Deeply remembering Ms. Li Pei: a true "goddess" who never succumbed to fate

Li Pei is an "idol-level" teacher at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Ding Zhongli, vice president of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and president of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, said: "Mr. Li Pei is an ordinary teacher, but she is devoted to her students and works for her whole life." This old lady is respected as "teacher's wife" by some white-haired scientists because she is the wife of Guo Yonghuai, the hero of my country's "two bombs and one satellite" and the first director of the Department of Chemical Physics at the University of Science and Technology of China.

She is also known as "the most beautiful rose in the Chinese Academy of Sciences". But her old friends say that "rose" is too light a description of her. Centenarians like Li Pei do not belong to a certain era. Their lives span multiple eras, and they maintain the same qualities in each era.

Five years ago today, Li Pei passed away. The turbulent current swept away her graceful figure. What it could not sweep away was a "legend".

Mr. Li Pei

Image source: China Youth Daily

"The man who can't be swept away by turbulence"

The three-story blue brick buildings at the southernmost end of Beijing Zhongguancun Keyuan Community are among the earliest buildings here. In those days, a group of famous scientists such as Qian Sanqiang, Peng Hengwu, Zhu Kezhen, Xiong Qinglai, Wang Ganchang and Chen Nengkuan all lived here. In October 1956, Guo Yonghuai resigned from his professorship at the Graduate School of Aeronautics at Cornell University in the United States and returned to China with his wife Li Pei and daughter Guo Qin, and has lived here ever since.

This is the home of Li Pei and Guo Yonghuai, and she is reluctant to leave at any time.

Image source: Sina Weibo @University of Science and Technology of China

In 1946, Guo Yonghuai obtained his doctorate from von Karman at the California Institute of Technology. At the invitation of his senior brother WR Sears, he went to work at Cornell University and became one of the founders of the Graduate School of Aeronautics. A year later, the dignified and virtuous Li Pei came to study at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University. The two met at an academic conference on aerospace given by Guo Yonghuai. They had a common past at Peking University and Southwest Associated University, and they were both good at classical music, so they naturally fell in love. In 1948, the two got married. Li Pei managed the family, while Guo Yonghuai devoted himself to scientific research and created the "PLK method" and other masterpieces. In August 1951, their beloved daughter Guo Qin was born, and the family of three was peaceful and happy.

Image source: CCTV National Memory

Guo Yonghuai and Li Pei returned to China with their daughter from Cornell University in the United States. It was Qian Xuesen who invited them. Qian Xuesen wrote to Guo Yonghuai several times in 1956: "Please come to work at the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. We have prepared your 'office' for you in the institute. It is a south-facing room on the second floor with light green curtains and a row of pine trees." "Your name has been 'registered' with the management office of the Academy of Sciences. Naturally, you should come to the Institute of Mechanics. Come quickly, come quickly!"

In 1956, Guo Yonghuai (first from left) and his wife Li Pei (second from left) were on the ship returning to China.

Image source: Sina Weibo @Voice of the Chinese Academy of Sciences

After returning to China, Guo Yonghuai served as deputy director of the Institute of Mechanics, and Li Pei worked in foreign affairs at the Chinese Academy of Sciences. It was not until the day after the successful explosion of my country's first atomic bomb that Guo Yonghuai and his friends were happily drinking together, and Li Pei realized something.

On October 3, 1968, Guo Yonghuai came to the Qinghai test base again to prepare for the launch of China's first missile thermonuclear weapon. On December 4, after discovering an important clue during the test, he hurried to Lanzhou that night to take a plane back to Beijing. At about 6 a.m. on the 5th, the plane crashed while landing at the Xijiao Airport.

There were more than a dozen people on the plane at the time, and only one person survived. He recalled that when the plane began to shake violently, he heard someone shouting, "My briefcase!" and he didn't remember what happened next.

Among the charred bodies were two people hugging each other tightly. When people struggled to separate them, they found a confidential briefcase intact between the chests of the two bodies. Finally, it was confirmed that the two people were 59-year-old Guo Yonghuai and his guard Mou Fangdong.

Guo Yonghuai once taught a turbulence course at the university that few people could understand, and Li Pei, who had lost her husband at the time, was experiencing the biggest turbulence in her life.

Image source: CCTV National Memory

On the evening of the 5th, the Institute of Mechanics arranged two people to accompany Li Pei at home. Guo Yonghuai's assistant Gu Shulin was one of them. She recorded the situation at that time in the article "My Teacher and My Teacher's Wife": "We came to Director Guo's home. This was also the first time I met Mrs. Guo. I didn't expect to meet under such circumstances. Mrs. Guo Li Pei is petite and beautiful. From her expression, it can be seen that she has fully understood what happened. She was extremely calm. After seeing each other, almost no one said a word. The air in the room seemed to be frozen."

