Only reading and writing books can not be disappointed
○ Wei Li
According to the normal law, everyone reads first and then writes, and I am certainly no exception, and my obsession with books is a kind of nature. In the mid-to-late 1970s, I went to Xinhua Bookstore to see only a few kinds of political books, and by the time of the rise of the "Batch Forest Pikong", comic strips with corresponding themes began to appear, and the impression was that such a comic strip was about a few cents to a dime, and for the children at that time, there were a few cents in their hands, which was no worse than the heroism of today's rich man. But if you want to buy more villain books and constantly ask for money from your family, it is obviously unrealistic. So I began to use my brain, fortunately, at that time, the mountainous area where I lived had plants all over the mountains, and I accidentally flipped through the Chinese medicine manual commonly used by barefoot doctors during that time, and finally remembered the characteristics of several herbs, so I led my friends to the mountain to collect medicine, and then went to the pharmacy to sell money, and immediately after getting the money, I ran to the Xinhua Bookstore to buy the little people's books of my choice. The joy of the friends is indescribable, and then we lie on the big haystack and read them one by one, and finally hide the books in a nearby tree hole, so that they can be brought back and confiscated by their parents.
However, there will also be special readings at this special time, because it is necessary to review the "Water Margin" to criticize Song Jiang, but this kind of book has long been extinct during the "Cultural Revolution", so the relevant departments specially printed a batch of "Water Margin" for criticism and distributed it to relevant personnel, so that they can understand why Song Jiang is a capitulationist. For this reason, I also have such a book for criticism at home, and it is through this book that I first read about the history of the Song Dynasty. Although there were many words that I didn't know at that time, and some sentences were not easy to read, it exposed me to the ancient face, which inspired me to learn more about the ancient books.
Probably at the beginning of the end of the "Cultural Revolution", small bookstores began to sell "Dream of the Red Chamber", of course, I don't know what kind of book it is, but I saw that the people queuing at the entrance of Xinhua Bookstore could not look at their heads, which made me very curious, what kind of book "Dream of the Red Chamber" is, it has such a powerful charm, it is said that some people queue up for a day and a night in order to buy such a book. And I saw a set of three volumes of "Dream of the Red Chamber" for the first time at a friend's house, and the impression was that the dark green cover was printed with words that I didn't know, and later I understood that this was originally called traditional characters.
Although I couldn't understand it, I still wanted to use this book to explore why people lined up in such a long line, and after my friends' brothers and brothers read this book, I borrowed this book. On the day of school, I lay on the grass by the river and looked at the big book until the sun had set before I returned home.
But the result of this reading made me very disappointed, because I really could not read how wonderful the book was, and this incident made me begin to wonder, people's feelings may be very different, until I grew up, I re-read this book according to the engraved "Requirements in Ancient Literature", this re-reading made me finally understand: a person at different stages must read what he should read at that stage, without the corresponding experience, it is impossible to read the author's thoughts hidden behind the words.
After the "Cultural Revolution", especially after the reform and opening up, the production of books is like the basis of the moment when the universe was born, in just a few years, the books in xinhua bookstores can not be bought, because of the "Cultural Revolution" division, I did not know that there are books in the world that cannot be read, so I carefully swore: The books in the bookstore will buy one book, and I will definitely buy all the books in the world. I insisted on this ambition for more than ten years, and finally I was drowned by the sea of books, after all, my financial resources and academics could not match all the books in the world. However, this incident has planted the goodness of my book collection. This is as Fang Weng said: "When there are many diseases in life, there is no cure for unique bookworms." "Once a person is infected with the habit of collecting books, he is almost immune for life. In this way, my history of buying and collecting books has exceeded forty years.
The more you read, the more you have the desire to pour out, and when you learn to discern, you will speak out about a certain point of view. Decades ago, it was not easy to publish an article, let alone a monograph. My uncle is good at writing books, although he has carried a gun and crossed the river, but he still has a strong writing complex. I remember him writing several novels, and whenever I came to his house, he would pull out a thick stack of manuscript paper and tell me the story in the book with a fluttering eyebrow. I was daunted by his account, especially the stack of manuscript papers with squares printed on them, and I vividly remembered that each piece of paper had three hundred and sixty squares, and how long it would take for these thousands of pages to complete.
Unfortunately, none of these novels he wrote were ultimately published. Decades later, whenever I met him, I wanted to ask him where the manuscripts were now, but I felt that I should not touch the hidden pain in the old man's heart, so I have not opened my mouth.
The memory of that year is very deep, although it is not easy to publish a book, but I have always had a lofty yearning for writing. In addition to school, I also write some tofu block articles and submit them to different newspapers. I remember that in 1981, there was a newspaper that published my first article, for which I received five dollars in writing fees, and I was holding this remittance slip and excitedly showing off to all my friends. What kind of content this article was written, I can't recall, I only remember that when I read someone's article, I found that the narrative was not correct, and I found the correct answer in another book, which encouraged me at the same time, but also made me realize that broad knowledge is the real way to read, can not be read for interest, to read for knowledge is the king. The only way to gain more knowledge is to buy more books and read them one by one.
