"Southern" magazine all-media reporter丨Xu Junqian
Intern丨Wu Hanhan
In an alley on Yuehua Road, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong, there is a Cantonese old ancestral hall with strong Lingnan characteristics, which is the Yang Clan Ancestral Hall called "Siru Study". This newly decorated century-old ancestral hall was the main residence of Yang Kuang'an, the "first person to spread Marxism in South China", in Guangzhou from 1918 to 1927, and was an important activity base of the Communist Party of China in Guangzhou during the Great Revolution.
Yang Kuang'an's former residence. (Photo courtesy of the Propaganda Department of the Yuexiu District Committee of the Communist Party of China in Guangzhou)
More than 1,100 kilometers away, Fenshuitang Village, located in the northwest of Yiwu City, Zhejiang Province, is the hometown of Chen Wangdao, the translator of the first full Chinese translation of the Communist Manifesto. In 2012, when visiting the exhibition "Road to Rejuvenation", General Secretary Xi Jinping vividly told the story of Chen Wangdao, who was concentrating on translation in a firewood house, and actually mistook the ink for brown sugar and ate it without realizing it, thus saying that "the taste of truth is very sweet".
Chen Wangdao's former residence. (Source: Wangdao Hometown Reservoir)
The faith born of truth is firm, and the bright light of South China will not be extinguished.
A promising nation cannot be without heroes, and a promising country cannot be without pioneers. Spanning 100 years, this issue of "Red Famous City Cloud Hand in Hand", the "Red Culture Communication Studio" jointly built by Nanfang Magazine, the Propaganda Department of the Guangzhou Yuexiu District Committee of the Communist Party of China, and the Rong Media Center of Yuexiu District, Guangzhou City, through the "red connection" of Chen Wangdao's former residence and Yang Kuang'an's former residence, will take you to relive that period of magnificent and fierce history.
Sowing the flame of revolution
Starting from the urban area of Yiwu, drive more than 30 kilometers in the northwest direction, and you will arrive at the small mountain village where Chen Wangdao's former residence is located - Fenshuitang Village.
After passing through the small stone paved path, you will come to the door of a courtyard with pink walls and tiles, which is the famous former residence of Chen Wangdao.
The former residence was built in the first year of Xuantong in the Qing Dynasty (1909), the whole is composed of a three-in-one courtyard and the front garden, firewood house, etc., the building is basically preserved completely, the wood carving process is fine, it is a typical folk house in Zhejiang. It was here that Chen Wangdao spent his teenage years, and from here he became the organizer and promoter of the New Culture Movement during the May Fourth Movement, and the pioneer of the early dissemination of Marxism.
Wangdao is actually not Chen Wangdao's real name. His original name was Chen Shenyi, and after the outbreak of the May Fourth Movement, he studied in Japan and couldn't wait to return to his motherland. When he was teaching at Zhejiang No. 1 Normal School, he took the initiative to change his name to "Wangdao", that is, to explore, look forward to, and find new morals, laws, and revolutionary paths. "New Youth", "Enlightenment", "Labor Circle", ...... These periodicals have become important fronts for him to propagate Marxism.
The October Revolution brought Marxism-Leninism to China with the sound of a cannon. Chen Duxiu, Li Dazhao and others actively disseminated Marxism and advocated the use of Marxism to transform Chinese society. However, the Communist Manifesto lacked a full translation, and it became a matter that many advanced intellectuals at that time were eager to solve. In the end, the burden of translation fell on the shoulders of 29-year-old Chen Wangdao.
Chen Wangdao studied in Japan in his early years and is proficient in Japanese and English. He is also very literate in Chinese language, proficient in language and rhetoric, and at the same time has Marxist knowledge. It is reported that at that time, there were no more than a few dozen people in the country who met these conditions.
In the early spring of 1920, Chen Wangdao returned to his old house in Fenshuitang Village. In the simple wood house, there is only a kerosene lamp, a plank, and two benches.
The "Communist Manifesto" is only 20,000 words, but Chen Wangdao has spent five times more effort than the usual translation, and he uses the Japanese version of "The Communist Manifesto" as the translation base, and corrects it with reference to the English version, and from time to time refers to the "Japanese-Chinese Dictionary" and "English-Chinese Dictionary", and translates it carefully and sentenced. The first sentence of the opening sentence of the manifesto alone, "There is a monster wandering in Europe", I pondered for three days and three nights.
