When I say "reading" here, I mainly mean reading "idle books", extracurricular books, and books of free reading.
First, the hero worship and frontier complex in adolescence
In the first to second grades of primary school (1958–1959), literacy was still low, and there was no "idle book" to read. However, the "little man book", that is, the comic book, still read some. At that time, in our town, at least two old people had "little people's books" stalls on the street, and they read a book for two cents. I am a regular customer in front of Mr. Yang Lao's "Little Man Book" stall.
In the third and fourth grades, in time for the "difficult times", I was often in a state of hunger, suffered from puffiness, struggled, often dropped out of school, did not care about reading idle books, and did not have idle books for me to read.
Reading idle books begins in the fifth grade of primary school. My sister loves to read, and often borrows books to go home, and the books she has read, I use to read. Children's reading materials, I vaguely remember "The Adventures of Little Butou", and a book about several children going to the Crystal Cave together. Most of the tomes are Yang Mo's "Song of Youth", Qu Bo's "Lin Hai Xueyuan" and "Bridge Longbiao", Luo Guangbin Yang Yiyan's "Red Rock", Wu Qiang's "Red Sun", Feng Zhi's "Armed Workers Behind Enemy Lines", Liu Zhixia's "Railway Guerrilla", Feng Deying's "Bitter Cauliflower", and Czech writer Vucic's reportage "Report Under the Gallows". At that time, I especially liked to read the heroic deeds of revolutionaries and longed for a magnificent revolutionary career. Reading is also very engaged, to eat, my mother urged several times to be reluctant to put down the book. One Sunday, holding a book, crouched in front of the second primary school in the town for a morning, read the book in one breath, and was seen by the class teacher, Liu Qizhong, who praised me at the class meeting the next day.
In my memory, the Chinese teachers at that time seemed to encourage students to read "idle books".
In the first semester of the first year of junior high school, Teacher Fan Yulian taught us Chinese. Teacher Fan is a senior Chinese teacher at Tanghe No. 2 Middle School, and my sister said that when she was in school, she taught Chinese by Teacher Fan. Once, in a Chinese class, Mr. Fan borrowed a book from the school library for each student in our class in his own name, which was a long novel and distributed it to everyone. The one I got was "The Vast Grassland" by the Inner Mongolian writer Malaqinfu. The book tells the story of the revolutionary struggle of the people of Inner Mongolia in the late 1940s. Influenced by this book, at that time, I was full of reverie about the life of the ethnic minorities in the motherland, and I was very eager for the national customs of the frontier. Subsequently, he subscribed to the literary periodicals "Tianshan", "Qinghai Lake", "Northern Literature" and "Guangxi Literature and Art" at his own expense.
When the class teacher, Mr. Xu Zheng, taught us Chinese, he would often recommend some excellent articles in the newspapers and periodicals for us to read, such as "The Model of the County Party Secretary - Jiao Yulu" by Mu Qing and others, "Scattered Songs, Three Cries of a Certain Gong", and "Nine Commentaries" on the debate with the CPSU. "The poor and the blue fall into the Yellow Spring, and the two vast places are not seen", Bai Juyi's poem was read in an article in the "Nine Commentaries". Regardless of ideology, in terms of language alone, the Nine Commentaries do have power and literary brilliance.
In junior high school, I was also greatly influenced by the "Twelve Lectures on Youth Cultivation" published by China Youth Publishing House, "How Should People Spend Their Lives" and "Lei Feng's Diary" by Dare Feng, all of which were my sister's books. I especially like Dare Feng's article. This type of books and articles taught me the principle of doing things, established the ideal of sunshine and upwards, and also had an important impact on my later argumentative essay writing, opening the beginning of the cultivation of critical thinking ability.
