Su Yun is the name that Tao Xingzhi chose for her, which means a cloud floating around, and under the careful taste, there is always a trace of unspeakable bitterness and sadness. As Xiang Ying's daughter, Xiang Suyun was only with her father for twelve days, and her memories of her mother were even more blank. "Occasionally, it's a little sentimental when I think about it, but I wasn't the only one who had this kind of experience in those days." The hearty Xiang Suyun waved his hand lightly, as if he didn't want to let himself fall into that emotion.
It has been more than 60 years since his father Xiang Ying died, and Xiang Suyun is willing to visit the New Fourth Army Memorial Hall, but rarely participates in various seminars on the New Fourth Army. "I don't know much about my father's information, and I don't want to participate in the debate as Xiang Ying's daughter. Leave the evaluation of my father to history, what history proves to be right is right, and what is wrong is wrong, and I will accept the evaluation of history. Seventy-seven-year-old Xiang Suyun has already looked down on it a lot.
In 1938, Xiang Ying took the only group photo with her children in Yan'an. On the right is Xiang Suyun.
Wandering clouds
Many people who know about my background feel that my experience is a bit unusual. I often think that, in a way, my father Xiang Ying, the experience of two generations of us, is actually a microcosm of the extraordinary years that this country has experienced.
My memories of life began with the Shanghai Labor Kindergarten, which was an orphanage run by the famous educator Mr. Tao Xingzhi. I was only two or three years old, and I didn't know where I was from, or even what my name used to be. Because I grew up in an orphanage, I grew up thinking that I didn't have a father, no mother, like the children around me, so I didn't feel how miserable I was.
At that time, of course, I didn't know that my father was Xiang Ying, the commander of the New Fourth Army. I also learned a little bit about my life experience when I grew up: I was born in 1931, and soon after my mother gave birth to me, she entrusted me to someone else, and left Shanghai to find my father in the Soviet District. One year, I met Aunt Xu Mingqing (the wife of former Minister of Agriculture Wang Guanlan), who said that she had taken me with my mother when she was in Shanghai, and after my mother left, she took me to Zhejiang and handed me over to Lin Disheng, an underground party in Zhejiang. But they couldn't support me, so they had to send me to Mr. Tao's orphanage. The aunts said that my nickname might be Ah Miao, my younger brother Xiang Xuecheng's nickname was Ah Mao, and there was a younger brother named Ah Gou who had lost his whereabouts in the Soviet area.
The name "Su Yun" was given by Mr. Tao Xingzhi. Mr. Tao's orphanage, which was in the British Concession in Shanghai, may have sensed his close ties to the Communist Party, and the United Kingdom did not let him continue to do so. The orphanage was about to be disbanded, and I remember that the female teacher sent me to Mr. Tao Xingzhi's house, sat for a long time and left. As soon as she went out, she was hit by a bicycle, and Mr. Tao was very anxious and hurriedly called someone to send the female teacher to the hospital. When I heard that, I was crying right there.
Nobody cares about me anymore. Tao Xingzhi is a celebrity, and he can't take me with him all day long. Mr. Tao once founded a Xin'an Primary School in Huai'an, Jiangsu Province, and a teacher named Guo Qing from Xin'an Primary School came to Shanghai to do business, so Mr. Tao asked Mr. Guo to take me to Xin'an Primary School. Teacher Guo asked, "What is the child's name?" Mr. Tao thought for a while and said, "It's called Su Yun, a cloud floating around in Jiangsu." "Since then, I have had an official name: Zhang Suyun. I don't know why Mr. Tao gave me the surname Zhang, maybe I think the surname Zhang is more common, but "Xiang" is still too eye-catching.
In retrospect, Mr. Tao should have known who I am. In 1930, my father went to the Soviet district and served as acting secretary of the Central Bureau of the Soviet district and chairman of the Central Revolutionary Military Commission. I remember that Mr. Tao solemnly instructed Mr. Guo: You must take this child well. Teacher Guo was unsure about me, a nameless child, and asked nervously, "What should I do if something goes wrong?" Mr. Tao said, "You just have to do your best, and you don't have to worry about what happens." "
Xin'an Primary School is a school run by Mr. Tao Xingzhi for the poor, and his philosophy is that poor children should also receive a good education. Many poor people can't afford to pay the school fees, so they can just take a bag of rice and give it to the teacher. The school seems to be a ruined temple in the village, as I still have memories of playing hide and seek behind the mud bodhisattva. At night I stayed at a farmer's house and slept with his eldest daughter.
