Yan Tu is a character in Mr. Lu Xun's novel "Hometown". "Hometown" is realistic, and the character of Leap Earth does have its own person in reality. The prototype of the leap soil is Zhang Yanshui, the son of Zhang Fuqing, a long-term worker in the family when Lu Xun was a teenager.
Zhang Yanshui was born in the leap march of the lunar calendar in 1879, two years older than Lu Xun, who was born in 1881, and was named Yanshui because of the lack of water in the five lines on the eight characters. In the novel "Hometown", Lu Xun changed "water" to "soil", so what we read is the story of farmers leaping soil.
In February 1893, Lu Xun's great-grandmother died at the age of 79, coinciding with the Chinese New Year's Eve, doing funerals, welcoming the New Year, and worshipping the ancestors.
After obtaining the consent of Lu Xun's father, Zhang Qingfu, Yan Shui's father arranged for the 14-year-old Yan Shui to go to the Zhou family to take care of the sacrificial vessels. This is consistent with what Lu Xun wrote in the novel "Hometown", but Lu Xun hid the death of his great-grandmother and only said the great sacrifice and worshipped the ancestors.
It was at this time that Lu Xun met Zhang Yanshui. He wrote his first impression of "leaping earth" in "Hometown":
He was in the kitchen, with a round purple face and a small felt hat and a dangling silver collar around his neck. He was very shy when he saw people, but he was not afraid of me, and when there was no one else, he talked to me, so in less than half a day, we became acquainted.
Similar in age, Lu Xun and Yan Shui soon became friends. While telling Lu Xun about the novelties and news after entering the city, he told him interesting things in the countryside, catching birds on snowy days, collecting shellfish by the sea, watching melon hedgehogs, catching jumping fish... For a child in the city, these things seemed very fun and interesting, which impressed Lu Xun.
But after the New Year Festival, Lu Xun soon separated from Yan Shui.
In the winter of 1919, Lu Xun returned to his hometown of Shaoxing from Beijing and was extremely emotional when he saw the beautiful hometown in his impression of being desolate and dilapidated. He learned from his mother the news of his childhood friend Yan Shui, and he couldn't help but think of the teenager with the steel fork in his hand.
This teenager is the leaping earth, which is actually the leap water. Zhang Yanshui married under the arranged marriage of his parents' orders, and after the death of his father, he took up the burden of the family alone. Under the oppression of famine and harsh taxes, the once lively and clever teenager has become an honest, numb and clumsy peasant.
In "Hometown", Yan Tu heard that Lu Xun had returned from Beijing and must see him. A few days after receiving the Zhou family's letter, Yan Tu walked into the door of the Zhou family with his young son. Lu Xun greeted him very warmly, but what he saw was no longer a close and friend when he was a teenager.
Decades of peasant life, not only on him is poverty, but also the burden of feudal ideology for thousands of years, and various practical factors have made him an image as follows:
On his head was a torn felt hat, and he was covered in a very thin cotton coat, and he was carrying a paper bag and a long pipe, but the hand was thick and clumsy and cracked, like pine bark.
The middle-aged Yan Tu became pitiful and humble, and he respectfully shouted to Lu Xun, "Lord! This made Lu Xun give a cold gag. The good memories of childhood were suddenly pulled back to reality. About the lively kindness, cleverness and bravery of the young man, it has become a distant and magnificent old dream. The environment can change a person, and the juvenile leap soil that grows up in the environment cannot transcend the imprint of the times on him.
The middle-aged leaping earth became a poor peasant who was honest and honest, and this was a fate that he could not resist. When He came to the Zhou family, he did not come empty-handed, because his family was poor, and he could only bring a little dried green beans from his own sun. When Lu Xun asked him about his situation, he shook his head and said:
"It was very difficult. The sixth child will also help, but he will always not have enough to eat... It's not peaceful... Money everywhere, no rules... The harvest is bad. To plant things, to pick and sell, to donate money a few times, to fold the book; if you don't sell it, you can only rot..."
