"Selected Works of Fei Xiaotong" came out The novel Cocoon was published for the first time

2020 marks the 110th anniversary of Mr. Fei Xiaotong's birth. Recently, Life, Reading and Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore published the "Selected Works of Fei Xiaotong", which presents Mr. Fei's learning process and major achievements in a context.

Throughout his life, Fei Xiaotong served as a scholar, and he never stopped working and writing. The "Selected Works of Fei Xiaotong" published by the Life, Reading, and Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore, in collaboration with the publishing house and Fei Xiaotong's family and his descendants, selected the most representative works from his more than 7 million words of writings, all of which are 12 kinds and more than three million words, involving rural peasant issues, ethnic issues in border areas, civilization and culture issues, world observation, academic reflection and other levels. Among them, "Jiangcun Economy", "Lucun Farmland", "Native China", "Fertility System", "The United States and the Americans", "Xingxing Re-Xing", etc., have all been published in a single line before the author's death; "Liu Ying", "The Pattern of Pluralism and Unity of the Chinese Nation", "Shicheng, Supplementary Lessons, Zhixue", "Kong Lin Katasi: On Cultural Consciousness", are re-selected according to the theme; "Chinese Gentry" was published in English in 1953, and in 2009, Sanlian Bookstore launched a Chinese translation; "Cocoon" is a novella written in English by the author in 1936 For the first translation and publication, it provides a rare new dimension for understanding the relationship between Fei Xiaotong's early academic thought and the trend of thought of the times.

Fei Xiaotong's works have been reprinted in one edition by different publishing houses, but so far there is no series of authoritative editions that can penetrate his lifelong academic intellectual contributions: the entire collection is too large, and the arrangement method is difficult to meet the reading needs of ordinary readers; the various anthologies currently circulating on the market are slightly casual and similar. These problems have led to the general public's understanding of Fei Xiaotong limited to the stereotype of "rural and peasant studies" experts created by "Jiangcun Economy" and "Native China", and it is difficult to present Fei Xiaotong's rich and multi-faceted academic ideological contributions throughout his life.

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Cocoon was written during a study abroad in the UK and was only discovered four years ago

In the "Selected Works of Fei Xiaotong", the book "Cocoon", a novella written in English by a recently discovered author, was first translated and published.

According to reports, the book "Cocoon" provides a rare new dimension for understanding the relationship between Fei Xiaotong's early academic thought and the trend of thought of the times. The novella, written in English in the mid-1930s, was long sealed in the "Firth Archives" of the Library of the London School of Economics, where the author had studied, before it was discovered in 2016 and translated into Chinese.

"For Fei Xiaotong's readers, the book Cocoon in the selected collection should be a very big surprise, because this is a novel that everyone has never seen before." Professor Zhou Feizhou of the Department of Sociology of Peking University introduced that "Cocoon" is an English novel created by Mr. Fei Xiaotong during his study in the UK, translated by two doctoral students from the Department of Sociology of Peking University and revised by Professor Wang Mingming.

Cocoon was never published, and after translating it into Chinese, it was only about 65,000 words. As a literary work, it contains a lot of imaginative elements, but it is not entirely fictional. This novel, rich in documentary connotations, portrays the relationship between a new silk-making enterprise and local society in the rural areas of southern Jiangsu in the mid-1930s. Professor Wang Mingming of the Department of Sociology of Peking University introduced.

The opening chapter of "Cocoon" "Mr. Tong" in Berlin on the eve of World War II, bored by the "light control", went straight out to eat at the Tianjin Hotel on Kant Avenue, and happened to meet Wang Wanqiu, an alumnus of his university studies. When they meet in a foreign country, the tireless chatter of the two people and the memories of the past interspersed with them constitute the entire content of the novel. Cocoon is introverted and funny as it is characteristic of The English essay, such as "And now, eating is just to avoid hunger." The laws of life seem to be realized only when you are with others" and other good sentences, from time to time reveal the author's insight and wisdom.

In the Chinese part of the depiction, although it is written that the villagers are suspicious of the factory chimney due to ignorance, the writing is idyllic and the brushstrokes are beautiful, and Fei Xiaotong undoubtedly has a good feeling and expectation for the farmers of "native China". It is not difficult to see from this that his prediction that Chinese farmers will "leave the land and do not enter the city" in the future urbanization and industrialization process - this is obviously confirmed and transformed with the rapid development of Chinese society in the past four decades.

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Write about the changes in China's rural areas in the form of novels

At the "Commemoration of the 110th Anniversary of Mr. Fei Xiaotong's Birth and the Launch of the New Book of 'Selected Works of Fei Xiaotong'", many participating scholars spoke one after another and expressed their views.

"Through the way of novels, Mr. Fei Xiaotong tells how the home and home mentality of Chinese have entered the countryside along with changes." Yang Qingmei, a teacher at the School of Sociology of China University of Political Science and Law, said.

Professor Zhou Feizhou of the Department of Sociology of Peking University talked about the inspiration of the novel "Cocoon" for sociological scholars, and in his view, under the background of today's discipline specialization, Mr. Fei Xiaotong's novel creation is even more precious. "I wonder how many other scholars of sociology, law or economics can write novels in English while studying in the UK? Do we still have the ability to write novels? ”

In Zhou Feizhou's view, all of Mr. Fei Xiaotong's writings are concise, concise, vivid and readable, which is also what scholars should learn today. "Today's prematurely specialized, quantitative essays are advancing along one path, and overly rigorous classroom training has left scholars with a lot of things lost—the readability of the text and many other precious pieces of information that were lost in the process of writing. And Mr. Fei Xiaotong recorded a lot of insights and details, at that time may not feel that it is of academic significance, may be just a simple description of customs, time, space, leaving a mark, but let us see the traces of that time, these are all we can still learn from it, from Fei Lao to get some inspiration. ”

This group of articles/ this newspaper reporter Zhang Zhiyi co-ordinator / Man Yi