At 12:00 noon on March 22, I suddenly received a WeChat message from my colleague, "obituary" two words "straight stabbed" in the eyes, surprised I saw the three words "Deng Xiaolan", I immediately dialed the phone of my colleagues, confirming that this is true?
It's true! The sadness in my heart suddenly surged, and the tears in my eyes burst out.
Just a month ago, I was face to face with Ms. Xiaolan. At Maran's house, on the Rouge River, on the Moon Stage, at the Music Castle, she and I talked to her life story about what she wanted to do for Malan and for the children. Her smile, the songs she sang, her joyful or mischievous or dignified look, were all so clearly engraved in my mind. In the days after I came back, it was like a mirror stood up in my head, constantly flashing images of her. It can be said that she is the elder who has touched my heart and made me happy for so many years, and she has also made me really calm down and think about the meaning of life after the years of confusion.
After this interview, I wrote the report "Marlan, Good Morning" like water, but five thousand words was far from enough to describe her who was still "innocent" despite the weather. Today, I will lay down the case again, share my unfinished words with readers, and remember Mr. Xiaolan, whom I like and admire.
Finally met Teacher Xiaolan
Many years ago, I had heard about what Teacher Xiaolan was doing, and I had been "eager to move" to interview her in my heart, but for various reasons, I had not been able to make the trip.
During the Spring Festival, the wonderful opening of the Beijing Winter Olympic Games, and the natural singing of 44 mountain children, Teacher Xiaolan entered the vision of the people of the whole country, and I also received the task sent by the newspaper. I dialed her phone early in the morning of February 8, and she said, "I'm going back to the village, I just left from Beijing, but I need to do a few things first, and I can arrive in three days." So I quickly booked a ticket for February 10. On the morning when I was ready to leave, Chen Hefang, vice chairman of the Baoding Women's Federation, called and said, "The Ma Lanhua Choir needs to be isolated due to important tasks, and it is temporarily impossible to go to Fuping for an interview," so I had to refund my ticket. At the end of the Beijing Winter Olympics on February 20, at 9:00 a.m. on the 21st, I dialed The phone of Teacher Xiaolan again, and she said that she would welcome the Ma Lanhua Choir home at bayi School in the afternoon. Hearing the news, I immediately booked a ticket and rushed there.
Before six o'clock in the afternoon, when I arrived, the welcome ceremony had ended, and in a classroom of bayi school in Chengnanzhuang Town, I finally met Mr. Xiaolan.
Zhao Bingli, the chairman of the Fuping County Women's Federation who rushed with me, also specially prepared a bouquet of orange flowers, and Xiaolan teacher who took the flowers was also very happy, at that time I noticed that she was wearing a black down jacket and a maroon flower scarf, very simple, like the big lady next door.
"How wonderful our children are, they are on the stage of the world!" "At the closing ceremony they sang more naturally and relaxed!" She praised her children, her eyes shining.
Teacher Xiaolan and her assistant, Teacher Xiaoqiao, briefly communicated the interview itinerary and decided to go back to the village after dinner to see where she lived and chat with her for a while. When she learned that Teacher Xiaolan still had to cook rice and eat when she went back, Chairman Zhao Bingli invited Teacher Xiaolan to have dinner together and then return to the village together, and she agreed.
Walking out of the classroom, I proposed to take a picture of Teacher Xiaolan, who stood in front of the statue of Nie Rongzhen standing on the left side of the school building, holding flowers in her hand and smiling quietly.
At the entrance of the school, we met Liu Kai, the principal of the central school of the Xiazhuang School District in Chengnanzhuang Town. Liu Kai said to Teacher Xiaolan, "I brought you back a winter Olympic gift." It turned out to be a red scarf and a red hat, and she immediately took off her scarf to change into. Liu Kai said "how festive" while helping her wear it. After putting it on, she smiled at us and asked, "Okay?" The sunset shone on her face, and the bright red set off made her brighter and brighter.
We went to a restaurant nearby. At the dinner table, everyone simply talked, talking about the food that people in the mountains used to eat, and talking about the village here. Every time Malan Village is mentioned, Teacher Xiaolan always expresses "our village" in this way. I said to Sun Zhisheng, the secretary of the village party committee, "Teacher Deng has already become your villager!" Sun Zhisheng replied, "Teacher Deng has been worrying about the affairs of the village for so many years. ”
The night in the mountains came early, and after dinner, the car window gradually twilighted, and I couldn't see the mountains, but the car was twisting and turning, telling us that we were circling on the mountain road.
"How many turns have this turned, and why not?" While I was secretly anxious, I thought about how Teacher Xiaolan had walked through this winding mountain road year after year. "Now that there is a highway here, what about when there is no high speed?" To this day, I am amazed at how an elderly person, a person living in Beijing, can persist in "crossing mountains and mountains" here almost once a month for 18 years. Even a mountain girl who was born in Si and grew up in Si and married far away from the city is not easy to do!
If it were not for special emotions, special beliefs, and special life perceptions, we must not persist in this way!
