On July 30, Mr. Wang Xiaobo, "an outstanding representative of Taiwan compatriots, an outstanding leader, theoretician, and a social activist of the patriotic reunification camp of Taiwan compatriots," died of illness in Taipei.
On August 8, Mr. Wang Xiaobo's ashes were scattered in the Taiwan Strait.
On September 3rd, at the venue of the "Professor Wang Xiaobo Memorial Meeting", Yang Zujun, who had accompanied the veterans back to his hometown, sang "Beautiful Island" and the melody of the girls' chorus "My Motherland" and "Yellow River Concerto" echoed in turn, showing Mr. Wang Xiaobo's wonderful life on both sides of the Taiwan Strait to "be a peaceful and prosperous Chinese".
The Righteous
"To be a peaceful and prosperous Chinese" is not a slogan for Mr. Wang Xiaobo, but a belief that grows out of the suffering of blood and tears. In 1953, on the night of the Lantern Festival when he was 9 years old, his mother Zhang Liman was arrested at home in Taichung, and he was righteous in taipei's Racecourse Execution Ground that year, and his father was imprisoned for "knowing the bandits and not reporting them", and he and his two younger sisters have since become "bandit spies" Children who have been suffering and bullying. In 1973, Wang Xiaobo was arrested and interrogated for his ideological views that were not tolerated by the Kuomintang authorities at the time, and was later dismissed from his teaching post by the Philosophy Department of National Taiwan University. Huang Zhixian, a veteran media personality in Taiwan, once said: "How many people are rich and prosperous because of their political suffering experience, and it is too easy for Teacher Xiaobo to get these, but he does not take these into account." ”
What does Wang Xiaobo see in his eyes? He wrote a home letter from the United States to his uncle on the mainland in 1980, saying: "The tragedy of our family is also part of the tragedy of China, we do not complain about the sky and do not distinguish others, we only hate that China is not strong, we do not fight for it, we should only wipe away our tears and fight for China's tomorrow, and hope that our tragedy will not repeat itself in our children and grandchildren." ”
It is precisely because of this kind of mentality that when Taiwan compatriots first arrived on the mainland in 1987, they saw mostly backward places and even disliked them, and what Wang Xiaobo saw was: "Today's China is not only an independent country, but also a country with the ability to defend its own independence." When Wang Xiaobo's parents and his family suffered many hardships in the past hundred years, when his father Wang Jianwen died, Wang Xiaobo wrote: "In your next life, you will be a peaceful and prosperous Chinese." In an interview with reporters, Wang Xiaobo once said that only by reunifying the two sides of the strait can we open up a peaceful and prosperous era for the Chinese nation. Because of this belief, he experienced the "two Chiang Kai-shek" and "Li Bian" periods in Taiwan all his life, and until the last moment, whether he was persecuted, attacked, or ridiculed, his position never wavered.
Professor Liu Yuanjun, former president of Soochow University, said at the commemoration: "We are commemorating a great national righteous man today. ”
scholar
Professor Zhu Yunpeng recalled at the commemorative meeting that Wang Xiaobo presided over the fine-tuning of the syllabus, saying that what all our group members admired most was his willpower and courage, and no matter who accused us, he said "no problem, I can argue with him openly." This kind of courage comes from Mr. Wang Xiaobo's solid academic foundation, his writings and other works, philosophical history and history, and after being dismissed from National Taiwan University, he can be promoted from lecturer to professor all because of his research strength.
Ma Ying-jeou, former leader of the Taiwan region, said at the commemorative meeting: "Brother Xiaobo does not believe that the Taiwanese who have been under Japanese colonial rule for 50 years will oppose nationalism and support colonialism; he only believes that wherever there is oppression, there will be resistance, and he believes that the people of Taiwan are by no means born submissive to imperialist colonial rule. With limited resources, he went all out to collect all kinds of literature on Jiang Weishui, and visited the anti-Japanese elders in Taiwan, restored the history of Taiwan's anti-Japanese resistance, and presided over the publication of the "Complete Works of Jiang Weishui". Ma Ying-jeou said that it was precisely because of Wang Xiaobo's research results that he "knew" Jiang Weishui, "Sun Yat-sen of Taiwan."
