◎ Wu Ge (screen name Bright)
Editor's note: Wu Ge (Bright) is an old resident and Internet celebrity of Huilongguan, and her comic book "Painting and Talking about Huilongguan" has recently been published as a cultural phenomenon that has attracted attention in "Guan". She spent more than half a year visiting the characters, collecting historical materials, and using a brush to describe the complicated past of the Huilongguan dynasty, but also highlighting the current living conditions of the Huilongguan people, and the frames and pages with distinct imprints of the times and individuals.
The old village chief specially dressed up to greet me
When I was a child, my family was a neighbor of the cartoonist Uncle Ding Cong, and often he drew on the table, and when I was young, I took a paintbrush next to me and followed the comparison, thus cultivating my interest in painting. The first comic book I drew was officially published by Tsinghua University Press in April 2019, and it depicted the interesting stories of my son's life with my dog in Huilongguan.
It has been more than 20 years since I moved to Huilongguan, and as soon as I have free time, I start toss and turn, and I have drawn many comics on the theme of Huilongguan. For example, "the past and present life of Huilongguan north of Beijing", "Through 50 years of Huilongguan prequel", "North of Beijing hardcore Huilongguan People Picture Book", etc., have been pushed on the WeChat public account of Huilongguan Community Network, and have also been published in lively forums, and some cartoons have actually recruited newspaper reporters, and they have been collected and sent...
One day in mid-March last year, the leaders of Huilongguan Street came to visit the website where I worked, talked about the cartoons I drew, and said that I had come up with a book called "Painting huilongguan", and wanted to sort out the relevant historical materials, materials, old stories, and folklore, record them in the form of cartoons, and leave something for the Huilongguan people and this land.
The leader said that many of the current Huilongguan people are from all over the country, including their children, who do not know much about the history of Huilongguan, past and present lives, or have a half-understanding, and publishing this book is to let Huilongguan people understand this land more deeply. As soon as I listened, I immediately felt that this was a very meaningful thing, and I agreed without saying a word. This is exactly what I like to do, I have already drawn a part of myself when no one asked for it, and this time I have this opportunity to officially open up to do it, and it is a wonderful thing to draw painfully.
So we started working intensively on the entire project, planning to draw five chapters and about 400 cartoons. It was agreed that it could be completed around last year's National Day and published before the end of the year. Painting is not a difficult task for me, and digging out and sorting out the historical materials is the most important first step.
After learning that I was going to start painting this new book, Teacher Guo of the Huilongguan Sanlian Bookstore took the initiative to lend me a bunch of history books about the history of Changping, which were placed on my desk like Xiaoshan, which was really very useful. Director Wu Liping of Longze Street also used her own off-duty time to find relevant materials for me, and colleagues on the website also thought of sending me any clues...
I visited two museums in Guanli: the Huilongguan Village History Museum (that is, the Yuguang Temple, which was not yet open to the public at that time), the Beidian Village History Museum, and interviewed the former Huilongguan township mayor and netizen Laosun, Huilongguan natives and several other old Huilongguan residents.
I remember when I went to interview Yan Youshan, the former mayor of Huilongguan Township and secretary of Shi Gezhuang Township, the old man was particularly happy, and he was specially dressed at home that day to greet me, and he thought that recording history was a very solemn thing.
Born in 1938, Mayor Yan is more than 80 years old, the old man is in good spirits, and his thinking is very clear when he speaks. He also told me that fortunately you came to interview, there are three older people left in the village, and I am still relatively clear, what do you want to know and ask quickly.
In the interview that day, the old man said a lot, and I selected a part of it and drew it into the book. The interview was particularly interesting and rewarding.
