Remembering his father Pei Wenzhong
Pei Shen
This article is derived from the reminiscences of Pei Wenzhong's son Pei Shen, and I would like to commemorate and commemorate the glory and pride of the people of Fengnan - Mr. Pei Wenzhong.
Adolescence
Mr. Pei Wenzhong studies fossils
His father was born on January 19, 1904 (the third day of the first month of December in the 29th year of the Qing Dynasty) in Fengnan Xiaoji Xiji, Hebei Province. My grandfather Pei Tingyao was a talent in the late Qing Dynasty, who had been teaching in the countryside and came from a poor family. His father's childhood and youth lived there, and witnessing the villagers in the depths of the water not only cultivated his simple nostalgia, but also cultivated his simple living habits.
In 1916, my father graduated from the Kaiping No. 2 Higher Primary School, and because his family was poor and unable to attend ordinary middle school, he was admitted to the Provincial Third Normal School, which provided food and accommodation. During his time at the teacher training school, during the "May Fourth" student movement, his father enthusiastically devoted himself to the patriotic movement. He also participated in the work of the Student Self-Government Association as a class representative and actively supported the struggle of peking students. In 1921, his father graduated from the Provincial Third Normal School. This summer, at the instigation of xueyou in the same village, my father came to Beijing to apply for peking university, and unfortunately, the first enrollment of peking university has passed. Wait until the second admission, go to the exam, be admitted, enter the Preparatory Department A (Science) of Peking University, and two years later, transfer to the Undergraduate Geology Department to study paleontology. Later, my father said that when I was in the geology department, I mainly thought that I could go back to the Tangshan coal mine to do things in the future.
The family simply could not afford to support his father to go to college. At that time, although there was the help of fellow villager Tan Tingying, in order to maintain his life and studies, he could only work and study half time. During this period, my father took classes and looked for various jobs, such as teaching part-time at the Kongde School near Donghuamen (now Beijing No. 27 Middle School), teaching everything from the first grade to the fourth grade, even music classes; working as a proofreader at the newspaper office at night; and sometimes writing for newspapers for a little fee. In the autumn of 1924, the second Zhifeng War broke out, the two sides fought in the Shanhaiguan area, the father and several fellow villagers did not get the news of their hometown, ran to inquire, the mood was very anxious, the father wrote this feeling into a novel "In the Sound of Horses", published in the "Morning News Supplement". This novel was later well received by Mr. Lu Xun, and in the "Preface to the Second Collection of Novels of the New Chinese Literature Series", Mr. Lu Xun referred to "Rong Ma Sheng" as a kind of "local literature". During this period, my father also wrote an article "Walking Through the Door of W School", expressing his determination to resist the imperialist powers, which was later included in the "Selected Essays on Modern Chinese (Volume 2)" compiled by the Modern Literature Research Office of the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. At that time, my father's life was very difficult, and he often had to go to the pawnshop when he had no money, and my father said that at that time, they changed the harmonic sound of "gentleman frankly" in the Analects to "gentleman often dangdang". My father lived in such an environment for 7 years, learned a lot of scientific knowledge, got good training in scientific research methods, and not only studied the compulsory courses of the Geology Department, but also often listened to the famous liberal arts teachers Qian Xuantong and Lu Xun. Lu Xun lectured on the "Historical Outline of Chinese Novels", and he almost listened to it, which laid a solid literary foundation for him. Hard life has tempered people's will and prompted people to work hard. Everything that my father did later had a very important relationship with my life at Peking University.
In 1927, my father graduated from the Geology Department of Peking University, but he was unemployed after graduation. In order to make ends meet, you must find a job right away. My father wrote letters everywhere, but he had no way to find a job. In my father's own words, it was "After graduation, I wanted to teach without being hired, and I wanted to do things without a way out: I was in exile in Beiping, and I was extremely poor." Later, the career I was interested in could not go through, and I had to return to the field of geology. Helpless, he wrote a letter to Mr. Weng Wenhao, director of the Geological Survey, and Mr. Weng replied, and Huiyun's father went to the Geological Survey to engage in the study of the Cambrian trilobite in Shandong, but it was not a formal job. Later, my father said in the "Zhoukoudian Cave Layer Excavation Record" written in 1934, "The results of the research do not need to be seen by others, and I feel inexplicable", but I still got a 30 yuan bonus. After a harsh winter, Mr. Weng encouraged him to find materials to do again.
