Ｇｅｏｒｇｅ Ｈｏｇｇ Ｆｏｒｅｖｅｒ Ｌｉｖｅｓ ｉｎ Ｃｈｉｎｅｓｅ ａｎｄ Ｂｒｉｔｉｓｈ Ｐｅｏｐｌｅ’ｓ Ｈｅａｒｔｓ

Ｓｈｕ　Ｚｈａｎｇ

To trace George Hoggs deeds, some teachers and students of St. George School in Harpenden of Britain, George Hoggs Alma Mater, led by the members of the Board of Directors and principal of the school, came to China. They interviewed the people who knew Hogg including the Nie brothers who were adopted by Hogg to get more knowledge about him, and also visited the Shandan Bailie School to which Hogg dedicated all his life.

George Hogg was born in Britain in 1915 and studied in St. George School in Harpenden, his hometown. After he graduated from middle school, he went to study in Wadham College, Oxford, where he got the degree of Bachelor of Arts. In 1937, 22-year-old Hogg together with his aunt went to the United States and Japan. In that year Japan started the aggressive war against China. In 1938, he came to China after passing through different places and first arrived in Shanghai which had been already occupied by the Japanese aggressors. In the city he saw houses destroyed by the flames of war, soldiers struggling for existence in hunger and pain, street urchins, homeless pregnant women who were about to give birth on the street. The sufferings of the Chinese people aroused his great sympathy. He asked himself what he could do for the Chinese people. In Wuhan he got acquainted with Agnes Smedley and Rewi Alley, and through their introduction he went to Yanan, the strongest centre of the anti-Japanese aggression movement at that time, where he saw that under the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC), young people with high ideals and great fervour were determined to drive the Japanese aggressors away, rejuvenate China and fight for their motherland. Soon afterwards he went to the frontline and anti-Japanese guerrilla battlefield where he witnessed the fights between the Eighth Route Army and the Japanese aggressors. Thereupon, he wrote the book I See a New China exposing the corruption and decline of the Kuomintang bureaucratic rule and praising the spirit of resistance against Japanese aggression under the leadership of the CPC.

He decided to stay in China and joined the Gung Ho movement run by Rewi Alley and others. Not long after he went to Shuangshipu, a small town south of Baoji, and took charge of Bailie School at the invitation of Rewi Alley. The students of the school were mainly refugee children. The guiding principle for running the school was geared to the needs of production and not disengaged from the local peoples struggle. Hogg lived together with the students and helped them to master practical skills for serving the people and their motherland. At that time he adopted four orphans of the Nie family: Nie Guangchun, Nie Guranghan, Nie Guangtao and Nie Guangpei. The eldest of the four was only 12 years old. He let the eldest and the second one study in Bailie School and brought up the third and the youngest all by himself, acting both as their father and mother. Once the third boy was seriously ill, he carried him in a handcart pulling it over the Qinling Mountain to a hospital in Baoji. The children took him as their own father..

In 1943 Rewi Alley accompanied Dr. Joseph Needham, a noted British scientist, to give a lecture in the Yumen Oilfield. On the way they passed Shandan, a small town at the western Gansu corridor. This remote small town far from the war front with rich resources, suitable conditions for developing agriculture and animal husbandry and some vacant houses was an ideal place for carrying out Gung Ho programmes. Thus, Hogg together with dozens of students put the schools equipment on several mule carts, and set off from Shuangshipu. After an arduous journey of several hundred miles they came to Lanzhou where they got on trucks and finally arrived at Shandan.

There Hogg took the school as his home and became one with the students who loved him very much. Unfortunately, once when he played basketball with the students, his toe was cut and he suffered from tetanus. On July 22, 1945 he passed away at the age of 30. His last words were: “Give my all to Bailie School.”

In Beijing, the China Society for Peoples Friendship Studies and Huiwen Middle School invited comrades in the CPAFFC and those once working with Rewi Alley and particularly Nie Guangtao and Nie Guangpei to attend a meeting with the British friends. They told the British friends that the Chinese people would never forget their old friends who had made contributions to the Chinese revolution and construction and one of these international friends was George Hogg and that Hoggs book I See a New China was being translated into Chinese and was to be published.

The teachers and students of St. George School were warmly received by the teachers and students of Bailie School in Shandan. The British guests listened to the account of Hoggs moving deeds with tears in their eyes and were deeply touched. They visited the places where Hogg worked and lived and his tomb, the memorial stone tablet and square pavilion at the side of the Shandan River, and expressed their high respect and memory of him.

After the delegation returned home, Norman Hoare, principal of St. George School, sent us a letter saying: “I enjoyed it (the trip) enormously. It was an amazing experience and I need time to let the wonderful experience ‘sink in.” He told us that they would continue to publicize Hoggs deeds to let more people know that the friendship between the British and Chinese people had lasted for a long time, and that the Chinese Embassy and the Association of Chinese Teachers in Britain asked them to give reports about what they had seen and heard during their trip for tracing Hoggs deeds.

April 4, 2008