For example, he asked me, do you know why Changping County is rectangular? I certainly can't answer. He said that the rectangle resembles a trough, the Ming Dynasty emperor's surname is Zhu, and the groove is placed in front of it, which means "there is to eat". He said that Changping was assigned to Beijing in 1955, before which it belonged to the Tongxian Special District, and the Sanhezhuang where he was located was once called "Xiao Sanhezhuang" and "Three Surname Zhuang", and the three surnames referred to Yan, Wang, and Yang, and the Yan surname was the most popular, and it was rumored to come from Shandong.
The old man said that before the liberation, every year on the 24th day of the sixth lunar month, huilongguan village now has a temple fair in the location of Yuguang Temple, and there are also in the years when it was just liberated. There is a famous four-eyed well next to the temple, the wellhead is very large, afraid of people falling, but also made a cover, leaving four eyes, every time on the 24th day of the sixth month of the lunar calendar, everyone goes to see the bottom of the well, clearly visible small stones, called "bright well bottom".
"After the liberation, Huilongguan was changed to a township, there were six villages, and for a period after liberation, the population of Huilongguan was 4,000-5,000 people, and it was not until the 1980s that it grew to about 6,000 or 7,000 people, and the population was mainly cultivated land." Talking about the changes in the Huilong temple, the old township chief said with emotion: "In the past five years, the current Yuguang Temple was the office of the brigade. In 1954, there was no middle school in Huilongguan, and students had to go to Changping City, 30 miles away, to study once a week. At that time, only Changping and Qinghe had schools. There are no buses in Huilongguan. At that time, the children in the village went to primary school for free, and the salary earned by the teachers was millet. ”
The old villagers counted the major events experienced in that year: "In 1955, a mutual aid group was established, a primary society was established the following year, and a people's commune was established in 1958. In the 1950s, mechanical crops were planted, and in 1958, water conservancy was built, and the villagers of Huilongguan successively participated in the construction of reservoirs such as Miyun, Ming Tombs, Taoyukou, Xiaoshahe and other reservoirs and the Jingmi Canal, and even the women in the village participated at that time. Everyone lives on the reservoir site, and the production team is responsible for delivering food and drink. ”
"To play is to have fun"
Yan Youshan's old village chief talked about fragmentary memories, and I sorted them out one by one and compiled what could be used into the book according to the timeline. For example, he said, Huilongguan later became part of the Sino-Vietnamese Friendship People's Commune, and the Vietnamese-Chinese Friendship Cooperative was established on the same day, and the Vietnamese ambassador to China also came to visit the society; in 1960, it merged with the state-owned northern suburb farm society and began to pilot the breeding of dairy cows, pigs, etc., and prepared to do a good job in promoting it nationwide; around 1962, Huilongguan began to have electricity, when it used water wells, and many water towers were built in the village; in 1981, the Huilongguan Hotel was completed and opened, and the big leader inscribed the name of the hotel, which was considered a landmark building at that time. It is a well-known visiting point where young people are proud to work there; in 1983, the Xisanqi Hotel was built by Huilongguan people with 300 beds, many large conferences in Beijing were held here, and old bobcat ear cave soldiers were also received and heroes told battle stories.
In 1986, on behalf of the China Light Music Troupe, Li Guyi went back and forth to the Longguan Brigade to handle office land, which was personally received by Mayor Yan and accompanied by relevant procedures. What made Mayor Yan and several elderly people relish was that during this period, Huilongguan Township funded the sponsorship of the Beijing football team and table tennis team to participate in the national competition, which shocked the sports circles in and outside the capital.
The old man sighed that the current HuilongGuan had developed too fast, and the pieces of high-rise buildings had completely changed their appearance. When I was compiling the painting into the 1980s, I couldn't help but add a sentence: "How many past events have been, as if it were just yesterday." The old Huilongguan people recalled that in 1993, Huoying's house sold for 900 yuan a square meter in the early days, and in 1994, Longhuayuan became one of the earliest commercial residential communities developed in the Huilongguan area. I drew an old man's worried look and quoted him as saying, "The old man is expensive, can anyone buy it?" Soon the Huilongguan area began to build natural gas pipelines, and natural gas was opened one after another. In 1998, Huilongguan was approved as the largest affordable housing residential area in Beijing, and the characteristic prototype of the cultural residential area was formed, and the entire area entered a period of rapid development.
