"I have always been a person who has been wandering and uncertain, running north and south for several years for my life, and I don't know where tomorrow is today. In such a life, children eventually become tired, so they are determined to send their two children to raise them outside the home..." In an ordinary residential building in the southwest village of Nankai University, 88-year-old Chen Zhiyuan read it in a trembling voice.
This is a family letter from a "lonely orphan", this "letter to the third brother, the sixth brother" from Chen Zhiyuan's father, Chen Tanqiu, a major representative of the Communist Party of China, in February 1933, Chen Tanqiu wrote this family letter and went to work in the Central Soviet Region, at this time, his wife Xu Quanzhi was pregnant and about to give birth, and the child in his womb was Chen Zhiyuan.
In 1943, Chen Tanqiu died, Chen Zhiyuan had never seen his father, and this letter included in the "Letter to the Third Brother and sixth Brother" in the "Chen Tanqiu Anthology" became the most special emotional connection between the old man and his father.
(Elder Chen Zhiyuan)
The mother died earlier than the father
88 years later, the child who was not yet born is now an old man, "I have been snuggling in my mother's arms for only two months, and my father has never seen it."
Although he never experienced the love of his parents in his life, Chen Zhiyuan always mourned whenever he talked about them, "When I was young, I rarely mentioned my father and mother, and I couldn't stand it emotionally, at that time, as long as the radio broadcast memoirs of revolutionary martyrs, I cried. Later, as I grew older, my feelings slowly calmed down, and I could face the untimely death of my parents..."
On the eve of Chen Zhiyuan's birth, the CPC Central Committee decided to transfer Chen Tanqiu and Xu Quanzhi to work in the Central Soviet Region. At that time, Xu Quan's direct delivery period was approaching, so the organization decided that Chen Tanqiu would take the first step, and Xu Quanzhi would go to the Soviet District after giving birth to the child.
The couple decided to send the first two children to their grandmother's house to raise, and the upcoming child was to be sent to huanggang's hometown in Hubei Province. In the family letter, Chen Tanqiu "asked for help" from his third and sixth brothers: "After this birth, I am ready to entrust someone, but I don't know if the sixth sister-in-law has a child?" If not, can I take it back to raise him?" In this way, the life of the two children and Chen Zhiyuan, who has not yet been born, was arranged, and Chen Tanqiu left.
Unfortunately, Xu Quanzhi was arrested and killed after giving birth to a child, and 10 years later, Chen Tanqiu was arrested and killed by the enemy in Xinjiang, and his son Chen Zhiyuan, whom he had never met, was separated from yin and yang.
For a long time, Chen Zhiyuan did not want to touch everything about his parents, it was like a scar on his heart, and it hurt whenever he touched it.
"I was born in April and my mother was arrested in June. My mother sent me to a family named Pan at the Shanghai work site, and my aunt took me back to Wuhan. After arriving in Wuhan, it was my eighth aunt who brought me back to my hometown. Chen Zhiyuan recalled that in April 1933, Chen Zhiyuan was born in Shanghai, by which time his father had already gone to the Central Soviet District. More than two months after Chen Zhiyuan was born, his mother was arrested and imprisoned by the Kuomintang authorities for being betrayed by traitors, and died in February of the following year at the age of 31 in Yuhuatai, Nanjing.
Chen Zhiyuan pointed to the picture of his mother in the bookcase and said, "This is the last thing she left in prison." "Xu Quan's straight hair in the photo is a bit messy, his face is clear, and his eyes are resolute." The elders said that my brother and I were very much like my father, my sister was like my mother, and my mother was very beautiful. Chen Zhiyuan likes to use the word "snuggle" to describe this short intimate time with his mother, although the memory is mutilated, it is full of temperature and texture.
Chen Tanqiu and Xu Quanzhi
My father was concerned with the survival of the country
Chen Zhiyuan was raised by his uncle and aunt. In 1953, Chen Zhiyuan was admitted to the History Department of Nankai University, and after graduation, he taught in Nankai, he once deliberately avoided studying his father's experience, until later, realizing the indispensable revolutionary spirit education of martyrs, he began to collect and sort out his parents' revolutionary years and revolutionary spirit historical materials.
