Li Yousheng

Author’s Note: This is part of my book “Looking at Confucius from a Different Angle,” published in China in 2014. Not a single word is fictional; it is all fact. My father participated in underground anti-Japanese work in the Hebei Plain. Faced with a powerful enemy, anyone could defect or desert at any time. Anti-Japanese personnel could only form a primitive social team based on equality and kinship, just like Confucius and his disciples. One snowy night in early spring of 1941, my father, Xiao Wang, and Jiao Shoujian were pursued by the enemy. They threw away their tattered cotton-padded coats and ran lightly through the darkness to escape. Finally, they found a local stronghold—a trusted farmer—and obtained a tattered quilt from them. Under the quilt, the three slept in a wheat field half-muddy and half-snowy. My father and Xiao Wang were young men in their early twenties at the time, while Jiao Shoujian was the secretary of the central county party committee overseeing three counties; he was their superior. The elderly commander insisted on sleeping on the north side to shield the two young men from the wind, saying, “Old bones aren’t afraid of the cold.” My father, a thoughtful man, waited until the two were sound asleep before quietly getting up and sleeping on the north side to protect the old commander from the cold wind. The next morning, he woke to find the old commander still lying on the northernmost side, his body frozen and unconscious. The two young men held him in their arms until the sun rose, at which point the old commander awoke. The three then moved to safety. Not long after, while my father and Jiao Shoujian were fighting the Japanese in the trenches, they heard a “plop” sound from the earth beside them. My father turned around and saw the old commander had been shot and killed, clutching anti-Japanese documents tightly in his hand. In his final moments, he clearly considered the fight against the Japanese his final destiny.

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The concept of “ren” (仁), proposed by Confucius, has been translated in various ways by Western scholars. I believe that only “Human-Heartedness” best conveys Confucius’s original meaning. In other words, it refers to a state of being with a human heart. Modern society’s people are controlled by social culture and individual rational thinking, while the benevolent individuals of Confucius’s time could hear the call of the innate human heart. Compared to those around them, my father and grandfather were among the very few modern people who still heed the call of the human heart in crucial moments.

The history of modern civilization is a history of escalating wars: humanity faces not a pack of tigers in the wilderness, but humanity itself, whose cannibalistic capacity is billions of times greater than that of tigers and wolves. Amidst frequent wars and fierce political struggles, my father and grandfather neither became cannibals nor participated in any such social actions involving cannibalism. They avoided unnecessary human conflicts: including unnecessary wars or other social movements that severely harmed the innocent.

My grandfather was born in 1885 and died of dysentery in 1943 at the age of 58. Today, he wouldn’t have died from Western medicine. After traditional Chinese medicine treatment proved ineffective, we sold our only two or three hundred catties of sesame seeds to raise enough money to buy Western medicine in Tianjin. However, the medicine was confiscated during a Japanese raid, and my grandfather died at the hands of the Japanese invaders.

Our family once had a primary school, where the adults in our family who knew a few characters taught the boys to read. My grandfather was young during the Qing Dynasty, and the *Analects* and *Mencius* were used as textbooks. Based on my later interactions with my grandfather’s generation, they seemed to have no understanding of Confucianism or Mencius’ teachings, and appeared to have no recollection of them whatsoever. Furthermore, they didn’t know many characters; in their own words, they had only learned to write their own names. The realities of early society instilled in them the pure and simple nature of Confucius.

My grandfather lived the life of an ordinary Chinese farmer for thousands of years in his youth. He owned a small plot of land, enough to support his family. In good years, they ate better; in bad years, they would gather a few more wild vegetables and stack a few more leaves. About three miles from our village was a river leading to Tianjin, and my grandfather’s uncle lived on its banks. This uncle did business in Tianjin and needed help, so in 1915 he invited my grandfather to work there. After my uncle passed away, his business faced bankruptcy. My grandfather, together with another farmer from the village, sold off their land and property to buy the business, which they later converted into a general store. In short, the business prospered, and they made a fortune, enough to buy a detached house with a courtyard.