When interviewing the old Huilongguan Laosun, she was also particularly enthusiastic, nearly 60 years old, and used her rest time to come to our website office to talk to me. Many of the pictures in the book come from her dictation, and we also talk about a lot of miscellaneous stories, of course, they are not drawn in the book, such as where there was a fire in a certain year, and the children of a certain well-known movie star were still in a kindergarten in Huilongguan. There are also old netizens "Huilongguan natives", the family has lived in the second batch for several generations, he drew a schematic map to me, told me where there is a dark river near Huilongguan, now the map can not be seen.
Huilongguan has the famous "Huichao" - Huilongguan Football Super League, which is a football event spontaneously organized by residents, and the first "Huichao" has 9 teams and more than 200 players actively participating, and since the 15th competition, a live broadcast has been opened. The US "Time" magazine website has made a special report on "returning to super" for this purpose, and its reputation is outstanding. In 2010, the first watermelon festival was held in Huilongguan Park, and the content of the competition was ingenious, including guessing the weight of watermelon, picking watermelon, transporting watermelon, and eating watermelon. Later, the annual watermelon eating contest and the water gun battle were super popular, and I wrote on this page: "Play to have fun", pointing out the unique cheerful and optimistic nature of Huilongguan people.
When it comes to the rich cultural heritage of Huilongguan, there are countless examples. For example, in January 2011, the first Huilongguan People's Spring Festival Gala was successfully held, and I painted several amateur resident actors who performed on stage, including those wearing long shirts and singing Peking Opera in full costumes, each with their own artistic style. In January 2014, the first Children's Spring Festival Gala in Huilongguan was launched, which became a grand event at the end of the year in Guanli, and children with expertise must be selected layer by layer in order to embark on the stage to "bloom wonderfully", and the on-site tickets became the most sought-after "New Year goods" for a while. The most interesting thing is that the grassroots movie "If You Love, Please Love" directed and acted by the residents of Huilongguan was released in everyone's expectation, and netizens "once waited" to serve as the director. I quote him in the picture as exclamating: "My investment in this film is 40,000, and the sponsorship is more than 10,000." Most of the actors are netizens of Huilongguan, and I painted the scene of them wearing suits to shoot in the sweltering heat, and they shouted "hot death" in their mouths, but their faces were smiles that could not be concealed.
After the book was published, I expressed my gratitude to the neighbors who had provided me with materials and help, and they were very excited and happy to receive it. Without their vivid stories, this book would not have had such a rich and grounded picture.
The whole book is all original by Huilong Guanren
In the process of collecting materials, the street leaders instructed us to publish this "Painting Huilongguan" is the scope concept of the Great Huilongguan, not limited to the current administrative division, but can be extended to Longze, Shi Gezhuang and the surrounding areas... So the material collected is even richer. The books I read and referenced were: "Toponymy of Changping County, Beijing" 1997 edition, "Overview of Changping Folk Customs and Intangible Cultural Heritage", "Famous Works changping", "Changping Archaeological Discoveries", "Changping Historical Records", "Changping Landscape Records", "Changping Cultural Relics" and so on.
After I sorted out all the relevant excerpts, the prototype structure of the comic book came out. Here I would like to thank Zhou Hongzhou sister on the street, in such a cumbersome and complex material pile, help me sort out the context of the whole book, the eyes are particularly sharp, and the structure of the chapter is adjusted to the point, and the content of more than four hundred pages is really a work process that requires wisdom and clear thinking. The run-in and cooperation between the two of us is also becoming more and more tacit.
