Story of Run:Moments That Determine Destiny

1. Story of Zhang Ailing, one of the Four Great Talented Women，Run

Previously, I talked about the tragic stories of intellectuals who returned to their homeland with the intention of serving after 1949 but were persecuted and even killed in various movements. However, in contrast to these tragic tales, there were very few astute individuals who saw through the situation at that critical time and decisively chose to escape. Today, I will share with you the stories of these pioneers of leaving, to see what lessons their stories can offer us today, especially for friends who are still within the country.

In recent years, Zhang Ailing has been resurrected not because of her novels but because many people regard her as an example of leaving. Her timely departure from Shanghai in 1952 is highly praised. However, Zhang Ailing initially did not want to leave. What prompted her decisive action was her keen judgment, akin to “seeing autumn from a falling leaf.” You may not know that after the upheaval in Shanghai in 1949, Zhang Ailing actively aligned herself with the Party organizations, preparing to abandon her expertise in emotional narrative and instead seek guidance in proletarian literature. She successively published two novels, “Eighteen Springs” and “Little Love,” using the familiar proletarian literary style of the old society suffering blood and tears and welcoming rebirth in the new society. She consciously sought to align herself with the new regime. At that time, the famous writer Xia Ye, who was in charge of Shanghai’s propaganda, always admired Zhang Ailing and was satisfied with her transformation. He specifically invited her to participate in Shanghai’s first Literary and Artistic Representatives Conference. The independent Zhang Ailing also agreed. This seemingly ordinary conference became a turning point in Zhang Ailing’s fate.

Upon entering the venue, she found that all the people, these literary celebrities who usually represented Shanghai’s ten miles of cultural prestige, were dressed in plain Lenin suits or proletarian attire. Only she, in a southern cheongsam and a grid-patterned white padded jacket, though her attire was already considered modest and low-key compared to her usual style, appeared extremely discordant, like an outsider. Ding Ning, another famous red writer attending the meeting, confronted Zhang Ailing about her attire, accusing her of standing out and not conforming to the unity. In this so-called new society, even the freedom to dress was restricted, which greatly shocked Zhang Ailing. As a writer who had always avoided political entanglements but could never escape political influence, she possessed an extraordinary sensitivity. This sense of being out of place made her feel an imminent crisis.

In the spring of 1951, her brother Zhang Zijing came to see Zhang Ailing for the last time and asked her about her plans for the future. After a long silence, Zhang Ailing said, “I will never wear those dull people’s clothes.” It can be said that at that moment, she had already made up her mind to leave. In July 1952, despite the promising future of acting as Xu Jinxiu, the 32-year-old Zhang Ailing resolutely left single-handedly and went to Hong Kong.

How did she leave? In 1939, Zhang Ailing had received an admission notice from the University of London but could not go due to World War II, so she changed course to Hong Kong University. Because of this, Zhang Ailing was very proficient in English. When Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese in 1941, Zhang Ailing had to interrupt her studies and return to Shanghai, but her enrollment at Hong Kong University remained valid. Therefore, in 1952, she wrote to Hong Kong University requesting to resume her studies. Hong Kong University agreed. Armed with Hong Kong University’s admission notice, she successfully obtained an exit permit in Shanghai, where control was not yet particularly strict.

Ultimately, she crossed the Luohu Bridge to reach Hong Kong safely. In 1955, she went to the United States and became a naturalized citizen until her death. Zhang Ailing saw the future from a small detail, known as “seeing the subtleties,” and we also saw her determination and execution.

But in the pioneers of leaving, Pan Liudai, another female writer from Shanghai’s Bund, had more foresight than Zhang Ailing. Pan Liudai, along with Su Qing and Zhang Ailing, were known as the Four Great Talented Women of the Bund. Pan Liudai had the most turbulent reputation among them, relying on writing articles to make a living at the age of 18. She was open-minded and transparent, calling herself a literary demon. She had some minor conflicts and mutual sarcasm with Zhang Ailing, but she was actually a good person. In 1950, when Shanghai’s Bund was still booming, Pan Liudai keenly showed the threat and resolutely left for Hong Kong, where she continued to flourish with just a pen. Moreover, her understanding of the Communist Party persisted throughout. After the signing of the Sino-British Joint Declaration in 1984, Pan Liudai immediately decided to leave for the second time and finally immigrated to Australia with three generations of her family in 1988. In Australia, she died in 2001. Among the Four Great Talented Women of the Bund, her life, whether in process or outcome, can be described as the best.

The other two lucky women who stayed behind were only described as miserable for their fate. Su Qing, who was even more famous than Zhang Ailing among the Four Great Talented Women of the Bund, became unemployed after 1949. To make a living, she once wrote articles for Hong Kong newspapers, such as “Please pay for the toilet” and other irrelevant articles. As a result, she was considered a foreigner, and the reason for suspicion was ironically to mock the new society.

Later, Su Qing was assigned to the opera troupe. To cooperate with the Three Anti-Five Anti, she wrote many red scripts, but she was still overthrown in 1955 and imprisoned. After being released with great forgiveness in 1957, she returned to the troupe to watch the door. During the Cultural Revolution, she was again raided and punished, and she was embarrassed. In her later years, she was impoverished and distressed that she could not reimburse her doctor’s fee of one yuan each time. She even said, “I just want to die early.”

