That year a meandering visit to the Walls of the Paris Commune

Source: Global Times

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the Revolution of the Paris Commune, and France holds a solemn commemorative ceremony. In 1987, I went to Paris to visit the Paris Commune Wall, and the twists and turns of the process are still fresh in my memory. Dissidents have very different views and ways of commemorating the Paris Commune, and I only record the process and feelings of my exploration of the Paris Commune wall at that time.

In Paris, when I asked how to go to the Paris Commune Wall, someone asked me confusedly: Are you studying history? I said no, I wanted to pay homage to the place where the revolutionary pioneers made their heroic sacrifices. He also told me that the road to the Paris Commune wall was not easy, saying that someone had been there not long ago, and that they had returned without finding the Commune wall. I don't believe it, how can I not find it? Did it disappear in Paris?

In the early morning of August 18, 1987, I went in the general directions to find the wall of the Paris Commune. When I saw the Wall of the Paris Commune, I learned that it was not a separate building, nor was it located in a protected site in an area. It is a remote part of the cemetery's boundary wall, more like a "remnant wall", far from the gate in The Lachaise Cemetery.

It was really inconvenient to go to the cemetery, and it took me a lot of time to find it. But where exactly is the Paris Commune wall in the cemetery? At first I asked the staff who were looking at the cemetery gate. He looked at me for a moment and replied dismissively, "I can't tell, you can find it yourself!" "Helpless, I can only find myself, I go forward, turn left, turn right, the cemetery is deserted, few people can inquire, and the one or two people who are asked can't say clearly." I was almost on the other side of the inner wall of the cemetery, and I had not yet found the commune wall. At this time, I saw a person pushing a construction trolley and looking like a maintenance worker, so I asked him. According to his guidance, I walked along the inner wall of the cemetery, and after more than a hundred steps, I saw the Paris Commune Wall that has entered the annals of history and is famous in the world. It was the inside of a section of cemetery wall about 20 meters long. The walls are slabs of off-white marble marked in striking gold French: "Dedicated to the victims of the commune, 21-28 May 1871". In front of this section of the wall, the last group of 147 members of the commune were executed.

On the ground in front of the wall, as in front of Marx's grave in London's Highgate Park, bouquets of flowers are still visible. At this point my eye sockets were moist! More than 100 years have passed, and the descendants of the victims and insurgents, and people around the world, have not forgotten this tragic history and the martyrs who fought for the truth!

I took some pictures of the commune wall myself, and then invited the worker who was guiding the way to me and helped me take pictures of me in front of the paris commune wall to express my mourning, admiration and remembrance of the martyrs.

In the process of searching for the Walls of the Paris Commune, I once again felt the different positions, attitudes, and even worldviews of people of different classes and strata of society. It is reported that after a long period of resistance by the French people, in 2016, the French parliament finally passed the decision to "rehabilitate" the insurgents of the Paris Commune. (The author is a professor at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences)