No. 21 Fan Wenlan: Educating and Influencing Tens of Millions of Revolutionaries

In the summer of 1907, at the age of 14, he witnessed the qing dynasty officers and soldiers go to the Chase Academy to arrest Qiu Jin like robbers, and his heart was extremely hateful, sowing the seeds of the pursuit of social progress. When the "May Thirtieth" anti-imperialist movement broke out in 1925, he was educated and established his revolutionary faith. Soon after, he joined the Communist Party of China.

After the "918" incident, he actively threw himself into the anti-Japanese struggle led by the Communist Party of China to save his life, despite the danger, and was twice arrested by reactionary warlords. In the face of the persecution of the reactionaries, he was fearless and linked his fate more closely with the cause of anti-Japanese salvation. In 1936, he moved to Kaifeng and served as a professor in the Department of Literature and History of the College of Literature of Henan University, during which he hosted the magazines "Wind and Rain" and "Jingshi" to carry out anti-Japanese mobilization and had a wide impact. In the autumn of 1937, he led his students to do excellent work for the propaganda and mobilization of the War of Resistance. During this period, he published a large number of commentaries, analyzed problems with the party's anti-Japanese policy, expounded profoundly and sharply, and formally joined the New Fourth Army. In October 1939, the "Chinese Youth" published in Yan'an reported his deeds in detail, praising him as a "national hero who can write and fight".

At the end of 1939, he reached northern Shaanxi through dangerous obstacles, and arrived in Yan'an in the early spring of the following year. Subsequently, Mao Zedong directly "gave him a task and asked to compile a general history of China in a short period of time with a length of about 100,000 words." In September 1941, when the first volume of the Compendium of the General History of China was published, Mao Zedong made a high evaluation, saying that we in the Communist Party of China had a say in the history of our country for thousands of years and had also come up with scientific works.

His two works, Compendium of general history of China and Modern History of China, comprehensively and systematically elucidated the entire history of China, educating and influencing future generations of historians, as well as educating and influencing the millions of revolutionaries at that time. He encouraged young people to do research with the determination to sit on a cold bench and eat cold pork, and clearly put forward his opposition to "empty words that are big and inappropriate", and his attitude towards learning was later vividly summarized as "the bench should sit cold for ten years, and the article should not write half a sentence empty".

"Walking with the Party - Red Memories of Intellectuals" No. 21, scan the QR code and walk into Fan Wenlan's more red memories.

Source: "Cultural Power" Guangming Daily Collaborative Promotion Platform