◎Baoding Writer Group and Red Classics

After the founding of the People’s Republic of China,literary and art workers who once moved to the Shanxi-Chahar-Hebei base area went to work in Beijing,Tianjin,Baoding,Shijiazhuang and other cities one after another.They continued to reproduce the Chinese revolution and the arduous national liberation war they had experienced in person,and created a large number of works reflecting the life and struggle of people in Baoding and its surrounding areas,with themes of the Great Revolution and the Counter-Japanese War as the mainstream,among which Liang Bin’s novel Keep the Red Flag Flying was a representative.Keep the Red Flag Flying was created by Liang Bin in 1953 and was published in 1957.With the official publication of Start the Kindling in 1979 and The Beacon Fire in 1983,the trilogy of Keep the Red Flag Flying was finally completed.The trilogy spanning several historical periods,such as the Northern Expedition War,the Agrarian Revolution,and the Counter-Japanese War,truthfully reflects the historical features of the suffering,turbulence and struggle in the rural areas of northern China,portrays several typical male and female characters with different characters from all walks of life,and shows the historical picture of the Chinese people’s indomitable and progressive revolutionary struggle under the leadership of the CPC in an all-round way.

At the same time,writers native to or living in Baoding for a long time created a large number of excellent works reflecting the Counter-Japanese War,including full-length novels such as Li Yingru’s Struggles in an Ancient City,Sun Li’s Wind and Cloud in the Early Days of That War,Liu Liu’s Steel Meets Fire,Feng Zhi’s Armed Working Team in Enemy-occupied Areas,Xu Guangyao’s Fires on the Plain,Kong Jue and Yuan Jing’s Daughters and Sons,and Li Ke’s Tunnel Warfare,and Xing Ye’s film screenplay Guerrillas on the Plain.These works,with magnificent momentum,show the heroic struggle spirits of the Chinese people in the fierce Counter-Japanese War.The artistic images created in these works are well-known and have educated and infected generations of people.