Smell a lot of spiritual heirs

Smell dawn in front of the portrait of grandfather ◎ Long Meiguang

A week ago, the "Book Collection" in Shijiazhuang, Hebei Province, asked me to write a year-end review. In the article, I wrote: "This year, after Mr. He Zhaowu, the beloved Xu Yuanchong and Zheng Zhemin, the two ancestors of the United Nations General Assembly, have left one after another. The first thing I want to look back on in the past year is this sad memory, which leaves me with endless sorrow. ”

However, the articles of the year-end inventory have not yet been finalized, and they have successively received the news of the unfortunate death of Wen Liming, an alumnus of the Department of Foreign Languages of Southwest United University, the eldest grandson of the famous poet Zheng Min and Mr. Wen Yiduo, and a research expert at Southwest United University. Mr. Zheng Min is a poet I have long admired, Looking up to Migao; Mr. Wen is a good teacher and friend who has known him for more than ten years, the most recent meeting seems to be yesterday, 71-year-old him, how can he say that he will leave in the midst of laughter?

Editor-in-chief of the in-house magazine who has never slackened off

I first met Mr. Wen Liming on December 1, 2005, on the 60th anniversary of the "One Two One" movement. At that time, I was still in the third grade of Yunnan Normal University, and I was running several special websites to disseminate history and culture after class. Because of the website, Mr. Wen and I first made friends by email, and soon he was invited to the school to give an academic report, and we had our first meeting.

On May 30 of the following year, we met for the second time. I wrote in my diary on this day: "Early, Wen Yiduo's grandson called to talk about Wen Yiduo's website and gave him a copy of "Wen Yiduo's Painting Biography". Accompany him to the Memorial Hall of the Southwest United University, the United Front Work Department and the Library of the Yunnan Division. Later, he added: "When Professor Wen Liming gave the "Biography of Wen Yiduo Paintings", the inscription was 'Brother Long Meiguang', which is said to be the case of Taiwanese scholars, but the called party cannot call the other party 'brother'. "It was a really fresh acquaintance for me at that time.

At that time, out of the strong interest in the cultural history of the Southwest United University, I had taken the lead in establishing the country's first Southwest United University website in mid-October 2004, which was determined to become an important position for all sectors of society to explore the history of the Southwest United University, find the context of the Southwest United University, and explore the treasures of the Southwest United University.

The exploratory establishment of the website has attracted the attention and support of experts and scholars, including Mr. Wen, and the relatives of southwest united masters and students. Under the framework of this website, a number of sub-sites are divided to supplement the main site. Among them, the special commemorative webpages of Professors Mei Yiqi, Wu Han, Zhou Yin'a and other professors who came into being with the support of the relatives of professors of the United Nations General Assembly were welcomed by netizens. At this time, Mr. Wen, who is committed to the research of Wen Yiduo, also invited me to plan a commemorative webpage under the main site. This brings us to the experience of meeting for the sake of smelling more websites.

With the support of family members, Wen Yiduo website was quickly built. In addition to my own design of the website section, the website also set up an independent column for the internal journal "Wen Yiduo Research Dynamics" edited by Mr. Wen. "Wen Yi Duo Research Dynamics" was originally printed in a paper version, and after the rise of the Internet, it was gradually replaced by an electronic version. In order to facilitate online reading, under the authorization of Mr. Wen, I have divided each article of each issue and published it independently, which is convenient for browsing and promotes the dissemination effect. Unfortunately, after the Internet technology update iteration, I myself can no longer continue to update under the pressure of graduation employment and work. Coupled with the attack of network hackers, the website was first paralyzed and eventually disappeared into invisibility.

In contrast to the disappearance of the website, the editorial work of "Wen Yi Duo Research Dynamics" has never been interrupted. By December 18, 2021, Mr. Wen sent the 154th issue of the editor of the month from the mailbox, which was the last issue he had compiled. The new issue has not yet begun, and he has quietly left, leaving the reader with eternal concern.

Unique scholarly demeanor

In my eyes, Mr. Wen is a particularly different celebrity after that. As a relative of Mr. Wen Yiduo, he is also a researcher of Wen Yiduo, and he is also a follower of his academic career and a practitioner of his academic spirit. On the road of inheriting the spirit of Wen Yiduo, he is not only a close relative whose blood is thicker than water, but also a digger, treasure hunter, and inheritor of academic life of Wen Yiduo's academic heritage, and once had the momentum of catching up with Wen Yiduo's academic achievements.

Subconsciously, celebrities studying their parents and grandparents after them is not necessarily convincing. Because they may have a natural preference for their loved ones, overflowing with the ancestors, and distance themselves from the real history; just as the situation of each person concerned is not necessarily completed by historians, the material mastered by celebrities after them may also be more one-sided, and the situation written will naturally cause the reader to question.

