Mr. Xie Mian has been working in the field of contemporary Chinese literature research for a long time, and his work has always kept pace with the magnificent history of Contemporary Chinese Literature Research: he published "In the Face of the New Rise" in 1980, as a defender and pioneer of "obscure poetry", writing an important stroke for the development of contemporary poetry history; his overall research on Chinese literature and a hundred years of Chinese new poetry, and leading many young people to embark on the road of Chinese new poetry creation and research; his critical articles have made outstanding contributions to the construction of new poetry criticism discourse. He founded and edited the magazine "Poetry Exploration", adhered to the concept of freedom, openness and pluralism, and opened up a vibrant garden for contemporary poetry... Poetry was at the heart of his life. In the words of Mr. Xie Mian, he "only did one thing in his life, and one thing used up his life's mental effort." ”
January 6, 2022 is Mr. Xie Mian's 90th birthday. Mr. Xie Mian's article "Like The Year of Flowing Water" summarizes his experience of learning as a literary essay with diachronic life fragments, and also intersperses unique life insights and literary testimonials; the articles of Zhang Jiong, Wu Sijing, and Meng Fanhua review and academic commentary on Mr. Xie Mian's new poetry criticism in China, the study of contemporary Chinese literature, and the work and achievements of teaching and educating people, running and compiling books. This set of album articles is read in comparison, which has both the effect of mutual confirmation and the corresponding interest of the drum - the reader sees the figure of a literary researcher who has run for the development of contemporary poetry and contemporary literature, and sees the image of a poetry critic who is still obsessed with the development of contemporary poetry and literature, and who is still obsessed with it after being criticized. The hearts of the people and the hearts of the people, the character and the literary works, are all reflected from this, shining, shining, shining, convincing, and admiring. We hereby launch four articles together for the benefit of readers, and sincerely wish Mr. Xie Mian a happy birthday, health and longevity!
— Editor's Note
Like a year of water flowing
Thanks
Childhood has no color
I came into this world, and the world greeted me with poverty and misery. Five years old, in 1937, with a slight memory, the sound of gunshots and cries could be faintly heard in his ears, coming from the far north. Immediately after the chaotic years, in order to avoid the bombing of enemy aircraft and to find a school with less money, I changed from this primary school to that primary school: Huamin Primary School, Meiwu Primary School, Maiding Primary School, Duqing Primary School, Cangshan Central Primary School, and my childhood was born and spent in endless disasters in the continuous migration (the real name should be "running back" in Fuzhou dialect). Today's children say that childhood is golden, my childhood has no color, if there is, it can only be gray, even black.
I was fortunate to meet Mr. Lee Siu Hung in the last two years of elementary school. In my mind, Mr. Li is an angel sent by God. He taught us Chinese, and after class he also taught us to sing, and began to sing "A good place on the other side of the mountain", and later quietly sang "You are a lighthouse" and also sang hymns. He was a loving Christian who was kind and tolerant at heart (although he was religious, he never "preached" to us). At Christmas, Mr. Lee would celebrate Christmas Eve with us and invite us to eat sweets.
Tough times are precocious. Poverty, hunger, the danger of being out of school at any time, born into a family with many children, I shared the sorrows of my mother from an early age. If there were a few potatoes on the table, I would pick the smallest one for myself. Holiday "hiking" is a rare joy of childhood, but due to the lack of pocket money, I always excuse myself. I read the Psalms to drive away my inner sorrows. Poetry then becomes a friend that soothes the soul.
The bell tower and the old banyan tree
Soon it was time for middle school. In 1945, the War of Resistance Against Japan ended, and it was time for me to go to middle school. With my family's poverty and soaring prices, I couldn't afford to pay expensive tuition. Mr. Li then introduced me to Trinity Middle School. After the five-family trade, foreign merchants and missionaries poured into Fuzhou, and they ran churches and hospitals and schools, and Trinity Middle School was a church school run by the Anglican Church. The predecessor of the school was St. Mark's College. Principal Wan Bawen is a poet, and our English school song is composed by Principal Wan. Wan Bawen returned to China, and the school built a bell tower to commemorate him, named: Siwan Building, which still exists today. Trinity Middle School is an aristocratic school, war, difficult times, banknotes do not work, tuition fees are rice instead of cash. Mr. Lee Siu-chung, the eldest brother of Mr. Lee Siu-hung, became my guarantor and applied for a tuition waiver for me as a school trustee. Just like that, pieced together, stumbled, and I finally finished junior high school.