My grandfather adhered to the principle of “staying in the city during minor disturbances and in the countryside during major disturbances.” When the Japanese occupied Northeast China and advanced into North China, he sold his businesses and real estate and returned home to farm. Despite the family’s increased wealth, his lifelong spirit of hard work remained undiminished. He managed sixty or seventy acres of land and continuously engaged in various businesses. The sheer number of skills he possessed is truly admirable even today: he was skilled in interior decoration, weaving, carpentry, and even used herbal remedies to treat patients. Like Confucius, he also organized funerals for many years.

Today, someone like my grandfather would be rolling in money; the quasi-primitive society of rural China didn’t allow for unlimited accumulation of personal wealth. Compared to those around him, my grandfather was only slightly well-off. Once, stragglers from Sun Chuanfang’s army surrounded our house with guns and attempted to rob it. My grandfather, alone on the roof, held them off with a wooden stick. His desperate struggle, like a mouse facing a tiger, was suicidal—a recipe for disaster. Fortunately, many farmers at the time had guns. Seeing the bandits coming to rob the village, they fired shots everywhere. The stragglers, unaware of the situation and being a minority in a village of three thousand, fled in panic.

After the July 7th Incident and the subsequent fall of North China to the Japanese, my grandfather sent his only son to participate in the perilous anti-Japanese guerrilla warfare. He also devoted his own resources to supporting the resistance, earning him recognition as an enlightened figure in the area. Later, he distributed most of his land to local farmers at very low prices, or even free of charge. My grandfather’s character can be described in Lu Xun’s words: “Fierce-browed, he defies a thousand pointing fingers; head bowed, he willingly serves the people like an ox.” As an ordinary, unassuming farmer, my grandfather lacked Lu Xun’s passionate writing, his sense of responsibility as a pillar of the nation, and his selfless dedication to any particular ideology. He struggled throughout his life, his success not for money or wealth, nor for posterity; he was content to be a well-received member of his family and community in a quasi-primitive society. In other words, like my grandmother and mother, my grandfather lived an aesthetic life, following the call of humanity and the deepest emotions within his heart.

My father, Li Fenggang, courtesy name Zhe, was born in 1919 and passed away in 2010. The following is a short memoir I wrote after my father’s death, written in the second person (respectfully) according to local custom, and is recorded here:

When you were born, your parents were already middle-aged and doted on you so much that they couldn’t bear to let you leave home for school. In 1933, you enrolled in a higher primary school in Xian County, and a year and a half later, you entered Juemin Middle School in Tianjin. You actively participated in the famous December 9th and December 16th patriotic student movements. In 1937, when the Japanese army launched a large-scale invasion, you resolutely abandoned your studies to join the army, fighting against the enemy under the sorghum fields of North China. In the autumn of 1937, you participated in and organized the Xian County Youth Anti-Japanese National Salvation Association; in 1939, you transferred to Jianguo County as the secretary of the Youth Committee. The environment was harsh, and you were repeatedly pursued by the enemy, suffering severe injuries and narrowly escaping death. In 1942, during a large-scale Japanese mopping-up operation, you returned home to recuperate from illness. During this time, you built an underground hideout in your home, sheltering many anti-Japanese cadres from the county and district, and relaying important intelligence that saved our army from heavy losses. In 1947, you established the Youxin Chinese and Western Medicine Society at Fuzhuang Post Station. In the same year, during the land reform, your family was wrongly classified as rich peasants and detained. While detained, you were paraded through the streets, shouting: “Down with the Kuomintang’s agents!” Down with Chiang Kai-shek’s filial sons and grandsons! This led to the entire family being implicated. Deeply moved, he devoted himself to medicine, shifting his focus from saving the nation from the hail of bullets to saving the people from the threat of illness. Over several years, he self-studied Western medical textbooks and classic Chinese medicine texts, combining this with his medical practice, and wrote and published numerous medical papers. In 1949, he was transferred to the position of vice president of Cangzhou Hospital, but due to illness, he did not take office, instead devoting himself to practicing medicine in his hometown. Around 1954, the Ministry of Health of China planned to conduct a unified test for existing medical personnel before issuing medical licenses. While the vast majority failed, he alone scored over 90 points, becoming the top scorer in the entire county. With a compassionate heart, he empathized with the suffering of his patients, earning a reputation throughout the community. After retiring in 1976, he continued to provide free medical care, treating over 70,000 patients between 1977 and 1983.

