During The "Cultural Revolution" Qufu "Four Olds" Campaign Brief

The "Destroy the Four Olds" campaign is a particular event happened at the beginning of the Cultrual Revolution. It first began in Beijing, and then under the agitation of the official media propaganda tool and the influence of "Leftist thought", this campaign quickly spreaded throughout the country.At the initial stage of the "Destroy the Four Olds" campaign, the cadres in Qufu county committee resisted the pressure, by invoking the rules on protection of cultural relics, they distinguished "San Kong" with "Four Olds". Thus they effectively pretected "San Kong". However, after the coming of the Mao Zedong Thought Red Guards Jinggang Moutain Fighter Group, headed by Tan Houlan from Beijing Normal University, the "Destroy the Four Olds" campaign got out of the original orbit. And this campaign turned into a campaign which crusaded against, downed with, and rebelled Confucianism.On the one hand, the "Destroy the Four Olds" campaign in Qufu had the common characteristics with the national "Destroy the Four Olds" campaign. Some of these chatacteristics were as follows:renaming in a blustering wave, i.e. changing the village names, street names, place names, store names, person names which were with so-called capitalist and feudalist characteristic to some names with revolutionary color; cancelling all temple fairs and dismantling various archways; reforming the traditional wedding and funeral customs; persecuting and confiscating the property. Even the influences of this campaign to service sector, cultural field and religion were eactly the same. On the other hand, the "Destroy the Four Olds" campaign in Qufu was manipulated and supported by the central cultural revolution group. Under the indulgence of this group, the crusading against Confucianism campaign, headed by Tan Houlan, became the priority and the particular content of the "Destroy the Four Olds" campaign in Qufu.Looking at it superficially, some old customs, old habits and superstitions were eradicated in the "Destroy the Four Olds" campaign, which represented the progress of the society. However, this campaign actually paved the way for the cultural revolution. What's more, it had no scientific or correct standard and attitude to the concepts of "new" and "old". In addition, the Red Guards were politically immature and lacked of social experience, thus they were used by Lin Biao, Jiang Qing and their like. As a result, this campaign quickly turned into a destructive movement to repressivly break cultural relics, destroy historic spots, persecute and confiscate the property.With the upgrading of the "Cultural Revolution' and the waxing of the struggle for power and money in the Gang of Four, the "Destroy the Four Olds" campaign gradually faded out of people's vision and retreated from the stage of history.Reviewing the history of the "Destroy the Four Olds" campaign, neither it destroyed the old and established the new, nor it promoted the progress of the society. In the opposite, it brought huge negative impacts to various fields in Qufu, such as political life, ecnomic life, cultural life, educational life, social life and so on. It caused the unrest of society and retrogression of history. The lessons of it are worth pondering over.