I miss the school, the bell tower, the church, and the old banyan tree in the playground of the elementary school. Decades have passed, and I don't forget all of this. That year, the school invited me to write an inscription for the school, and I wrote: "The bell is still in the ear, and this tree is the most affectionate." These ten words are now engraved under the old banyan tree. In 2021, the Fuzhou Foreign Chinese School, which is now officially named, established a special class named after the alumni, and there are classes named after me and Chen Jingrun. In my speech, I said: Trinity is a famous school for football, I can't play football; Trinity is a famous school in a foreign language, I can't speak foreign languages; but I enjoy her broad love and the freedom of her heart that she gave me.
At Trinity Middle School, Mr. Yu Zhongfan recited the Analects of the Analects and The Analects in Fuzhou Dialect in a Chinese class, and for decades he made me realize and praise the true state of life in a charming rhyme. It was he and his friend Mr. Lim Chung-hyun who guided me on the path of literature. I remember that because I wrote clearly, I and my classmate Tao Cheng were selected by Mr. Lai Huaiying to copy the novels he created, and I was initially influenced by literature. The first work I published was an essay for the second grade of junior high school, which was inspired by Mr. Yu's comments, and it became the starting point of my literary path.
The gun car rumbled south
The summer was very hot, and the sun was like a fireball, shining on this coastal city in South China. In the early morning of August 17, 1949, after the sound of gunfire had subsided, the People's Liberation Army entering the city quickly ran through the mountain road at the back door of my house. I was seventeen years old, just finishing my first year of high school. I took to the streets, lined with neatly lined with soldiers lying in disguise, galloping long distances and after fierce battles. They won a city, but they slept on the streets with their clothes. The fiery sun was shining, sweat, mud, and even blood, and in this way they could not hear the sound of cheering victory, much less the praise and thanks of the liberated people, who slept on the side of the road.
I've never seen it before. I've seen the old army, but they don't sleep on the streets. I was struck by the scene of this rough street. In 1949, Fuzhou, the capital of Fujian, was liberated. The troops did not stop, they continued to the south, after Fuzhou was Xiamen, and after Xiamen was Taiwan. New China is beckoning to us! I hear the voice of the ideal calling. I no longer endure the misery of struggling to raise tuition every year and semester, nor do I want to repeat the old road of graduation and unemployment, I want to find a bright new life. It was also this year that I published a farewell message to my hometown and relatives in the Xingmin Daily: New China is beckoning to me, and I have entered the ranks of the revolution!
The gun car rumbled south, and the infantry ran south with the gun cart. The rainy season in the south country, muddy roads, the rolling mud of the tires of trucks and gun trucks, splashed all over my ill-fitting military uniforms. Rifles, bullets, grenades, dry food bags, and my diaries and poems are all my equipment. I left my parents' tears and worries behind, and I asked my father to keep my beloved books for me. I started another, completely new life. My position in the army is that I am a member of the Literary and Art Task Force and a cultural instructor. I spent almost all my time living in grassroots companies.
The first realization
The 83rd Division of the 28th Army of the Field Army was a company-level organization, with more than 200 people at its peak. Some of the members were college students who joined the army from the local literary and art groups after the Shanghai Campaign, and most of them were middle school students like me who joined the army after the liberation of Fuzhou, or even primary school students. Later, the literary and labor corps was reorganized, and I was assigned to the company until I was demobilized. In the literary team, I was placed in the choreography group. I began to write simple performance materials to suit my needs: skits, duets, allegro, counting treasures, and songs. It was peacetime, and when encountering marching or wartime, my task was to walk in the ranks of the soldiers and use megaphones to agitate the soldiers with songs and slogans.
In this way, the literature in the books that I had been subjected to was "shelved." At that time, I was doing the most ordinary and lowest level of literary and artistic popularization work. Literature and art serve the grassroots, literature and art serve the soldiers and the war, and this is the enlightenment and recognition of revolutionary literature and art that I received that day. I then understood and understood the simple and simple truth of why "popularization" or "ideological" in the literary and artistic policy of the day is always "first" rather than "second" than "improvement" or "artistry".
