Huang Huilin: On the road

　 Life is easy to grow old, and suddenly he is eighty-seven years old. These eighty-seven years are very long, long enough to look back at youth, and the footprints have been carved into history; eighty-seven years are very short, short enough to look back on the past, and only three words can sum up a lifetime: "On the road." "Always on the road, although there are twists and turns, but always moving forward, never retreating." In the course of the journey, I encountered different stages and various nodes, and I decided my ideals and beliefs and the direction of my destiny.

Recent photo of Huang Huilin Author/Courtesy photo

　　Youth Ire morning

　　The first stage in life is "youth into the DPRK". When I was a teenager, because of family reasons, I went around in many places until I was admitted to Suzhou Zhenhua Girls' High School, which opened the most important enlightenment of my youth: contact with the Chinese Revolution and the Chinese Communist Party. Because the school has a rule of pairing, I met Ye Meijuan after entering the first year of junior high school, she was an underground party member, and later became the secretary of Marshal Zhu De's wife Kang Keqing. Under her guidance, I participated in some progressive plays and debates, and also learned songs and dances in the Liberated Areas, and learned about the values of New Democracy. Shanghai was liberated, and we welcomed the People's Liberation Army into Shanghai with a waist drum, and the majesty, kindness, and discipline of the People's Liberation Army left a deep impression on people.

　　When I was 16 years old, because of family reasons, I came to Beijing from Shanghai to study in the third grade of junior high school at the Affiliated Middle School of Beijing Normal University. A month after the start of the school year, the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea began. Almost all the students submitted applications and asked to go to the front line, and some even wrote blood letters. In the end, 4 of the 40 classmates in the class approved 4 of them, and I had the privilege of being one of them. Before the age of 17, he put on a large red flower and went to the exercise of blood and fire.

　　Our troops arrived in Andong by stuffy can train, then crossed the Yalu River into Korea and stayed overnight in a Korean farmhouse. The Great Uncle of The Joseon Dynasty did not believe that there were female soldiers in the Chinese Volunteer Army, so we took off our hats and showed them two large braids. The uncle was very excited, and wrote a line of Chinese characters with a pen: "There are friends from afar, and they are not happy." "Later, I worked as a propagandist in the political department of the anti-aircraft artillery unit, wiping shells with the soldiers, learning culture, singing revolutionary songs, and when the battle started, I went to the front line to transport ammunition, and countless times I rubbed shoulders with the god of death. One day I went to the position with my comrades-in-arms, and while we were walking, the US bombers came, and we threw ourselves down in the crater, only to hear two loud "booms", and the ground under us violently trembled, and the dirt and stones fell down. At that moment, I thought that this time I could "resist US aggression and aid Korea"! In North Korea, we called the sacrifice "Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea," but in the end it was no big deal.

　　Later, the troops were tasked with defending North Korea's most important bridge, the Cheongcheon River Bridge. At that time, the U.S. military was fighting in large groups, dispatching thousands of bombers to attack the bridge that delivered supplies. Whenever the enemy plane came and the operational siren sounded, several anti-aircraft artillery groups on both sides of the Cheongcheon River opened fire in unison into the air, and we sent shells and carried the wounded. The troops held a summary meeting to select a hundred people's heroes, and I was the only female soldier among them.

　　The warriors are the loveliest people, they have no complaints, they are single-minded in defending their homeland and helping their brothers and sisters in North Korea. So many warriors died in foreign lands, some of them did not even leave their names, we had to scrub their bodies, put them in white cloth pockets, and bury them on the spot. Things like this have established my lifelong values and outlook on life.

　　When I finally returned to the school with the title of Meritorious Servant of the Chinese People's Volunteer Army and the Silver Military Merit Medal of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, I vowed to study hard. Because the experience of the war tells us that only by constantly forging ahead can we be worthy of our fallen comrades-in-arms and the beautiful life they have exchanged for their lives and blood.

　　Four degrees of transformation

　　After leaving the army, I entered the liberal arts class of the Workers' and Peasants' Accelerated Middle School of Beijing Normal University, where I met my future wife Shaowu. He is the descendant of a legendary soldier. In 1942, the Japanese army launched the May Day Sweep, his mother jumped off a cliff with her son in her arms in order to lead the enemy away, the mother was sacrificed, and the son survived and grew up in the Eighth Route Army. He always had a firm idea in his heart, that is, to erect a monument to the pioneers and victims of the Chinese revolution through literary creation. Therefore, when escorting the Beijing Normal University, he mobilized me to go to the Chinese Department together. When we read the junior year of pre-filling volunteers, we agreed to go to the frontier together to support construction and become "a screw in the revolution". However, when we graduated, the school needed to add people, so we stayed on to teach. To this day, my coaching career has been 62 years and has undergone four transformations.