Participated in the excavation and research work of Zhoukoudian
In the spring of 1928, my father had to ask Mr. Weng for help again, but due to the shortage of funds in the geological survey institute, he could not arrange to work in the institute. At this time, the excavation work of Zhoukoudian should continue, and Mr. Yang Zhongjian, who was in charge of the excavation work, could not go to the scene due to illness.
So Mr. Weng asked his father to take the place of a newly resigned worker to work in Zhoukoudian as Mr. Yang's assistant, manage chores, and use the opportunity to learn about vertebrates in paleontology from Mr. Yang Zhongjian and Mr. B. Bohlin, a Swede. Since then, my father has participated in the excavation of Zhoukoudian.
My father came to Zhoukoudian in April 1928, and at first he didn't even know "what a vertebrate fossil is", nor could he tell what pig teeth and deer teeth were, and he thought he was a "inferior" worker. In addition to managing the relevant excavation affairs, uneasy about "leisure", Shang Zhun Yang Zhongjian and Mr. B. Bohlin participated in the excavation: in the work, he studied seriously, and could get the help and guidance of the two gentlemen at any time, and also asked the workers for advice, quickly mastered the skill of distinguishing fossils, and repeatedly picked out Chinese ape fossils from the fossil pile. At the same time, in order to improve himself in theory and move forward to a higher level of work, in the case of "making things up" in English, he had to read the English version of Kilt's monograph "Paleontology" Volume 3 (specializing in mammal fossils) in the morning and dusk after work, and read it in one year. Under the guidance of P. Teilhard de Chardin and others, combined with the actual reading of specimens, digestion and absorption, so the father was able to get started in the theory of vertebrate paleozoology, laying a good foundation for future work.
1929 was an important year in my father's scientific career. This year, B. Bohlin participated in the Northwest Science Expedition, and Mr. Yang Zhongjian and P. Teilhard de Chardin went to southern Inner Mongolia, northern Shanxi and western Shaanxi to investigate the Late Cenozoic strata. The excavation of Zhoukoudian was the responsibility of the father. It was in this year that the Zhoukoudian excavations achieved gratifying results, and on December 2, the first skull of the Chinese ape man was discovered, and in 1934, my father described the situation in the "Zhoukoudian Cave Layer Excavation": "If we look down from the top of the mountain, we will see the depth of the ape cave entrance and the steep cliffs, which has somewhat frightened us. In fact, this is our inch by inch removal, soil and stones are we basket by basket out, now it seems that the ape man cave is very deep and large (recently due to rain alluvial and cliff fall, can not go down), when we first opened, only can accommodate people's small holes, and one is still filled with sand, only a thin gap. When the opening of the cave was exposed, we did not know the depth, so I went down with a worker, tied with a rope around my waist, and pulled by many people on the top. I feel that since I am responsible for this excavation, I should take the lead, just as in a war, if an official retreats, it is best to fight in this way, and the battle will be lost. After I went down, I saw that there were so many fossils in the cave that I was very happy. It was the end of November, it was cold and it was time to stop working, but I decided to continue for a few more days. This is exactly the same as the cloud in the ancient poem: 'The mountains and rivers are doubtful and there is no way, and the willows are dark and the flowers are bright and another village'. Unexpectedly, the day after we excavated the ape-man hole, at about 4 p.m. on December 2, we spontaneously saw the ape-man skull. My luck is so good! The ape man's skull was half in loose soil and half in hard soil, and it was late at night, and if I worked harder, I was afraid that I would not be able to dig it out at night. In fact, he had spent tens of millions of days and nights in the mountains, and did not care about one more night; but I was not at ease, and I did not know how many times I had tossed and turned in my mind, so I decided to take it out and pry it out with a crowbar. As a result, one part of the skull was shaken and broken; this result has made me regret it, but this opportunity has made me know the thickness of the skull of the Chinese ape man, and the skull of the current person is relatively thin, and the skull of the ape man is unusually thick. If you say that apes are human, you are really wronged! From this point of view, he really does not look like a person. ”
In 1930, my father received a gold medal from the Chinese Science Society for discovering the first complete skull of a Chinese ape man. With the spirit of perseverance, my father continued the arduous and meticulous excavation work in Zhoukoudian, carrying out the Qingshan Boundary Search (looking for the southern boundary of the Ape Man Cave) and discovering the ruins of the cave at the top of the mountain. In the excavation of the lower cave, my father found at least 7 stone artifacts with clear artificial traces (4 existing ones).
