Li Baotian is over seventy years old and rarely appears. With his ability to "perform super-naturally", he has shaped many film and television characters such as Liu Luoguo, Xi Laile, Wang Baochang, etc., with different forms, which can be called classics.
On October 19, 2020, Li Baotian, a national first-class actor, won the "China Television Golden Eagle Award" Lifetime Achievement Award awarded to him by the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, which is also one of the highest honors in the Chinese performing arts industry. The news came out, so that this old drama bone, who is more than a rare old man, once again attracted the attention of the public. At the same time, it also raises a question - what has this old man done all these years?
Recently, Li Baotian's only book work "Self-Talk and Self-Painting: Li Baotian", which was jointly launched by Life, Reading and Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore and Movable Type Culture, has been sold on the whole network. In the book, we can see both the familiar him of the past and the surprise of his N many unknown talents and talents.
Regarding his relationship with painting and performance, his personal destiny is involved. Li Baotian himself wrote that he grew up in Xuzhou and had a good family, but he was rebellious in nature and never played cards according to the routine arranged by his parents. It was also a special time, and he stole to learn drama from the master of The Willow Opera Class without much schooling. Many years later, Li Baotian and Chen Chong played Huang Shuqin's "Man, Ghost, Love" and had the shadow of this personal experience.
Today, Movable Type Jun shares with book friends the article "Form in Speech - Li Baotian's Self-Description" in the new book "Self-Talk and Self-Painting: Li Baotian". The drift of the world and the departure of his loved ones depict his face in ravines and his own only art.
The form is in the words - Li Baotian's self-description
—
Li Baotian Wen
This article is excerpted from "Self-Talk and Self-Painting: Li Baotian"
Life, Reading, and New Knowledge Triptych Bookstore, February 2022
Self-Portrait, Pen
When I was a child, I wasn't a smart kid. My mother said I used to be fat, playful and cute. Needless to say, this is the common feeling of a young boy, but it does not reveal the signs of running away from home and wandering for many years in the future.
When I was five years old, tired of the monotony of kindergarten, I took advantage of the lack of preparation, and ran to the street not far from home with a cigarette, wandering east and west, and watching the street scene. It was a Sunday, and for the first time I thought it was nice that no one was in charge.
When I was tired of walking, I crouched on the side of the road to watch the big kids play pinball. The exquisite balls rolled beautifully on the ground, and I stared straight at those special things, but I did not expect that the kindergarten, my father's unit, and the family had already boiled over the sky. It was getting dark, and I was unconscious. Suddenly someone kicked me in the back—it was my father, and he grabbed my ear in anger and lifted me off the ground.
When I got back to kindergarten that night, everyone sat up from the cot and glared at me with owl-like snowy eyes. Suddenly, I realized that I had become an outlier for the first time, and I had become the target of everyone. The gadgets that are usually hidden under the pillow are all gone, and they are divided and plundered by those righteous children. Since then, I have begun to wonder why mortals always put small things that they think are rare and precious under their pillows. Probably seeing them as important as their own heads, they need to be next to each other all the time, and even bring them into dreams.
At that time, I was very maverick and rarely played with others. This sense of self is frequently frustrated at home, especially in front of the father.
My brothers were born one after another, and I gradually fell out of favor, no longer cute, and even became thin and ugly. The third brother's small face was fine skin and tender flesh, which really made me jealous, I bullied him like a fighting rooster, at that time he was the most favored, but became my target, so his thin white and pink baby face often cried a blur.
My father was not originally a peaceful man, and the atrocities I inflicted on my brothers often made him angry. The father is also a completely old-fashioned father, reveling in the vanity of having many children and many blessings. Almost every Sunday, he took his children to the streets, leading them with his left hand and holding them with his right hand, surrounded by him and followed behind him, and his whole family went out in a mighty and mighty way. Father's face was often filled with pride, which aroused people's envy. But my stubbornness often greatly diminished my father's pride, and I was advised, scolded, and coaxed to go out with them, but I was either twenty meters ahead or twenty meters behind.