The good times did not last long, and soon the Anti-Japanese War broke out, and the Japan soon occupied Xuzhou. The principal of Xin'an Primary School is named Wang Dazhi, and he formed the older children into Xin'an tour groups and went to various places to perform and promote anti-Japanese resistance. Principal Wang Dazhi wrote to tell Teacher Guo Qing: The situation is very tense, you should take Zhang Suyun to Xi'an. In addition to me, there was an orphan in the school, but Principal Wang only asked Teacher Guo Qing to take me alone. I think Mr. Tao should have explained my identity to President Wang.
But Mr. Guo Qing didn't know my identity, he just fulfilled his promise to Mr. Tao. He took me for a ride in a truck, and then changed to a train to Xi'an to continue on my way. I remember that at night when the car passed through Tongguan in Shaanxi, it was suddenly shelled by the Japanese army at Fenglingdu, and all the lights on the car were suddenly extinguished, and all the passengers held their breath and did not dare to make any noise. The train sped through the darkness and was lucky enough to get out of danger.
We arrived in Xi'an, completely unfamiliar. After living in Xi'an for a month, Mr. Guo ran out of money. He told me that there was a children's troupe at a certain school and wanted to send me there and find a place to teach on his own. While discussing the way out, Mr. Guo received a letter from Wang Dazhi, in which Principal Wang explained my identity, and he told Mr. Guo: As long as I bring Zhang Suyun to the Eighth Route Army Office in Xi'an, there will be a way to get there.
At that time, he did not dare to talk openly about the Eighth Route Army in Xi'an, and the director of the Eighth Route Army Office in Xi'an at that time was Wu Yunfu, that is, Wu Shaozu's father. I heard that Mr. Guo introduced me to Xiang Ying's daughter, and he let us live there first, in fact, to understand and review my identity. It was only then that I had a vague impression of who "Xiang Ying" was. Uncle Lin Boqu, who happened to be the chairman of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border District Government, also lived in the office of the Eighth Route Army, and he knew my father very well, and when he saw me, he personally sent a telegram to his father, asking him if he had a daughter like me. After getting my father's confirmation, Mr. Guo Qing and I were officially approved to go to Yan'an.
At that time, the Eighth Route Army Office in Xi'an sent many young students to Yan'an, and they were openly delivered in large trucks, about five or six vehicles at a time. I set off in April 1938, and the truck that sent me to Yan'an was a bit special, in addition to me and Mr. Guo, there were also Wang Shiying, the intelligence minister of the North China Bureau of the Communist Party of China, and a family of four, Xiao Jinguang's son, Liu Zhidan's daughter, Gao Gang's son, and Zhang Guotao's son were also among them. They were going to go to the Soviet Union, but they couldn't make it. Although Zhang Guotao had already left the Communist Party at that time, his son did not believe it and returned to Yan'an. I remember he was bigger, and although the road was bumpy, he liked to stand and look out of the window.
Twelve days of father and daughter
I grew up as an orphan, and it was really unexpected for me to see my father in Yan'an.
One day in September 1938, I was having dinner when Mr. Guo Qing came and said that your father had arrived in Yan'an, and someone had picked you up to meet him. I remember being so surprised and happy that I was so anxious that I couldn't finish my meal.
When my father was engaged in the labor movement in Wuhan, he had a comrade-in-arms named Lin Yuying, who was pseudonym Zhang Hao during the revolution. Zhang Hao sent guards to take me and Zhang Hao's two sons to a bungalow in a courtyard in Yan'an City. Seeing us coming, Uncle Zhang Hao introduced them one by one: Sitting on the bed is Dad Zhu (Zhu De), sitting there with the little girl in his arms is Dad Liu (Liu Shaoqi), and the child in his arms is Dad Liu's daughter Liu Aiqin. I remember that Liu Aiqin was only six or seven years old, wearing a small flower cloth cheongsam and combing a child's flower head. Zhang Hao told me that I would go with Dad Zhu to the welcome party to welcome your father in a while.
