The first and only National Anthem Memorial Plaza located at the intersection of Dalian Road and Changyang Road in Shanghai's Yangpu District was completed on September 25, 2009, occupying an area of 27,000 square meters. It is a large-scale open plaza, with a circular field resembling the shape of a record, which symbolizes that the "March of the Volunteer Army" was sung from Shanghai to the whole of China. National Anthem Exhibition Hall is located in the National Anthem Memorial Plaza southwest, a total area of 1,500 square meters, through more than 400 pieces of cultural relics, documents and historical photographs, a comprehensive display of the "March of the Volunteer Army," the birth of the background, the process and impact. It is reported that, as the Chinese people's *** and the national anthem of the National Anthem of the "March of the Volunteer Army" is the theme song of the movie "Sons and Daughters of the Wind and Cloud".
The historical background of the birth of the March of the Volunteers.
"Arise! People who don't want to be slaves! Build our new Great Wall with our flesh and blood! The Chinese nation has reached the most dangerous time, everyone is forced to send out the last roar ......" Do you know the origin of the national anthem? Do you know some of the untold stories of its birth? A few days ago, the reporter interviewed the national anthem exhibition hall exhibition office in charge, Yangpu District Party History Office deputy director Li Guocai, listen to him tell that story of the national anthem.
Nie Er forgot to compose a song, was a friend's mother jokingly called "up"
In 1931, the Northeast, "9-18" Incident, see the Chinese nation facing a critical moment of survival, literary and artistic patriots have been running to appeal. In 1934, the Dentsu Film Company was established, specializing in left-wing films. At first, the company rented a dilapidated studio on Xietu Road in Shanghai as its production base, and after moving to No. 405 Jingzhou Road in early 1935, the first movie it made was "Children of the Wind and Cloud". The plot synopsis was written by Tian Han. "Tian Han was only in his early 30s at that time, but he was already a boss figure in the literary world. In those days, we used waxed paper and oil printing, and we wrote and printed one sheet at a time. But Tian Han could do it in seven steps, immediately." Li Guocai told reporters. Unfortunately, in February 1935, Tian Han was arrested and imprisoned not long after he wrote the synopsis of the plot, and his good friend Xia Yan took over and adapted the story into a movie script. This incident was coincidentally heard by Nie Er, and the 23-year-old youth ran to Xia Yan, "Leave the music score to me."
On May 24, 1935, "Sons and Daughters of the Wind and Cloud" premiered at the Jincheng Grand Theater in Shanghai, and was a huge hit.
Li Guocai said, "That year, Nie Er was introduced to the party by Tian Han, and because he was blacklisted by the reactionary authorities for propagating anti-Japanese resistance, the party organization decided to have Nie Er transferred from Japan to Europe and the Soviet Union for study. Nie Er left for Japan on May 15.On May 14, he went to 405 Jingzhou Road to try out the March of the Volunteers.After arriving in Japan, he revised the tune and then sent back the final draft, addressed to Situ Huimin and Sun Siyi of the Dentsu Company."
When visiting Situ Huimin's daughter, Li Guocai learned a little-known anecdote: the first person in all of China to hear "March of the Volunteers" was actually Situ Huimin's mother. It turned out that Nie Er often visited the progressive Situ Huimin's home at that time, and every time he finished composing a song, he couldn't wait to sing it to Situ Huimin's mother, who was also very fond of this diligent musician. When the first draft of "March of the Volunteers" was completed, Nie Er sang "Get Up" over and over again at Situ Huimin's home, leaving a deep impression on her mother. From then on, whenever Nie Er went to their house, Situ Huimin's mother would say "Get up". One day before lunch, Nie Er went to their house again, Situ Huimin's mother said to her daughter-in-law: "Quickly, quickly, add more rice, 'get up' is coming."
After leaving for Japan on May 15, Nie Er drowned swimming on July 17 of the same year. Li Guocai commented that Nie Er was a musical genius who never attended a formal conservatory, but composed 30 to 40 popular tunes in his short life, including "Song for Selling Newspapers" and "Song of the Great Road", among others. Fourteen of them were collaborations with Tian Han. Shortly after the release of Sons and Daughters of the Wind and Cloud, the theme song March of the Volunteer Army went viral. When Tian Han was released from prison, he heard it being sung in the streets and alleys, and, momentarily bursting into tears, he vowed, "Without Nie Er I will never compose lyrics again in my life."
Before the founding ceremony, Chairman Mao hammered out "the lyrics will remain unchanged."
Li Guocai said that in 1949, preparations for the founding ceremony, the People's Daily published a call for the national flag, national emblem, national anthem, the national anthem of the draft 632, but the national anthem collection team to discuss the situation, feel that they are not very satisfactory. The government has not been able to get a clear picture of the situation," he said.
