This year is the 80th birthday of Professor Liang Xi, a famous expert in international law in China. With reverence, I specially visited LuoJiashan. Mr. Liang is a pioneer in the law of Chinese international organization law. When I came into contact with the old gentleman who studied the new world, I felt a strong traditional literati atmosphere - eloquent, work with joy and humble introspection.
The story of cow
Mr. Liang was born in an ancient village in Anhua County, Hunan Province. At the age of 5, he began to study in private schools in the country. However, three years later, he dropped out of school like many rural children because of impoverishment in the old society. It was leisure to graze barefooted and swim in river barely.In the memory of Mr. Liang, the hometown of childhood is like a water painting of "small bridge flowing water" and "fishing shallow bottom". Therefore, Mr. Liang has always loved nature, and this quiet and beautiful place is where the soul is parked.
One thing that happened when he was 9 years old interrupted his life. At noon one day, the cattle dealers in the neighboring village came to the home of Liang Xi and took away his beloved oxen with great anger! It turned out that because his father was illiterate, he mistakenly a piece of agreement of selling cattle for a mortgage document and pressed fingerprints on it, so the cow was defrauded. Liang Xi was deeply hurt and made up his mind: no matter how difficult the family was, he must go to school! After a long time, his father gritted his teeth and sent him to a new school not too far from the village. His high school days were spent in the anti-Japanese bonfire. In an environment of extremely poor learning conditions, extremely difficult life, and threats of enemy aircraft day and night, parents worked hard to borrow money from usurious loan, and barely offered him a six-year high school. The national affliction and the family's poverty cast his character of anger and perseverance, and also inspired his patriotic enthusiasm. He devoted himself to the great torrent of the national salvation movement, and published "Fancheng fengyu", "Frog" and "Civilization and the brutality"., "Two Roses" and other works, to promote anti-Japanese.
In 1946, Liang Xi moved to Sichuan University in Wushan,, from Sichuan Leshan with a bloody essay "How Difficult to Develop" and outstanding achievements in various subjects. In the second year, he served as the president of the China Delegation to the United Nations in San Francisco and opened the International Law course. Liang Xi recalled with deep affection: "Mr. Zhou's explanation of the section on "The Unequal Treaty with China" made the students feel very excited and deeply feel that 'weak countries have no diplomacy', and it is necessary to create a new China with a rich and powerful country!" Under the influence and encouragement of Mr. Zhou Gengsheng, Liang Xi chose international law as his lifelong research task after graduation.
In 1953, he applied for the reconstruction of the law department of Peking University and became one of the earliest part-time lawyers of Chinese law schools in the 1950s. Liang Xi, who was defrauded of a cow in the past, was a barrister who attended many trials involving foreign-related cases at this time and struggled for justice. In May 1955, the Supreme People's Court heard the case of "Cameron driving a US plane into the Chinese airspace to harass and provoke the dangers of China's security." He accepted the commission as a defendant's lawyer. This case is of great significance in the history of Sino-US relations and attracts worldwide attention.
From the old-school cow to the teacher of the highest school in New China, he began his 30-year teaching career at Peking University. However, his fate with the cow is not there. At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, at the Peking University's “Five-Seventh School” on the bank of Poyang Lake in Jiangxi Province, he happened to have the opportunity to raise four buffaloes, and lived a life of sunrise and sunset. Two years later, when the school was disbanded and returned to Peking University, he was quite confused and braved, and took a photo with the bull. This old photo is still on the desk of Mr. Liang. Liang Xi on the photo, muscular, smiling, without any feeling of depression.
Professor Liang Xi likes cows, because cows are silently cultivators. "Simple and innocent, indifferent to money and fame, life is beautiful!"
Unexpected gains in "air-raid shelter"
At Peking University, Liang Xi is a "fairy" who is bent on reading and teaching. He is determined to be a good teacher of "preaching, teaching, and confusing". However, some people have criticized him for not paying attention to national events, taking the white road and the "bourgeoise" sentiment. Mr. Liang said with a smile: "This is a misunderstanding. I was very enthusiastic at the time. I was the head teacher of the first international law class in New China. I laughed and sang with the students, and "forced" them to join me every morning to practiced long-distance running and learned spoken language beside Weming Lake. "These students who followed Liang’s class and exercised in the past are many directors of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, American barristers, and others are diplomats of the Chinese Human Rights Commission in Geneva. "The body is the capital of the revolution." He likes to teach the students with the words of Chairman Mao.
Liang Xi, who has always been introverted and low profile, has not escaped the bad luck brought by the times to intellectuals. However, when talking about his experience as a "Chou laojiu" sent to Jiangxi "reconstruction", Mr. Liang said, "It is best not to use the word "frustration" to describe my experience." It seems that the years of bad luck have become a new starting point for his life. He counted his fingers and introduced three of the "reasons":
"First of all, I participated in labor exercise, and my thoughts and understandings have improved. I am no longer a weak nerd. The body is stronger and health is a lifelong benefit."
"Second, after going to Jiangxi, there is no struggle between the two factions involved in Peking University, and avoiding punishment."
“ The luckiest thing is that I hid in a ‘air-raid shelter’...”