In the company, my position was between soldiers and cadres until I left the platoon, and my highest rank was the deputy platoon level. At that time, most of the soldiers came from the liberated countryside, and some of them came from the old soldiers who surrendered, and they were all illiterate or semi-illiterate. My task is to teach them literacy and popularize the most basic culture. Running posters, teaching singing, organizing weekend company evenings, writing newsletters, etc. are all my daily tasks. My beloved ancient and modern Chinese and foreign literary and artistic classics can only be snubbed or dismissed as "unhealthy".
Reading stone on the island
Nanri Island, now seen from the map, looks like a string of pearls scattered on Xinghua Bay. That day was a brutal battlefield. A reinforced company of the 249th Infantry Regiment to which I belonged was completely annihilated in a sneak attack that was more than ten times mine, including several of my friends. Nanri Island was in a hurry, the battle was an order, we hurriedly packed up the literacy textbooks and the blackboard, and rushed to Nanri Island day and night. The island, which unified more than a dozen villages, suddenly lived in a reinforcement regiment, and the fishermen pushed the door panels and gave up their already modest housing to the army. Our job is to dig tunnels and hold our ground.
Fight again in Kinmen and liberate Taiwan! It was the most urgent task of the day. But the sudden outbreak of the Korean War forced us to lock in the pace of the march in that year, that month, that day. More than 70 years later, Taiwan's situation is still a pain in the hearts of the whole country! Decades later, I met with the poet Yan Xian under the big banyan tree of Tainan Cheng Kung University, who pointed to a row of bungalows in the far side of the playground and said to me: "At that time, I lived there, and Sima Zhongyuan and Zhu Xining also lived there." We dig pits day and night, afraid that you will come over!" "He knows my experience, and he smiled and said this to me. I responded to him: "At that time, I was on Nanri Island, and I was digging tunnels day and night, and I was afraid that you would call me!" This is "meeting and laughing", a smile that dissolves the old enmity.
I remember that there was a beautiful young fisherman with freckles on her face, I remember that there was a huge rock where I used to read poetry and write when the wind and waves were calm, and I remember that behind the boulder was the village where I was stationed that day—when the war was in danger, I lived for many years, and I didn't know the name of the village. Later, several times on the island to search for memories, only seagulls were kissing the waves, and only the stele carved with dead soldiers stood speechless. The past is long, and there is no trace of it, including the village where I once suffered.
Kurayama Merlin
Now in 1955, I was ordered to be demobilized without explaining why. Afterwards, I learned that it was the army that wanted to formally implement the rank system, and because I had my second brother making a living in Taiwan, it was considered to be "overseas relations" and it was not appropriate to stay in the army. I remember that the director of Company Li accompanied me to a farewell meal, and I received more than 300 yuan of demobilization money and returned to my hometown of Fuzhou. The house is still there, and the parents are old. I'm going to start a new life. Thanks to a girlfriend who walked with me at that time, it is not love, love is a slim dream. I submitted a book to seek a career, and the stone sank into the sea; so I decided to devote myself to the college entrance examination with my own strength.
Behind the old house there is a plum blossom hill (now gone). A merlin, plum blossoms in winter, cold fragrance, very charming. I made an appointment with zhang jiong, a middle school classmate who also wanted to take the exam at the same time (he also joined the army), to review his homework together. We complete all of our high school studies on our own. When I applied for the volunteer examination, I insisted that "there is no peking university", and I filled in the volunteer on his behalf: Peking University, Peking University, and the third is Peking University! As a result, we were admitted to the department of Peking University Chinese at the same time, or the same class, and the student number was also connected.
I use the image of a little girl playing dandelions on the grass to describe the chance and inevitable chance of my meeting with this university. Just as I chose my military career and vowed not to turn back, my choice of Peking University is also a decision that will never be easy. The same day in 1949 and 1955: August 29 was two major days of my life, the first August 29, when I threw my pen into the pen, and on the second August 29, I went north with no regrets – I chose my own path without regret! Usually I have to fill in my work history, and my form is filled with spaces except for "Peking University". From 1955 to 1960, I spent five years as an undergraduate, and after 1960, until I retired, so that today, my experience is only "Peking University" four words.
Remote to the East Sea
At Peking University, the beautiful days are very short, and the turbulent days are very long. That fall, in the East Playground, the open-air school orientation meeting. Everyone brought their own small wooden stools to the venue. I remember that Mr. Zhou Peiyuan, the provost at the time, delivered a welcome speech and said: "We gather the world's talents and cultivate them. "Listening, there is a kind of heartfelt touch and pride! This pride, at first, is a bit shallow vanity. Later, when we got to know each other deeply, we learned that it was scientific democracy, inclusiveness, academic independence, and freedom of thought, and in the final analysis, it was the lingering feeling of serving the country and the deep-rooted spirit of Peking University!
