A pure heart full of the ambition to serve the country - Lu Dingyi's green years at Jiaotong University

Lu Dingyi (left) and Zhang Yonghe meet in Beijing in their later years (file photo)

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■ "In the middle of the night, I suddenly woke up, only to feel the cold, piercing into the muscles and bones, and trembling all over my body." Roll the blanket tighter, curl up, still can't sleep. The twinkling stars in the sky are like jewels on the black screen, and it is so close to us..." This "Old Mountain Boundary", which was included in the middle school Chinese textbook, was created in the 1930s, and with vivid, beautiful, sincere and delicate brushstrokes, narrates the story of the Red Army overcoming many difficulties and crossing the first difficult mountain, the Old Mountain Boundary, which is still widely praised as a prose classic. Its author is Lu Dingyi, who graduated from the Electrical Engineering Department of Jiaotong University in 1926 and was then a propaganda officer of the Second Column of the Central Military Commission.

Lu Dingyi (1906-1996), from 1927, served as the director of the Propaganda Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Youth League and the representative of the Communist Youth League to the International Of the Communist Party of China. During the Long March, he was responsible for the work of the Political Propaganda Department in the "Red Seal" column of the First Front of the Red Army, and later served as the director of the Propaganda Department of the General Political Department of the Red Army. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, he served as director of the Propaganda Department of the CPC Central Committee, vice premier of the State Council, secretary of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, minister of culture, and vice chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference

How did Lu Dingyi embark on the revolutionary road? Let's open the historical archives of Jiaotong University and trace the footprints of the growth of heroes.

Ambitious

Lu Dingyi (1906-1996), born in Wuxi, Jiangsu Province, was brilliant when he was young, and he had already read a lot of books after graduating from primary school, and could write a good article. In the summer of 1918, because of his admiration for Tang Wenzhi, the president of Lao Jiaotong University, the master of Chinese language, and the school's profound Chinese language heritage, he applied for the attached middle school of this institution that was then called the "Southeast Model", and he tried it out.

Lu Dingyi loves martial arts and believes that xi wu will strengthen his body. He joined the school's martial arts team shortly after entering the school. In addition to participating in school training and competitions, he was often invited to perform in Shanghai and foreign ports, such as Tan Legs, Spring and Autumn Knife, and Zimu Gun, which were repeatedly praised. In particular, the "Three British Battles Lü Bu" that cooperates with others is the most distinctive, which makes the viewers fascinated. After the "May Fourth" strike, Lu Dingyi and the technical strike team saluted the national flag every morning, and then went to the playground to practice, and the fiery patriotic fire turned into a heavy sword and light sword shadow.

In the class, Lu Dingyi was the youngest. He was diligent and studious, and he was very accomplished in arithmetic. In the commemorative book of middle school graduation, there is also an article written by him entitled "Counting One Gain".

In middle school, Lu Dingyi was smart and cheerful, humble and was deeply loved by his classmates. Although his family has superior economic conditions, he does not like clothes and accessories, but is good at traveling, because he believes that travel can increase insight and knowledge. His footprints covered the major cities and historical sites in the southeastern provinces, and he often said to his friends in the same window: "I can't step on the famous mountains and rivers because I hate ears." "He likes to read the biography of the ancient warrior, and when it is wonderful, he can't help but beat the knot." At the end of middle school, the classmate quoted the "scholar who is determined to be in the Tao, but the one who is ashamed of his clothes and bad food, and who is not enough and conspires" in the Analects to evaluate Lu Dingyi, and asserted that "in the future, it is not measurable to test, and it is a matter of waiting and seeing."

Participate in the May Thirtieth Movement

In September 1922, Lu Dingyi, who had completed his secondary school studies, went straight to the Electrical Engineering Department of the University Department with excellent results. This year, he had just turned 16.

In China in the early 1920s, the imperialist powers were pressing forward step by step, the feudal warlords were fighting for years, the domestic economy was in decline, and the people were not happy. Lu Dingyi cherished the belief of "saving the country through science" and studied hard, believing that as long as his motherland developed industry and became rich and strong, the great powers would not dare to bully him.

In 1921, the Communist Party of China was born. In January 1924, the Kuomintang and the Communists achieved their first cooperation. Some progressive students of Jiaotong University were confident and threw themselves into the National Revolutionary Movement. They invited Yun Daiying, Shi Cuntong and others to give speeches at the school many times. The development of these Marxist theoretical propaganda work has rapidly enhanced the revolutionary consciousness of the broad masses of young people.

Under the agitation of the new trend of thought, Lu Dingyi, as the editorial editor of Nanyang Weekly, and other students changed the school magazine Nanyang Weekly, which previously only published academic articles and school news, into a political publication to publicize the National Revolution. In May 1925, in the article "To Commemorate May Fourth and May Ninth", Lu Dingyi shouted loudly: "We must now create a good personality, a learned and strong self, we do not want to have 'May Nine', we want to snow away from 'May Nine' and a lot of shameful stains similar to 'May Nine'; we must prepare for a more thorough 'May Fourth', to eradicate all unequal things in the world, and to guide the world to a free, equal, bright, and pure place!" ”

On May 30, 1925, in protest against the murder of Gu Zhenghong, a worker in a cotton mill inside and outside the Japanese businessmen in Shanghai, more than 400 students of Jiaotong University, divided into 17 speech teams, walked from Xujiahui to the public concession. At about 3:00 p.m., Lu Dingyi's speech team came to the intersection of Tianjin Road and Zhejiang Road north of Nanjing Road, and in the slogan of "Down with Imperialism and Abolish the Unequal Treaty", in the face of the British and Indian patrols with guns, Lu Dingyi bravely stood on a stool and made a generous statement to expose the atrocities of imperialism. Suddenly, there was a burst of gunfire from the south, the procession was shot by the British imperialist patrol, Lu Dingyi and his classmates rushed away, and to their shock, more than a dozen students and workers were already lying in a pool of blood. Among them was Lu Dingyi's classmate and Chen Yuqin, a student of the attached middle school.

