Original: Shenzhen Nanshan Source: Nanshan
Why would someone say that the Republic of China is the best age?
When looking at various materials of the Republic of China, I always have a feeling that in the Republic of China, if we do not consider the two factors that foreign invasion, burning, killing and looting need to be a strong country and the realization of personal career ideals, in the Republic of China, we should not be more than 90% of the bottom, but an upper class. At present, 5% of the elite, life is really good.
1: The treatment given to the elite during the Republic of China is very good. Lu Xun’s treatment has been discussed on the Internet. I inquired about the development of national industry during the period of the National Government. For example, Lu Xiaopeng, the father of the famous strong five in China, designed the strong five attack aircraft in Nanchang Aircraft Manufacturing Factory. The figure below is the strong five under development that year. This is the first generation of famous aircraft in China, from mass production in 1968 to production in 2012, Qiang 5 series has been produced for more than 40 years and exported to North Korea, Pakistan, Bangladesh and other countries.
Before the founding of the People’s Republic of China, Lu Xiaopeng graduated from the Department of Aviation of the National Central University in 1941 (at this time, the Central University was in Chongqing),
In 1946, the National Government sent him to Gloucester Aircraft Company of the United Kingdom for training and participated in the jet fighter project jointly developed by China and the United Kingdom. The model is CXP-1001. Lu Xiaopeng’s aircraft design level has been greatly improved in this process. Of course, the aircraft project was finally stranded due to the continuous failure of the National Government in the domestic war, and failed to mass production.
But Lu Xiaopeng bought his own car in England at that time. He usually drove to the department store in the town for shopping. He also made a British girlfriend, Margaret, who worked in the department store.
In the 1940s, it was amazing that a Chinese young man in his twenties could still own his own private car after being sent abroad.
Not only that, Lu Xiaopeng also went to Paris and Switzerland, France, together with his colleagues who went to the UK for training, including the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Notre Dame, etc,
He also wrote poems,
“In the past, during the holiday tour in Paris, the iron tower towered into the clouds. The famous paintings of the Louvre were priceless.
The bell of the Virgin rings at the end of the night, and the wine of grapes urges you to drink. Since ancient times, Paris has been a place of singing and dancing “I recall that when I went to Switzerland on holiday, the country of gardens was not boastful. The white snow lake at the peak was green, and the flowers on the bank were hidden in the tavern. The ice palace lamps were suspicious of fairyland, and the lonely people in the empty valley were enjoying tea. A piece of paper must be carefully selected, and the British women looked like flowers in the distance.”
The English girl here is her English girlfriend Margaret.
Later, when Lu Xiaopeng heard of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, he finally decided to return from Britain instead of going to Taiwan and become a famous aircraft designer in history. This relationship with the British girl also became a regret in his life.
Anyway, Lu Xiaopeng, as an outstanding person in science and engineering during the Republic of China, was able to get such preferential treatment when he was in his twenties.
Gao Yongshou, who served as the chief craftsman of the new China’s first J-5 aircraft at Nanchang Aircraft Manufacturing Factory, recalled:
“In 1944, Guangyu and I left Chengdu together and went to St. Louis, the United States via India and Australia. We worked in the design room of MacDonald Aircraft Company. We also drew on the drawing board and studied together at the University of Washington. We rented a suite at 6041 Washington Street near the school, four rooms plus a kitchen and bathroom. The landlord was a railway worker and lived upstairs. Because the living area was relatively large The Chinese people who work in the wheat mill will have a meeting at our home. Of course, when young people are together, it is unavoidable to make noise. Many people smoke, which makes the house smoky. This makes the landlady old lady very unhappy. But she can’t help it, because the rent she charged us was very high, which had exceeded the wartime limit of the local government at that time, so she was afraid that we would report it. “
It can be seen that compared with many domestic people who can’t afford to eat, the treatment given to these elites at that time was generally more preferential.
2: Pro-American values
Some people think that the period of the Republic of China was the best because it was the era of “freedom”,
This is obviously wrong. Don’t say that Communists could be tortured, imprisoned and slaughtered if their identities were exposed at that time,
Even the democratic parties and non-party people in the Republic of China were killed for their speeches.