1955: Moscow University model, Soviet-style five-point system, five-good class, three-good student, labor guard system, and braggi and ballroom dance. 1956: The Hundred Flowers Era, the warm and cold early spring season, and the slightly drunken New Year's Day greeting of Principal Ma Yinchu with a thick Shaoxing accent. It doesn't matter what he says, what matters is the casual, the free, the richer than anything else, the wanderings! After Principal Ma spoke, it was a grand Chinese New Year's Eve dance party, a large dining room with music and a night of revelry! Fleeting, fleeting joy!
1956: After peking university poetry journal, we founded the red chamber. Here I got to know Lin Zhao, Zhang Yuanxun and Shen Zeyi. The cover of the inaugural issue of "The Red Chamber" uses the Chinese painting "Mountain Rain Wants to Wind The Building". The ghost sent God, a word, but an ominous prophecy. In fact, before that, the wind had started from the end of Qingping: the earliest was "between our husband and wife", followed by: the Dream of the Red Chamber case, the Hu Shi case, and then the hu feng case with great fanfare. By the time we wrote "Far Away from the East Sea", it was already a stormy weather. "Remote East Sea" is a cooperation between me and Zhang Jiong, one person and one paragraph, carefully read, I know that it is really "each side of the table". This article describes our excitement and confusion, and even shock. Behind the lyrical text, there are stains of tears.
A date in the spring
The music is interrupted, the dance party is over, and the years are fierce. As mentioned earlier, I have no childhood, and perhaps it can be said that I have no youth. At the age of 17, it is the flower season of life's dreaming, I bid farewell to my parents for a belief, dusted my beloved poetry collections and textbooks, and pinned myself on life and death. 23-year-old studying in Beijing, innocent and romantic, full of ambition, the sky is high and wide! What follows is the opposite of what is desired: to criticize and to be criticized, to be transformed and to be transformed, to struggle and to be fought. White roads, individualism, screws, and endless "talk every year, month after month, day after day"! Rare joy, too much poignancy. Of course, there is the grace of a generation of masters who have passed on the teachings of the Scriptures, and of course there is friendship and love that are in the same boat, sorrow and joy. However, the unavoidable truth is that we have paid all our youth for this!
A sad text recorded my mood that day:
It was a slaughtering autumn day, the leaves of the Saido River had begun to wither, and the riverside had begun to freeze. The sour dates in the mountains began to ripen, and we went up the mountain to pick many sour dates, which is a souvenir of this autumn. Goodbye friends, the road ahead is vast, when will you see you again? We did not imagine, in fact, no matter how rich the imagination, we would not have imagined that the ensuing ten-year-long storm! Dear friends, we are all outcasts of the Hundred Flowers Era, and all we enjoy that day is the parting of the autumn cold in the Saido River.
That period of history, we can't look back, some people are secretive, and they are reluctant to mention it again. Don't mention it, leave this long "blank" for posterity to consult and hang! Having had this experience, I was silent. Friends and friends gathered, I did not want to talk about "suffering", and I did not want to re-listen to the "fashion" songs of the day, I forgot the Russian language completely! In the years when we should enjoy our youth, we are deprived of youth!
Leisurely this heart
I wrote a lot of texts, and I began to keep a diary from elementary school, so that I could practice writing and writing about current events. Every word is childish, and every word is free. One note a day, "rain or shine", never stopping. Only the years when freedom was not allowed, and because security was not guaranteed, and often frightened, I was forced to interrupt this writing. Even, in order to protect myself and not to drag others down, the years of martial arts, taking advantage of the dark wind at night, I quietly burned more than ten beautifully written letters that Mr. Xu Chi gave me behind the 12 apartment houses. I am ashamed of my mentor! It's a shame for my life.
All my words, whether shallow or false, even weak and "humble", I insist on "not changing a word". I reiterated this in the compilation of essays that year, and they all respected it. But then I made a request: I just wanted to change one word. Several editors-in-chief (Gao Xiuqin, Liu Fuchun, Sun Minle) did not agree, so they did not change.
