Comrade Shi Ping, a veteran of the New Fourth Army and former deputy director of the Standing Committee of the Shanghai Municipal People's Congress, died in Shanghai on June 29, 2024, at the age of 113. Shi Ping is the grandfather of Shi Yigong, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of Westlake University. The old article "Shi Ping: An Idealistic Groundhog" (originally published in Wen Wei Po on 11 April 2015) is republished for the benefit of readers.
"I'm a groundhog." Shi Ping wrote in his autobiography. Born in 1911 in Dayao, Yunnan Province, he joined the First Revolution in Kunming in 1926, and since then, he has been like a "groundhog with powerful front paws, crawling in the arms of Mother Earth, pulling soil from the east and west, planting flowers, and removing miscellaneous weeds."
When he was a student at Zhejiang University, Shi Ping actively participated in the "December 9" anti-Japanese salvation movement, and twice confronted Chiang Kai-shek's anti-Japanese proposals. During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation, he served as a local party leader under Su Yu and Chen Pixian of the New Fourth Army. In 1957, when he was the party secretary of China Agricultural University, he was involved in the "anti-rightist" movement, and after that, the "groundhogs" suffered huge disasters ...... censorship, criticism, and imprisonment.
It was not until the end of the Cultural Revolution that Shi Fang was rehabilitated. At the age of 67, he came to East China Normal University and served as the first secretary of the party committee. This loyal groundhog continued to bravely pluck the soil, plant flowers, and remove turnips.
Not long ago, Shi Ping was selected into the third batch of the list of the older generation of educators in the Republic. The reporter met him in the ward of Huadong Hospital, a 105-year-old man with white hair and red face, physically and mentally healthy, reading books and newspapers every day, and not having a moment to spare. He remains concerned about the current state of higher education in the country and offers many forward-looking insights into the development and prospects of universities.
"Born at the right time." Shi Ping described his 105 years of life to reporters, which was a major historical period in modern China's struggle for national independence and national prosperity, and his life picture scroll also unfolded in the ups and downs of this era. Therefore, Shi Ping felt obligated to tell young people about this history: "To tell others how the current situation of our country has evolved and developed, and what valuable lessons there are." Only when young people are aware of the past can they take over the baton from our hands and fulfill the historical responsibility they shoulder. ”
Twice confronted Chiang Kai-shek
Shi Ping's great-grandfather was a Ming Jing Jinshi, and his grandfather was a Gongsheng. Although it is a scholarly family, when it came to his father's generation, the family was in the middle of the road, and was engaged in grain harvesting, winemaking, pig raising, and small business. Although his family was poor, his mother knew the importance of studying, and she had to send her son to Kunming to attend middle school in sprifty.
At the beginning of 1926, when Shi Ping left Dayao, this ancient mountain city was under the rule of the warlords of the Republic of China. The strong become soldiers and die for their lives, or take risks and become bandits." Shi Ping's grandparents had four brothers, the youngest of whom was called Xiao Mingye. Due to the withering of his hometown, Xiao Ming Ye had nowhere to make a living, so he could only watch his beloved girl become a prostitute because of poverty, and he himself was urged by tuberculosis to starve to death in a dilapidated temple of the God of Wealth. He was put into a "coffin" made of several thin wooden planks, and at night he was gnawed away by wolves, and his body was gone.
The young Shi Ping experienced this scene and felt extremely painful in his heart. When he left his hometown to study junior high school in Kunming, he first heard about "communism" and was fascinated by it, and at that time, in his ignorant cognition, in a society that eradicated injustice, the tragedy of Xiao Mingye would not be repeated.
In the long life since then, "childhood has always followed me into, under, and outside my life journey with different shades of branding", which finally made Shi Ping determine the distant light of Jinggang Mountain as a guide for his life's actions. In 1935, North China was in an emergency, and in Beiping, the "December 9" anti-Japanese salvation movement launched by Communist Party members as the backbone set off a climax.
