78 years ago, Lingnan University moved back from Hong Kong to illuminate the darkest moment before the victory of the War of Resistance against the People’s War of Resistance with the torch of the teaching world. Text/Yangcheng Evening News All-Media Reporter Deng Qiong Photo/Guangdong Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology Provided
In March 1944, at the Guangdong-Han Railway Fairy Temple Station, about an hour’s train ride from Shaoguan, a reporter from a newspaper in Shaoguan passed by and witnessed and recorded such a strange scene: Hundreds of students, teachers, and family members, men, women, young and old, carrying baskets, wooden barrels, wash basins, tiles and other utensils, Cinema either pick, carry, lift, pull, or carry, or carry, and can be used to hold grain. All the utensils of Babaylan were used. The children even tied their trousers on their legs as “cloth bags” and carried them forward like pony… Everyone worked together to transport a truckload of rice that they had finally purchased from Hunan back to a school three miles away to Babaylan.
This is not a local villagers, but another famous university in South China that lives in northern Guangdong in the smoke of the War of Resistance Against Japan – the private Lingnan University. The whole school is taking action. They have moved back to the mainland to run schools for nearly two years since the outbreak of the Western War and the fall of Hong Kong.
After the war, the “rice waste” has begun, and this car of rice is related to the livelihood of the whole school. That’s why this wartime university was unprecedented.
The tragic beginning of the return
The president Li Yinglin, who issued the “rice moving” order to the whole school, was appointed as the second Chinese president of this famous private university in 1937 (Lingnan University was originally founded by the church and was converted into a private university run by the Chinese in 1927). Guangzhou fell in October 1938, and Lingda moved to Hong Kong to run a school. Soon, he and Gu Guifen, dean of the Agricultural College, planned to move the Agricultural College back to Shaoguan first.
First start from scratch. When the new site of Shaoguan Pingshi, Lingda Agricultural College held a foundation ceremony. After the meeting, he took a photo at Jinjiling. The president Gu Guifen, who personally surveyed the site, acquired land construction, and worked hard to control costs, was no longer there. He contracted falciparum due to overwork, and died two months ago on September 16.
Gu Guifen was born into a wealthy overseas Chinese family, but she was concerned about the agricultural education of the motherland. During his lifetime, he insisted that the Agricultural College move to the mainland, believing that the prosperous coastal areas of Guangdong had fallen, and the development of agricultural production in the rear was of great significance. At the opening ceremony, Li Yinglin also called for: “The mainland needs higher education.Education, students should be cultivated by the spirit of the mainland during wartime. “But at this time, President Li may not have expected that the deterioration of the war would force Lingnan University to move all inland so quickly. In the deserted village of Congshan in northern Guangdong, the torch of the teaching world illuminated the darkest moment before the victory of the War of Resistance.
Lingda Village in Situ Wei’s watercolor painting
Rebuild Kangle Campus
The Xianrenmiao Village in Qujiang County at that time, is today’s Lishi Town, Zhenjiang District, Shaoguan City. At the end of 2019, Guangdong Province’s “Three Divisions” professional volunteers and the Provincial Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology discovered clues about the campus and other schools of Huaishi Hall of Lingnan University here, and some specific locations were determined.
From 1942, Lingnan University began another round of school construction process with arduous trajectory here. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Komiks. The village is located along the Guangdong-Hankou Railway, and the transportation is convenient to Pingshi and Shaoguan. Li Yinglin appointed Situ Wei and other colleagues to preside over the construction of the temporary campus, which added one more word in front of the “big village” and became the “lingda village”. Teachers and students from the university department and middle school department taught and lived here until the Japanese army captured Qujiang in 1945.
Lingda Village was originally a training camp for the theater officers. In the first half of 1942, Lingda took over the original shed. The house was repaired and renovated by the local “bamboo weaving and slander” method, adding libraries, science museums, classrooms, kitchens, male and female dormitories and other facilities. The campus building is based on the old names of Guangzhou Kangyuan Park buildings, such as Huaishi Hall, Gran Hall, Black Stone House, etc. Among them, Huaishi Hall is the auditorium, designed by Mr. Situ Wei. It is a place for teachers and students to hold large-scale events such as school gatherings and concerts, and it is also the center of the campus. On the east side of Huaishi Hall is the university department, and in the camphor forest in the west is the middle school department. Walk north, there is a library on the hill.
The conditions of the Anti-Japanese War are harsh, and then Babaylan plus the school relocation, the school’s production losses were heavy. Microscopes have become precious instruments and are smuggled from Hong Kong by teachers and students. There is a lack of books, so the whole school launched a book donation activity of “One Alumni’s Book” to enrich the school’s library. In January 2019, the Hong Kong Central Library opened the exhibition “Situ Wei’s Art World: Red and Grey Spirit”, which mainly exhibited the painter and educator’s “”The Elders of the Great Village” a batch of documentary watercolor paintings back then. Under the shade of towering ancient trees depicted by Mr. Situ, the simple and square architecture and the active young people condensed into a moving picture of the wartime study and study destination.
