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Reading | Wei Jianmin: The essayist Mu Qing among journalists

One year, I went to Puhuangyu to visit Mr. Wang Zengqi, and Mrs. Wang's wife, Shi Songqing, told me: "Zhou Yuan also lives in this building, that is, the Zhou Yuan who wrote Jiao Yulu. At that time, Wang lived in His Wife's house, which was a family dormitory of Xinhua News Agency.

The long newsletter that touched China at that time, "The Model of the County Party Secretary - Jiao Yulu", had three authors: Mu Qing, Feng Jian, and Zhou Yuan; according to today's ranking of academic papers, Mu Qing was the first author and Zhou Yuan was the third author. At the same time, I also thought that the name of a famous journalist was associated with his representative works. After a lifetime of being a journalist, if someone says that so-and-so is the author of a famous work, it is the highest reward and glory. Veteran journalists who used to work in news units don't care about the ranking of their works. An article signed by many people, who plays the biggest role in writing? Who should be ranked first? It was gossip from people outside the article.

Reading | Wei Jianmin: The essayist Mu Qing among journalists

In my limited reading range, only Deng Tuo and Mu Qing, who have served as the main leaders of the central news units, have published books under the name of "prose". I have read Deng's essays, and his close-ups and newsletters written in the name of journalists, especially "Yanshan Night Talk", written later under the pen name "Manan Estate", are a model of prose of the times and the work of everyone. "Selected Essays of Mu Qing" includes his representative works of various periods, and readers are most familiar with Jiao Yulu's long-form newsletters. Mu Qing's "Yanling Team", written during the war years, was published in the Liberation Daily in Yan'an in 1943. This newsletter report, in meticulous and light text, comprehensively reported the anti-Japanese contingent active in a northern water area, and was the first work to introduce Hebei Baiyangdian to readers in the Liberated Areas. This armed force marked by the yanling is not only an anti-Japanese contingent led by the party, but also has a bit of the color of the good men in the green forest of the old era; their equipment and symbols make the reader feel strange! In the spring of 1945, Sun Li, who was also studying in Luyi, published "Lotus Pond" in the "Liberation Daily", which also enabled readers in the Liberated Areas to see a poetic picture of the Baiyangdian military and people resisting the Japanese invaders. Mu Qing's "I Saw the Cultural Learning of the Warriors", written in 1942 in Longdong, is a war report. He made the reader see that in the ranks of peasants as the main body, between battles, the soldiers were already overcoming the shortcomings of lack of cultural knowledge and were seriously literate and learning culture. Chairman Mao said: "An army without culture is a stupid army, and a stupid army cannot defeat the enemy." Mu Qing's newsletter objectively and truthfully reported the scene he saw of the soldiers putting down their guns and picking up their pens, and reading it today still made people interesting.

Authenticity, simplicity and pragmatism are the main characteristics of Mu Qing's prose. When he was a teenager, he joined a literary group in Datong Middle School in Qixian County, Henan Province, and the writer Yao Xueyan was his teacher. While studying in Yan'an Luyi, he was in the Department of Literature. According to the composition of the revolutionary contingent of that era, during the Yan'an period, he already belonged to a relatively high-ranking intellectual. His ability to control words was stronger from the beginning. After entering the team of reporters, he grasped the characteristics of "news" as one, regarded "truth" as life, and handled the subject matter with simple and never boring words, so that a reporting article showed the beauty of the article and had a vibrant atmosphere.

Reading | Wei Jianmin: The essayist Mu Qing among journalists

"The Role Model of the County Party Secretary - Jiao Yulu" once touched China. When this famous newsletter was broadcast on the radio, I was still in elementary school, and the touching deeds of Secretary Jiao Yulu were a source of strength for the formation of our generation's outlook on life. Since childhood, we have been familiar with everything about Jiao Yulu. From the perspective of prose, why does this newsletter have a huge energy to touch people's hearts, and still people read it today? - Real, unpretentious! Only the truth can win the trust of the reader; only simplicity can have long-term vitality. Mu Qing talked about the experience of writing this newsletter interview. Jiao Yulu's deeds first impressed several sensitive journalists. They went deep into Lankao, from the narration of cadres and the masses, and from the sincere feelings of the Lankao people for Jiao Yulu, they restored the short life process of a county party secretary, and let the role model himself shine under the sun. Jiao Yulu was not "shaped" by several reporters, but was reported by reporters after being moved by Jiao Yulu's deeds. They seized Jiao Yulu's mission to come to Lankao - to lead the people of Lankao to control sand and saline land, and to lift the people of Lankao out of poverty. He himself was ill, a serious liver disease, but he had lofty ideals and a firm will, "he had in his heart the whole people, but he did not have himself." As a county party secretary, he had a clear idea of Lankao's economic development, and did not shout a beautiful empty slogan, he knew that the land as a factor of production could not talk about anything if it was not improved and the sand dunes were cured. His vow was: "I didn't cure the dunes when I was alive, and when I died, I watched you cure the dunes!" "The subtitle of the newsletter, the glittering language, is the overall presentation of the prose from truth, simplicity to pragmatism. Jiao Yulu's famous saying "eating other people's chewed buns is tasteless", is to attach importance to first-hand materials, pay attention to the work methods of investigation and research, Secretary Jiao said it in the language of image, we remember this sentence when we were young. As the secretary of the county party committee, Jiao Yulu was wary of the corrosion of cadres by privileges. His children did not buy tickets to watch the movie once, and he immediately guarded against the slightest mistake, not only to spend money to make up the tickets, but also to form a document to warn the party members and leading cadres in the county to be honest and honest. The image of an excellent county party secretary who is single-minded and self-reliant is fully presented in the long-form newsletter.