Zhejiang University, where Shi Ping works, was the first to respond to the student movement in Beiping. On December 11, the Hangzhou Student Federation was established, and Shi Ping was elected as the chairman of the Hangzhou Student Federation. On December 16, the Hangzhou Federation of Students secretly held an executive committee and decided to occupy the railway station and take the train to Nanjing to force the Kuomintang to resist the Japanese.
Zhejiang is close to the Nanjing Nationalist Government and Chiang Kai-shek's hometown, and the student tide of Zhejiang University was a great blow to him, and he decided to personally go to Zhejiang University to "lecture" to the students.
On January 10, 1936, when the snow began to fall, the campus of Zhejiang University, which was shrouded in severe cold, ushered in an "uninvited guest". On the morning of the same day, Shi Ping and Yang Guohua, vice chairman of the Federation of Students, received a notice that Chiang Kai-shek was already in the principal's reception room and wanted to "summon" the leaders of the student movement. This was not the first time Shi Ping had seen Chiang Kai-shek. In 1931, after the "September 18" incident, Shi Ping, as the leader of the Zhejiang Student Union, led more than 2,000 students to Nanjing by train, and went straight to the auditorium of the Central University to meet Chiang Kai-shek and bitterly express his anti-Japanese demands. On that occasion, Chiang Kai-shek replied to the students that he would immediately set off to the north to resist the Japanese. The students believed it and found out that they had been deceived when they returned to Hangzhou.
The consequences of the second histological wave are clearly much more severe. Shi Ping recalled, "Chiang Kai-shek wore a yellow tweed tunic, no belt, no epaulettes, no collar badges, and no hat on his bald head." As soon as they met, he said menacingly: "Shi Eryi (Shi Pingyuan's name), you have instigated the student tide and destroyed the normal order of the school, you must immediately restore the order of the school and resume classes!" ”
Shi Ping replied: "Asking the government to resist the war is the opinion of all our students, and I can't do it if I want to resume classes." ”
Chiang Kai-shek interrupted him and shouted: "You are the leader of the students, and what the leader says, you must obey below." ”
Shi Ping still repeated: "I can't do it." ”
On the afternoon of the second day, Chiang Kai-shek sent another car to take Shi Ping and Yang Guohua to his "Chenglu" villa. This time, his face was calm, there was no anger, and his tone was kind. The talks lasted for an hour, and most of the time was his monologue, which was nothing more than theories such as "study hard" and "be safe inside the outside". Later, after Shi Ping returned to school, the Federation of Students held a meeting and decided to continue the strike.
Chiang Kai-shek's continued boycott was thoroughly enraged, and his threats followed: Shi and Yang would leave the school immediately, and if there was any further disobedience, the university would be dissolved immediately. After discussion, Shi Ping and Yang Guohua lived outside the school. After Chiang Kai-shek left Hangzhou, they returned to school. Later, the Kuomintang Nanjing government was forced to remove the reactionary president, and the famous scientist Professor Zhu Kezhen served as the president. After Zhu Kezhen took office, he restored Shi Ping and Yang Guohua's student status, and awarded them graduation certificates from Zhejiang University.
"He called me Grandpa, not No. 276"
In January 1938, Shi Ping officially joined the Communist Party of China. From then on, under the direct leadership of the party, he fought in the north and south of the great river, and served as secretary of the county party committee, political commissar of the regiment, deputy commander and commander of the county anti-Japanese self-defense force in Zhejiang, Jiangsu, Anhui and other places, and participated in the whole process of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the War of Liberation until the founding of New China.
In 1953, Shi Ping was transferred to Beijing Agricultural University as vice president and head of the party group. At that time, the ultra-left ideology was already surging in universities. Professor Cai Xu, an expert in wheat breeding and cultivation, was labeled as "idealistic", and the new wheat varieties he cultivated were not only not allowed to be exhibited and promoted, but even criticized.