Interviews at night
When I arrived at the residence of Teacher Xiaolan in Malan Community, it was already more than 8 p.m. It is a two-bedroom, one-bedroom apartment. In the living room were several tables and an upright backplane with two playlists of musical scores. Where a small dining table could have been placed, bookshelves were placed on the left and right sides, and music-related books and several instruments such as guitars were placed on them. In a small bedroom, there are three single beds, Xiaolan and assistant Xiaoqiao sleep on one side, and the other bed has simple luggage. I saw that there was a book at the head of Xiao Lan's bed, which seemed to be a guide to classical music, and the book was folded, so I should have looked over and seen it there.
In the hut, Teacher Xiao Qiao wants to help Teacher Xiaolan make the bed, and she says, "I'll come." She was tidying up, and I was casually talking to her. I said, "It's a long way to go!" Heavy mountain roads, half a day, a day can not see the village, are you not in a hurry? "There is no hurry, I look at this mountain road, and I feel like the song is singing, 'The mountains don't turn, the water is turning, the water doesn't turn, the clouds are turning...' She sang like a child.
At 9 p.m., our interview began.
Xiao Lan, who wears a red sweater inside and a thin blue cotton jacket on the outside, sits on a stool in the living room and tells her life story. From birth to back to Malan, from the music "sowing" in her heart to the "sowing" in the Taihang Mountains, little by little, clearly seeping into my heart. The doubts in my heart as I walked the mountain gradually dissolved in her murmuring narration, and the answer became clearer and clearer, like the water rushing away the weeds and dust to reveal the pebbles at the bottom of the river.
She talked about her parents falling in love, living, and fighting here, about how she was born and fostered in her hometown. "The old man I saw when I came back in 1997 to ask for directions had fed me milk for 4 days, only 15 years older than me, and almost became my grandmother that year, and her mother-in-law was afraid that she had no experience in raising me well and did not take this matter." She also said that the villagers in the mountains took her life very seriously.
In Fuping, Teacher Xiaolan did not leave until he was 3 years old. The poet Ai Qing has a famous poem, "Why do I often have tears in my eyes, because I love this land deeply", and the impact of this emotion can also be strongly felt in Xiaolan's teacher's narration.
She talked about her parents' musical enlightenment and edification of her as a child, and about her unfulfilled dreams in middle school. In 1954, a Soviet ballet troupe came to China to perform, and she went to see, "The beautiful princess in the skirt went to the mountains to pick flowers and dance ballet, it was so beautiful!" When recalling this period, I can see a sweet dream of a young girl from Xiao Lan's teacher's expression. Later, she had a period of obsession with applying to the conservatory to study ballet, but finally lost her hand because the university stopped enrolling students that year. Later, Xiao Lan chose the Department of Chemical Engineering of Tsinghua University, also because someone told her that only Tsinghua University taught music history at that time. In her 6 years at Tsinghua University, she participated in a small music team and toured the outside world many times.
At noon that day, when I interviewed Bai Zihui, a member of the Malan small band in the Malan community, she was particularly proud to tell me a "little secret": "Teacher Deng can also dance ballet!" She didn't know that I also shared Xiaolan's dream of being a girl.
"The road of life is unknown, and music is the best companion and the best comfort." When you are happy and sad, you can express it through music. Teacher Xiaolan said that when the exam was not successful, she would ride a bicycle while composing lyrics and singing all the way home; in the turbulent years, her life encountered a low point, because she could not talk to others, she would silently play the violin.
After graduating from college, Teacher Xiaolan was assigned to work in Tai'an, Shandong Province, and after work, she found that the female workers gathered together and laughed, she was very curious, so she listened closely, "I found that their jokes were not knowledgeable and interesting, so I said 'teach you to play the piano'." "One, two, and slowly several people followed her, and after half a year they could participate in the performance at the Palace of Culture." Later, these female workers got married and had children, and when the children grew up, the female workers came to ask Teacher Xiaolan to teach their children.
Wherever Xiaolan teacher goes, he will bring music to wherever he goes. The mischievous children of Maran Village were also transformed by the "domestication" of her music. "Once, I went to the school and asked 'who would like to learn guitar with me', and a boy sitting in the back with a eager look in his eyes was hit by me, but the other students began to 'complain': 'Teacher, he beat people' 'Teacher, he is naughty, he doesn't like to do homework'. The little boy was anxious and said, 'The teacher likes naughty children'. Yes, they were all children, as long as they cared more, he felt liked by the teacher and would work hard, and later this little boy became the little main force of the band. "Naughty" Xiao Lan teacher also learned how the children initially sang in a thick Malan village tone, "corrected over and over again, even if they take three steps back and one step back, in the end they are also moving forward, anyway, no one is assessed, not in a hurry, in the middle school, sing well and be happy." ”
Life sea sea. In Teacher Xiaolan's heart, music should be able to cross the boat through the rapids, and she willingly passes it on to everyone who has intersected with her.
