On December 9, 1949, when Yan Xishan fled from Chengdu to Taiwan on the last Kuomintang plane, the rumor that he was desperately stuffing gold on the plane despite the overweight of the plane and the safety of his colleagues has been circulating in the news.
In an interview in his later years, Hang Liwu, a scholar, once told the scene of that day -
"On December 9, 2038, I accompanied Executive President Yan Xishan to Retreat to Taiwan on the last plane at Chengdu Xinjin Airport, accompanied by Chen Lifu, political councilor, Zhu Jiahua, vice president of the Executive Yuan, and Jia Jingde, secretary general. I remember that day, when I rushed to the airport to board the plane, I saw Yan Xishan sitting on a box, his body shaking and thinking. Zhu and Chen said to me, 'Our whole life is on the two boxes he sat in.' It turned out that the two boxes were full of gold, weighing too much, posing a threat to the safety of the aircraft. Chen and Zhu thought that my friendship with Yan Baichuan was relatively good, and asked me to persuade Yan not to take the gold with him. I think this is impossible, Yan carried this gold, not for him personally, but for the sake of the people of Shanxi. I then suggested to Chen and Zhu that Yan give up the gold, and I would sign with Chen and Zhu to assure him that after arriving in Taipei, I would ask Mr. Jiang to compensate him for the same amount of gold. Chen and Zhu thought it could not be done. ”
In Hang Liwu's account, Yan Xishan fled to Taiwan with two boxes of gold with him, but Chen Lifu said another in his memoirs.
"I was ordered to accompany President Yan feitai, accompanied by Zhu Jiahua and a few other people, who set off at night to fly through the mainland to Taiwan. Unexpectedly, it flew to the junction of Sichuan and Hubei, encountered a cold current, and the two wings of the plane formed a thick ice, falling down more than 700 feet, unable to fly forward, still back to Chengdu. At that time, the pilot announced the situation, and Yumi saw that the city lights were bright, suspected to be Hankou, and took out a pistol in the suitcase and prepared to kill himself. After listening to the report, I knew that I returned to Chengdu, and a false alarm began to pass. Later, fang learned that the plane was full of dozens of boxes of gold bars, which was part of the luggage carried by President Yan, and the reason for the fall last night was related to the excess weight contained therein. The next day, the pilot told me that it was best not to be overweight to avoid danger. I am the dean of the Shang Zhu Yan, Yan would rather reduce the number of guards, and the gold bars must be brought, fortunately all the way to Taiwan safely. Later, I learned that many people who came out of Shanxi with Yan were all dependent on Yan for help, so the gold bars were indeed very important to Yan, and the lives of solipsists and so on were almost in danger because of this. ”
The two boxes of gold that Hang Liwu said in black and white became ten boxes when Chen Lifu arrived. But Chen Lifu's recollection, in addition to this, actually left a face for Yan Xishan, the specific scene of the day, he only said a few words, point to the end, but that day the same plane Zhu Jiahua and other people were not so subtle.
In the memories of Zhu Jiahua and others, Chen Lifu listened to the pilot's report and consulted with Yan Xishan, hoping that he would bring less things, such as those gold goods, at this time it was an extraordinary moment, and human life was worth more than gold bars.
Yan Xishan listened and said very unhappily: "My property cannot be brought out in Shanxi, and now I have this little savings left, and the family members and servants who follow me, as well as the relatives who have already arrived in Taiwan, and the old subordinates in the past will all live on these things in the future. ”
Chen Lifu, Zhu Jiahua, and others listened to Yan Xishan's "big truth" and said in private disapprovingly that Yan Laoxi was telling lies.
It turned out that Chen Lifu, Zhu Jiahua, and others all knew that as early as April, when the Shanxi Provincial Office in Beijing was moved from Nanjing to No. 4 Jing'an New Village, Nanjing West Road, Shanghai, Yan Xishan asked his brother-in-law Xu Shihuan to smuggle a large amount of gold and silver from Shanghai to No. 34 Huaining Street in Taipei City, and then Xu Shihuan transferred it to Japan on the pretext of doing business.
After learning of this incident, Miao Peicheng, a cc member and a person from Shanxi who went to Taiwan, specially took advantage of Yan Xishan's opportunity to go to Taiwan for funeral on June 8 (Yan's mother Chen Xiuqing came to Taiwan first and died of illness soon after), ran to No. 34 Huaining Street, and asked Yan Xishan to share some of the money with them.