Another talented woman is also a legendary spy, Guan Lu, who was absorbed by the Chinese Communist Party to defect and sacrificed her own body, giving up her own future as an underground party infiltrating the Wang puppet organization to spy on intelligence. It can be said that the resume is a merit, but after 1949, the Chinese Communist Party died and the dog boiled, and the underground party headed by Pan Hanne did not end well. Guan Lu, who has a close relationship with Pan Hanne, naturally did not escape the catastrophe, carrying the stigma of traitor, was locked up twice in Qin Cheng prison, and was extremely mentally deranged. After being rehabilitated in 1982, Guan Lu, who was 75 years old and completed his memoir, peacefully committed suicide.

Four great women on the Bund in Shanghai, two of whom have been kind to me, have had a happy ending; two who have stayed have not lived as well as they do.

2. Story of Ni Kuang Run

Many people may know Mr. Ni Kuang like me, because of the “Wesley Series Novels” and movies, which can be said to be unforgettable. But for Mr. Ni Kuang himself, his background may not be familiar.

Ni Kuang, who is also from Shanghai, has as many as seven brothers and sisters, ranking fourth. Both parents are small employees. In 1950, he had a vision and determination, actually brought three children to Hong Kong. Among the four brothers and sisters who stayed on the mainland, there is Ni Kuang.

But at the age of 15, Ni Kuang was not sad at the time. In that hot revolutionary atmosphere, he ran to Suzhou and was admitted to the East China People’s Revolution University for training public security talents. He was trained for three months and then went on duty to become a so-called revolutionary cadre.

At first, Ni Kuang’s revolutionary enthusiasm was very high. He not only participated in many political movements but also took the initiative to create a labor reform farm in northern Jiangsu. In 1955, at the age of 20, Ni Kuang voluntarily applied to leave Jiangsu and go to remote and remote Inner Mongolia to open a labor reform farm. This initiative ruined his ideals and permanently changed his life.

The labor reform farm where Ni Kuang was located was extremely remote and can be said to be isolated from the world. In that special era, everything with a unit is a rule that conforms to the big rules and regulations of the wonderful little demon wind and big mercy shallow king eight multi-level and strict level. Randomness prevails, regardless of size, must be reported for thought and discussed.

The young Ni Kuang, who has poured several pots of cold water and who has dreamed of that equal revolutionary world, is completely two kinds of things.

Ni Kuang’s nature is the kind of character of traditional Chinese literati, who is not subject to discipline, loves freedom, and is doomed to his tragic fate. Because of the dog he raised, he went crazy and bit the secretary. He also reported at the criticism meeting in winter because he dismantled an abandoned small bridge and used it for heating. He stood up for his colleagues who made mistakes, and the leaders regarded him as a nail that must be removed, accused and sentenced, and was under house arrest for several months. The unit even prepared a special court to try him, and the situation was precarious.

Fortunately, this Ni Kuang had a Mongolian friend who, at this critical moment, advised him to quickly make his way to Outer Mongolia for survival, lending him an old horse. It was with this old horse that Ni Kuang escaped one snowy night, heading for freedom. However, he lost his way and didn’t reach Outer Mongolia as intended, instead ending up in Tailai County, Heilongjiang Province, by sheer chance heading east. From there, he boarded a train southward and eventually found his elder brother working at the Anshan Iron and Steel Plant in Liaoning.

However, his brother couldn’t shelter him at the time and could only send him back to Shanghai by boat, where he faced rejection everywhere he turned. Disheartened, Ni Kuang eventually set his sights on Hong Kong.

Shanghai was a metropolis after all. Back then, he also had some underground immigration intermediaries. Ni Kuang spent some money to buy a boat ticket and, arranged by the intermediaries, first took a train to Guangzhou, then slipped into Macau, and finally escaped to Hong Kong from there. After a journey of five thousand miles, he finally transformed from a youth almost beaten to death in a labor reform farm in Inner Mongolia into a Hong Kong resident with nothing to his name but freedom, eventually becoming a prominent writer through his own pen, reversing his personal fate.

What truly made Ni Kuang remarkable to us wasn’t his later personal success, but his rare clarity in the face of his own suffering. In his later years, during a media interview, when asked, “You’ve said that if Hong Kong loses certain advantages, it will become an ordinary city. What are these advantages?” Mr. Ni Kuang immediately responded without hesitation: “Freedom. Freedom of the environment, freedom of speech.” Not only did he say this, he lived by it.

After the Sino-British Joint Declaration, in 1992, he returned to the United States in his twilight years, settling in San Francisco to pursue the freedom he never forgot. It wasn’t until 2006, when his wife fell homesick, that he accompanied her back to Hong Kong. But throughout his life, Ni Kuang never returned to the mainland.

Though he made a living with his pen, writing numerous fantasy and even erotic novels, he never sang praises, not a single one. He once firmly stated, “I never believed in ‘one country, two systems,’ it’s just a phrase of the Communist Party. I don’t believe in ‘one country, two systems’ at all.”

