- Preface
There is such an old man.
He has been on Peking University and Tsinghua . He has served as Premier Zhou for 9 years and has been the secretary of the country. He has been at the national level and is deeply trusted by Zhou Enlai, Deng Xiaoping and Chen Yun. After retirement, he devoted himself to poverty alleviation and education, realizing the dream of college in many children in poor areas.
This old man is already 105 years old this year, and he is Song Ping.
- Study hard and have lofty ambitions
1917, Song Ping was born in a poor peasant family in Ju County, Shandong Province.
At that time, under the rule of Beiyang government, the burden on farmers was not lighter or heavier than that of the late Qing Dynasty. Therefore, Song Ping's life was very difficult when he was a child and he could not fill his stomach.
Perhaps it was physical hunger that stimulated spiritual hunger, and Song Ping was very eager to read.
Song's father and mother looked at their son's begging eyes, thinking that their son was smart since childhood, and they might be able to make a name for themselves. Although studying costs money, they gritted their teeth and tightened their belts and squeezed out some money to support their son to go to school.
Just like that, Song Ping went to school as he wished.
Song Ping knew that the opportunity to go to school was hard-won, and he also knew that children from poor families like him could only go by studying, so he worked very hard on his studies and even skipped the level.
Hard work pays off. Song Ping was admitted to the nationally renowned institution at the age of 17 - Peking University . Song’s father and mother were so happy that they burst into tears. Their family had a college student, and more than ten years of hardship were nothing.
1949 Tsinghua alumni took a photo in Shenyang. From right: Chen Shunyao, Song Ping, He Li, Xue Gongchuo and his wife and their children, and their children, Shusheng was full of enthusiasm. Song Ping, who was young, was inevitably a little young and vigorous. During his time at school, he had a serious conflict with the school teachers. The school leaders asked Song Ping to make a profound review in front of all the teachers and students of the school, and to remember the demerits and stay on campus for probation.
But Song Ping has his own principles. He thought it was not his fault, so he said very toughly that he refused to accept the school's handling. In response, the school had to make a decision to expel Song Ping.
is a blow like this, for a boy who is only seventeen or eighteen years old, and it may even be the ruthless cold water that extinguishes the fire. But Song Ping is an indelible fire. As long as there is a trace of hope, he will reignite the flame and emit a dazzling light.
So, Song Ping took the initiative and focused on repeating the study. The following year, he was admitted to Tsinghua University with better results. This time, Song Ping took his strength away and focused on his studies. After all, it was not easy for him to study at home.
It is worth mentioning that his brother Song Shoutian was lucky enough to win a grand prize, with a total of 300 oceans. These 300 oceans can greatly improve their family's living conditions, but Song Shoutian gave Song Ping no more than a piece of the 300 oceans to him for his study. Therefore, Song Ping cannot let down his family's expectations for him.
But he is just focused on reading the books of sages and turning a blind eye to the things outside the window?
No, every aspiring young man has a strong patriotism in his heart.
When gunfire sounded at Lugou Bridge, when the Japanese army was ambitious to occupy our country's North China Plain, and when Beiping was about to fall, countless patriotic young students like Song Ping took to the streets to shout anti-Japanese slogans. However, the vigorous "January 29" student movement failed to resist the pace of Japanese invasion. On July 29, 1937, Peiping fell.
Tsinghua, Peking University and Nankai In order to preserve their strength, they unanimously decided to move south. In this way, Song Ping followed the school south to Southwest Associated University to continue his studies. But the nation was in danger, and the land under his feet had been trampled by the ambition of imperial powers. He could not just go out to the streets and chant patriotic slogans like before. He wanted to do something more practical and useful.
So, Song Ping turned his attention to Yan'an.
- rushed to Yan'an and devoted himself to the revolution
After graduating from Southwest Associated University, Song Ping went to Yan'an and devoted himself to the revolutionary cause.
In the war years, even the problem of food and clothing could not be solved. Reading was out of reach for most people, so the Communist Party lacked talents who had received higher education. Therefore, as soon as Song Ping arrived in Yan'an, he was arranged by the party organization to study at the Central Party School and the Marxist-Leninister College. At the Party School, Song Ping often handled documents until late at night and never complained about hardship and fatigue.
At the end of 1938, Song Ping was transferred to Chongqing Southern Bureau for publicity work to help Zhou Enlai carry out his work. Soon, Song Ping was transferred to the " Xinhua Daily " agency and served as the director of the editorial department's information room, mainly responsible for the work of news editors.
When everyone was watching movies and TV series, they could see the tabloids shouting "Sell newspapers, sell newspapers,..." in the streets and alleys. It can be seen that newspapers were a very important communication tool at that time, so Song Ping's burden on his shoulders was not light at all.