But why do others think that the Republic of China is very free? I think the most important point is that the people who hold this view are ideologically consistent with the government of the Republic of China. They are both pro-American and pro-Western, and identify with and yearn for the Western system. That is how people are. As long as they have the same view and feel like their own people, they tend to be tolerant of them.
The social ethos of the Republic of China was very consistent with the western system and culture. There were not a few intellectuals who advocated total westernization, even more radical than the government at that time. Many intellectuals even believed that Chinese characters were the reason for China’s backwardness, and some people proposed the Latinization of Chinese characters.
During the period of the Republic of China, from the government to the elite of colleges and universities, we can say that all of them are from the West, especially from the United States, and many of them are alumni, with common topics. Hu Shi is a Ph.D. from Harvard, Song Ziwen is a Ph.D. from Columbia, Song Meiling was educated in the United States when she was a child, and returned from college. Kong Xiangxi is a master’s degree from Yale. Moreover, American missionaries have also built many universities in China, including St. John’s University, Soochow University, Hujiang University (formerly known as Baptist University), Yanjing University, Jinling University, Jinling Women’s College of Arts and Sciences, etc. These universities established by Westerners, while bringing advanced technology and ideas, also unconsciously spread and spread ideology to the Chinese elite.
Like Zhang Ailing, a female writer in the Republic of China, her “Ailing” was not her real name, but was chosen according to the pronunciation of her English name Eileen when she was in primary school.
Ideology compatibility is very important. Different ideologies must be suppressed, as is the case throughout the world.
The most active part of the government of the Republic of China is anti-Communist, because the ideology is completely incompatible. After all, TG wants to “oppose imperialism” to foreign countries, and “fight against the local tyrants and divide the land” to domestic countries. This is a fundamental conflict with the government of the Republic of China that is pro-Western, especially pro-American, and that is the ideological form of maintaining the landlord rule at home.
3: The elite monopolizes the sense of superiority brought by knowledge and culture
Most of the people in the Republic of China are illiterate, not only because they have no cultural problems, but also because they don’t even know the words. Many of the people who have studied, that is, they have read primary school. The opinions and opinions of intellectuals are published in newspapers and magazines, and not many people can read them, let alone understand them. Because they can’t reach the masses, Therefore, the scope of influence is limited to a few cultural groups.
How small was the circle of intellectuals in the Republic of China? In 1949, there were only 21000 college graduates (junior college or above) in the country, and the cumulative population with junior college or above education was several hundred thousand.
The number of literate people should be a little more,
But even though the two newspapers with the largest circulation and influence in Shanghai during the Republic of China, Shenbao and Xinwen,
For example, the daily circulation of “Shen Bao” was only 150000 in 1931. Their two newspapers were distributed not only in Shanghai, but also throughout the country. In 1931, Beijing’s “Shi Bao” also used various means to form its advantages in the north. At the most, it had a circulation of 140000 copies, which was known as “the first newspaper in North China”.
During the period of the Republic of China, the distribution of these well-known newspapers was concentrated in the cultural groups of a few large cities in China, such as Shanghai, Tianjin, Peiping, Nanjing, Wuhan, Guangzhou, etc. During the period of the Republic of China, 90% of the population lived in rural areas, and 10% of the urban population did not live in large cities. In 1949, the national urbanization rate was only 10.6%.
So at that time, the elite and intellectuals argued with each other, debated and spread different views, which the ordinary people did not understand at all, because the knowledge was held in the minds of a few people, which gave people a sense of superiority in circles.
Why did the Communist Party come to the world after that? They can carry out propaganda in a language that the common people can understand. They have a high degree of outreach to the masses, not only to run newspapers, but also to run propaganda in factories, coal mines, stations, schools, and the streets all over the country. They have also gone deep into the countryside to run various farmer classes, mobilize to make revolution, and cover the majority of the population in the country.