In the summer and autumn of 1931, when excavating the Pigeon Hall, more than 2,000 pieces of quartz pieces and dozens of stone tools made of other rocks were found in the 54 square meters of piles on the second floor of quartz. My father thought it was a product of a Chinese ape man, but some people thought it was natural rubble because its artificial traces were not easily recognizable. At that time, it was not unreasonable to hold different opinions, first, such stone chips had not been found in China before, and there was a difference from what was said in textbooks, and second, due to the poor material of raw materials, the blow marks on them were really difficult to identify compared to the blow marks on the flint. Faced with different understandings, the father himself conducted experiments on quartz, simulated the method of making such quartz pieces, and typed specimens similar to quartz pieces excavated from the quartz II layer of Pigeon Hall. Although the experiments and comparative studies have been conducted, it is still difficult to convince some colleagues. In order to solve the problem of whether there are stone tools in Zhoukoudian, under the suggestion of P. Teilhard de Chardin, Mr. Weng Wenhao invited Professor H. Breuil, a French prehistoricist and authoritative scholar of Paleolithic archaeology at that time, to visit China. In the autumn of 1931, H. Breuil came to China, visited Zhoukoudian, observed the stone products his father had collected from the first site of Zhoukoudian, not only fully affirmed its artificial nature, but also praised his father for combining experiments and research, and insisted on taking his father to France for further study.
Because the stone products were approved by authoritative scholars, his father's paper on the study of stone products at the first site of Zhoukoudian, "Discoveries of Quartz Quartz and Other Rock Stone Tools in the Accumulation of Human Fossils in the Pleistocene Caves under Zhoukoudian", was published in the 2nd issue of the Geological Society Chronicle of this year, and D. Black published the results of the study of ape-man fire in China.
The publication of this paper is of great significance both in the history of Zhoukoudian research and even in the history of Chinese paleolithic research, as well as in the history of his father's academic activities, which means that his father officially entered the ranks of Chinese paleolithic archaeology. It is the first paper Chinese independently engaged in paleolithic archaeology research, ending the previous situation that the research work of this discipline in China was basically done by foreigners, marking a new era in Chinese paleolithic archaeology; more importantly, due to a series of research work by his father, the academic community recognized that Chinese apes were not only ancient humans who could make stone tools, but also knew how to use fire. Because its skull morphology resembles that of a Javanese ape man, the protracted debate over whether a Javan ape man is a man or an ape is resolved, and the existence of an ape man stage in human evolution is established. A new page in the history of paleoanthropology has been opened. Later, when my father recalled his work in Zhoukoudian, he said that when excavating ape fossils in Zhoukoudian, it was courage and responsibility, and making stone tools was to smash the rice bowl.
Due to the qualitative change in the nature of the first site of Zhoukoudian in the period of understanding, that is, the transformation of the site of human paleontological fossils from only 1 to 6 places, except for the 4th site that was not excavated at that time, other sites (sites 3, 13, 15 and the site of the cave people on the top of the mountain) were excavated, and a batch of precious scientific data was obtained, and the cultural sequence of the Paleolithic era from early to late was initially established, making Zhoukoudian a place that researchers yearned for. The Keel Mountain was bought from the coal ash plant owner for 4900 yuan, so that the terrain, landform and site itself near the site could be protected. In order to reduce the labor intensity of the workers, my father also relied on the workers, soil manufacturing, to realize the mechanization of excavation work, so that the efficiency of work increased by more than 30 times. During the zhoukoudian shutdown, he and Mr. Yang Zhongjian and others investigated the Quaternary geology of Xi'an in Luoyang, the Yangshao cultural site and the accumulation in the Cave in Jiangnan, and obtained good results, and also found relics that may belong to the Mesolithic Era. Thus broadening the field of research, touching on the entire prehistoric period, and dabbling in Quaternary geology for the first time (the study of Quaternary stratigraphy of abiotic stratigraphy).
