Qingming Special Topic | Remembering Teacher Zhu Jiansong (3)

Mr. Zhu Jiansong was born in Wuhan, Hubei Province, graduated from the Department of Chinese Literature of Hubei Normal University, and was a full-time professor of the Department of Language of the College of Literature of Central China Normal University, and was known as the "first person to study the dialect in Wuhan".

On February 13, 2022, Mr. Zhu Jiansong passed away in Wuhan at the age of 96.

I miss Teacher Zhu Jiansong

Photo, text/Nguyen Kwai Kwan

In 2001, when I was a graduate student, my supervisor Professor Wang Guosheng arranged a class for our students to learn international phonetic standards, which was taught by Professor Zhu Jiansong.

I remember the first time I met Teacher Zhu, I saw that he was tall and thin, his hair looked very hard, combed upwards, with a little black in the silver, and he carried a convenience bag with the information for the class and his glasses and magnifying glass. At that time, Teacher Zhu was 75 years old, but his spirit was very good, amiable, and with a little majesty.

He said that Mr. Xing and Mr. Wang entrusted him to give us the Last Semester of the International Phonetic Alphabet class, mainly to teach us pronunciation, and by the way, to talk about the knowledge related to dialect surveys. At that time, the number of graduate students was not much, and there seemed to be less than 10 people in all directions of the language institute, and Teacher Zhu taught us hand in hand how to pronounce the two lip sounds and how to pronounce the tongue and leaf sounds. The deepest impression was Teacher Zhu's small tongue vibrato, because he knew French, so he was very authentic. Teacher Zhu taught us not simply to imitate, but also let us know the details of each sound.

Once, when teaching the non-round-lip vowels of No. 6 and No. 7, in order to let us better judge these two tones, Teacher Zhu repeatedly read them against each other and let us judge which one was which. To tell the truth, at first we judged based on Teacher Zhu's mouth type, and then Teacher Zhu covered his entire mouth with his palm and then pronounced it, and we were wrong. Teacher Zhu said that when he attended the first Mandarin pronunciation training class in Beijing in 1956, a tutor showed the students by covering his mouth, and Mr. Li Rong said that this should not be the case, and when we were investigating, the mouth shape of the dialect collaborators could be seen.

Teacher Zhu often said that since returning to Central China Normal University after attending the Mandarin pronunciation training class in Beijing, he has been teaching phonetic transcription all his life. Because he was very sensitive to pronunciation, during the training class, he was designated by Mr. Ding Shengshu as a pronunciation assistant to assist the teachers to help correct the pronunciation of the students. Speaking of this, Teacher Zhu is always full of affection, saying that he has embarked on the road of dialect investigation and is inseparable from these gentlemen. Teacher Zhu often lamented that he had been teaching phonetic transcription all his life, and when he was more than seventy years old, he was willing to go to the podium to teach us phonetic transcription, which was nothing more than hoping that in the future someone would be able to pass on the international phonetic alphabet teaching that Mr. Ding and Mr. Li taught him. At that time, I was thinking, I want to inherit this inheritance!

Later, most of our students went to the doctoral level after graduation, and after joining the work, some stayed in the school, some went to Beijing Normal University, some went to Guangwai, and some went to the National People's Congress, but most of them did not engage in work related to the teaching of the International Phonetic Alphabet. After I arrived at Wuhan University, for the first five or six years, I didn't teach phonetic transcription-related content. Later, taking the opportunity of revising the training plan, two courses of modern Chinese dialects and dialect surveys were opened among undergraduates, and finally Realized Teacher Zhu's dream.

In life, Teacher Zhu is a very simple person. There is no special leather bag, backpack or the like, and I carry a convenient bag made of cloth for many years. Printing paper is never willing to throw away, as long as there is still a place to write, Teacher Zhu can always use it reasonably. I remember that Teacher Zhu had a special wallet, which was made of plastic packaging of napkins that could be closed on both sides, and contained some change.

Teacher Zhu paid attention to social language life all his life, and often wrote letters to "Reference News", "People's Daily", "Chutian Metropolis Daily" and so on, pointing out the mistakes in the newspaper in making sentences and using words. He often said that as a language worker, you should actively intervene in language life and dare to criticize bad language habits and word use. In 2003, he published a collection of 43 short essays that he had accumulated over the years of observations on language life, entitled "Zhu Jiansong's Collected Treatises on Languages", in which he said: "These manuscripts ,...... It was I who found problems in reading, writing, speaking, and listening on weekdays, and after repeated thinking, extensive verification, and multi-party consultation, I carefully wrote them in a targeted manner, among which there was my love for the national language, my desire for advanced culture, my concern for the spiritual life of the masses, and my intervention in the application of social languages, which condensed my decades of painstaking efforts..." Because this collection was published by the Hong Kong News Publishing House, almost no one can see it.

Teacher Zhu has always had a passion for folk culture and folklore. He believes that the commonplace and habituation of daily life is the most solid cornerstone of the edifice of spiritual civilization. In 2004, the China Archives Publishing House published his "Wuhan Folk Games", collected 117 games, in the words of Teacher Zhu, to sort out this material, "One is to rescue these valuable folk culture materials and keep them in the future; the other is to draw the attention of today's education and culture departments and all sectors of society to use, and further develop, so that more and better games can be carried forward, for example, once considered dangerous and fragile Bu Bu Deng (Di Dong), why can't it be made of special paper?" The Lord (Card) was once all the rage, so why should it be allowed to disappear into obscurity? Why can't some games such as shuttlecock kicking, hopscotch, and scratching that don't cost money, are healthy and skillful enough to be fully developed? ”

(From this errata table, we can see that Teacher Zhu is rigorous and meticulous)

In order to collect a wider range of folk culture, after seven years, Teacher Zhu published the book "Wuhan Folk Songs" in 2011, at the age of 85, from this collection of songs, we can see almost the complete memory of the city of Wuhan, singing these songs, we can see the imprint of the lives of our ancestors in the lights.

Teacher Zhu has always studied the dialect culture and always lamented that we have insufficient understanding of the culture in the dialect. In view of this, in 2008, Mr. Zhu published the book "Dialects and Culture", which is dedicated to discussing the culture in dialects, dialects and tongyu are closely related, he believes that there are a large number of ancient languages preserved in dialects, dialects and community languages are also inseparable, and there are also a large number of foreign languages in dialects. Dialects are also inextricably linked to writing, dictionaries, literature, literature, science, folklore, economics, politics, etc.

In the year of Mi Shou, Mr. Zhu's essays from the 1980s to 2012 were collected into "The Long Road to Knowledge - Gardener's Miscellaneous Essays", published by Central China Normal University Press, which recorded the gains and questions that Teacher Zhu had in visiting teachers, making friends, reading newspapers, listening to radio, watching TV, travel, leisure and entertainment, showing an old man who was a young man with a unique understanding of life.

Teacher Zhu has been honest and devoted to learning all his life, and after retirement, he still works tirelessly, dedicating his life to the study of Wuhan dialect, leaving a special gift for the city, and also leaving valuable academic ideas and qualities for the study of Chinese dialects. We often say that from the past to the present, from the present to the future, on this special day, remember Mr. Zhu Lao, may he still be so cold and humorous in heaven, still so optimistic and cheerful!

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Editor-in-Chief: Ruan Guijun

Text/Photo: Nguyen Khwai Kwan

Editor: Orange Lee