Chen Tanqiu's original name was Chen Cheng, the character Tanqiu, Hubei Huanggang people, because the fifth brother was a member of the League who participated in the Xinhai Revolution, Chen Tanqiu was influenced by his revolutionary ideas from an early age.
In 1916, Chen Tanqiu was admitted to the English Department of the Higher Normal College (the predecessor of Wuhan University) and became an active member of the school, and in the May Fourth Movement in 1919, he was the leader of the parade, and was selected as a Wuhan student representative to contact the local student federations in Shanghai. By reading the "New Youth" magazine sponsored by Chen Duxiu and studying Marxist-Leninist books with Dong Biwu, Chen Tanqiu accepted communism ideologically. After graduating from university in the autumn of the same year, he worked as a reporter for a news agency and worked as an English teacher at The Wuhan Middle School presided over by Dong Biwu. In July 1921, Chen Tanqiu and Dong Biwu took a steamship together to represent the Wuhan Party Organization of the COMMUNIST Party of China and went to Shanghai to participate in the First Congress of the Communist Party of China. Under the cover of his status as a teacher, he taught at the Hubei Women's Normal School, guiding students to oppose feudalism, cut their hair short, and read new books. When Xu Quanzhi was looking for revolutionary faith, Chen Tanqiu also encountered his own love in the revolution, and Xu Quanzhi, the backbone of the "female teacher study tide", deeply attracted Chen Tanqiu with strength and bravery, and the two became revolutionary partners.
For Chen Tanqiu, from a progressive student to a patriotic journalist to one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party, on the shores of the South Lake, this 25-year-old young man completed the most perfect transformation in his life and embarked on the road of revolution.
In 1933, Chen Tanqiu went to work in the Central Soviet Region, in August 1935, Chen Tanqiu went to Moscow to attend the Seventh Congress of the Communist International, and then participated in the work of the delegation of the Communist Party of China to the Communist International, and returned to China in May 1939 as the representative of the CPC Central Committee in Xinjiang and the head of the eighth route army office in Xinjiang. On September 17, 1942, Chen Tanqiu was arrested, and on September 27, 1943, he was secretly killed by the enemy in Xinjiang, and since then, Chen Zhiyuan and his father, who have never met, have been separated from yin and yang.
It wasn't until he graduated from junior high school that Chen Zhiyuan saw his father's photo for the first time, and looking at his spirited father in the photo, he felt both familiar and strange. "I can't imagine that my father had such a firm faith and such a strong integrity."
After growing up, Chen Zhiyuan slowly understood his father, "He takes the overall situation into account, does not care about personal gains and losses, gives up his small family for everyone, and is a Communist Party member who cares about the survival of the country."
Chen Tanqiu in Tianjin
In 1953, at the age of 20, Chen Zhiyuan was admitted to Nankai University, and he left Hubei to begin a career of exploration alone in Tianjin.
Chen Zhiyuan has long regarded Tianjin as his second hometown, in addition to Tianjin witnessing his youth, prime and old age, but also because this was once the place where his father Chen Tanqiu worked.
From 1928 to 1929, Chen Tanqiu, as a central inspector, twice went to Tianjin to inspect the Work of the Shunzhi Provincial Party Committee. On June 29, 1928, Chen Tanqiu arrived in Tianjin, and on this trip, he was responsible for rectifying the work of the party organization in the north together with Comrade Liu Shaoqi as the special commissioner of the central government stationed in Shunzhi. At this time, Tianjin was in the midst of white terror, and the party organization was seriously damaged.
