Why wandering, wandering far away.....
——Ai Wu's Journey to the South and the Birth of the Journey to the South
Text/Xu Jiancheng
……
Don't ask me where I'm coming from
My hometown is far away
Why wandering
Wandering far away
Birds flying in the sky
For the stream that flows lightly in the mountains
This year, he visited Ai Wu's former residence twice in Qingliu Town, Xinfan (now part of Xindu District, Chengdu), leaving behind several mobile phone photographs. Qingliu Town is the hometown of Ai Lao, where he set off from the south. Facing the statue of Elder Ai, I wanted to ask softly: Elder Ai, why do you want to wander, wander to such a far place? Is it for your big goal in life, for the chivalrous dream of your youth, or for the literary dream of your youth?
The old man's eyes were shining, just as he was when I was in front of the Chengdu Youth League Committee that year—he was about to get on the bus to go back to the Provincial Writers Association, and when he saw me walking toward him with a book, he smiled and signed the award-winning book "Modern Idiom Dictionary" of one of my poems: "Ai Wu 1982, 3, 2."
I stood next to his statue, close to him, and photographed me on my wife's mobile phone. Elder Ai did not answer my inquiry, his eyes were shining, his expression was serene, and he looked into the distance. At the moment when my wife took pictures of me, a song composed by the wandering writer Sanmao suddenly sounded in my heart: "Why wandering, wandering far away..."
The road is long and the road is long, and I will seek up and down
At this time, in the summer of 1925, Tang Daogeng of the Sichuan Provincial First Normal School was also as dazed as Li Bai was, except that he was a pure scholar, had not practiced swordplay, had no sword to pull out, and could only be Guan Shu's "four gu heart dazed", and now he is now a bit "unable to fight the direction" - a letter from his father at home.
The school is in Yan street (the school site is now Yandao Street Middle School), not far from Jinjiang, he put down his books, walked out of the campus, wandering and wandering by the river, the night is dark, the river moon is shaking in the water, he is really dazed and overwhelmed.
Tang Daogeng was twenty-one years old at this time, around the age of twenty-one, what kind of age should this be?
The following year at the age of twenty-one, Guo Moruo went to Japan to study, and seven years later, the pioneering work of modern poetry, "Goddess", has amazed the history of modern Chinese literature to this day (Although Hu Shi's "Attempt Collection" was published a year before "Goddess", literary historians recognize it as slightly inferior to Guo Shi in terms of literary quality and the pioneering nature of vernacular poetry).
The year before he was twenty-one years old, Ba Jin set out from Chengdu to study in Shanghai and France and became a professional writer, but ten years later, his masterpiece "Home" came out, which is still the peak of modern Chinese literature.
Twenty-one years old, the age when my generation has been a young intellectual in the countryside for several years, wondering when I will be able to take my hukou back to the city, is the age when I have returned to Chengdu from the countryside one step ahead of me, and I am pulling a frame car to do odd jobs, and at the same time I want to find a position as a substitute primary school teacher to survive and develop; twenty-one years old, it is my son who is about to graduate from college, and is studying whether to choose a job or study for further study.
The Tang Dynasty's "Spring River Flower Moon Night" chanted the common feelings of all the people of all dynasties: "Who on the riverbank first saw the moon, and when did the river moon shine at the beginning of the year?" Life is infinite from generation to generation, and Jiang Yue is only similar every year..."
I will only graduate next year, and this year my family will write a letter urging Tang to go home and finish the marriage. It was ten years ago when his parents were engaged to marry him, he didn't know what the woman looked like, it was really a cat bought in the pocket, not to mention, the big husband, first established a business and then started a family, "The Xiongnu are not destroyed, why is the family?" He was thinking about his studies and the future, and the family wanted to have a daughter-in-law who cooked, washed, fed pigs, and took care of housework to inherit his late mother's unfinished "career." His eyes were on the big world outside the family, and the family now wanted him to turn back, go home to marry and have children, and continue the incense of the Tang family. The generation gap is very deep, the south is the opposite, not to say that it is like water and fire, but also almost the wind and horses and cattle are not in reach.
