"It is true that the current China is of course a broken country and a poor country, but who can assert that China does not have a bright future? No, absolutely not, we believe that China must have a bright future to praise. "
On May 2, 1935, Fang Zhimin wrote this "Lovely China" in prison, at which time his life had entered the countdown.
When Fang Zhimin died, his daughter Fang Mei was only three years old and illiterate, and the memory of her father was scattered and almost nothing, and when she was 17 years old, Fang Mei first read her father's prison posthumous work "Lovely China", this essay made Fang Mei really close to her father Fang Zhimin for the first time, and the father's strong patriotic spirit in the text affected Fang Mei's life.
Fang Zhimin and Miao Mei have five children, four sons and one daughter. Fang Zhimin named them "pine, cypress, bamboo, plum, orchid", which are all plants with integrity and fathers' expectations for the future of their children.
Because the revolutionary worker Fang Zhimin and his wife were absent from the growth of several children, their five children were born in the war-torn era and had to be fostered in order to ensure their safety.
Fang Mei, Fang Zhimin's only surviving child, was born in 1932, the winter of which the Kuomintang launched its fourth crackdown on bandits, which mobilized nearly 400,000 people. In the midst of the continuous war, Fang Zhimin and his wife had no time to enjoy the joy of parenthood, and after they entrusted their newborn daughter to the local compatriots, they had to rush to the battlefield.
The war subsided slightly, the couple immediately returned to their hometown to visit their daughter, the living conditions in the countryside at that time were harsh, the newborn was young and weak, Miao Min was most worried that her daughter could not survive this cold winter day, but Fang Zhimin, who was on the side, said optimistically:
"Plum blossoms born in the harsh winter are also the most tenacious in life force!"
So Fang Mei got its name. Who would have thought that this was the first and last side between father and daughter. Fang Mei never saw her father again, and as time went on, she grew up and established a understanding of her father, Fang Zhimin, through the descriptions of the people around her.
The villagers love to tell Fang Mei about her father's deeds, because in the eyes of everyone, Fang Zhimin is simply a legend, and they describe Fang Zhimin as "majestic with two guns, both literary and martial arts and gone without a trace..." Perhaps there is indeed an exaggerated element in these words, but this also proves the love of the villagers for Fang Zhimin.
Therefore, Fang Mei recalled: "Even though I never saw my father get along with him when I was young, I always thought that my father was a great hero, and I admired and loved him in my heart."
In fact, Fang Zhimin is indeed worth remembering. Chairman Mao made such a speech at the memorial service in honor of Comrade Zhang Side:
He said: "People always have to die, but the meaning of death is different. "
Fang Zhimin's death was a great sacrifice. At the end of 1934, on the way of the Long March of the Central Red Army, the Red 10Th Army led by Fang Zhimin and Su Yu, chief of staff, was strongly surrounded and blocked by the Kuomintang, and the strength of the Red Tenth Army was less than one-twentieth of that of the Kuomintang troops.
"As the main person in charge, I can't leave first!"
After that, Fang Zhimin returned to the surrounded soldiers, and he and more than 2,000 Red Army soldiers were stationed at Huaiyu Mountain, which was a cold winter with flying snow, and the guards around Fang Zhimin failed to withstand the test of reality, thus revealing Fang Zhimin's location to the enemy, which eventually led to Fang Zhimin being captured by the Kuomintang.
One of the most surprising things happened at this time. It turned out that these two little soldiers wanted to "fish for oil and water" on Fang Zhimin, but they accidentally found that he did not have even a valuable thing on his body except a pen, not to mention the banknote copper plate, and even the clothes were patched. The two enemy soldiers who went to arrest Fang Zhimin couldn't help but marvel: I didn't expect that the generals who had made great achievements in battle were so poor!
Fang Zhimin watched as the Kuomintang soldiers searched the cave where they were hiding, trying to dig out some of their belongings, but still found nothing, and after a long time he leisurely spat out a sentence:
"Our revolution is not about money at all!"
For the Kuomintang, he did not want to kill Fang Zhimin at first, after all, he was a famous general of the Communist Party, and if he could make him surrender, it would be beneficial to the situation of the Kuomintang. However, despite the Kuomintang's soft and hard bubbles of coercion and inducement, Fang Zhimin ignored everything and adhered to the policy of never bowing down and never surrendering.
The Kuomintang had no choice but to temporarily detain Fang Zhimin in a detention center.
During his days in prison, Fang Zhimin needed to wear ten pounds of shackles every day in order to restrict his movements. However, the body can be imprisoned, but the mind cannot be captured and controlled, and in prison, Fang Zhimin still has to work for more than ten hours a day, and he fights with his pen, writing 300,000 words including works such as "Lovely China".