The fundamental reason for Professor Cai Xu's encounter was that universities at that time mixed academic issues with political issues. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, the Agricultural University was divided into "Mendelists" and "Michurins". The "Michurinists" came from the Soviet Union, which denied Mendel's biological genetics with the doctrine of "genes" at its core. The original teachers of Beijing Agricultural University were all learned from Europe, the United States and Japan, and believed in Mendel's theory. Professor Cai Xu's criticism led to serious antagonism among teachers. When Shi Ping took office, he first had to solve this problem.
"At that time, I thought that idealism or materialism should be tested by results." Shi Ping said that Cai Xu's new wheat varieties can resist rust and increase yields, which has not only been proven in experimental fields, but also has good results after being popularized among farmers. After obtaining the consent of the higher authorities, Shi Ping organized the party organization of Beijing Agricultural University and the party members directly involved in the matter to conduct a public review, and appointed Professor Cai Xu as the head of the Department of Agronomy.
However, the "wheat incident" is only a prelude to an even bigger storm ahead. In the summer of 1958, the "pompous wind" intensified, and no one was spared destruction.
How much wheat can be produced per acre of land? At that time, the average yield per mu of land in the United States was less than 400 catties. The North Agricultural University signed a contract with the nearby Malianwa Commune to convert the commune's land into a school farm, and teachers and students worked with the farmers to farm the land. If the output decreases, the school will compensate for it, and if the production is excessive, it will be distributed to the farmers according to work. The output of Malianwa Commune in the previous year was an average of 150 catties per mu, and after scientific management, the output doubled to 300 catties per mu. But this achievement was "born at the wrong time", and after Kang Sheng came to inspect the school, he spread it as a joke: "The yield of ordinary farmers in China is more than a few thousand catties per mu, what is the use of agricultural universities?" ”
"I also let go of the satellite at that time, and now that I think about it, I was knocked unconscious." Shi Ping said. Infected by the "satellite fever", he led the teachers and students of the school to work all night to complete the transplantation of 145 acres of late rice. In order to ensure that the seedlings do not rot under high-density planting, they designed a set of technical measures for ventilation and light transmission. After more than 20 days, the ears were pulled out of the ground, and the ears were drawn neatly, and the bulbs would not sink when they were put up. I thought that the success of the new technology was in sight, but a month later, a strong northwest wind caused all the green ears of rice to turn into white ears, and the grains were not harvested.
From the "Anti-Rightist Movement" to the "Release of Satellites", Shi Ping's ideological split began from this: "Can an ordinary party member distinguish right from wrong from the major decisions made by the Party Central Committee? This is what I want to be a 'two-faced person', both real and fake, true and false. Being a 'two-faced person' is the deepest pain in the heart of a true Communist Party member. ”
However, after the "Lushan Conference" convened by the CPC Central Committee, Shi Ping, who considered himself to be quite "leftist," was still criticized by name at the meeting of the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee and labeled a "right-leaning opportunist." From 1962 to 1967, he was "briefly rehabilitated", but the ensuing "Cultural Revolution" dragged him into the darkest period of his life.
On the afternoon of December 3, 1968, Shi Ping was escorted to the second floor of a building by two people. Walking down the long cement passage to the end, he was wheeled into a room, and the sound of iron bolts pulling and clicking locks behind him told him that he was really in prison.
This is a secret prison set up by the "Gang of Four" in Shanghai, and Shi Ping's prison number is "No. 276". The cell is small, with barbed wire fence around the window, through which you can see the holly and sycamores outside, and outside is the forbidden area of the prison, where few people walk, and where the vegetation naturally withers and where a flock of sparrows thrives. During his prison life, Shi Ping witnessed this group of sparrows flying, foraging, reproducing, and training their children, for four full spring and autumn periods, and eight generations of descendants. Every day, he looked out the window and looked at the free creatures in a foolish way, which was one of the few pleasures of his life behind bars.