Due to the tight schedule, I made a strict plan, according to the comic script, I must complete at least a few shots a day before it can be completed on schedule. It is not difficult to draw, you have to think about how to draw the picture. The time is so tight, every day when I open my eyes, my brain keeps up with clockwork. I basically draw for 16 hours a day, often starting at five o'clock in the morning. I laid out a bunch of snacks in the study, coffee and tea are all awakening artifacts. I was spread out to eat snacks this time, burning my brain really needs energy, I can't care about fat or not fat so much. Later, when I got out of the customs, I found that I had gained 10 pounds, and I told the class leader that this was definitely overworked.
The most interesting thing about drawing this book is that many of the things in the second half of the book are mixed by myself. I stayed in Huilongguan in 2000, although I am not as good as the old village chief and the old grandson, I am also an old man in the new Huilongguan people.
For example, in 2007, I personally experienced two major events that happened. One of them is that the mother of a netizen in Huilongguan went missing from Shunyi's sister's house alone on the way back to Longguan, this netizen was so anxious that he couldn't get on the class, looking for his mother outside every day, looking for the field and shelter, finding her exhausted, looking for many months did not find, fell into a desperate situation.
After the netizens of the Huilongguan Community Network knew about it, they organized a large-scale action to help her find her mother, and I also participated in it at that time. We set up several convoys, the family printed 50,000 copies of the search notice, everyone divided the area from Shunyi to Huilongguan into several districts, each convoy according to the area to find, inquire around, see people to send a search notice. All the people involved were paid for the gas, and I remember that it was a weekend when I left that day, and it was raining lightly. In the end, no one expected that through this activity, she would actually find her lost mother.
At that time, the "Face to Face of Life" column of Beijing Television station carried out continuous reports on the activities of netizens searching for their mothers, and an audience member provided clues after seeing it, saying that a worker took in an old man on a construction site in Yanjiao. As a result, this netizen rushed to Yanjiao to see that it was his mother who had been lost for several months, and the reunion of mother and daughter touched countless people. At that time, this matter was very sensational in Huilongguan, and everyone congratulated her on the Internet, saying that it was the best news she heard that year. Until now, this netizen bought gifts on the website every New Year's Day to thank him, and became the most loyal volunteer of the website.
The biggest feature of this book is that the whole book is all original to Huilongguanren, from planning, to editing, to painting, to interviewing... Each link is done by huilongguan people. The most interesting thing is that there are more than 30 characters in the book, which are real and real, based on real people who live and work in Huilongguan. For example: there are old secretaries of Huilongguan Township, there are website webmasters, there are volunteers of community networks, there are people's congress deputies living in Huilongguan, there are colleagues' mothers-in-law, there are many children in Huilongguan, and yes, there are Wang Xingren in my family... If you're a Huilongguan, make sure you'll see familiar faces when you flip through. The most funny thing is that the friends who appear in the comic book will say, bright, you must draw me thinner, out of the customs please you to eat... I will answer: as long as the bribe is in place, draw you a Ming Dynasty lady dangdang, hahahahaha...
Jokes are jokes, to be honest, I also have a lot of feelings about the process of painting. As an old Z who has lived in Huilongguan for more than 20 years, he has personally experienced its development and changes and great changes. Many of the people I write about are vivid and vivid real people, and many of them I have personally contacted, know their stories, and know that they selflessly dedicate themselves to the Huilong Temple. There are also neighbors who have left us, such as the old tower, a practitioner of civilian charity, and the optimistic and cheerful parent-child cottage library volunteer Flower Sun. I often feel that I am not painting, I am recording history.
The profits from the sale were donated to the Huilongguan Volunteer Association
As stated at the beginning of the book, the long river of history rolls forward and never stops. The life of each of us is one of the waves. What I'm doing now is documenting the scenery in this long river. There is a detail that is particularly interesting, once, there is an incident in the book that needs more information to support it, and Sister Zhou took the trouble to go through the information and finally planed it out. I told the squad leader, if you look at the people in the future, if you want to turn back to the information of Longguan, you have to check our book...