Although After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, the relationship between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party eased and was unanimous to the outside world, in fact, the Kuomintang was still unwilling to treat the Communist Party with an equal heart, so there are still some contradictions and frictions between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
At that time, the Eighth Route Army Office established by Zhou Enlai in Chongqing was at No. 950, Zengjiayan. It was surrounded by the special constitution of the Kuomintang military and police, which brought great trouble to Zhou Enlai and Song Ping and others in their work. However, all difficulties and obstacles are vulnerable to the staunch Communists. Song Ping, who was only in his early twenties, faced the difficulties and managed the newspaper in a vivid and vivid way.
Zhou Enlai admires this young man who is serious and responsible in his work and is extremely enthusiastic about everything he does. As the saying goes, opportunities are always reserved for those who are prepared. This year, Song Ping, who has outstanding work ability, became Zhou Enlai's political secretary.
After that, he served as Zhou Enlai's political secretary for 9 years.
After the founding of New China, Song Ping followed the organization's arrangements and his position changed again and again. But no matter which position he goes, he works diligently and does not forget his original aspiration. Everything he does is to let the general public have a full meal and live a good life.
- deeply rooted in Gansu, dedicated to farmers
How many eight years can a person's life be? What can a person do in eight years? Song Ping used one eight and a half years of his life to deeply cultivate Gansu and worked hard for the people of Gansu.
returns time to the early 1970s.
In 1972, when Song Ping first came to Gansu to take office as the first secretary of the provincial party committee, Gansu was suffering from drought and had not rained for almost two years. Song Ping seized the time to inspect the drought and actively took corresponding emergency measures.
Hard work pays off. That year, Gansu overcomes the drought without any danger.
This is not enough. What Song Ping needs to do is not only help the people of Gansu through this disaster, but also help the people of Gansu live a good life without panic. So Song Ping went to the grassroots level personally and conducted research on each household to understand the real production situation of farmers.
Through long-term investigation, he clearly realized that the collective economic system was not suitable for the development of productivity in rural areas at that time. So based on the actual situation, he clearly proposed to implement the operating and management responsibility system in rural areas.
However, due to some special reasons, these policies have not been implemented, and farmers' lives are still standing still.
Later, until 1978, some rural areas in Anhui and Sichuan began to implement the agricultural production responsibility system of , which greatly mobilized the enthusiasm of farmers and made a qualitative leap in grain output. The people of Gansu learned from newspapers that some rural areas in Anhui not only had enough food, but also had surplus food. They were eager to try and wanted to contract.
Song Ping strongly supports this.
He clearly stated at the meeting that the agricultural production responsibility system is in line with the actual situation in rural Gansu, which is conducive to stimulating farmers' production enthusiasm and greatly improving rural productivity.He also said that he should not be afraid to show off and not hesitate, because once hesitation, it will delay the harvest of a year, and the people will suffer for one more year.
Now, the policy of household contract responsibility system is correct in conformity with the development of the times, but it was difficult when it was first implemented. In response to this, Song Ping insisted on putting pressure on the implementation of responsibility fields in rural Gansu without hesitation.
Faced with the subsequent new thing of rural professionals, Song Ping personally went to the grassroots to investigate the actual situation. Based on the investigation, Song Ping took "female member Gao Xuelan raised chickens" as an example to vividly illustrate that "farmers can take the path of professional households to make a fortune."
This undoubtedly gave farmers peace of mind and also promoted the rapid and good development of Gansu's rural economy.
- Simple style, without taking the masses one needle and one thread
During the nine years when Song Ping was Zhou Enlai's political secretary, in addition to his increasingly outstanding work ability, Zhou Enlai's hard and simple style of work was also learned by him without any implementation.
During his tenure in Gansu, Song Ping often went deep into the countryside to conduct research.
In 1973, Song Ping visited Tongwei County to inspect the disaster.
When the local commune saw that the leaders were going to come down to inspect, the food was getting better. Thinking that they could not neglect the leaders, the commune specially bought meat and eggs from the county to entertain him. In response to this, Song Ping refused to eat at a glance because he saw many members on the road so hungry that they could only dig wild vegetables to eat, and he could not make big fish and meat here.
Another time, it was in August 1978, when Zhangxian suddenly encountered hail weather. The hail as big as eggs smashed the crops and the ground was in a mess. The members had only achieved hard work for more than half a year.
Song Ping looked at the members who were in pain in the ground and the soup with a few vegetable leaves floating in the pot, and felt very uncomfortable. But he didn't expect that under such a severe disaster, the commune killed a sheep to entertain him.
