Hu Xudong Photo courtesy of the interviewee
Author China Youth Daily, China Youth Network intern Lu Siwei
A lesser-known poet died, and the obituary was read more than 10 million times on social platforms — a real thing that had just happened.
Many media reported the news, and articles commemorating him circulated on the Internet. Old friends reminisced about the joy of getting along with him, and students missed the enjoyment of reading poetry in his office. Readers who have read his film reviews and books also think of him.
The young poet Du Lulu once described: "When everyone talks about him, they are smiling and happy. ”
Before he died, Hu Xudong, who had a baby's face, was like a playground, as a poet, as a teacher, as a husband and father, he all pulled the people around him over: "Hey, brother, just be happy!" ”
He died young at the age of 47, but even his funeral did not play mourning, and a crowd gathered around him, singing the emotional "Goodbye Friend".
Come to my word paradise
Hu Xudong's writing has a strong personal style. He wrote poems using ichijing imagery, and dialects were also frequent visitors.
Presenting the pressure and sadness of the people at the bottom, he wrote "Zhang San smashed the pot, Li Si sold blood... Only I/pee all pee on Zhongguancun Street." It is with these words that are not elegant that Hu Xudong creates a unique Hu poetry.
Su Kui, a professor at the College of Literature of Northeast Normal University, once used the analogy of "conducting a thorough language experiment": "The most intuitive feeling of Hu Xudong's poetry is that it is full of gamification and carnival language expression, and he explores how much language in poetry can be indulged in the practice of creation." ”
In Hu Xudong's literary "paradise", the most tourists are column readers. Hu Xudong, who holds the title of poet, is not the most acclaimed and widely disseminated poetry collection, but the collection of observations he traveled in Brazil from the second half of 2003 to 2005, "Go to His Brazil".
Brazil in 2003 has not yet hosted the 2014 World Cup and the 2016 Olympic Games. The rainforest, football, samba were the entire impression of that distant country that most Chinese at the time. Hu Xudong lived in Brazil for a year and a half, in the form of newspaper columns, four times a week, taking Chinese readers on a tour of Brazil.
This "paradise" has a base camp for hippies, a carnival that indulges in alcohol and barbecue, a Brasilia metro that serves as a major commuter between urban and rural areas, and a slum full of joy and adventure. In his own words, it was "to use my physical encounter as a hammer and to open a window for readers to understand this distant country."
10 years later, some netizens read this collection, picked 3 mistakes, and said that the book is only suitable for "Brazilian blindness". Under this criticism, someone posted that "the significance of this book for the domestic people at that time is far from being comparable to these mistakes."
Hu Xudong's Brazil has a variety of joyful scenes and fresh objects, and he uses witty and witty words to depict a vivid and joyful world. Fan Xing, a young teacher of the Spanish-Portuguese Department at Peking University, also read these articles during her doctoral studies in Brazil, and in her opinion, "it is difficult for academic thought to see through Brazil, a place where popular art is developed and underlying wisdom prevails." When the atmosphere of academic theory is too strong, it is necessary to dilute the Brazilian flavor of Teacher Hu's grassroots flavor. ”
Hu Xudong handed the reader not only a kaleidoscope, but also a little serious poetry of that hot country. Today, when poets are generally not valued, the country has the head of the Brazilian realist poet Andrade printed on the front of the 50 yuan note. At the opening ceremony of the Rio Olympics in 2016, Brazilian film star Fernanda Montenegro and British film star Judy Dench jointly read Andrad's most famous poem, "Flowers and Nausea". The Chinese translation of this poem was completed by Hu Xudong. Hu also helped young Brazilian poets translate poems and bring their works to China. After Hu's death, Brazilian poet Francesca Cricelli, Cuban poet Victor Rodriguez, and Croatian poet Nunez Tomica Bajsic all posted on social platforms to mourn the cultural ferryman.
On August 26, the farewell ceremony of Hu Xudong's body was held at the Babaoshan Funeral Home in Beijing. Screenshot of the network video
Read poetry on Mars
In addition to the titles of poet and writer, Hu has an important identity as an associate professor at the Institute of World Literature at Peking University. Most of his classes are electives, and students come and go by interest. However, from the public election of undergraduate students to the small class discussion of graduate students, Hu Xudong's classroom has always been full, and some students are worried that the course cannot be grabbed, so they run to the Douban website to leave a message for Hu Xudong and ask the teacher for "accommodation".