One of the tasks in prison is pulling weeds. Shi Ping likes to pull weeds under the bamboo fence on the side, so that he can peek through the cracks in the fence to peek at the people in the world outside. Once, when he was looking out in silence like this, a little boy of three or four years old came up from the sidewalk, crouched in front of him, and asked, "Old man, is it useful for you to pluck the dog's tail grass?" Can you give me one? ”
"He called me Grandpa, not No. 276." That salutation seemed to drag Shi Ping out of hell on earth for a short time, "I am a human being all of a sudden, a child's grandfather." My soul flew to a rational, just, and civilized society. He trembled and plucked up a number of fat dog's tail grasses, which were shoved into the child's hands through the cracks in the fence. That day, the child held his hand full of dog's tail grass, said goodbye to Shi Ping, and left step by step, until the figure disappeared, but he still stayed on the edge of the fence for a long time, reluctant to leave.
In 1973, Shi Ping was released from prison and went to a cadre school to undergo labor reform, and was not completely rehabilitated until the end of the Cultural Revolution. Before he was imprisoned, he only had a few strands of silver on his ears and temples, but now he is full of gray hair.
Bringing the wind of democracy to the campus
"If we want to run higher education well, we can't be 'left.'" To this day, when Shi Ping talks about education, he still speaks with this sentence, "I thought so then, and I still think so now." ”
East China Normal University was one of the hardest hit areas of the Cultural Revolution. At that time, the teaching order of the school was seriously disrupted, and a large number of intellectuals were criticized and persecuted, of which more than 500 were put on file for examination. In 1978, Shi Ping was transferred to East China Normal University as the first secretary of the Party Committee. After taking office, the first major task he grasped was to make drastic efforts to set things right and completely correct unjust, false and wrongly decided cases.
The sensational "Wang Shenyou case" was completely rehabilitated under Shi Ping's vigorous appeal. Wang Shenyou was originally a student of the Department of Physics of East China Normal University, and was admitted to China Normal University in 1962 with excellent results. During his university years, in his diary and long letters to his girlfriend, he explicitly stated that he would oppose personal superstition and correct the mistakes of political movements such as the anti-rightist, anti-rightist and "Cultural Revolution"; He advocated respecting objective laws, developing the commodity economy, breaking the isolation of the country from the outside world, and opening up to the outside world. In September 1976, Wang Shenyou was arrested as a counter-revolutionary and executed in April 1977 at the age of 32.
After reading Wang Shenyou's "handwritten confession", Shi Ping deeply felt that this was a great injustice. He decided to use the rights granted to Communist Party members by the party constitution to write directly to the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection and the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China in his personal name, demanding that Wang Shenyou be rehabilitated.
Not long after, under the direct interrogation of the party Central Committee, the "Wang Shenyou case" was retried and a conclusion was reached: Comrade Wang Shenyou was a good young man who did not die during the period when the "Gang of Four" was rampant, but was executed after the "Gang of Four" was smashed. Shi Ping personally presided over the aftermath of the family, and he said to Wang Shenyou's father: "You have raised an amazing son. When Wang Shenyou's father heard this, he shed tears on the spot.
From 1978 to 1983, Shi Ping played the role of a reformer in the nearly six years of ECNU, implementing a series of reforms and construction at the institutional level, bringing the wind of democracy to the campus. His former colleague, Wang Xiangyun, the former director of the school office of East China Normal University, said that in those years, Shi Ping was often accompanied by reporters, because "if you follow him, you can publish news."
One example is the democratically recommended vice-principal. At that time, the age structure of the leadership of East China Normal University was on the high side, and the selection of young cadres was a top priority. Shi Ping put forward a new idea, in which the masses democratically recommended a vice principal from among the young teachers of the whole school. This proposal has been met with skepticism and opposition: the presidents and vice-presidents of mainland institutions of higher learning, which have traditionally been appointed by higher-level organizations, now seem to be contrary to the principles of the organization by allowing them to be elected by the masses.