In Qingliu Town, Xinfan County, Tang can be said to be talented and intelligent, with deep family learning. His grandfather had poetry and books, was a cultured squire, had also gone on an expedition to the former QingKe Field but failed, and his father was a township teacher in a county public school, and was a rare rural intellectual. When he was four or five years old, he studied at his grandfather's private school (similar to the current Guoxue school) and the new school taught by his father, and was taught in both the old and new modes of education, and memorized many sage poems. A few years ago, when he was fourteen years old, he was admitted to the first place in the third grade of the county in composition, so his father was summoned by the Provincial Department of Education, which said to his father, "This student can enter high school." A few years ago, when he was seventeen years old, when he was studying in the second grade (that is, the fifth grade of primary school) of Xinfan County Higher Primary School, the highest school in the county, he went to Chengdu Union Middle School (that is, Guo Moruo, Li Jieren, etc.) with his third-grade graduating classmates. The top three students who passed the examination were Tang Daogeng, a classmate of the second grade of high school.
However, Mr. Tang failed to attend Chengdu Union Middle School. It is not that he does not want to study, it is his family, as Lu Xun said, "fell from a well-off family into a difficult situation", his father sold his grandfather to share his family's land property with his son because of opium smoking, and he also owed a lot of debts, and the income from teaching was very limited, unable to pay for the forty yuan he needed to enter the Union Middle School every year. The father's inability to be angry, not like words, not to give strength, delayed the enrollment of Tang classmates. His mother was still alive at the time, and gave the red envelope to the annunciator, but like him, it was empty and joyful.
Tang is not a person who has done nothing, and is in the midst of his youth, and has made some thoughts and plans for his future. After half a year of fruitlessness in wanting to study at the United Middle School, he went to the examination hall again and was admitted to the Sichuan Provincial First Normal School, which had to manage food and housing, and he successfully enrolled. Tailor-made, watching dishes and eating, at any time is a wise move - fortunately, he did not jump into the fountain pond at the doorstep of his home half a year ago because of a momentary frustration and a thought, leaving an indispensable wandering literary hero in the history of modern Chinese literature.
The school was about to end, and Tang returned to Qingliu's house first, because he wanted money from the family. He did not answer his father's request for him to complete the marriage, nor did he say that he opposed his father's arrangement, he said that he would graduate next year, and when he graduated, he would talk about marriage. This is exactly what is going on: everything is urgent, and things are slow. His father also slowed down the pace of urging him to complete his marriage, giving him time to think: Where is the road, where should I go?
The future of his son Tang Daogeng is something that his parents are very concerned about.
When his mother was still alive, she said that she hoped that he would go to church schools, not to pay tuition fees, and that he would be recommended to go to free universities and teach in church schools, but Xiaozi Tang refused his mother's proposal, and after undergoing the may fourth new culture baptism, he read many famous works in ancient and modern China and abroad, and had new ideas and new concepts.
His father advocated that he advance to the military school, and his two uncles entered Liu Xiang's army, and within a few years they were promoted and rich again, which was his example. But he adamantly refused. Warlords fight, disasters to the country and the people, in the clashes between soldiers and students, he has always been on the side of students. He said he was reluctant to serve as cannon fodder for the warlords.
His wish was to go to the center of the May Fourth Movement and apply for universities in Beijing. He wrote to his teacher liu Zuobin, who was studying in Beijing, to inquire about the situation (Liu founded "Stars" when he was a senior teacher in Chengdu, and Yu Tang wrote a poem to publish as a publication, which was Tang's debut work, but now he has not found only one issue of lead print "Stars". Liu Hou was a professor at Tsinghua University, and was later wrongly classified as a rightist, and then rehabilitated) Liu Zuobin wrote back to tell him that it costs three hundred yuan to study in Beijing every year, he was speechless, and he wanted to study at Chengdu Union Middle School for more than 40 yuan a year.
However, just as Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping chose a road of work-study in France, just as many poor rural students today chose a life path of "drifting north" and "drifting south" to work first and then studying, Tang naturally thought of taking a road of work-study that was self-sufficient and self-seeking.