Yan Xishan disagreed, claiming that the money he brought out belonged to the people of Shanxi, and that he would bring it back to Shanxi and return it to the people of Shanxi in the future, and now he could not share it.
Miao Peicheng and others think that Yan Xishan is pure nonsense, and they scold in Taiwan, you are Shanxi people, and we are also Shanxi people. You can bring it back to Shanxi, we can't bring it yet!
In order to get the gold bars in Yan Xishan's hands, Miao Peicheng then led a group of people to distribute leaflets in the streets of Taipei, counting the facts that Yan Xishan had expropriated and extorted in Shanxi, exploited the people, and enriched himself, and threatened that if Yan Xishan did not meet their reasonable demands, they would also publicly expose them in the newspaper.
Miao Peicheng's rebellious behavior caused Yan Xishan and his cronies a headache, and when the two sides quarreled, when there was almost a conflict, Yan Xishan had no choice but to take out dozens of gold bars, and finally calmed down this storm.
Because the inside story of this matter was very clear, seeing Yan Xishan's unashamed lies, Chen Lifu was a little rude. He said to Yan Xishan, you are now the head of government, and The Taiwan side is anxious to wait for us to pass. For the safety of government officials, you have to give up the small and unload some of the supplies on the plane.
Yan Xishan listened and remained silent for half a day.
At this time, Chen Lifu also said that the president urged us to go early and not to delay any longer. If you don't unload some of your things, then reduce the number of entourage, and you will be one of the two. This matter is urgent, and today is leaving, so we must hurry up and settle it.
Yan Xishan was helpless, and finally decided to take Jin Yin and several important cronies with him, and the guards, medical officers, cooks, etc. all stayed behind and took another plane to Taiwan.
In Yan Xishan, here and now, this scene, colleagues accused him of loving money as much as life, and his heart was probably unacceptable. Regardless of the lives of his colleagues and subordinates, he insisted on taking away the gold, and what he thought of was not to continue the glory and wealth of the past, but to continue to operate the stability of his own acre and three-quarters of land after coming to Taiwan.
However, looking at Yan Xishan's last years of life, you will sigh that no amount of gold can drive away the loneliness and loneliness of his secluded Jingshan. Or rather, no amount of gold can make him let go of the dignity and stubbornness in his bones.
Yan Xishan, who holds the title of chief executive and defense minister, arrived in Taiwan, and only a few months later, the scenery he enjoyed was confiscated by Chiang Kai-shek.
Just after New Year's Day in 1950, Chiang Kai-shek summoned Yan Xishan to his office, saying that he was discussing with him the candidates for the reorganization of the Executive Yuan, in fact, informing him who he should replace. Yan Xishan looked at the list handed over by Chiang Kai-shek, and not only did Guanggu Zhenggang, Gu Zhu, and other chiang kai-shek's concubines replace him, but even the post of defense minister whom he himself concurrently held was replaced by Xu Yongchang.
This personnel change caused dissatisfaction among people from all walks of life in the Kuomintang. One day, Yan Xishan had just eaten dinner and was walking in the courtyard when a group of Sichuan legislators came in and angrily asked: Why did Sichuan, such a big province as Sichuan, make such a great contribution to the Eight-Year War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, that no one had entered the cabinet?
Yan Xishan could only smile bitterly and could not say more.
He knew that politics was all he had left to do.
On March 1, 1950, Chiang Kai-shek held a ceremony in Taipei to "resume the work of seeing things" in Taipei. After the ceremony, Yan Xishan, quite knowingly, offered to resign as chief executive. Chiang Kai-shek even omitted false courtesy, and five days later, Chen Cheng replaced him.
At the time of his departure, the subordinates of the Executive Yuan held a small tea party for Yan Xishan. Someone gave him two sentences from Lao Tzu's Tao Te Ching, "Absolute holiness abandons knowledge, and the great thief stops."
At this time, Yan Xishan said this passage meaningfully: "No jewelry and no dispute with jewelry, not without dispute, it is not disputed; there is jewelry without dispute, it is not surprising that there is no jewel in one's heart." Man does not insult you, you do not argue with others, not without controversy, but without controversy; man insults you, and if you do not argue with others, you are not in dispute. ”
Suddenly awakened, no quarrel with the world!
Since then, the 67-year-old Yan Xishan has decided to become a "Tao Yuanming" with Yan characteristics.
