Part II Genuine Emotion

Group One: Treasure Friendship; Group Two: Cherish Family; Group Three: Care for the People

The exhibition of historical relics such as Chen Yun’s correspondence with central leaders and his children, and inscriptions to his comrades and family shows his passion and sincerity. Among the relics,   two walnuts merit attention. The two sepia walnuts are 3.5 cm in diameter and featured by fine texture. Ordinary as they look, but they all have touching stories.

In 1970s, Chen Yun had health problems with his hand joints. In addition to enhancing treatment, the attending doctor suggested that he had better exercise his hand joints more to help his recovering. To this end, the doctor suggested him to use walnuts to exercise in daily life, which was the most convenient fitness method. At that time, his daughter, Chen Weihua, was a teacher at Huairou County. She heard about her father’s illness and was very worried. Later, knowing Huairou was the town of walnut, she was overjoyed. Then she chose two big, shapely walnuts for her father and took them home. Chen Yun was delighted and grew very fond of the two right-sized, handy walnuts. Ever since, the two walnuts became his favorites and he carried them all the time. Whenever he read documents and papers, or listened to news, story-telling and Suzhou Pingtan (a regional variety of musical performance art form originated from Suzhou, Jiangsu Province), or pondered on strategies, or went deep into the masses to make investigation, or took a walk, he was always holding them in hand. Even when he sat at the rostrum during the opening ceremony of the 13th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, he still put the two walnuts inside the right-side pocket of his Chinese tunic suit. Grown slick and shiny, the two walnuts and accompanied Chen to get through his last leg of his life journey.