Second, "Spring and Autumn in a Small Town", read twice
At the beginning of the Cultural Revolution, many books became banned. Guo Moruo said at that time: "The books I have written more than six million words should be burned." Once, my sister and I picked dozens of books from the books we had at home and carried them to the office of the General Society. Since then, the number of books available has been limited. At that time, the "two newspapers and one periodical", namely the People's Daily, the People's Liberation Army Daily, and the Red Flag Magazine, were frequently read as editorials of the "two newspapers and one periodical", as well as articles signed by "Liang Xiao" (Peking University, Tsinghua Writing Team) and Luo Siting (Shanghai Municipal Party Committee Writing Team), from which to judge the trend of the movement and understand the above principles and policies. When Feng Shuping, the principal at the time, introduced me to people, he said: "Willing to study, love to read, often have Red Flag magazines in their pockets." In fact, in addition to the Red Flag Magazine, the pockets often contain "Quotations of Chairman Mao", the "Quotations of Marx" sent to me by Teacher Shen Guangya; the books I often read include "Poems of Chairman Mao" and "Idioms and Allusions in the Four Volumes of Mao Xuan" and so on.
For a while, our faction was suppressed, and my sister sent me to my grandmother's house to cut grass and herd sheep to collect firewood. He brought a long novel "Spring and Autumn in a Small Town" and read it twice. I borrowed a copy of "Cow Mo" from a relative's house in my grandmother's village and read it carefully. At my home, "Twelve Aunts", I met my uncle who returned to his hometown to escape the Cultural Revolution, and he taught at a secondary school in Pingdingshan City, bringing back a set of "History of the Development of Chinese Literature", three volumes, the first, middle and second volumes, which I still remember was edited by Liu Dajie. I read it greedily, and copied some poems, words, songs, and gifts from it.
Later, he learned from Xu erhu in different classes in the same grade, and borrowed "Anna Karenina" from him, only the first book. The next volume was not read until the early eighties.
After Zhiqing went to the countryside, a young man from the same village gave me a copy of the "Detailed Analysis of Three Hundred Tang Poems" edited by Yu Guanying, published during the Republic of China period, which was missing more than a dozen pages in the back, and was torn off by his grandfather to smoke a roll of paper. This book accompanied me through the countryside, the steel mill and the university life.
During his time in the steel factory, he borrowed "Mirror Flower Edge" and "The Strange Situation Witnessed in Twenty Years" from a friend. At that time, there was a notebook, as it was in the sixth grade of elementary school, which specially extracted some words from the book to accumulate vocabulary for writing.
Iii. In college, I read Rousseau's "Emile"
In September 1973, he came to Wuhan Iron and Steel Institute to study ironmaking. In addition to professional study, I also want to read more books in other aspects. When I went to the library, books on natural sciences and professions were open, and most of the books on literature, history, and philosophy were sealed. Looking up the list of books, I still found books that I had never read: Hegel's Little Logic and Rousseau's Emile, so I chose these two books. "Little Logic" did not understand it very well, and browsed it in a confused manner. Emile read more carefully, and the literary philosophical works of education, like reading novels, still remember some of its words, such as: Facing the same woods, a hunter and a couple of lovers have completely different ideas. Later, when teaching "Introduction to College Generation" to college students, he quoted this passage to show that the role of the environment in human growth often depends on personal subjective judgment.
During this period, he also borrowed a copy of "The Outer Biography of Masayoshi Odaira" written by a Japanese journalist. When the reporter wrote the book, Masayoshi Ohira was the Foreign Minister of Japan and had not yet become prime minister. What impressed me very deeply was that Da Ping Zhengfang followed Confucius's teachings of "I am three provinces and my body in one day", locking himself in a small house for an hour every night, facing the wall and reflecting on what he had done in the day. Remember that Masayoshi Odaira said that a leader of a country must have literary literacy in order to become a great leader.
He also borrowed the biography of Gaddafi and was amazed at the success of a battalion-level officer in a military coup and the fact that his father was still herding cattle in his hometown after he became head of state.
He also purchased Lu Xun's "Book of Two Places", "Selected Miscellaneous Letters of Lu Xun", "Sunny Days", "Poetry Rhymes", "Ancient Poems and Modern Uses of Newspapers and Periodicals" in Xinhua Bookstore, etc. The last two book titles are not accurately remembered.
At that time, when the Cultural Revolution was in progress, the whole country was "approving the forest and approving the holes." The school compiled and printed the critical material "Black Five" and distributed it to the team. The so-called "Black Five", namely the Analects, the Disciple Rules, the Thousand Character Text, the Daughter Sutra, and the Augmentation of the Sage Text. When I first came into contact with this kind of article, I was very curious and read it carefully. The school students' union organized a criticism meeting, and the class recommended me to speak, and I chose the sentence "Knowing that there are tigers in the mountains, mo going to the tiger mountains" in the "Augmented Sages" as the object of criticism, the title is: "Knowing that there are tigers in the mountains, I prefer to go to the tiger mountains.", I made a speech in the form of five-word poems, taking Wu Song, Yang Zirong, Dong Cunrui, and Huang Jiguang as examples to praise the heroism of the revolution.
