By Sun Youquan
"Pine tree is your will, flowers are your smile..." on March 11，the 70-year-old Xu Shuzi sat in front of the piano and sang "The Monument Forever".
"I learned to play the piano, in order to record a soundtrack for 'The Monument Forever' exhibition board," Xu shared her story.
Xu came to Beijing from her hometown of Yanji county, Jilin Province in 2002, to take care of her elderly mother. She liked to read books and newspapers in spare time. At the beginning of 2005, media reported many stories of the revolutionary martyrs to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. When doing newspaper clippings, an idea came to her head. She decided to make an exhibition board to promote these heroic stories.
In February 2005, Xu pasted the collected news clippings on a hundred revolutionary martyrs’ heroic deeds on two 1.5-meter-wide and 2-meter-long exhibition boards, with the theme of "The Monument Forever", and then placed them on both sides of Beiyuan Street, Chaoyang District, Beijing. A large number of people stopped to watch the exhibition boards, and the community workers invited her to display the boards in front of the community gate."I felt very encouraged after that exhibition," she said.
Not long after that, teachers from Beiyuan Primary School in Beijing sent the invitation and she took her boards to the campus. In the following two years, she made nearly 50 exhibition boards for the school.
"It would be great if the exhibition boards could be displayed with a theme song," Xu had this idea as there were more and more opportunities to display the exhibition boards.
She bought an Electric Piano and began to learn playing it from a music teacher. Xu practiced so hard that she passed the Level 5 test within just two years. The piano teacher was moved by her perseverance and wrote the music "The Monument Forever" for free.
In 2012, Xu returned to Yanji, her hometown, concentrating on collecting the heroic stories in her hometown. There were few clues in the beginning. She asked the retired personnel, the martyrs' cemetery staff, and even went to some remote villages to collect information. Her efforts were finally paid off. She and her friends found totally 62 heroes and martyrs of the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea.
On July 19, 2013, Xu was invited to the Primary School Affiliated to the Normal Branch of Yanbian University to host an educational exhibition featuring "August 1, the Army Day", where her work was well recognized by all.
By now, she has collected the stories of more than 3,600 heroes who came from Yanbian Korean autonomous prefecture and died during the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, the Liberation War and the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. She made exhibition boards at her own expense for more than 500 photo exhibitions at 58 schools and 54 communities.