　　I originally liked classical literature, but when I reported to the department, the leader said that there was a shortage of people in the modern literature major, and I immediately went to the modern literature major without saying a word. The second transformation was after 1978, when the school underwent educational reform, and then transformed from modern literature to modern drama, starting from scratch again. When opening the Chinese Modern Drama Research Course, Shaowu and I repeatedly discussed and concluded that students should not only listen and memorize, but also write, create, and perform, and appreciate the rich connotation of drama. Therefore, we set up the "NorthLand Drama Society" and led the members to participate in the first International Shakespeare Theatre Festival in China.

　　At that time, the conditions were difficult, and all the members of the drama club stayed in the school to rehearse during the winter vacation, "the school blew out the lights, and the North Country Drama Club got up." In the evening, when we practiced until late at night, we would go home and cook a large pot of noodles, and then lay down a few eggs to bring to the rehearsal room as a supper for the students. In order to prepare the costumes, everyone bought a wrapped leather cloth, dyed it on the gas stove, hung the cloth strips as stone pillars, and scraped the plastic packaging rope to make a "goose feather fan"... All difficulties were resolved with the concerted efforts of everyone. At the time of the performance, the NorthLand Drama Company had the honor of appearing on the hall-level stage of the "Capital Theatre" and performed seven consecutive performances. Mr. Cao Yu went to see the play five times and asked us, "How can you act so well?" To this day, the thriving younger generation continues to rehearse and perform at the Northland Theatre, writing a new chapter.

　　The third transformation was in the early 1990s, when I was ordered to leave the department of Chinese and create a new film and television discipline. In order not to make film and television studies into "old paper pile studies", I have always adhered to the principle of "the unity of knowledge and action", and regarded social practice as the foundation of the development of the discipline, and one of the landmark measures was to establish the Beijing University Student Film Festival. But it's not easy to run a film festival! At the beginning of its establishment, the organizing committee could be described as "poor and white", lobbying everywhere to solicit sponsorships, and fighting guerrillas in office locations, all of which were commonplace. Under such conditions, in 1993, the first Beijing University Student Film Festival was officially born. In the following 20 years, we have always taken "youth passion, academic taste, and cultural awareness" as the purpose to effectively supplement and promote China's film industry.

　　In the process of discipline construction, we found that in more than 1,000 colleges and universities across the country at that time, there was not even a doctoral program in film and television disciplines, so we began to carry out a lot of preparatory work for discipline construction and declaration of doctoral programs in film and television disciplines, and the school leaders also gave great care and support. In 1995, with the official approval of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, the first doctoral program in film studies in Chinese universities was opened in the Art Department of Beijing Normal University.

　　The fourth transformation is the establishment of the College. Throughout the '90s, our school was located in an abandoned chemical warehouse in the backyard of the Fu Jen campus, where it was in disrepair, leaking water, and the most modern tool in the office was an old telephone. In order to improve the conditions for running the school, I went back and forth several times to invite Mr. Tian Jiabing, a Hong Kong philanthropist, to visit the school, and then Mr. Tian finally came to the small warehouse, was touched by our hard work and entrepreneurial spirit, and decided to fund the construction of the building. In 2001, the Tin Ka Ping Art Building was completed. In 2002, the School of Arts and Media was founded, becoming the first college in China to have the most complete art disciplines.

　　These four transformations are the needs of disciplines, the needs of schools, and the needs of the country, as long as I recognize that it is beneficial to the collective and the motherland, I will unreservedly pay for it.

　　Look at the world

　　The independent character and value of Chinese culture and art are what I have been trying to find in teaching and learning, although the language of film and television is international, the grammar of film and television is national. However, in 2009, I began to be a little uneasy about the current cultural situation, it seems that from education, to people's livelihood, to aesthetics, to values, they have been impacted and covered by the strong culture of the West, and the film and television works are handan toddlers, dong shi gong, unable to find their own positioning in the world cultural pattern.

　　Chinese culture can only go out if it stands up, but this is by no means a trick, but it needs to be explored and worked hard. After a long period of thinking and brewing, I and Shaowu jointly put forward the strategic idea of "third pole culture", believing that the world's culture in the world presents a pattern of pluralistic coexistence, generally has the strong "pole" culture of European culture and American culture, and the strong historical foundation, independent tradition and long-term vitality of Chinese culture give us reason to believe that on the basis of fully inheriting and excavating excellent traditional cultural resources, drawing on and absorbing the essence of foreign culture, and summarizing and upgrading The experience of China's revolution and construction, we can form a standing with Europe and the United States." Third Pole Culture". Since then, I have begun to devote myself to finding a new vision for the international dissemination of Chinese culture, hoping to provide some theoretical support and practical paths for Chinese culture to go global.