I later learned that my father had come to Yan'an from the southern Anhui base to hold the Sixth Plenary Session of the Sixth Central Committee, and that Yan'an had held a welcome meeting for members from other places. The welcome party was held in the auditorium of the Eighth Route Army, and I remember obediently following the adults in. The conditions of the auditorium were very simple, and people were crowded on wooden benches, but the atmosphere in the hall was very warm. After I followed up, the adults greeted each other, but I didn't know anyone. I walked up to the podium, turned around and looked at the whole room, looking for my father. Chen Yun came over and called me, "Su Yun, are you looking for your father?" He led me to a row of seats, pointed to a person next to Zhu De, and said, "Old Xiang, this is your daughter." Then he turned to me and said, "This is your father!" "
I remember my dad picking me up and putting me on his lap. He looks at me, and I look at him. He asked me, "How old are you?" What is your name? "--It's like asking someone else's child. Whatever he asked, I said, as if nothing particularly exciting. Although I have always been very envious of the children around me who have a father and mother who can be spoiled, I am still a little embarrassed after my father really suddenly "popped up", after all, I didn't see my father for the first time until I was seven and a half years old. After the meeting, my father wanted to take me back to live with me, but I felt that my father and I were still timid, and I was embarrassed, so I said that my classmates in the dormitory were waiting for me and wanted to go back to school first. So my dad sent guards to take me back to school.
The next day after school, my father came to pick me up from school, took me to the cave where he lived, and took me to the nursery to meet my younger brother, who had arrived in Yan'an a few months before me. In this way, my father and I, as well as my brother, who was four years younger than me in Yan'an Nursery School, were finally reunited in Yan'an. It's a pity that my younger brother cried desperately at night and wanted to find an aunt in the nursery school, but my father couldn't rest because of the noise, so he sent him back to the nursery school.
I remember my dad being very kind to me, he went to meetings and work during the day, picked me up at night, sent me to school in the morning, and washed my face, feet, and clothes when I had time. One day, my father invited Mr. Guo Qing to dinner, and I remember that my father personally poured wine for Mr. Guo Qing, but I snatched Mr. Guo's wine glass and said, "Mr. Guo doesn't drink, don't drink!" The two adults looked at each other and smiled.
In front of the Central Organization Department in Yan'an, Dr. Ma Haide took a photo of me, my father and my younger brother, which became a commemoration of this reunion, and it was also the only photo of our sister and brother with my father. The hat I wore in the photo was given to me by my father when he was in Yan'an. Dad smiled very happily inside, and later someone said that this was the most brilliant photo of Xiang Ying in his life. Dad was very happy, washed a lot of photos, and sent them to many friends. I went to Mother Deng in the 50s of the last century and saw this photo, and Mother Deng gave it to me.
One night, Mr. Guo came to tell me that my father had a task and was about to leave Yan'an, so he came to school during the day and wanted to come to see me again. However, our school had already taken refuge in the mountains to avoid the bombing of Japan planes, so my father and I had not had time to say goodbye and separated.
Although my father is not around, I can still feel his concern and love. Half a month later, someone in Xi'an brought me something from my father: a letter, a tube of biscuits, and a pair of gloves. When many people from the New Fourth Army came to Yan'an, they would come to the school to see me. When Xue Duqiao's wife, Luo Qiong, saw me in Yan'an, she said, "With such a pair of children, Commander Xiang is satisfied!" "Many years later, when I went to visit Uncle Chen Pixian, he specially called his wife over to see me, and it turned out that my father told Uncle Chen that I looked very much like Aunt Chen. Of course, Aunt Chen is prettier than me.
The biggest regret of my life is that I only spent 12 days with my father. To this day, I don't have any direct impression of my father's character, but the image of a "loving father" will always be deeply rooted in my memory.
The Southern Anhui Incident
The merits of the "Southern Anhui Incident" are now the focus of many scholars' research. I studied engineering, and I didn't study much about the history of the party, but I didn't start to understand this history until the 90s of the last century.
In January 1941, my father broke through with a group of men and horses and hid in a stone cave. According to the memories of people close to my father, my father was still very sad when he was on the mountain, and felt that he was very responsible for the great losses suffered by the New Fourth Army, so he decided to make a good review after coming out and make a comeback. On the night of March 23, his father, Zhou Zikun and guard Huang Cheng lived in a stone cave, and Liu Houzong shot and killed his father and Zhou Zikun in the early morning, and snatched the gold and silver dollars that his father and Zhou Zikun carried with him as military expenses, and snatched his watch and gun, and Huang Cheng, who was shot twice, escaped death.
Mr. Liu Hou is not as described in the TV series "New Fourth Army", he is Xiang Ying's personal adjutant. According to his father's secretary Gu Xueqing, Liu Hou was always the adjutant in charge of the horses in the adjutant office of the military department, and he had no contact with Xiang Ying at ordinary times. Liu Hou was tall, strong, and accurate in marksmanship, and was a good guerrilla fighter, so when he asked to stay with his father, his father naturally agreed. After his father broke out with a few people, Liu Hou always thought that his future was hopeless, he was depressed, and he kept saying "it's over", so he had the evil idea of killing people and robbing money. Poor father Hero I, who did not fall under the guns of the enemy, died at the hands of such people.