Fourth, the golden age of reading
From the late 1970s to the 1980s, it was a golden age of reading, and the whole society ushered in a boom in reading. The publishing industry is unprecedentedly prosperous, books that have been banned for many years are reprinted and reprinted; new books are emerging in an endless stream; Xinhua bookstores and libraries are overcrowded; in parks and on the side of the road, you will often encounter people holding books or holding them. That situation is really unprecedented, warm and lovely.
On days like this, I also had a book addiction. In foreign literature, he successively read Hugo's Les Misérables, Stendhal's The Red and the Black, Romain Rolland's John Christopher, Leo Tolstoy's Resurrection, Rousseau's Confessions, Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, Ostrovsky's How Steel is Made, and so on.
In Chinese literature, he successively read Feng Menglong's "Three Words and Two Beats", Pu Songling's "Liaozhai Zhiyi", Ba Jin's "Home Spring and Autumn" and "Fog, Rain and Electricity", Mao Dun's "Midnight" and "Eclipse", Zhou Libo's "Storm", Zhou Erfu's "Morning in Shanghai", and so on.
Of course, I also paid special attention to and read the works of the new generation of writers, such as Zhang Jie's "Heavy Wings", Zhang Xianliang's "Green Tree", Gu Hua's "Furong Town", Zhang Wei's "Ancient Boat", Jia Pingwa's "Impetuous", Zhou Daxin's "Fragrant Soul Girl", Zhang Chengzhi's "The River in the North", Liang Xiaosheng's "There is a Blizzard Tonight", Ye Xin's "Staggering Years", Dai Houying's "People", Ke Yunlu's "New Star", Mo Yan's "Red Sorghum Series", Jiang Zilong's "Qiao Factory Director's 1st Record" and Tang Haoming's "Zeng Guofan". As well as Zong Fuxian's drama "In the Silent Place", Ye Wenfu's long poem "General, You Can't Do This" and so on. Among them, the novellas are mainly read through the literary journals "October", "Harvest" and "Novella Selection". From this, I realized that literature, the observation of social phenomena is meticulous, the pulse of social development is sensitive, and the sound of the spring tide and the footsteps of social progress are clearly heard.
Gorky said: Literature is anthropology. Reading literary works can be empathetic, compassionate, compassionate, and nourish a kind heart. It is also an important way to watch and know people, including watching oneself and knowing oneself.
Reading literary works, another advantage, is that consciously or unconsciously, more vocabulary will accumulate in the mind, and when you write or speak, these vocabulary will automatically gush out from the pen or mouth, making the article or speech a little more vivid and vivid, a little less official; a little more literary intellectualism, less Cultural Revolution hostility.
V. Those things about Pedagogy and Psychology
The 1980s and 1990s were not only a flourishing scene in the literary world, but also a thriving scene in the philosophical and social science community. It was also during this period that I began to really pay attention to and read works on the humanities and social sciences. After entering the nineties, literature was gradually alienated.
About the spring of 1978, the library of the Wuhan Institute of Posts and Telecommunications Science was cleaning up and selling old books, and I rushed over and saw a large pile of old books on the ground, two cents a book. I selected two books from them, one "Pedagogy" and the other "Psychology", both of which were university textbooks in the early days of the founding of New China. After reading it, I was very excited: it turned out that the process of education and teaching was regular and followed! It turns out that the process of human growth and development is also regular!