However, this is not the case with Mr. Wen. Although he admired his grandfather, admired his grandfather's versatility, and admired his righteousness, in the process of studying and writing and hearing a lot, he always demanded himself with the eyes and standards of historians, and dug into the literature and historical materials as an important support for supporting historical facts. He not only obtained the most emotional historical records through oral interviews, letters for advice, audio recordings, etc., but also sought objective empirical evidence by consulting a large number of books, periodicals, and archival documents. Most of his research and smell from the perspective of a third party, the only one he saw, "My Grandfather Smells A Lot", is also a transcript of other people's oral interviews. However, the finisher also emphasized in the article: "Speaking of Smelling Yiduo, Wen Liming is sometimes called 'Grandfather', and sometimes directly called 'Smelling Yiduo', which is related to his dual identity." On the one hand, he is the eldest grandson of Wen Yiduo, and on the other hand, he is also a historical researcher at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. "It's totally in line with what I've seen.

After wen Yiduo's website was agreed on the relevant matters, he immediately went to the pile of old anti-war newspapers in the southwest United University Library Special Collection Room of the Yunnan Normal University Library. There, in the Yunnan Provincial Library, in the Yunnan University Library, he spent several months with the rotten old newspapers, taking pictures, copying, and making catalogs, sleeping and forgetting to eat, in one fell swoop, and obtained many first-hand materials.

Such investment and sales should have lasted for more than ten years and decades. His daughter, Wenting, recalled that every time he checked the information, he was away for two or three months. Every time he came to Yunnan to carry out special research work, he invariably indulged in the silverfish bushes that had been sealed for 70 or 80 years.

In order to smell more research, he traveled to Hubei, Yunnan, Taiwan, Japan and other places for many years, and even took the Xiangqian dian tour group of Changsha Temporary University in spite of his weakness. In the archives and libraries of various places, he found a single document that others had broken through the iron shoes and painstakingly searched for but could not find. Once, he wrote to me: "I found Chen Cheng's two speeches at Changsha Provisional University and Southwest United University in Taiwan, and I will send you them together later." In Taiwan, because the library did not allow the reproduction and photography of the documents, he braved the sweltering heat to transcribe a huge amount of documents from the Southwest United University. His effort in excavating historical documents is truly amazing.

As early as 1989, Mr. Wen and his wife Hou Jukun compiled the 840,000-word "Long Compilation of Wen For More Than One Year", which was published by Hubei People's Publishing House five years later. Because of its detailed and credible historical materials, the "Long Edition" has become the founding work of Wen Yiduo's research, which has been widely quoted, and its historical spirit has been deeply praised by the academic circles, and it is known as the last volume of the "Complete Works of Wen Yiduo". Mr. He Bingdi, a famous historian, emotionally praised it in "Sixty Years of Reading History and Reading the World", saying that its "scale and richness of content are probably unprecedented since there was a special category of chronology".

However, Mr. Wen did not stop at the "long compilation" of the existing and considerable achievements. After the Hubei edition of the editor came out, he kept collecting new historical materials and meticulously preparing for the supplementary work anytime and anywhere. When we first met, I learned that he was in the process of compiling and supplementing the long volume, so I copied a sentence from the diary of Wu Liancai, a student of Sino-French University, which I treasured. He wrote: "I once interviewed Wu Liancai, it was in the 1980s, I don't know how he is now. The diary provides some clues, but unfortunately lacks substance. During that time, Mr. Yang Ming was also at Sino-French University, and he once told me a lot about the situation. "I thought this material was useless for the chronology, and it was quite lost. Unexpectedly, in 2014, a new edition of the nearly 1.2 million-word "Long Edition of The Genealogy of Wen Yi", which was published by Shanghai Jiao Tong University Press, read in the relevant content of 1944: "On March 8, in the History of Chinese Literature at the University of China and France, I talked about the evolution of Tang Dynasty culture and the 'literary quality' of the Northern Dynasty. Attached is a footnote: "According to Wu Liancai's diary, Long Meiguang provided." "The small footnotes not only reflect his importance of the credibility of the source, but also reflect his scholarly spirit influenced by his grandfather, which makes me quite moved. This is in stark contrast to the situation in the academic community where some people in the academic community do not blush when they sign other people's articles. Of course, he is often like Mr. Wen Yiduo, frank and honest, and often blunt to people and things. This is also the consistent high wind of Southwest United University, and Mr. Wen Liming seamlessly inherits this style. Therefore, for each issue of "Smelling a Lot of Research Dynamics", he had to personally draft a concise and concise content summary for everyone's reference. The works listed in the dynamics are also given names and surnames in recognition of the hard work of the original author.