He had wanted to go to Nanyang, go to that warm place to work, and make an appointment with his companions, but the companions missed the appointment. He finally made an appointment with a "Huang Jun" who wanted to return to Juan County for the summer, and he could walk with "Huang Jun" for a while, so that the journey would not be too lonely and lonely.
Tang lied that he wanted to apply for a university in Beijing, he had to pay the examination fee, and it was possible that after being admitted, such as the provincial first division, he could not pay the fee, and on this reason, he "cheated" his grandfather and father of only a dozen yuan. With money in his hands and a road in front of him, he is going to go on the road. Although, his mentor Liu Zuobin learned that he was going south, he hurriedly wrote a letter to dissuade him: Don't go, "this can only drag himself outside."
The night before his trip, he was full of poetry and wrote—
"Ander lifted his wings,
Dancing in space?
ShuShan has no wonders,
I'm going to ride the long wind! ”
Although he is far away, Goofy is still in a distant time and space
21-year-old Tang is about to travel away by boat at the Nine Eyes Bridge. Carrying in his arms was a transfer certificate issued by the provincial first division to prove that he was a student, a small package on his shoulder with several pieces of change of clothes, and several books he cherished—Liang Shuming's "Eastern and Western Culture and Its Philosophy", Wu Zhihui's "A New Belief's Outlook on Life and Cosmology", Hu Shi's "Outline of the History of Chinese Philosophy", Ma Yinchu's "Collection of Lectures on Economics", Xiong Deshan's "Sociology" - there are philosophies, historiography, economics and sociology, but there is no literature. Literature awaited him in his heart, in the far reaches of his quest.
39 years later, the 16-year-old author of this article is also like Tang Classmate, I am going to start from Chengdu Renmin South Road to the south to go south to the mountains and go to the countryside, our southbound is a military truck, there are people to manage food all the way, to the destination xichang there are also people to manage rice, and the rations of that year were provided by the state for free, generally guaranteed to be able to eat. In addition to a few pieces of change of clothes, I also brought with me a dozen books, including reviews of Ancient Chinese, as well as plays and poems. People who have left may have thought like Tang classmates that they want to fly high, but I have returned to Chengdu from Xichang a few years later, and it should be said that I have not been able to fly high in my life.
Tang took the water road and dry road from Yibin (Xufu) out of the river to Yunnan, unlike me a few years ago with my friends driving into the high-speed tour of Yunnan. We stayed in Kunming at dusk towards Farong City, and it took only one day to travel about 900 kilometers. From July, Tang went through dangers and obstacles all the way to Kunming, a work-study destination before the Mid-Autumn Festival, which took nearly three months and traveled about 1,000 kilometers. Shu Dao is difficult, Dian Dao is also difficult, in a word: it is difficult to walk, it is difficult to go far, it is more difficult to want to fly high!
When he arrived in Kunming, life gave Tang the "first lesson of life philosophy". Many years later, he wrote in an autobiography that —
"In the autumn of 1925, I wandered to Kunming. Walking into the city, I didn't have any money on me, only a pair of straw shoes that I didn't wear, and maybe sold them, and bought a few burnt cakes. I was going to pull a rickshaw, but I still couldn't pull it because I didn't have a cartel. Coupled with the large number of unemployed people, it is extremely difficult to find a job. I sold straw shoes, sold old books I had brought with me, and lived a half-hungry and half-full life. No one wanted books, so I went to an old bookstore to sell them, and the old man who sold books looked at my broken books and said that he was selling new books and did not buy old books. It turned out that this was a shop that sold good books, and there were very few people who bought books, and over time, books became old, so that people would suddenly see them as selling old books. He asked me why I sold books, and I said I hadn't eaten in a day or two and couldn't find a career, so I had to sell books. He gave me two dimes. I asked him to help me find a career, and he agreed. The next day, when I went again, he said that the Kunming Red Cross Society needed a miscellaneous service, and I was very happy to take over this job, so that my starving life on the streets came to an end, and it was also my first lesson in the philosophy of life when I left school. ”
Mr. Lu Xun said in the Beijing Newsletter: Young people must survive first, food and clothing, and third, development. Before Tang went south, there was no problem in survival, and there was basically no problem with food and clothing, but for the development of his life, he insisted on going south, and forced himself into the primary stage of survival and food and clothing, and it is difficult to say whether he has made progress or regressed. Just looking at the present, his life is obviously regressive, such as looking at ten years and eight years, there is no doubt that you can say this sentence that everyone can hear the cocoon in their ears: "Without a cold bone, where the plum blossoms are fragrant."
