And make the far away home

In the summer of the ugly year, I was immersed in writing "Tibetan Mother" in my hometown in Yunnan, and suddenly I received a text message from Mr. Wang Meng's secretary, inviting me to return to Ili with Mr. Wang Meng to participate in the PEN conference, and I did not hesitate to agree. Because I look forward to revisiting mr. Wang Meng's literary hometown and feeling his heart path of becoming a people's singer in the exile of Lin Zexu. On this trip to Yili, he also hid another kind of piety in his heart -- he wanted to ascend the Heavenly Mountain, and with a piece of literary heart, he would shine on the ice heart, and approach the spirit of the old chief Lieutenant General Li Xuge in heaven and listen to the voice of his soul. Time flies, and at the snap of a finger, the old general has been gone for 9 years, but I am convinced that his heroic soul is still patrolling Ranati, which is where he and Mr. Wang Meng arrived with their lives.

Far away, for a writer, it is the hometown of poetry; for a soldier, it is the place where Qingshan buried his loyal bones. Looking at the starry sky at night, I was solemn, General Xu Ge and Mr. Wang Meng were both soldiers of Yan Zhao, a Shangwu, one Congwen, out of Gyeonggi, dragging his family with his mouth, and arrived in Ili successively. The former sank into the heavens and found his literary homeland; the latter watched the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, writing about the great love and loyalty of a soldier. Looking north at the Tianshan Mountains, I look forward to appreciating the majesty, literary style and righteousness that the Tianshan Mountains generously bestowed on Mr. Wang Meng and the old general.

The Tianshan Mountains under the morning sun, the mountains are like Dai, decorating an Ili city like a fairyland. The day after arriving in Ili, we came with Mr. Wang Meng to the second team of bayandai people's commune where he had been sent down. He hugged and greeted the elderly Uyghur people, pointed to each other, and had not seen each other for ten years, they were all well maintained, and they had lived as Tianshan Immortals. After taking a seat, Mr. Wang Meng asked the neighbors and villagers who were still alive. He spoke fluent Uyghur to reminisce with old friends, and I stood on the side with envy and emotion, a Han writer and Uyghur villagers' hearts melted together and became close friends, stemming from respect and love for the history and culture of the brother nation, folk customs and even living habits, but all of this first began with language, and had to be able to talk together. Subsequently, I walked into the Folk Customs Hall of the Brigade Headquarters and lingered in front of the old photos of Wang Meng when he was the captain of the brigade, which deepened my feelings, and he truly became a family with the ethnic minorities.

When I first read Mr. Wang Meng's book, I was 19 years old, I had just been promoted to a platoon-level cadre, and the place where I joined the army happened to be the place where Shen Congwen served as a company clerk. We lived in a sandwich ditch with a hidden force deep in the dense forest. That summer, I was transferred to the Publicity Office, and on Sunday I went into the county town to visit the Xinhua Bookstore and bought a copy of "Replayed Flowers." After reading through the autumn night, I actually met Mr. Wang Meng in the book, and read "The New Young Man from the Organization Department", and I did not cover the volume with my hands, and I did not know that the East was white. Later, I bought Mr. Wang Meng's "Long Live Youth" in that remote small county town. "Come all the days, let me weave you, with the golden thread of youth, and the radiance of happiness, weave you. There are the songs and laughter on the boat, the dancing on the campus under the moon, the drizzle in the mist, the morning march in the first snow, and the heated arguments, the pulsating, warm hearts..." Those classic sentences have always stirred in the heart, and I often recite them silently. Crouching in that place called the city wall boundary, I read through the night, and when the sky was about to break, I pushed the window to see the starry sky in Xiangxi so bright, as if I had found my own literary constellation. Therefore, I embarked on my own creative path, writing a piece of ice in the jade pot of Yuanshui, writing about The Dragon Biao Wei Wang Changling on the upper floor of Qiancheng Furong, writing about Mr. Congwen in Huaihua Pear Shuping, and of course, more about the years of casting swords. In the year of establishment, I was transferred to work in the creative studio, immersed myself in the creation of three years, wrote "The Great Power Sword", and won three literary awards from the whole country and the whole army.

Wen Yuantian is destined.

There is another Jiren like Mr. Wang Meng, who is destined to influence my life. At the foot of the Tianshan Mountains, I was waiting for him; to Ranati, I came to see him.