During this time, my father worked diligently, day and night, and published a large number of papers, monographs and popular science chapters. My father was so preoccupied with his work that he couldn't take care of the family at all, and everything in the family was handled by his mother.
In October 1935, his father went to Paris, France to study under HBreuil, and with the belief of "never giving shame to Chinese", he studied diligently and obtained a doctorate from the University of Paris in two years. When he returned to China, he brought back many stone tool specimens, except for some that HBreuil gave away, most of which were bought at his own expense. On the way back to China, in July 1937, he passed through Moscow to participate in the "17th International Geological Congress", and then arrived in Vladivostok by land, originally planning to return to China by boat, but just in time for the "July 7" Lugou Bridge Incident and the August 13 Battle of Shanghai Songhu, the sea route was impossible, and had to return to Moscow, and then transferred to Berlin, Germany, Naples, Italy, and then returned by boat. It was November when I returned to Beijing.
Due to the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, the excavation of Zhoukoudian was interrupted. In particular, before and after the Pearl Harbor incident in 1941, all the Peking ape-man fossils excavated by Zhoukoudian, including the five most precious skull fossils, were unaccounted for in the hands of foreigners in the process of preparing for transfer from The Union Hospital to the United States, causing painful and irreparable losses and becoming a major mystery in the history of science. After the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, my father tried his best to search for it, and after liberation, he searched for various clues many times, and until his old age, he still remembered this matter, but never made any progress. The excavation of Zhoukoudian was not restored and developed until after liberation.
My father had always hoped to find Chinese ape man fossils from his own hands, and in 1966, he excavated the first site of Zhoukoudian, and in order to explore the development of Chinese ape culture, he chose the original Luxus H site at the top as the excavation area. On 4 and 5 May, a occipital bone and two frontal bones were discovered, coincidentally belonging to the same individual as those discovered in 1934. Father finally got his wish. His father had a deep affection for the work of Zhoukoudian, and although he could not personally participate in the excavation work, he was still full of hope for Zhoukoudian. In 1979, when commemorating the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the first skull of the Chinese ape man, a reporter from the Central People's Radio came to his home to interview his father, saying: "Due to the party's emphasis on scientific work and the efforts of all scientific workers, the excavation, collation and research of the data of the Peking ape man have made gratifying achievements. However, there is still a lot of research work waiting for us to do, and the excavation and research work of Zhoukoudian has not ended here, and it is still continuing to excavate. Perhaps in the future, there will be greater gains at the new excavation site, so that the Beijing Ape Site will make greater contributions to the world's anthropological research. ”
Always love your career
After liberation, my father worked in the museum department of the Cultural Affairs Administration of the Ministry of Culture, in addition to completing his own administrative work, in order to meet the needs of archaeological excavations in the vigorous development of infrastructure at that time, from 1952 to 1955, he organized and held 4 training courses for archaeologists, which cultivated many talents for The archaeological cause of our country. In addition, he also participated in the Yanbei Cultural Relics Survey Mission, discovered several Neolithic sites, and presided over the excavation of ziyang sites. In 1953, the Chinese Academy of Sciences established the Paleovertebrate Research Laboratory, and at the end of the year, my father returned to the cause he loved, "like a sense of returning to home." He gave himself the tasks of "promoting China to become the most important center for the study of human fossils in the world" and "cultivating cadres". Since then, my father has continued to participate in field work, participating in the excavation of the ruins of Ding Village in 1954, conducting two surveys of giant apes in Liuzhou, Guangxi Province in 1955 and 1956, and leading students to Zaganoer in 1956. In those years, my father traveled on business and ran the wilderness, always wearing overalls of labor cloth and carrying a large rucksack. I remember that after my father returned from Zajanor, when he got on the train in Manchuria, the Soviet conductor of the international train saw him wearing shabby overalls and did not let him get on the train.
