At the age of 11, he was admitted to Xiucai, and his reputation was full of Sergeant Lin, and his calligraphy attainments were even more unique; In the twenty-first year of Guangxu (1895), he entered high school, entered the court, and later became a doctor of Tongyi.
With such a dazzling achievement, it is obvious that he has enough capital to be proud of. And in the face of the chaotic world at the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, he finally chose to resign in anger and return to the city, and retired Dumen.
However, in 1941, in the face of this highly respected former Qing veteran Hanlin, who was also quite prejudiced against the Communist Party at that time, in order to strengthen the construction of the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningbo Border Region, he decided to invite him to take up his post.
But this old Hanlin repeatedly refused the invitation at first. As for the reason, he said, "Although the Communist Party is good, it has no culture, and I don't want to go."
And after these words reached the ears of ***, ** had a "strategy" when he landed. He ordered the guards to bring in a young man, let him show his hand, and enlighten him.
** It was not someone else who invited the guards, but Shu Tong, who had "a pen in the party and a calligrapher in the Red Army".
As for this old Hanlin, it is Xiao Zhibao, who is quite famous in Shaanxi and even the whole country.
Xiao Zhibao was born in 1869.
When he was young, he was famous, and he was admitted to Xiucai at the age of 11; At the age of 20, he was admitted to the exam; 26-year-old high school jinshi.
Such a smooth imperial examination career, the chaotic ** at the end of the Qing Dynasty, did not make Xiao Zhibao choose to join the stream.
As the Qing court ** for more than ten years, he can be said to be "as clear as water, law enforcement like a mountain", especially in the murder of the Mongolian king, he was not afraid of intimidation, making him famous.
However, after the Wuchang Uprising, because of his disgust with Yuan Shikai, he chose to return to Li. After that, he lived a reclusive life, revising local chronicles in Pingsuri. Later, in the face of the invitations of many governors and dignitaries, he chose to refuse.
As for Shu Tong, he was born in 1905 in a poor peasant family in Dongxiang County, Jiangxi Province.
Although his life was difficult, he loved reading, writing, and calligraphy.
This habit has also been continued, and in 1921, Shu Tong was admitted to the Jiangxi Provincial No. 3 Normal School.
During his time at the school, under the influence of his classmates, Shu Tong learned new ideas.
In 1925, he published "The True Face of China", denouncing the corruption of the authorities, and in 1926, Shu Tong officially joined the party. It is precisely because he is very educated that his superiors appointed him as the secretary of the Dongxiang County branch, which is not a low starting point.
After the April 12 coup, Shu Tong was put on the wanted list, but he did not give up his goals and beliefs, but chose to find the organization alone.
Due to the spread of the coup d'état, many local organizations were broken up, so he first went to Shanghai and Nanjing, trying to find headquarters, but without success.
So he has been active in Jiangxi and Anhui, running all over the county with two legs, during which the living expenses were exhausted, so he helped people write letters in the countryside and helped merchants write plaques in the county to earn some travel expenses.
This search lasted for 4 years, and in 1930 he finally found a local organization in Chongren County, Fuzhou, Jiangxi Province, and then joined the ranks of the Red Army.
The organization knew that he was very literate, so they arranged for him to take up a civilian job, just like political propaganda work.
After the failure of the fifth anti-encirclement campaign, Shu Tong followed the large army on the Long March.
On this difficult and tortuous road, it is the norm to not have enough food and clothing, and he has to worry about being bombed by planes all the time, and many people can't walk, but he not only walks, but also insists on writing calligraphy on the road.
Therefore, many comrades-in-arms admired him very much, and when they saw that he was tired of walking, they let him ride a horse and rest for a while, treating him as a treasure in the army. In this way, he often wrote articles on horseback, and wrote articles such as "Attack to the North - The Beginning of Victory" to inspire the soldiers to forge ahead.
In 1936, after the victory of the Long March, Shu Tong led other propaganda cadres to write slogans on many walls in Yan'an, using his beautiful and upright font to propagate the fierce fighting spirit. ** is also a calligrapher, after reading his words, praised him: "a pen in the party, a calligrapher of the Red Army". Knowing that he practiced hard day and night, ** also gave him a nickname, called "Little Donkey", affirming his spirit of practicing calligraphy and pen perseverance.
In 1941, at the critical juncture of the all-out War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in order to further do a good job in cultural propaganda, Yan'an decided to invite a group of local people with progressive ideas to serve as senators.
And Xiao Zhibao, a well-known Jinshi of the late Qing Dynasty, is also among them. But the old Hanlin Jinshi repeatedly refused, at first he said that he was sick, and later directly said that the Red Army troops were "uneducated" and that he was not suitable to go there.
Obviously, in the eyes of this old literati, there is no difference in mistakenly believing that the Red Army is the kind of armed forces entrenched in the localities for personal gain.
**After learning about it, he arranged for Shu Tong to write a letter to Xiao Zhibao, which could not only show that the "Red Army" was educated, but also persuade him to explain the goals and ideals of the Red Army.
After Xiao Zhibao read Shu Tong's letter, he was first amazed at his calligraphy level, and then realized that maybe his previous thoughts were wrong, so he came to the border area to feel the atmosphere of the army, and finally decided to join the border area ** as a senator.
His views on the Communist Party also changed, although he did not attend the Senate because of his old age and illness.
And this old Hanlin also showed a great independent personality in the face of help. In the face of the national disaster, he also chose to destroy his family and donate his pawn clothes to the Eighth Route Army to resist the Japanese.
In 1945, 76-year-old Xiao Zhibao died.
As for Shu Tong, during the Anti-Japanese War and the War of Liberation, he successively served as the secretary general of the Eighth Route Army Headquarters and the director of the Political Department of the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei Military Region.
During this period, he worked closely with generals such as ***, and wrote articles such as "Letter from Director Shu of Commander Nie of the Military Region to Kiyoichiro Higashine", which showed the determination of the Chinese people to resist the war, and also advised the Japanese invaders to reflect on their mistakes and ordinary soldiers not to give their lives to careerists. Some Japanese soldiers were affected and chose to defect to Yan'an, or gave up resistance, which weakened the morale of the Japanese and encouraged the anti-Japanese enthusiasm of the troops.
After the War of Liberation began, Shu Tong served as a member of the Standing Committee of the East China Bureau and head of the Propaganda Department and the editor-in-chief of "Liberation**", and publicized and reported on the victory of the army again and again. More than ten years after the founding of the People's Republic of China, when the special period came, Shu Tong was treated unfairly and was labeled.
After recovering his reputation at the end of the 70s, he served as the first president of the Chinese Calligraphers Association. In his later years, he was pure and focused on practicing calligraphy, and died in 1998 at the age of 93.