Hou Xianglin: "I accepted Marxism with joy and sincerity, and my lifelong faith has never wavered"

【The Red Love affair of 100 academicians】

"I have walked through almost the entire course of the 20th century with my motherland, and as a Chinese, I am proud of the achievements of my motherland today; as a Communist Party member with more than 60 years of party experience, I have no regrets about my political beliefs for life; as a scientist in New China, I have never doubted the power of science, and I am pleased with the scientific work I have been engaged in all my life."

——Hou Xianglin

Guangming Daily, September 7, 2005

Hou Xianglin character sketch Guo Hongsong painted

Born in Xinhai, enlightened "May Fourth", studied in war... The young Hou Xianglin's eyes were full of gray. In the rolling torrent of anti-Japanese salvation, Hou Xianglin is always thinking, where is China's way out? When Capital and Popular Philosophy entered the field of vision, he seemed to have found the "pilot lamp", "At that time, I accepted Marxism with satisfaction and sincerity, and I believed in it all my life, and I never wavered." Hou Xianglin said.

A classmate talked about the Red Army and revolutionary base areas led by the Communist Party of China, which made Hou Xianglin excited, and the news in foreign magazines about the Red Army going north to resist Japan made him sincerely admire the Communists.

In April 1938, Hou Xianglin made "the most important decision of his life" and secretly joined the Communist Party of China. In order to facilitate his work, the organization twice arranged for him to join the Kuomintang to do underground work, and Hou Xianglin gladly agreed.

When the war is chaotic, the Chinese army is desperately short of gasoline. Hou Xianglin resolutely threw himself into the queue of oil product development. With no oil to refine, he refined diesel oil from rapeseed oil and distilled man-made oil from coal; when there was not enough fuel, he designed a distillation tower to extract alcohol from liquor...

On the eve of the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in accordance with the arrangements of the central authorities, Hou Xianglin went to the United States as a technical cadre for further study to prepare for the construction of a new China.

On October 1, 1950, teachers and students of Tsinghua University went to Tiananmen Square to participate in the celebration parade. In the "ocean" of the boys' white shirts, a bright red shirt is particularly eye-catching. This is Hou Xianglin, and the red shirt indicates Hou Xianglin's undertone. At this time, he had just given up his superior working conditions and returned from the United States to his homeland after a 6-year absence to become a professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering of Tsinghua University.

At the beginning of liberation, everything was in ruins. The most urgent thing to solve is the localization of aviation kerosene. "We can't get aviation kerosene, and we have to keep our heads down when we cross Tiananmen!" Yu Qiuli, then minister of petroleum, frowned all day long.

Military orders are like mountains. Racking machines, measuring data, and making comparisons, Hou Xianglin personally led the scientific and technological elites of 6 research rooms to work hard day and night. Trial, failure, trial and error... Countless setbacks, failures, countless analyses, summaries.

"I don't believe that China's own 'gas fighting oil' can't be done!" Hou Xianglin did not care about the dangers of poisoning, explosion, etc., and the team overcame difficulties one by one, and broke through one technical difficulty after another: all the high-precision special lubricants were successfully trial-produced, which met the special needs of the development of China's aviation, aerospace and nuclear industries in one fell swoop, and the time was only one year.

Since then, As one of the completers of the oil project, Hou Xianglin participated in the formulation of the "National Science and Technology Development Plan from 1956 to 1967", which was the foundation project of the new Chinese science and technology undertaking. Entrusted by the China Association for Science and Technology, Hou Xianglin, in the name of the chairman of the China Petroleum Society, presided over the demonstration of more than 100 people and wrote "Several Suggestions on the Rational Utilization of 100 Million Tons of Crude Oil" and submitted it to the State Council. The research of Hou Xianglin and his team has greatly improved the technical level of China's oil refining industry and realized the foothold of oil products in China.

When he was recuperating, Hou Xianglin still went to work and did research normally. "As a Communist Party member, you always have to do something!" Hou Xianglin often said, "The real joy of scientists lies in innovation and dedication." ”

(Guangming Daily reporter Chen Peng)

Guangming Daily ( 2021-06-21 01 edition)

Source: Guangming Network - Guangming Daily