Jun’s mother often told her grandchildren that when Jun was two or three years old, fearing he wouldn’t survive, she would pick out the best food for him at mealtimes, assuming he would eat it all. Only when clearing the table afterward would she discover he had secretly hidden it underneath. The so-called “good food” was nothing more than a simple white steamed bun; this hardship highlighted the deep bond between mother and child, and Jun’s extraordinary life. Jun was intelligent and studious, earning praise from teachers, students, and neighbors alike, his academic future clearly visible. When the Lugou Bridge shot rang out, some with Jun’s talent continued their studies under the iron heel, while others fled west with refugees to pursue their education. Jun, however, went alone to the front lines of national crisis, crying out in the fields. Jun once said that when he was wanted by the enemy, he hid in the snow and ice of the wilderness overnight. The next day, he woke up unable to move, waiting for the sun to warm him before getting up and subsisting on wheat seedlings. After the war, many with your qualifications would have risen rapidly through the ranks only to be criticized as capitalist roaders. But you chose to retire gracefully, and through long illness, you became a renowned physician. Li Bai said, “Heaven has endowed me with talents, which must be put to use.” Indeed, you were born to save the country and its people. How many people were saved from the Japanese invaders’ guns by your service? How many lives were brought back from the brink of death by your medical practice? In this ever-changing world, opinions on merit and demerit are divided, but your deeds in saving the country and its people will be remembered for eternity, and no one dares to criticize you. Sima Qian said, “Those who pursue this ambition can shine as brightly as the sun and moon.”

After the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937, the Japanese army launched a full-scale invasion of China, occupying cities and plunging the rural areas of Hebei into anarchy for nearly a year. This was the era depicted in the model opera “Shajiabang,” where “anti-Japanese heroes rise from all directions, and whoever has a gun is a warlord.” My father and other young students traveled everywhere giving speeches and promoting resistance against Japan. They also visited the ubiquitous “warlords”—those with “ten or so men and seven or eight guns”—intending to choose one to join. My father and his group were disappointed: these warlords, under the guise of resistance, had amassed money from the wealthy, spending their days indulging in wine and women, a far cry from the refined tastes of the young students. Finally, my father and his group decided to establish their own organization: the Youth Salvation Association. Later, the Communist forces led by Lü Zhengcao came to deal with these warlords, forcing them to surrender to the Communists, threatening to eliminate those who refused.

After the Japanese army reached Guangzhou and Hong Kong, and then turned back to consolidate North China as their base, the anti-Japanese war in central Hebei became extremely difficult. Japanese pillboxes were everywhere, and gunfire was constant; even when Japanese soldiers patrolled from their watchtowers, they could fire at any point on the Hebei plain. Thus, all anti-Japanese personnel lived within the firing range of Japanese patrols. The people naturally sided with the resistance, but many also colluded with the enemy. I had an uncle who, like my father, was engaged in anti-Japanese work. One night, he sneaked home and was killed by enemy fire in a cornfield a couple hundred meters from his house. Those who saw his body told me, “He didn’t look like a human at all; he was just a lump of flesh and blood.” The village bought white cloth to wrap this lump of flesh and blood in the shape of a human for burial. My father attributed his survival to his own caution and adherence to the operational rules established by the anti-Japanese forces to minimize casualties. Of course, wisdom and skill also played a role. A distant uncle of mine, who also participated in the War of Resistance against Japan, once chatted with my father and said that his survival was also due to his caution. He said he personally witnessed a comrade stand up to relieve himself in a wheat field and be shot dead by a patrolling soldier, even though the regulations at the time forbade him to stand up to relieve himself. In his later years, my father wrote an analysis, saying, “In the cruel environment of war, my survival was by no means predetermined. It was because I was highly vigilant in my daily life, always paying close attention, never letting my guard down or becoming complacent, sleeping little, being alert and quick-witted, and calmly analyzing and judging situations that I was able to turn danger into safety and avoid death in many crises.”