"We stayed at their home that night, and Mr. Li and I slept in the same room. My nerves were extremely tense the whole night. I silently thought that this blow was too sudden, and how would Mr. Li survive the night. At the same time, I was prepared that if I needed to do anything for her, I would not be slow to react, and I must ensure that she was absolutely safe. In this way, time passed by second by second until morning. Mr. Li was completely awake that night. She lay on the bed and hardly moved, and occasionally let out a soft sigh, which was so restrained that it was heartbreaking."

22 days after Guo Yonghuai left, China's first thermonuclear missile test was successfully conducted.

At that time, people downstairs often heard Li Pei's daughter Guo Qin playing the aria of Li Tiemei from The Red Lantern on the piano: "My father is as strong-willed as pine and cypress, standing tall and upright..."

Two years after Guo Yonghuai left, his teenage daughter went to Inner Mongolia as an educated youth, and Li Pei went to the University of Science and Technology of China in Hefei to continue her investigation and labor reform. The political turbulence repeatedly swept them into the whirlpool.

In the decades since then, Mr. Li Pei has almost never mentioned "Old Guo's death", and no one can tell what kind of pain she has endured. However, she sometimes stood blankly on the balcony for hours.

A bigger upheaval in life occurred in 1996, when Li Pei's only beloved daughter, Guo Qin, died of cancer. No one saw Mr. Li Pei, who was nearly 80 years old at the time, shed tears. The old woman quietly collected the doll that her daughter played with when she was a child. A few days later, she went to teach English to doctoral students at the Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences as usual, carrying a tape recorder, but her voice was hoarse.

Image source: CCTV National Memory

After learning about the situation, her students recalled that Li Pei's voice was a little hoarse that day, and that day was the only time they saw their teacher teaching without a smile.

"Life is an eternal and heavy effort." Mr. Yan Jiyi, an old friend of Li Pei and a colleague at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, used this famous quote from Milan Kundera to describe Mr. Li Pei.

Until September 18, 1999, Li Pei sat in the Great Hall of the People, and the state awarded 23 scientists the "Two Bombs and One Satellite" Medal of Merit. Mr. Guo Yonghuai was the only martyr among the 23 "Two Bombs and One Satellite" heroes.

After Li Pei returned home, her daughter Guo Qin's friends all clamored to come to her house to see "that big lump of gold." The medal is 8 centimeters in diameter, made of 99.8% pure gold, and weighs 515 grams - everyone sighed, "It's really scary how heavy it is."

Four years later, on the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the founding of the University of Science and Technology of China, a friend of Li Petuo who visited Hefei put the medal in his friend's suitcase and presented it to the University of Science and Technology of China, where Li Petuo had once served as department head.

Image source: CCTV National Memory

Money and age are just numbers to her.

Teaching and educating people was Guo Yonghuai's lifelong dream, and Li Pei wanted to fulfill Guo Yonghuai's unfulfilled wish in her position as a teacher.

When China and the United States formally established diplomatic relations in 1979, Li Pei introduced to students the methods of American universities in recruiting graduate students and encouraged everyone to apply to study abroad at their own expense.

The Cultural Revolution had just ended and there was a shortage of talent. Li Pei found English talents who had been labeled as rightists or even imprisoned and engaged them in teaching. Facts have proved that her vision was very accurate. The "rightist" Xu Mengxiong she invited out of retirement was the person who checked the English documents when Comrade Deng Xiaoping visited the United States in January 1979.

Soon after the resumption of the college entrance examination, the Ministry of Education and the Academy of Sciences respectively deployed large-scale graduate student recruitment plans, and the first graduate school in New China, the Graduate School of the University of Science and Technology of China, came into being. The then president Yan Jici solemnly invited Li Pei to come out of retirement and serve as the director of the Foreign Language Teaching and Research Section of the Graduate School. At that time, Li Pei was already 60 years old.

At that time, English learning materials were scarce, so Li Pei started from scratch and began drastic reforms.

Today, a set of English textbooks is still preserved in the school history museum of the Yuquan Road campus of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. This is the first set of English textbooks for graduate students in China, and Li Pei's name is prominently written in the editor-in-chief column.

Image source: CCTV National Memory video screenshot

The head of the linguistics department of a US university called Li Pei the "mother of applied linguistics". In the recommendation letters of some US universities, as long as Li Pei's signature is on the English proficiency certificate, it will be recognized. In class, Li Pei boldly asked students to read original English books such as "A Tale of Two Cities" and "Pride and Prejudice". For all graduate thesis defenses, she required students to make presentations in full English.

She also promoted the Sino-US joint physics graduate program with Tsung-Dao Lee, helping the first batch of self-funded students from China to study abroad. By the end of the program in 1988, 76 excellent universities in the United States had accepted 915 Chinese Sino-US joint physics graduate students. At that time, there were no TOEFL or GRE exams, so Ms. Li Pei made her own test questions, and Tsung-Dao Lee selected students at Columbia University in the United States.

In 1987, Li Pei retired and she said happily that she could ride the bus for free.

But she never retired. She continued to teach English to doctoral students until she was in her 80s. Ma Shizhuang, deputy secretary of the Party Committee of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, was a student of Dr. Li Pei's English class. Now, he stands when he speaks and gives lectures at various occasions. He said that he learned this from Mr. Li Pei.

