Special Article: "The Tears of the Vicissitudes of the Family and the Country, Relatively a Stained Towel" - The Mid-Autumn Festival Remembrance of the Descendants of the Taiwan Anti-Japanese Family

Chongqing, 15 Sep (Xinhua) -- Title: "The Tears of the Vicissitudes of the Family and the Nation, Relatively a Stained Towel" -- The Mid-Autumn Festival recollection of the descendants of taiwan's anti-Japanese family

Xinhua News Agency reporters Zhao Bo, Chen Shu, and Liu Enli

"In 2013, I spent the Mid-Autumn Festival in Taiwan for the first time, met my cousin who lived in Tainan, and had a reunion dinner with my great-grandfather's friend and descendants of the Wufeng Lin family. In my memory, the mid-autumn moon of that year was rounder than ever. Xu Pei said.

Xu Pei, who has a gentle smile, always speaks softly. She is also the vice president of the All-China Federation of Taiwan Compatriots and the president of the Chongqing Municipal Federation of Taiwan Compatriots, which makes her busy running across the strait. On the eve of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Xu Pei put aside the tense preparatory work for the "one family on both sides of the strait" party and gave an exclusive interview to a Xinhua reporter, telling the moving story of the Xu family's crossing of the two sides of the strait.

(Subtitle) Taiwanese poet Xu Nanying's anti-Japanese lament

Xu Pei's great-grandfather was Xu Nanying, one of the 33 Imperial Scholars in Taiwan in the Qing Dynasty. The Qing government was defeated, and in the spring of 1895, the humiliating Treaty of Maguan was signed, and was forced to cede Taiwan to Japan. As an intellectual with strong national feelings, Xu Nanying resolutely obeyed Rong and organized ding xiang to bravely resist the Japanese army entering and occupying Taiwan.

At that time, Xu Nanying led troops to defend Tainan and raised the anti-Japanese banner with Liu Yongfu, Qiu Fengjia and others. When Keelung was in a hurry, he led his troops to help, and when he reached Ali Pass, he heard the bad news that Taipei had lost, and had to return to defend Tainan. Despite stubborn resistance, Tainan, which had lost support, eventually fell. The day before the fall, Xu Nanying, with the help of the villagers, crossed to Fujian in grief and indignation.

Because he didn't want to be a Japanese shunmin, his great-grandfather decided to go back to the mainland to continue the struggle. Before leaving Taiwan, he distributed all his family property to his subordinates as military pay, and this act of affection and righteousness is still widely praised by taiwanese villagers. Xu Pei said.

In the winter of 1895, Xu Nanying, who lived in Jieyang, hugged and cried with a visiting Taiwanese friend and wrote a poem: "People who are hot with alcohol are drunk first, and I am poor when the lights are cold." The vicissitudes of the family and the country tears, relatively a towel. In the autumn of the following year, he also wrote "There is a feeling on the third day of the first month of September (last year's day when the Japanese people ascended to Tainan)", which said: "The cool autumn is the third day of the first month, and the past is only ashamed of himself; the Han Dynasty yiguan remnants hate, and the Shunchang banner is old and old." Blood withered souls wounded spring birds, cocoons broken silk entangled undead silkworms; today drifting in the country, the sea and the sky look east to weep tainan. ”

The date of the Japanese occupation of Tainan was only half a month after the Mid-Autumn Festival. Since then, Xu Nanying has looked at his homeland every mid-autumn festival, always full of sorrow and sorrow. 21 years after leaving Taiwan, Xu Nanyingke died in Nanyang at the age of 63. In the Mid-Autumn Festival of the day of his death, he left behind the verse "A pill of cold moon to pass the Mid-Autumn Festival".

In the history of Chinese literature, Xu Nanying, Qiu Fengjia, and Shi Shijie were called the three major poets of Taiwan in the late Qing Dynasty. In the 1930s, Xu Nanying's poems were compiled and printed by the fourth son, Xu Zankun, entitled "Peeping into the Garden and Leaving Grass".

Peeping Garden is the ancestral residence of the Xu family in Tainan, the poem collection preface Yun: "Build a number of school houses, a few acres of open space behind the house, let the grass and trees grow naturally, called the Peep Garden, take Dong Zi to recite under the curtain, and do not peep into the garden for three years." "During the Japanese colonial period in Taiwan, the garden was demolished in the name of building roads.

Fortunately, near the Confucius Temple in Tainan today, there is still the Xu family's Xizi Pavilion; in the Chihkan Tower, a statue of this anti-Japanese righteous soldier is still enshrined. "Every time I go to Taiwan, I go there when I have the opportunity to pay my respects." Xu Pei said, "My great-grandfather has been serving the country with sincerity all his life, which is worth remembering by the world." ”

(Subtitle) The Anti-Japanese War Song of Xu Dishan, the pioneer of the New Literary Movement

Xu Nanying had six sons and two daughters, the eldest son Xu Zanshu was the president of the Xiamen League; the second son Xu Zanyuan participated in the 1911 Huanghuagang Uprising in Guangzhou; the third son Xu Zanmu, Xu Pei's grandfather, participated in the Northern Expedition; the fourth son Xu Zankun, also known as Xu Dishan, wrote a large number of anti-Japanese literary works under the pseudonym "Luo Huasheng".

Xu Dishan is a famous modern Chinese writer and one of the pioneers of the May Fourth New Literary Movement. Historical records record that after the "July 7" Lugou Bridge Incident, Xu Dishan ran around to help exiled young people study cultural classes, and also published essays in newspapers and periodicals to publicize the War of Resistance and oppose surrender. In March of the following year, Xu Dishan, Guo Moruo, Mao Dun and 45 others were elected as directors of the All-China Literary and Art Circles Anti-Enemy Association.