Fang Zhimin's behavior touched Ling Fengwu, the acting director of the detention center, who took extra care of Fang Zhimin, and in order to make his life easier, he changed the restricted mobility handcuffs from ten pounds to three and a half pounds. Ling Fengwu replaced Fang Zhimin's leg shackles, which played a role many years later, and later when Fang Zhimin's remains were recovered, it was through the shackles that the identity of the bones was initially locked.
The story goes back to the last day of Fang Zhimin's life, the Kuomintang top brass could do nothing about him, so they had to issue an order to execute him. On August 6, 1935, Comrade Fang Zhimin was secretly executed by the enemy in Nanchang.
Looking back at the self-statement that Fang Zhimin was forced to write by the Kuomintang before, the full text is only one sentence, but its spiritual connotation is incomparably thick:
"Chinese New Year's Eve six years old, I am willing to sacrifice everything to contribute to the Soviets and the revolution, just as above."
Fang Mei recalled: "'Lovely China' written by my father Fang Zhimin in prison became the first book I read in my life, and this book was also the book that had the most profound impact on my life."
As mentioned earlier, because of the War of Resistance, Fang Mei and other siblings were fostered in the rural adoptive parents' homes, when basic education was not yet widespread, so Fang Mei missed the goldenest reading period in her life, until 1949, when Fang Mei was taken to her by her mother Miao Min, when she really began to read and study.
Everything was difficult at the beginning, and Fang Mei, who had just begun to learn to read, did not understand why her mother was so strict, and shut her in the door all day to read, and Fang Mei took about four years to master the basic literacy skills.
After that, her mother gave Fang Mei a book called "Lovely China", and the author of this book was her father, Fang Zhimin.
Miao Min's wish is to let her daughter know as soon as possible what kind of person her father really is, she wrote on the title page:
"Mei'er, this book is your father's last words written with blood and tears in prison, you must read it repeatedly, study hard, and use practical actions to inherit your father's unfinished career!"
In 1953, when the seventeen-year-old Fang Mei opened the first page of the book, a different feeling immediately arose in her heart, these words seemed to be his father's oral narration to him, Fang Mei finally did not have to understand her father in the mouths of others, now she can read it herself, she reads the last works left by her father, after many years Fang Mei can still read her father's hot emotions from these words, every word and sentence is so sincere and warm.
"Lovely China" is the best spiritual legacy left to her by her father, and her father's love for the motherland has aroused Fang Mei's thoughts and inspired her future development direction.
The first is to be a cultural revolutionary successor, Fang Mei began to consciously accumulate reading, and after taking the initiative to understand her father's relevant works, her understanding of her father became richer. At the same time, China is taking off step by step, and the bright future that her father imagined is becoming a reality, and she has an impulse to record all this she feels.
In 1995, Fang Mei began to write her father's biography "The Complete Biography of Fang Zhimin", which was written for ten years, for which she visited every place where her father struggled before his death, interviewed the people of the relevant events of that year, and recorded a million words of interview notes with a pen.
In Fang Mei's "The Complete Biography of Fang Zhimin", she wrote down two small details of her father before the sacrifice.
First, when Fang Zhimin was taken out of the detention center, he was stuffed with a white towel in his mouth, and the towel was not taken off until the execution; second, the bullet was hit from the back of Fang Zhimin's head.
Many people wondered that Fang Mei was not a witness to the incident, and when her father died, she was only three years old, how could she have such a clear understanding of the secret execution of the day?
In order to confirm the facts, a reporter interviewed Fang Mei and learned from her mouth that these details do exist. It turned out that before the execution of Fang Zhimin, the Kuomintang had found a photographer from a photo studio in Nanchang City to take photos of the scene of the execution of Fang Zhimin, and the details of his father's presence at the execution site were all evidenced by photos.
The photographer was a witness to the incident, and he witnessed the executioner shooting from behind Fang Zhimin, and the towel stuffed in his mouth was to prevent Fang Zhimin from making a sound, so as not to shout slogans during the escort to let the people know the Kuomintang's shooting order.
Fang Zhimin looked at the distance silent for a long time before the execution, he was not afraid to face death, on the contrary, his reaction that day was unusually calm, this state is very uncommon in the dying person, even the executioner who executed him also felt a little nervous, the crowd did not dare to act rashly, after a moment Zhimin signaled to the executioner: You can do it.
He greeted death without looking back, what was he thinking before he died? We don't know anything about that. Maybe it's a final farewell to his beloved motherland!
From the moment before the sacrifice of Fang Zhimin restored by Ms. Fang Mei, I can feel that he is optimistic, he is still full of hope that China will have a bright future, he still believes that the glorious day is coming, fortunately, our take-off world in China today is obvious to all, it is enough to comfort the martyrs, today's China is much better than you think!