Our beloved principal, Teacher Yang Zhangxi, has been gone for eighteen years. Today, looking again at photographs taken at his memorial service, seeing Teacher Yang’s body covered with a white cloth and, beside him, Teacher Du Jian and his children overwhelmed with grief, my heart aches and my spirit sinks.
What a good man Teacher Yang was. Throughout his life he worked for the Party and the country, truly living out the words: “The spring silkworm spins until death; the candle’s tears dry only when it has burned to ash.” From his youth, he loved truth and pursued light. Seeking a remedy that might save society, he worked hard to study Marxism. He once wrote a booklet on the materialist conception of social development. It recorded and summarized the process through which his worldview and outlook on life underwent a great transformation.
Beginning in 1938, together with Huang Chaoqing and others, he helped establish the Burma branch of the Vanguard for Chinese National Liberation, systematically publicizing Marxism-Leninism and the Party’s political positions and organizing mass movements among the Burmese Chinese for resistance against Japan and national salvation. To unite the greatest number of young people, awaken patriotic feeling through song, and support the War of Resistance, he actively promoted singing activities among overseas Chinese youth. On June 1, 1940, the Burmese Chinese Chizha Chorus compiled the Chizha Songbook, and he wrote its preface under the pen name Lansheng.
In 1940, so that young shop clerks and workers who had no opportunity to attend school could receive an education, he single-handedly established the Rangoon Chinese Public School. Unfortunately, not long after it opened, the Japanese invaders arrived. After the war it reopened under the name Rangoon Chinese Evening Public School. When Teacher Yang returned to China, the school was handed over to Zeng Guanying.
In 1947, Rangoon Overseas Chinese Middle School was rebuilt from the ruins of war, and Teacher Yang Zhangxi took responsibility as director of academic affairs. He devoted himself to rebuilding the school and wrote the lyrics “Rebuild the Old Overseas Chinese Middle School.” In those lyrics he proclaimed the direction and school spirit he had set for it:
“Rebuild the old Overseas Chinese Middle School,
Raise up our new school spirit;
Disciplined, yet full of action,
Practical, and steadfastly fair.”
A year later, the school adopted a new school song, and this temporary song was eventually lost.
In 1949, Teacher Yang went to Nanyang Middle School and took over as director of school affairs, later becoming principal. At the time I was in the second year of junior middle school there. Our original homeroom teacher, Wang Pengnian, had returned to China, so Teacher Yang also became our homeroom teacher and taught Chinese. He was gentle and approachable and never once lost his temper with students. In teaching, he was conscientious and responsible.
Once in Chinese class, he taught Ai Qing’s poem “The Bugler.” When he recited it, he poured his whole heart into the words, and the students sat quietly listening:
“With urging passion
He blew the signal to set out,
Giving the advancing footsteps
A beautiful rhythm.”
He held the textbook in his left hand and raised his right hand above his head. His narrowed eyes, behind thick myopic lenses, stared toward the ceiling. The genuine feeling in his voice, his clear and exact pronunciation, deeply moved the students listening to him. That scene remains branded in my memory to this day.
After Teacher Yang returned to China, he worked successively at the Beijing Overseas Chinese Supplementary School, Xiamen University, and Quanzhou University, remaining in education until his death. Throughout his life he worked diligently for overseas Chinese education, ran actively for the cause of resistance against Japan and national salvation, and gave his energy to the birth and construction of New China. He was like a bugler, blowing the call to set out with full passion and with all the strength of his heart.
Teacher Yang and I did not see each other for decades. I heard that during the Cultural Revolution he suffered many injustices and torments. On November 18, 1981, he stopped breathing.
“He fell—
Fell upon the land he loved so deeply.”
Today, as I write this memorial piece, I can almost still hear his voice beside my ear:
“Listen—the bugle seems still to be sounding.” …
Note: The quoted lines in this article are from poems by Ai Qing.