　　After a period of appeal, on November 19, 2010, the Chinese Culture International Communication Research Institute, which carries the academic research, artistic creation, cultural dissemination and resource integration of "Third Pole Culture", was inaugurated at Beijing Normal University. I deeply feel that this "position" is not easy to come by, because it is the first international communication research institute named after "Chinese culture" in Chinese universities. I was 76 years old, but it felt like I was back in time to 16 and kicking off the "post-adolescence."

　　Since its establishment, the Institute has created seven words and seven aspects of the "Founding of the Research Journal on Questioning", most of which have been carried out continuously for more than ten years: since 2011, the "Look at China • Foreign Youth Video Program" project has been created as an unofficial, cross-cultural video practice and interpersonal exchange activity, with the intention of strengthening the experience and cognition of foreign youth in modern China and traditional culture, and discovering, expressing, disseminating and expanding the international influence of Chinese culture from the perspective of foreign youth. It has become a new model and new path for the international dissemination of Chinese culture. In the past ten years, we have invited 804 foreign youth from 78 overseas universities in 91 countries on five continents, completed 779 short films, won more than 120 international awards, and entered the mainstream television platform in North America, becoming an important carrier for the overseas dissemination of Chinese stories.

　　Since 2011, we have conducted a data survey on "International Communication of Chinese Films" for ten consecutive years, taking foreign audiences as the research object, measuring the effects of the international dissemination of Chinese films and the construction of national image, forming a research report of about 200,000 words and 10 "Silver Book" treatises, obtaining about 1.26 million pieces of international communication data of Chinese films, providing a large amount of basic information and research basis for the relevant research on the international communication of Chinese films.

　　Since 2011, we have held an annual international forum with the theme of the international dissemination of Chinese culture and discussed from different angles, such as "The Modern Evolution of Chinese Civilization", "The World Cultural Pattern and Chinese Cultural Opportunities", "From the Beauty of Each To the United States and the United States", "Discourse System and Cultural Image", "The World Value of Chinese Culture", "The Diversity of Chinese Culture", "The Generation of International Influence of Contemporary Chinese Culture", etc., gathering well-known scholars at home and abroad to provide suggestions for the international dissemination of Chinese culture.

　　Since 2012, we have led the research institute team to actively go abroad, and jointly held large-scale international forums with the University of Southern California, the University of Hawaii, the University of Paris VIII in France, the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow University, the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, the University of Athens in Greece, the University of Macerata in Italy, and the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia.

　　Since 2013, we have pioneered the English journal of international communication of Chinese culture: "International Communication of Chinese Culture" (ICCC), co-founded with the German Springer Publishing Group, hired 32 editorial board members from 16 countries and regions to operate in accordance with the international practice of anonymous review, and has published 24 issues, which have been successfully indexed by ESCI and other 9 international searches.

　　Since 2013, I have donated funds with my disciples to establish the "Huilin Cultural Fund" of Beijing Normal University to fund the work of the Institute and continue to transfuse blood for many large-scale activities. In 2014, the "Huilin Culture Award" was founded, which aims to reward Chinese and foreign scholars who have made outstanding contributions to the international dissemination of Chinese culture, and each year selects one winner from each country and abroad, and each person is awarded a prize of 300,000 yuan, which has been held for seven consecutive years.

　　All of the above is not my personal achievement, but the result of the team's efforts. Our team is small, but every one of them has a spirit of selfless dedication and a pursuit of excellence. Their remuneration is very small, but no one says that the money is less and not enough, and everyone is scrambling to do things, regardless of you and me, regardless of gains and losses, just hope to do things well. It is my good fortune to have so many lovely young fellow travelers in my old age.

　　In more than eighty years of life, I did not dare to slack off in the slightest, wasted a moment, and have been diligently doing everything well and living every day to the fullest. From the battlefield to the classroom, from drama to film, to the speech for Chinese culture, always with the consciousness of being a Chinese, the conscience of a scholar, and the soldier who once accepted the mission on the battlefield, I hope to use my own small efforts to serve the society and repay the people. A person will eventually live his life, as long as he has a firm pursuit and faith, he will always go forward, and I will continue to walk.

　　(The author is a senior professor at the Institute of Chinese Culture and International Communication, Beijing Normal University)

Source: China Social Science Network - China Social Science Daily Author: Huang Huilin