Around 1970, many people saw an old man hunched over and wearing tattered clothes on the street in the northwest part of Beijing. Sometimes, he would buy two small apples from a store and nibble on them as he walked. When he met a student he knew, he would say: “If you have money, spare me some. But I don’t want much.”
This penniless old man was Ye Qisun, the founder of the physics department and College of Science at Tsinghua University, and one of the pioneers of modern physics in China. Under his guidance, 79 members of his academic lineage became members of the Chinese Academy of Sciences; prominent scientists such as Qian Sanqiang also benefited from his mentorship.
Regarded as the “master of masters,” why did Ye Qisun live in such destitution in his later years? What kind of ups and downs did he experience throughout his life?
Founder of Tsinghua Department of Physics and School of Science
Ye Qisun was born in Shanghai in 1898. The Ye family was a family of scholars and officials. Ye Qisun’s grandfather was a five-grade official in the Qing Dynasty and he worked at the Imperial College. His father, Ye Jingyun, was a learned man and educator in Shanghai.
From the age of five, Ye Qisun’s father taught him to read. When he grew up, he was sent to a private school to study the Analects of Confucius, receiving traditional Chinese education. In 1911, Ye Qisun, who was not yet 13 years old, was admitted to Tsinghua Academy, becoming one of its first students. Later, he went to the United States to study physics at the University of Chicago, where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1920, and the same year he entered Harvard University to pursue a doctoral degree.
During his doctorate, the 23-year-old Ye Qisun and his colleagues obtained the best data at that time on the determination of Planck’s constant, an important topic in experimental physics, and the measured values were used by the international physics community for many years.
In 1924, after receiving his doctorate, Ye Qisun returned to China and became an associate professor in the Department of Physics at National Southeast University. In 1925, when Tsinghua Academy established the University, he was appointed as an associate professor of physics, promoted to professor the following year, and founded the Tsinghua Department of Physics, serving as its head.
In 1929, the School of Science at Tsinghua University was established, with Ye Qisun as the dean, and he was elected as one of the seven reviewers who decided the major policies of the university. After that, Ye Qisun was one of the core leaders of Tsinghua University.
Under the leadership of Ye Qisun, the Department of Physics at Tsinghua University hired many outstanding talents, and the department became a base for cultivating China’s science and technology elites.
A favorite student joined forces with the CCP, making great contributions, but was labeled as a spy
Among his many students, Xiong Dazhen, who was admitted to Tsinghua in 1931, was Ye Qisun’s favorite and also the person who completely changed Ye Qisun’s destiny.
In 1935, after graduation, Xiong Dazhen stayed on as a teaching assistant and lived in Ye Qisun’s house. The relationship between teacher and student was very strong. One day in March 1938, Xiong Dazhen suddenly told Ye Qisun that he was giving up his scholarship to study abroad and would go to the central Hebei region to help arm the resistance against Japan since the region needed science and technology personnel.
Xiong Dazhen was eager to save the country and was misled by the propaganda of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), so he decided to go to central Hebei. He told Ye Qisun about his idea, but Ye Qisun did not approve. However, he was unable to stop Xiong and had to let him go.
After arriving in the Central Hebei Military Region, Xiong Dazhen’s talent was highly appreciated by the military commander in the region. Three months later, Xiong Dazhen was appointed as Minister of Supply, taking overall responsibility for the material work of the entire base area. At the same time, Xiong Dazhen began to prepare for the establishment of a technical research society to carry out research and development of high explosives, landmines, detonators, and also research and installation of short-wave communication tools.
In order to obtain more resources, Xiong Dazhen quietly sought Ye Qisun’s help. With Ye Qisun’s assistance, more than a hundred young intellectuals were gathered to assist Xiong Dazhen, and key military supplies were also obtained. The explosives factory in the base area of central Hebei continued to grow, and later, a large arsenal with more than 2,000 workers was established that had the capability to manufacture large quantities of mines, grenades, compound bullets, and grenade canister shells, as well as to repair various firearms.
However, Xiong Dazhen did not understand the murderous nature of the CCP at that time, and he soon encountered his disastrous fate. At the critical juncture of the Second Sino-Japanese War, the CCP launched the Yan’an Rectification Movement, which included a counterespionage campaign to purge “traitors and spies.”
The CCP suspected there was a large spy organization within the military, and they happened to focus on the supply department of the Central Hebei Military Region. As a result, Xiong Dazhen became a prime suspect, along with other young intellectuals. In the spring of 1939, Xiong Dazhen and more than 100 others were arrested on charges of being Kuomintang spies and were subjected to brutal torture.
The case attracted widespread attention, and after Ye Qisun heard about it, he contacted both the Kuomintang and the Communist Party at the same time and tried to rescue Xiong Dazhen, but in the midst of his rescue attempt, Xiong Dazhen, who was only 26 years old, was secretly executed.
In later years, the commander of the Central Hebei Military Region wrote in his memoirs and acknowledged that Xiong Dazhen “made important contributions to the creation of anti-Japanese bases.” Speaking of which, in the CCP’s films such as Mine Warfare and Tunnel Warfare, it is said that it was the peasants who came up with methods to blow up the Japanese all on their own, but that is not the real history. Behind the real mine warfare are the figures of Xiong Dazhen and his patriotic intellectuals.
On June 6, 1947, Ye Qisun wrote in his diary: “Today is the Dragon Boat Festival. Every Dragon Boat Festival, I think of Xiong Dazhen. Nine years ago, he returned to Tianjin from the mainland, and it was a surprise. Who knows how sad things will be next? In recent days, I have been reading a poem by Bai Shidao, and seeing the line about ‘five days of desolate heart’ increased my grief.”
Despite the fact that the two had been separated for eight years, Ye Qisun still deeply missed his former student.
This is a two-part story; please go here for Part 2
Translated by: Chua BC