In the work of rectifying the party organizations in the north, Chen Tanqiu and Liu Shaoqi conducted social investigations in the Baoding, Tangshan, and Beiping areas, and also founded the publication "The Way Out," which specifically reflects the work of the party organizations in the north, and the journal is edited by Chen Tanqiu. "During the investigation, my father found that some of the party members did not know their way out, and the masses did not understand the Communist Party, so they needed a publication to publicize the party's principles and policies." Chen Zhiyuan said that "The Way Out" has a total of 13 issues, and some of them have been preserved in the Zhou Deng Memorial Hall.
At this time, Zhou Enlai came to Tianjin from Shanghai, listened to chen Tanqiu and Liu Shaoqi's reports, was very happy, praised them for their good method of "speaking with facts," and Zhou Enlai also published an article in "The Way Out" under the pseudonym "Wu Hao" to encourage and support their work.
At the end of 1928, the enlarged meeting of the Shunzhi Provincial Party Committee was held in Dajili after the opening of the Church in the French Concession of Tianjin, and at this meeting, Chen Tanqiu was elected as the propaganda director of the Shunzhi Provincial Party Committee. In mid-July 1929, Chen Tanqiu received instructions from the central authorities and returned to work at the central authorities.
"In less than a year in Tianjin, my father wrote 9 articles, mainly work reports, which were reported to the Party Central Committee, and these reports sought truth from facts and played a key role in the future of the Northern Party." Chen Zhiyuan said.
Most of Chen Zhiyuan's understanding of Chen Tanqiu's revolutionary experience in Tianjin comes from his father's biography and related materials, but he knows very little about his father's life in Tianjin. "At that time, Tianjin was under the shroud of white terror, and Communist Party members, including Liu Shaoqi, Zhou Enlai, and Chen Tanqiu, were all disguised and had no place to live." Chen Zhiyuan said.
A lifetime of searching for the footprints of his father
On the bookcase behind Chen Zhiyuan, the wooden photo frame was placed with photos of Chen Tanqiu and Xu Quanzhi, and a pair of red lovers did not leave a photo, no photo of their parents, Chen Zhiyuan put their photos in a photo frame.
Although he and his father have never met, Chen Zhiyuan has spent his whole life searching for his father's footprints.
Chen Zhiyuan has visited the Chen Tanqiu Former Residence Memorial Hall in Huanggang, Hubei Province, many times, and when he saw the information photos about his father, he was full of emotions, "My father's thinking has always been very progressive, it is said that in the small rural villages at that time, my father wore shorts, cut braids, and carried a school bag to a new primary school, which can be described as the first to open up the atmosphere."
Chen Zhiyuan traveled to Xinjiang three times to commemorate the memory of his father where he last fought. "At the memorial hall of the Eighth Route Army Office in Xinjiang, I saw that my father's bookshelf was full of history books, and I had been engaged in history teaching and research all my life, which was also a tacit understanding and inheritance with my father." In 2004, the First Party Branch of the Nankai University Library organized Party Day activities at the site of the First Congress of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai and on the red boat in Jiaxing, Zhejiang, and Chen Zhiyuan's daughter Chen Xueqing joined the party on the red boat. Chen Zhiyuan went with his daughter, and he not only witnessed the glorious moment when his daughter joined the party, but also boarded the "red boat with one leaf" that carried the hope of the nation, "I carefully looked at the place where my father once fought, looked for my father's seat on the boat, and imagined him sitting there." Recalling this experience, Chen Zhiyuan's heart is still excited.
(Chen Zhiyuan and his daughter in Jiaxing South Lake)
Influenced by the red family style, Chen Zhiyuan taught and educated people when he was young, and After retirement, Chen Zhiyuan often went to talk about the history of red. Today, the 88-year-old Chen Zhiyuan still insists on reading books and newspapers every day, this year is the 100th anniversary of the founding of the party, Chen Zhiyuan said, for many years, he has been thinking, must live healthily, with the DNA of his parents to see what the country looked like when the party was 100 years old. "I would like to say to my parents that future generations have not failed to live up to their expectations, that the country's development has changed historically more than it did when they sacrificed, and that I believe that it will be even more brilliant in the future."
Jinyun News reporter Lao Yunfei