Reading Story | Zhou Ping: The First Book of My Life

The first book of my life

◎ Zhou Ping

Everyone has their first book in life. The first book of my life, to be precise, was the first extracurricular book, but it was not easy to come by. It is "Three Hundred Newly Selected Tang Poems", which I still regard as a treasure and treasure it in the bookcase.

The author's treasured "Three Hundred Newly Selected Tang Poems"

I still remember when I was a child, my home was in a remote village, and my mother used to work as a private teacher in the village. Later, due to the lack of labor at home, he returned to the countryside to work as a farmer, while his father worked in another township, cycling back and forth for dozens of miles every week, three brothers and sisters, all in school, relying only on the father's meager salary to survive, and the family's life was hard not to say. Therefore, except for the textbooks required by his own school, there is no extra money to buy extracurricular books. However, in school, some students with rich families have ordered some extracurricular books and newspapers about literature such as "Children's Literature", "Juvenile Literature and Art", "China Teenagers Daily", etc., which often make me envious, and how I have always longed to get a book that really belongs to me!

But at that time, what a luxury it was to buy a book! And wanting to have a book I liked was my biggest desire as a teenager, and this idea lasted until Children's Day in 1982. I remember that it was dusk on the weekend, and my father came home earlier than usual, and the bicycle had not stopped yet, so he asked me to quickly take out his bag and said that he wanted to give me a gift. I ran over to it in surprise and carefully took it out, it turned out to be a book wrapped in newspaper, and when I opened it, it turned out to be a "Three Hundred Newly Selected Tang Poems". Listen to my father say that it is a Children's Day gift specially given to rural primary school students by the cultural station of his township government! Perhaps, to this day, the uncle or aunt who bought the book did not know how important this book played a turning point in my future life path, and my dear father never expected that this book would have put me on the road of literature since then, and I have never come out of love until now.

As soon as the newspaper was opened, the light green cover was published by the People's Publishing House, and the first page was opened, and the preface read: Tang poetry is a monument in the history of the development of classical poetry on the mainland, and it is also a glorious pearl in the treasure house of classical literature and poetry, which with rich and profound life content and brilliant and colorful artistic style, broadly and profoundly reflects the life of the Tang Dynasty in the past three hundred years, and has become a model of classical poetry, giving people historical reference and beauty enjoyment... Casually flipping through it, I turned to the Tang Dynasty poet Wang Bo's poem "Send Du Shaofu to Ren Shuzhou": "The city que assists the three Qins, and the wind and smoke look at the five Jin." Parting ways with Jun, the same eunuch. Confidant in the sea, if the end of the world is next to each other..." I remember when I was young, because this poem seemed to understand non-understanding, and suddenly fell in love with this book!

As the saying goes, "If you read three hundred Tang poems well, you can't compose poems and you can also chant." Since life is literate, three-year-old dolls will also memorize Tang poems. It is both a classic and a popular read. I think my father sent me this book, but he also hoped that I would memorize more famous articles and improve my literary accomplishment. He never imagined that this book would bring about an important turning point in my life in the future!

Since "Three Hundred Newly Selected Tang Poems" is the most important book at the beginning of my life, it is deeply integrated into the memories and emotions of my youth. To this day, I still love to read poetry, and occasionally write poetry, all the inspiration comes from the ancient poems I memorized when I was a teenager, and these ancient poetry arts are so important to me! I remember when I was in elementary school in the village, if it rained heavily because I was far from the school and could not go to school, I curled up in my hut and memorized the Tang poems that were particularly impressive. For example, the poems of Li Bai, Du Fu, and Li Shangyin, I think, this is another way of existence of "Three Hundred Newly Selected Tang Poems", a more solid and deeply rooted in the bone marrow of the way of existence is engraved in my life.

In addition to memorizing poetry, I began to fall in love with reading books. I remember that the first classical Chinese novel I read, "Water Margin", turned out to be at the wood stove of my aunt's house. At that time, my aunt was a private teacher in a small village in Chongzhou, because to be a public teacher, she had to study "Chinese Language and Literature", so she bought a lot of books in this profession, of course, all kinds of Chinese masterpieces and foreign masterpieces can be found on the desk where she prepares lessons. But because my aunt was going to take the exam, we weren't allowed to go to her room and flip through the books, so I had to peek.

