1928: The Rise of Giants

The principal's New Life Movement was carried out with great fanfare. His speeches were even recorded into records, and radio stations across the country were required to assist in publicity.

Not long after the Lantern Festival, Yamei Radio, owned by Yeh’s Investment, began broadcasting the principal’s new life speech every day: “We want to reform society and revive a country and a nation, but we cannot succeed by force. How can we succeed?

Simply put, the first thing is to make the general public have national morality, and the second thing is to make the general public have national knowledge. Germany was able to revive in less than 15 years. They just lost the war and they can stop paying the indemnity in a few years. They can refuse to pay it if they want. But we have been paying the indemnity for decades or even hundreds of years, and we still pay it every year.

In short, Germany is also a country, and we are also a country. Germany can be equal to other countries without military force, but we cannot achieve equality even though we have military force. Why is this? There is no other reason, it is simply because the knowledge and morality of our general public are not as good as others.

Well, the general meaning of this statement is that this generation of citizens is not good enough, not that the Nanjing National Government is incompetent.

So the principal launched a vigorous new life movement.

First of all, we should start with the people's food, clothing, housing and transportation. People should sit at the table properly to eat and cannot squat anywhere to eat. They should not expose their chests or stomachs when wearing clothes, buttons must be buttoned up properly, and their hair should not be messy.
The principal also said, "The spirit, thoughts, knowledge and morality of a person or a country's citizens can all be expressed in the way they live their basic lives."

He compared the way people in the Republic of China and Japanese ate and washed their faces, and came to a very interesting conclusion, that the Japanese were more disciplined and had better national qualities than the people in the Republic of China.

He said: "We don't have to fight the Japanese in a hail of bullets. We can know who is stronger and who is weaker just by comparing our daily lives."

Soon, major newspapers across the country began reporting on the "New Life Movement", and the Nanjing National Government also issued a directive to designate the first week of April as the "New Life Movement Propaganda Week."

The whole country was in chaos. The Kuomintang's action teams wore red armbands and went from street to street to catch those who were in tattered clothes, wearing strange clothes, or had messy hair. They would impose fines at the very least and detention at the worst.

Each street and alley has also been divided into areas, and any businesses and residents in the area found to be substandard in terms of hygiene will be punished.

The rickshaw drivers were very depressed. They were sweating profusely while carrying passengers, but they didn't even dare to unbutton their clothes to cool down.

Because once you are caught not buttoning your clothes, you will be fined immediately, and all the income you have worked hard for for a day will be gone.

Shanghai residents used to like to sit in the alleys and eat dinner while listening to radio programs.

Now I don’t dare to do that at all, because we must sit around a table to eat, and eating on the roadside is not in line with the instructions of the New Life Movement.

Fortunately, it was just a passing fad, just like the ban on the Spring Festival and other activities. After the "New Life Movement Promotion Week" is over, the KMT action team will not be so strict and everyone can do what they should do.

Only those unlucky guys who happen to encounter patrol officers will be fined. Anyway, just consider it as bad luck.

However, the "New Life Movement" of the Republic of China was a long-term activity that lasted for more than ten years.

During this period, new content would be come up every now and then, such as prohibiting waste at weddings, funerals, and birthday banquets, prohibiting the wearing of strange clothes, prohibiting men and women from sitting in the same bathroom, prohibiting primary and secondary school students from having long hair, prohibiting women from perming their hair and showing bare legs, prohibiting smoking in cars, theaters, conference halls, and mountains, promoting punctual exercise, persuading people and animals to live separately, promoting relief and comfort for the wounded, promoting anti-drug and anti-gambling, etc.

Most of it is good and helpful for the betterment of society.

But some content is too strictly controlled. For example, some places prohibit perming hair and bare legs, which makes women afraid to even wear skirts.

The most terrifying thing is the waste of money and time. By 1935, when the New Life Movement reached its peak, there were more than 6 people working in the same field across the country.

The main work of these tens of thousands of people was to promote the New Life Movement, which wasted a lot of financial expenditure. Not only that, due to the poor control of local areas, many local officials used chicken feathers as a token of authority.

"What's going on, Principal?" Ye Hao said speechlessly.

When this trend started, the most affected company among Ye’s investments was Ye’s Security Company.

Ye Hao's company is full of people from all walks of life. Most of these people do not comply with the rules and regulations of the New Life Movement. Once they are caught, they will be fined. Once they are fined, he, as the boss, has to step in to get them out.

Throughout February and March, Ye Hao had been on the road rescuing people.

Ye Luo smiled and said, "The principal is trying to establish his own prestige."

In Ye Luo's opinion, the principal's original intention of launching the New Life Movement was to increase his presence and promote his Confucian ideas in the process of implementation.

This was an ideological movement that opposed all kinds of chaotic isms and advocated the Four Virtues (propriety, righteousness, integrity and shame) and the Eight Virtues (loyalty, filial piety, benevolence, love, faith, justice and peace) in order to unify the nation's ideology and morality.

Of course, another point is to promote the militarization of the entire nation to facilitate conscription in the future full-scale war of resistance.

The principal also knew that there would be a war between China and Japan, but he did not dare to shout anti-Japanese slogans directly, so he quietly incorporated preparations for the anti-Japanese war into the New Life Movement.

In his own words, "The ultimate goal of the New Life Movement is to make the lives of the people uniform. What do the four words 'uniform' mean? It is what people now generally call militarization. The New Life Movement is a militarization movement."

However, it was all useless. The common people were strictly controlled, but the officials continued to indulge in eating, drinking, gambling, and smoking.

That’s why Feng Yuxiang said, “The new life is just a lie.”

Xiang Meili, a close friend of the principal's wife, commented: "The New Life Movement is a joke that is not small but widespread across the country."

A foreign friend was more direct, describing the New Life Movement as "a national rejuvenation movement based on toothbrushes, mousetraps and fly swatters."

Anyway, Ye Luo was too lazy to comply with the principal's instructions, and he didn't see any blind guy dare to come over and twist him to demand a fine.

"Don't worry about the New Life Movement for now," Ye Hao whispered. "You have to take care of the editorial department of The World. There were problems with the content of the last issue of the magazine. A friend who works in news censorship reminded me that the higher-ups were very dissatisfied with some of the statements in the magazine."

"It's okay, I agreed to those reports." Ye Luo said with a smile.

"Don't go too far, otherwise we will be implicated as well." Ye Hao reminded.

The "excessive" content that Ye Hao mentioned was the new issue of "World" reporting the establishment of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army and Yang Jingyu's first victory under the leadership of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army. The Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army was established under the leadership of an underground organization, and both the Nanjing National Government and the Kwantung Army hated it.

Ye Luo even received a telegram from the principal's secretary Deng Wenyi, asking him not to mention the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army again, otherwise he would ban "The World" directly.

"Alas, it's a lot of trouble to run a newspaper these days." Ye Luo had to intervene and couldn't let the members of the underground organization in the editorial department do whatever they wanted. (End of this chapter)