflect a perfect and unified artistic conception; while Yang Qi took advantage of the opportunity of returning from Hong Kong to attend the meeting of the Standing Committee of the Guangdong Provincial People's Congress every two months, and conscientiously acted as an "art postman" and promised thousands of dollars.
Until 1982, the four of them' 130 collaborative paintings were finally completed, showing the artistic style of the Lingnan School and the innocent and informal friendship between the masters; others praised Yang Qi for his "first achievement", and he laughed humbly and said: "The cooperation of 130 paintings can be said to be a 'great project', and I transmitted from the side, it is 'a small thing'." ”
Selfless and tolerant to make friends
Yang Qi's life and the "Pearl of the Orient" have formed an indissoluble relationship. In July 1978, when he went to Hong Kong for the third time, he returned to the Hong Kong branch of Xinhua News Agency, which he had participated in the establishment of more than 30 years ago. Over the next 14 years, he served as deputy secretary-general, minister of propaganda and secretary general in this representative office of the CPC Central Committee in Hong Kong, and later as the director of Hong Kong's Ta Kung Pao, witnessing many historical moments before Hong Kong's return to the motherland.
Yang Qi gets along well with people in the Hong Kong media circles, although his views are different, people respect him as a frank, selfless and tolerant person, and people of different ages have different nicknames for him: Yang Gong, Uncle Qi, Uncle Yang... Whenever Beijing made a major policy decision, Yang Qi separately met with friends in the press and publishing circles to drink tea and "blow the wind" and enlist the assistance of the Youbao newspaper in public opinion propaganda, so that Beijing's voice could not only be heard by leftists, but also spread to the bourgeoisie, the middle class, Taiwan politicians, and even religious figures.
The most "classic" one was in July 1982, when Liao Chengzhi, then vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, wrote an open letter to Chiang Ching-kuo, the leader of the Taiwan authorities, starting from the friendship of his youth and the feelings of home and country, urging the two parties to cooperate again. Yang Qi was instructed to try to publish the letter in newspapers that could enter Taiwan. At that time, Sing Tao Daily and Overseas Chinese Daily were two of the four Hong Kong newspapers that could enter Taiwan. At afternoon tea at the Lee Garden Hotel, Yang Qisui urged two old friends, Zhou Ding, editor-in-chief of Sing Tao Daily, and Li Zhiwen, chief writer of Overseas Chinese Daily, to try, and they should all be accepted.
The next morning, when both newspapers went out on the street, they all published Liao Gong's letter. "Overseas Chinese Daily" was placed in the upper left corner of the third page; "Sing Tao Ribao" was placed on the front page and handled very skillfully, combining the conversation of Sun Yunxuan, the "chief executive" of the Kuomintang government in Taiwan, with Liao Chengzhi's letter to Chiang Ching-kuo, and the headline was "The KMT and the CPC Yesterday Promoted Reunification and the Two Sides Still Have Their Own Aspirations." By the time Taiwan's "intelligence department" found out that afternoon, most of the newspapers sent to the island on the same day could not be recovered. The people of Baodao heard this spring thunder of the Chinese Communist Party's Taiwan policy, and the decades-long isolation between the two sides of the taiwan strait has since been broken step by step.
The interaction between Yang Qi and Zha Liangyong (Jin Yong), a famous cultural figure in Hong Kong and the founder of Ming Pao, is also quite interesting. In the 1950s, when Yang Qi founded the Yangcheng Evening News, he was inspired by Zha Liangyong's serialization of "Books and Swords and Enmity" in the newspaper to add a serial column of the newspaper; and after Zha Liangyong founded the Ming Pao in 1959, he looked at the newspapers published in the mainland every day and also noticed the unique appearance of the "Yangcheng Evening News". But the two frankly and deeply befriended each other after Yang Qi returned to Hong Kong to work again in 1978, and they often visited each other to exchange views on running a newspaper, the current situation, and the great cause of patriotic reunification.