Mu Qing wrote essays about the characters, and there was also an essay about Wu Jichang, a model of Shanxi cotton planting. Writing about a labor model who has an innovation in agricultural technology, he places the character in the context of the country's agricultural policy, especially for the sake of Premier Zhou's entrustment. A farmer in Southern Jinnan, his motivation for innovation stemmed from both his love for Premier Zhou and his obsession with agricultural technology.

"The Role Model of the County Party Secretary - Jiao Yulu" is a typical figure found by reporters in grassroots interviews. After this long-form newsletter was broadcast and published, it quickly produced a sensational effect throughout the country. The month after the newsletter was published, Mu Qing went to Lankao again, and saw many letters from all over the country in the county party committee office, and readers and listeners expressed deep emotions about Jiao Yulu's deeds and regarded Jiao Yulu as an example to learn from. The newsletter written by the reporter produced such a wide educational significance in the period of peaceful construction, which is rare in the history of new Chinese journalism. The great success of this newsletter made all journalists ask themselves: How should I be a journalist? What kind of communication reporting will have a social effect? What is the relationship between news timeliness and the life of the article?

Mu Qing is good at writing characters. In addition to Jiao Yulu, Wu Jichang, and others, he also published a book called "Ten Communist Party Members," a collection of more than a dozen people on more than a dozen fronts he interviewed. Mu Qing has a characteristic, that is, he has long-term contact with many people he has interviewed, and in the old saying, he has his "contact point". In this way, it is necessary to maintain friendship with the people being interviewed, but also to understand the social dynamics, especially the development of the places he has interviewed, so that a reporter always maintains "ears and eyes", is not confused by illusions, and will not write fake news reports. The reason why "The Model of the Secretary of the County Party Committee - Jiao Yulu", a typical model discovered by reporters and actively reported, can withstand the long-term test of time is that in the news work, he has adhered to the ideological line of seeking truth from facts, and written a person like gold, who is full of gold and red, and is still shining after 60 years, and the weight is not reduced.

Reading | Wei Jianmin: The essayist Mu Qing among journalists

Mu Qing

Mu Qing's more distinctive batch of essays is his work on foreign scenery, characters, politics, and economic situations when he visits foreign countries. The reporter's sharp eyes and profound literary accomplishment have all been expressed in this batch of works, a bit like Yang Shuo's batch of prose seen and heard abroad. When writing about overseas scenery and characters, Mu Qing completely let go of his hands and feet, his writing was more free, his language was more lively, and his articles were more colorful. Among them, "Fatima", which wrote about venezuelan reception of them and had to be his daughter, and "Miss Ali", which wrote About Peru, could draw a sketch of the object in a short period of time, showing the writing skills of an old journalist. This is an excellent prose work that is unified in news, literature and artistry.

When Mu Qing was the editor-in-chief and president of Xinhua News Agency, Xinhua News Agency had a good practice, that is, to invite famous linguists to give lectures to editors and reporters, and to analyze the news reports in the agency in detail, so that "educators must be educated first." Mr. Ye Shengtao once gave a lecture at xinhua news agency, specific to the use of punctuation marks and imparting knowledge to the pen pole. After the mainland resumed the graduate school enrollment and degree system, the Academy of Social Sciences recruited journalism graduate students, because there were too few tutors, and the press institute invited famous journalists with achievements from various news units to serve as tutors. I have a list of graduate students of the Graduate School of the Academy of Social Sciences in 1981, from which I know that Mu Qing served as a tutor for a graduate student majoring in world journalism. Mu Qing attaches great importance to journalism education and believes that journalism is "learned." Xinhua News Agency, which established the China Journalism Institute, is the understanding of his generation of this industry.

Because of Jiao Yulu, because of the long-form communications of Mu Qing, Feng Jian, and Zhou Yuan, when I went to Zhengzhou, the local comrades asked me where I wanted to go, and I said without hesitation: "Lankao." "In the hotel room where I was staying, there was a carnation on the bedside table that had been sent in the morning, and I drew it out, took it in my hand, and took a flower to Lankao with me, and respectfully offered it in front of Jiao Yulu's tomb. I went to see the famous "Jiao Tong", took a photo, and published the "Jiao Tong" photo in the second cover of the magazine I was responsible for, indicating that the people of Lankao made national musical instruments from the materials of paulownia trees; the planting of paulownia trees advocated by Jiao Yulu in those years is today the door to Lankao's prosperity. At the Jiao Yulu Memorial Hall, I saw the old tattered rattan chair. Jiao Yulu's liver disease recurred in pain, and he sat on this rattan chair against the liver area. The comrades of Lankao asked me to write a few words in the guestbook, and without thinking, I picked up the brush and wrote: "Live to the heart of the people and live forever." "In Lankao County, I saw several inscriptions that were Mu Qing's beautiful and round calligraphy. The people of Lankao could not forget Jiao Yulu, nor could they forget Mu Qing.

>> Author Profile:

Wei Jianmin: Editor of the Development Research Center of the State Council, author of a collection of essays and essays, "Looking for Danfeng Pavilion" and "Chen Gu Collection".

Author: Wei Jianmin

Editor: Zhou Yiqian

Editor-in-Charge: Zhu Zifen

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