Li Binzhu

Li Binzhu ( Chinese  李 濱 珠  /  李 滨 珠 , Pinyin Lǐ Bīnzhū ; born  November 8, 1921 in Yanshi , Henan China; †  July 12, 2007 in Vienna ) was a long-time fighter in the war of resistance against Japanese aggression . She developed a school model for literacy for women in rural areas. In 1945 she married the Austrian doctor Richard Frey , an anti-fascist fighter in Yan'an . During the time of the civil war and after the founding of the People's Republic of China , she worked as a judge , later as a trial manager and as a commissioner in the People's Prosecutor's Office. In 1958 she and her husband had to give up their offices for political reasons. She then worked as the principal of a high school and became a critic of the political movements " Anti-Rightist Campaign " and " Big Leap Forward ". In 1959, under political pressure, she finally had to annul her marriage and raise her three children alone. After overcoming a severe depression, she worked as a party secretary in the clothing industry until her retirement in 1982. She died in Vienna in 2007.

Adolescence

Li Binzhu was born in Yanshi County. Her father was a traditional Chinese medic in the countryside. During her time at the county middle school, she was actively politically influenced by the Chinese language teacher and communist Wu Zhipu . In 1936 she joined the organization "Chinese National Liberation Vanguard". In 1937, after the Marco Polo Bridge incident , she left the Henan Province Educational Art School and returned to Yanshi to take part in the War of Resistance against Japan. To call for the liberation movement, Li Binzhu organized the reading and women's group, the National Liberation Theater in Yanshi. She joined the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) in February 1938 . In July of the same year, she said goodbye to her hometown, went to Yan'an and devoted herself wholeheartedly to the cause of the war against Japanese aggression.

Time during the resistance war

Until the end of the resistance war, Li Binzhu lived in Yan'an for eight years. She studied law at the local university, worked in the security office of the Shaan Gan Ning border region and later in the education department of the Commission Office of the Guanzhong Zone.

In 1943, Li Binzhu was hired by the CCP to run the so-called "Winter Learning Campaign" in the Londong area, one of the CCP's resistance bases, as part of literacy, fighting poverty and backwardness. At first she taught the farmers to read in her winter school and in the process also imparted basic social, political and scientific knowledge to them. Li Binzhu quickly realized that due to poverty and lack of education, not only the old customs still existed, such as B. child marriage , the tying of the feet , the superstition in the witch doctor (shamanism) , ignorance of social life and women's suffrage . The region still had a very high number of female diseases and a high infant mortality rate . In this village, for example, 43 out of 54 women suffered from gynecological diseases and there were 106 deaths among 194 newborns.

According to the local conditions she analyzed, Li Binzhu worked on a new implementation strategy. She changed the winter school curriculum to focus on hygiene and obstetrics as the main curriculum, learning Chinese script, and other knowledge as accompanying classes for female participants. This was so well received by the population that the number of participants tripled within a week. Many women now attended the class with enthusiasm. Because the school achieved very positive results and polarized in this region, the school model was quickly promoted and implemented throughout the region.

Li Binzhu's work was highly valued by the CCP Central Committee. Xu Teli , Mao Zedong's teacher, president of the Yan'an Science Academy , said of her winter school, “This school gave people the practical knowledge of life. As soon as the problem of dystocia (difficult birth, high-risk birth ) among women is resolved, the traditional thinking in previous history will be corrected that literacy ( education ) of women is useless ”. Lin Boqu , President of the Border Region, awarded her an honorary title. The model of Li Binzhu's winter school has been described in “Chinese Educational History” and “Modern Chinese History”.

During the civil war

On July 15, 1945, Li Binzhu married Richard Frey, who at the time was working as a researcher and lecturer at the China Medical University in Yan'an. After the victory in the resistance war, Richard Frey and Li Binzhu, who was already pregnant at the time, marched with the army into the liberation zone of the city of Zhangjiakou . In 1946, Li Binzhu worked as a judge at the People's Court in Zhangjiakou City, taking care of her war-born child and helping her husband make penicillin , which he had already started in Yan'an. After the outbreak of civil war, the city of Zhangjiakou fell into the hands of the Kuomintang . In September 1946, they moved to the Jin-Cha-Ji District CCP Base . Li Binzhu then worked as the party secretary of the student organization at North China Medical University, and she also participated in local land reform in Tang County.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China

In March 1950, Li Binzhu was transferred from the Chinese University of Political Science and Law in Beijing to the Supreme People's Court of the People's Republic of China and shortly afterwards was transferred back to the city of Chongqing , which had just been conquered by the communists. She was responsible for preparing the establishment of a south-west branch of the Supreme People's Court of the Central People's Government, and after its establishment she was the head of litigation.