Liu Hou was caught by the Kuomintang when he descended the mountain, and the Kuomintang did not give him any preferential treatment, and released him after a long period of detention. After the liberation of the country, he went into hiding incognito, but heard that he was captured and executed in Nanchang, Jiangxi Province in early August 1952.
Ye Ting's son's name is Ye Zhengda, and he was my classmate when I studied in the Soviet Union. We had a good relationship, and he patted me on the shoulder more than once and said, "Let their father's affairs go with them, we will always be good friends." We looked at each other and smiled.
In 1945, when Chen Yi went to Yan'an for a meeting, he lived in the cave of Li Fuchun's house, and he was very good to me and my younger brother. Uncle Chen said "you have to get it", and at the same time took out money and gave 10,000 yuan of border coins per person. When I returned from the Soviet Union in 1956, I heard that Uncle Chen Yi was attending a ball at the Beijing Hotel, and I went to meet him. When Uncle Chen Yi saw me, he immediately put aside his dance partner and pulled me around the dance field, and then he was very excited to meet people and said, "This is Lao Xiang's daughter, this is Lao Xiang's daughter", and his love for me was overflowing. A woman next to him asked him puzzledly, "Who is Lao Xiang?" Uncle Chen replied in a very heavy Sichuan dialect: "Old Xiang, it's Xiang Ying!" "I don't think Uncle Chen Yi would have agreed to the remarks that provoked him and his father if he were alive.
After the "Southern Anhui Incident" in 1941, I only knew that my father's whereabouts were unknown. It wasn't until 1945, when Chen Yi went to Yan'an for a meeting, that I learned that my father had died. There doesn't seem to be any special grief, and it's only been twelve days with my father, so frankly, how deep will the feelings be? In addition, there were often parents sacrificed by classmates around them, which was also a common thing in those days. But after the "Southern Anhui Incident", I changed my name from Zhang Suyun to "Xiang Suyun", and I told myself and everyone: I am Xiang Ying's daughter.
The Mystery of Motherhood
In 1938, when Mr. Guo Qing brought me to Yan'an, I heard that my mother had just arrived in Yan'an a month earlier, and that she had left my younger brother behind, and no one had seen her since. I also missed the opportunity to meet my mother. The mother's later fate was somewhat related to Qu Qiubai. After the failure of the fifth anti-encirclement campaign in 1934, more than 10,000 people were surrounded by the enemy. At that time, Qu Qiubai, who was seriously ill, He Shuheng, who was old and frail, and his mother, who was pregnant, were evacuated together with Zhou Yuelin, the women's minister of the Central Soviet District Government. When they were captured, their mothers used fake names, and there were no flaws in the interrogation. They were in prison for more than three years, and my brother was born in a prison cell. But just when his mother and Zhou Yuelin were released on bail and Qu Qiubai was about to be freed, the Kuomintang suddenly knew Qu Qiubai's true identity and killed him.
Why did Qu Qiubai, who goes by the pseudonym "Lin Qixiang", reveal his identity? It has been a mystery for a long time. In recent years, some official publications have also published such articles, saying that my mother found her father Xiang Ying after she was released from prison, and before she could put down her luggage, her father asked her: Does Qu Qiubai's death have anything to do with you and Zhou Yuelin? The father saw that his mother looked very nervous, so he thought that his mother had betrayed Qu Qiubai, and in a fit of anger, he pulled out a pistol and shot his mother to death. I don't know where this statement came from, but it's a complete rumor.
In order to write a biography of his father, Wang Fuyi of the Academy of Military Sciences found Li Dehe, who was the commander of Xiang Ying's guard platoon. Li Dehe recalled that between February and March 1938, when Xiang Ying was in Nanchang to organize the New Fourth Army, his mother Zhang Liang took a two- or three-year-old boy to the Southeast Branch. They talked in a house, the child was led by Li Dehe to play outside the door, and they talked for about an hour, they didn't know what they were talking about, their voices were high and low, Xiang Ying's attitude was serious, but there was no shooting Zhang Liang at all. After the conversation, Xiang Ying went to Zeng Shan, deputy secretary of the Southeast Branch, and then returned to the military headquarters, and never met Zhang Liang again.