In his dealings with Yang Qi, Zha Liangyong gradually realized that the divine land had eliminated the poison of the ultra-left line, changing the situation formed since the "Cultural Revolution" in opposition to the leftist newspapers. In particular, in 1981, Yang Qi, on behalf of the Xinhua Branch, formally invited Zha Liangyong and his family to visit the mainland and meet with state leader Deng Xiaoping in Beijing. After that, Zha Liangyong was more and more attached to the great righteousness of the family and the country, and further sought common ground while reserving differences with the CCP in running newspapers and social affairs.
On October 16, 1981, when Mr. Cha wrote to the editorial office of the overseas edition of Yangcheng Evening News that he was willing to serialize his martial arts novel "Blue Blood Sword", he specifically wrote: "Mr. Yang Qi, the former editor-in-chief of your newspaper, is my close friend..."
Willing to be plain and unassuming
From September 14, 1940, when Yang Qi's debut novel, a news feature about the death of a guerrilla, was published in Hong Kong's Sing Tao Daily, he never put down his pen until he was more than ninety years old. In the later stages of his work in Hong Kong, Yang Qi edited the 800,000-word academic monograph "Introduction to Hong Kong", a set of large books that "grind a sword in five years", which is considered to be the foundation of Hong Kong studies, and has been republished six times by Hong Kong Sanlian Bookstore, setting a record for the highest number of books sold in the same category.
In the 21st century, although Yang Qi has long since left his retirement and returned to Yangcheng, the academic works "Hong Kong Intellectual Class: A New Class with Unlimited Prospects", the self-selected collections "Guangdong-Hong Kong Feihong Stepping on the Snow Mud -- Selected Articles of Yang Qi's Newspapers and Periodicals", "AccidentalLy Left Fingers and Claws on the Mud -- Selected Works of Yang Qi's Newspapers and Periodicals", and his books such as "Earth-shattering Feats -- The Tiger's Den Rescues Cultural Elites and Secretly Escorts Democratic Celebrities" written on the basis of what he has seen and heard have been published one after another, all of which show the high sense of historical responsibility and amazing creativity of this cultural old man.
Whenever an important commemorative node or deceased friend is gone, Mr. Yang Qi will also carefully write articles or give interviews, and present key memoirs. He wrote a letter to the crew of the movie "The Great Undertaking of the Founding of the People's Republic of China", and he errata to the list of democrats who participated in the convening of the new CPPCC from Hong Kong; when he was 92 years old, he personally served as the director of the editorial board of the "Dongjiang Column Illustrated Anthology", carefully reviewed the pictures and texts of the Eight Yiqi manuscripts, and put forward new academic suggestions; about Yu Guangyuan, Zha Liangyong, Zeng Yanxiu, Li Chao and other old friends, he had "large articles" in the newspaper, providing researchers with precious historical materials... It is Qi Gong's consistent style to mention the origin of the incident and the generosity of others without making a single word of falsehood to himself.
Many people suggested that this "treasure old man" publish an autobiography, and Mr. Yang Qi always insisted on saying that he grew up by the Pearl River and knew that his personal was as small as gravel... But society has not forgotten this lifelong diligent and courageous elder. In June 2005, Yang Qi was awarded a commemorative medal at the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression in Hong Kong; in 2007, at the commendation meeting for the 60th anniversary of the establishment of the Central Liaison Office in Hong Kong, he was awarded the "Special Honor Commemorative Medal"; in the same year, he was selected as one of the "Fifty Contemporary Lingnan Cultural Celebrities" jointly sponsored by Yangcheng Evening News, guangdong Provincial Federation of Literature and Literature and the Provincial Writers Association, and voted by readers and scholars; in April 2012, Guangdong Province awarded the first Journalism Lifetime Honorary Award. Mr. Yang Qi was the oldest of the winners. In addition, he is the recipient of the commemorative medal "Celebrating the 70th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic of China" and the commemorative medal of "50 Years of Glory in the Party".
In Mr. Yang Qi, the legendary life and the style of being unassuming and willing to be plain are reflected in each other, and the courage and steadfastness of the Communist Party members and the keen responsibility of the newspaper people are mutually impressive. His achievements and experience can become a vivid chapter in the history of journalism in Guangdong and Hong Kong and even the history of the revolution in South China, and spread to future generations.
Edit: Zhenglong
Source: Golden Sheep Network