Chen Wangdao's former residence is located in Fenshuitang Village, Chengxi Street, Yiwu City. (Source: Zhejiang Jinhua Municipal People's Government)
As a result of working day and night, Chen Wangdao lost a lot of weight, and his mother saw it in her eyes and felt pain in her heart. One day, his mother specially wrapped zongzi with brown sugar abundant in Yiwu to replenish his body. After a while, my mother came in to clean up the dishes, but saw Chen Wangdao's mouth full of ink. It turned out that he was so engrossed in considering the words that he actually ate the ink in the inkstone as a brown sugar dip in zongzi.
Chen Wangdao finally completed the translation of the full text of the book "The Communist Manifesto" in late April 1920. Subsequently, the "Communist Manifesto" was published and distributed, causing a sensation throughout the country.
The translation and publication of the Communist Manifesto promoted the process of the founding of the Communist Party of China. In May 1920, the Marxist Research Society was founded, and its main members were Chen Duxiu, Li Hanjun, Li Da, Chen Wangdao and others. Soon after, he initiated the establishment of the Communist Party on the basis of the Marxist Research Society.
Today's Chen Wangdao's former residence also set aside a space to place the statue of him sitting on the desk, and on the rough and simple desk, there are paper, pen and ink, oil lamps, and rice bowls with zongzi and brown sugar, vividly restoring the familiar story of "the taste of truth is very sweet".
Truth accompanies the rebirth and immerses the soul and blood of a nation. The river of time flows endlessly, and the sweet taste lasts forever.
Continue to write the red story
Gray brick walls, nostalgic scenery, bright red party flags...... The Yang Clan Ancestral Hall stands out among the towering shops and residential buildings.
Interior view of Yang Kuang'an's former residence. (Photo: Xu Junqian)
Walking into Yang Kuang'an's former residence, what catches your eye is the bust of the young Yang Kuang'an, and the text on the wall reproduces the extraordinary life of this communist fighter.
In 1896, Yang Kuangan was born into a dilapidated tea merchant family in Beishan Village, Nanping Township, Xiangshan County, Guangdong Province (now part of Zhuhai City). Yang Kuang'an entered the school at the age of 7 and was later admitted to Guangya Academy, which was first founded by Zhang Zhidong, the governor of Liangguang, the leader of the Westernization faction in the late Qing Dynasty, and was the most famous institution in South China. Yang Kuang'an had extensive contact with various social currents of thought, such as Westernists, reformists, revolutionaries, and anarchists.
In the autumn of 1912, 16-year-old Yang Kuangan graduated from Guangya Academy and returned to his hometown to teach in a primary school. After being released from prison, he accompanied overseas Chinese businessmen to Japan by boat and went to Yokohama to study. When he first arrived in Japan, not only could he not pay the tuition fees, but sometimes he couldn't even eat enough, but Yang Kuang'an's enthusiasm for studying hard did not diminish at all. He studied Japanese while working in Japan, and finally mastered the Japanese language proficiently, which laid the foundation for him to return to China and publish a large number of translations.
In 1916, Yang Kuangan returned to China and transferred from his hometown to Macao as a tutor. In 1918, Yang Kuangan went to Guangzhou to serve as the director of Shimin Middle School, and concurrently served as a reporter for "Guangdong Zhonghua News", and lived with his uncle Yang Zhangfu in the Yang Clan Ancestral Hall on Sihou Street. This is the ancestral hall set up by the Yang family in Guangzhou during the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty. At this time, Yang Kuangan already had a child, including a single aunt, a cousin whose parents died, a family of seven, and a difficult life, but Yang Kuangan was poor and happy, and the fellow bureaucrats of the police station asked him to be a secretary. He wrote a poem Mingzhi: "Borrow the frost to strengthen the proud bones, and fight the turbid wine to fight the body." ”
When the October Revolution broke out in Russia in 1917, Yang Kuangan wrote an article about the October Revolution in the "Guangdong Zhonghua Xinbao", which was even earlier than Li Dazhao's "The Victory of the Common People". After that, Li Dazhao took the "New Youth" as the position in Beijing, and Yang Kuangan took the "Guangdong Zhonghua Xinbao" as the position in Guangzhou, respectively systematically introducing Marxist theory. From May 1919 to the end of December of the same year, Yang Kuangan wrote nearly 100,000 words of articles on Marxism and socialism in Guangdong Zhonghua Xinbao.