The Kunming Red Cross Society is located by the pleasant scenery of green lake, and it is controlled by handymen to eat. Next door is an institution called Myungsando that runs a food group, but only serves vegetarian food. Mr. Tang worked as a handyman in the Red Cross for survival. The work of the handyman is very complicated, and he should do everything that doctors and nurses do not do, such as sweeping the floor and wiping the house and pouring spittoons, boiling water, opening doors, raising flags, registering, running errands and sending letters, bringing out tea to honor guests, because he has culture and then transcribes official documents...
So hard work, the monthly labor fee is fourteen Dian yuan, the monthly meal is used to use twelve yuan, and every day to eat vegetarian, fishing intestines and scraping the belly, I don't know how Tang classmates miss the pot meat boiled into a lamp nest in the bucket bowl in their hometown when they are homesick at night?
At this time, Tang's living situation was very similar to when I was in junior high school. At that time, I lived on the people's bursary of eight yuan per month, ate the food group, two and a half cents a day, and every month except Sunday, I had to pay the food fee of six yuan and five yuan or six yuan and seven corners and five yuan, and the remaining one yuan was a little more for haircuts, toothpaste, etc.; on Sunday, I took my partner card (four weeks is three pounds and eight two, plus about four dimes to buy three pounds of eighty-two white raw rice) to the suburbs of Tuqiao Township to buy some fine grain to improve the life of the mother who was a peasant. I helped her eat two meals of the commune canteen's wavy cereal (even chaff with rice ground into flour) paste. But I can only study and not do handymen to force my livelihood, and Tang students have to do handymanship to make ends meet. Therefore, it is still good for the new society, or the people's bursary is good, or my teacher is good, let me receive the highest people's bursary of that year, so that I can still live to this day, in front of the computer to write this article about Ai Wulao and his journey south.
Tang students will also change their names to Tang Aiwu and Aiwu.
Shortly after working in the Red Cross, Tang eased up and began his early literary creation. He wrote a narrative poem about an insulted and hurt woman, which he posted to Kunming's Yunbo magazine. After reading this, the editor of the magazine went to the Red Cross to meet with him and talk about literature and life. The narrative poem was not published, but Yunbo published another of his poems called "Starry Sky", which Tang himself signed: Tang Aiwu. The full poem of "Starry Sky" is as follows——
"Low wandering by the lake,
The stars of the sky are crystal clear,
The stars in the water are miserable,
They all looked at me with waves.
Suddenly a flash of shooting stars,
The stars in the water flow to me,
The stars of the sky gallop towards me,
Oh, I'm going to hold the double star,
Soaring! ”
Ai Wu's poem, published in 1926, only six years after the birth of modern vernacular poetry (counting from Hu Shi's 1920 "Attempt Collection" a year before Guo Moruo's "Goddess"), now seems to be a fairly well-written free poem. If you compare it with the Sanmao lyrics quoted at the beginning of this article (the lyrics are also a kind of poetry) "Olive Tree", or more convincing.