Wang Fuyi also visited Li Yiyu, former secretary general of the Military Department of the New Fourth Army and later a member of the Standing Committee of the Central Advisory Committee. Li Yilu recalled that when Zhang Liang found Xiang Ying, because Xiang Ying already knew that Zhang Liang was captured by the Kuomintang army in Fujian during the breakthrough in the spring of 1935, and the situation after the capture could not be ascertained at that time, he did not leave her, but gave her some money to let her go - I guess that my father was probably asking my mother: Qu Qiubai was killed, why did you come out alive? There must have been some suspicion of the mother as well.
It turned out later that after leaving Nanchang, the strong mother sent her younger brother to Yan'an. Xu Mingqing is the former director of the Yan'an Women's Federation, and when my mother sent her younger brother to Yan'an, she also received my mother, so "Xiang Ying killed his wife" must not exist. But since then, she has not been seen again, and no one knows her whereabouts.
In 1955, Qu Qiubai's remains were taken out of Panlonggang in Luohan Ridge, Changting, Fujian Province, and buried in the Babaoshan Revolutionary Cemetery. Qu Qiubai's lover Yang Zhihua wrote a letter to the Party Central Committee, demanding that the traitor who betrayed Qu Qiubai be caught. The relevant departments soon set up a special task force, and Zhou Yuelin, who was arrested at the same time as Qu Qiubai and knew Qu Qiubai's identity, and his mother Zhang Liang became the biggest suspects.
Zhou Yuelin is a legendary figure, in his early years he was sent to the Soviet Union to study, married Liang Baitai, the head of the Chinese labor work in Vladivostok, and in 1931 was allowed to return to China with Liang Baitai to work, leaving a pair of children in the Soviet Union, and later his whereabouts are unknown. In 1934, she was elected as a member of the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the Chinese Soviet Republic, along with 17 others, including Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Zhou Enlai, and Liu Shaoqi, and was the only woman in the Presidium. She once served as the head of the Women's Department of the Central Bureau of the Soviet District of the Communist Party of China, and in terms of seniority, she was still Deng Yingchao's superior. When the fifth anti-encirclement campaign failed, because Zhou Yuelin knew medicine, he stayed to escort Qu Qiubai. After his arrest, Zhou Yuelin was sentenced to 10 years in prison and imprisoned in Longyan Prison, where he was released on bail in 1938. Zhou Yuelin later returned to Shanghai, and after liberation, he served as an ordinary cadre in the streets. Within a few days of the good days, after the establishment of the Qu Qiubai task force, Zhou Yuelin was arrested in 1955 and sent to Qincheng Prison for reform, and in 1965 he was sentenced to 12 years in prison and sent to a factory in Shanxi for labor reform, where he suffered a lot.
Zhou Yuelin never stopped appealing, until a few years later, someone found a report in a Kuomintang newspaper that year that "the wife of the Fujian provincial secretary of the Red Communist Party surrendered to Cheng and confessed the identity of the bandit leader Qu Qiubai", and the truth about Qu Qiubai's arrest was revealed. It turned out that the traitor who betrayed Qu Qiubai was Xu Shi, the wife of Wan Yongcheng, secretary of the Fujian Provincial Party Committee of the Communist Party of China and political commissar of the Provincial Military Region. In 1979, Zhou Yuelin was rehabilitated, and she has been wronged for 25 years. After being rehabilitated, Zhou Yuelin returned to her husband's hometown of Xinchang County, Zhejiang Province to spend the rest of her life. In 1997, 91-year-old Zhou Yuelin died in Xinchang County.
What is a little comforting is that Zhou Yuelin's old age is quite stable. Xinchang County treated her very well, and someone interviewed her and wrote a biography for her. Among them, Zhou Yuelin also recalled that after Zhang Liang was released from prison, he told her that he was going to Jiangxi to find Xiang Ying. The person who wrote the biography sent me the book, but unfortunately when I saw these materials, I didn't have time to find Zhou Yuelin, and she died a year later.
My mother's name was also known after I arrived in Yan'an. When my father came to Yan'an to see me when I was seven years old, I asked him, "Where is Mom?" He just replied, "Mom is gone." "And then say nothing more. The adults around me rarely mentioned my mother's affairs, as if they were all maintaining a tacit understanding. My mother-in-law, Tu Junming, was also an old revolutionary, who opened a furniture store in Shanghai to cover the workers' movement, and occasionally she would say to me: "Your mother was very beautiful when she was young, more beautiful than you." "
Xiang Suyun learned for the first time about the appearance of his mother Zhang Liang (right) through this photo
For many years, I didn't know what my mother looked like. During the Cultural Revolution, I visited Shanghai and stayed at my husband's friend's house. One day, a friend of my friend came to visit and saw me, and suddenly said that there was a picture of my mother from the memorial hall of the "First National Congress" of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai. He made a copy of it for me, and I keep it with me, the only memento my mother left me. Judging from the photos, my mother is indeed beautiful, and I only have a chin that looks like my mother. But when I saw the photos, I didn't seem to have any special feelings, and I didn't get motherly love, so I didn't have the pain of loss.