In particular, from November 11 to December 4, 1919, he published an article entitled "Marxism -- Scientific Socialism" in the "Guangdong Zhonghua Xinbao" 19 times, in which Yang Kuangan praised Marx's "Capital" as the "holy book of socialism" and openly pointed out that "the present social state is also the period when the workers rise up to revolution in order to seek transformation." This article appeared almost at the same time as Li Dazhao's "My View of Marxism", and was the earliest article in South China to systematically introduce Marxism.
In the spring of 1921, the early organization of the Communist Party was formally established in Guangdong. In the spring and summer of that year, Yang Kuangan was introduced by Tan Pingshan to join the Communist Party of China and became one of the early party members in Guangdong. After Yang Kuangan joined the party, his residence became a base of party activities.
At the risk of being killed, he provided the Yang Clan Ancestral Hall's home to the collective as a place for the early organizational activities of the Communist Party of China in Guangzhou, a place for the activities of the Guangdong District Committee of the Communist Party of China, a mailing office for the Shanghai Socialist Youth League to be mailed to the Guangdong Youth League Committee, a place for the provincial-Hong Kong Strike Committee to distribute donations from all walks of life to the striking workers, and a place for the registration of CPC members who took the examination when they were enrolled in the Whampoa Military Academy.
Today's Yang Clan Ancestral Hall still retains the content of Circular No. 62 issued by the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China in 1925. According to the content of the notice, party members who should take the examination at the Whampoa Military Academy should first report to Yang Kuangan at the Yang Clan Ancestral Hall with a letter of introduction, and then Yang Kuangan recommended them to the Whampoa Military Academy.
In July 1931, due to the traitor's informant, Yang Kuangan and others were arrested. The enemy tried to persuade him to surrender, and he said: "From the beginning of my participation in the revolution, I have put life and death on the line. It's okay to die, but it's not okay to apostate. Chiang Kai-shek sent people to write letters and call to persuade him to surrender, but Yang Kuangan tore up the letter, smashed the telephone microphone against the wall, and said resolutely: "It's okay to die, but it's not okay to defect." In August of the same year, he bravely died in Longhua, Shanghai, at the age of 35.
On the eve of his inauguration, he saw that Luo Qiyuan, who was in prison, was shaken, and made up a poem "Showing Victims" and presented it to Luo Qiyuan and his fellow prisoners. The poem reads:
Generously board the car, and the phase is complete.
There is nothing to love in the remnants, and the enemy is present.
Knowing that he was poor and frugal, he laughed at Chu Yuan.
From the breakup, we looked at each other without a sigh of relief.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the poet Xiao San compiled this poem into the famous "Poems of Revolutionary Martyrs". After the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the Party History Research Department unearthed many materials on Yang Kuang'an's early years of propagating Marxism and collected and published them, so that the achievements of this pioneer could be widely publicized.
In addition to retaining the original appearance of the Yang Clan Ancestral Hall, the original appearance of the Yang Clan Ancestral Hall has been restored on the north wall of the ancestral hall through realistic painting and VR virtual means.
Through the joint efforts of many parties, the Yang Clan Ancestral Hall has now been rejuvenated. (Photo: Xu Junqian)
In the attic of the East Wing where Yang Kuang'an once lived, tables and chairs in the Republic of China style, stationery supplies, and an ever-lit oil lamp were placed, restoring the scene of Yang Kuang'an working in the study, implying that although Yang Kuang'an had left, his revolutionary spirit would never be extinguished like a lamp on the desk, conveying the light of hope.
The laneway where the Yang Clan Ancestral Hall is located. (Photo courtesy of the Propaganda Department of the Yuexiu District Committee of the Communist Party of China in Guangzhou)
Today, the former residence of Yang Kuang'an, located on Yuehua Road in the bustling Yuexiu District of Guangzhou, has become an important cultural attraction, lighting up "Guangzhou Red" and "Yuexiu Red" in the ancient alleys of the old city, radiating new vitality.
Here, people pay tribute to their ancestors, feel the power of truth, strengthen their belief in Marxism, and muster up the spirit of forging ahead in the new era.
This article is edited by Lin Ruochuan