Both works are in ten lines, Sanmao's understanding is as good as words, clear and poetic, but does not pay attention to rhyme, nor pay attention to scrutiny, there are two places in the ten lines that use "far away", written casually, natural and smooth; Ai Wu's works are clear and implicit, the word double star has tension, giving people space for imagination and supplementation, and paying attention to rhyme, it is easier to remember to read. Sanmao's song was popularized into a popular music classic due to the composition of famous composers and the interpretation of famous singers. Writing this, I suddenly thought: when Ai Wu's work was published, nie er, the later composer of the national anthem, had already enrolled in yunnan provincial union middle school, and it was a pity that Ai Wu did not have the opportunity to meet Nie Er in Kunming. If they knew each other, if Nie Er liked his song, a few years later, when Nie Er developed in Shanghai, this word could be completely integrated into a drama episode of a certain movie through his composition. Don't think that Nie Er can only write revolutionary songs, I have heard Tian Han's "Mei Niang Qu" by Nie Er Qu, "Brother, don't forget me, I am your dear Mei Niang." You used to sit on the window of our house, chewing on the bright red betel nut..." Lyrical, so good to hear!
Nothing in the world can be assumed, so although Ai Wu, a literary young man with a poetic temperament, also had to write poetry, and some poems were later published and paid for, the direction of his literary development was no longer mainly lyrical, but mainly to tell the story of the fate of the low-level characters he was familiar with, using the genre of short stories and novellas, although there were also poems and songs, but poetry and songs were only a partial and secondary part of his novels, that is, not the main part.
From the autumn of 1925 to the spring of 1927, a year and a half of red cross work was coming to an end. Five hundred and fifty busy dawns, five hundred and fifty tired dusks, five hundred and fifty times the sun came out, five hundred and fifty times the moon rose in the east, and Ai Wu was going to go on another journey.
During his time in Kunming, he met some literary youths because of his contributions, and had the object of exchanging literary dreams; he and his friends had been very romantically lying in the grave dam, looking at the stars in the sky, drinking Du Kang, and talking about their ideal society to the deceased people; he had a crush, a crush on the lost love, a psychological imbalance caused by the psychological imbalance of the lost love, and jumped into the moment of long sleep in Cuihu Lake; he had the motivation to study English night school after work, hoping to be recommended to the University of Hong Kong for further study He also used his vacation to go to the countryside with friends to carry out compulsory education; he also participated in the progressive activities of students and wanted to speak on stage, but he was pushed away as a pickpocket because he was wearing miscellaneous work clothes...
The ideal is very full, the reality is too bone. The multi-faceted three-dimensional life of unwashed modification is tempering, honing, training and testing the future of the great writer Ai Wu!
In the spring of March, the grass grows and the warblers fly, and Ai Wu sets off south again, toward the thatched grass in the south of Yunnan, towards Yangon in Myanmar...
He is still a simple bag, and there are a few more english night school textbooks that he has worked hard to save money to buy: the original shakespeare", "Hamlet", "Caesar"... On the body is more of a pendant with the characteristics of Aiwu - a hemp rope tied to the ink bottle like a necklace hanging on his chest, with his footsteps to the south, close to his heart beating; the ink in the bottle will continue to flow into the tip of his pen with personality thinking, to write down the original southbound material, to record the literary bottom life, To write an indispensable chapter in the history of contemporary Chinese literature...
Step on your feet and continue south, running from the thatch to the distance
At this point, in order to check and verify Ai Wu's route to continue to the south, I found the "Commentary on Ai Wu" signed by Mr. Tan Xingguo in April 1996 (Mr. Tan is a famous literary critic in our province, who served as the deputy editor of "Sichuan Literature" and "Contemporary Literature", and later a writer in the United States. In 1998, when I was also the editor-in-chief of the literary edition of Shu Bao, he returned to China and wrote an essay on helping children with children in the United States. After the manuscript was published, I asked the reporter to bring a sample newspaper with him. Later, I heard that he went to the United States again. We had no more contact). Mr. Tan wrote in the book that —
