"Memories of Beijing"
Chen Ping's original work
Published by Life, Reading, and New Knowledge Triptych Bookstore
For Mr. Chen Pingyuan, who is in the academic "high order" and has already "written and so on", publishing books is nothing new, he often publishes several books in one year, which surprises readers one after another; and keeps his academic research at a considerable level for many years, constantly has new ideas or ideas, and has become a topic of academic quotation or music, which shows that Mr. Chen's extraordinary skills and profound learning.
Usually when I see Mr. Chen's new works, I will pay more attention to his ideas for selecting articles, to see how he "flashes and moves" in the expanding academic field, turns old topics into new ideas, or experiences the "mood pressed on the back of the paper" through meaningful words.
"Memory of Beijing" in front of us is an excellent example of how you can savor these characteristics.
The protagonist of this book is Beijing, which is glimpsed through the eyes of a scholar who has lived in Beijing for nearly 40 years, and brings together Mr. Chen's deep thinking on the big topic of Beijing over the years, a total of 25 articles, divided into three parts: upper, middle and lower. Mr. Chen's doctoral experience, academic research, and teaching career are all based on Beijing, a city with profound historical and cultural accumulation, so the various "memories" of Beijing in the book are not only the specific basis for scholarship and teaching, but also the true record of experience and state of mind, reflecting Chen Pingyuan's "human feelings" and "humble and undecided" academic character as a professor and scholar.
Chen Pingyuan was the first scholar to propose the topic of "Beijing Studies" (see "Beijing Studies", Beijing Daily, September 16, 1994). From an academic point of view, with Mr. Chen's qualifications, he is naturally the best candidate to be "Beijing Studies", but he is more dedicated to the promotion of students, and his boost can be seen from his teaching practice in recent years:
In the autumn of 2001, he began to offer special courses such as "Beijing Cultural Studies" and "Modern Cities and Modern Literature" for graduate students at Peking University, organized four rounds of courses and guided ten doctoral students; presided over five large-scale academic conferences in Beijing, Xi'an, Hong Kong, Kaifeng, Tianjin and other places; edited the "Beijing Reader" published by East China Normal University Press, hosted the "Beijing Special Number" for Taiwan's "United Literature" magazine, and edited and printed the "Beijing Studies Bibliography"...
In addition to the "transmission of words" in the classroom, Mr. Chen also attaches great importance to "teaching by example", he will lead students to tour Beijing in the name of spring travel, "with feet, eyes, nose and tongue, feel a city", and standing on the front door arrow tower and talking about the history and culture of Beijing in front of the camera is a teaching method that Mr. Chen is willing to teach.
▲Beijing City Wall (file photo)
Mr. Chen once said very emotionally:
"If you can't keep the city wall, if you can't keep the courtyard, then you can keep the historical memory of the city, which is also a merit." In addition to the architectural city, there is another city that is also worth guarding - that is, Beijing with imaginative elements constructed in words. That's something we can do. Scholars use education, scholarship, media and even oral speeches to try their best to keep the figure of the city and the complex emotions between the 'city and people' that are constantly cut and chaotic.
"What else can we do but appeal? We can protect our historical memory only to the extent that we can — even if it has become fragmented, we must strive to codify it. ”
As for the academic research that has always been concerned, he admitted: "Once the students get started, they are quickly evacuated; after a few years, they find that there is still 'leftover meaning', then kill another carbine, or switch to other fields." Many chapters in "Beijing Memory" are wonderful interpretations of "the title has leftover meaning".
Although the ideal of "leaning on the Great Wall to speak Tang poetry" has not yet been realized, adding temperature to scholarship has become a habit of Daily Research or Teaching in Chen Pingyuan. For example, when he hosted the international symposium "Beijing: Urban Imagination and Cultural Memory" at Peking University, his "exquisiteness" to details can be seen from the background of the venue and the arrangement of the board, and he chose two old photos from the 1920s: Xizhimen and camels under Jingshan Mountain. In this regard, his explanation is: "The towering walls alone are not enough, coupled with the rather vicissitudes of the camels outside the plug, the taste of Beijing is beyond doubt." In addition, he also selected the ink figures in the "Beijing Customs Map" by the great painter Chen Shizeng during the Republic of China as the cover and back cover of the conference agenda and the outline of the paper. This unique and exquisite "design" was well received by the participants and became a "souvenir" that everyone rushed to ask for after the meeting, which was also Mr. Chen's proud idea.
Not only operating professional works, but also facing ordinary readers, being able to go up and down, opening the bow left and right, this is the ideal state of humanities scholars in Chen Pingyuan's eyes, and it is also the two pairs of pen and ink that he himself uses very skillfully.
