[Alberta Special Issue on the 70th Anniversary of the Anti-Fascist Victory]: National Spirit

[Alberta Special Issue on the 70th Anniversary of the Anti-Fascist Victory]: National Spirit Phoenix PEN Club Cui Zengqi During the Anti-Japanese War, I was still a child, but those who united against Japan...

Phoenix PEN Club Cui Zengqi

During the Anti-Japanese War, I was still a child, but the national spirit of unity and resistance against Japan deeply affected me and our generation, and even affected my entire life. During the days when the Japanese invaded and the Chinese people suffered a great loss of life, we went through many hardships and fled from Shanghai to Kunming. My father found a job in Mingliang Coal Mine through friends in the Resource Committee, and we settled in a small mountain village dozens of miles away from Kunming. It was a small village named Zaige with only about twenty households. In order to develop the coal mine, more than 20 new families moved in, including from Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shandong, Anhui, Shanghai, as well as from Shaanxi and Hebei. These strangers who came from different places and spoke different languages ​​and lives came together. They were like good friends. They immediately set up a shed near the village, using branches and soil cut from the mountain to build a house like an ancient castle. This house is backed by a mountain. There is a tall gate on the east side, which is the only exit. It is surrounded by fences made of branches. The residents set up a cooperative within the fence, established a sewing group, and built a tiger stove to supply boiling and hot water to each household every day. Friction is inevitable in life, but in the general atmosphere of joint resistance against Japan, people live in harmony, showing a scene of mutual help and care everywhere. Once, an American plane crashed into a nearby farmland. The whole village, men, women and children, rushed to the rescue and carried the injured home to recover. Every family sent nutritious food and treated the injured like family members. Everyone knows that this is the Allied Forces and a friend of the United States. It was only after I grew up that I learned that they were members of the American Flying Tigers led by General Chennault who helped the Chinese in the war. After my life became stable, a primary school was opened next to the village, named Mingliang Coal Mine Workers' Children Primary School. My early education benefited from this place. Many teachers in the school are part-time employees. What I remember most is a music teacher invited from other places. His surname was Liu. He taught us anti-Japanese songs. So since I was a child, I would sing many anti-Japanese songs such as March of the Volunteers, Huang Shuijian, Trilogy in Exile, and Graduation Song. "Rise up, people who do not want to be slaves" aroused my awareness of the responsibility of the motherland. "Today we are fragrant with peaches and plums, and tomorrow we will be the pillars of society." We gather together today, and tomorrow we will set off a huge wave of national liberation and bear the responsibility for the rise and fall of the world. ’ I have closely linked my destiny with the future of my motherland. During those days, the employees also organized a Peking Opera club, set up a large tent as a theater, and set up a stage to perform Peking opera plays such as Shi Lang Visiting His Mother, Zhengqi Song, and Su Wu Shepherding the Sheep, which were historically used to resist foreign invasion. Donation activities have also been held to support soldiers on the front lines. In such a small society, living conditions are very difficult, but people live in harmony, and the atmosphere of fighting against the Japanese invaders is very strong. In that era of upheaval and displacement, adults had no intention of having children, so we children became the sons and daughters of the public, attracting people's love and bringing laughter to everyone wherever we went. Some people say that I grew up eating hundreds of meals, which had an important impact on the formation of my life-long personality. I miss that era very much. On the 40th anniversary and the 65th anniversary of my leaving this village, I returned to the village there twice. The first time I went back, I saw our original house. A classmate who was a child when I was a child is now a coal miner. He lived in the house where the mine director lived at that time. I lowered my head to enter the low and damp hut. I really can't imagine how people could live optimistically for nearly eight years in such an environment. I think that is a kind of national spirit, the great Chinese national spirit. At that time, foreigners said that we were the ‘sick men of East Asia’ and a plate of loose sand. When the enemy invaded our land and killed our compatriots, at the critical moment of the survival of the country and the nation, the Chinese people stood up, united as one, and resisted the invasion of foreign enemies with their own actions. It was this national spirit that relied on us. Although we have never seen a Japanese devil or fired a single shot, the lives of the people in that small village are full of this national spirit. God, the spirit of the whole people to resist the Japanese invasion. I think this is an important guarantee for the victory of World War II. Today, as we commemorate the 70th anniversary of the victory of World War II, we must not forget the history of being despised and humiliated, and we must not lose our national spirit-the soul of our national survival!