"Relying on a pair of feet and a kind of 'ignorant' courage, he walked to western Yunnan, passed through Lufeng, Shezi to Xiangyun, according to the right path, should be from Xiaguan to Dali, in order to meet a friend, detour from Midu, to Yunzhou, Shunning to Yongchang (that is, present-day Baoshan, when Yang Sheng'an exiled place - Yang was his predecessor's hometown, Xu Zhu), and then through Tengyue (Tengchong), Qianya, across the Gurka Iron Bridge, into the Kachin Mountain thatched meadows in Myanmar, and then to the commercial town of Bamo. Unable to find a job, he was introduced by two coolies and turned back to the thatch. ”
Immediately after, Mr. Tan had a more vivid description of Ai Wu's southbound journey -
"This journey of more than a month had a great impact on Ai Wu's life and his creations. He seems to have traveled in the environment he wrote about in his later works, weaving the protagonists of many future works. He sometimes walked with hawkers and caravans along the way, and sometimes walked alone in the uninhabited mountains. At night, either stay in a small guest house blown by the river breeze, or accompany the mountain god in the ancient temple; and the most interesting thing is to spend the night in the open air with the horse-headed brothers. At that time, there were many horse packs traveling back and forth between Yunnan and Burma, and they transported native products from China and returned to foreign goods. They marched in groups, each with five horses, an old horse with a bell leading the way in front, and the horses behind them followed in an orderly manner. They walked, sang mountain songs, awakened the sleeping mountains, and dissolved the loneliness and fear of the travelers. At night, he looked for a more spacious place, separated the horses and the goods, formed a circle, burned a hot pond in the middle, and buried the pot to make rice. Ai Wu followed them, neither afraid of the beasts of the mountains nor the strongmen who cut the path, and spent the night around the fire, and could hear them tell many legendary stories. ”
The journey of more than a month has benefited Ai Wu a lot, from the strange scenery of Yunnan to Burma, from the Dai girl with beautiful eyebrows and a wonderful posture to the Jingpo Hanzi with a long knife hanging from the waist and a disgusting face; the horse-headed brother who drives horses, the wandering entertainer, the coolie who lifts the slider, the businessman who sits on the slider; the market under the yellow fruit tree, the hut in the banana bush; the trek in the wind and rain, the rush under the hot sun...
When he arrived at Ba mo, he was fruitless in his work, and after being introduced, he fell back to the thatched grass.
Kunming was the first station of his life journey southbound, he took the first lesson in the philosophy of life in Kunming, in Kunming is half work and half reading - working during the day, and reading at night to the free English night school. The thatched grass is the second station of his life's journey southbound, where it is half-work and half-teaching—working as a handyman in the guest house during the day and teaching the boss's children to read free of charge at night. During the day, he cleans the guest house, picks up and drops off guests, cleans the horse bran, and the work is no easier than in Kunming. At night, he taught his boss's children to read, and the energy he paid was not inferior to learning English in Kunming. Ai Wu's journey south, that is, the difficulty of his life journey, from Sichuan to Dian, from Dian to Burma, is always difficult to walk. However, fortunately, I finally settled down again for the time being, and I was no longer drifting for the time being.
The god of fate was always honing and testing his tolerance, and within a few days of arriving in the thatch, he was sick— a pendulum (malaria), and he was not lightly ill.
According to the data: "Malaria (malaria) is a serious disease with chills and high fever as the main symptoms, which is transmitted to humans through the bite of infected mosquitoes, and is commonly known as 'pendulum' in China." Writing this, I am reminded of the scattered clouds of malaria in the past: "Sitting in the steamer basket in the hot season, lying on the ice in the cold season, trembling in the trembling season, the heavenly spirit breaking in the painful season, the vulture does not harm the murderer, the vulture does not harm the murderer, the cold and the summer are all passed." "Ai Wu is in the thatched Zhao family guest house, in the middle of summer, experiencing the torment of cold and summer, cold and hot, painful and trembling, clenching his teeth in order to have food to eat, a bed to sleep, working hard, sweeping horse bran, teaching dolls...
As the saying goes: Blessings are incomparable, misfortunes are not alone, and the rope is broken in the details. His malaria was not good, his feet were rotten, itchy and painful, itchy and uncomfortable, and the pain came to his heart! This is because he has to take illness every day to insist on doing a living road, sweeping the horse's bran, sweeping the horse's urine, stepping on the water barefoot, day after day, constantly soaking, and the toes of the foot board are damaged by the water. Fortunately, a passing horsehead brother had experience and asked him to go to the mountain to collect a kind of herb to cure it, so he did so, soaking his feet with herbs every day to wash his feet, and slowly his feet were better, and then slowly his feet were basically better.