He immediately criticized the leaders of Zhang County seriously, and then endured hunger and went to other communes to inspect the disaster. Song Ping was kind and happy to those local leaders who arranged to treat him with simple meals.
During Song Ping's tenure, everyone knew that he never accepted gifts from others. No matter who gave gifts, he would invite people and places to go out; he would not allow additional entertainment in the local area when inspecting the countryside. However, there are exceptions in everything. Song Ping once received a gift from a fellow villager and ate local specialties during an inspection.
things are like this. Hining County There is a forester named Aaron Fushan who spent more than 20 years turning the bare Hongzui Mountain into a lush forest. Song Ping was shocked and went to Hongzui Mountain to visit Aaron Fushan in person. Even later, he was over 80 years old and climbed to the Taohua Mountain in Huining County to worship Aaron Kwok Mountain.
In 1979, Aaron Kwok-san, who was already a member of the National People's Congress, brought a few apples to Song Ping when he went to Lanzhou to attend the meeting. This time, Song Ping did not refuse. He knew that these apples represent Aaron Kwok-san's efforts for most of his life; his acceptance was a great affirmation and encouragement for Aaron Kwok-san. In return, Song Ping gave Aaron Kwok-san two brand new shovels.
Another time was when Song Ping visited the reservoir in Minle County and ate the apple and pears sent by the guesthouse.
Of course, Song Ping did not want to satisfy his appetite, but because apple pears are a variety introduced by the local area. The local plan to develop apple pear planting industry and wanted him to taste it and see if it is possible to get support from the province.
, Song Ping naturally strongly supported this.
Later, the apple pear planting industry in Minle County developed extremely rapidly, and local farmers also relied on this to make a fortune.
- committed to poverty alleviation and education
"It is important for students to receive revolutionary traditional education ... I hope that in the event, you will understand the hard-won principles of a happy life, learn how to be a person, learn how to study and live, and be determined to be the successors of the cause of communism who loves the motherland and the people."
On April 27, 2007, the campus of Sunzu Town Central Primary School in the old Yimeng District was broadcasting such a letter. This was a letter written by the retired Song Ping to the primary reporter of the school, which brought great encouragement to the revolutionary education of Sunzu Town Central Primary School at that time.
After retirement, Song Ping attached great importance to the education issues of children in poor areas. Because he was once a poor family Children, know how difficult it is for them to go to school.
Under the initiative of Song Ping, the "Dream Recovery Class" was established and received strong support from Jiangsu Zhongyuan Student Aid and Help Foundation.
's first "Dream Recovery Class" is in Huining County, Gansu. In 2016, all 60 students in the class reached the first-tier score line in Gansu Province, one of which was admitted to Peking University and four students were admitted to Tsinghua University.
Song Ping was very happy when he learned the news.
He also said that if their retired cadres, whether they are 65 years old, 75 years old, or even 80 years old, can still contribute to the country and the people and help children from rural poor families go to college.
In fact, Mr. Song’s poverty alleviation and education assistance began a long time ago.
early on helped those out-of-school children return to school by donating money to the Hope Project. Later, he simply carried out poverty alleviation and education assistance through "whole class poverty alleviation" such as "Dream Class" and the strong support of the foundation.
Xu Zhongyuan, the initiator of Jiangsu Zhongyuan Student Aid and Education Assistant Foundation, established the foundation at the suggestion of Mr. Song. Xu Zhongyuan invested all the income he earned from writing books and selling books into the foundation, and many caring people donated money to the foundation.
In 2017, Mr. Song, who is already a hundred years old, was still very concerned about poverty alleviation and education assistance. Xu Zhongyuan met Mr. Song in Hainan and reported to Mr. Song about the foundation's work, and listened carefully to Mr. Song's questions and suggestions raised by Mr. Song on the foundation's work.
The foundation has donated nearly 40 million yuan since its establishment to the present, and has established 25 "dream classes". More than 1,500 children from poor families can continue to study with the help of the foundation.
- Conclusion
To this day, Mr. Song is 105 years old.
In his life for more than a century, Song Ping has been contributing to the Party and the people for almost most of his life.
He is diligent and studious, can get into Peking University, and can also get into Tsinghua University; he works hard and obeys the party's command. The rear did a good job in publicity; he devoted himself to serving the people, went to the grassroots to conduct on-site inspections, and made decisions that were most suitable for the development of farmers; he was honest and dedicated, never accepted gifts, and did not treat them with special treatment; he was concerned about education, and he was old and realized his dream of college for children from poor families through the "dream-realization class".
Let us wish Mr. Song happiness and health!