This teacher's lectures are unique. In the classroom, the protagonist is the student. In the course "World Poetry Studies Since Modernism", Hu Xudong will list the poets of all countries in the world and ask students to claim the poets of their choice to explain. The students stood in the center of the main podium, and Hu Xudong became the course assistant, responsible for the opening, stringing, commenting, supplementing and summarizing. The poems translated by the students in class were collected into a commemorative book, and Hu Xudong wrote in the preface that "every Tuesday, we all read poems on Mars."
The classroom is always cheerful, and Wang Ji, a graduate student of Hu Xudong's class of 2018, summed it up with freedom and relaxation: "This is the place dedicated to literature, poetry, and talking about the world." ”
Liu Haihua, director of the Student Financial Aid Center of Peking University and former director of the Mental Health Education and Counseling Center of Peking University, often hears Hu Xudong's name when giving psychological counseling to students, "They feel that taking Teacher Hu's class is a very direct spiritual healing."
Hu Xudong never put up the shelf of the master, but walked into this group of young people in the way of friends. When he was a student, he got a nickname "beard", and when he became a teacher, he was also called "beard". This is a very jianghu title, Wang Ji feels that "beard and we are the same stratosphere", rock music, online novels... "many topics can be talked about".
Once, when Hu Xudong talked about Argentine literature, he pulled out the local specialty yerba mate tea. Yerba mate is a very special way of drinking, with a metal straw inserted into it, sucked and drunk. Hu Xudong handed the tea to the students and took turns to suck it up, and loudly announced: "According to the ritual of the local Gaucho people, take turns to suck it, everyone is a good brother." ”
Hu Supports Young People. "The beard will always keep an eye on you." Gong Ruoqing went to Spain last year as an exchange student, and the new crown pneumonia outbreak broke out in Europe, and Hu Xudong would always call her in the group of classmates and ask her about her recent situation. Most of the people in the group could not escape Hu Xudong's nagging, here it rained heavily, there was a fire reported there, Hu Xudong had to ask the local classmates in the group: "Are you okay over there?" ”
"The beard is always in a state of being ready to help you." His students said that there are difficulties in learning and life, and Teacher Hu will help them find ways, emotional problems, further education problems... Relatives and children can also find Hu Xudong for consultation. One student recalled that he was not a minor language major at his undergraduate level, and at the luncheon after the defense of his master's thesis, other teachers questioned whether he could read the literature of the language well, and Hu Xudong "protected the calf" to count the student's efforts for language learning and list the results.
"He's going to give people strong spiritual support." Gong Ruoqing concluded.
Hu Xudong's good friend Zhu Jingjiang also works at the university, and the relationship between Hu Xudong and the students makes him envious. "He's always had a particularly hot affection for these young people, and these students are like his children." On the day of the "first seven" after Hu Xudong's death, a public account sent the words written by students to Teacher Hu, and Zhu Jingjiang forwarded the article with the text: "As a college teacher, I am not as good as Beard (Hu Xudong) too much." ”
The frankness and purity of man has remained unchanged
Hu Xudong has always been in his "playground".
He wrote articles to laugh at himself, before going to Beijing to go to school, wandering the streets of Shiyan, Hubei Province, and was a little. But this "little bastard" did not covet cigarettes, spirits, nor stole money and food stamps, but pulled out "One Hundred Years of Solitude" that others used to press the bottom of the cloth bag, and also cooperated with others to steal 3 sacks of foreign literature books.
In 1991, Hu Xudong was admitted to Peking University with the third place in Hubei Province. In January 1992, Deng Xiaoping delivered the "Southern Tour Speech", and the market economy reform was further advanced. The power radiating to the campus is a richer collision of ideas and concepts.