In August 1941, Xu Dishan died in Hong Kong at the age of 47 due to overwork. In that year, nearly a thousand people from the University of Hong Kong, yenching University students in Hong Kong, Peking University Alumni Association, the Great League for the Defense of China, the Chinese Cultural Association, the Press Association, and the hong Kong and Guangzhou masses attended the ceremony. At the memorial service organized by the cultural circles of Hong Kong, Mr. Soong Ching Ling sent a wreath.

"The more you flee, the more disaster follows; if you turn around, stand still." Anything can resist! This is the protagonist's anger in the anti-war novel "The Gills of the Iron Fish", published half a year before Xu Dishan's death.

"The fourth uncle used this method to tell the people of the world that as long as they strengthen their faith, the War of Resistance will eventually be victorious." Xu Pei said: This is the persistent persistence of the Xu family, and it is also the national heart and patriotic feelings of an anti-Japanese family that has been deeply buried in their bones and blood.

(Subtitle) The great love hymn of the descendants of the Xu family across the strait

The vicissitudes of a hundred years have faded under the erosion of time, but the sadness of the isolation of the Taiwan Strait still plagues this family bathed in glory from time to time. Because of the anti-Japanese resistance, most of Xu Nanying's descendants remained outside the island of Taiwan, and are now distributed in Wuhan, Chongqing, Zhangzhou, Xi'an and Kunming.

In Xu Pei's treasured thick materials, a letter written by Zhou Lingzhong, the son of Xu Dishan, on the occasion of his father's birth in the hundredth year, is touching: "It has been more than 450 years since our ancestors entered Taiwan, and the blood and sweat of our ancestors have been sprinkled on the land of Taiwan, and the way back home for our descendants who were forced to leave their hometowns is so difficult, so why should we sue my ancestors?" ”

The letter was written in 1993. Being able to return to taiwan and meet our relatives there is a great expectation for those of us who live in the Xu family on the mainland. Xu Pei said.

In 2008, Xu Pei, as a representative of the descendants of the Xu family in the mainland, set foot on the homeland of Baodao. "Uncle Zhou was 76 years old at the time, and he was very excited to know that I was going to Taiwan, and he told me over and over again, and he also specially wrote some notes by hand."

Xu Pei pulled out two pieces of paper densely packed with Notes on Taiwanese Idiomatic Terms. On that, from how to ask about the occupation, age, and place of origin of others, to how to call elders, peers, etc., everything is missed.

"I felt so much that time! In Taipei, I met the descendant of Uncle Xu' praise, my cousin Xu Minzheng. Xu Pei recalled, "We lost contact with our relatives in Taiwan for decades, that was the first time we met, my sister took my hand, but I did not feel strange at all." ”

Since then, Xu Pei has visited his relatives in Taiwan many times. Recalling the joy of the reunion, she could not help but mention some regrets hidden deep in her heart. "Once in Tainan, the son of another cousin of mine walked to the door, but never came in."

"Even meeting with cousin Xu Renzheng is not easy." Xu Pei said that perhaps it was too long without contact, at first the cousin did not plan to meet with her, "I repeated many phone calls, the power of family affection let us finally meet." After a hint of gloom, she smiled again: "I believe that as the interaction between the descendants of the Xu family on both sides of the strait becomes more and more frequent, one day, we will gather together." ”

Being in the middle of it, I know even more about the suffering of the lack of understanding between the two sides of the strait due to their long-term isolation. Therefore, most of the descendants of the Xu family choose to work on Taiwan. Xu Pei's father was a professor at Southwest Agricultural University and one of the original heads of the Chongqing branch of the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League.

"The daughter of my sixth uncle and second son works in the Zhangzhou Municipal Committee of the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League, and the children of the fourth uncle and the second daughter work in the Jiangsu Provincial Party Committee of the Taiwan Democratic Self-Government League." Xu Pei said that the descendants of the Xu family have been active in the forefront of the work toward Taiwan for many years, that is, they want to build a bridge of communication and exchange between compatriots on both sides of the strait and make modest efforts to realize the reunification of the country at an early date.

Over the years, Xu Pei has helped many relatives across the strait reunite and reunite, and has also organized many cross-strait youth exchange activities. "Compared to my grandparents, I didn't do enough." She said her great-grandfather taught her children to make peanuts buried in the dirt.

The descendants of the Xu family will not forget the dialogue between father and son in Mr. Xu Dishan's famous essay "Falling Peanuts" -

"So you have to be like a peanut, it's not pretty, but it's useful."

"Then, people should be useful people, not people who only talk about decency and have no benefit to others."

"Yes. That is my hope for you. ”

"We are xu family, and we inherit the 'spirit of falling peanuts' in our bones." Xu Pei said: This thick, humble, indifferent, and tranquil life realm is precisely the traditional values of the Chinese nation and the spiritual pillar for the descendants of the Xu family to engage in cross-strait exchanges.

It has been another 3 years since the last meeting in Tainan. In the Mid-Autumn Festival this year, Xu Pei was so entangled in official business that he could not go to Taiwan, and his heart was even more worried about his relatives on the other side of the strait. She called her cousin, who lives in Taipei, and inquired about her aunt's physical condition. "I don't have a chance to spend the holidays together, so I can have a few words." She said.

On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival reunion, the end of the world is at this time, although the Xu family who crossed history and crossed the two sides of the strait were not in the same place, their hearts were imprinted, and their thoughts were stringed together with good wishes. At the end of the interview, the reporter asked Xu Pei what he most wanted to say to his relatives in Taiwan. She said without hesitation: "Sister Minzheng and Brother Renzheng, come to Chongqing to see it in the Mid-Autumn Festival next year!" (End)