At that time, Ai Wu was looking for the way of life in hardship and hardship, and he would not know that it was what he saw and felt when he returned to the thatched meadow for more than a month from Kunming to Bamo, that is, what he saw and felt when he dragged the sick body in the thatch for five months to make a tenacious living, it was these unique and strange life materials that were unique and different from other writers, which gave birth to the embryo of the famous book "Journey to the South" that had been refined by life in his chest, and achieved his representative works and major works in the future "Journey to the South". The history of modern Chinese literature laid the foundation for his position as a wandering literary hero.
Therefore Mencius said, "Therefore the heavens will descend upon the Scythians, and they will first suffer their minds, strain their bones, starve their bodies, and empty their bodies,...... Then He was born of sorrow and died of comfort. ”
Ai Wu was about to travel south again, via Ba Mo to Yangon to continue to expand the new kaichi, in September 1927. At that time, the remaining troops of the August 1st Nanchang Uprising led by Zhu De, the former brigade commander of the Mixed Brigade of the Dian Army in China, would soon meet with the Autumn Harvest Uprising Peasant Army led by Mao Runzhi. At that time, Ai Wu also wanted to participate in the great revolution at home and abroad, change this too unfair world, and turn into a master. A year later, in 1928, he joined a Communist Party group in Burma in Rangoon. In 1930, the Burmese Communist Party was merged into the Communist Party of Malaysia, and Ai Wu attended the meeting as a representative of the Burmese Prefectural Committee, the meeting was in Singapore, and on the way, he was left on the island for a week due to epidemic inspection and disinfection, and failed to attend the meeting as scheduled, but was able to stay in Singapore for forty days and live in the seamen's union.
After returning to Yangon, he became more active in the revolutionary activities of the Communist Party of Malaysia (CPM), until in early 1931, due to the interference of the Central Propaganda Department and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Kuomintang authorities, Ai Wu and four other Communists were expelled by the Anglo-Burmese authorities and escorted back to China...
Ai Wu, who almost became a professional revolutionary, met his old classmate Sha Ting in Shanghai, and he drafted and edited by Sha Ting, and the two of them jointly wrote letters to Mr. Lu Xun for advice, and Mr. Lu Xun's reply to the two young writers naturally became an important research material in the history of modern literature. Compiled in 1933 and finally published in 1935, the Journey to the South once again announced the birth of a professional writer.
In 1936, Mr. Lu Xun said in a conversation with the American journalist Snow, an "old friend of the Chinese people": "The best leftist writers are Mao Dun, Ms. Ding Ling, Sha Ting, Rou Shi, Guo Moruo, Zhang Tianyi, Tian Jun, Ye Zi, Ai Wu and Zhou Wen."
At this time, I suggest to the literary youth who are busy with work and have no time to read Ai Wu's "Journey to the South" and "The Continuation of the Journey to the South" and "The New Chapter of the Journey to the South", that we can selectively read the masterpiece of "Journey to the South" "In the Mountains and Gorges", and it is best to select the representative work of the French writer Mélime "Carmen" to study together, to see how the two literary images of the two Chinese and French writers: wild owls and Carmen are vivid and flexible, glorious - one naturally has a Chinese charm, and the other is undoubtedly full of European style...
This concludes this article. I still have that song in my ears—
(On the ninety-third anniversary of Ai Wu's old southbound journey, the later student Xu Jiancheng wrote in Chengdu Longquan Shangdong Sunshine)
Yiyi was originally published in the "Sichuan Economic Daily" Yue Reading Edition 2018\9\14
Note: The illustrations used in this article are provided by the author
About the Author
Xu Jiancheng
He is a member of the Chinese Writers Association, the chief editor of Sichuan Workers Daily, the vice president, secretary general and editor-in-chief of the Sichuan Provincial Poetry Society of the Sichuan Provincial Association for the Promotion of Literary and Art Communication (Sichuan Journalists' Literature and Art Research Association), and the vice president of the Sichuan Poetry Society.