In his and other students' memories, Li Pei always smiled during class. At that time, the classroom had no air conditioning or electric fans, and it would be very hot in the summer. However, during the several hours of teaching, Li Pei, who was already over 70 years old, was never tired. She always stood during the class. Her voice was not loud, but she could explain the knowledge very clearly.

In order to enable retired elderly people in Zhongguancun to keep up with the pace of modern scientific development and understand changes in domestic and international situations, Li Pei decided to open the Zhongguancun Lecture Hall when he was 81 years old.

Image source: CCTV National Memory video screenshot

Holding a forum is an extremely tedious task, but Li Pei has always done it herself. Not only did she raise funds out of her own pocket, she also personally communicated with the speakers about the topic and time of the speech. Sometimes Li Pei had to make dozens of phone calls to the speakers, and even chat until late at night.

The lecture hall covers a wide range of topics, including literature and science, earthquake disaster reduction, space exploration, and Sino-US relations. Every time, Li Pei personally collects information about speakers and personally invites experts and scholars to give speeches. Famous figures in various fields have appeared in this lecture hall.

From 1998 to 2011, the Zhongguancun Lecture Hall was held once a week, with a total of more than 600 sessions. Every time, the auditorium of the Institute of Mechanics was packed with young students and elderly people.

When Li Pei was 94 years old, she was finally too busy and reluctantly said goodbye to Zhongguancun Lecture Hall.

Over the past few decades, Li Pei seldom mentioned Guo Yonghuai, but her longing for him was deeper than the sea. She hoped that Guo Yonghuai's scientific research attitude and scientific ideas could be passed on.

When she was over 90, she organized more than 20 experts to translate Qian Xuesen's papers published in English during his 20 years of research in the United States into Chinese. To outsiders, Mr. Li Pei often talked about Qian Xuesen, but rarely mentioned Guo Yonghuai. Others said that Mr. Li was too "generous".

In October 2011, to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Qian Xuesen's birth, "The Collected Works of Qian Xuesen" (Chinese and English versions) was officially published.

Image source: CCTV National Memory video screenshot

When Mr. Li Pei was alive, the coffee table in the living room had been the dowry of his family when he returned to China 60 years ago.

The hand-cranked computer, electric fan, and small refrigerator she brought back from the United States in her early years were donated. After Guo Yonghuai passed away, she donated her desk, books, and music records. She donated the English teaching plans that Mr. Li Pei used throughout his life. She donated money to the Wenchuan earthquake, to save Kunqu Opera, and to a kindergarten for the mentally retarded.

Some younger generations said that her treatment of fame and fortune was like that of Marie Curie, who used the largest pound notes as bookmarks and gave her Nobel Prize medals to her children as toys.

In 2008, Li Pei asked her secretary Li Weiguo to accompany her to the bank and donated her and her husband's savings of 600,000 yuan to the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the University of Science and Technology of China respectively.

There was no ceremony, it was as normal as dealing with a water or electricity bill.

"Donation is donation, there is no need for ceremony." Li Pei once said to Li Weige.

Image source: CCTV National Memory video screenshot

This is the remittance slip left behind that year. The University of Science and Technology of China used this donation to establish the Guo Yonghuai Scholarship.

On Guo Yonghuai's 104th birthday, Li Pei donated some of the items used by Guo Yonghuai during his lifetime to the Institute of Mechanics, including commemorative seals, exquisite slide rules, Longines pocket watches, and Guo's belongings that were packed in an envelope by the Beijing Administration of Civil Aviation of China when Guo Yonghuai died in 1968 - glasses and watches blackened by flames.

The Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences erected a white marble statue of Guo Yonghuai. Li Pei moved her husband's ashes from the Babaoshan Martyrs Cemetery and buried them under the statue. She did not forget Mou Fangdong, a young PLA soldier who died with Guo Yonghuai, and moved part of his ashes to be buried with him. She said that Mr. Guo had never left and was at the Institute of Mechanics, at home, and by her side...

Mr. Li Pei paid tribute beside the statue of Guo Yonghuai at the Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences

Image source: Voice of Chinese Academy of Sciences

However, time has brought about changes, but it has never taken away the ruthlessness of the years. Li Pei, who has been moving forward all her life, has finally reached the end of her life.

In the early morning of January 12, 2017, Mr. Li Pei passed away suddenly.

On April 5, the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences held a joint burial ceremony for Guo Yonghuai, the hero of the "two bombs and one satellite", and his wife Li Pei. After 49 years of separation, Guo Yonghuai and his wife Li Pei were finally able to rest in peace together.

She is an outstanding woman of China's new era. Even though she is petite, she is fearless and undaunted in the face of difficulties.

Today, we mourn Mr. Li Pei with deep affection!

Image source: Song Longmei and Li Xiaoyan, Foreign Languages ​​Department, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences

Comprehensive sources: CCTV National Memory, People's Daily, China Youth Daily, Communist Youth League Central Committee, Guangming Daily, China Women's News, etc.