Foreword

Where am I from?

Where are we from?

Such questions are as old as life itself.

Such questions are more than those from the future to the past. They are questions that the tree has for its roots, the volcano for its lava, and the finite for the infinite.

We were once slaves. Were it not so, the century of disgrace from 1840 to 1949 would not have happened.

We have had heroes. Were it not so, we would not be on this 100-year-long journey to revival, from 1949 to 2050.

When compared with the eventful history of a nation, an individual's life feels short indeed, so those who now are blessed with happy lives are loath to acknowledge that they once were slaves. Nor are they inclined to recognize that once we had heroes. Before you know it, their own stirring and awe-inspiring history ends up like a desiccated exhibit, life-less and dull, abandoned in the corner, attracting no interest.

When history's fate morphs into the fate of the individual, people can only tremble in fear as they stare at the divination in The Book of Changes .

Are we not casting away our treasures?

As Qu Qiubai, one of the early CPC leaders who was murdered by the KMT in 1935 once wrote: “A man loves his history like a bird loves its wings. Please do not tear off my wings!”

How other than through the intimate touch of the past can one acquire wings to fly?As Denis Diderot once said, “What else can inspire us if not truth and virtue.” If I may adapt his words - how can we grow a backbone and stand tall if we are stirred only by the thought of individual wealth and nothing else?

Is stacks of money all it takes to become a worthy member of the international community?

If everything was about individual comfort and pleasure, the Chinese nation could never have produced such men as Sun Yat-sen and Mao Zedong.

You should not gather the pretty flowers of history. You should go and bring back the fire that burns beneath like molten lava.

As Lucien Febvre, a French historian and cofounder of the Annales School, once said, “In the chaos and turmoil of the world we live in today, history is the only thing enabling us to face life without a trembling heart.” Febvre died in 1956, but his words still resonate across the world today.

As for the Chinese nation, the cause continues, a cause demanding commitment from this generation and many more to come.

I firmly believe that the men and women who work long and hard for the renewal of our nation without asking for credit for it will draw great inspiration from our past.

No matter how rich and powerful we become, this line from our national anthem must forever remain the same: “Arise, ye who refuse to be slaves! / With our flesh and blood let us build a new Great Wall!”

No matter how hard it is for us, we must forever remember this line from The Internationale : “There are no supreme saviors, / Neither God, nor Caesar nor tribune.”

Matter never perishes. The universe is eternal. The only thing more vast than the blue dome of heaven is the spirit.

Any nation needs heroes of its own. And there are profoundly tragic implications for true heroes. They sow the seeds but do not share in the harvest.

That is what being the backbone of a nation is all about.

I present this book as a tribute to those backbone people of the past, the present and the future.

Thanks to their pain and suffering we reap the glory.

Jin Yinan