On 23 April, the 27th World Book Day came. Almost every weibo post of Jiang Zhen, the annual champion of the 2022 Chinese Poetry Conference, is related to books. In an interview with Nandu and N video reporters, he quoted a poem by Song Ren Weng Sen to describe this feeling: "The music of reading is endless, and the Yaoqin is a song to fumigate the wind." "The joy of reading is like bathing in the gentle wind and playing a song with a yaoqin.
In the middle of March this year, the "2022 Chinese Poetry Conference" was simulcast for ten sessions, and the appearance of Jiang Zhen made many viewers feel refreshed. The boy who can chant "flower" and recite "moon" in the Super Flying Flower Order is a post-00s "police second generation" who is currently in his junior year in the Department of Public Security of the Railway Police College. His father, Jiang Fangcheng, was also shortlisted for the "Hundred People's Group", dressed in a straight police uniform, and competed with his son. After Jiang Zhen won the championship, the picture of father and son saluting each other touched countless people in front of the screen.
Despite receiving a lot of attention through the show, Jiang Zhen still felt that he was "more suitable for ordinary work close to the people" and hoped to become an excellent railway policeman like his father. But he also firmly believes that poetry books are imperceptibly nourishing life. No matter what profession you are engaged in, you can maintain a "poetic heart".
Jiang Zhen.
Xi Wu Xiuwen
After the finals of the "2022 Chinese Poetry Conference" were broadcast, the good news of Jiang Zhen's victory spread among his teachers and classmates.
"I know him better, and I don't think it's a surprise." The speaker was Yang Hailong, Jiang Zhen's squadron leader (equivalent to a counselor at an ordinary university) at the Railway Police Academy, who introduced to the Nandu reporter, "Jiang Zhen's love for poetry is indeed different from ordinary people. At our weekly squadron meeting, as long as he went up to speak, he would quote ancient poems to express his meaning; our school has held many competitions, such as book review competitions and theme essay contests, and students generally write modern texts, but Jiang Zhen almost all write poems or literary texts. ”
He Languo, director of the public basic teaching and research department of the university, is a teacher of Jiang Zhen's "University Language" class. He recalled to the south, "This course was held in the first year of the university, a large classroom of more than 100 people. In the first lesson, I asked my classmates to 'show it' and say the ancient poems they had memorized. When it was Jiang Zhen's turn, he carried a lot of it at once, and he couldn't stop it... I was a little confused after hearing it, is there really this poem? At that time, I was on the podium, gave him a thumbs up from a distance, and 'liked' him in the way of the Internet age, but I didn't expect him to return an ancient arch salute to me, which left a deep impression on me. ”
As a police cadet who loves traditional culture, Jiang Zhen seems to have "got used to" this surprised look.
He laughed, "Probably many people think that the people who go to military schools and police academies, boys are 'simple in mind and developed in limbs', and girls are all 'not fond of red clothes and love arms'." In fact, although our school implements police management, police cadets also have their own lives and hobbies, and in their spare time, they can also participate in interest clubs such as the Literary Club, the Hanfu Club, and the Animation Club. ”
Jiang Zhen himself did not participate in the club, but he would use the fragmented time to memorize and write poems in addition to the fixed schedule of exercises and classes. "For example, when I am queuing up in the cafeteria to buy food, for 5 to 10 minutes, I will open my mobile phone, look at the poems once or twice, and accumulate a lot of verses over time." Some of the "prose sentences" he uses his mobile phone to read are encountered in the process of reading, and some are encountered in life - such as when visiting museums, he will search for the original poems on the Internet, and if he is interested, he will paste them into the "memos" of his mobile phone, and use fragmentary time to read and digest.
Jiang Zhen's strong interest in poetry comes largely from the demonstration and enlightenment of his father Jiang's equations.
After graduating from the Zhengzhou Public Security Cadre College of the Ministry of Railways (now the Railway Police College), he became a railway public security grassroots policeman, but poetry and classical literature were hobbies he had since his youth, and he deeply infected his son. When Jiang Zhen was very young, his father began to teach him to recognize words and lead him into the magnificent world of poetry.
Jiang Zhen (left) in life with father Jiang Equation.
Nowadays, the way father and son get along is the envy of many people. Jiang Zhen proudly said to the Nandu reporter, "Usually we all use poetry to play games, for example, when we go out to play, the road is farther, my father and I may play Flying Flower Order, poetry solitaire, or simply more than who memorizes the poems, so to pass the time, but also to communicate with each other." ”
During the New Year's Festival, the passenger flow increased sharply, and the father often had to guard the safety of passengers at his post and could not be reunited with his family. At this time, Jiang Zhen would pay tribute to him by sending letters and poems. For example, this year's Spring Festival, he wrote to his father: "The golden river is full of jade passes, and the chao ma ce and the sword ring are." And the Jiang Equation handwriting gave back the next link of this poem: "Three springs of white snow return to Qingzuka, and the Yellow River surrounds the Black Mountain." Signed "Dad", in order to express the desire to protect the mountains and rivers.