Wang Xiaobo's research on the history of Taiwan's anti-Japanese resistance is also included in the Memorial Hall of the Chinese Min anti-Japanese War in Beijing. In the process of historical research, he realized that there was no history of the anti-Japanese resistance in Taiwan, and that the record was only the execution confession of the Japanese colonial ruler, so that posterity mistook the anti-Japanese Shilin Shaomao as a "bandit". Therefore, in 1984, Wang Xiaobo wrote an appeal: "If we cannot immediately rescue the documents of the history of the Taiwan compatriots' anti-Japanese resistance, after this generation of anti-Japanese Compatriots has passed, the heroes and martyrs of the Taiwan compatriots can only write their history in terms of Japanese accounts. ”
Wang Xiaobo's wife, Song Yuan, said that in order to study that period of history, Wang Xiaobo "nibbled" the "Taiwan Minbao" of the Japanese occupation era every day. He visited the parties, and in addition to history, he also left the last record of the lives of these respectable Taiwanese predecessors. In 1987, Wang Xiaobo promoted the establishment of the Taiwan History Research Association and served as the founding chairman of the association, and he proved with dozens of works on Taiwan history that "Taiwan culture, in a sense, has a more Heluo component than other provinces" and "the development of modern Taiwan's history is closely related to the development of the modern Chinese revolution." Someone challenged him at the forum: "Why are you opposed to 'Taiwan independence'?" He replied: I am an intellectual, not a politician, and when I study Taiwan's history, I have to put forward my opinions, and it is my responsibility.
Chivalrous
At the commemorative meeting, Li Gongqin, vice president of Shih Hsin University, recalled Wang Xiaobo, who was no longer young in his eyes: "Beef noodles, sorghum wine, riding bicycles in and out of the campus like a prince, and loudly discussing the home country in the small restaurant..."
Ma Ying-jeou said at the commemorative meeting that he met lecturer Wang Xiaobo when he was in the fourth grade of National Taiwan University, and that after 49 years of friendship, Wang Xiaobo had only asked him for two things: first, he asked for help to political prisoner Chen Mingzhong to seek medical parole; second, he requested permission for the wife of Mr. Chen Guying, who teaches at Peking University, to return to Taiwan to visit his relatives. During His term of office, Ma Ying-jeou hired Wang Xiaobo to preside over the fine-tuning of the syllabus and the revision of the high school history syllabus, and Wang Xiaobo thus became an arrow target for the "Taiwan independence" forces.
Along the way, Mr. Wang Xiaobo initiated the campus "fishing protection" movement, promoted veterans to return to their hometowns to visit their relatives, founded a unification group, founded the Straits Review, and devoted himself to the study of historical philosophy... These are not known to most taiwanese people, and what makes him most famous for "going to the page" is the revision of the history syllabus in 2009 and the fine-tuning of the syllabus in 2013, and Li Gongqin, who was invited to work with him, said at the commemorative meeting: "In some newspapers, there are more than the pages of the shooting of key criminals.", and the attacks can be imagined. However, Wang Xiaobo specifically recorded this period of work in his autobiographical "Stories of the Deceased: My Confessions": I not only corrected the Taiwan history textbooks distorted by the imperial democratization during the Lee and Bian periods, but also included the history of the Taiwan people's resistance to Japanese colonial rule and the history of participating in the revolution of the motherland in the high school history curriculum.
Zhu Yunpeng said at the commemorative meeting that it is a pity that the fine-tuning syllabus was later overturned. After the 2016 election frenzy, Taiwan has entered another phase, with democracy obscured by populism and peace on the verge of being overwhelmed by hatred.
Wu Kuncai, chairman of the "New Three-Self Movement Association for History Education" and professor of the Department of Applied History at Chiayi University, said that we will continue Mr. Xiaobo's lifelong volunteer and let Chinese culture live forever on the land of Chinese on both sides of the strait.
(Taipei, September 3, this newspaper)