University students across China held various activities on Friday to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the "December 9" student movement.
In Shanghai, about 500 college students participated in a poetry reciting contest with a theme of "Eulogizing Youth and Loving China." The activity is part of a series of campus activities in Shanghai.
In Beijing, students held discussions and performance to review history and study the historic mission of contemporary youth.
"I spent my younger days in an era when China experienced the national crisis. It's the love for my motherland that led me to embark the road of revolution," said Lu Cui, aged 91, a participant of the student movement 70 years ago.
In a talk with students of Tsinghua University, she expressed the hope that students at Tsinghua would be patriotic and work hard to make the motherland prosperous.
In Guangzhou, debate contests and movie shows were held at various colleges and universities to mark the anniversary.
"The movement, led by the Communist Party of China, made the nation united to fight against Japanese invaders. The younger generation should remember the history," said Du Jinnan, aged 90, an activist of the movement, in a lecture to students of a dozen of universities in Guangzhou, capital of booming Guangdong Province.
The "December 9" movement occurred in 1935 when students in Beijing, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, held a patriotic demonstration, putting forward such slogans as "stop the civil war and unite to resist foreign aggression" and "Down with Japanese imperialism." The movement then spread to other parts of China and gained wide support, but collapsed under the long reign of terror imposed by the Kuomintang government.
(Xinhua News Agency December 10, 2005)