It turned out that after Lin Biao’s crash, under the arrangement of Premier Zhou, most of the teachers who went out to work in Peking University returned to school. In order to prepare for Nixon's visit to China, Premier Zhou also entrusted the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to collect information about Nixon. Finally, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs handed over some tasks to the law department of Peking University. Liang Xi, together with famous scholars such as Wang Tieya, Rui Mu and Shen Zongling, became members of the compilation team and participated in the translation of "United Nations and Disarmament", "United Nations Handbook", "Nixon: Six Crisis", "Heath Diplomatic Report: Old World Six books, including the New Prospects, and a large number of documents related to the United Nations. These books and documents have great reference value for China's academic research and China's foreign affairs work after the restoration of the UN seat. They have been praised by domestic and foreign governments and the UN Secretariat. During this period, Mr. Liang specially collected and translated a number of documents on international organizations such as international relations, and accumulated more than 2 million words of information.
"The 7 years of participating in the compilation team not only made me hide into a 'air-raid shelter' that is far from turbulence and disputes. The improvement of my own language and the accumulation of research materials are even greater than the gains of reading a few more universities!" In the turbulent year, I can still have such academic experience.
In this way, when some people are involved in various storms, flying or being tortured, he silently accumulates energy under the shelter of ‘air-raid shelter’. He is keenly aware of various information materials that international organizations will play an increasingly important role in the future world, and China will play an increasingly prominent role in the United Nations. He is determined to study the United Nations-centered international Organization, day and night to study, work hard. Hard work pays off. When the "Cultural Revolution" ended, he basically built a new system for studying international organizations, and finally took the lead in creating a new course of "International Organization Law" in China.
Dialectics of "cold and hot"
Library—Classroom—Home, Professor Liang Xi has been living this three-point line since 1950. Mr. Liang said: "The bookmaker is a kind of contempt for the teacher in the past. But I was a local teacher who had eaten chalk ash for a lifetime, but I have no regrets. I take pride in it !" Mr. Liang went on to say that to be successful in learning, you must be willing to be lonely, and to quit impetuousness. "Cold" and "hot" must be dialectically. Over the years, he has followed this "cold and hot dialectics".
In the era of "political enthusiasm", he has never been ignorant, and he has been studying the neglected learning in the unknown lake; in the "golden years", he still feels like water, guarding a house on the mountain... ...
In the early 1980s, the law of the sea was a hot topic in international law. The famous jurist Wang Tieya intended to let him preside over the study of the law of the sea at Peking University, but he was obsessed with the international organization law that was considered unpopular. Just when he was rated as a good teacher many times at Peking University, he returned to his alma mater for more than 30 years in 1982 and returned to the beautiful mountains of LuJia shan. Some people think that he is going to get a leader when he returns to Wuhan Univeristy, but he has resigned from any position and is a general faculty member. "The alma mater has my most memorable time, the most beautiful memories, the most respected teacher, the most pleasant place to study..." Mr. Liang is full of affection for Lushan.
Back to Wuhan University to teach, Mr. Liang renewed the unprecedented passion, can be described as fruitful, peach and plum fragrance.
In 1984, Professor Liang Xi prepared for many years of academic monograph "Modern International Organization" to publish, which was the first comprehensive monograph on the international organization law in China. It was a unique collection of Chinese and Western cultures. His "International Organization Law" was revised five times. It was designated by the Ministry of Education as a general textbook for colleges and universities nationwide. In 1996, it was awarded the first prize by the State Education Commission. Nowadays, the law of international organizations represented by the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the European Union, etc. has become a hot spot in the hotspot; the Institute of International Law, which he helped Mr. Han Depei, has grown into the only national key research base for liberal arts in this field. In addition, he also edited the International Law and published dozens of papers with academic influence at home and abroad.
For academic hotspots, Mr. Liang also advocates a calm view. As early as in the schooling stage, he formed a style of study that "pays attention to accumulating materials, stresses factual analysis, does not love people, and diligently thinks personally." In the 1980s, some people dismissed the views of Mr. Zhou Gengsheng's works, but he thought that it was Mr. Zhou's unique contribution in a specific historical context.
Regarding how to view the relationship between teaching and research, Mr. Liang said that "the combination of the two is good, and the result is twice the result with half the effort. If it is 'two skins', it will be unpleasant." Therefore, he is very devoted to cultivating students. Since 1986, Professor Liang Xi has begun to recruit doctoral students and has trained a large number of senior talents in international law. Many of them have been awarded as professors, doctoral tutors, "outstanding young and middle-aged jurists", and many others have held important positions in the embassies or consulates of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the judiciary or in charge of higher education institutions. Nowadays, Mr. Liang still insists on exercising, playing gateball, reading and writing every day, and sometimes goes deep into the students, giving lectures, introducing academic experience and frontier areas of the discipline.
Lu Zhaolin, a poet of the early Tang Dynasty, once left the famous phrase " Lonely is Yangtze house and be obsessed with beds of books Lonely; Only the fragrance of osmanthus is still here, flying and blossoming to approaching to people’s clothes", which is the most appropriate word to portray Mr. Liang’s peace in heart and the spirit of excellence in learning.