After leaving office, for the first time, Yan Xishan received a monthly fund of 50,000 yuan and lived in a small courtyard on Nong'an Street in Taipei. This yard, the courtyard wall is low, the house is old, and it is dilapidated. More than forty Shanxi attendants, secretaries, drivers, and brothers-in-law who came with him were indignant at the old commander.
Witnessing this scene, Yan Xishan only lamented and laughed at himself: "This is not strange! The land lord of the East Mountain, when he reaches the West Mountain, it will not work. ”
In the days when Nong'an Street was reclusive, Yan Xishan did not have a single relative around him, his mother died of illness, the second wife died of illness, his children and grandchildren were not close to him, they all went to the United States, and the remaining lonely wife also lived elsewhere, but in the bleak evening scene, Yan Xishan did not complain, he locked himself in the house, only blindly writing books and saying.
Half a year later, Old Master Yan thought that Taipei was too noisy and noisy, and within a few days, he simply took his confidential secretary Yuan Futing and forty loyal attendants to Yangmingshan, found a clean place, and completely retreated.
The clean place Yan Xishan was looking for was a small, nearly abandoned farm in Yangmingshan, with only a few Japanese bungalows, no telephones, no electric lights, and no running water.
It is said that in the middle of the night after living on this small farm, a storm blew off the asbestos tiles on the roof. When the attendants saw this, they could only raise their blankets with both hands to shield the old master from the wind and rain.
After the rain passed, the attendants advised him to move back to downtown Taipei.
But Yan Xishan did not have this plan, and he said to his attendants, I will build a few cave dwellings in my hometown in Shanxi.
In this way, the "Seed Energy Cave" was born in the Jingshan Grass.
The strange name "Seed Energy Cave" was personally taken by Yan Xishan, which means that he wants to observe the universe with seed energy, and the realm is not an ordinary mysterious void, which is puzzling.
After Chiang Kai-shek learned of this, he made a special trip to visit Yan Xishan and installed a military telephone for him.
When Chiang Kai-shek was able to take a look, Yan Xishan was still very pleased, because apart from him, only Chen Cheng had come once in a polite manner, and apart from that, no other Kuomintang politician had ever gone up the mountain and seen him.
The world has forgotten this former "King of Shanxi", but he himself has never forgotten the glory of the past. On Yangming Mountain, he still called his subordinates to a meeting every night, and although there was no military and political matter to discuss, he still had many experiences and feelings to talk about. This is his unique way of writing books and speaking, he never writes by himself, only dictates, lets the confidential secretary record and polish, and then accumulates into a book.
In addition to writing books and sayings in this way, Yan Xishan must do one more thing every day: reclaim wasteland, raise chickens, ducks, pigs and cattle, plant oranges, and plant pine trees.
To this end, he often advised the last forty remaining subordinates: "The heart is at peace, the hut is stable, and the sex is fragrant." As long as the mind is at ease, all suffering can be tolerated. ”
However, in the eyes of those forty subordinates, as time went on, the days on Yangming Mountain became more and more bitter day by day, and what was even more fatal was that it was still a hopeless ordeal.
Zhang Riming, Yan Xishan's last attendant and his later tomb keeper, later recalled that the fifty thousand yuan allocated by the Executive Yuan to the old chief on a monthly basis was naturally more than enough if it was used to feed these dozens of people, but he also had to bear the salaries of these dozens of people. The land occupied in Jingshan is also rented by the old governor to the Taipei Municipal Gold Mining Bureau in his private name, and he has to pay a lot of rent every year, repair houses and build houses, and all the expenses of cultivating land are also included.
In order to support the livelihood of these subordinates and their families, the old governor later took out Laodi and let the attendants establish the Taixing Printing Factory and the Xingzhong Department Store. But what factories and businesses will these people who play with guns and knives run? As a result, the family collapsed, and all of them lost everything.
Some people asked: When Yan Xishan flew from Chengdu to Taipei, he loaded more than a dozen heavy wooden boxes on the "Meiling" with gold in them.
Zhang Riming listened and was very dismissive. He said that there are many such statements, and there are also some in Taiwan, saying that Yan Xishan made a will before his death, and after his death, he gave all the gold he kept to the Shanxi people who came to Taiwan, one or two for adults and five dollars for children. It is said that there is a nose and an eye. However, I can guarantee that these are all eighteen pulls. Do you think that he will make us the old subordinates who have followed him from birth to death for many years, and give gold to shanxi compatriots he does not recognize? Why didn't everyone run out later? Heck, I can't even afford to pay my salary!
