Fang Da was on the Suiyuan Front (from Feng Xuesong's "Treasure Fang Da Zeng", New World Publishing House).
On July 10, 1937, in the early morning in Beiping City, a tall young man with a camera on his back walked out of his house, stepped on his bicycle, and sped all the way.
He crossed the artillery fire from Peiping alone to the area of Lugou Bridge, where he was intercepted by the Japanese army, "They first suspected that I was a senior detective of the Chinese army, on the grounds that the journalists did not have the courage to come to the Japanese side, but because of my self-assured attitude, this suspicion was eliminated." An hour later, he passed the interrogation without any danger, becoming the first journalist to arrive at the scene after the Lugou Bridge incident.
In just over a month after that day, the young man would become a legendary figure in the history of modern Chinese journalism.
He is Fang Dazeng, pen name Xiaofang.
He said: "Fang, just and righteous, small contains the meaning of humility, it is the way to deal with the world, I am to be a righteous person, useful to the country and the people." ”
"Always on the go"
"Nowadays, our nation no longer needs that gentle and elegant intoxication, but should have a majestic and heroic posture!" Friends of Jiangnan, come here, not only because the scenery here is good, but also because the territory here needs our protection! ”
——Fang Dazeng, From Datong to Suiyuan, 1936
In 1912, Fang Da was born in Beijing to a solid family. When he was in elementary school, his mother bought him a camera with 7 oceans, and since then, the camera has become his inseparable partner in suffering and suffering.
Visiting the front line of the Lugou Bridge is not the first time that Fang Da has single-handedly rushed to the battlefield. Sister Fang Chengmin once recalled in the article that after the September 18 incident, his brother ran around every day, always on the road, "he always left home with an umbrella, a blanket, a backpack, and a camera."
In November 1936, the Suiyuan War of Resistance broke out, which was a large-scale local war between China and Japan before the Lugou Bridge Incident, and the Chinese army won the Battle of Honggeltu and the Battle of Bailing Temple, which inspired the whole country. On December 4, Fang Da zeng boarded a train alone and rushed from Beiping to the Suiyuan front line, where he began a 43-day interview.
At this time, he had just graduated from the Department of Economics of the University of China and France for one year, and worked as a photojournalist in the "Sino-Foreign News Society" founded with his friends.
In a later report, Fang Da once wrote: "In order to give the reader a practical and true understanding of the situation of the Suiyuan War of Resistance, the reporter had a trip to the front line... Hearing the roaring wind outside the car window, I felt the cold chestnut, and I felt the state of the soldiers guarding the country in the trenches. Ah, cold! Freezing cold to death! ”
In the cold winter outside Saiwai at minus 30 degrees Celsius, Fang Da used to hitchhike, ride horses, hike, day and night. He took hundreds of photographs and wrote many field communications such as "Inspection of the Suidong Front", recording the soldiers digging trenches, wiping machine guns and other preparation scenes, and the thinking and enthusiasm of the officers in the war.
During this period, Fang Da once met Fan Changjiang, a well-known journalist who was also interviewing at the front line, and told the other party that he would soon ride a horse to the Lark Temple, where the war had just taken place.
He prepared to cross the Yin Mountains diagonally, pass through the Lark Temple and other places, and then cross a section of grassland to investigate the situation after the areas he passed along the way were ravaged by the puppet bandits. The journey is so dangerous that no journalist has been there since the war subsided.
"It was a majestic and arduous journey, and this friend, who was not usually valued, came to such a feat today." This "Slavic youth with a strong body, rosy face and yellow hair" thus impressed Fan Changjiang, who lamented in the article: "In the minds of young people, there is only the pursuit of light and victory. The so-called dangers and difficulties, we can not tolerate much consideration, amazing causes, always successful in ordinary people do not dare to do. ”
Fang Da Zeng was indeed not afraid of hardships. Today, people can see many images of Him climbing high in the selfies left by Fang Da Zeng — on the tower crane, on the ladder, on the top of the mountain, the young man always seems to want to stand higher.
This kind of personality, which was evaluated by his mother as "adventurous", accompanied by the maturity of his thoughts and the traction of the times, made Fang Da zeng destined to walk in the forefront of the times, leaving people with a long-distance back.
On the Suiyuan front, Fang Da once sent his mother a photo of himself dressed in a military uniform and wearing a steel helmet. It reads: "Mother And Adult Remembers, Boy Xiaofang took photography in the winter of 1936 in the Suidong Battlefield."