The word "difficult" has two meanings, the first layer refers to the hardships faced by the leaping earth at this time; the second layer is to reflect the suffering of the old-style peasants, including the leaping earth, in the special years: many children, famine, heavy taxes, soldiers, bandits, officials, gentry, all of which suffered like a puppeteer.
The change of middle-aged leaping earth, the oppression of real suffering, and the shackles of feudal etiquette, two reasons, let the heroic teenager holding a steel fork in the moonlight become a middle-aged peasant with a sad face and a low voice in order to survive.
In the novel "Hometown", it is recorded that Yan Tu had six children, and he could only support them by farming and fishing, but he faced the economic collapse of the Republican period and various kinds of harsh taxes and fees, and even his basic survival became a problem.
As a peasant, there is no other means of livelihood, he can only cultivate more diligently, hoping to meet a good harvest, and in the face of famine, he can only endure hunger and hunger, relying on the patience of the body to survive those sufferings.
In reality, in his later years, Zhang Yanshui, poor and sick, lay on his hospital bed and said to his children, If it were not for you, I would have gone to Beijing with the Zhou family. This is Zhang Yanshui's wishful thinking, and in the years of war and chaos, whether Lu Xun can take him to Beijing with the friendship of his childhood has always been a mystery. His pure hope, or fantasy, could hardly be realized.
When Lu Xun and Lu Xun met, they were called "Old Master". When Lu Xun's mother asked him to call Lu Xun "Xun Ge'er" as he did when he was a child, he hurriedly replied: "Ah, the old lady is really... What a rule. At that time, he was a child, and he didn't understand things..." After decades of oppression, he had become a very self-aware peasant.
In the spiritual world of the old-style peasants, Lu Xun will always be the old master, and in front of Lu Xun, he is just a subordinate without identity. All this is taken for granted, and the old-fashioned peasant represented by the leaping earth admits from the bones that people are divided into three, six, and nine, and his identity is naturally inferior. He came to the Zhou family to move some old things, which was the charity and favor of the Zhou family.
The middle-aged leap earth has been unable to break through such a spiritual world, and the shackles of feudal etiquette have left an indelible mark on his heart, so that he has to whisper in front of all "masters", humble and humble.
At the end of the novel, Lu Xun writes:
"Hope is nothing to have, nothing to have. This is like the way on the earth; in fact, there is no road on the earth, and the more people who walk, the more it becomes the road. ”
Shui Sheng, a child of Yan Tu, became friends with Lu Xun's nephew Hong'er, and Shui Sheng asked Hong'er to go to his house to play. Hong'er asked Lu Xun when they would come back. The friendship between the two children could not help but remind Lu Xun of the teenager who wore a silver collar and held a steel fork in the watermelon field in the moonlight. Hopefully, such a tragedy will not be repeated, and their next generation should always be able to be friends as equals.
However, for this faint hope, even Lu Xun himself could not be sure. Just like the road on earth, only when there are more people walking, it becomes a road. The children of intellectuals and the children of peasants can sit together on an equal footing, and more people of insight have yet to fight for it.
Lu Xun's hazy hope at that time was now finally realized. Zhang Yanshui died of a serious illness at the age of 57. His son was aquatic and later lived a miserable life; but his grandson Zhang Gui, after the founding of New China, finally got rid of the fate of the family by learning cultural knowledge.
In 1954, Zhang Gui entered the Shaoxing Lu Xun Memorial Hall to work, lu Xun's son Zhou Haiyin became acquainted with Zhang Gui, and the two became close friends. In 1982, Zhang Gui was appointed deputy director of the Lu Xun Memorial Hall, and worked all his life to study and publicize Lu Xun until his retirement in 1993 and enjoyed his old age. The descendants of Lu Xun and his teenage playmate Yan Tu finally lived a new life that they had never experienced before.