Time passed unconsciously, Teacher Xiaolan was still radiant, and everyone present listened with bated breath, not daring to leave easily, like listening to a concert, for fear of missing a wonderful chapter. At 11 o'clock in the evening, the interview came to an end. Another media host proposed to ask Teacher Xiaolan to sing a song she wanted to sing the most, she looked at Teacher Xiaoqiao, paused, and began to sing Ali's "If One Day You Come to Malan". The beautiful melody of the lyrics, the gentle and beautiful singing, sounded in the cottage, and still echoed in my ears, and unconsciously I would hum it too...
A vision of the mountains and forests
The next morning we rushed to the front of The Xiaolan Teacher's Building again. At eight o'clock, I didn't know if she had packed up, so I didn't rush to knock on the door. No, she saw us on the balcony and waved at us through the window glass.
Walking in, she was sitting in the corner of the kitchen stove eating breakfast. "Teacher Deng, what are you eating?" "Meal replacement powder, this is for diabetics, and two eggs." The reporter's occupational disease made me take a picture of her, and she immediately got up and picked up the bowl, picked up the empty bag and returned to the small balcony, and said to me mischievously: "I won't let you shoot!" ”
After dinner in the bedroom, between her medications, I once again "asked the root of the matter", "Teacher Deng, so many years, spring, summer, autumn and winter, have you encountered a particularly heavy wind and rain or heavy snow on the way here?" I tried to ask some more "thrilling" stories, but she told me calmly, "It seems that I just caught a heavy snow recently, and there is nothing wrong with it. In her heart, there seemed to be no hardship, no anxiety, and nothing to stop. Similarly, her answers did not see the rhetoric and rhetoric of tall people, and the "dramatic effects" that the journalist profession wanted never appeared, and everything was light.
During the conversation, several children came, they first came to the bedroom and politely called "Teacher Deng", and then sat down on the bench in the living room. The little boy played the guitar, and the children naturally practiced the two songs to be sung in the afternoon to participate in the event in Baoding City, "The Tomb of the Malan Martyrs" and "Malan Nursery Rhymes". Teacher Xiaolan listened for a while, went to the back panel to direct and point, and after only two or three strokes, the children sang in unison.
At 9:00 a.m., we went with Mr. Xiaolan to the mountains outside the village to see the moon stage and the music castle. The weather was nice, the bright sun was shining through the forest, and the snow on the slopes was melting. We first got off the bus and stopped at the place where the first Maran Music Children's Festival was held, and in the cold breeze she recalled the grand occasion at that time, she said that she liked natural things, so the children's music festival was also called "Forest Concert". Then we continued to go deeper and came to the moon stage in the mountain pass.
She describes the ingenuity of the moon stage design, saying that she likes to see the reflection in the famous paintings, and one day she found that this scene can also be presented in the mountain forest of Maran. In order to create a stage for the children in nature, this dream was "stored" for 8 years until it came true last year. I asked her if she was looking forward to the festival being held here soon? She said: "Yes, this year it will be done here. Standing in front of the moon stage, looking at the stone steps on the opposite hill, she said, "This is what I planed out with a pickaxe." She imagined the opening night of the music festival, "People stand on the stone steps of the hillside, look up at a moon in the sky, look down at a moon in the water, and the children perform in the center of the stage, how beautiful!" ”
"When we were young, we all liked to play with toys, and now we are in such a big place, such a big stage, fiddling with children, how fun!" 」 Teacher Xiaolan said, "These ten years have been running to Malan non-stop, and the happy time is in Malan. ”
In the interview, I found that no matter how difficult and tiring things are, they have become "very fun" and "really fun" in Xiaolan's mouth. Yes, an old man full of innocence led a wave of children full of innocence, playing through spring, summer, autumn and winter, playing and playing, the mountains woke up, the river woke up, the village woke up, and spring came happily!
On the way back, Ji Zhiqing, a fourth-level researcher of the Baoding Women's Federation who accompanied me to interview, also sighed: "It is really fortunate to hear the story of Teacher Deng!" "What a pure person this is, so rare!" A few of us met, and the spring flowers bloomed and malan came to visit Teacher Xiaolan, and went to the moon stage together to enjoy the performance of Teacher Xiaolan and her small band of Malan during the music festival.
"The better we do, the higher the utilization rate, the more people come to Maran, and the tourism in Maran will develop!" Teacher Xiaolan's words are still in her ears, but the strings of her life have come to an abrupt end in this early spring, and the "curtain" is really lamentable in the moon stage that she has painstakingly created and has not yet been unveiled!
On March 23rd, Malan Village held a live broadcast to commemorate Teacher Xiaolan, and I left a message to Teacher Xiaolan who went to heaven: "You made me believe that there are really innocent people in the world!" "The seeds of music you have sown have blossomed, and Malan's singing, piano, and laughter will always accompany you!"
The story of Teacher Xiaolan is circulating. I would like to tell readers that if one day you come to the beautiful Malan, don't forget to bring a bouquet of brightly colored garlands, dedicated to this red land, but also to the 18-year "Love Farming Hometown" Xiaolan teacher!