At the end of the fourth grade of primary school, I failed math, failed the make-up exam again, and repeated the grade. Father said, "Okay, I won't buy you books, use your old books." Where do I go to find old books? The textbooks were rotten, they all made me tear into an oval shape, and there were a lot of swords, guns, swords, and martial arts characters painted on them, and the content of the texts was incomplete, which made me three points shorter than my classmates. Because of the repetition of grades, I was a year older in the class, and I was taller than others, which was not the feeling of standing out from the flock, but the feeling of a donkey in the flock, which made me feel dwarf. The severe inferiority complex made me even less in the mood to study hard.
The teacher regarded me as a living example of an improper learning attitude, and often called me to the front of the podium to punish the station. Over time, the teacher and I got used to it, so much so that one day it became natural—the teacher forgot to tell me to come home from school. I stood motionless in the classroom watching the snowflakes fall out of my mind, until my mother came to the school to find me, and it was already more than seven o'clock in the evening.
The parents thought that the teacher's teaching method was inappropriate, and wrote a "letter from the people" to the school, but they did not know that this action actually made their son an "enemy of the people" in the school, and was ridiculed and ridiculed by all the people in the school. The teachers either didn't ask me questions once for ten days and a half a month, or the teachers of several subjects took turns teaching me. Over time, I became accustomed to it, so I got a nickname - rubber face.
In the evening, I mixed at the entrance of the theater, picking up the ticket stubs of the audience who had left the theater, and I went in to watch the last half hour or twenty minutes. When I got home at about ten o'clock, I went to sleep. At that time, my mother was in cram school to learn culture, and this time she had not yet returned home. After another year and a half of neglecting management, I finally couldn't mix anymore.
In the winter of the sixth grade of primary school, the Jiangsu Provincial Opera School and the Jiangsu Provincial Cultural Cadre School came to Xuzhou to enroll students. I carried my father on my back and took a younger brother to sign up.
During the exam, I actually performed vividly and livelyly. My brother and I were quickly accepted. The notice asked everyone to gather together on the evening of February 24 to take the train to Nanjing.
I finally sniffed and told my father that I was going to study drama and not study anymore. My father, as angry as he imagined, beat me violently.
My father was frugal, but he never saved money on educating his children, and often bought us comic strips (little people's books). At that time, there were also movie monthly passes, most of the movie theaters were sparse audiences, ordinary movies were not watched by many people, my father did not watch, I went to see. The Jinghu hanging on the wall of the house is my father's toy when he was young, he has artistic cells in him, likes to play, although I have not heard him sing, nor have I seen him play the huqin, but it is still a little subtle influence, or a little genetic. After I secretly finished the drama school, my father knew about it, so he beat me away and did not dare to go home. He was an old revolutionary and didn't want me to make a career out of singing. I went to the cinema with a large pile of movie tickets, and when I didn't have to watch them, I wandered the streets. In the end, there was really no way, so my father and mother had to let me go to the drama school.
My father didn't paint, but he would buy a bunch of chalk and have a couple of our kids scribble on the unpainted wooden floor, and then the babysitter would wipe it clean, and then paint it, and wipe it again. A few of our brothers learned to draw in this way at the beginning, and then two of the five of our brothers actually engaged in painting, and I counted half of them.
My father's writing was beautiful, he was diligent and skillful, he sewed us clothes, and there was a full set of palm shoe tools at home, and the shoes of our four or five boys, all of which he did. This shows that he is clever, and at the same time, it also shows that he is frugal and frugal, and he does everything he can.
One day before the day of the meeting, I was carrying the movie monthly ticket that my father had bought for our brother, and I was wandering the street. At the end of the day, I watched four or five movies, and my favorite one, "The Great Haunting of the Heavenly Palace", I have already turned my back and watched it again.
The next day, I simply packed my bags, left home, and went to Nanjing. It was 1960 and I was thirteen years old. I am still not sure which will be more beneficial to me later, going to study drama or studying in school.