Hu Xudong wrote poems and talked with friends, playing guitar strings and singing on campus; he held large poetry meetings at school, attracting poets from other factions to raise bars and clash; he and his friends held painting exhibitions, inviting painters and works gathered in the Yuanmingyuan Painters Village at that time to the campus and hanging their works in the persimmon forest of Peking University. He and his classmates gave night classes to the security guards of the school security office, and later Hu Xudong clashed with the school authorities, and the security guards also turned against the group of young teachers. This free, straightforward lifestyle and code of conduct has been maintained by Hu Until his middle age, and some media said that he "represents a history of Peking University's campus culture." Wu Fei, a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Peking University, compares his friend to "the fossil of the last century" and "when I think of Hu Xudong, I think of the days when we were at Peking University in the 1990s." ”
The time entered the year 2000, at the beginning of the commercial application of the Internet, and the portal sites were rising together. According to the southern weekend "Internet economy 10 years of cool heat (19940-2004)" report, this year, Sina, Sohu, NetEase has been listed on the NASDAQ in the United States, at that time in Beijing, every day there are new websites born, Internet companies always have endless press conferences.
Hu Xudong also went to sea in the first wave of the Internet. He found friends who had written and sung together in the past, opened the Peking University Online New Youth Website, and carefully wrote a business plan for this purpose. At that time, the website was extremely popular, and the film criticism section in the station was collected into the "New Youth DVD Manual". The manual became a bellwether for pirated discs at that time, and some pirates, after learning that the discs they had introduced were recommended by the manual, stuffed promotional paper on the cover of the plastic box - "New Youth DVD Handbook Evaluation: Five Stars". According to Hu Xudong's self-description: "It's quite a bit of the taste of the "Film Manual" at the time of the New Wave. Later, the website experienced a funding gap, personnel departure, and the cold wave of the Internet, and in 2003, the cultural website, which was known as the largest Chinese at that time, was closed. In 2005, the Internet entered the 2.0 era, and a platform called Douban was born. Hu Xudong also used Douban, but only gushed regrets: "Douban basically realized what the Internet 1.0 era wanted to do but did not achieve." I felt that I had missed an era, when as long as I held up a little more and survived the first wave of the Internet, there might be no Douban. ”
Hu Xudong failed to go to the sea, but "crossed the sea" to the other side of the earth, ushering in an exotic adventure in Brazil in South America. In this adventure, he found His wife Azi, who could write with him and go down to the kitchen. Couples often tinker with dishes from all over the world in the kitchen and practice their cooking skills. Hu Xudong once wrote a passage that "arouses people's jealousy": "This is a profligate thing, in this era when most literary and artistic or non-literary young people's cooking skills are close to zero, this small family has actually been smashed down two cooks." ”
Later, the daughter of Hu Xudong and his wife was born with a knife, and there was a cute and flexible girl in the "playground".
Friends say that Hu Xudong has become a super dad. In his poem "Tianji" for his daughter, Hu Xudong wrote: "That was a certain young me, / sucking and drinking porridge, / spitting everywhere, taking out garbage from upstairs... We thought we had buried ourselves thoroughly, / We didn't expect the DNA of the Tai Shi Gong / Leaked the next generation. / Daughter, daddy's severed violence / Sorry for the milk and honey in your eyes. ”
People familiar with the father and daughter recall that on the campus of Peking University, Hu Xudong can always be seen holding his daughter's hand to feed cats by the unnamed lake. He would accompany his daughter to crouch by the grass, shaking the biscuit jar filled with cat food in his hand, and waiting for the cat to stick out. Wu Fei described his friend as follows: "After having a daughter, his beard has changed, changing into specific issues and specific areas of life that he cares about, but his frankness and purity about things and people have not changed." ”
Hu Xudong's "playground" also has some peach blossom source meaning, which can use self-enjoyment feelings to isolate the noise of the outside world. Wu Fei wrote in an article commemorating his friend that Hu Xudong, as a teacher at Peking University, is not at all like many people, concerned about publication, concerned about title, concerned about income, and concerned about the house. What he always thinks about is the student, is poetry, is the pure Peking University life. After seeing the obituary issued by Hu Xudong's department, Wu Fei was a little surprised, and the title of his friend was only associate professor: "But Beard is very indifferent, and he has never heard him talk about it." ”
On August 22, 2021, Hu Xudong passed away in his office. This used to be the place where he composed and translated poems, where he talked about his knowledge with his students, and where his daughter daodao came every day and lay on her desk to draw pictures of the little princess.
The "playground" called "Beard" suddenly turned off the lights and closed its doors, and people were involuntarily isolated outside the garden. Fortunately, there are bearded books and poems, in his words, in people's memories, Hu Xudong continues his happiness.
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