To minimize casualties, anti-Japanese fighters traveled in small teams of three to five. On several occasions, only my father returned, earning him the nickname “the one with the best life” from his comrades. Three times, he was pursued by numerous enemies, yet he managed to escape each time. Once by Japanese cavalry, and once by a Japanese motorcycle unit. I once asked him curiously how he managed to escape when multiple people were firing at him. He said he ran into the local orchards, constantly firing back at the enemy from behind the trees. The orchards were small, individually owned, but clustered together. Enemy cavalry and motorcycles couldn’t enter the orchards; they quickly surrounded my father from different directions, waiting for him on the other side. My father would wait until they had just reached the other side and were still standing still before suddenly changing direction, running sideways into another nearby orchard. He had to be careful not to run in the direction of any enemy fire, as this would force them to constantly move their guns, making it difficult to aim. The following story tells of his third solo pursuit of the enemy, this time by infantry.

In March 1940, the crops, then known as the “green curtain,” had not yet grown. The corn and sorghum stalks from the previous year, which the farmers hadn’t cut down to provide cover for the anti-Japanese personnel, had by this time been scattered by the cold winds, offering little shelter. This was the most difficult time for guerrilla warfare on the plains. My father and others could only hide in farmers’ homes during the day and carry out anti-Japanese activities at night, only daring to sleep soundly in the fields late at night.

After my father independently organized the county’s Anti-Japanese Youth Salvation Association in 1937 and joined the county committee, he served as one of the main leaders of the county committee during the Anti-Japanese War, carrying out organizational work for the resistance. On a day in March 1940, he, along with Li Peixin, the district committee secretary, and Xiao Lü, the owner of the district farmers’ association, formed a group and went to Hanzhuang Village in Jianguo County. They planned to cook and eat around four or five o’clock in the afternoon, and then hold a meeting of Hanzhuang party cadres in the evening. While my father was making pancakes over a fire, the militiaman on guard duty ran over and said, “A small group of armed men is coming from the northwest. They don’t look like our people.” Li Peixin and Xiao Lü immediately went with the guard to investigate.

Unbeknownst to Father, news of their meeting had leaked, and the enemy was there to arrest them. Father was still baking pancakes when gunfire erupted in the village. He ran out and found the village surrounded by the enemy. At this time, Li Peixin and Xiao Lü had already been captured, tortured, beaten to death with wooden clubs, stuffed into sacks, and thrown into the Ziya River. Therefore, the enemy’s siege of the village was solely for Father’s sake.

My father ran into a house, trying to hide in a haystack in the yard. The old lady who owned the house was frightened and said, “If you hide in my haystack and the Japanese find you, our whole family will die with you. I’m old and not afraid of death, but I can’t let my son die with you.” (My father deleted this passage when he wrote down this history, but I think it makes more sense and highlights the bond between her and her son.)

The old woman finally advised my father to escape by climbing the ladder through the doorway onto the roof. Just as my father climbed up, the enemy opened fire on him from all sides. It turned out the enemy had surrounded the village from the rooftops at the edge of the village. Farmers in Hebei all lived in single-story houses with flat roofs used for drying grain and other crops. My father tumbled down into the alley and ran towards the edge of the village. He heard traitors beating the villagers, saying he had Eighth Route Army border region tickets. As my father ran through a street in the village, a Japanese soldier and a traitor shouted at him, “Come back! Don’t run!” and fired a shot at him.