Life in Nanjing is not as colorful as you might think. I used to like Peking Opera, but now I want to learn Liuzi Opera. South KunBei Yi, East Liu Xi Yi. Liuzi drama is a folk drama that is on the verge of being lost. The masters in the drama class come from the folk and have never entered the class, that is, the level of senior drama fans and ticket holders. When I expressed my desire to learn Peking Opera, the people in the troupe said with some anger: "This child actually looks down on our Willow Opera!" ”
After all, I failed to learn to sing Peking Opera, but I left the impression of "watching Willow Opera in a small way". When I was divided into subjects, I chose to learn the "ugly" line. The "clowns" on the stage are witty, lively, funny, playful, and likable, and I don't know if I chose to learn "ugly" because I have always been eager to be liked. My brother-in-law was twenty years old at the time, a young actor in the troupe, and since I signed up to learn the "ugly" line, he regarded me as a challenger.
Soon my mother went to Nanjing on a business trip to see me, and she shed tears to persuade me to go back to study, but I refused, but I could hardly bear my mother's sad tears. My mother gave me a white handkerchief embroidered with small flowers, which I always regarded as a symbol of warm maternal love, and later this handkerchief became the trouser pocket of one of my brother's pants.
Sunflower, pen color pencil drawing
I don't like to socialize, I am more withdrawn, which is related to personality, and lonely people are generally more inferior and shy. The troupe environment in which I grew up aggravated my tendencies to be withdrawn, inferior, and conceited.
The problem was the relationship between the whole group and me.
I joined the troupe in 1960 during three difficult years. The rest of the children in the group were from the countryside, and I was from the city, so they squeezed one of them into me. I was isolated, and as a result, my inferiority complex was reinforced. The teachers didn't like me either. The teachers are also from the countryside, and they all have the vices of the old drama class. Children from the countryside can send some things from home to the teacher in difficult times, but I can't send anything. I ran out of the house and almost cut off relations with the family, so I couldn't take things from home to give to the teacher, and I didn't have the money to buy things myself.
Summer is here, and in this atmosphere full of hostility and ridicule, I have a good thing that makes country children hungry — a snow-white single mosquito net. That's what I brought from home. Brother Shi said, "I'll hang a mosquito net." "So my good stuff became his." This did not make me resentful, because respecting the teacher is the rule of the drama class, and I should naturally give selflessly. Moreover, my brother was seven years old, and it seemed natural to be obedient to him. There are many mosquitoes in the countryside, the brother sleeps sweetly in the mosquito net, I was bitten by mosquitoes outside the tent, but I am not very uncomfortable, I think if the brother looks at me in the tent, am I not also in the account?
When summer passed, the brother stuffed the mosquito net in a wooden box. The following year he returned the mosquito net to me, which was no longer white and could no longer be used. Rats made nests in mosquito nets and bit countless holes.
The inability to establish a sweet and bitter relationship with my brother and master really troubled me for a long time, and although I sacrificed the mosquito net and the handkerchief my mother gave me, it did not help. When I couldn't learn the essentials, my brother often exaggerated my failures to others.
My master was a kind old man, the deputy leader of the regiment, and the only person who treated me well in those years. He did not ask his disciples to serve him with his head, such as a urinal, as other people's masters did. But if he asks, I will be willing.
Master did not have much culture, and his wife and children were all in the countryside. He is showy and taciturn, and he can't see the brilliance of the actor at all, but as soon as he arrives on the stage, his body will emit an eye-catching brilliance.
Master also had earth-shattering feats when he was young. When the Japanese devils invaded, the men, women and children of the whole village were frightened and ran around the mountains, but there was actually only one Japanese soldier. The honest master actually killed this Japanese soldier. After the people in the regiment counted his nests honestly, they often talked about this paragraph. I didn't ask him how the Japanese soldier got his hands on a gun.
I never deliberately remember about him, but when I think of those days, I must think of him. As a result, one by one, the pile became clearer and clearer, and today it has become an indelible brand.
Master only hit me once.
