Great Meeting in Peking
In Memory of Lu Hsun, the Great
Standard-Bearer on the Cultural Front
[This article is reprinted from Peking Review, Vol. 9, #45, Nov. 4,
1966, pp. 10-11. Thanks are due to the WWW.WENGEWANG.ORG
web site for some of the work done for this posting.]
IN the new upsurge of the unprecedented great proletarian cultural revolution, more than 70,000 members of a great army of cultural revolution — the Red Guards, workers, peasants and soldiers and representatives of literary and art workers in Peking and from other parts of the country — held a great meeting in the afternoon of October 31 in solemn memory of the 30th anniversary of the death of Lu Hsun, the great standard-bearer of the proletarian cultural front.
Filled with militant spirit, the revolutionary masses present were resolved to take Lu Hsun as their example and hold still higher the great red banner of Mao Tse-tung’s thought. They were resolved to inherit and develop Lu Hsun’s fearless and thoroughgoing spirit of proletarian revolutionary rebellion and, fierce-browed, to coolly defy imperialism headed by the United States and modern revisionism with the C.P.S.U. leading group at its centre and the reactionaries of all countries. They were resolved, head-bowed, like a willing ox, to serve the revolutionary people of China and the rest of the world, defend to the death the proletarian revolutionary line represented by Chairman Mao, thoroughly smash the bourgeois reactionary line, carry the great proletarian cultural revolution through to the end and make still greater contributions to the revolutionary cause of the world proletariat.
Among the responsible people of various fields of work and representatives from all walks of life present were Chou En-lai, Tao Chu, Chen Po-ta, Chen Yi, Hsieh Fu-chih, Liu Ning-I, Hsiao Hua, Yang Cheng-wu, Chiang Ching, Liu Chih-chien, Chang Chun-chiao, Liu Chien-hsun, Chao Yi-min, Kuo Mo-jo, Hsu Kuang-ping, Chu Tu-nan, Hsieh Tang-chung, Wang Li, Kuan Feng, Chi Pen-yu, Mu Hsin, Yao Wen-yuan, Wang Tung-hsing, Chou Yung-hsin, Tang Ping-chu, Hu Chih, Chen Ya-ting, Tsao Yi-ou, Chin Ching-mai, Yuan Ming, Nieh Yuan-tzu, Chang Pen, Chu Hsi-hsien, Li Li-fang, Chien Hao-liang, Chang Ying-che, Wei Feng-ying and Cheng Shu-yu. The entire meeting place resounded with hearty applause when they and the representatives of the Red Guards in the capital mounted the rostrum.
Foreign friends invited to the rostrum to attend the meeting included Anna Louise Strong, the noted American writer; Rathe Deshapriya Senanayake, Secretary-General of the Afro-Asian Writers’ Bureau; Djawoto, Secretary-General of the Afro-Asian Journalists’ Association; Nguyen Minh Phuong, Acting Head of the Permanent Mission in China of the South Vietnam National Front for Liberation; Yukio Kanazawa from Japan; Joshua Horn from Britain; da Cruz from Angola; Pablo Cortes from Chile and Rewi Alley from New Zealand.
Red flags fluttered over the meeting place. Opposite the rostrum were huge placards with quotations from Chairman Mao: “Representing the great majority of the nation, Lu Hsun breached and stormed the enemy citadel; on the cultural front he was the bravest and most correct, the firmest, the most loyal and the most ardent national hero, a hero without parallel in our history. The road he took was the very road of China’s new national culture” and “This couplet from a poem by Lu Hsun should be our motto:
Fierce-browed, I coolly defy a thousand pointing fingers,
Head-bowed, like a willing ox I serve the children.The ‘thousand pointing fingers’ are our enemies and we will never yield to them, no matter how ferocious. The ‘children’ here symbolize the proletariat and the masses. All Communists, all revolutionaries, all revolutionary literary and art workers should learn from the example of Lu Hsun and be ‘oxen’ for the proletariat and the masses, bending their backs to the task until their dying day.”
This meeting in memory of Lu Hsun was presided over by Chen Po-ta, Member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party and leader of the cultural revolution group under the Central Committee. At the end of the meeting, he made a concluding speech. (See here.)
Comrade Yao Wen-yuan delivered the first speech, entitled “Commemorate Lu Hsun and Carry the Revolution Through to the End,” to the meeting. Speaking after Comrade Yao Wen-yuan were Huang Ping-wen, a student at the Peking Institute of Geology, whose speech was entitled “Learn From Lu Hsun, Be Faithful to Chairman Mao for Ever”; Liu Lu, a student at the Long March Middle School in Peking, whose speech was entitled “Rebutting Simonov”; Comrade Hsu Kuang-ping (Madam Lu Hsun), whose speech was entitled “Mao Tse-tung’s Thought Illuminates Lu Hsun”; and Kuo Mo-jo, whose speech was entitled “Commemorating Lu Hsun’s Rebellious Spirit.” (For full texts of these speeches see pp. 12-22.)
Contents page for this Peking Review issue.
Peking Review article list (in date order).
Peking Review article list (by subject).