Remembering Mr. Zhu Xie
Linshan Agricultural School Zhu Shulou He Xiangdong photo
October 14 marks the 120th anniversary of the birth of Mr. Zhu Xie, a famous biologist in China.
My father, Xu Tianhong, met Mr. Zhu Xie in the 1920s and 1930s. They were all the earliest participants in the "Cultural Life Publishing House" founded by Wu Langxi and Ba Jin. I first met Mr. Zhu In 1938. After the "July 7 Incident", my father took our mother and son from their hometown of Haiyan (which had been occupied by Japanese soldiers at that time) to the French Concession in Shanghai for refuge. One day, my father took our brothers to see Mr. Zhu Xie. In his research institute, I saw a large vat with several frogs, which Mr. Zhu Xie used the principle of single-sex reproduction to successfully experiment with frogs without grandfathers. At that time, I was just in the second grade of elementary school, and I didn't know what it meant to be parthenogenetic, but I had a scientific curiosity about these frogs without grandfather.
Due to the war in Shanghai, people fled into foreign concessions, causing rent prices to soar. The publishing house bookstore was also closed, my father's translations could not be published, and seeing that the family's livelihood was not settled, Mr. Zhu Xie suggested that my father move his family to his hometown of LinhaidianQian Village, which is located in a remote mountainous area where Japanese devils cannot go. Linhai Huipu Middle School has moved here, and my father can teach at Huipu Middle School while continuing his translation work. He could ask his relatives to help us settle down. My father was grateful.
With the help of Mr. Zhu Xie's relatives, we successfully settled down in the village of Dianqian. My father taught English at Huipu Middle School High School, and several of our children attended Linshan Agricultural School, founded by Mr. Zhu Xie. The mode of Running Linshan Agricultural School is half rural and half reading, and many of the teachers are agricultural school graduates. The lyrics of the school song written by Mr. Zhu Xie began with "I came to Linshan, and I worked and read, worked with my heart and hands, and eliminated bad customs." The school's funding sources are several houses (ancestral halls) donated by the Zhu Ancestral Hall to the school as classrooms, dozens of acres of land and a mountain (LinShan). Lin Shan mainly buried the ancestors of the Zhu clan. Mr. Zhu Used his salary as a professor to build a teaching building (which is still in existence), and continued to use his own money to buy teaching and experimental instruments, such as the German high-power microscope. Through his friends in the cultural publishing industry, he collected many books for the school, which were not only read by teachers and students, but also by surrounding farmers. The students are not limited to Zhu's children and the villagers of Dianqian Village, but also children from around one or two miles away. These students leave early and return late, bringing a few taro and a few pieces of sweet potato for lunch, and the school provides boiling water or vegetable soup. All students are exempt from tuition fees, and those who have difficulties in living can also apply for subsidies.
According to the different grades and the age of the students, the school arranges the difficulty and intensity of the labor class, from the primary and secondary school students to learn weeding to the senior grades to learn various field operations, but also to learn fruit tree cultivation grafting, vegetable planting and other agronomy. The school also encourages students to use their spare time to plant melon vegetables on the mountain, and every autumn harvest season holds a harvest exhibition competition, which is rewarded according to the size of the harvest, and these melon vegetables are served in the canteen at a low price.
Every year, when he was on vacation, Mr. Zhu Always had to return to Linshan and work with teachers and students to open the mountain and farm. He often brought back some excellent fruit and vegetable seeds. What impressed me the most was a kind of peach, which is not only juicy but also very sweet. There are also pink tomatoes, which are full of flavor, and many local farmers have introduced them to their own vegetable gardens, and my family has planted a few plants, which can be enjoyed almost all year round. Mr. Zhu Xie is familiar with ancient texts, and often teaches us to recite them between labors, such as "Man Jiang Hong", "Peach Blossom Origin", "Burrow Ming", etc., which I still remember vividly.
After the victory of the War of Resistance, I never saw Mr. Zhu Xie again, but I only knew a little about the situation from my father's correspondence with him. In 1949, after the liberation of Linhai, I was assigned from the fourth detachment of the Eastern Zhejiang Guerrilla Brigade to work in the Military Control Commission of Linhai City, and at one point I was seconded to the Taizhou Military Sub-district to participate in the recruitment of young students to join the army, and met many alumni of Linshan Agricultural School. Everyone invariably recalled Mr. Zhu Xie's teachings.
Source: Taizhou Net, China
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