I looked up the information about the development of national industry before. Wu Yunduo, a famous expert on red military weapons, has heard of it. He was originally a worker in a coal mine in Hubei Province, but he attended a lecture on the anti-Japanese war held by the Communist Party, and then decided to join the revolution. He joined the Party in 1939.
Why “reaching out to the masses” is a magic weapon. The actual situation in China at that time is that most people do not know and understand the advanced language, so we must reach out to the masses, communicate and publicize in the people’s language.
4: The elite in the Republic of China can obtain the bottom manpower at a very low cost
In addition to a small number of elites, the country is in abject poverty. In rural famine years, farmers sell children and sell women. Every year, people starve to death.
The elite in the middle and upper classes can buy a beautiful girl with a few days’ income or even a meal. Although the law stipulates monogamy, it is in fact a polygamous system. Similarly, for male workers, it is easy to find a servant to serve themselves without paying for food and shelter. After all, it would be good to have enough food at that time.
In fact, there are also people in Taiwan and Hong Kong who miss 20 or 30 years ago. I once saw a Taiwanese man on the oil pipe recalling the “happy time” in the mainland 30 years ago. He said that he found a mainland girl to accompany him for 10 yuan in Hainan for one night. The girl was also very happy,
At that time, the average Taiwanese’s monthly salary was not much different from today’s, and it was common to exceed 10000 yuan. If you are a high-ranking figure in the Republic of China, and there are so many low-cost slaves serving you in the country, you can buy a male and female servant with only a very low income,
Why don’t you like this kind of life?
5: The living standard of the elite in the Republic of China was in line with the western level.
Villas, swimming pools, cinemas, golf courses, racetracks, basketball courts, tennis, bars, football fields, cars, running water, electricity, air travel, everything. For friends who travel to Tianjin, you can go to the villa area of the Fifth Avenue and have a look. There are all kinds of small western-style villas built in the 1920s and 1930s. They live in the upper-class social figures of the Republic of China, including officials of the Northern Warlords, celebrities of the literary and art circles in the education sector, businessmen, and industrial capitalists of the people. There are hundreds of villas of all kinds, and there are also rich and famous people gathering areas in other areas of Tianjin. The Central Aircraft Manufacturing Plant, established by the National Government in Hangzhou in 1934, was built in accordance with American standards, with all kinds of facilities such as swimming pools for employees. Qian Xuesen had a year’s internship here before he went to study in the United States. The picture below is the aerial view of the Central Aircraft Manufacturing Plant at that time.
The following picture shows the luxury train from Nanjing to Shanghai, which started in 1948 during the Republic of China. Looking at the interior of the train taken by the upper-class society at that time, the comfort level is far higher than that of the hard-seat green car several decades later.
The villa in Xiliuwan, Shanxi Road, Nanjing, built by the traitor Zhou Fohai in 1932, covers an area of more than 10000 square meters, with a housing area of more than 2000 square meters. Of course, this is where the famous “low-key club” was formed. This club later produced many traitors.
How did Xu Zhimo, the “romantic poet” of the Republic of China, die? He died in an air crash on the morning of November 19, 1931, when he was flying from Nanjing to Peiping on the “Jinan” postal plane of China Airlines. He was going to attend a speech on Chinese architectural art held by Lin Huiyin for foreign envoys at the Peking Union Hall that evening. Even today in 2022, there are still many Chinese people who have never taken a plane, let alone at that time. Moreover, Xu Zhimo, who took a special plane to Beijing to attend a speech by a friend of the opposite sex, is not engaged in architecture. It can be said that the content of the speech has nothing to do with him. It is really a little expensive to take a special trip.
According to the memory of Lai Mingtang, a pilot of the Kuomintang Air Force (he later went to Taiwan), when he studied at the Central Aviation School in Hangzhou in the 1930s, he could buy 45 taels of gold with his salary and bonus of 75 yuan when he arrived in Yinyang during the internship period. After half a year of probation, he added 150 yuan to Yinyang. At that time, the best food was only 10 yuan per month in Yinyang. There was a lot of money left. These aviation school students had nowhere to spend, so they all bought the best clothes, Almost everyone has a three-gun bicycle when purchasing cameras, riding boots and other items. At that time, every person in China had a three-gun bicycle, which was even more difficult than that in the developed areas in the 1970s.
