This year marks the 102nd anniversary of my father's birth, who devoted his life to the party's educational cause, but he rarely mentioned to us at home that he had made a special achievement for the party and the country in his lifetime. Until my death in the winter of 2007, I was invited to Beijing to attend the memorial meeting held by the Central University of Finance and Economics for my father, and I learned from the eulogy read by the school leaders that my father was "a famous economist and accountant in China", "a pioneer in the basic theory of management accounting in China", "the main founder of the discipline of management accounting in China"..... Previously, in recognition of his outstanding contributions, since October 1992, my father has been an expert in enjoying special government allowances issued by the State Council.
Professor Li Tianmin
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My father was born in 1919 in Yangzhou as a "famous family". The family lived here for 64 years from 1862 to 1926. At that time, geyuan was just a "front house and back garden" private garden located in Dongguan Street, Yangzhou City. In October 1919, my father was born in this garden. His younger brother Li Tianhe was also born here, and later became a famous Chinese-American electrical scientist and a foreign academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and returned to China in 1983 to attend the National Science and Technology Conference, where he was cordially received by Comrade Deng Xiaoping.
His father was gifted and intelligent since childhood, and in the autumn of 1933, he was admitted to the provincial Yangzhou Middle School High School, one of the four famous people in the country at that time, with the same degree. Most of the teachers hired by this school are first-class in China, such as Mr. Fan Gengyan, who teaches Chinese, Mr. Wang Jingzhai in mathematics, and Mr. Li Zhiyun in English, all of whom are famous teachers who were well-known in the teaching arena at that time. The mathematical, physical and chemical textbooks use the English textbook used by the undergraduate students of Jiaotong University, and the students are required to answer the exercises in English, which lays a very solid foundation for his father to engage in teaching and research later.
In 1936, his father graduated from high school and took the college entrance examination, and as a result, he was admitted to the Shanghai Business School, the Beiping Railway Management College of Jiaotong University and the private Hujiang University run by the American Church, respectively, and finally his father chose to study at the Beiping Railway Management College of Jiaotong University, whose dean was Xu Chengchai, then deputy director of the Bac Ninh Railway Bureau. Just one year after my father entered school, the "Lugou Bridge Incident" that shocked China and foreign countries broke out. In order to avoid the chaos of the war, the school decided to move inward to Xiangtan. Later, due to the invasion of the Japanese and Kounan, my father had to go to Shanghai and transferred to the second year of the Department of Economics of Fudan University to continue his studies.
Youth does not ask questions, and the years become their own fanghua. With the ambition of the great bird and the dream of rejuvenating the country, during his studies at Fudan University, he was bent on serving the motherland after completing his studies, so he was here and went, and he did not hesitate to study hard day and night, and finally ushered in the day of graduation from college. Since his father entered the school, his grades in each subject were "A" every semester, so he was awarded the "Commemorative General Xie Jinyuan College Scholarship" by Wen Wei Po at that time 100 silver dollars. The scholarship is only awarded to one outstanding student in each academic year of Jiaotong University and Fudan University, and the school holds an award ceremony for this purpose, and the principal personally presents the award.
Old photo of Fudan University
After graduating from college, my father thought that through so many years of hard study, he could go to the workplace to show his grand plan, but who knew that when he left fudan school, Shanghai had become an isolated island, the concession was surrounded by Japanese Koso, and the ten miles of ocean field were full of drunken dreams and deaths in whiskey, and the erosion madness in jazz music. In order to earn a living, his father was introduced by someone to work in the "Qiantai Commercial Bank". According to his father's later recollection, at that time, Shanghai Sichuan Road, Jiangxi Road area, like this kind of bank as many as a hundred, most of them are from the previous old money house, silver number reorganization, its main business is nothing more than speculation and speculation in gold, US dollar bills, Chinese and foreign securities, the business is very hot, holding senior positions in the bank, such as managers, deputy managers and Xiangli, etc., are some of the city servants who have no knowledge, my father as a newly admitted college graduate, just a general staff, but the salary, bonus is not cheap, but it is far from the ideals and interests held before. I am very confused about the future.
Just when "the mountains and rivers are full of doubts and there is no way", the good news of the victory of the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression reached Shanghai, and people rejoiced and rushed to tell each other. In October 1945, my father was admitted to the prestigious head office of the China Commerce and Commerce Bank on his own merits, and not long after, he was hired as an associate professor at St. John's University, the first cattle school in Shanghai at that time, and worked there until the liberation of Shanghai.