There was a boy a few years older than us in the regiment, a juvenile bully, bullying all the students who were weaker than him. Everyone dared to be angry and did not dare to speak, but secretly determined to take revenge. One day when he was not in the group, I proposed that everyone take turns peeing on his rice bowl, and I came first, and then everyone came. Those people said: Good! I set the precedent, but there was no second one to continue. There was a traitor complaint that afternoon, and I naturally got the retribution I deserved. He beat me first, then went to the regimental commander to complain, and I became a villain with great public indignation. They were yelling and shoving me into the bathroom to push my head into the urinal, when Master came up and kicked me a few times and then yelled at me. The crowd gradually lost their words, and Master's intention was to calm the anger of the crowd and save me from more grievances.
Fifteen paintings (one) of "Flower Corpse", ink
In the summer of 1961, many people had their dream mosquito nets, and that year, without knowing what evil had been committed, almost all the people in the regiment contracted malaria and swung. I don't know if it was the usual mosquito bites that actually strengthened my immunity or something else, but this time I was safe.
Master has been ill for more than forty days, and the daily injections and medicines still do not get better. The sick master became more and more reticent, and his silence inexplicably added to my panic.
That afternoon, when the sun was still scorching at four o'clock, I saw Master sitting next to the tap, and he put his feet into the pool and kept flushing with cool water. He sat motionless, as if he didn't feel the flowing water splashing himself. I ran to touch him, and I was so hot that my hand retracted from his hot body. I said, "Don't rush, go back to the house and lie down." Master was so stupidly helped back to the room by me.
I went to see him again at seven o'clock, and his terrible red eyes really made me mess up. I called brother Shi, brother shi asked him something, he couldn't say anything, we went to the regimental commander again, and the regimental commander said to send him to the hospital soon.
My brother and I found a scooter. I was barefoot and wore only shorts (I didn't wear extra stuff on those years if it wasn't necessary to keep warm, because there was nothing extra to wear). Brother Shi pulled the car, I supported the handlebars, and the two of them ran breathlessly on the road covered with fine stones, only to feel the soles of their feet hurt by the stones on the road.
I ran all the way to a small hospital outside three stations, and I still remember it as "Third Hospital.". It was getting dark, and we called out the doctor on duty, who looked at Master with a professional look and said, "We can't save this patient, you have to go to the big hospital." In the panic and confusion, his composure gave us the illusion that the big hospital could save my master. We pulled the car and ran seven more stops, this time my feet did not seem to hurt, the big hospital arrived, my heart was beating wildly, as if happiness was coming, extremely nervous.
After a few minutes, the brother ran back in frustration and said that he needed to pay a deposit of twenty yuan for rescue expenses. Twenty yuan, our monthly living expenses are only ten yuan and fifty cents, and at the moment we are not named.
Brother Shi went in again and begged the doctor to save people, and I subconsciously looked at Master. I don't know what I said to him, but I remember that he shook his head slightly no matter what I said. His eyes were filled with anxiety and impatience. Under the dim street lamp, I also saw something that made me feel deeply strange and surprised—a dying man's premonition that he was about to leave the world. I looked at Master in panic, despair, and helplessness, and I felt that there was also panic, despair and helplessness in those eyes.
I don't know how long I stood, Master's eyes seemed to be pleading again, and there seemed to be a pair of hands in his eyes pulling me for help. In the end, this survival instinct left him along with life, and those eyes no longer conveyed any emotion, empty, sluggish, and unfocused.
When Master left this world, I was the only one by his side. Over the years, when I thought about this scene, a voice sounded in my ears: Master died at your hands. It was the reproach and mockery of the relentless Destiny for the poor and powerless, and it may have been just an echo of my own heart, but it always shattered my ethereal sense of accomplishment, pride, and vanity into powder.
When Master died, I was still the most hated and bullied person in the regiment. Not only that, but I was probably the apprentice who worried him the most but didn't show up the most. This torture of shame was sometimes even better than the guilt his death left me. Master died, dead at my hands, with disappointment in me. This disappointment became an immutable and eternal impression at the end of his life.
The first performance of my artistic career left a record of utter failure. At that time, Master was still alive. As a rising star, Brother Shi took over the mantle of Master and played the role of Master before his death. And the previous role of brother Shi was passed on to me. When I learned the news, I was overjoyed uncontrollably, and I felt that the days of lying on the salary and tasting the guts had finally come to an end, and the time for redress was coming. I managed to release satellites to my two younger brothers and have them come to see how I shined on stage.