Inspired by the two textbooks, in connection with the reality of work, I felt that a course or a series of lectures should be opened for college freshmen to talk about the issues that should be paid attention to during university studies. This idea was supported by Mao Yuanzhong, then secretary of the general party branch of the department, who encouraged me to compile teaching materials. Later, he was transferred to the school department and was also supported by the school leaders. It was also during this period that Guangming Ribao published reports by Wang Communications and others calling for the establishment of a talent science; carried out a great discussion on "realizing the scientificization of ideological and political work"; and reported the news that Teacher Zhuang Qing of Dalian Institute of Technology had opened a moral education class. In the fall of 1987, we also opened the "Introduction to College Generative Talents" course for new students, mimeographing lecture notes. It was published by metallurgical industry press in 1988 and republished in 1992. More than a dozen colleges and universities have also used the textbook. Later, with the unified compilation of teaching materials in the whole province and the whole country, it was required to use the unified teaching materials, so we had to stop using the "Introduction to University Generation" and use the unified compilation of "Ideological and Moral Cultivation" teaching materials. Now this course is called "Ideological and Moral Cultivation and Legal Foundations", and the two courses of "Ideological and Moral Cultivation" and "Legal Foundations" have been merged.
During the same period, I also presided over the preparation of the lecture notes "Mental Health of College Students", which was offered as an elective course.
In the process, I read many pedagogical works by soviet educationalists Zamkov, Sukhomlinsky, and Makarenko. Admire their ability to document their educational practices and elevate them to the theoretical level. Makarenko said: "My basic principle is always to ask as much of a person as possible, and to respect a person as much as possible. These words are deeply remembered.
In the mid-1980s, I bought Zhang Boyuan's "Abnormal Psychology", a pre-Cultural Revolution edition, at the Xinhua Bookstore in Wuchang Street. In the early 1990s, at a gathering, Professor Jiang Guangrong of Central China Normal University presented each of us with a copy of his new work: "The Theory and Practice of Psychological Counseling". This book was indeed practical, and later became my textbook for teaching the "Psychological Counseling" course for graduate students majoring in political science.
At the same time, I also read Freud's Introduction to Psychoanalysis and Psychology in Everyday Life, paying special attention to Freud's theory of the subconscious: the formation of the subconscious mind is often related to its early experiences. But he does not approve of Freud's limiting this experience to the age of three, to the extent that it is related to sex. In childhood, the lack of loving care or excessive coddling is the root cause of the formation of some people's psychological disorders, and reasonable explanation of this root to patients is the key to solving psychological problems. This is confirmed in my psychological counseling practice.
Sixth, about the psychology of propaganda and aesthetics
In the early nineties, by chance, I read the Soviet psychologist Vychrushvelli's Propaganda Psychology. According to the theory of fixed posture psychology, the authors quantitatively analyze various factors affecting the publicity effect in the process of publicity activities, such as: how to evaluate the relationship between the promoter and the audience before the activity; to assess the difference and proximity of the views of the two sides; and the choice of the time node and environment of the activity.
I also found a textbook of "Communication Studies" from a used bookstore, similar to "Propaganda Psychology", which explores the process of information dissemination and its influencing factors.
Reading this kind of book has broadened my thinking, and it turns out that propaganda and ideological work also has so much knowledge! It is not enough to be rational and strong, but also to have communication, exchange, feedback and evaluation, etc., so that in the subsequent practical work, consciously follow these theories and strive to achieve better propaganda results.
Reading this kind of book, combining theory and work practice, he wrote the article "On the Interaction between Educators and the Educated in the Process of Ideological and Political Education", which won the Outstanding Paper Award for The Ten Years of Research Results of the National Association for Ideological and Political Education in Colleges and Universities, and was included in the book "Compilation of Ten Years of Achievements in Ideological and Political Education Research in Colleges and Universities" published by Jilin University Press.
During this period, the following books were also read:
Li Zehou's Treatise on the History of Ancient Chinese Thought, The History of Modern Chinese Thought, and The History of Modern Chinese Thought. I did not read it in its entirety, but only read some of the chapters of the recent and modern histories.
Ernst Cassirer's Treatise on Man. The Theory of Man points out that man has the ability to create an "ideal world", and that the essence of man is man's infinite creative activity, and uniquely defines man as an animal capable of "creating and using symbols".
Teng Shouyao's "Aesthetic Psychological Description". This is Teng's doctoral dissertation. The description of aesthetic psychological processes is very sympathetic, and there are many places that resonate with me.
