Wang Simen: "Go back to your hometown cleanly"

Written by Yuan Guoxiang

"Why do you have such a strange name?" he replied, "because a good classmate with the surname Men died suddenly, so I changed my name to Wang Simen."

Wang Simen is my old comrade-in-arms who has been with me for many years in the Political Department of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region, and later he served as secretary section chief, cadre division chief, director of the Political Department of the Kashgar Military Sub-district, and full-time deputy secretary of the Discipline Inspection Commission of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region. After he left his post to recuperate, I happened to be down from the Ali Army Division to take his place.

The year before last, I went to the No. 3 Cadre Rest House of the Xinjiang Military Region in Xi'an to visit him, but I didn't expect to see him for a few years, his hair was all white, and his gait was faltering, and he was old. In fact, he was only two or three years older than me, so why did he look so old? My comrades-in-arms said, "That's because he's so serious about everything." ”

Yes, he has always been characterized by being extremely responsible for his work and enthusiastic about his comrades. Even when it comes to playing, he is also very serious. I remember that when we were both officers, we used to play chess together, and at first he couldn't play me, but he studied how to break my offensive such as "driving the horse and entering the rook" and "cannon". After that, he gradually gained the upper hand, because to play chess you have to use your brain, and if you don't use your brain, you have to lose, and he is just a person who is not afraid of spending his brain, so he often wins. Sometimes when he walked in the streets, he would see someone playing chess, and then he would crouch down, first as a staff officer, then instead, and then come back until midnight. It is no wonder that at the sports meeting for veteran cadres held by the Xinjiang Military Region, he won the championship in a chess competition held in Jinan by eight cadres in the mainland.

Wang Simon has always been conscientious and conscientious in his work, striving for perfection. He enlisted in the army from Shaanxi Wugong Agricultural College in the summer of 1949, when the Liberation War was at its most intense. Later, he served as a squad leader in the Second Army Teaching Corps, and led a large number of student soldiers from Gansu to Xinjiang. He once said: "The biggest fear at that time was that some people deserted during the arduous march. Therefore, he continued to do a good job in the ideological work of his class, and tried his best to help the frail comrades carry guns and backpacks, and always sleep in the outermost tent every night. If someone wants to go out to relieve himself, he will also accompany him. In this way, he successfully completed the glorious task of walking more than 3,000 miles to Kashgar, the westernmost city of the motherland.

As soon as I arrived at the barracks, I put down my backpack, and before I had time to rest, I went to Dacao Lake to open up wasteland for production. He and his comrades-in-arms endured arduous labor and tempered themselves and grew into strong revolutionary fighters one by one. Later, after a period of military and political training, they were assigned to work in various units and local governments. Most of them have become the backbone force for defending the motherland and building the frontiers. Wang Simen was transferred to the Political Department of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region as an officer, and later as section chief and division chief, and we worked together for about 25 years. I remember that he lived a very simple life, always wearing cloth shoes and being unkempt. Smoking was his greatest luxury, but he bought "patriotic bonds" and supported the local "construction of Bayi Tractor Station" every time. Another time, he learned that an old classmate was living in poverty, and immediately sent 100 yuan to let him tide over the difficulties. That was a lot of money in the fifties. For this reason, I also wrote a small article praising him in the "Xinjiang People's Liberation Army" newspaper.

In the mid-fifties, the army set off an upsurge of the "great march towards culture," in which the soldiers had to take off their illiterate hats and the cadres had to improve their culture. Accelerated primary schools and middle schools have been set up, and the organs of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region have set up "cultural schools for in-service cadres." Wang Simen was hired as an algebra teacher, I taught geometry, and Zhang Yongsheng taught trigonometry. We are all serious about going to class and correcting homework, and if the students are absent from class, even if it is the chief, we have to make up the class in the evening. However, Wang Simen taught better, shallow and deep, patient and meticulous, and was well received by the students, and the results were also remarkable. On the basis of the culture they learned in those years, many comrades were later admitted to military academies and health schools, and some even went to university. Zhang Mingru, a "model student," was selected to Beijing to attend the "Conference of Representatives of Cultural Study Activists" of the whole army, and later became deputy political commissar of the Xinjiang Military Region. Wang Simen, a "model teacher" unanimously elected by everyone, participated in the national "Congress of Activists for Socialist Construction." It's funny to say that they personally don't care about such high political honors. Time has passed, and everyone has forgotten. The year before last, when I met Comrade Wang Simen in Xi'an, he took out a reply letter from the Federation of Trade Unions to him for me to see. It turned out that when he saw from the newspaper that the state cared for the former model workers and looked for them to give them preferential treatment, he wrote to the Federation of Trade Unions to ask if the meeting he attended counted. As soon as the General Office of the Federation of Trade Unions checked the file, it immediately replied to affirm that he was a national model worker. He said: "I don't need to enjoy any more preferential treatment, but please bring this letter to the Southern Xinjiang Military Region and let the organization know that there is such a thing." I said, "I can prove that you are our elected representative and have attended the meeting in Beijing." In this way, Wang Simen's "national model worker" was included in the historical archives of the Southern Xinjiang Military Region.

As for Wang Simen's work when he later served as secretary section chief and cadre section chief, our comrades in the Political Department admired him very much. For example, during the three-year disaster, when we were also engaged in production, he put two large buckets in the toilet and put the next two buckets of urine into the vegetable field every morning to make fertilizer, and the pumpkin grew big and good. When it comes to wheat cutting, he takes the lead in organizing competitions, and his results often exceed those of the logistics department. In military training, he was strict with the requirements, supervised the inspection, and as a result, the pistol shooting results of the Political Department were better than those of the command. Although there are few people in the political department, he has won the first place in the whole military region in the basketball competition, and he has even pulled out the guard company in the tug-of-war, and he is often among the best in singing competitions.

Wang Simen's conscientious study, his high political level, and his original cultural qualities have made him a recognized "pen stick" in the southern Xinjiang Military Region. Whenever there was a meeting, he, the secretary and section chief, would shut up in the office, consult materials, smoke and pace, and think about it repeatedly. Once the draft is ready, it is done in one go, and the next day the draft document comes out. As the head of the cadre department, he has to go down every year to evaluate the cadres and appoint and dismiss them impartially and impartially, because "giving gifts, entertaining guests, and building relationships" has nothing to do with him. It is no wonder that he later became the director of the political department of the military sub-district, and the head of the Urumqi Military Region once asked him for advice and was ready to let him become the head of the cadre department. But to everyone's surprise, he politely declined, ostensibly because he was old and had a low level, and he couldn't take it, but in fact, he was disgusted with the unhealthy qi that had quietly sprung up, and he was unwilling to get involved in that complicated interpersonal relationship. In his words, it is necessary to "do a good job as a member of the party's discipline inspection committee and go back to his hometown cleanly." ”