Sweep away the style of "writing a thousand words and leaving a thousand miles"

After the Anti-Japanese War entered the stalemate stage, the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region encountered unprecedented financial and economic difficulties. As an important resource of the border region at that time, the export of salt was of great significance to overcome the financial and economic difficulties of the border region, but due to the controversial policy of salt distribution in the border region, the export progress was slow.

In order to gain an in-depth understanding of the work of salt transportation, Mao Zedong asked the Northwest Bureau to write an investigation report on salt transportation and asked it to be completed within three days. The Northwest Bureau handed over this work to Gao Kelin, who was working as a secretary in the Yanshi Ten County Working Committee at that time. On the night when Gao Kelin accepted the task, he called Lu Zhongcai, deputy head of Chengguan District, who had just returned from salt transport in Yanchi, Dingbian County, to understand the situation and form an investigation report, which was reported to Mao Zedong the next day.

Gao Kelin's investigation report came straight to the point and went straight to the point. The full text, including punctuation, was only more than 2700 words, but it talked about seven aspects. There is not a single adjective or a group of ranking sentences in the whole article. Judging from the content, most of them are one or two sentences, but after reading, the situation of salt transportation at that time is clear.

After reading this investigation report with concise content, simple language and clear organization, Mao Zedong highly praised it and specially wrote a note:

This is a report that reflects the actual situation in concise words. It was written by Comrade Gao Kelin and is worth learning. We must now sweep away the style of "writing a thousand words and leaving a thousand miles to the subject", the "rhetoric" and the subjectivism and formalism. Comrade Gao Klin's report was written after a three-person investigation meeting in one night. His investigation meeting was very good, and his report was also very good. What we need is this kind of thing, not those stereotyped "rhetoric", not those stereotyped party writing.

Later, Mao Zedong drew up the title of "Lu Zhongcai's Long March" for Gao Kelin's salt transportation investigation report, and recommend it to Yan'an "Liberation Daily". "Liberation Daily" published Mao Zedong's notes and the full text of the investigation report on September 14 and 15, 1941. This investigation report not only played an important role in promoting the salt transportation work at that time, but also became a learning reference material for the rectification movement.

The reason why Mao Zedong valued this investigation report so much was that, on the one hand, the investigation report provided an important reference for the Party Central Committee to understand the true situation of salt transportation in the Shaanxi-Gansu-Ningxia Border Region and formulate corresponding policies; on the other hand, it was in line with the Party Central Committee at that time. Opposing subjectivism and formalism, the need for investigation and research in the whole party. As early as May 1941, when Mao Zedong made a report on "reforming our study", he sharply criticized the style of subjectivism and called on the whole party to pay attention to investigation and research. In February 1942, he made a speech on "opposing the eight-part writing style of the party," which was mentioned in the press, clearly pointing out that "the form of the party's eight-part writing is not only inconvenient to express the revolutionary spirit, but also very easy to suffocate the revolutionary spirit. In order to develop the revolutionary spirit, we must abandon the stereotypically written party writing and adopt a lively, fresh and powerful Marxist-Leninist style of writing" and "replace it with a fresh and lively Chinese style and Chinese style that is loved by the Chinese people".

Today, it seems that Mao Zedong's emphasis on opposing the eight-piece writing of the party still has a strong reference significance for our party to strengthen the construction of work style.

Source: People's Daily