In 1938, I went to Hankow with the training school for students studying in Japan, and Hu Feng also ran the July magazine there, but I always disliked associating with celebrities, so I only corresponded with him, but I never visited him. At that time, I encountered an incident in my private life: my first wife died of lung disease. My hometown is in a mountainous area, and the feudal concept is very strong, and if a man does not marry a daughter-in-law at the age of twenty, he will be looked down upon, because the poor cannot afford to marry a daughter-in-law. My family was born as a landlord, so my parents were in charge and married my brother and me early. That was before my brother and I went to study in Peking, and because of my young age, I came out after only half a year of marriage. Later, after being released from prison in Beijing, for fear of worrying about his family, he returned to the countryside again before going to Japan, and lived with this woman twice in a hurry. Her name is Gao Chan'e, she is younger than me, introverted and delicate. She attended middle school in the county and was also a literate woman. After I arrived in Japan, we kept in touch, but when I returned to Japan, the communication was disconnected. When he arrived in Hankow, he received a letter from his brother saying that Chan'e had died in July 1938 due to acute tuberculosis. I was very sad when I heard the news. I have traveled all my life, first going out and then going to prison, which must have added a lot of pressure to this delicate and delicate woman; Coupled with the turmoil of the war, she and her family were terrified, and I didn't share anything with her. Now people are dead, but for me, there is an indescribable sense of frustration and guilt. After Chen Qixin found out, he repeatedly persuaded me and dragged me to a small hotel to drink to relieve my boredom. I didn't drink well at that time, and I was in a bad mood, so I didn't want to drink. In this case, I sat in the tavern and wrote a script "Home", writing a ** sacrifice in the war and the story of the vast number of people in the countryside rising up to resist Japan, in that **, I couldn't help but write my mourning and remembrance of Chan'ejun. After this script was written, I sent it to Hu Feng, and it was published in "July" soon after, which was the first script I wrote. Soon after, the training class was assigned, and I was assigned to the front line of Nakajo Mountain as a Japanese translator. Before leaving, I wrote to Hu Feng to tell him that he wrote back that he hoped that I would write more battlefield newsletters for "July" after I arrived at the front, reporting on the anti-Japanese news of the front-line soldiers and the masses, and that if I had the opportunity, I could run a northwest edition of "July". For the convenience of work, he also specially gave me the name of "Northwest Field Commissioner of the July Society". Later, the name did work.
When I arrived at the front line, the predecessor of the Seventh Division of the Third Army where I belonged was Cai Yi's protector, from the army commander to the platoon commander, all of them were from Yunnan. In this army, I served as a Japanese officer of the captain, under the supervision of the division's political department, and my job was to translate some Japanese documents, adapt to the situation, compile some Japanese propaganda materials, distribute them in the form of mimeographed leaflets, write leaflets and slogans in Japanese on the walls, knowledge of the Japanese language of the military reconnaissance team of the staff office of the teacher's department, and shout in the trenches during the war, and so on. The military rank is captain, which is considered a military civilian officer, and the monthly salary is fifty yuan. At that time, on the northwest battlefield, we had a head-on encounter with the Japanese division, and the Nakajima division was the main force of the Japanese army, and the war was very fierce. I followed the troops in a hail of bullets, and sometimes the troops were scattered, or I was too far behind, so I walked away, and ran alone in the mountains for five or six days before I found the troops. I remember one night, after I was swept away, I ran desperately in the dark, and I was so tired that I was dozing off in a daze, and my legs were still staggering forward. When I ran to the dawn of the day, I found a city wall in front of me, and when I looked up, there were Japanese soldiers standing on the city wall, holding bright bayonets in their hands. I was gray and small, but luckily they didn't find out. On the basis of these lives, I successively wrote some battlefield newsletters and essays for "July", such as "Mourning Huang Langpingjun" and "Distance", all of which were written in the Zhongtiao Mountain battlefield. "Sent from Zhongtiao Mountain to Chongqing" is a passage from a letter I wrote to Hu Feng, and he picked some of it and published it, and the title was also given by him.
