As long as there are boats and winds, the sea is still a hunting ground that can be galloped.
Cen Sang's "Fish Backbone"
This is a poem written by Cen Sang, and it is also a word of self-encouragement that he quotes. Since the 1950s, he has been struggling on the publishing front and cultural front in Guangdong. With a persistent idea and a lifelong persistence, he has persevered and tenaciously gone through more than 60 years of editing history and has become a clear banner in Guangdong's publishing and cultural circles.
On February 26, 2022, Guangzhou ended a continuous day of rain, clearing and warming, and there was no cloud. However, on this calm afternoon, Cen Sang passed away and bid farewell to the "hunting ground" of his life.
▲ Cen Sang at the Lingnan Library Thirty Years Symposium
I have worked hard all my life
In his long literary career, Cen Sang has created millions of words of excellent literary works. Essays, essays, poems, novels, fairy tales, reportage... In almost all literary genres, he has been involved in and has achieved great success. From the 1940s to the present, Cen Sang has published dozens of literary works that have had a wide impact. Cen Sang has written a series of inspirational articles aimed at enhancing the ideological cultivation of young people, which have been published in the supplement column of Yangcheng Evening News, which has aroused great repercussions. Since its publication in 1962 as "When You Were a Flower", it has been reprinted and reprinted more than ten times in the following decades, with a total print of 500,000 to 600,000 copies. Throughout Cen Sang's literary career, he began to publish works in 1942. Among them, "Failure is an Unknown" and "Painting Starfruit" have been included in the language teaching materials in the compulsory education stage, which has affected generations of students.
▲ Four versions of the book "When You Were a Flower"
Be a pioneer of Guangdong publishing
Before the reform and opening up, except for Beijing and Shanghai, most provinces and cities in the country had only one people's publishing house. After the reform and opening up, Cen Sang felt that the spring of the publishing industry had arrived, and increasing the number of publishing institutions was inevitable for the development of the situation. In 1984, Cen Sang, as the president and editor-in-chief of the Guangdong People's Publishing House, proposed to prepare for the establishment of the Guangdong Education Publishing House at the beginning of the bus, and then proposed the establishment of the New Century Publishing House. The establishment of these two publishing houses has played an important role in expanding professional publishing in Guangdong.
At his initiative, the Guangdong People's Publishing House published two magazines, "Hope" and "Friends of Middle School Students" for young readers, with hundreds of thousands of copies printed in each issue, which were greatly welcomed by the vast number of young people, and the social and economic benefits were both harvested. In particular, in order to prepare for hong Kong's return to the motherland and let the masses better understand Hong Kong, Shum Sang initiated the establishment of "Hong Kong Style" magazine in 1985 and personally served as the editor-in-chief. Published for more than 20 years, "Hong Kong Style" has become one of the main channels for mainland readers to understand Hong Kong society, and initially printed more than 500,000 copies, which was very popular with readers, and aroused strong repercussions in Hong Kong's cultural circles, connecting many Hong Kong cultural circles. "Hong Kong Style" is praised by the majority of readers as a bridge for cultural exchanges between Hong Kong and the mainland.
▲ "Friends of Secondary School Students" magazine
In 1981, Cen Sang published dai Houying's novel "Man, Man! 》。 The book expressed the voice of the broad masses, especially the intellectuals, at that time, and had a positive social significance, and once it was published, it aroused strong repercussions in society.
▲ "Man, Man"
As an outstanding publisher, Cen Sang enjoys special allowances from the State Council; he has won the first national publishing "Bole Award" and the highest award in the publishing industry, "Taofen Award".
▲In 2006, it won the "China Publishing Taofen Award"
Adhere to the "Lingnan Library" for thirty years
The publication of Lingnan Bunko is the masterpiece of Cen Sang's publishing career in the past 70 years. Cen Sang, who could have enjoyed a pleasant and comfortable retirement life, had a grander vision and wish - to do a great cause and open up a new world for the history and culture of Lingnan and the publication of Academic Works in Guangdong. So he vigorously defied public opinion, recruited troops, raised funds, and in 1991 founded the country's first large-scale regional academic and cultural series - "Lingnan Library".
▲The editorial work meeting of the Lingnan Bunko in the initial period
Under the leadership of Cen Sang, Lingnan Bunko was successively published in 1992, included in the national "Eighth Five-Year Plan" key book publishing plan in 1993, and won the highest award for book publishing in 1997 - the "National Book Award". After that, he won more than 30 awards such as the first prize of the Fourth Guangdong Provincial Book Award, the Guangdong Provincial Propaganda and Cultural Excellence Award, and the first prize of the National Excellent Ancient Books. So far, Lingnan Bunko has gone through 30 years and published nearly 200 kinds of books.