A journey to fulfill your dreams
Appearing on CCTV's "Chinese Poetry Conference" is a "dream journey" for Jiang Zhen.
During the Spring Festival in 2016, this program turned out to be a reality, and quickly set off a traditional cultural upsurge of "the whole family, old and young, and the world and the north share this feeling".
Jiang Zhen began to watch the show very early, and what touched him a lot was Wu Yishu, the overall champion of the second season and known as the "National Talented Girl", "Because we were the same age, we were all in high school at that time." I saw the profile on the Internet and found that she was dozens of days younger than me. Later, I learned that she was admitted to The Xinya College of Tsinghua University. Another player who impressed him was Xia Hongpeng, a "stomachless" policeman, "When he participated in the show, he just had a total gastrectomy, and he said that he wanted to set an example for his little daughter on stage, hoping to come to the "Chinese Poetry Conference" with her in his lifetime." ”
The gripping game mechanism makes Jiang Zhen in front of the TV set a little "skill itchy". In 2018, as a senior in high school, he signed up for the audition for the fourth season of the "Chinese Poetry Conference" with tens of thousands of poetry lovers, and made a special trip from Jiaozhou, Shandong Province, to Jinan, one of the "offline sub-competition points". "At that time, I remember that it was a lottery group, 5 people in a group of 1, facing 3 examiners together. One of them is the director of the column group, equivalent to the role of 'host', one is like a university teacher, who will ask some more academic questions, and there is a similar 'clerk' who has been buried in the record. He remembered Nandu. After completing the self-introduction, the contestants need to answer some poetry common sense questions, and then the competition "Flying Flower Order." In that audition, Jiang Zhen failed to enter the "Hundred People Group" in the fourth season, but this small defeat did not weaken his interest in poetry culture in the slightest.
"Every season of the Chinese Poetry Conference, there are some verses that are difficult for us to access in our daily lives." Speaking of this, Jiang Zhen casually recited the title of one of the programs, "For example, there is a question in the first scene of the sixth season, which was issued by Academician Luan Enjie, the first commander-in-chief of the lunar exploration project, and asked 'Which of the following poems raises the question that our Chang'e project can answer?' I looked at it at the time, and I didn't know these three verses in the option, and I had never heard of them. For example, 'Ask Chang'e who planted the Pasa tree in the first place', and 'Try to ask Chang'e with a cup of wine, the moon temple is winding and the road is geometric'... Later, I specifically found all these poems and memorized them. ”
In 2021, when the 2022 Chinese Poetry Conference launched the audition, Jiang Zhen was already a junior. After obtaining the consent of the school, he participated in the audition again, entered the "Hundred People's League" as he wished, and was selected into the "Family Group" with his father.
The audience who followed this show was deeply impressed by this police cadet in a police uniform and tall and tall.
Many links set up in the program have a countdown to answering questions, and the scene is also equipped with sound effects and lighting effects, which fully test the mentality of the contestants, but Jiang Zhen has always behaved very calmly and calmly. In the second game of the team's poetry solitaire, several consecutive teammates failed to answer the poem that began with the word "fire", and when it was Jiang Zhen's turn, he thought about it a little and said "the fire companions are busy", which attracted the applause of the audience... From becoming the "representative of the winning team" to the final peak showdown, it can be called a smooth sailing.
However, in the final game, Jiang Zhen still encountered difficulties: at that time, Yang Huishan, a non-hereditary heir, while demonstrating glass firing, gave them a question and asked them to guess a poem containing the word "虬" describing pine trees. At that time, including Jiang Zhen, the top four players on the field all handed in white papers.
"When I saw the keyword '虬', I thought, as if I had lived for 20 years, and I had never memorized a poem with this word in it, could it be an unnamed poem written by a particularly unknown poet?" Jiang Zhen recalled. The final answer was revealed, and the poem was "In the empty mountain where the ghost people live, the old pines are all dragons", and the author is Zeng Ji, a famous poet of the Southern Song Dynasty. "Zeng Ji was Lu You's teacher, and he had a seven-sentence poem called "Three Qu Dao Zhong", 'Plums are yellow and sunny every day, but the creek is full but the mountains are traveling.'" The green yin did not reduce the road of time, adding four or five sounds of yellow orioles. 'It was collected from elementary school textbooks.' So after the answer was announced, I had a sense of sudden enlightenment, and at the same time I couldn't help but sigh that our Chinese poetry is indeed a vast sea, and I just explored the tip of its iceberg. ”
Jiang Zhen and his father saluted each other.