I recently heard an update on my mother's whereabouts. At the end of last year, a reporter went to visit an old comrade of the Ministry of Public Security, who had previously been in Yan'an and had participated in the review work of some special task forces under Kang Sheng. According to his recollection, they arrested a man and two women, suspected of being Trotskyists, and asked someone to censor them, and the man who was censored by the old man was shot, and the two women were strangled by Kang Sheng's order. He heard that one of them was Xiang Ying's wife, and she betrayed Qu Qiubai. After this incident, he was almost eliminated by Kang Sheng under some pretext, but these old cadres were Luo Ruiqing's subordinates, and he asked someone to find Luo Ruiqing to save his life. When the news reached me and I asked them to take me to the old man, he was so confused that he couldn't speak. However, based on my experience in Yan'an, I think this statement is credible.
I only heard about it when I was in my seventies, how can I feel about it?
As for my mother, I only know that she is from Sichuan, but I don't know where Sichuan is, so I can't trace her family and her life experience. All I know is that she and her father fell in love with each other when they were engaged in the workers' movement in Shanghai, and they came together for a common goal. Today's young people certainly can't understand their emotions, but I think that in the minds of their parents' generation, their ideals are above all else, and they will not hesitate to sacrifice their feelings, their families, and even their lives when the need arises.
Yan'an years
After arriving in Yan'an in 1938, I was sent to study at the Lu Xun Primary School founded by Xu Teli, and in 1939 the school was renamed the "Primary School of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border District Nursery School", also known as Yan'an Nursery School. The students of Yan'an Nursery School are the children of revolutionary martyrs and the descendants of senior CCP cadres. Teacher Guo Qing was sent to Yan'an Kang University to study, and he later became the principal of the nursery primary school and became the parent of many children.
When I first arrived in Yan'an, I was only seven years old, and it was difficult for me to live independently, so I had a nanny who took care of me. At that time, there were no caves, and the bungalows we lived in in the plains were made of beds with large wooden tables, and one bed could sleep twelve or thirteen children, like a bunk. We, the children, ate and slept together, living a militarized communist life.
In Yan'an, we can see Chairman Mao at any time, and he can call each of our children by name. Once we picked a large handful of mountain flowers, and we said to the teacher: "These flowers are so beautiful, shall we dedicate them to Chairman Mao?" The teacher agreed. So a group of our dolls, lined up and sang songs, and walked towards Chairman Mao's residence. Mao Zedong was very happy to see us in front of the cave, and Jiang Qing was there at that time, and she also took out a bucket of biscuits from the cave for us to eat. Sometimes when I think about it, I miss the atmosphere of Yan'an at that time.
Because of my good memory, boldness, and lack of stage fright, I was often taken by my teacher on horseback to attend meetings or give speeches on behalf of the school, and the newspapers in Yan'an called me "a little orator". Once, my teacher took me to the Jinwudong market near the school to give a lecture on the "Action Plan" to the people who were rushing to the market. I memorized it very skillfully, and when I was talking about it, I suddenly found that the fellows standing in a circle under the stage were touching something from their arms, and then they took out a small thing, put it on their hands and pinched it, with a very crisp sound, and then he put it in his mouth and bit it, as if it was very delicious. He kept repeating this action, which aroused my curiosity, and I thought: what is he doing? What does he eat? Thinking about it, I lost my mind, forgot the program I memorized, the speech was stuck, and the audience burst into laughter. When I went back to school, I was criticized by my teacher.
I later learned that there was a shortage of water in Yan'an, the sanitary conditions were relatively poor, and many people had lice on their bodies. They used to catch lice while basking in the sun, and that fellow was catching lice on his body. The local villager also thought that if the lice ate my blood, I should eat the lice too, so that fellow was doing this just now.
Living without my parents has allowed me to develop a self-reliant and strong character since I was a child. The adults who have taken me all like me, like Cai (Chang)'s mother, Kang (Keqing)'s mother, and Ren Bishi's wife. But no matter how good they are to me, they are not their own parents, I still have to be more disciplined, this is always clear to me.
The Organization Department of the CPC Central Committee took special care of us, Chen Yun and Li Fuchun often took us to their house for dinner, and Cai Chang's mother treated us more like her own children. At that time, in Yan'an, we only had to put a toothbrush and a spoon in our pockets, and we could eat at everyone's house.