Fang Chengmin felt: "This means that from then on he will go out, uncertainly, he has long been determined to dedicate himself to the cause he likes, regardless of the end of the world." ”
Go to the line of fire and record the War of Resistance with your life
"I saw a large number of wounded soldiers walking slowly in groups. As they passed the army post, the sentries solemnly raised their guns in salute, and the reporters were moved to tears, especially in the darkness of the night, adding a hundred times the greatness of this picture. ”
——Fang Da Zeng, "South of Baoding", 1937
On the front line of the Lugou Bridge, Fang Da interviewed the officers and men of the Twenty-ninth Army who bravely killed the enemy, and photographed the heroic posture of the Chinese soldiers who were carrying large knives and rifles and guarding the stone lions of the Lugou Bridge.
After returning to Beiping City, he wrote a long newsletter "Lugou Bridge Anti-Japanese War", washed and printed photos, and spent his 25th birthday in a busy period of several days.
On August 1, 1937, Shanghai "World Knowledge" magazine Volume 6, No. 10 published the "Lugou Bridge Anti-Japanese War" signed "Xiao Fang" and several photos. After that, "Good Friend" magazine, the British "London News Illustrated" and other domestic and foreign media successively published his special photo reports on the Lugou Bridge incident.
These texts and pictures, which were recorded by reporters at the scene, provided the world with first-hand information on the beginning of China's all-round War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression at the first time, and became a precious historical document of the Chinese nation.
"I stood on the Lugou Bridge and browsed a cheerful and beautiful scenery, which was nostalgic, and a vast white cloud was floating in the north, setting off the wilderness on the bank of the Yongding River. The great Lugou Bridge may become the birthplace of the great national liberation war! ”
This was a prophecy made by Fang Da in the "Lugou Bridge War of Resistance", and this prediction soon became a reality, and Fang Dazeng's fate was also rewritten by this war.
After the Lugou Bridge Incident, the Japanese army continued to increase its troops in North China and imposed a military encirclement on Pingjin, and large-scale war was about to erupt. Soon after Fang Da sent out the "Lugou Bridge War of Resistance" and photos, he packed up his bags, left home again, and went to the front.
At that time, the reinforcements of the Chinese side were concentrated in the Shijiazhuang and Baoding areas, and Fang Dazeng also came to this area for interviews. He met Fan Changjiang again, and also got to know Lu Yi, a reporter for Shanghai's "News Daily", and Song Zhiquan, a reporter for Beiping's "Shi Bao". On July 28, 1937, they set off from Baoding with a group and went north to Changxindian.
"The car arrived at Liangxiang Station, 25 miles away from Changxindian, and the sound of front-line artillery was faintly audible, and Xiao Fang jumped up from his seat and said to me: 'Listen, Lao Lu!'" This is the cannon of the Chinese nation for liberation. He couldn't sit still, and after a few minutes, he dragged me again to the window, pointed to the field where the gauze tent was raised, and said, 'Look, our army is pulling out of the front!' ’”
Decades later, reporter Lu Yi still remembers Xiao Fang's "young, handsome, and vigorous" face, and remembers his figure wearing a white canvas hat, wearing a white shirt, yellow shorts, carrying a camera, pedaling shoes, and energetically running on the front line for interviews.
After getting off the bus from Changxindian, Fang Da said goodbye to his companions and walked alone along the railway, laughing and saying that he was going to shoot the footage of the IronClad Army participating in the battle on the front line.
Two hours later, he returned from the front and told Lu Yi that he had just photographed a young soldier of the Twenty-ninth Army, only 16 years old, tall, big-eyed, with a rosy face, holding a captured Japanese officer's command knife and binoculars. In the middle of the conversation, a bomb exploded nearby, "Xiao Fang said dismissively: 'Today's harvest is not small!'" ’”
On July 29, 1937, after the fall of Beiping, Fang Da had a hard time returning home, and through the introduction of Fan Changjiang, he began to serve as a field commissioner of the Shanghai Ta Kung Pao.
After that, he ran in Changxindian, Baoding, Shijiazhuang, Taiyuan, and Datong, braving the rain of bullets and bullets, and went deep into the battlefield again and again, almost wherever there was fighting, there was his figure.
In early August 1937, the Battle of Nankou began, the Japanese army launched a general attack on Nankou and Juyongguan, and the Chinese defenders desperately supported and engaged in fierce hand-to-hand combat with the enemy, and the positions were repeated several times.
At this moment, Fang Da Zeng appeared alone at the forefront of the Nankou Battlefield. In the newsletter "Blood Battle juyongguan", he recorded the tragic feats of the Chinese defenders fighting Japanese tanks hand-to-hand.
"The commander of the Seventh Company jumped out of the position with two rows of men and rushed to the tanks, and they rushed to the eyes of this 'iron monster'... Desperately climbing forward, throwing grenades into the window, reaching in with a pistol to fight, fighting with flesh and steel, the iron monster was not supported, and actually lost... The two rows of brave athletes were half dead, but we finally won. ”
He also recorded the fierceness of the battle and the high morale of the Chinese soldiers.