Zhang Riming said that less than three years after going up Jingshan Mountain, less than ten of the forty people who went up the mountain were left. Even Wang Yanhua, who had crawled out of the pile of dead people in Taiyuan and traveled thousands of miles to return to the old chief's side, finally left him one day. Even the confidential secretary, Yuan Futing, almost left. At that time, he was the only spiritual reliance of the old chief, and I remember that the old man knew that he was leaving, so he called him, and after a long time, the old man covered his knees with his hands, leaned forward, and said slowly in a very old voice, Any of them can go, you - do not leave me. Hearing this, Yuan Futing felt that his nose was sour, and just such a sentence completely dispelled his idea of leaving.
At that time, I thought, wherever the old man has any gold, all he has is vicissitudes and pity. In the ten years in Jingshan, he had not seen a movie or a play in Taipei. He was writing books every day, and the stubborn look of the dying old man wanted to cry when he thought of it.
Yuan Futing also recalled that the old man was once shipwrecked in the sea, what did he not experience in this life? What haven't you seen? But in the twilight years, there is no scenery in the heart, seeing the mountain is not a mountain, seeing the water is not water, only to write a book as the only spiritual sustenance, day after day, into the fire, it becomes eaten and does not know its taste.
When it comes to food without knowing its taste, Yuan Futing said that there is one thing he always remembers, and every time he thinks about it, he feels sad -
One evening, he saw Adjutant Zhang bring his dinner up and put it on the table, and then get up and prepare to leave.
The old man said, you are not busy leaving, I still have something to say to you.
While he was eating, he was talking to me, and when the chopsticks were picked up and stuffed into his mouth, suddenly he said to Zhang Riming in surprise, how do you give me two noodles?
I smiled and told him, President, the noodles are underneath, and you are holding the sprouts on top.
If you think about it, eating without knowing its taste has reached such a point.
On May 20, 1960, Chiang Kai-shek held a commemorative meeting at Zhongshan Hall to celebrate his 12th anniversary as "president." Yan Xishan, who was 78 years old, received an invitation, knowing that there would not be too many opportunities to meet Chiang Kai-shek, so he decided to go down the mountain. However, because of the severe cold and asthma, his legs were weak, he was bedridden, he could not go, and when he was in a hurry, his condition worsened the next day.
Zhang Riming said that when the ambulance of Rong General Hospital drove, the old officer could no longer move, and the former secretary and I each put up one hand and helped him to the bamboo chair where he usually basked in the sun.
After the ambulance came out of the ravine, the old officer's face was already dark, and after less than five minutes of walking forward, the old officer opened his eyes widely, let out a long breath, and passed.
Zhang Riming said that he walked fast and walked suddenly. In fact, this is the best, the end of the big life, the end of the complete ending.
Yan Xishan had a quirk, and from the age of fifty, he would dictate his will every New Year's Day morning. His last dictation will says this—
1, everything should be simple and not luxurious;
2. Collect the tie and do not collect the tie;
3. Flowers and trees for flowers and trees before the spirit;
4. It is better to come out of the funeral early;
5, do not cry loudly;
6. The tombstone inscribes the 100th and 128th paragraphs of his thought diary;
7. For seven days, read his selected "Supplementary Heart" once every morning and evening.
Yan Xishan also made several of his own appendages, instructing his subordinates to stick them in the designated position after his death.
Attached to the spirit is: "Avoidance and avoidance, breaking and breaking, and transformation are three steps of kung fu; exhortation, continuation, and all are first-class merits." Horizontal batch: "Decaying desire".
After Yan Xishan's death, his cemetery was chosen behind the Jingshan Caolu where he lived before his death. During the burial, Yuan Futing, Zhang Riming and several other most loyal subordinates picked two things to bury with the old chief: one was the fountain pen he usually used to remember things, which was very ordinary; the other was a pair of scissors, which he used to cut his beard when he was idle thinking about things.
Regarding Yan Xishan's evaluation, Chiang Kai-shek finally sent a plaque with the words "Qi Huai Qi Xun" (怆淮耆勋).
Li Ao later also commented on Yan Xishan, saying that in modern society, we will never see such a distinctive person as Yan Xishan again, whether he is a good person or a bad person...