One can imagine that the enemy, having found their target, would swarm towards my father and fire at him. Fortunately, the village was small, and right next to it were communication trenches dug by the farmers to escape enemy pursuit. My father knew the terrain like the back of his hand. When he approached the trenches, he quickly and nimbly rolled into them. After running for a while, he caught up with a group of civilians also fleeing the Japanese army. Two Japanese cavalrymen chased after the civilians, and my father fired two shots at them from the trench. They probably didn’t know the number of armed men in the trench and dared not advance rashly, so they dismounted and observed. During his escape in the trench, my father later encountered the head of the Hanzhuang Village Armed Forces Committee, whom he knew. Seeing that the man’s face was ashen and bloodless, my father asked him, “Do I look yellow?” The man, still running, said, “How come I can only see your body but not your head?” He had probably seen too many murdered anti-Japanese personnel and was experiencing nightmare-like hallucinations during his escape.

After finally reaching safety, my father learned that he had been severely injured when he tumbled off the roof. For several days, he was unable to move his legs, could not lie flat due to shortness of breath, and coughed up blood, clearly indicating internal organ damage. My father was arranged to recuperate at the home of Comrade Liu Yao, who was then known as a “fortress household.” After taking care of my father and helping him recover somewhat, Liu Yao went out to work, telling my father, “Take good care of yourself, I’ll come back to see you in a few days.” He soon heroically sacrificed his life, and these became his final farewell words to my father.

My father had been wounded multiple times and contracted tuberculosis and pleurisy. Once, he fell so ill that he lay on his back in a wheat field, too weak to even turn over. During the day, nearby farmers would come and feed him a few sips of noodle soup. He lay in that position for three days and three nights until someone came to move him. Thankfully, it didn’t rain for those three days; a single rain shower would have been fatal.

My father later fell ill and was admitted to the rear hospital of the Eighth Military Sub-district. This coincided with the May 1st Great Sweep in 1942, when the Japanese army, with over 50,000 troops, vehicles, and aircraft, launched a brutal sweep across the Hebei Plain, attempting to wipe out our anti-Japanese armed forces and local organizations in one fell swoop. To reduce the number of targets, the hospital decided to break up the operation, placing the seriously wounded in the homes of reliable farmers to recuperate, and allowing those who could afford it to go home for treatment. My father was assigned to go home. Our village was considered an advanced anti-Japanese village at the time; none of its nearly 3,000 residents had become traitors, and it was frequently chosen as a base for anti-Japanese troops and county/district government offices.

To facilitate the mopping-up operations, the Japanese army built more guard towers. One new guard tower was less than 200 meters from my house, manned by over a hundred Japanese soldiers. Late at night, I could hear the sentries talking from the tower. When my grandfather built the house, he secretly constructed a hidden adobe wall, a small room without windows. I climbed into it when I was little. Above the bedroom was a storage room called an “ear room,” containing furniture and other items. Behind the furniture was a hidden door in the wall leading to this unknown adobe wall room.

Because my father was recuperating at home, our house became a gathering place and intelligence hub for anti-Japanese personnel. These people soon took a liking to the small hut hidden in our house. The village sent fourteen young and capable Party members to dig a tunnel in the hut in two shifts, and then dug out two underground rooms in the tunnel that could accommodate five or six people.

During the six months surrounding the May Day mopping-up operation in 1942, over a hundred anti-Japanese personnel from the county and district levels sought refuge at my home to avoid the Japanese troops. Countless anti-Japanese meetings were also held there. All remained safe and sound, without a single injury or death. During the day, my mother and grandmother took turns sitting at the doorway doing needlework, which served as lookout duty. If Japanese soldiers approached, they would return inside to inform my father. My grandfather was responsible for relaying written intelligence. He would slip the intelligence into the harness on the donkey’s neck and then lead the donkey to work in the fields. He would then find an opportunity to pass the written intelligence to a person responsible for intelligence delivery in the neighboring village of Wu’anzhuang. The Japanese never discovered this.

