In the early days of the founding of the People's Republic of China, the work of being the leader of a country was very arduous, and it could be called a day with all kinds of opportunities, and the seat was not warm.
Reading documents, holding meetings, meeting with foreign guests, and going out to inspect, ** not in Zhongnanhai, that is, on trains, planes, and ships all over the country or in the Soviet Union.
In 1957, when he went south to inspect the work, the chairman flew from Xuzhou to Nanjing, and a photojournalist took a photograph.
This ** has been widely circulated and has been rumored to be a "work photo of the chairman on the plane".
But in fact, according to Link, the secretary of international affairs, this is not a work photo of the chairman, but the chairman is learning English as a way to rest.
In 1954, at the age of 29, Link was transferred to work with the chairman.
Graduated from the Department of Economics of Yenching University, he joined the underground party as early as 1946 when he was in college, and participated in and organized the last time
After leaving school, he was transferred to work in the North China Bureau, mainly engaged in social investigation work, and because of this, Link accumulated rich work experience.
After the liberation, Link went to Xinhua News Agency as an international columnist, and finally at the age of 29, when he was about to stand up, Link was selected to be the president's secretary for international affairs.
At that time, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea had just ended, and the chairman urgently needed an assistant like Link to deal with international issues.
At the Yuexiu Mountain swimming pool in Guangzhou, Lin Ke met with the President for the first time as the President's Secretary for International Affairs.
In Link's memories, on that day, by the Yuexiu Pond, "the water in the pond was clear" and "the shadows of the trees were swaying".
Before the meeting, the chairman just showed his skills in the swimming pool, and the chairman who came out of the pool looked at the young offspring in front of him, and was very interested, and those who are familiar with the chairman know that the chairman has a habit of seeing people, that is, first ask who the surname of the person is, where he lives, and how old he is, so this time he saw Link, and the chairman did the same, and asked the old three first.
And Link is young after all, not to mention that he is a little nervous when he sees *** that others can't even dream of seeing.
The chairman's personality is thick and detailed, and he is often keenly aware of the nervousness of the interlocutor, and is good at using profound knowledge, humorous words and caring attitude to resolve this tension, so as to quickly open the conversation.
When Link talked about Baoding by chance, the chairman immediately said in a thick Hunan accent:
"Baoding is very famous, since ancient times, there is a lotus pond, you know?It was the private garden of Cao Kun, the leader of the Beiyang warlords. ”
It turned out that as early as the first period, in the 20s of the 20th century, after the chairman left Hunan, he had been to Baoding, and he had walked a large circle along the Baoding city wall.
"Cao Kun used 5,000 silver dollars a vote to buy more than 500 'pig parliamentarians', which is very expensive, he is a very famous bribery voter!”The chairman humorously recounted the past, and Link listened to it with relish.
By the time he finished chatting about the anecdotes related to Baoding, Link had relaxed a lot, and his eyes with the chairman were more calm and natural.
Seeing this, the chairman cut to the topic and muttered slightly"At present, your job is to study the development of the international situation and report to me at any time. ”
Link, who had already relaxed and eliminated his inhibitions, nodded solemnly when he heard this.
Finally, the chairman talked to Link about the work arrangements, and just as the conversation was about to end, the chairman suddenly changed the conversation and said with a sincere face"You will be my teacher and teach me English, okay?"”
When Link heard this, he looked confused, being the chairman's "teacher" was something he had never thought about.
Immediately afterwards, the chairman was heard to continue:"In the past, I used to be a teacher, but now I'm a student. ”
With that, the chairman burst out laughing.
Since then, Link has had another role, that is, the chairman's tutoring "teacher".
In fact, as early as the Yan'an period, the chairman had taught himself English, but under the harsh war environment at that time, the chairman's self-study was greatly restricted.
In addition, it is worth mentioning that learning English from others is from elementary to intermediate textbooks, so step by step is different, **accustomed to according to their own characteristics, starting from reading news and**, etc., and the time to learn English is all inserted in the work interval.
Link recalls that when he traveled with the chairman on a business trip, he always had to carry the chairman's study materials with him in his briefcase.
Despite the exhausting work, when the work stopped, the chairman still thought about learning English, which in Link's words was more like a special kind of break, that is, a "** break".
Generally, when the chairman is tired of going out to inspect, reading documents, holding meetings, meeting foreign guests, or between eating, sleeping, going to the toilet and thinking about problems, the chairman will ask Link to read English to himself.