"The soldiers of the Thirteenth Army are really amazing, and the order they have received is to hold their positions, but where is the position here?" Some of the temporary fortifications were also leveled by artillery fire, and Juyongguan will never see what it looks like from now on, but only a new Great Wall made of the flesh and blood of our loyal anti-Japanese soldiers! ”
In late August, Fang Da went to Datong to agree on the next direction of work with Fan Changjiang and others, in time for the Japanese army to attack Datong, and he moved to Shijiazhuang. Later, after hearing that the Third Division of Wei Lihuang's unit that reinforced the south entrance was fighting fiercely with the Japanese army on the upper reaches of the Yongding River, Fang Da had brought sufficient blue ink, manuscript paper and photographic equipment to rush to board the train to Baoding north.
When parting, Fan Changjiang said: "I hope you can write a 'war on the upper reaches of the Yongding River'!" Fang Da Zeng replied calmly and firmly: "I must have a very good result to reply to you." ”
At this time, the "field commissioner Xiao Fang" was already a well-known journalist covering the War of Resistance, and there were almost no unique all-round reporters like him who excelled in photography and writing. No one expected that this dazzling new star that had turned out to be born would pass away in a flash, and he did not know the end.
In September 1937, due to the tight war situation in Baoding, Fang Da retreated to Li County, about 50 kilometers southeast of Baoding, and on the 18th, he sent a newsletter to the Shanghai Ta Kung Pao from here, "Changes in the Northern Section of the Pinghan Line", and sent a letter to his relatives in Handan, saying: "I will continue to go north from Li County to reach the task originally given to me by the (Fan) Yangtze River." ”
On September 30, 1937, "Changes in the Northern Section of the Pinghan Line" was published in the Ta Kung Pao. Since then, people have never received a single word from Fang Dazeng, and no one has ever seen him again, and this young figure with a shoulder camera constantly attacking the front line of Pinghan Road has disappeared in the smoke and gunfire.
"Testament of the Times"
"Fang Dazeng's works are like a will left in the thirties, a will left for all the future eras... When everything disappears, Fang Dazeng's works tell us that one thing will never disappear, that is, the look and figure of people, which are being passed down from generation to generation. ”
——Yu Hua, The Meaning of Disappearing, 1999
In Shanghai and Hankou, Fan Changjiang met countless people who cared about Xiaofang and asked him about Xiaofang. "I believe that he will not have a problem, because his resourcefulness is enough to cope with extraordinary events, and his talent should also do more for the cause of Chinese journalism and the cause of China's national liberation." He thinks so, and he answers others that way.
However, year after year, Xiaofang never appeared.
No. 10 Xiehe Hutong, Dongcheng District, Beijing, is Fang Da Zeng's former home, and in July 1937, he walked out of here for the last time.
After Fang Da zeng disappeared, his mother Zhu Li refused to move until his death, because before her son left home, she had agreed with him: I live here anyway, and when you come back, you will come to Xiehe Hutong to find me.
Fang Dazeng's nephew Zhang Zaixuan remembers that when he was a child, he asked his grandmother that everyone else had moved to a new home, why didn't we move? "Grandma said I don't move, I'm going to wait for my son, wait for your uncle, because I made a pact with him, and he's going to come back to me later."
She waited at the old house for 32 years until her death in 1969.
Fang Da Zeng's sister Fang Chengmin carefully preserved and sorted out the negatives that her brother left at home. They were wrapped in pink paper bags, neatly stacked in a tan wooden box, through the war and various upheavals, following Fang Chengmin from her girlhood to the white-haired flies, and before she died, they were entrusted to the next generation of the family.
On March 16, 2006, three generations of the Fang family carefully kept 837 negatives of Fang Da Zeng's photographic works for nearly 70 years, which were donated to the National Museum of China by his family free of charge. These precious image historical materials have finally found their home and become the common wealth of the whole society, and the back that has long left and was once forgotten by the public for more than 60 years, the handsome, tall, fearless young man who ran on the battlefield, is also in people's nostalgia, discovery and pursuit, turning around and coming to us today.
In July 2000, the documentary "Looking for Fang Dazeng" was broadcast on CCTV. Documentary filmmaker Feng Xuesong began to search for Fang Dazeng from the discovery of Fang Dazeng in 1999, and has published monographs such as "Fang Dazeng: Disappearing and Reappearing" and "Fang Dazeng: Lost and Regained".
On July 7, 2015, the "Fang Da Zeng Memorial Room" was completed in Baoding.
On July 7, 2018, the "Fangda Zeng Research Center" was established in Baoding.
In 2021, the tribute drama "Ideal Shines on China" told the story of Fang Dazeng in the "I Am Xiaofang" unit... (Reporter Wang Jingxue)
Source: Xinhua Daily Telegraph