I remember that in the second half of 1961, the organization arranged for my father to go to the Central Socialist Academy to study off-the-job, and then he was ready to go to the Jiusan Society to engage in social activities full-time. Although my father had ideas for such an arrangement, he obeyed. At that time, I was given a bibliography and asked me to buy books for study according to the bibliography. When all kinds of books were basically purchased, news came that the main responsible comrades of the Chinese Academy of Sciences did not agree to let such scientists go full-time to engage in social activities, or should stay in the research institute to engage in scientific research. Shortly thereafter, on September 22, 1961, people's daily headlined on page 4 about an academic controversy in the field of paleoanthropology research, with the subtitle "each holding his own opinion" (the next day he issued a correction to "each expressing his own opinion"). For some time after that, my father always had to continue working at the institute after work, and did not return home until after 8 o'clock in the evening by the last bus no. 44. Later, I learned that I was writing "Chinese Quaternary Mammalology" and academic controversies. Unfortunately, the "Cultural Revolution" broke out soon after, and the whereabouts of this manuscript, which had been basically completed, were unknown.
My father loved his career and said many times: "Those who engage in our business, not going to the field scene, is equivalent to living in vain." "My father has been to many places, and some places are not accessible by train or car, so I walk or ride donkeys and camels. No matter how harsh the conditions, my father could eat and sleep. According to colleagues who have traveled with their father on business, when running in the wilderness, after a day of work, they return to their hometown, eat cross-legged on the kang, and are never picky; lying on the kang can fall asleep and snore; when they go to the wild excavation, there will often be a group of children around to watch the liveliness, the father is never annoyed, and sometimes he laughs with the children. I remember in 1970 when my father went to Hubei To visit the Jianshi area and came back, it was the "Cultural Revolution", my father had just resumed work, and when I came back, I asked my father how it was, and my father said: "It is quite bitter, some young people are about to be overwhelmed, but I am OK, I did not feel how it was." "My father always regarded being able to run wild and engage in excavation as a joy. After smashing the "Gang of Four", my father was refreshed. At the 1978 Science Conference, my father said, "I want to be 75 years old when I am 57 years old." In the following nearly two years, my father was full of energy, and successively went to many places such as Nihewan in Yangyuan, Hebei, Zazinuoer in Inner Mongolia, Lushan in Jiangxi, Datong in Shanxi, and Puding in Guizhou.
old age
Father's health has always been very good, he never paid attention to what kind of health, but in his old age, the disease came to the door: at the end of February 1980, my father suddenly had unbearable pain in his left toe, and after examination, he was diagnosed with a blood clot in his lower limbs, and he was admitted to Fuwai Hospital, and after more than a month of careful treatment by traditional Chinese and Western medicine, he was discharged from the hospital. During my father's hospitalization, it just so happened that Yugoslav President Tito also had a blood clot in his lower limb, but President Tito could only amputate his leg, and my father was very emotional about this, thinking that our Traditional Chinese medicine was really remarkable. Shortly after being able to walk normally, my father went to Inner Mongolia and was invited to Japan to give a lecture in September.
On the afternoon of February 19, 1981, it was snowing outside and the temperature indoors was relatively low, so my father read the English abstract of "Chinese Ape Man Stone Tool Research" at home. The mother first asked her father if he was cold, and then when she entered the room, she saw her father leaning sideways in the chair, and she couldn't speak clearly. That night, Comrade Wei Chuanying, secretary of the party committee of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was busy contacting and quickly invited the doctors of Zhongguancun Hospital to come to the house to see, and the preliminary diagnosis was cerebral thrombosis. The next morning, he was sent to the People's Hospital, diagnosed with cerebral thrombosis, and immediately left hospitalized, admitted to a large ward with more than a dozen patients. When the leaders of the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Sciences visited the hospital, they felt that the conditions here were very inconvenient for treatment, so they reported to Comrade Fang Yi (then vice premier of the State Council and president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences) overnight, and Comrade Fang Yi made instructions and asked the Minister of Health to assist in the arrangement. On the morning of February 21, my father was transferred to Beijing Hospital. After the condition stabilized, one day the father asked the mother to call the mother to come to the hospital, asked the attending doctor to be discharged, asked him why he was in a hurry to be discharged, and the father said that he was going to Anhui and County. This is because the fossil skull of an ape was found in Washi Prefecture at that time. My father was hospitalized in Beijing Hospital for nearly half a year, and he still needed someone to help him when he walked around after he was discharged, but all day he still remembered to go to the research institute, to Anhui and County, and to Zazhannuoer in Inner Mongolia.
