Recently, friends in Shanghai went to see my woodcut exhibition and said a lot of old sayings that I almost forgot and good words of encouragement for humble works, but unfortunately I am old, so old that I can't help myself today. I fell a few years ago, and this one fell, and one after another I really "got old", otherwise I would say that I had never been old. At that time, standing on the electric elevator, on the edge of the painting wall for eleven or twelve hours.
Now, no, sitting and writing, drawing things for ten hours is still quite often, friends come to chat, sit for a few hours OK, is to stand up and go to the bathroom to ask for help, otherwise their exhibition can not fly over? You can see your friends in Shanghai, go to dinner together, drink tea and chat.
I was twenty-one or two years old, and wen wei po on Yuanmingyuan Road in Shanghai was actually my "food station", and there were many new and old acquaintances, Yang Zhuozhi, Yang Chongye, Ma Ling, and Ye Gang, who said that when he met me in Jiangxi, he was between teenagers and young people, as well as Eunuch Township, Chen Qinyuan, Huang Pei, and Tang Tao, who only met later. At that time, the editor of the Ta Kung Pao supplement was Liu Beifeng, who was a classmate of Wang Zengqi's Southwest United University, and in Shanghai, we rarely talked about him, and he liked Wang Jianfeng's woodcuts. I had no contact with Xiao Qian, Pan Jikui, and Wei, and had no direct relationship with the newspaper.
There is one thing worth mentioning, Wen Wei Po had a commemorative meeting that year, the bookmark sent was the woodcut wheat ear I carved, there are some inscriptions of Guo Lao, you can still see it in today's exhibition hall, this small thing, I still think the carving is not bad (above).
In the "Eight Years" of "The Wandering Man on the River Without Worries", I wrote a lot of happy passages about participating in the closed-door Wen Wei Po New Year's Party. At that time, the gate was sealed, and the entrance and exit had to go through the small corridor with a high wall on the left. At that time, the progressive cultural people in the Kuomintang area all relied on the fees of the progressive newspapers and magazines to live their lives, and all of a sudden there was none. In Cantonese, it is called "eating food", from porridge to few monks to each other, still so excited to grab the woodcut knife and run on the wooden board all day long.
I rely on so many noble old people around me, big brother.
The closest was Mr. Li Hua, who I remember corresponded with him very early on. When I went to Shanghai and saw him upstairs from the Daming Road Woodcut Association, I almost cried out and told him about the suffering of the War of Resistance, as if the War of Resistance was my own resistance to Japan, and poured out to him one grievance after another, and he lived on Diswe Road in Hongkou. One day I went to his house and he said that the Nanjing Road Bright Theater staged Walt Disney's cartoon "Fantasia", and I heard that it was very good, so we went to see it right away. I bought two tickets and went now, "How do you know I'm coming?" "I asked him." I guess you'll be here! The two men went out together and walked toward the tram terminal on Sichuan Road. The two of us came to the terminus of Sichuan Road, and he asked me if I had any ticket money to take the tram to the Daguang Tram Station on Nanjing Road.
I said, "No. He wondered, "How can a man not even have the money to take the tram?" I said, "Come to you, it just ran out." He hesitated and said, "Well, I'll accompany you to the Great Bright Theater!" "He doesn't have no money in his pocket, he still has at least that, after watching the movie, a person takes the tram back with money, he can't have another piece of money in his pocket to invite me to take the tram, and he can't bear to let me go to the Great Bright Theater alone at this time." We walked and talked, and we forgot what the two of us talked about along the way. In the future, I was fortunate to work with him at the Central Academy of Fine Arts for most of my life, and I did not think of finding a time to recall that story. Tell this story to young people now, will they think it is my nonsense?
Woodcut Association office two sitting at the desk office of the gentleman, one named Shao Keping, one called Yang Keyang, not upstairs, just go upstairs to see them, are the first time to meet, familiar to be a little familiar, in 1943 in the Changle People's Education Hall to help colleague Li Shaohua learn woodcuts, buy woodcut knives, write to Mr. Yefu, on behalf of Mr. Shao Keping.
Dealing with, buying woodcut knives, later turned into woodcut art to discuss. I remember that he wrote to criticize my woodcuts for being weird like Hans Christian Andersen's fairy tales, which was a well-intentioned exhortation. I thought at that time, this meaning is good or bad, at least like an Andersen fairy tale is not bad! As for Ah Yang, it is a pity that there is no chance to come and go. I admired one of his woodcuts, "The Street That Happened," where people were talking, and the other end of the street didn't know what was going on, and it was rare for him to find such an interesting topic. So sweet, so plain, full of content. After liberation, I heard that he had become an official in the art world in Shanghai, which gave me a moral blessing and confidence that he would do well. The other thing I want to say is that Mr. Noo is my respected predecessor, it turns out that he was married before, and the former lady has been quietly raised by Ah Yang; the former lady is the sister of Ah Yang's wife.
There are many reasons why I like Shanghai, there are many high-rise bungalows that are real, and you can walk around under them casually. There are many elderly people who have written books and learned books, and they have the opportunity to see them, there are radios and newspapers. The Kuomintang did bad things that people would know, so the Central News Agency helped to cover it up, and the Communist Party's Xinhua News Agency debunked it in the newspaper. In Shanghai, I had the opportunity to see a lot of foreign knowledge, appreciate foreign art, and expand my horizons. I saw a lot of evil in Shanghai, and I also saw the ideals that were about to come...
As for eating, at that time, there was no tasting. I remember that after the woodcut exhibition in Daxing Company, everyone went to a dining room to eat a Russian meal, a bowl of soup, a plate of pig's foot rice, and a cup of tea, and happily told people that after the woodcut exhibition next year, I hope to come here again.
I am busy in Shanghai like this, where is the opportunity to go outside to sketch, I have not thought about sketching, what to do after writing? I also did not have the opportunity to learn Shanghainese, I only remember going to Yuyuan Road to find Lin Jinghuang once, and when I reached the end, I bought a ticket and still had two cents not returned to me. There was only him and me left in the tram, and I had to ask him for it, and he took two cents out of his old leather pocket and handed it to me fiercely. When I got off the tram, the conductor gentleman reached out of the window and pointed at me (xxx, deflated three). I listened to this, smiled and bent down, I don't know what to say, I guess he is also wondering, how can this person still laugh after being scolded? I learned two Shanghainese sentences for the first time, and I can still be catchy.
I cherish the word "mercy", which requires a little courage to face myself.
6 January 2022
Author: Huang Yongyu
Editor: Qian Yutong