My character was insignificant and short-lived in that play—after I finished reading two lines on stage, I was "hacked to death" by the samurai around me with swords. Thus my epoch-making debut was completed. It was a nameless character, and it didn't leave an impression, as if it were a procedure that was naturally followed only for the sake of the traditional authenticity of the play, as inconsequential as a human appendix, or like a spice in a traditional dish that cannot be named or tasted.
Still, I smashed the stage. As soon as I appeared that day, I forgot my lines. At this time, the samurai around me fought with the same enemy and strengthened their swords against me. Desperate, I lay on the stage and let them slash and kill, then drag the "corpses" backstage.
I don't know if my brothers recognized me, and I secretly hoped they didn't come to the show at all. But Master must have felt a lack of light on my face because of my ugliness. Within a few days, he had malaria. Those two lines were so forgotten—I still don't think about them.
My second role was playing the unlucky shopkeeper in the folding play "Cheng Bites the Golden Shop". The rogue proletarian representative Cheng Yaojin ate the meal but refused to pay, and not only did he beat up the shop. This time, in order to prevent the tragedy from happening again, I was fully prepared, and in addition to sleeping, I always silently recited those few life-threatening lines: "I ignored the old guest's call, and came in a hurry, and went forward to pull the horse-"
The play began, and I stood at the edge of the curtain. Cheng Yaojin called "Shopkeeper" on the stage
My body fluttered, and I rode up to the stage like a fog, making a gesture of arching my hand - God, I forgot my lines again! I stood there with my hands folded, and it was as if I had been standing for an unknown number of years. Then I was dizzy and unsteady, either planting forward or leaning back. Suddenly, the divine signs flying from the sky woke me up, and the heavens had eyes, and I blurted out, "Hurry up and come—"
This phrase "hurry up and come" fundamentally saved me, otherwise I would have been a dragon runner forever in this life. The idea that I was bent on becoming a "horned child" drove me crazy and made me despair. I practiced fiercely every day, gritted my teeth, cruel and ruthless, almost to the point of masochism.
It was a difficult time, when after eating and licking the rice bowl with your tongue, after eating fish, the fish bones were picked up back into the bowl and brewed with boiling water to brew "fish soup". The twelve yuan of living expenses that we should have paid as trainees were also embezzled and fifty cents by the regimental commander and the accountant who drank blood. In four years, they deducted more than a thousand yuan from our dozen children.
Every month we each had thirty-three catties of grain, one or two oils, and one or two pieces of meat. I often eat a day's ration in one meal. Fatigue and malnutrition from over-practicing made me dizzy, and I often lost my balance and fell to the ground when I "hit the flying foot" and jumped in the air. There are always seven or eight days of the month without food, lying in bed all day "standing up". I was so hungry that I borrowed dried sweet potatoes from rural practitioners who could often get help from their families, broke them into the size of fingernails, and threw them into a thermos "water hair". Reimbursement will be made with food stamps at the beginning of next month. Such a yin to eat grain, there are often amazing deficits. One year during the Spring Festival, I went bankrupt — I didn't have a grain stamp or two except for a slice of cooked meat with skin. That piece of meat is my "New Year goods", all the supplies during the Spring Festival.
In those days, I also experienced a lot of wine and food. That year, the troupe performed in Yutai County, Shandong Province. The reason why we came to Shandong was simple: a local deputy county magistrate loved to listen to Liuzi opera. After the play, we went to the canteen of the county party committee to have dinner. There was wine at that meal, and it was that meal that made me know what wine was.
The wine is mixed with alcohol with grape juice and then white wine. There was fat meat and other dishes on the table, as well as one or two white-faced buns. The dramatists were very happy and feasted, and many people ate more than a dozen steamed buns and kept carrying them into their mouths.
The people at the dinner table began pouring wine into each other. I had never drunk two full glasses, from head to toe. Then I was dragged outside drunk in the snow. My last perception was silvery snow. As if deep into the soul of the snow drowned in the cool moisture of the snow, the feeling of suffocation is gentle and mysterious.