After the May Thirtieth Massacre, Lu Dingyi and Zhang Yonghe, as two representatives sent by the Jiaotong University Student Union, lived with other university students in an office rented by the Shanghai Municipal Federation of Students in Nanshi, handled daily affairs, and published the Blood Tide Daily, a tabloid of the Federation of Students, to report on the truth of the May Thirtieth Massacre and the brutality of British and Japanese imperialism. The editorial work is hard, the newspaper has to come out every day, and the facilities are very simple, they often work without sleeping, but no one calls a bitter word.

Joined the Communist Party of China

The new semester began, Lu Dingyi returned to school, and his mood in the study was not calm. In the final year of college, students have a preferential treatment in life, that is, they live in a dormitory for two people, and they can freely choose their partners. At this time, Zhang Yonghe, who went to the School Union to run the newspaper a few months ago, took the initiative to ask to live with Lu Dingyi. Zhang Yonghe returned to the dormitory very late every day, often brought some "Guide" and "Chinese Youth" to show him, and sometimes came back with a bag of things and mysteriously locked it in the drawer. Lu Ding, out of curiosity, secretly looked at what was in the drawer. At first glance, it is all the outline and report of the Communist Party's political propaganda. Sensing Lu Dingyi's curiosity, Zhang Yonghe simply identified himself, told him about the path of proletarian revolution guided by Marxism, and solemnly proposed to introduce him to the Communist Party of China.

At this time, Lu Dingyi, after the baptism of the "Five Thirtieth", had begun to jump out of the ideas of "saving the country through industry" and "saving the country through science", and realized that only by taking the road of "revolutionary salvation" through revolution and throwing himself into the national revolutionary movement could imperialism and feudalism be overthrown. A few days later, Lu Dingyi made the most important decision of his life — to join the Chinese Communist Party. In the autumn of 1925, under the introduction of Zhang Yonghe, Lu Dingyi first joined the Chinese Communist Youth League. At the end of that year, he became a member of the Communist Party of China.

At the end of 1925, under the guidance of the Shanghai District Committee of the Communist Party of China and the Xujiahui Independent Branch, Jiaotong University formally established the Branch of the Communist Party of China and the Communist Youth League, and Zhang Yonghe served as the secretary of the Party Branch. In March 1926, Lu Ding was appointed secretary of the regiment branch.

After the establishment of the PARTY Group Branch of the Jiaotong University of the Communist Party of China, it engaged in tit-for-tat polemics and contests with the rightist forces of the Kuomintang that denigrated cooperation between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party of China. Lu Ding, a responsible person, mobilized all the party members, united a large number of Kuomintang leftists, secretly organized a Marxist-Leninist reading club on campus, invited communists to come to the school to tutor and study Marxist-Leninist works, and invited the Kuomintang leftists, social activists, and famous figures in the academic circles at that time to give various speeches at the school. Taking the Nanyang Weekly as the theoretical position, he successively published dozens of articles with clear banners, expounding the truth that only Marxism can save China with the materialist view of history, and demonstrating the necessity of the Kuomintang and the Communist Party forming an alliance and a united front.

On March 18, 1926, the "March 18" incident in Beijing occurred in which the warlord Duan Qirui shot and killed the demonstrators, and the news spread to Shanghai, and students from various schools rose up in solidarity. At this time, Lu Dingyi was getting "diphtheria", and after he went to do some start-up work with his illness, he had to regret living in the isolation room because his body could not support it. In the middle of spring, the weak willows outside the window fluttered with the wind, the chirping birds in his ears continued to come in, and Lu Dingyi, who was lying on the hospital bed, had difficult thoughts, and a song "Spring Light" came out:

scold! Spring light! Intoxicating spring light!

Melted into my heart.

On the grass I want to jump,

I want to sleep on the grass.

Birds chirping, red peach green willows.

Crimson cherry blossoms,

Blown by the breeze, flaps float in the air.

How much to worry about and how much to worry about?

Small rivers, babbling streams,

A hundred years later, the stream of the fittest!

Why scramble, snail horns and fly heads.

The day of graduation is approaching, remembering his father's words, "You should study in the United States after graduation, if you can't pay for the official fees, you will pay for yourself", Lu Ding showed a hint of regret on his face, because at this time he had already made a firm choice, that is, not to study abroad, nor to be an engineer, but to be a revolutionary with a hard and unstable life and a dangerous killing.

In the summer of 1926, Lu Dingyi, who graduated from university, left the school and went to the Shanghai Fanan District Committee of the Communist Youth League as a secretary with great knowledge and strong body, and began his career as a professional revolutionary without hesitation. This year, he was just 20 years old.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Lu Ding returned to his alma mater several times, or inspected and guided, or participated in the celebration activities of his alma mater, and always paid attention to the development of his alma mater and placed hopes on his alma mater.