This is the case unless he is really unwell, but rarely, and in August 1957 the chairman wrote a letter to Link.
In the letter, on the one hand, the chairman instructed Link, "Please find Lenin's "What to Do" and "April Theses" (1971) and read them to me, and on the other hand, he asked for a leave of absence from his "teacher" Link: "I have not recovered from my cold these days, my mind is restless, and I don't want to read English yet, don't you feel lonely?"”
After speaking, the chairman also suggested that Lin Ke read more theory books and learn theories, so as to further cultivate his interest and gradually get better.
It can be said that ** to find Link to learn English, as his own "teacher", in this process, as a "teacher" Link benefited a lot, Link recalled, he later gradually realized that the chairman is no longer satisfied with just listening to his report, but wants to hear his own views and opinions, the chairman's spur and encouragement to him, he "touched deeply".
In November 1957, the second and last time the chairman went abroad, the same as the first, the chairman went to Moscow, but the last time was by train, this time by plane.
At that time, the congress of the World Communist Party and the Workers' Party was held in Moscow, and in the face of the changing international situation, **, as the original proposer and participant of the congress, had a lot of work to deal with and a full schedule.
But even so, ** insisted on learning English, and Link kept the chairman's study materials in his briefcase, as is customary.
In Moscow, every day at dawn, the chairman would invite Link to the Soviet chairman's dormitory in the Kremlin to help him learn English.
In this regard, some people may think it is very strange, the chairman was at work in the last second, especially in a foreign country to attend a meeting, seeing so many foreign guests at once, the brain is tired enough, how good it is to close your eyes and rest and rest, why do you still have to learn English, will it be more tiring in this way? ?
But the fact is that for ***, the founding leader of New China, compared with the many national events that he came into contact with in his work, the brain that needs to be used to learn English is nothing at all.
In other words, only when listening to Link read English, can the brain get rest, because the English words and sentences are drilled into the chairman's head, and the rest is not to be thought.
**I often say: "Learning a foreign language is good, but it can be used as a kind of rest and a change of brain." ”
In addition to this, the chairman also said: "You can go a day without eating, you can sleep for a day, and you can't go a day without reading." ”
In the matter of learning English, the chairman's perseverance is firm, except as a special way of rest, which he hopes to really master.
For this reason, ** once said: "Determined to learn, until death rests." ”
By January 1959, the chairman had been reading news and short stories for a while, and had mastered a certain vocabulary, and he set himself a "five-year plan", that is, through five years of study, he would be able to understand the English version of articles on political and economic philosophy.
Since then, Link has been accustomed to marking the unlearned words for the chairman in advance, so that the chairman can save time, but wait until the chairman himself readsHe still habitually goes to the dictionary himself
So in this way, when Link took any time to read English to the chairman, and was responsible for teaching, in addition to the news and short stories, the chairman began to learn some theoretical chapters and classics, such as "Theory of Practice", "Selected Works", "Critique of Political Economy" and so on in English.
Link recalled that in the blank space of each page of the English version of "The Theory of Contradiction", you can see dense words, which are the chairman's annotations, and this annotation is still progressive, and the chairman will annotate every time he reads it, and write down his thoughts with random strokes.
This is also an important method and prominent habit of reading.
By the end of the day, the chairman had been able to read the **, the political ** chapters and the theoretical books relatively smoothly, but there were difficulties in reading some of the more obscure and difficult classical works.
In addition, one of the difficulties in learning English was that because the chairman's Hunan pronunciation was very strong, and he was over the age of sixteen at the time, it was even more difficult to change the local pronunciation when reading English.
Since there is no distinction between "n" and "l", the chairman often pronounces "night" as "light", and so on, and there are many other words, if it were replaced by someone else, he would have been afraid to read it for fear of making jokes, but the chairman is different, he persevered, he was a humble student by Link's side, and he tried to correct it if he read it wrong, and practiced it repeatedly.
In Link's words, the chairman "always reads aloud and changes aloud and calmly."
Later, in English conversation, the chairman was able to say a few simple words of entertainment, and it was not easy for an elderly leader to do this.
As *** said, "Determined to learn, until death", in the end, he will learn this matter and carry out his life until the last moment of his life.
At 5:50 p.m. on September 8, 1976, it was the last time *** read a book, and this time, he read for 7 minutes.
On September 9, a generation of leaders*** passed away.
Since then, the chairman has ended his uninterrupted study life and fulfilled his vow of "determined to study until death".