In 1954, she worked as a commissioner in the Southwest Branch of the Supreme People's Procuratorate of China in Chongqing. Due to the extremely left-wing course within the party against officials of foreign origin, the couple Li Binzhu and Richard Frey had to give up their posts with the government authorities one after the other in 1958. Li Binzhu left the Southwest Branch of the Supreme People's Procuratorate and was transferred to a new job as the principal of Chongqing No. 29 High School.

While she was taking up her post as school director, the political movement “Anti-Rightist Campaign” also spread in her school. Following her knowledge of human nature, she assigned the former headmaster, party secretary and teachers who, due to their different way of thinking, were considered problem persons in the movement and had lost their jobs as a result, to appropriate work. The subsequent " Great Leap Forward " movement also had an impact on Gymnasium No. 29. A campaign to increase the country's steel production was carried out at the school. Teachers and students built simple "backyard blast furnaces" out of bricks in the schoolyard. Everyone brought metal goods from home to school, threw them into the blast furnaces without specialist knowledge, where the unusable scrap was melted down to make “steel”. Li Binzhu criticized the absurd action and questioned this both unscientific and inefficient steel production. Li Binzhu paid a heavy price for her behavior in the two political movements. She was severely warned by the party and, after only one year as a high school director, was transferred to work in an urban people's commune.

The consequences of the “Great Leap Forward” were one of the main causes of the subsequent catastrophe of the century, the Great Chinese Famine in China. One of the particularly affected provinces was Henan. During that time, around three million people died of starvation there, including Li Binzhu's parents. She had left her home and her parents at the age of 16 and now suffered from the fact that she was unable to pay her last respects due to her own difficult phase in life.

After repeated political misfortunes and the death of his parents, Li Binzhu experienced his own family misfortune in 1959 under the high pressure of the political "left" route. Her husband was suspected of being a potential spy because of his foreign origins. The party called on Li Binzhu to clearly separate himself politically from him. To protect their three minor children, they decided to temporarily annul their marriage. These successive blows of fate caused Li Binzhu to suffer lifelong severe depression. That is why she was later treated in a special hospital for a long time.

In 1962, Zhou Enlai transferred Richard Frey, who had meanwhile been remarried in Chongqing, to the "Chinese Academy for Medical Sciences" in Beijing. Li Binzhu stayed in Chongqing and, thanks to her indomitable will, returned to work after years of treating her depression. a. as party secretary in the Chongqing municipal clothing industry. She raised her three children alone. During the Cultural Revolution , she again suffered from accusations of espionage from her divorced husband, but thanks to her close leadership style, she was also able to survive this political movement. In 1982, she retired as the head of the Discipline Inspection Branch of the Chengdu City Light Industry Bureau .

In the later years of life

In the early 1990s, Li Binzhu, who had never married again and now lived alone, visited her children in Vienna, Richard Frey's hometown. In 1994 she suffered a severe stroke there , which resulted in paralysis. She spent the rest of her life in the Hietzing Hospital and in the Kaiser-Franz-Josef-Spital . During her treatment time and her stay in hospital, she always received the attention and help of the governments of both countries. The mayor of Vienna wrote her a sympathy letter for her birthday. In 2005, on the occasion of the commemoration of the 60th anniversary of the victory in the War of Resistance, the Chinese ambassador to Austria visited her in the hospital. She received the Resistance War Gold Medal.

Li Binzhu died on July 12, 2007 in Vienna. The funeral address of the Chinese Embassy in Vienna read as follows: “Comrade Li Bin Zhu was a war veteran who made important contributions to the war of resistance against Japanese aggression. She lived through the highs and lows, success and tribulation both in wartime, in peacetime and in difficult times in the country. We will never forget their loyalty, selflessness and fighting spirit, the Chinese people will always remember them. "

On July 23, 2007, the ashes of Li Binzhu were buried in the Vienna Central Cemetery, and also on this day, on the other half of the earth in China, in the district of Tang, the ashes of Richard Frey were buried in the "Jin Cha Ji Martyrs Cemetery “, Also buried on the former war front. Li Binzhu and Richard Frey, a Eurasian couple, comrades-in-arms in the resistance war, were accidentally and miraculously buried on the same day in the partner's country of origin, and from then on they found their eternal rest in the other's homeland.

Web links

• Richard Frey
• 《抗战 时期 镇 原 解放区 的 冬 学 运动》
• 《读 〈教育 通讯〉 创刊号 的 我 见》 徐 特 立 著
• 《中国 现代史》
• 《晋察冀 烈士 陵园》

literature

• 《解放 日报》 05/12/1944
• 《国际 共产 主义 战士 傅 莱》ISBN 978-7-81136-161-2 /R.161
• 《怀念 傅 莱》ISBN 978-7-5621-4375-8
• 《Inside China》ISBN 978-1-60702-235-0