The sequelae of cerebral thrombosis caused my father's health to deteriorate, and at the end of October 1981, due to a cold and pneumonia, he was admitted to the Naval Hospital as a military family member (my brother Pei Duan worked in the Navy). This time, I was discharged after only two weeks in the hospital.
On August 16, 1982, my father wrote to his niece, who was working in Chengdu: "My illness seems to go on like this. Beijing Hospital said that there was a problem with the No. 9 nerve, it was inconvenient to speak, and other parts had problems, and now it had to be quiet. I went to Liuzhou in September, about a month. There is no time to go to Manchuria this year. ”
On August 26, the father suddenly launched a high fever, the institute sent a car to send the father to the Naval Hospital, after the hospital to rescue, the condition was slightly stable, at that time was the 12th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, Comrade Fang Yi took the time to personally visit the hospital, asking the hospital to do its best to treat. However, due to old age and frail health, his condition continued to deteriorate, and he passed away on September 18.
Conclusion
Time flies so fast, my father has been dead for 20 years, but many things in the past seem to have happened a few days ago, and they are vividly remembered. Here we must first say one thing: since in recent years there have often been reports in the press about the excavation work of Zhoukoudian, some of which have been reprinted several times, which are somewhat different from the facts, and through the efforts of Mr. Zhang Senshui, the "Record of the Excavation of the Cave Layer of Zhoukoudian" (written in 1934 and printed by the Geological Bulletin No. 7) written by his father was reprinted in 2001.
My father did something meaningful for the motherland and for the cause of science, and people still often mention it. In the past 20 years, there have been great developments in the fields of paleoanthropology and Quaternary research, and many major achievements have been made, and experts and scholars have written articles and discussed them.
I am a layman in this regard and cannot say anything, but I think the following things can be comforted by my father:
At the end of the 1970s, by car to Zhoukoudian, starting from the city in the morning, you can return to the city from Zhoukoudian in the afternoon, my father was very emotional about this, saying that in the past it took two days to ride a donkey, take a train or take a long-distance bus to spend a day and now take the highway, it only takes more than an hour to get from Beijing city to Zhoukoudian, the traffic is very convenient, which is very beneficial for future excavations, scientific research, and visits. In December 1987, UNESCO inscribed Zhoukoudian on the World Heritage List, and together with the Forbidden City and the Great Wall, it became one of the first places in China to be inscribed on the World Cultural Heritage List. Later, Zhoukoudian was also rated as one of the 16 scenic spots in New Beijing; it was selected as one of the first 100 patriotic education demonstration bases because of "the discovery of the fossil skull of the Chinese ape man, followed by the discovery of its culture, thus resolving the debate between Javan ape man and ape man, and establishing the existence of the ape man stage in the process of human development." So far, the number of ape fossils found at the first site of Zhoukoudian, the large number of stone products and the richness of fire relics are difficult to compare with the contemporaneous sites in the world; it is also unique in the world to find representative cultural sites from the early to late Paleolithic in such a small area of The Dragon Bone Mountain. Therefore, Zhoukoudian has always been regarded as a "holy place" for paleoanthropology and early human culture.
In 2001, his father's last book, "Chinese Ape Man Stone Tool Research" (co-authored with Zhang Senshui), won the first Guo Moruo Historical Honor Award, which can be ranked with Mr. Fan Wenlan's "General History of China" and several other famous works, which is also a full affirmation of his father's research work.
The source of the article is from the 2010 Winter Volume of the Literary Quarterly of Reed Flute
Source | Fontanan Library