In the winter of that year, the regiment bought eight pounds of beans for the first time and sent them to me and another person as a hardship allowance. These four pounds of beans and the line "Hurry up and come" have an equivalent effect in a sense. They brought me back to life from both the material and spiritual aspects. At that time, I was so puffy that my eyes became a line and I couldn't keep them open.
In 1966, an uncle from Shanghai came to See Me in the troupe when he came to Xuzhou. He watched in amazement as the mattress on my bed was free of cotton, only straw between the two layers of cloth. He twisted the thickness of the quilt with his hand, and did not expect that the bed quilt was rotten and broke a hole when twisted. The distinguished deputy military uncle was in tears at that time, probably feeling guilty. I once wrote to him asking for help, and he replied in a serious manner to give me an ideological education, but it did not solve my hunger in the slightest.
To this day, I am still glad that I survived, and I survived without stealing or robbing.
I don't know what suppressed the evil impulse that was hidden in my instincts, maybe it was master's death, maybe it was my ambition to become a "horned child", or maybe it was the evil itself that prevailed in human nature.
During the years I was away from home, I was used to being alone. When I sleep at night, I spread out my luggage between the earthen wall and the curtain, and I fall asleep watching the stars, and the dark night surrounds me, vast and safe. On a trip to a foreign country, I fell ill and had a high fever for a whole month. The body temperature is normal during the day and hot at night. I didn't go to the doctor, and every night I lay down alone in a corner, watching the stars flicker like a slur, and I thought for the first time about death, thinking that I might just watch the stars die silently in this corner, but the fear in my heart was still silent.
Later, the regimental commander sent a female secretary to take me back to Xuzhou first. She sent me to the troupe to meet friends. I lay down my thin luggage in the empty aisle and fell asleep.
When I woke up, I was in a large ward in the hospital. They live with diabetics and heart disease. I was diagnosed with typhoid fever.
In this hospital, there is still a relative of mine, that is, my father, whom I have not seen for a long time.
His father was the son of a farmer, who joined the Eighth Route Army in 1938 and later worked as a local cadre. In his father's mind, studying and advancing is the right way, and following a group of folk blind streams as a drama is really humiliating and insulting.
In the years when I was away from home, my mother, as a cadre of the health system, often led medical teams to the countryside. The father took care of his four younger brothers alone, and finally became ill with overwork.
There is a ward between the general ward and the high cadre ward, and that is the distance between me and my father. There were many days when we didn't interact with each other, as if we were both expecting each other's compromises.
One day at noon, I was asleep and felt that someone was laying my tingling arm flat. I opened my eyes, and my father was leaning over to look at me. When I woke up, my father's eyes were red. I stared at him, and he straightened up and turned and left. I couldn't stop crying. It was the first time I had seen my father in years since I had run away from home.
The next day I went to my father's hospital room. He sat motionless on the couch, not looking at me or talking. After that, my courage gradually grew, and I often went to see him; my father also gradually cared about me, asking me if I was still reading and studying, and what progress I had made. I answered honestly. One day I took my diary to see my father and showed him my ambitions. On a page in the diary, it reads: "Dad, don't look down on me, when I become a big actor in the future, I want my father to pick up Little Li Baotian, who has become a big actor, to go home." After reading it, the father threw the diary against the wall and cursed, saying, "You can't become a big actor!" ”
My father's words were like a whip in my face, and I could no longer hide my feelings of inferiority and hopelessness. After five years at the Yanagi Troupe, the prospects are still bleak. So I thought I wouldn't have the face to see my father again until I mixed up.
At the beginning of 1966, just as the theater reform and the social education movement were making a big splash, I unexpectedly received the news that my father was seriously ill and hospitalized.
One day in late February, I went to the hospital in a worn-out cotton jacket and pants to see my father. For some reason, my father spoke to me a lot that day and instructed, "You are the eldest, and you will take good care of your mother and brother in the future." Then my father burst into tears. It was the first time since I was an adult that my father had spoken to me so gently and calmly, and it was the only time I had seen my father cry.