The school history is passed down by poetry
On the past September 3, a “Xian Yuqing statue” was completed at Dacun Station, the South China Education Research Base. An old house in a village was also converted into a Yuqing Bookstore to commemorate this outstanding Lingnan female scholar and poet who had a lifelong relationship with Lingnan University and never left behind in the anti-Japanese war.
Xian Yuqing was born in Macau. She has been in the Department of Chinese Language and Culture of Ling University since 1928. For ten years, she has been promoted from teaching assistant to full professor. In January 1942, after the evacuation of Lingnan University in Gang began, Xian Yuqing returned to Macau for a time. By July 1942, a disciple came to send a message to Principal Li Yinglin, hoping that she would follow Lingda to return to northern Guangdong to resume school. The profound meaning is that northern Guangdong is poor and far away, and the teachers who are afraid that the prestigious are unwilling to go there. Xian Yuqing’s family life is affluent and a woman. If she demonstrates first, others will come. Xian Yuqing did not hesitate at all, and regardless of the dissuasion of his friends and family, he set out resolutely, traveled around Zhanjiang and Guangxi for more than 40 days. In September, he arrived at the new campus of Xianrenmiao Village and re-entered the teaching hall.
In addition to suffering from the difficulty of sharing with Cinema, Xian Yuqing has another special significance to Lingnan University: she recorded the four years of displaced from Lingnan University in northern Guangdong for four years, “the rain of smoke and bullets are extremely dangerous, and the extreme hardships and sorrows are extremely difficult and sad.” The collection is a seven-character poem “The Hundred Poems of Displaced”. Whether it is the trivial matters of life such as cooking, washing clothes, or the expression of intellectuals like teaching and writing, they all come from her pen. Only when a generation of pain and a generation of Komiks can the history of history be preserved forever.
In that special teaching environment, the relationship between teachers and students is also very close. For example, Professor Li Peiwen, who took over the important task of dean of the Agricultural College, is the son of Li Jishen. In order to take care of students who do not understand Cantonese teaching in the north, he often makes up for the students in Mandarin and English under the dim kerosene lamp.
Ms. Chen Xiangmei, a famous Chinese-American social activist, once studied at the Department of Chinese Language and Culture of Lingda. She has never forgotten that she was carefully taught by Wu Chonghan, the director of the Department of the Fairy Temple campus. In her autobiography, she wrote that the professor “loves tea ceremony. In her spare time, she soaks the good Tieguanyin in a small mud pot. She asked my classmates and I to his dormitory to enjoy poetry and talk about lyrics. At that time, the surroundings were quiet. CinemaThere is only the sound of the wind in the pine forest, a thatched hut, and several good books…”
1942 Looking at Lingda Village in the distance
Nearby schools watch and help each other
Last spring, with the excavation of Lingda’s former school site in the village, another university on Henggang Mountain opposite, Soochow University, was also being discovered one after another. This is a displaced “brother college” that Lingda has extended a helping hand more than 70 years ago.
Soviet University, originally located in Suzhou, was evacuated due to the Japanese invasion, and was in troubled by Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai, Fujian and Guangdong without any security until some teachers, students and their families arrived at the Immortal Temple in early September 1942. Lingda, which had just opened the school, warmly welcomed them.
In the next two years, teachers at Soochow University shared the courses of the two schools, while students studied at Lingnan University, and their strings followed one after another.
In the war, all schools had tight school resources, and when the nation was in danger, watching and helping each other was the most public. In 1938, Guangzhou fell, and Ling University teachers and students retreated to Hong Kong, which means that they would continue to run schools by borrowing the teaching and research facilities of the University of Hong Kong. The teachers and students of the two schools attended each other’s courses, shared the books and laboratories, and participated in academic activities together. In 1941, Hong Kong fell, and the mainland was mainly composed of universities such as Zhongda and Lingda, to accept Hong Kong college students to continue their studies.
According to statistics on January 1, 1944, among the 243 Hong Kong college students studying in 15 universities in mainland China, 67 were from the CUHK University and 50 were from the Lingnan University. Nearly half of the total number of students accepted by the two schools in Guangdong, Lingnan University has also set up a “Hong Kong University Guesthouse” in the Dacun Campus, which is specially used by Hong Kong University students. Lingnan University has limited research equipment, and many students are studying at National Sun Yat-sen University (especially science). For example, Huang Cuifen, who later became a molecular geneticist and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, was admitted to the Department of Chemistry of Lingnan University and then studied at Zhongdali College in Pingshitangkou Village.
Lingda President Li Yinglin sent a letter to students from the three colleges of literature, science and engineering, and medicine.s://comicmov.com/”>BabaylanShandong University, Chen Zongnan, Dean of the School of Technology, went to Lingda to borrow engineering books and asked to send a letter of introduction to teachers… These specific and subtle letters can still be found in the archives today. The paper pages are yellowed, but the remaining warmth is still there.