I spent a total of 10 months in this army (August 1938 to May 1939), when the War of Resistance was still in its normal phase, that is, the political united front was still relatively stable. The political and military situation here was complicated, with the Kuomintang army and the Sichuan army, known as the miscellaneous army, as well as the local armed death squads and guerrillas of the Eighth Route Army led by the Shanxi Sacrifice League. Most of the troops of the Third Army to which I belonged were stationed and fought in Zhongtiao Mountain in the Xia County area, and the county government at that time was presided over by the Sacrifice League, the county magistrate was Liu Yumin, who was only in his twenties, and the person in charge of the District Sacrifice League was called Gan Yumei. Because I am a native of Shanxi, and I am not accustomed to the corrupt habits of the old army in my army, in addition to formal work, I often go to the county ** and the Sacrifice League to visit the door, and sometimes I will stay with them for a few days. I was in my twenties at the time, and I felt much more comfortable with the young comrades because we all had a common language. In the winter of this year, Chongqing sent a field relief group, and on behalf of the garrison, I accompanied them around the Zhongtiao Mountains for more than 10 days, and a section member of the county ** and an officer of the county sacrifice league also accompanied us. Once when we went to Qimu Village in Xia County, the officer told me that Mr. Jia Jichen, a famous old revolutionary, also lived here and commanded a guerrilla unit to fight against the Japanese army. I've heard Mr. Jia Jichen's name for a long time. Before and after the Xinhai Revolution, there were three old revolutionaries in Jinnan, all of whom were old students studying in Japan. One is Jing Meijiu, a member of the League, who was once influenced by non-**ism and wrote a book called "Crime", which became popular, and later became decadent, smoked opium, and became a member of parliament of Yuan Shikai**. When I was in exile in Xi'an in the 40s, I was brought to see him by a fellow countryman who was a supplement editor at the Xi'an Evening News, and by this time his Guofeng Bao had moved from Beijing to Xi'an for publication. It was winter, he was wearing an old robe, a little goatee, very easy-going, no politeness, no shelves, some casual Confucian demeanor. When he found out that I was a student in Japan, he talked to me about his life in Japan, where he was a student at Meiji University. When I said goodbye, he ran to his inner room and took out a set of "The True Meaning of Stones" that he had printed at his own expense. This two-volume set was printed in traditional Chinese chalk paper and bound in Chinese style, and he signed it for me to keep. Another old revolutionary from the south of Jin was Li Qishan, the father of the dramatist Li Jianwu and a member of the League, who was later killed by Yan Xishan. Another is Jia Jichen, who turned to believe in Marxism, joined the Eighth Route Army, and was leading a local guerrilla force to resist Japan. Jia Jichen has a very high prestige in Xia County, and there are many folk legends about him. The two locals who accompanied us introduced us to a lot of stories about Jia Jichen along the way. When we arrived at his mother village, they arranged for us to visit Mr. Jia. Jia Jichen was in his fifties, wearing a fat blue cloth cotton jacket and cotton pants, and white cloth socks, like an old farmer. He received us very kindly. At that time, I wanted to write a book with these three revolutionaries from Shanxi, and I also had the title of the book in mind, called "The Legend of Hedong Heroes", but in the end, due to the bumps in life, I did not get my wish, so I only wrote a reportage "Mr. Jia Jichen and His Surroundings", which was handed over to Hu Feng to be published in the magazine "July".
Hu Feng and his wife Mei Zhi.
At the beginning of 1939, that is, after the fall of Wuhan for a period of time, the Kuomintang put forward the reactionary political program of "dissolving the Communist Party" and "limiting the Communist Party", which was the formative period of the "first ** upsurge" mentioned in our history books. An important part of their activities was to investigate the non-party members, members, and leftists who had entered the Kuomintang organs or units as a result of the War of Resistance. I am not a member of the Kuomintang, and I have nothing to do with the people in their circle; At the same time, he also wrote articles in the progressive newspapers and periodicals in the rear; In the 10 months since I joined this army, I have adopted a coherent and unclean attitude, and I have often interacted with the local progressive forces. Taken together, these factors naturally became the object of their suspicion, and I knew it myself. Among the people I was with, there was a secretary surnamed Li, a native of Anhui, who was also my boss, who was usually very enthusiastic about me and asked me everything. Once he went to the thatched house to defecate, he also came, and the two squatted on the edge of the thatched pit and chatted. He said to me very affectionately: "We are going to promote you and make you the secretary of the major, and the above also has this idea, and is going to send you to the Political Department of the Luoyang First Theater Commander's Headquarters for training, and you can be promoted when you come back." As soon as I heard this, I was alert, because I had suffered political lawsuits from the Kuomintang in the past, and the Kuomintang referred to "training," which was what we later called "trial cadres." I have always been disgusted with this set, I joined the army to participate in the anti-Japanese resistance, not to find a way out of life, let alone to take advantage of this to get a half-official position. So I excused myself and said: "I am a student, I have been in the army for ten months, I am not used to life here, I am from Shanxi, my mother recently wrote to me that I am not in good health, I want to resign and go back to my hometown." As soon as he heard this, his face immediately pulled down, and he began to say in an official tone: "Chairman Chiang's edict: All officers and men of the front-line combat units who take a long leave or resign will be punished as deserting from the battle!" I asked him, "What about it?" He exclaimed: "All military law is done - shoot!" ”
I said, "So, it's okay for me to take a leave of absence to go back and see my mother, right?" "You can only take up to three weeks off," he said. "After a few days, I went through the leave formalities and issued a certificate to leave the unit.