Before the outbreak of the War of Resistance Against Japan, students from all over the world often visited the aviation school in Hangzhou. In order to stimulate students’ ambitions, the aviation school often performed flight performances for a large number of visiting students. One day, a group of female students came from Shanghai to visit the Central Aviation University, so the instructor Leng Peiji took off with Hawk 3, but died because the plane stalled and crashed when the ground speed was insufficient. Lai Mingtang recalled that Leng Peiji was a student of the second phase of the aviation school and was a student of Jinling University before applying for the exam.
Leng Peiji liked music very much during his teaching in the aviation school, and his personality was straightforward. He often drove private cars between Shanghai and Hangzhou. His standard of living was very high. He was an excellent pilot in the same period, but he sacrificed recklessly in the performance. It was a pity.
I was shocked that the flight instructor of the aviation school could drive to and from Shanghai and Hangzhou by private car, which shows the high level of treatment of the elite in the Republic of China.
6: The existence of Taiwan
Because Jiang’s father and son went to Taiwan, and then Taiwan became the “Four Little Dragons”. Today, the per capita GDP, development level and living standard are higher than those of the Chinese Mainland, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, the living standard was one time ahead of that of the mainland.
So some people put the current living standard of Taiwan back to the past, and think that the mainland in the Republic of China era will continue to develop to the present, and it will be the same as Taiwan.
This idea is also wrong. No matter how the development of Taiwan is now, it cannot be denied that the Republic of China period before 1949 was really bad. A large number of farmers did not have land, and there were many people who died of cold and hunger in the city. The Japanese army slaughtered millions or even tens of millions of people on the mainland, and even lost a large area of land in Outer Mongolia after winning the World War II.
What’s more, Taiwan’s rapid development after World War II is the concentration of a number of senior talents and gold from the mainland, as well as assistance and technology transfer from the United States. The development background is special, and it cannot be extended to the whole China.
Just as today in 2022, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen are also developing well, with a per capita GDP of more than US $20000, which will surpass Taiwan in the next few years, but the development level of most parts of China is not up to that of first-tier cities, so it cannot be extrapolated from the development level of Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen to that of the whole country will reach US $20000 per capita in 2022.
Finally, it should be noted that the elite intellectuals in the Republic of China were not all addicted to the “golden age” of such elites,
Many of them have experienced the Japanese invasion of China, the aircraft bombing, the massacre of their compatriots, the fragmentation of mountains and rivers, and the evacuation of themselves from major cities to the southwest. They have also experienced the corruption of the national government, which led to the failure of their career ideals, especially the development of national industry. So after the founding of the People’s Republic of China, many of them chose to stand on the side of the new China,
Among them, especially those who study science and engineering, not only a large number of them stayed in the mainland at home, but also many people returned home from Europe and the United States to give up the favorable living conditions. They found their own stage and position in the large-scale industrial construction and rapid scientific and technological progress after the founding of the People’s Republic of China.
I think some people today will miss the Republic of China era, and even some people say that the Republic of China is the best era in China, because they have replaced themselves into the life of the elite of the Republic of China with a sense of superiority. First, they are more ideologically identify with the political system of the Republic of China era, or they are ideologically pro-American and pro-Western like the National Government,
The second is to ignore the struggle of the general public, who accounted for the absolute majority of the country at that time, on the survival line. The third is to ignore the weakness of the country at that time, which was beaten, slaughtered and looted by Japan, and even won the war of resistance. The Soviet Union also instigated the independence of Outer Mongolia, and the Middle East Railway and Lushun in Northeast China were occupied by the Soviet Union. Fourth, I think these people should not be engaged in science and engineering and industry, because the weak national industrial level and the difficulties of development in the Republic of China are setbacks and blows for those who have ambitions to develop national industry and realize the dream of a powerful country,
No matter what angle of view, there is no way to say that it is the best age.