“Do you have any unbreakable ones? There is no such problem. What the Communist Party says is fixed, and there is no ‘one country, two systems.’ ‘One country, two systems’ is what the Communist Party says.”

“What the Communist Party says is actually reliable.”

Someone asked him, “Have you ever used prostitutes to compare the CCP?” He said, “No, I respect prostitutes very much. That kind of analogy insults prostitutes. First of all, I personally know that I respect prostitutes very much. I won’t.” “A prostitute is useless, why should I do this?”

3. Story of Li Jingjun Run

The first two are from the literary world. Let me tell you about a knowledgeable person in the scientific community who was very forward-thinking. Li Jingjun’s name may not be familiar to everyone, but he is indeed the father of Chinese genetics. Li Jingjun graduated from Cornell University, where he studied genetics and biostatistics. After obtaining his doctoral degree, amidst the turmoil of war, he returned to China with his wife and children in October 1941. During this process, he also lost his own son. He became the youngest dean in the history of Peking University’s Rong Xue Academy when he was only 34 years old.

He wrote the academic masterpiece “Introduction to Population Genetics” entirely in English, which remains a authoritative work in the field of genetics to this day. After the founding of the People’s Republic of China, various fields followed the Soviet Union as their father, and the academic field was no exception. With an American educational background and an American wife who consistently disagreed with the Soviet academic system, Li Jingjun was dismissed from his post and faced criticism. Unlike other intellectuals who harbored illusions and bowed their heads in confession, Li Jingjun, who had always been proud, knew very well what his future held. He made a decisive decision and left Beijing quietly in March 1950, heading south to Shanghai under the pretext of visiting his parents.

After a brief stay, he fled to Guangzhou again and finally arrived in Hong Kong. After Li Jingjun left, Beijing Agricultural University held a school-wide meeting of teachers and students to criticize his reactionary words and deeds. His departure was also characterized as treason. Because of Li Jingjun’s immense influence in the academic world, including efforts by many American academic masters, including Nobel Prize winner Müller, Li Jingjun eventually returned to the United States after more than a year in Hong Kong, joining the University of Pittsburgh. He made several influential academic contributions that continue to impact the field today. The most famous is the principle of random and double-blind trials. In the development of modern drugs and vaccines, the principle of randomized double-blind clinical trials has been accepted as an authoritative verification method. It is not an exaggeration to say that the leaps and bounds of modern biology in recent decades have benefited from this principle. Li Jingjun made a great contribution to this.

In 1998, he received the Outstanding Education Award in Human Genetics in the United States. Until he passed away at the age of 91, Li Jingjun, the father of Chinese genetics, never returned to the mainland. Compared to contemporary domestic intellectuals, I think his story is more valuable.

Inspiration

I’ve finished telling the stories of these pioneering scholars, so what kind of inspiration can we draw from them? What enabled them to transcend their contemporaries, successfully escaping the quagmire of suffering? I think there are two main reasons: one is a keen perception of the environment and the era, and the other is personal determination. Both are indispensable; many intellectuals have knowledge but lack insight, making erroneous judgments about the direction of the times and thereby losing control over their destinies. Because some opportunities come and go in an instant, missing them means losing the initiative.

However, many people have actually perceived the changes in the era and the dangers of the environment, but they harbored illusions and did not translate this awareness into the determination needed to change their destinies. Ultimately, they were powerless in the face of changing circumstances.

Before 1952, there were many intellectuals and capitalists who had the conditions and capabilities to leave, but very few actually took action.

After the CCP completely closed the country’s doors and cut off all retreats, it was already too late to run.

Today, many people worship Li Ka-shing not only for his wealth but also for the wisdom of decisively retreating ten years ago, not seeking the last penny. Compared to figures like Jack Ma and Liu Qiangdong, who have been severely constrained by Xi Jinping and suffered significant wealth shrinkage, their vision falls far short; while many have the wisdom to seize wealth, not everyone has the determination to act at the right moment.

Most ordinary people, including myself, often feel a great sense of inertia when facing enormous social changes. Considering our social class and the difficult-to-change wealth status, many can only go with the flow, swept along in the tide of the times without even a chance to cry out in pain.

However, as small individuals seeking to change our own destinies, although there are many difficulties, it’s not impossible. Compared to wealthy and influential figures, I think it’s easier for ordinary people to make changes because small boats are more maneuverable. What is often lacking is the wisdom to foresee the situation and the courage to decisively turn around.

Li Ka-shing’s foresight is something we can all achieve, and it’s actually less difficult than his. In 2019, when I left China, I discussed this topic with several friends in a small circle, and they all said, “You go first, explore the way for us, and we will follow later.” But today, I’m still alone.

It’s not that they didn’t want to leave, but it’s very difficult now. As a popular internet saying goes, “People who can see through the essence of things in a minute and those who take half a lifetime to see through it are destined for different fates.” But seeing through is only the first step; after seeing through, if one does not act on it, seeing through is in vain and only leaves endless regrets.