It was already 6:30 p.m., the sun was still hanging in the northern foothills of the Tianshan Mountains, the Lanati grassland was just ahead, and the turbulence of the Gongnais River could still be faintly heard. 17 years ago, I came here to visit the old chief Li Xuge. In the darkness, it was as if the old general had once again seen the heroic posture of riding the heavenly mountains and galloping Lop Nur again.

Looking past from Lanati, north and south of the Tianshan Mountains, Lop Nur and Peacock River, you can still see the bones of the soldiers. In October 1964, Colonel Li Xuge, who was the director of the Office of the First Nuclear Test, flew by helicopter on the day after China's first nuclear test, leaving a generation of Chinese soldiers majestically in the western desert. When he returned, as the deputy director of the technical department of a certain department of the former General Staff, he continued to participate in the second airdrop nuclear test and launched the hydrogen bomb test. In that year, the border situation tightened, and he was appointed as the commander of a division of the Xinjiang Army, leading an army division all the way to the west. The oldest was his oldest mother-in-law, who was 68 years old at the time, and the youngest was the daughter of a soldier who was only 10 months old. That year, his three daughters, the eldest 15 years old and the youngest 10 years old, left Beijing with their parents on an expedition. The military column rolled toward Xinjiang, which was quite tragic and heroic of "sacrificing one's life to go to the country." It is precisely because of such a strong steel brigade arrayed in Ili that the Tianshan Mountains appear so majestic, and the ice peaks will be so proud.

The war clouds dissipated, and the ancient city of Ili skimmed the dove of peace. The teacher led the soldiers into the depths of the Tianshan Mountains and surveyed the Tianshan Highway, and like Mr. Wang Meng, he also learned a fluent Uyghur language.

In 1964, shortly after Mr. Wang Meng arrived in Urumqi, he went to Ili as a cadre of the Literary Association, and he went to 15 years, and his wife, who was two years older than him, also chased after her husband Jun.

Li Xuge and Wang Meng, both of whom are members of the Jidong clan, one does "earth-shattering" things, the other writes "Long Live Youth" text, one martial arts and one article, and sings a magnificent song of the Tianshan Mountains with his life.

In his later years, Li Xuge, who was injured by a cannonball during the liberation of Lanzhou, relapsed and was almost deaf. I wrote a biography of him, the Atomic Bomb Diaries. Beidaihe seashore, one old and one young, with a small blackboard dialogue. The topic is like a needle on an old record, and the most exciting movement still echoes in Xinjiang Lop Nur and Lanati.

After more than 30 years, he developed lung cancer, and in 2001, after removing a lobe of his lungs, he was quiet for ten years. At 9:30 on October 6, 2012, I stood in front of the old general's bed at the 301 Hospital and watched his blood pressure gradually drop from 130 to zero. At that moment, I rushed out of the ward, unable to suppress my tears any longer...

Fortunately, there is also long live youth; fortunately, that thick soil has left a magnificent landscape.

That night, Mr. Wang Meng stood in the afterglow of the Tianshan Mountains, leaving a long back. Witnessing this scene, I was shocked to feel that the era of heroism and idealism did not go far.

The scenery here is unique. Ascending high and looking far away, the Lanati grassland rushed to my eyes like a wave, and the picturesque era of the wind and flag also came to me. I stood in the sea of flowers, plucked a yellow flower, picked the flower and smiled, and the grassland stirred like a wave. A thought arises, a thought goes home. What is the supreme realm of the article, with ice and snow as the heart, the dust is not stained; the grass and trees are living, and there are fireworks everywhere. At that moment, I realized that life under the old commander was a fortune and a destiny. Like Mr. Wang Meng, his experience and life are a poetic awakening for writers of my generation. I finally understood that what is more important than literature is life, human experience and destiny. Even if the glory and disgrace are ups and downs, they are all the reserves of writers, and they will not be excessive in creation.

A homesick bird flew overhead, chirping and chirping, autumn grass yellow, eagle flying... I want to think of Xinjiang, I want to return to the Ili River again, like Mr. Wang Meng and Commander Xu Ge, and make the distant place my hometown. It turns out that I also have a piece of literary origin. (Xu Jian)

Source: People's Liberation Army Daily