For Jiang Zhen, this show was his target for climbing, and he never expected to win the championship. On March 31 this year, Jiang Zhen wrote on Weibo: "In the seventh year of the "Chinese Poetry Conference", I was lucky enough to be the winner, maybe this is what Bai Juyi said, 'identification of materials must wait for seven years'. ”
Poetry is the same
Walking out of school and participating in large-scale TV programs not only gave Jiang Zhen the opportunity to communicate with experts and scholars such as Kang Zhen, Wang Liqun, Meng Man, Yang Yu, and Li Bo, but also allowed him to get acquainted with many folk masters and find a group that was "harmonious and different".
The "Thousand People in the Clouds" of the 2022 Chinese Poetry Conference.
This year's show continues the sixth season's new "Thousand People in the Clouds". Jiang Zhen revealed that the program team really found 1,000 poetry lovers "Cloud Connection". "The first time I saw the 'Thousand People in the Clouds' in a circle of screens around the recording site, I was shocked. At the beginning of each show, we (the on-site contestants) and the online 'Thousand People Group' chanted the opening poem together, which can really be said to be imposing! ”
Between recordings, Jiang Zhen will also consult with the players of the on-site "Hundred People Group", among whom there are workers from all walks of life who are "with special skills", as well as teenagers who play the flute and girls in Hanfu, who are attracted to each other because they love traditional Chinese culture. "When we players get together, most of us will talk about poetry, talk about what we can memorize, what we can't memorize... If you use an ancient text to describe it, it is 'talking and laughing with Hongru, and there is no white Ding'. ”
Previously, Jiang Zhen had been shortlisted for the CCTV "Chinese Character Dictation Conference" with the performance of Qingdao City Champion and the sixth place in Shandong Province, and also participated in the prefectural and municipal Sinology Competition, and while winning awards, he also got to know some of his peers, but most of them were students of similar age. This time, because the "Chinese Poetry Conference" is not limited to the age and occupation of the contestants, he has more "yearless friends".
According to Jiang Zhen, the oldest contestant in this season of the show is 72 years old, and the youngest is only 7 years old. There are many children with excellent poetry, such as 12-year-old Xu Yixuan, who can rank among the top 6 in the country with their own strength. During the competition, Jiang Zhen was impressed by the performance of these young players many times, "For example, when playing poetry solitaire, some of our general 'helpless' verses, such as 'choking' of 'even speechless condensation', how to pick up the next sentence, people can also answer." ”
After winning the championship in the show, Jiang Zhen felt that his life had not changed much, and he would not shake his original career choice.
When filling in the college entrance examination, he chose his father Jiang Equation's alma mater, the Railway Police Academy, hoping to become an excellent railway policeman. "Because my father was a railway policeman and my mother was a lawyer, I was very eager to work in the law since I was a child."
As for whether he wants to engage in literary or cultural research, Jiang Zhen said very modestly, "I think the treasure house of literature needs to be explored with sincerity, and I may not be able to reach this level myself." Top intellectuals can find pleasure in academic research, and I may be more suitable for ordinary work close to the people. ”
For him, the love of ancient poetry and literary reading is more like opening up a new dimension to daily life, where there is a enjoyment of nothing about matter, only about spirit, and is the "habitat of the soul".
On personal Weibo, Jiang Zhen often participates in the lottery activities held by major libraries and museums in China, occasionally forwarding book lists and book profiles, and occasionally publishing short book reviews. His squadron leader Yang Hailong also told Nandu reporters that Jiang Zhen's borrowing volume at school is very rich, "What impressed him most is that he really loves to read and is a studious child." ”
Usually, in addition to reading and memorizing poems, Jiang Zhen will also create his own Gelug poems, using the Pingshui rhyme inherited from the Song Dynasty. In addition, he also likes traditional music and art, especially some of the literary passages in cross-talk, such as "Article Society" - "the so-called 'Wen is afraid of the Article Society", and Wu is afraid of "The Great Bodyguard".' In fact, the classic cross-talk passage is not only a window for our contemporaries to understand ancient society, but also reflects the ingenuity of the older generation of artists. Talking about his hobbies, Jiang Zhen said that he is not a person who is "mud and ancient", and usually writes simplified characters, but when visiting the museum, he will deliberately leave a message in traditional characters, "because I think that cultural relics and ancient books are the channels for the 'dialogue' between modern people and the ancients, so in that scene, it is appropriate to use traditional characters." ”
In Jiang Zhen's view, ancient poetry has never been a strange word in the pile of old paper, but the soul and indomitable spirit of the Chinese nation that have been passed down for thousands of years. He told the Nandu reporter: "I have always felt that poetry is hidden in our souls, in our genes, in our blood. ”
Producer: Nandu Instant
Written by: Nandu reporter Hou Jingjing intern Zhang Chunchun Courtesy of the interviewee