When I arrived in Yan'an, I learned that I had a younger brother here. My younger brother Xiang Xuecheng was born in prison and was delivered by Zhou Yuelin for his mother. My brother and I have a good relationship, and I usually go to Li Fuchun and Cai Chang's house the most with my brother.
Cai's mother liked me very much and taught me to wash clothes and weave clothes to mend holes. Cai's mother loves cleanliness very much, and the things on the table cannot be moved casually by others. She also told me, "It's okay for children to come and play, but you can't move my things." "Once a classmate came, just curiously flipped through it, I didn't feel any change, Cai's mother came back and asked me if anyone had touched her things.
Sometimes, after eating, Uncle Li and Cai's mother took me for a walk on the hillside behind the cave, and I also led Uncle Li's dog "Lu Lu". On the way, when I met an uncle and aunt I knew, they would come over to tease me: "How many people are in your family?" I gave the puppy a serious look and replied, "Four!" "Uncle Li and Mother Cai's daughter, Li Tete, was very jealous of me, saying that I had been with them much longer than her.
In 1943, Yan'an carried out a "rectification movement", and later Kang Sheng carried out a "rescue movement", which put everyone in danger. Our nursery school also started a "campaign to catch spies", and the teacher did not allow us to go home, so we stayed at school to carry out the "campaign". Teachers and seniors are subject to scrutiny, and each has to explain their experiences clearly, and if they don't know it, they will be suspected of being spies, and their classmates will expose each other. The school also specially organized our students to go to the auditorium to listen to some people who performed well, and we elementary school students sat down and shouted slogans to the adults.
My brother told me one thing: their teacher called a junior classmate to explain the problem, and the teacher asked him if he was a spy, and he denied it. If the teacher said that he was not honest, he would punish him for standing on a stool. The little classmate was so hungry that he couldn't stand it, and he couldn't hold on, so he reported a person to the teacher. He said that in the summer, Uncle sent a young man surnamed Li to pick him up for the summer vacation, and on the way he encountered heavy rain, the river rose very high, and Xiao Li, who was riding in front of the horse, asked me to hold his waist tightly, and he whipped a few times on the horse's back, and rushed through the river. The little classmates suspected that Xiao Li was a spy sent by the Kuomintang, because everyone was almost swept away by the flood with people and horses, and they must have no good intentions.
The teacher carefully took the notebook and wrote down the revelations of the little classmate, and then told him very satisfied that he had passed the test and could go back to the dormitory to sleep. The little classmate later heard that Jingbian County really made Xiao Li a "spy" and was very miserable. When he grew up, he regretted his ignorance when he was nine years old, hurting an unfamiliar big brother.
Teachers and students were not allowed to go home during the rectification, and it took a few months for tensions to subside.
In the summer, my brother and I went to Li Fuchun and Cai Chang's house. Uncle Li asked, "Why haven't you come home for so long?" I said, "The principal said that everyone is rectifying and can't go home." Uncle Li asked very strangely: "A group of dolls, what kind of wind is it?" He ignored my dissuasion, and immediately said: "Our school is very lively, and we still hang people up and beat them!" Everyone shouted slogans! Uncle Li listened to his brother's words very carefully, with an angry expression. He immediately picked up the phone and called Gao Gang, the person in charge of the Northwest Bureau of the Communist Party of China: "Why are we adults rectifying, and the doll is also arresting spies and beating people?!" A week later, the Northwest Bureau sent someone to the school to investigate, and the school leaders apologized to several teachers who had been wrongly corrected, admitting past mistakes.
After Li Fuchun and Cai Chang went to the Northeast, they handed me over to Ren Bishi. With these uncles and aunts taking care of me, I never felt lonely when I was in Yan'an.
past events
In 1948, the Central Committee decided to send a group of people to study in the Soviet Union, and the children of revolutionary martyrs and central leaders were selected, including Zou Taofen's son Zou Jiahua, Ye Ting's sons Ye Zhengda and Ye Zhengming, Gao Gang's son Gao Yi, Li Shuoxun's son Li Peng, and I, a total of 21 people. When we were seeing us off, the leaders said to us, "Now that the country is at war, we don't want you to fight the war, let us fight it, you should study hard, and come back to build a good new China."