Before leaving, I was suddenly assigned another task by the army. At that time, there were propaganda team members in the army, all of whom were male and female students, who were doing anti-Japanese propaganda work on the front line. Because I was going to pass through Xi'an on my way back to my hometown, they asked me to send six members of the youth propaganda team to the "Fourth Cadre Training Regiment" in Xi'an for training. I said yes and set off with the six young men. After crossing the Yellow River and arriving in Mianchi County, Henan, I found a small restaurant, asked the boss to set up a sumptuous banquet, and called these six young people to eat together. At the table, I raised my glass and said loudly: "I announce to you that I wanted to resign and leave the army a long time ago, but the above is not allowed, and now that I have crossed the Yellow River, they will not be able to control it." From now on, I will no longer be Jia Riwen's officer. I won't send you to that kind of place for training, your official certificates are here, and whoever wants to go can go by himself. We are fellow countrymen, and we will break up after eating this meal. I don't have much money around me, so I divide each of you into two yuan for pocket money, anyway, the soldiers don't need to buy tickets for the train, so let's go our separate ways! "I put it bluntly, and the young people also spoke their hearts. They said that they had read "July" in the past and knew that I wrote articles on it, but because of the strict hierarchy in the army, they had never been able to associate with me. Now that I have said so, they have expressed their reluctance to go to the Kuomintang cadre training regiment for training. They turned out to be young people who had saved their lives and participated in the army's propaganda work because of the anti-Japanese resistance. Two of them said on the spot that Luoyang had gone to their relatives, and the other four young people said that they would not be able to return to their hometowns anyway, so they simply went to Yan'an to participate in the anti-Japanese resistance, and asked me if I had anything to do with introducing them. I didn't know anyone from the Eighth Route Army at the time. Let's just say, since that's the case, let's go to Xi'an together first. When I arrived in Xi'an, after staying in a small hotel, I remembered the name of the "Northwest Field Correspondent" given to me by Hu Feng, and said to them, I will write you a note, you go and try it, I don't dare to take insurance if it succeeds, I will wait for you in the hotel. So I wrote a note that read: "Xi'an Office of the Eighth Route Army: I am Jia Zhifang, the northwest field correspondent of the "July" Society, and I have a few young friends who want to study in Yan'an, so I would like to introduce them. Within two hours, they happily came back and said that the Eighth Route Army Office had read my letter of introduction and agreed to their request, and wanted to send them to study at the Taihang Mountain Branch of Kang University, and asked them to move to the office first. They packed their luggage and left. More than 50 years later, I received a letter from a newspaper written by a cadre in Shanxi. In the letter, he asked if he was an officer of the Seventh Division of the Third Army of the Kuomintang during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and he said that he had gone to work in the anti-Japanese democratic base area because of Jia's relationship with the officer, and now he was a cadre who participated in the revolution in 39 years. I think this incident also fully illustrates the lofty prestige of Hu Feng's "July" in the anti-Japanese base areas.
When I returned to my hometown from Xi'an to visit relatives, most of Shanxi had already fallen, the houses in my hometown had been burned down by the Japanese, and my parents, my sister, and my sister-in-law who stayed in the countryside were hiding in the mountains all day long, hiding from the Japanese army and bandits, and life was very difficult. But I also saw that the villagers, who had always been numb, threw themselves into the sacred war of self-defense because of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and their minds and horizons became broadened, and from them, I also saw the hope that the vitality of the nation was born in the flames of war. I fled with them, lived together, and returned to my hometown under the enemy's bayonet in disguise to visit my late wife's new grave. As I left, I was filled with emotion at the exaltation of our own meaning in life, which was immersed in suffering. A few years later, I wrote my feelings about returning to my hometown into ** "My Hometown", and I couldn't help but praise at the end: "Hometown, the hometown of war, is what gives us the courage to live and fight." It is such a new harbor of life. This is a short story I wrote when I was in exile in Xi'an in the early forties**, which was later published in the inaugural issue of Hope for Hu Feng, and he said in this issue of "Postscript": "This is a very touching lyrical**.
Soon after, I left my hometown and wandered all the way to Chongqing. Before leaving, I took eighty pieces of ocean with me, hired a carriage in Yichuan, and set off. On the way, I met a soldier from Northeast China, in his thirties, who was a major adjutant, and he also went to Xi'an, so he went in the same car. One evening, when the carriage stopped at a small shop, I asked the major for a room. Due to the fatigue of the day, after dinner, the two lay down on the kang. When I woke up in the middle of the night, I used to touch my pocket, and my eighty dollars were there, and I had to be cautious when I was away in troubled times. But when I felt in my pocket, I realized that the money was gone.