October 1 is the founding of the country, and by September 25, the national anthem had not been decided. Meanwhile, the crowd elected the March of the Volunteers as the national anthem. That night, in the Fengze Garden of Zhongnanhai, the matter of the national anthem was once again hotly debated. As one of the members of the anthem collection team, Tian Han suggested that the lyrics should be changed, because the general background of the lyrics was the war of resistance at that time, but now that it was liberated, the background had changed. But Zhou Enlai said, "Either use the old lyrics, which will drum up emotion, or modify them so that you won't have that emotion when you sing them." In the end, Chairman Mao decided that although China had been liberated, the lyrics should remain unchanged because "peace should not be forgotten". The national anthem was then finalized.
"Students sing the national anthem without passion, just because the background of the birth of the national anthem do not understand"
So the National Anthem Memorial Plaza and National Anthem Museum is how to build up? Li Guocai told reporters that in 2005, "Yangpu Forum" published an article, Yangpu District is the birthplace of the national anthem. It turned out that "Sons and Daughters of the Wind and Cloud" was filmed at the Shanghai Dentsu Film Company, which was formerly located at No. 405 Jingzhou Road in Shanghai's Yangpu District. During the production of the movie, the first record of "March of the Volunteers" was recorded at Shanghai Hundred Generation Records at No. 1099, Xujiahui Road (now No. 811, Hengshan Road), and the recording was transferred to the film "Children of the Wind and Cloud". In May of the same year, the film "Sons and Daughters of the Wind and Clouds" premiered at the Jincheng Grand Theater (now the Huangpu Theater), and from then on, the "March of the Volunteer Army" resounded throughout the Chinese land. In this way, the birth of the national anthem and the three districts of Yangpu, Xuhui and Huangpu are related.
After some consultation, the National Anthem Memorial Plaza played the Shanghai card, that is, "March of the Volunteers" was born in Shanghai, and there is no objection to this. After that, a few comrades from the Publicity Department of the Yangpu District Committee and the District Historical Records Office, the Cultural Affairs Bureau and the Archives Bureau started to prepare for the construction of the National Anthem Exhibition Hall.
On the eve of the construction, Li Guocai already had a good layout in mind: the round wall of the "National Anthem Shock Hall" is engraved with the lyrics of the "March of the Volunteer Army" on the translucent steel plate in Chinese, English, German, French and Japanese languages. In the "Interactive Earth" exhibition area, a 1.8-meter-diameter model of the Earth is embedded in the wall, on which multimedia images of countries around the world are projected. By touching any place on the earth with your finger, you can get the customs and people from that country and region. And in the national anthem display area, people can play the national anthem of each country on demand at any time.
After the completion of the national anthem exhibition hall, the praise was overwhelming. But Li Guocai still a little regret, "The current pavilion is limited by the area, can not be expanded in detail to introduce the historical background of the birth of the March of the Volunteers."
In Li Guocai's view, the national anthem is the best patriotic education for the next generation, but now some teachers reflect that students can't open their mouths when singing the national anthem, "Brave the enemy's fire, march!" Who is this "enemy"? "Build our new Great Wall with our flesh and blood!" Why "flesh and blood" and not bricks?
Li Guocai said that after the September 18th Incident, the Northeast spontaneously formed a variety of anti-Japanese organizations, collectively known as the "Volunteer Army", and the Japanese invaders to fight to the death. The Japanese imperialists were quite cruel. "In the coal mines of Fuxin, they boiled the Chinese people they killed into oil to light lamps, commonly known as 'human oil lamps'. In Dalian harbor, because there were too many corpses, the Japanese also came up with a kind of 'coffin with a living bottom', where the coffin was carried to the middle of nowhere, the bottom was extracted, and the corpses were thrown away......." said Li Guocai." Nowadays, students sing the national anthem without passion, which is caused by students' lack of understanding of the lyrics. If they have an understanding of the background of the birth of the national anthem, will certainly stir up a full of passion."
National anthem exhibition hall old photos: Nie Er under the eyes of the Japanese army to shoot evidence of aggression
In the national anthem exhibition hall, there is a Nie Er shot a precious photo, is Li Guocai from Yunnan to find, the content of the "one-two-three-eight" Incident, the Japanese army invasion of Shanghai after the scene. After the "January 28th" Incident, the movie studio had to go to the war zone to take scenes, Nie Er, with his camera, ran into two American sentries at the riverside, and greeted them in English. Seeing that the young man was handsome and could speak English, the American sentries were very kind and allowed him to take pictures by the Huangpu River. At that moment, two Japanese soldiers came over, saw Nie Er taking pictures of Japanese warships and wanted to take him away. The American soldiers acted as peacemakers and advised Nie Er to remove the negatives from his camera. Only then did the Japanese soldier give up. Nie Er pretended to thank the American soldiers and took out spare film to take pictures of them, and with a turn of his body, he photographed the Japanese warships on the Huangpu River.
"There are many precious old photos in the National Anthem Exhibition Hall." Li Guocai told reporters that Dentsu was forced to close its doors in the second half of 1935, shortly after the release of "Sons and Daughters of the Wind". At that time, there were many people who wanted to play roles in Dentsu's movies, including Zhou Xuan, who later became famous, who only fought for the role of a dancer A in "Children of the Wind and Clouds".