The majors we studied in the USSR were chosen from the point of view of construction. Ye Ting was killed in a plane crash, and his two sons decided to build their own planes and went to the aviation academy. When Lin Hanxiong's father died, he said what Lenin said, that communism is Soviet plus electrification, so he studied hydropower. However, during the "Cultural Revolution", the central government set up a "4821 task force" to examine the 21 "Soviet repair agents" who stayed in the Soviet Union, and the name "4821" was called out at that time. Now, the members of our "4821" still get together regularly, although many of them are already in high positions, but when they get together, there is no difference in identity, and I feel like I am back to the warm memories of my old classmates.
My husband, Lin Hanxiong, is Zhang Hao's son and my classmate when he was in the Soviet Union. Now many people put Lin Yunan, Lin Yuying and Lin Biao together, calling them the three Lin brothers. The Lin family is a big family, Lin Yunan is Lin Biao's elder brother, and he was the first to come out of the revolution in the Lin family. Lin Yuying was brought out by Lin Yunan to participate in the revolution, and he assumed the pseudonym Zhang Hao during the revolution, and Lin Biao was brought out by Lin Yuying. They did come out of the Lin family, but purely in terms of blood, they were not that close.
Zhang Hao participated in the labor movement in Hubei in the early days, and his qualifications were relatively old. Before his death in 1942, he told the people around him that he would be buried on Taohualing opposite Yangjialing after his death, which meant that he would look at the Party Central Committee and Chairman Mao every day. The CCP also held a public memorial ceremony for him in Yan'an. Mao Zedong, Zhu De, Ren Bishi, Yang Shangkun, Xu Teli and others personally carried the coffin to Taohualing for burial, which was also the only time in Mao Zedong's life that he carried the coffin.
After liberation, Lin Biao has always been good to Zhang Hao's wife, that is, my mother-in-law. However, since Lin Biao and Ye Qun got married, we have had a lot less contact with their family. The mother-in-law said that Ye Qun arranged for many people from the Ye family to come to their house, and she was relatively cold to the Lin family.
We didn't go to Maojiawan to see Lin Biao very often. At that time, Lin Biao's father was still alive, and we called him "Lin Si Dad", and when we went to see Lin Si Dad, we would occasionally see Lin Biao. Lin Hanxiong's eldest brother served as deputy secretary of the municipal party committee in Harbin, and he was affected during the "Cultural Revolution", he wanted to meet "Deputy Commander Lin" in Beijing, and we called Lin Biao, but his secretary only sent a few copies of "Chairman Mao's Quotations". The mother-in-law still contacted the Lin family through Lin Biao's sister, and Ye Qun brought a message, saying that Lin Biao was not in good health and could only talk for 20 minutes. When Lin Biao came out to see us, he didn't talk much, and his face was very bad. At that time, I had already heard that Lin Biao had a lot of problems during the war, and he was afraid of light and wind. We just chatted for a while, and when we met Lin Biao's two children, we only knew that they were called Tiger and Doudou, and it was only after the "913" incident that we learned that their big names were Lin Liguo and Lin Liheng.
After the 1971 "913" incident, our family was also implicated, Lin Hanxiong, who worked in the Ministry of Water and Power, was imprisoned, and the Public Security Bureau was also stationed in our home. I was released after a year of imprisonment, and my mother-in-law, an old revolutionary, was very unconvinced and went around looking for people to complain.
Around 1975, an old friend once told us by chance: I heard that Jiang Qing and Chairman Mao had a falling out, and the letter to Chairman Mao could be directly in his hands. So we hurriedly wrote a letter to Chairman Mao in the name of my mother-in-law, reflecting the situation at home. Soon the Ministry of Water and Electricity sent someone to pick me up and meet with my mother-in-law and Lin Hanxiong, who had been detained somewhere in the General Logistics Department, and there were many members of the task force in charge of him. On October 1, 1975, Lin Hanxiong, who had been imprisoned for four years, was released. Unfortunately, my younger brother was implicated in the Cultural Revolution and died of liver cancer in 1974.
"Xiang Ying", who has been silent for so many years, has also entered the field of vision of academic circles and public commentaries in recent years, and his evaluation of that period of history has become increasingly objective. I will not participate in it as Xiang Ying's daughter, I think, it is better to leave the evaluation of my father to history, history proves that what is right is right, and what is wrong is wrong, and I accept the evaluation of history. I believe that history will eventually be restored to its true nature. These memories of my father and I are the memories of the Republic. May those sad stories forever become a thing of the past. (2008)
[Xiang Suyun (1931 - August 31, 2022), female, Han nationality, born in Wuhan, Hubei Province, was born in Shanghai. She was the daughter of Xiang Ying, an outstanding proletarian revolutionary, a famous activist of the workers' movement, and an early leader of the Party and the Red Army. 】