Head Office of Commerce and Commerce Bank of China
St. John's University
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="92" > ninety thousand miles of wind and peng zhengju</h1>
Just as my father was celebrating his 30th birthday, he suddenly heard on the radio the good news of Mao Zedong's founding ceremony at Tiananmen Square in Beijing! The People's Republic of China was founded! It was also the year of his "thirty and standing", and his father's heart was surging and his excited mood was difficult to calm down for a long time. At the beginning of the founding of New China, the education of the party and the state urgently needed a large number of teaching and scientific research talents, and upon learning of this situation, my father voluntarily gave up his high-paying position in the head office of the China Commerce and Commerce Bank and actively devoted himself to the country's education cause. Soon his father was hired as an associate professor and head of the accounting teaching and research team of Shanghai Lixin Accounting College, and also served as an associate professor of auditing at Soochow University and an associate professor of senior accounting at St. John's University.
In order to fill the gap in the accounting of New China, Mr. Pan Xulun, the elder of China's accounting circles, personally went to his father and encouraged him to take the lead in organizing and compiling a new auditing science that cooperated with the economic policies and various financial and economic systems and measures in the period of the new democratic revolution as soon as possible. Under the repeated encouragement and strong support of Pan Lao, after a stage of arduous exploration and hard work, his father's debut work "Auditing Course" was officially published in 1951 and put into teaching use in various colleges and universities across the country.
With the advancement of the national education cause, in October 1952, the state implemented a major adjustment of faculties and departments for colleges and universities, and the Shanghai higher education system where my father was located was formally established by 16 colleges and universities, including Jiaotong University, Fudan, Shangshang, Dongwu, Datong, Hujiang, Guanghua, St. John's, Jida, Daxia, Lixin, etc. His father was assigned to the first major department of the university, the Department of Accounting, the head of the department was Professor Yang Yinpu, and his father was the leader of the teaching and research team of accounting principles. During this period, my father began to think deeply about and question the former Soviet expert Makarov on the objects, functions and methods of socialist accounting, and at the same time, combined with China's national conditions, in 1958, he launched his painstaking work - "Principles of Accounting", which was published by the China Finance Publishing House. This is the first self-compiled textbook with Chinese characteristics that has taken the lead in breaking through the box of the former Soviet Union since the founding of the People's Republic of China, and has made unprecedented original achievements in the formation and practical exploration of the basic theory of accounting in New China, so it has quickly caused a sensation in the academic community. Immediately after, his father's other book, "Financial Planning of Industrial Enterprises", was published, which won widespread popularity and praise from the business community. In recognition of his father's outstanding contributions, in the summer of 1956, the Shanghai Municipal Party Committee specially asked the Shanghai Municipal Housing Management Bureau to allocate a three-bedroom apartment at No. 60 Shimen 2nd Road, Shanghai to his father, which greatly improved the living conditions.
Writings of Professor Li Tianmin
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During the Cultural Revolution, my father was attacked as a "bourgeois academic authority". In the winter of 1969, his father was sent to the countryside of Suqian County in northern Jiangsu Province, and was soon transferred by the county education bureau to the then Suqian Shiling School as a high school English teacher and class teacher. When his father later recalled this experience in Suqian, he was particularly grateful for the warm embrace of the local government and the people in that special era to his father and warmly accepted him, which undoubtedly gave his father the motivation and confidence to rise again at the trough of his life. Han Zhaohui, the current deputy director of the Suyu District Local History Office, is a witness to her father's experience, when she was still young, her father was a county teacher at the time to study school clerks, often took her and her father to walk around each other, very close, when the father left her impression is "more knowledge, extraordinary temperament."
Ma Cheng, former secretary general of the CPPCC Suyu District, was also a student of his father at that time, and he is still deeply impressed by his father's rigorous teaching style. His father has always been conscientious and serious about the teaching work he has done, even when he was an English teacher at Suqian Shiling School, he was meticulous and very devoted to the teaching work he took. Limited by the teaching conditions at that time, the teaching reference books for the English subjects in middle schools were even more scarce, and in order to add more relevant knowledge to the students, my father wrote to me to buy the English version of the Beijing Weekly at the Nanjing Foreign Language Bookstore and send it to him as an English teaching reference. To this end, every week I went to the foreign bookstore on Zhongshan East Road in Nanjing to buy the Beijing Weekly, and then rushed to the Xinjiekou post office to mail it to him.
Years flow in sorrow and joy, and fate changes in setbacks. After 1976, his father's situation began to gradually improve, and he was first transferred to Lianyungang School of Finance and Economics as the head of the accounting teaching and research team. During this period, because of his outstanding work performance, his father was elected as the eighth people's representative and cppcc member of Xinpu District, Lianyungang City in 1978.
By 1979, it was an exciting and unforgettable spring for my father! With the convening of the Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, the spring wind and rain of reform and opening up, China has entered a new era of waste and prosperity! At that time, just like when New China was just founded, the country urgently needed a large number of economic construction talents, and colleges and universities also needed a large number of teachers with rich teaching and scientific research experience. This coincided with my father's 60th birthday. My father's birthday is a grand holiday for our family. At the moment when his family Zhang Luo was celebrating his father's birthday, a paper transfer order from the Ministry of Finance transferred his father to the Central University of Finance and Economics, known as the "Whampoa Military Academy of China Finance and Economics", as the director of the foreign accounting teaching and research office. This was even more gratifying for my father and our whole family, and we immediately packed up our bags, took the train to the north, and went to Beijing to take up our duties.