Great people make history, and ordinary people can only live in history. Many of my texts record my childishness and superficiality, and of course there is later maturity, that is, the account of the course of my life, true, without pretense. In the march of life, I may be hesitant, cowardly, stoic, and even forced to be "sophisticated", but this is the real me, the living person. For that reason, I don't want to rewrite a single word I've ever written. Perhaps, this is a real person who has lived in the complex and changeable and difficult history of nearly a hundred years.
Ordinary people experience ordinary people
Unconsciously, people are old. I feel that I should not be old, I can still think and express myself, I also want to enjoy the joy of life, I also want to enjoy the warmth of the world with the people I love and who love me, and I want to do more of what I like to do. However, the years have sounded a wake-up call to me. I am a person who likes to do everything by myself and does not want to trouble others. As long as I can, I will try to help others. In his lifetime, he did not like to argue with others, nor was he good at arguing, and the biggest "advantage" was that he did not make enemies, and he had a "hard skill" that I could "turn enemies into friends" - I said that Lu Xun would definitely strangle my wrists and even be angry when he was alive. However, I can only be so and so.
In my daily life, I am a "good man", easy-going, and rarely say "no" to people, although I have a deep view of evil and injustice. As long as I can, I will try to do it. But I have made several "no's" for myself: I don't celebrate birthdays, I don't write autobiographies, I don't hold meetings about myself, and I don't compile anthologies. These "no's" have persisted for many years, but unfortunately they are being broken one by one and cannot be defended. That day, Old Meng said to me seriously: "Regarding this matter, sir, you can't say no, this is not your personal matter!" "In that case, I can only follow the crowd. For example, this text is also the "homework" that students "assign".
This is not pretentiousness, it is introspection, it is a kind of calm "evaluation" and "positioning" of oneself -- an ordinary intellectual, an ordinary scholar, a mediocre person created by ordinary experience. Many years ago, I seriously said that I can't do the three worldly stands: morality, merit, and speech, so why should people remember?
Do only one thing in your life
Only one thing is done in a lifetime, and one thing is exhausted with a lifetime of mental effort. This is a summary of what I have done to my life. When I was young, I loved poetry, and then I read poetry and tried to learn poetry, but then I consciously closed the channel to becoming a poet. I didn't succeed in writing poetry, so I retired to studying poetry. Poetry has been with me all my life. In college, I was mediocre in my studies, a little diligent, and some understanding, but in the end I was just a mediocre person, and my studies were always done seriously. When I study poetry, especially new Chinese poetry, I have the "right to speak." My "right to speak" was obtained through a lifetime of reading, accumulation, analysis and thinking. Because I have studied, thought, and analyzed, I dare to judge and make arguments.
Learning the sea is vast, all I can do in my hand is a spoonful of water! It was only recently that I had an epiphany that one cannot exhaust all one's knowledge. What the average person can do is often just a drop in the ocean! Among the modern scholars, what I most admire and admire is the kingdom of peacekeeping and Wen Yiduo, who have a short life, but their learning is earth-shattering. From the oracle bones to the "Book of Poetry", "Chu Ci", Tang poems, literary history, academic history, theoretical research, in addition to creation, Mr. Wen and art, they condensed their short lives in the grand scholarship, hurried but brilliant, like the burning of fire, more like thunder and lightning flashing in the sky. I am ashamed that I have grown older than them, but my achievements are the difference between heaven and earth!
exegesis:
Trinity College of Foochow
I remember that I received a total of 360 yuan in demobilization money after six years of joining the army. I divided it into three portions, and I gave my mother 120 yuan to repay her for her nurturing grace; for another 120 yuan, I bought a second-hand Swiss watch smuggled in; and the other third was reserved for my own use.
Leaving the hometown to go north, it was also this girlfriend who sent her to the Minjiang Ferry Terminal.
The memory may be so, it may also be wrong, it may be Mr. Yan Rengeng.
Here is the intention not to use the title of the book, referring to the criticism of Xiao Yemu's novel "Between Our Husband and Wife".
For this passage, see the preface I wrote for the 1956 class of 1956 commemorative book "This Life and This Life Is Not Famous": "We Went to the Spring Date".
At that time, the two sides of the strait called each other "bandits," and I also used them in some poems.
Old Meng is Meng prosperous. In the circle, regardless of teachers and students, everyone is so "honorable". "About this matter", here is omitted.
