This is a two-part story; please go here for Part 1
Before Xiong Dazhen died, he would never have imagined that decades later, his teacher Ye Qisun would also be persecuted because of him.
After the outbreak of the Cultural Revolution, the “Xiong Dazhen espionage case” was dug up again. Because Xiong Dazhen was a student of Ye Qisun and received assistance from Ye after joining the military, Ye Qisun, who was not even an ordinary member of the Kuomintang, was falsely accused by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) of being the head of the Nationalist Party’s intelligence network that was supposedly planted in Tsinghua University.
According to records of Ye Qisun’s Contributions and Tragedy, since June 1967, Ye Qisun, nearly 70, was beaten and imprisoned, and his home was raided by Peking University Red Guards. At that time, Ye Qisun had already left Tsinghua University for a position at Peking University, where he had been since 1952. They locked Ye Qisun in a cow shed, and the physical torture and personal insults brought him to a near mental breakdown.
Ye Qisun suffered from hallucinations
Ye Qisun suffered auditory hallucinations, thinking that a radio was watching him. “Every move was reflected; when he took a sip of tea, the radio said that he was drinking the wrong tea; he wanted to walk out the door, but the radio told him to return immediately.”
His nephew Ye Minghan looked at him sadly and said: “You studied physics; you know that the radio waves can’t penetrate the wall; there is no such thing at all; it is an illusion.” Ye Qisun replied: “Yes, it is clear to me that you are deaf to it, and I am deaf to you!”
On June 28, 1968, Ye Qisun was officially arrested by the Central Military Commission office and detained for over a year.
In November 1969, Ye Qisun was sent back to Peking University. The school continued to track him; his salary was suspended, and only a little money was paid to him, which covered a few of his living expenses. In addition, his house had been raided, and his housing had also been reassigned. Ye Qisun was placed in a student dormitory. The once famous scholar and professor was now seriously ill and incontinent, his legs were swollen, and he had difficulty standing up; his whole body was hunched at 90 degrees.
At that time, many people had seen Ye Qisun in the area of Zhongguancun in the northwestern part of Beijing. He had gray hair and was wearing a pair of old cotton shoes with broken soles, shuffling through the streets alone, occasionally moving forward hesitantly, and sometimes begging for food and drink at small stalls.
Later, he gradually regained some sanity. Once, Qian Sanqiang met him on the street in Zhongguancun, and as soon as he saw his teacher, he immediately ran up to him to say hello and showed his concern. When Ye Qisun saw Qian Sanqiang running toward him, he immediately said: “Leave me quickly, quickly get out of the way, and when you see me in the future, don’t pay attention to me; hide from me.”
Qian Sanqiang was the deputy minister of the Second Ministry of Machinery at that time and was in charge of the atomic bomb project. His student knew Ye Qisun’s kind intention and concern — Ye Qisun knew that it was taboo for a person with such an important job to deal with politically problematic people, and he was afraid that Qian Sanqiang would suffer some misfortune because of it.
Two years later, Zhang Zhixiang, who was a teacher at Peking University, rode his bicycle and found Ye Qisun at an apartment complex outside the campus.
Zhang Zhixiang recalled: “He didn’t recognize me anymore. I said: ‘I am Zhang Zhixiang,’ and he said: ‘Oh, okay, have a seat.’ He sat on a rattan chair and showed me his legs, which were severely swollen and he couldn’t walk. He didn’t complain and remained very calm, but he no longer looked like a human being. I didn’t have much to say, I just said: ‘Please take care, sir,’ and then I…” At this point, Zhang Zhixiang burst into tears and continued: “…I left, and I never saw him again.”
Ye Minghan, Ye Qisun’s nephew, said: “My uncle never expressed to anyone that his life was very miserable. His view seemed to be that there are many injustices in the world and in history, so there was no need to lament his own life. He faced his own experiences with indifference.”
On January 13, 1977, Ye Qisun died of illness. At the end of his life, the physicist Qian Linzhao went to see him. Ye Qisun took out the Book of Songs and turned to a passage from “Letters to His Nephews” and “His Poems in Jail” by Fan Ye.
“My madness and destruction, there is nothing more to say about it. You can abandon me as a criminal. Yet my life’s conduct is still in my heart and can still be found. As for whether or not you can understand my thinking, it is up to your interpretation.”
Translated by Chua BC
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