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When he arrived in Beijing, his father did not fail in his mission, that is, he led his teaching and scientific research team to work. This became the last station of his father's magnificent life journey, in his own words, that is, the old cow knew that the sunset was short, did not need to whip himself, read the words, and raced against the clock to do his best for the party's education cause, for the rich country and the people, and dedicated the rest of his life. Through several consecutive Chinese New Year's Eve of hard work and hard work, we have finally completed the three tasks assigned by the school leaders: First, we have introduced to the Chinese society that has just opened its doors to the development and changes of Western financial accounting in the past few years since the founding of New China; second, we have introduced and opened a new course of modern management accounting; third, we have begun to prepare for the establishment of foreign accounting majors, formulated teaching plans and syllabuses for various main courses, and sent to the state a batch of high-level professionals who are familiar with Western accounting theories and methods. After completing their studies, these comrades returned to their respective posts, and some of them later grew up to become the leaders and backbones of a certain central ministry, commission, system, and unit, and played a decisive role in promoting the great cause of reform and opening up in the new period.
Mr. Yu Guangyuan
One evening, Mr. Yu Guangyuan, a well-known economist and director of the Science Department of the Central Propaganda Department, an old friend of his father,' came to his father's apartment after work and had a long conversation with him. Uncle Yu suggested that his father further combine accounting research with accounting and cost research to make accounting research more practical and applicable, and to transform accounting theory research into direct productivity. According to Uncle Yu's suggestion, his father led his work team to play an important role in accurately predicting the medium- and long-term development trend of the national economy and improving the scientific decision-making ability of the relevant government departments at that time through the preparation of macroeconomic accounting model system, and was known as the think tank and "brain" of the national economic development at that time.
In 1981, his father's book "Fundamentals of Management Accounting" came out, which was the first self-compiled textbook on management accounting in China, and in 1990, he launched the masterpiece "Modern Management Accounting", which was published by Shanghai Lixin Accounting Publishing House. This book has both accounting research and practical value, so after its publication, Luoyang paper was expensive for a time, and millions of copies were distributed that year, which was still in short supply, and was republished until after the death of his father. In this life, my father can be described as a book, publishing more than 40 kinds of monographs, accumulating more than 6 million words. Hua Haibo, a former disciple of his father and a 1991 graduate student of the Central University of Finance and Economics, fondly recalled his father in an article mourning his father:
"Mr. Li Tianmin is rigorous in his studies, as a member of the Academic Committee of the Central University of Finance and The Jury of Professorial Positions, he has always been fair and strict in the evaluation of professorial titles, adhered to the standards of both academic and moral excellence, resolutely rejected the application of professors who did not meet the standards, and defended the academic dignity with practical actions. In the spring of 1993, I gave a lecture to the financial personnel of the building materials system in Shandong Province, and I was surprised to find that many financial personnel of state-owned enterprises had read his "Management Accounting" and other works, and they greatly respected Professor Li Tianmin..."
At the same time, since 1985, my father has also served as the main teacher of the "Management Accounting" course of the economic major of the Central Radio and Television University, and has been broadcast to the whole country on CCTV every academic year, which has been widely praised by all walks of life. In November 1994, at the 15th anniversary celebration of the Central University of Electricity and Television and the commendation conference of the National Radio and Television University, his father was awarded the honorary title of "Outstanding Lecturer", and since 1992, he has enjoyed the special government allowance issued by the State Council. Before I died, my father often said to me: "In fact, a person's personal destiny is often closely linked to the fate of the country and the times." ”
Yes, when my father was 30 years old, when he was confused by his youth, he was glad that new China was born, and his personal ideals and ambitions were put on display in the great journey of building a new China; and at the age of 60, he just jumped out of the trough of career and life, and coincided with the arrival of a new period of reform and opening up, so he ushered in the second spring of his life... Although my father has been engaged in teaching and research in finance and economics all his life, in fact, his foundation in traditional Chinese studies is also quite profound, and he usually tells me that Confucius is still righteous, Lao Tzu is still clean, Shakya is still harmonious, and the three qi of righteousness, purity, and harmony are the spirit of our Chinese, and whether it is for human learning, we must pay attention to manifesting and carrying forward these three qi. Although he has left us for more than ten years, the achievements he has made before his death and the precious spiritual legacy he has left us are like gold coins that are silent in the deep pool of time, and they still shine with the brilliance of value.
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Author: Li Yong
Li Yong is a member of the Jiangsu Writers Association and the China Railway Writers Association. He has successively served as a researcher of the Chinese Academy of Management Sciences and the deputy secretary-general of the Jiangsu Railway Society. He is the author of the essay collection Eternal Traction.
Review, Release: Zhang Yizhe