At noon the next day, I was suddenly panicked. When I arrived at the hospital, twenty minutes before the time of the visit, the gatekeeper stopped me, and I looked at my worn-out clothes and was ashamed to explain to him that I was Li Yong's son. In desperation, I had to go to the book stall across the street and rent two villain books for two cents, and flipped through them endlessly. I was uneasy in my heart, and after reading it hastily, I ran to the ward.
Turning into the corridor, I saw the door of my father's hospital room wide open, and the dark corridor was only reflected in the white light of the sky, and there were people in the room constantly moving, and panicked shadows moved in that light. I ran over desperately.
Nurses were packing up their equipment, and mothers and brothers were wiping tears from their eyes at the bedside.
One of my father's feet was out of the quilt, and he was wearing gray nylon socks on his feet. In the infinite emptiness of consternation, a thought recurred in my mind: "My father is dead, my father is dead!" The thought caught me like an ominous spell, and at the same time I wished it were just a spell.
I stared at my father's foot without blinking, but I didn't have the courage to look at my father's face. I was afraid to see the confirmation of that incantation on my father's face, and I hoped wholeheartedly that the foot would move slightly.
I stood for a long time, and no one noticed me, and no one did not accept that fact like me. My mother kept wiping her tears, but she couldn't hear the cries. She is a stoic person who is ashamed to show weakness at all times. After a while the mother calmed down for a while and said that she should send a telegram to the uncles in the field. I remembered my father's ding-dong yesterday, so I said, "I'll go shoot it." The mother waved a handful of tears, and suddenly raised her voice in anger: "Don't worry about it!" ”
I stood in embarrassment for half a moment and silently withdrew. I finally glanced reluctantly at my father's foot, a foot that would never move again, and then stood for a long time in the dark corridor, weeping without tears. There was a quiet rest in every door, and only in the open door was a man who slept forever. No one can wake him up, make him angry, and he no longer needs to be quiet. No matter how much he begged and shouted, he could not hear it, and he sank into eternal silence. That is my father, the father to whom I have always been disobedient.
......
Master's death made me see for the first time the fragility of life, the process of the soul leaving the body is still vividly remembered. My father's death forced me to sharpen myself and achieve my career to comfort him with regrets of long sleep. And the death of the younger brother has made my life that is not young carry the mission he left behind.
Is it just to fulfill me that God has taken these people I love so much away from me? Is it just because I want to fulfill that God has put me on such a heavy load? If so, do I deserve these people to give their lives back to God for me? If so, what will I accomplish to repay the sacrifices of these people?
I was often completely confused by such questions, but no one could answer for me. I can only answer with my paintbrush and carving knife, and answer with the sadness, joy, crying and laughter of the people in my play. As long as I live, I can't stop. Heaven knows, their undead know, and although I am humble and ordinary, I will do my best all my life.
When love beckons to you, follow her, though her journey is difficult and steep.
As her wings wrap around you, succumb to her, though the blade hidden in the middle of the feather may hurt you.
............
Although love crowns you, she will crucify you.
Although she cultivates you, she also cuts you.
Like a handful of rice corn, it binds you together.
Scooping you makes you naked.
Sieving you makes you out of the shell.
Grind you until you are white.
Rub you until supple.
Then send you to the holy fire and make you a holy bread at God's feast.
Indeed, to the Creation we are merely dolls in His hands, or achievements or destruction, noble or poor, great or insignificant. I want, I pray to be the one chosen, the one chosen to be the one who makes art.
I have long remembered a passage by the French absurdist dramatist Cocteau: "Each of us is a rough marble billet, and the master of creation constantly strikes us with a hammer and a chisel." Endure willingly, don't groan and don't wail. Cooperate with his beating, because he wants to accomplish you, create you, remove the superfluous, and retain everything necessary for art. ”
Years are carving knives that carve wrinkles on our faces. Fate is a carving knife that imprints wounds in our hearts. Whenever I was disappointed and miserable, I believed that The gaze of God was staring at me with deep concentration, and that was the moment when He loved me the most. I will greet all this with great emotion and repay it all.
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