Shi Ping responded: "It is reasonable for us to mobilize the masses, follow the mass line, and democratically recommend vice presidents; After the recommendation is made, it is also legal to be appointed with the approval of the superior. As long as it is reasonable and legal, others have nothing to criticize. ”
In 1979, Yuan Yunkai, then 49-year-old head of the Department of Physics, was appointed vice president of ECNU after a democratic election. He was promoted to principal in 1984 and was re-elected for a further term, serving 13 years in leadership positions.
The democratic recommendation of school leaders was the first among colleges and universities in the country at that time. Later, in order to solve the problem of foreign language teachers, Shi Ping was even more bold and innovative, and was the first to publish recruitment advertisements in newspapers. On March 29, 1979, East China Normal University published a recruitment notice in Wen Wei Po, welcoming more than 800 applicants, many of whom had studied abroad, obtained degrees, were proficient in a certain foreign language, could teach and translate, and understood a certain professional discipline. They have been implicated in political movements, have had historical problems, and have even been sentenced. However, Shi Ping believes that as long as the issue has been examined clearly, past history should not be an obstacle to hiring. This concept of opening up to the society and "using talents without sticking to one pattern" was an "unprecedented" move in the school and society at that time.
Holding the "Passing Stick" of Idealism
In 1985, 74-year-old Shi Ping retired. The following year, he traveled to the Great Northwest and fulfilled a dream that he had never forgotten as a teenager.
In the 1930s, when Shi Ping was a student at the College of Agriculture of Zhejiang University, he was interested in using modern science and technology to plant trees in the desert and Gobi to stop the encroachment of wind and sand. After his retirement, he went to the northwest twice and took pictures of this magnificent mountain and river with his camera.
Shi Ping, who is in his late teens, is also fascinated by photography. When he was in middle school, he witnessed the "April 12" coup d'état, saw Chiang Kai-shek's betrayal of the revolution and purge the Communist Party, and once became discouraged in politics, turned around and buried his head in Western watercolor paintings, and even won the first place in the Kunming Art School. However, Shi Ping, who was enlightened by the Great Revolution, did not choose this path in the end, but heeded the call of his heart and devoted himself to the cause of "removing soil and removing turnover" for the republic. In the old age, the footsteps of the "groundhog" were finally suspended, and the hobbies and dreams of childhood seemed to light up another youth of the old man. Shi Ping devoted the aesthetic cultivation he cultivated as a young man to photography, and when the reporter met him in the hospital room, a digital camera was placed in the center of his desk.
On the walls of the ward hung several photographs of him, as well as a calligraphy work by a calligrapher to describe his later years: "The old age became more youthful and frenzied, and he set sail again. ”
The elderly are still paying attention to the education of colleges and universities. Although he has been away from his job for a long time, he still remembers his educational ideals: "I once went to the United States to study and saw that their teachers and students were very equal. Students can study their homework on their own and then bring questions to class to discuss with the teacher. In one class, the teacher didn't talk much, and most of the time it was discussed. I think this format is very good, and universities should promote this kind of 'face-to-face' teaching. ”
Shi Ping's picture of the university is one in which the "walls" of the university are torn down, classrooms, laboratories and libraries are open to all, and everyone has access to the resources of higher education. From kindergarten onwards, the cost of education is borne by the state. In college, students are no longer tied to a particular school, they can choose their preferred courses as long as they wish, and they can graduate after completing the credits. After graduating from university, students can still come back to attend lectures, and as long as they pass the assessment, they can get a master's degree or a doctorate.
Such an educational idea, even in the eyes of his juniors, seems too "ahead of its time". But when the old man spoke of all this, he was sincere, his eyes were firm, and he still shone with the idealism of his youth. Over the past century, it is the struggle of tens of millions of idealists that has paved the way for China's strong country, and now, this 100-year-old man hopes that young people can take over the "baton" of their idealism: "You were born in an era of openness, on the cusp of the world trend, than the older generation, you know more, think wider, stand higher, see farther, so you will run better and faster than us." ”
Wenhui
Editor: Xiang Yanhong