▲"Lingnan Bunko" won the third National Book Award
In 2004, Cen Sang also planned and launched a set of popular books on a relatively large length and covering a wide range of Lingnan themes, the Lingnan Cultural Knowledge Book Series. This series of books is a by-product of Lingnan Bunko, targeting both young and general readers, and has a wider audience. In order to determine the writing style of the series of books and give the author a writing demonstration, Cen Sang wrote three biographies of "Three Great People of Lingnan in the Early Qing Dynasty", "Qiu Fengjia" and "Chen Gongyin".
In July 2020, the 94-year-old Cen Sang took on the heavy burden of preparing for the establishment of the "Canton Bunko Library" and served as the editor-in-chief, continuing to open up new territories for Lingnan culture and helping the cultural construction of the Bay Area.
Reward the latecomers, dedicate the hometown
Cen Sang planted peaches to breed plums, and Zilan trees to cultivate generations of talents for the Guangdong publishing industry.
Chen Junnian, the former director of the Guangdong Provincial Publishing Bureau, once engaged in literary and art editing under the leadership of Cen Sang, and his memory of Cen was always like this:
It was in such an intimate atmosphere that Cen Sang received countless authors, talking with them about long stories, short stories, or prose, or poetry, from ideas to art, from structure to detail, from titles to punctuation... He is always smiling and listening to your high opinion, your high opinion, or nodding, or shaking his head, but his eyes are always smiling and squinting at you. Then he talked about his analysis, his recommendations, his expectations. There is a twinkle in your eyes with respect and trust for you. From beginning to end, you will feel that you are not only dealing with a knowledgeable and experienced literary editor, but also a heart-wrenching and heart-to-heart friend.
▲ Cen Sang in the Lingnan Bunko office in 2014
Zeng Xianzhi, secretary of the party committee, vice president and secretary general of the Guangdong Publishing Industry Association, was once the director of the editorial department of Lingnan Library. He recalls his experience with Cen Sang in this way:
In front of us juniors, Old Cen is also a kind brother and father. He will be anxious about the difficulties encountered in the life of those of us who are younger, the work transfer of our families, the enrollment of children, and even the marriage and love of young people, as long as he knows it, he will worry about it, so that our younger generations can feel the love of old fathers. This is the invisible cohesion of the Lingnan Bunko as a collective that unites and fights.
Chen Hailie, executive deputy editor of Lingnan Bunko, has worked with Cen Sang for many years, and has been very close to tell many little-known touching stories:
Cen Lao was born in Ge'an Village, Lecong Town, Shunde District, Foshan City, Guangdong Province. The village is beautiful and rich, and the people are outstanding. He is very attached to and loves this hot land where he was born and raised in Sichuan, always concerned about the development and changes of his hometown, and always wants to dedicate something to his hometown to repay his hometown for his cultivation. In 2008, after careful consideration and consultation with the whole family, Elder Cen decided to donate the Ancestral Residence of the Qing Dynasty in Beihua Street, Ge'an Village, Lecong Town, Shunde District, Foshan City, to his hometown to establish the "Cen Sang Book House" free of charge.
▲Donated the ancestral house and established the Cen Sang Book House
Shen Zhanyun was the director of the editorial department of Lingnan Bunko, and witnessed Cen Sang's professionalism in the editorial department:
An old man in his nineties, who has been engaged in publishing for more than sixty years, borrowed the words of the German thinker Weber, published in his heart as a sacred cause, dedicating high-quality spiritual food to society, and unswervingly. He did not rest, and he could not stay at home, so he reviewed the manuscripts of the Lingnan Library and the Lingnan Cultural Knowledge Book Series; whether it was wind and rain, summer, summer, summer, winter, cold, he would go to the publishing house every week for half a day, unchanged for decades from retirement to the present. Every Monday morning, Mr. Censang basically went back to the office. Sometimes it rains, and he arrives at the office earlier than the young editor—"Old Cen, is it raining today?" He replied, "I'm coming back!" ”
▲ The old age is still on the desk review
Xia Suling, director of the editorial department of Lingnan Bunko, was greatly affected by Cen Sang, and was particularly touched by Cen Sang's words and deeds:
Cen always gives the impression of being efficient and strong, every Monday, he will inevitably ask, what manuscript to show me, and the speed of our editorial department to do the manuscript together is far less than the speed of his single review, but this high efficiency and strong ability does not affect his rigor and meticulousness at all. I still remember that in order to edit a book manuscript, I went to the Zhongshan Library to proofread several versions of the monograph books, and found that there were many discrepancies. Cen Zong has always been very concerned about the growth of me as a newcomer, that day, he took my edited manuscript to see, and then compared the advantages and disadvantages of each version one by one, and instructed me one by one which version to follow, as if Ding Ding solved the cattle, the original entangled problems were solved.
In his poem "Youth", Cen Sang wrote that "youth is a boiling phenomenon of life, and once it is cooled down, it ceases to exist." "Cen Sang spent an extraordinary life with boiling youth. All his writings and spiritual wealth deserve the admiration and admiration of future generations and will never be forgotten.
Mr. Cen Sang, all the way