Because of this, although he is a relative of Mr. Wen Yiduo, the biography of Wen Yiduo written by him is still an authoritative history of letters, and the long compilation of his chronology has always been an extremely reliable material for Wen Yiduo's research, southwest United University research, and even modern and contemporary Chinese history research.

The spiritual transmitter of the Southwest United Congress

With the deepening of Wen Yiduo's research, it naturally brought Mr. Wen's attention to the research of Southwest United University. Historically, wen yiduo research has been an important topic in the research of southwest United University. In the process of collecting wen yiduo's literature and historical materials, Mr. Wen Liming naturally paid attention to the relevant literature and historical materials of Southwest United University, and also personally wrote and published a number of influential academic articles.

In addition, his two monographs, "The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and Chinese Intellectuals -- The Trajectory of the War of Resistance against Southwest United University" (subsequently renamed "National Southwest United University in the Storm of the War of Resistance" and "Southwest United University: Chinese Intellectuals Moving Toward Modernization") and "Southwest United University Wen Yiduo: Chinese Intellectuals Moving Toward Modernization", two monographs, in-depth study of the Southwest United University's academic problems in opposing compromise, the resistance of the literati, the academic participation in the war, the participation in the battlefield, and the concern for Japan, have become one of the most solid achievements in the research of the Southwest United University.

Mr. Wen pointed out in the preface to the book "The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and Chinese Intellectuals - The Trajectory of the War of Resistance against Southwest Union University": "Southwest Union University is a 'rich mine' to be continuously developed. In order to develop this "rich mine", he was not only gladly invited to serve as a distinguished professor of Yunnan Normal University and a special researcher of the Southwest United University Research Institute, the host of the major bidding project of the National Social Science Foundation "Collection and Collation of Literature and Database Construction of the Southwest United University" and the editor-in-chief of the "Long Compilation of Historical Materials of the National Southwest United University", but also more closely united a group of research experts at home and abroad and encouraged the "small characters" in the research team of the United Nations University like me.

"Old Wen Classmate" is the nickname of Mr. Wen Liming's beloved daughter Wen Ting to her father.

On the afternoon of January 3, when I heard the bad news of Mr. Death, all those who knew him well felt shocked and regretful. As Professor Yu Bin, the author of the book "The Back of Southwest United University" and an 86-year-old professor this year, said, the death of Mr. Wen has made us lose an important scholar of Southwest United University and Wen Yiduo, and an important teacher.

Mr. Wen is a recognized expert in historiography, in fact, he also has the blood of a poet flowing through him. In 1971, he wrote a poem "Cherishing Today's True Should", which was included in Hao Haiyan's "Chinese Zhiqing Poetry Copy", as well as "Peking University Centennial New Poems" selected by Zang Di and Xidu. He wrote: The old man always loves to reminisce about the past in the shade of the locust / The young man prefers to talk about the future on the balcony / But only today is the most realistic / Cherish today is indeed deserved.

……

Of course, people who are wasted also have a day of regret / then stomp their feet and beat their chests and want to drag time back / but "today" is not like the pigeons released can fly back / Hate the past is better than to work hard in the future.

It is better to hate the past than to work hard for the future, and it is indeed necessary to cherish today. This poet and scholar, who explores the unknown and enlightens new knowledge every second, like his grandfather Wen Yiduo, lives endlessly and writes endlessly. If he were given a strong body, he would certainly be able to achieve more magnificent achievements.

He has gone to another country in history, and at the intersection of time and space, he will definitely be able to hear his daughter Wenting's affectionate confession on the eve of the official farewell-

"Old Wen classmate, are you okay?" You nasty fellow, one day to Tintin (Mr. Wen Liming's grandson - the author's note) to tell history, three days to click and throw us down. See that you walk decisively without pain, forgive you first, and go back to settle the account. I don't think of you all the time, but fortunately, you and your mother have taught you well, and with your spiritual support, I am finally ready for tomorrow's send-off and farewell... Your classmates at Peking University, your comrades-in-arms in because of the Wilderness, your colleagues in the Academy of Social Sciences, the people from your hometown in Shuishui, your family members at Southwest United University, your friends with your mother, my classmates and colleagues in Jingshan and Beiyu... Tomorrow I will see you off with my family. You taught me to write a book and a well-known history, and it seems that some have been realized, don't be complacent, and continue to comment on history later. Proud of you! ”

In the light and shadow of the future, he was left staring at the back of the red candle. His back will be frozen into an eternal silhouette, reflecting the splendor and magnificence of life.

January 6, 2022 in Kunming

(The author is the deputy director of the Southwest United University Museum of Yunnan Normal University, and the editor-in-chief of the series of "Memories of southwest United University in the Books and Periodicals of the Republic of China")

This edition is courtesy of photo/pavilion