One night, a young man from the village who was heating water for the Japanese soldiers in their watchtower overheard that the Japanese were planning to attack an anti-Japanese guerrilla force gathered in a neighboring county, Wuqiang, at dawn the next day. This news was relayed through two or three people before reaching my father. With only a few hours left, my father walked around the watchtower to the neighboring village in the middle of the night to deliver the information. The next day, the Japanese indeed launched their attack, but thanks to my father’s timely intelligence, they found nothing.

Seeing my father’s interest in medicine and his ability to publish articles in medical journals, the Party organization, after the victory of the War of Resistance Against Japan, instructed him to establish a clinic, which later became the county hospital. While treating the local people, my father and other doctors also provided shelter for visiting Communist Party cadres. These cadres stayed at the clinic under the guise of being patients. After 1950, my father returned home to recuperate and simultaneously opened his own clinic.

My father was knowledgeable in both traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine, and he developed some Western medicine formulas that met the needs of local farmers, which were very popular. The farmers clearly viewed the difference between traditional Chinese and Western medicine with a practical attitude; they were very willing to accept inexpensive Western medicine pills that were effective and quick to cure. After agricultural collectivization in 1956, my father had to stop developing these formulas. I remember in the 1960s, someone traveled over a hundred miles to buy one of my father’s formulas, and he had to tell them that he had stopped developing it seven or eight years earlier.

Today, readers with some experience in secondary social life might say: Isn’t serving the people the same for a hospital director and a rural doctor? For people in the quasi-primitive society of rural China, saving lives and healing the wounded in their hometown is a genuine joy. However, being a hospital director in a secondary society involves many unpredictable variables and may not align with human nature. During the later stages of the Cultural Revolution, my father visited Beijing and met Qian Xinzong, a surgeon and Minister of Health. Upon learning that my father, like him, had participated in the anti-Japanese war in central Hebei and was now a doctor, Qian treated him like a long-lost comrade-in-arms, talking with him for a long time. Afterwards, he even offered to give my father a physical examination. He had my father lie flat on the bed and examined him from head to toe, then explained his findings and offered his assessment and suggestions regarding my father’s health.

From his earnest yet slightly smug expression, I, standing beside him, immediately understood his unspoken meaning: I, Qian Xinzong, am a reputable professional doctor. If I were like you, returning to my profession as a doctor immediately after the revolution’s success, I wouldn’t be where I am today—sidelined and idle for years after being overthrown. Is it still possible for me to be a doctor and serve the people now?

Qian Xinzong told me about another side of the War of Resistance Against Japan. After World War II, American military historians found that only 15-20% of American soldiers who participated in the war fired their weapons. Some soldiers even deliberately fired shots into the air because humans have an innate instinct not to kill their own kind. The Japanese army was no exception, only to varying degrees.

During the May Day mopping-up operation in 1942, Qian and his anti-Japanese forces were stationed in a village in Hengshui, Hebei Province. One morning, after getting up, Qian went to the well at the village entrance to brush his teeth. A sentry nearby was blowing a reveille to wake the sleeping soldiers. Suddenly, Qian saw Japanese soldiers marching in a line to the east of the village, each carrying a rifle, towards their position. These Japanese soldiers, spaced about twenty meters apart, advanced in a comb-like pattern—the so-called mopping-up operation—intending to sweep through the entire Hebei Plain once or twice to eliminate all anti-Japanese personnel. Qian told me that none of their men were injured because the Japanese soldiers advanced without looking around; they didn’t care how many anti-Japanese personnel passed through their ranks. As far as I know, Qian’s anti-Japanese personnel, like my father, did not wear military uniforms; their attire was no different from that of ordinary people. The Japanese army naturally mistook them for ordinary farmers. My father’s repeated escapes from Japanese pursuit were also due to the same factor; those Japanese soldiers were not always so serious in their official duties. Many Japanese soldiers fired at the same person; everyone fired indiscriminately, and in the end, no one knew who let the Eighth Route Army soldier escape. (Author’s website: http://taoism21cen.com)

author By Dr. You-Sheng Li

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