Eighty-five years after being wrongfully accused and sacrificing his life, the memorial soil of martyr Yu Xiusong has been laid to rest in Shanghai today.

The year 2024 marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of martyr Yu Xiusong and the 85th anniversary of his sacrifice. To commemorate this great revolutionary martyr and to revisit his immortal revolutionary spirit and noble character, a ceremony for scattering commemorative soil was held on December 17 at the site of Yu Xiusong’s sacrifice in Shanghai Fushouyuan.

The Yu Xiusong memorial statue at Shanghai Fushouyuan. Photo provided by the organizers.

Yu Xiusong was born in 1899 in Ciwutown, Zhuji City, Zhejiang Province. He actively participated in organizing the patriotic movement of the May Fourth student movement in Hangzhou and joined one of the early organizations of the Communist Party of China in Shanghai in 1920. He served as the first secretary of the Shanghai Socialist Youth League, secretary of the temporary central executive committee of the Chinese Socialist Youth League, and a member of the central executive committee of the Chinese Socialist Youth League, making significant contributions to the early communist movement, especially in the establishment of party organizations. In 1937, he was falsely accused and arrested by Wang Ming and Kang Sheng, and tragically lost his life in Moscow in 1939 at the age of 40. In 1962, he was posthumously recognized as a martyr by the state.

After Yu Xiusong was killed in Moscow, his spirit was unaccounted for for a long time, causing enduring pain for his relatives. Upon learning of this, Shanghai Fushouyuan, with the support of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Youth League, reached out to his widow An Zhijie and other relatives, proposing to build a tomb and statue for Yu Xiusong in Shanghai Fushouyuan to allow his spirit to return home. Finally, in 2002, on the occasion of the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Youth League of China, the bronze statue of Yu Xiusong was completed among the verdant pine and cypress trees in the Yixia Garden of Shanghai Fushouyuan.

During the 2024 May Fourth Youth Day, Yu Min, the secretary-general of the Shanghai Research Center for the History of the Communist Party of China and the stepson of Yu Xiusong, retrieved commemorative soil from the Don River Cemetery in Moscow, where Yu Xiusong was sacrificed. One portion was scattered in his hometown of Zhuji, while another was scattered today under the Yu Xiusong memorial statue at Shanghai Fushouyuan.

On December 17, as gentle and melodious music played, the ceremony proceeded in an orderly manner. Guided by the ceremonial personnel, Yu Min solemnly scattered the commemorative soil around the statue, planting the seeds of revolutionary memory and spirit in this land.

“During my first trip to Russia in 1996, one of the tasks my mother entrusted to me was to bring Yu Xiusong’s remains back to China, as Chinese tradition emphasizes ‘a tall tree must have its leaves return to their roots’,” recalled Yu Min. He remembered that he learned during his journey that Yu Xiusong was shot on February 21, 1939, and buried in the Don River Cemetery, but there were no remains to bring back. Upon returning to Shanghai and discussing this with his mother, they felt a deep sense of regret.

“In 2019, during my 12th visit to the Don River Cemetery, while standing in front of Yu Xiusong’s monument, it occurred to me that beneath the land I was standing on, there should be elements of Yu Xiusong. After his body was cremated, his ashes were scattered in this cemetery.” Yu Min felt that even if it was just one ten-billionth, it was still a trace of Yu Xiusong. This led to the subsequent story of retrieving and scattering the soil.

To this day, the Yu Xiusong memorial statue at Shanghai Fushouyuan remains an important site for commemorating martyrs and conducting patriotic education. Every year, officials, employees from state-owned enterprises, red social groups, and teachers and students from universities, middle schools, and primary schools come here to pay their respects to the memorial statue, commemorate the martyrs, and lay flowers, expressing their reverence and remembrance for the heroic figures.