Who knew that one day when cooking on the fire, I actually found a book that was blackened by the charcoal fire and thrown in the fire waste paper, and when I tore the piece of paper to ignite the fire, I suddenly found a lot of beautiful text, so I immediately took the piece of paper out of the fire quickly, and looked closely, ah, it was a novel. I just can't see the previous content, and I've burned many pages. The remaining content seems to start from the ninth time: Chai enters the door to recruit guests from all over the world, and Lin Chong beats the head of HongJiao. Because this novel was read by me while burning the fire, I am still particularly impressed more than 30 years later, and I still remember it well, and I still remember many plots of various Chinese and foreign novels such as "Red and Black", "Anna Karenina", "Quiet Don River", "Dream of the Red Chamber" and other Chinese and foreign novels that I peeked at my aunt's house at that time.

Because I loved books, I began to look for books everywhere, as long as I didn't let go of any pieces of paper related to literature. I remember a family building a house behind my house, and the tiles of the house were cement tiles. The family piled up a lot of cement tiles in the bamboo forest. At that time, the cement tiles were generally used as a face on the cement during the production process, so as soon as I finished my homework, I hid there, looking at the contents of the newspaper on the cement tiles one by one, while reading and looking at the second side, just like that, I did not subscribe to the newspaper, but I still learned a lot of social science knowledge from the expired newspapers on the cement tiles, and learned a lot of knowledge far beyond the knowledge of students of my age. I began to read and copy a lot, bring a book at any time, when I turned over the cement tiles, I saw good articles, I excerpted them, and insisted on memorizing a Tang poem every day, so that I went to junior high school, until high school, my Chinese and historical results were very good. Through all kinds of fragmented reading, I began to like Chinese history, read a lot of books on Chinese and foreign literature and philosophy, and embarked on the road of lifelong love of literature!

This kind of reading and uninterrupted learning has always strengthened my belief and nourished my character. From the book, I understood Fan Zhongyan's fine character of "worrying about the world before the world, and enjoying the happiness of the world after the world", and understood the patriotic noble sentiments of Wen Tianxiang's song "Who has not died since ancient times, leave Danqing to take care of Khanqing" when he crossed the zero Ding Yang. In particular, when Du Fu, a great realist poet, lived in Huanhuaxi, Caotang, Chengdu, he wrote in "Songs Broken by the Autumn Wind in the Huts" that "Ande Guangsha has tens of millions of homes, sheltering the world from the cold and the people are happy", such a broad mind made me deeply moved, established and firmly established and firmly unchanged ideals and pursuits throughout his life, and even after all kinds of hardships, he insisted on reading without stopping.

Therefore, I have always carried this book of poems with me and taken it out to memorize it whenever I have time. Later, he failed the college entrance examination, went to work, and also experienced ups and downs, but never gave up his faith, such a firm belief came from the Tang Dynasty poet Liu Yuxi's "Wave Taosha", "Although it is hard to blow out the yellow sand, it begins to reach gold." Reading this poem inspired my desire to struggle, I must not be able to yield to the arrangement of fate, to find the coordinates of my life again in my ordinary life and work!

While working hard, I began to study Chinese language and literature diligently. Later, he took the social college entrance examination and re-entered the university, studied hard for three years in the beautiful campus of the mountain city, and returned to work with full harvest. Since then, I have not given up reading, but expanded from pure literary history to social sciences to economics and historiography. I have always insisted: the road is long and the road is long, and I will seek up and down!

Nowadays, whenever my poetry or prose works appear in the newspapers or magazines, I feel relieved and recognized, and at any time, I always think of the first book in my life, "Three Hundred Newly Selected Tang Poems", which touched me and my father's sincere teachings to me. Those masterpieces that still shimmer with the brilliance of thought and art, together with the greatest and most selfless fatherly love in the world, like the eternal constellations in the celestial body, will accompany me throughout the course of my life.

(Edited by Duan Xueying)