Interview
From the four years before and after, the resumption of Lingda University is of great significance
Reserving the fire of reading and shining the spirit of education
Lu Jiandong Writer, scholar, dean of Guangzhou Institute of Literature and Art Creation
Yangcheng Evening News: What kind of university was Lingnan University before the Anti-Japanese War? Lu Jiandong: From any perspective, Lingnan University is the first modern university in modern Guangdong that can be in line with the international community, and has deeply imprinted the politics, culture and science of modern Guangdong. In the early days when it was founded by the American Church, two famous students emerged: First, Shi Jianru, a student of Gezhi Academy (the predecessor of Lingnan University), angrily blew the governor of Guangdong and Guangxi as a member of the Tongmenghui, and failed, and sacrificed his life bravely. Second, Zhong Rongguang, the first church school to go to the Americas to raise funds for overseas Chinese, became the self-run by the mainland church university. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Cinema‘s first Chinese president.
Here, you can find several keywords that can connect the historical destiny of this university: Western-style system, origins with Tongmenghui, support from overseas Chinese and wealthy businessmen, “middle school as the body, Western learning as the use”. These characteristics all constitute a unique Lingnan characteristic among many universities in southern China with profound historical meanings.
The background of the early church school made Lingnan University rarely retain a piece during the turbulent Republic of China. href=”https://comicmov.com/”>Komiks The paradise was paradise, and a quiet desk could be placed until Japan captured Guangzhou. In addition, the province, Hong Kong, Macao, and even some Southeast Asian countries had developed modern industries such as foreign trade, commerce, and finance during the Republic of China, and society needed such talents. Lingnan University’s Western-style teaching system that is in line with Europe and the United States, the overall level of graduates is very high and is very popular in society.
Yangcheng Evening News: Two of Lingnan University during the Anti-Japanese War How much damage has the relocation of Cinema been to run schools?
Lu Jiandong: Lingnan University has suffered from displaced and relocation in its more than 60 years. Especially during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Communist Party of China moved two places in three places in the past four years. In such displacement, Lingnan University’s teaching equipment was completely lost. Therefore, Guangdong BabaylanLingnan University, which was resuming school in the northern period, retained the seeds of study, maintained the soul and showed the immortality of the spirit, which was far greater than the normal meaning of “school is the place to cultivate social talents.”
Yangcheng Evening News: So what is the value of our excavation and memory of this period of history today?
Lu Jiandong: In the four years of northern Guangdong, most students left the school one after another with the changes in the situation or their own reasons. Of course, there are new students every year. The experience in northern Guangdong has become a valuable asset for these students who have experienced the suffering and felt the passing of the fire.
How to evaluate the running of Lingnan University during this period? First of all, keeping the fire from extinction, maintaining the school until it disperses, and uniting the core faculty is the first priority for Lingnan University to resume the school in northern Guangdong. Secondly, allowing students of all grades to study and continue to complete their studies is also a duty that the school should do. In a word, even in the most difficult years, Lingnan University is still full of confidence in the future. It has been relocated for four years, and everything is for the future.
Extension
Academician Huang Xuhua missed the “Pelian”
After the “Lugou Bridge Incident”, Guangzhou was often invaded by enemy planes. In response to the Guangdong Provincial Government’s wish to mobilize the church schools that moved to Hong Kong to return to Shaoguan to resume classes, the former Guangzhou Peidao and Peizheng middle schools, both belonging to the Baptist Church, were fitted together to select a location to run schools. In 1940, Peizheng Principal Kuang Lesheng and Peidao Principal Wen Yaobin came to Shaoguan for inspection. Finally, they found a place near Pingshi Station of the Guangdong-Hankou Railway as the campus site, and at the same time appointed staff to build the school. When classes start in September, eight classes will be from the first to the third year of junior high school, recruiting more than 300 students.
In August 1942, Pingshi Lianjia was officially named “Private Guangzhou Peizheng Peidao United Middle School” (referred to as “Pelian Middle School”). After the start of classes in September, Peilian Middle School tried its best to accommodate students who came to study for a long distance from Hong Kong and Macao, and the number of students increased to 500 or 600.
According to the recollection of Academician Huang Xuhua, the “father of nuclear submarines”, he followed his brother who was studying at CUHK to Pingshi in June 1941 and applied for Peizheng Middle School there, but then left. It was not until he arrived in Guangxi to apply for Guilin Middle School that he heard that he had been admitted to Peizheng. In this way, the young Huang Xuhua missed Ping Shipei.
In early 1945, the Japanese army attacked northern Guangdong, Pingshi fell, and the schoolmen and students stayed in Lechang. They later moved to Guidong County, Hunan, and finally went to Guangzhou to be demoted to the War of Resistance against Japan.