Wang Chaowen's "Introduction to Aesthetics"; Liu Gangji's "Philosophy of Art"; the mainland translation of the Soviet textbook "Technical Aesthetics" and so on. At one point, he offered an elective course on Aesthetics for two grades of mining. I also exchanged views with Professor Zhou Ding, a cartographer, to discuss whether it was possible to open a course on "Technical Aesthetics". He also suggested to professor Ren Delin, a mathematician and then president, that it was possible to organize a lecture on "The Beauty of Mathematics". These wishes and proposals have not been able to be realized.
7. When you are old, read Lao Tzu
Lao Tzu, another name for the book Tao Te Ching.
In the summer of 2006, I went to Sanmenxia City, Henan Province, with two other colleagues from the school, to visit Guo and other alumni in my college classmates. Guo arranged for the three of us to visit Hangu Pass, which is located in Lingbao County. Lingbao's friends gave each of us two annotated Copies of the Tao Te Ching. It is said that the Tao Te Ching was written by Lao Tzu at Hangu Guan.
In the past, I only knew about Confucius and the Analects, and I knew very little about Lao Tzu and the Tao Te Ching, but I only heard that Confucius was born into the world and was positive; Lao Tzu was born and negative. Actually, that's not the case.
The Tao Te Ching has been published for more than 2,500 years, and it is indeed a bit difficult to read now. This is especially true for those of us who lack the basic knowledge of Old Chinese. Fortunately, there are notes, there are reference books, and reading them against each other can understand the content of the book.
I didn't read it, but as soon as I read it, I liked Lao Tzu.
One is the sense of intimacy. Many of the words in "Lao Tzu" are often used in our daily lives, but in the past we did not know that they came from "Lao Tzu". For example, "the sky is long and long", "the good is like water", "see the simplicity", "retire after success", "less selfish and widowed", "born into death", "governing a big country is like cooking small fresh", "the voice of chickens and dogs hear each other, old and dead do not interact with each other", "the legal net is restored, neglect is not leaked", "the people are not afraid of death, why should they be afraid of death", and so on.
The second is the beauty of language. For example, "The Tao gives birth to one, one life two, two births to three, and three births to all things"; "The curve is complete, the wrong is straight, the depression is profitable, we are new, the less is gained, and the more is confused"; "Know its male, keep its female, and be the stream under the heavens." For the sake of the stream under heaven, Changde is inseparable, and returns to the baby"; "There is no mutual birth, difficulty and ease, length and shortness, high and low, sound and sound, and front and back." Hengye "and so on, as rhythmical as prose poetry, catchy, graceful and fluent.
The third is the shocking view. For example, "Great goodness is like water, and water is good for all things without controversy"; "Dare not be the first in the world"; "The strong are under the weak"; "Those who are strong are not allowed to die"; "All things under the world are born from existence, and there is no birth to nothing"; "nothing is done without doing"; "The husband is indisputable, solid and uncontroversial"; "The husband is indisputable, so the world cannot argue with it"; "Absolutely holy abandons wisdom, the people benefit a hundred times; absolute benevolence abandons righteousness, the people restore filial piety; absolutely skillful abandonment of profit, thieves have nothing", and so on, subverting many of the original cognitions.
Fourth, the content is broad and profound. The origin of the universe, the evolution of heaven and earth; the stabilization of the country, the governance of the country; strategy and tactics, the use of soldiers to fight; the establishment of the family, self-cultivation and health, etc., are vast and all-encompassing.
In order to facilitate the understanding of the Tao Te Ching, later, Wang Meng's long masterpiece "The Help of Lao Tzu" was also purchased, as well as a compilation of famous articles from famous artists during the great discussion of the Tao Te Ching in the 1950s.
After retiring, he wrote sixteen reading notes on "Lao Tzu": "I Read Lao Tzu Series", which were published on "NetEase Blog" and "Beauty".
I once told my friends that if I could read Lao Tzu in the early years, I might change my attitude to life and style of acting, think more rationally and be less impulsive; more calm, less passionate; more listening to exchanges, less aggressive.
Of course, I have also said that after a person is about 50 years old, he can read Lao Tzu and understand Lao Tzu.
Conclusion:
Today, in his seventies, he is indeed old.
However, the book still has to continue to be read.
Reading makes people happy, makes people clear, makes people not lonely, makes people not lonely.
(Written on February 15, 2022, lunar Lantern Festival)
(Disclaimer: Some of the pictures come from the Internet, if there is any impropriety, please contact to delete.) ）