The origin of the Huilongguan written in the book begins with the stone stele of the Yuguang Temple in the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, the new book launch was set at Yuguang Temple, which is the west side of the Beijing-Tibet Expressway and the north of Huilongguan Village. In the past two years, Yuguang Temple has been renovated, and the Museum of Village History in Huilongguan Village has also been set up here, and it has just been officially opened to the public not long ago.
On the morning of December 18, 2021, the new book launch of "Painting And Talking About the Dragon View" was held in Yuguang Temple. Leaders of the Propaganda Department of the Changping District CPC Committee and Huilongguan Street came to celebrate. I said at the press conference: "The reason why this book is wonderful is not because my paintings are wonderful, but because the stories here are wonderful, and the people here are wonderful." In this land, the spirit of huilongguan people is condensed, indomitable, and born to the sun, so that we have the vigorous Huilongguan that we see today! ”
When you read this book, you can see the changes in Huilongguan bit by bit, for example, around 2000, there are still "motorcycles" all over the place, there are sheep herding on the side of the road in the community, there are no street lights, and the minibus drivers are shouting "I can't go to Beijing"...
By 2019, the farm bridge in the northern suburbs was widened and opened to traffic, and residents rushed to tell each other the same as the festival, and there is a picture in the book where a resident says: "Whoever has not been blocked on this bridge is a fake Huilongguan person." "It really says how many guanli people love and hate." This was followed by the opening of Beijing's first dedicated bicycle lane. In 2020, the opening of Lin Cui Road, traffic in all directions, a number of urban railways crisscrossing... With the launch of the "Huitian Three-Year Action Plan", Huilongguan is really changing with each passing day and developing rapidly, and people who live in Huilongguan feel very kind when they see these pictures.
The book records the words of the second generation of Huilongguan's hardcore kick (IT): "We don't go into the city to buy school district houses, we have to test the door of the house into a school district house." The daily purchasing power of Huilongguan people is quite amazing, and there is such a page in the book: every double eleven, the basketball court is borrowed and unloaded by the courier company.
In the book, I focus on depicting several representative figures of the "Huitian" region, such as Chang Jiwen, a deputy to the Municipal People's Congress, who embraces the belief that "public opinion is greater than heaven", and has submitted about 240 proposals and suggestions in the past fourteen years to provide suggestions for the development of the Huilongguan area; Cha Ying, who came from a family of scholars, loves to deeply interpret the philosophy and history of the East and the West, and as the president of the Huilongguan Reading Club, he has great organizational ability, is willing to share, and often organizes cultural and sports activities for Huilongguan. They all represent the face of the crowd at all levels of the Huilong Temple, which clearly reflects their unique humanistic feelings.
On the day of the press conference, we also carried out a live broadcast, and after that, many residents and netizens could not wait to buy this "Painting TalkIng About the Dragon View", and some people found the website to ask how to buy it. There are also groups to buy, find the station master to go through the back door...
Because this book is jointly edited and published by the Huilongguan Street Office and the Huilongguan Community Network, our original intention in publishing this book is to inherit history, leave something for the land of Huilongguan, and do something meaningful. If a sales profit is generated, I hope to continue to serve Huilongguan. The leaders of Huilongguan Street were particularly supportive of this idea, and the two sides of the street website jointly decided to donate all the profits from the sale of the book to the Huilongguan Volunteer Association for the public welfare undertakings in the Huilongguan area. We will make donations at regular intervals each year.
I remember reading reports that studies have shown that ordinary people will be completely forgotten 50 years after death, just as if they had never been to this world, and after a hundred years, they will completely return to dust and soil. So I think this book, at least records the real life of our generation in this land, the footprints of the struggle and growth here, just like we will now go through the ancient books and trace the origin of the Huilongguan, maybe this is the meaning of publishing this book. As for how future generations see and evaluate it, leave it to time.
Courtesy photo/Wu Ge