Chen Pingyuan is a professor of "literature and learning", who pays attention to the alliance between life experience and academic research, and likes to move freely between "learning" and "literature". His academic articles belong to the type of easy to read and attractive, and he pays great attention to the tension of rhythm when writing, so that the rhyme flows between the lines. The titles of many articles are very attractive at first glance, such as "The Four Seasons of Literature: Spring, Summer, Autumn and Winter", "Long To the Literati to Fry Chestnuts", "Ten Years of Sleep", "Xiao Ser Changping Road", etc., which will immediately bring readers into a literary mood.
Mr. Chen's ability to make his learning so "sound and colorful" is related to his conscious pursuit of language.
Generally speaking, for scholars, people pay more attention to his academic achievements, the novelty and originality of ideas and insights, and the significance and influence of the research field he is engaged in, and does not specifically mention language. In fact, the sophistication of language and the way of the tendon are also an important factor in the long-term charm of an academic work, which reflects the author's full knowledge, cultivation and cultural pursuit.
The reason why Chen Pingyuan's article can firmly "suck" the reader in, reading it has a feeling of both composure and pleasure, and it is still thought-provoking and evocative after covering up, which is greatly related to his high degree of self-consciousness in language and the "stickiness" of language. This is one reason why his scholarly works have always had a loyal readership.
Chen Pingyuan likes to pursue the author's thinking pressed on the back of the paper, which is more consistent with his own academic style. His attitude is also quite clear:
"For trained scholars, what is spoken belongs to the public; what is pressed on the back of the paper is more personal." The latter 'does not have a word', can determine the realm of the entire article, so it is not an exaggeration to call it 'exhaustive'. ”
Such feelings and reflections can be glimpsed in his papers or monographs.
For example, the wuxia literature genre research monograph "The Dream of a Literati of the Ages", written in 1990, has a special place in Chen Pingyuan's writing experience, and is also a book that Chen Pingyuan has always been humble in his self-evaluation: "To say that when writing, the spirit is full, the thinking is fluent, there is basically no hiccup in the middle, it can be called a one-off, "The Dream of the Ancient Literati" is almost close." It is precisely because of this work that he re-feels the meaning of life and re-understands the mission of the scholar: "Those who hope that learning and life will be united often enrich their lives through writings, and even use them as an effective means of self-salvation in times of crisis";
For another example, in a paper entitled "Remembering The Floating Of Poems and Sentences", Mr. Chen conducted an in-depth and unique analysis and interpretation of the old style poems written by eight Southwest United University professors such as Chen Yinke, Wu Mi, Zhu Ziqing and Pan Guangdan during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, "read out" the mood hidden behind the poems, and regarded the professors' chanting, gifting, singing and writings in that particular year as the spiritual history of Chinese readers;
▲Fried chestnuts (Xinhua News Agency photo)
What best represents Mr. Chen's concern for the "warmth and affection of the back of the paper" is the article "Long To the Literati for Stir-frying Chestnuts", which makes the most vivid and powerful footnote to the "Memory of Beijing" with the trend of a single article pressing the whole book.
Mr. Chen started with "fried chestnuts", the most common diet in Beijing in autumn and winter, and proceeded layer by layer: from Su Rui's raw chestnuts to treat "waist and foot disease" to Lu You's remembrance of "fire simmered chestnuts" in his later years, and then slowly led to the poignant story of Li He'er who delivered fried chestnuts to the Southern Song Dynasty envoys and then "snot away" after cooking; and then borrowed the records of the poets and scholars Zhao Yi and Hao Yixing in the Qianjia period to further strengthen the theme and set off the atmosphere, and after laying the ground fully, they "naturally" Access to the passage where Zhou Zuoren praises Hao Yixing's article realm, thus pointing out the contradiction between Zhou Zuoren's own "knowledge" and "action", so that the sentence "Sadness is most Li He'er" has become a torture of the soul. After such a slight effort, the pen power has reached the back of the paper, and the thought has also touched the subtleties of human nature, but the author has not stopped there, he has turned the pen edge gently, so that the "fried chestnut" from the slightly heavy "literary table" down, back to the daily life, with "osmanthus chestnut heavy sugar fried" such a color, fragrant, flavor overflowing street scene bunched tail, thus adding a palpable temperature to the article. Having achieved this step, learning is already an admirable realm of mastery, and can only be described by the word "extraordinary".
Author: Zhong Zhenxin
Edit: Jin Jiuchao
Editor-in-Charge: Zhu Zifen