Over the next few years, I kept getting small articles into lead letters, and those fees became my new collections. With the passage of time, I liked the novel again, but suffered from the lack of famous teacher guidance, and then through a friend found a famous writer, under his guidance, I finally learned how to write a novel, in fact, as far as I felt at the time, the teacher was not to learn skills, but more to get an affirmation from the teacher, and this affirmation is more precious than any skill.
I remember that my teacher gave me a large stack of Selected Novellas, and asked me to read them over a holiday and then report to him which three were the best. At that time, I was very obedient, and I actually read the one-foot-tall magazine day and night for thirty days, and then reported to the teacher, I remember that the best three articles I selected were "Old Well" and "Red Sorghum", and I couldn't remember what the third one was, so I was praised by the teacher, which greatly enhanced my confidence in writing. A few years later, Zhang Yimou made "Red Sorghum" into a movie, and since then he and Gong Li have become very popular, but I have an inexplicable sense of pride, as if I have become their appreciator.
Unfortunately, my "talent" because of the job change abruptly stopped, about ten years, I wholeheartedly to engage in business expansion, although the work has success or failure, but in the process I did not stop reading, because do not write only read, but let themselves can calmly examine, and such an examination makes me have certain doubts about some famous works.
For decades, my love of collecting books has not been broken, because the collection of texts has made me study a large number of historical materials to cultivate a discernment of books, and it is precisely because of this process that my preferences have gradually shifted from literature to historiography, and this change has made my interest in fictional works fade, emphasizing the empirical evidence that must be based on words, and then gradually writing books, and this kind of writing is more of a combing of my own collection.
In the process of combing through the collection of books, I gradually found that there were some versions of the predecessors that did not point to the pain and itch, and precisely because it was their own income, they had time to play carefully, so I saw some points that had not been paid attention to by the predecessors, and then formed a series of books. From six or seven years ago, I handed over the books I wrote to the Guotu Publishing House for publication, and it came out at a rate of about one episode a year to the fifth episode, and these five episodes were all in my collection of manuscripts and banknotes, and the other series had not yet been covered. In the bibliographic edition academic community, I most want to know which predecessors have had some unpublished manuscripts, and my book introduction has played such a role. In the process of writing the book, I have a concept that every piece of the book must reveal details or academic points that others have not noticed, and I think that such a book has academic value.
Because of a fortuitous incident, I became interested in the ancient library. More than ten years ago, I spent five years intermittently visiting more than 140 library buildings across the country, and then with the help of Mr. Xu Yan, I collected the texts of these libraries and officially published them by Hebei Education Publishing House. Writing about ancient libraries in the form of a search, this is the first monograph, which is very popular with the industry. The book was reprinted three times before being discontinued due to personnel changes. However, over the years, I have continued this search and collected the relevant texts into "Finding the Bookstore", which was printed by CITIC Publishing House, and the search is still ongoing, and I look forward to finding more bookstores in the coming years. A cliché was once a buzzword: "Carry the search to the bookstore to the end".
In the process of searching for the library, I encountered too many historical sites, which made me have a new idea, that is, to expand the objects of the search, to measure the land of Shenzhou with my own footsteps, and then to sort out and write in different categories, so as to sort out all aspects of the Chinese relics.
After the search, I began to write different articles in a series, and now I have published "The Book of Findings", "The Book of The Poetry", "The Book of The Book of Seeking", "The Book of The Book of Seeking", "The Book of Seeking Words", "The Book of Seeking", "The Book of
The search for historical sites is not easy, because there are too many traces that have disappeared in the dust of history, and the preparatory work before the search is to systematically read a certain type of academic history, such as "History of Chinese Literature" alone, I read the works of the same name written by seven different authors, through such a series of studies, I gradually have a methodical understanding of various types of academic history, and for the owner of each article, through a series of collection of related research articles, and then read them. It also systematizes and completes my knowledge of the fragments of the stars and pieces that I once had, so that the image of the ancients in history in my heart is three-dimensional and full.
Therefore, both searching and writing have given me a systematic knowledge, and more importantly, this has given me a deeper understanding of the study of my beloved catalogue version. Regarding this discipline, in fact, there are different views in other disciplines, such as some people who disparage the catalog versioning as "book skin learning", these people think that the identification of the version is just from the form of the point of view, look at the binding, discern the handwriting, check the avoidance of words, the number of lines, and I have been engaged in this industry for decades, I know that the identification version is far less simple than the layman's identification, but I also admit that the version of the appraiser, neglect to sort out the content, of course, this is the problem of the art industry has a specialty. Born with an end, and knowledge without an end, the study of the catalog version involves encyclopedic knowledge, and no one can cover the world.
However, while emphasizing objectivity, can we listen to the opinions of some others and deepen the science of appraisal to a limited extent to the content? At least I don't have the strength to try this, and my search process and writing process are precisely my unexpected gains in this regard. By studying academic history in a series and then writing articles accordingly, I have become a little more intimate when looking through my collection.
Therefore, I think that the search for historical and cultural sites is not only to think about the past from this, but also to study the text. Over the past ten years, I have traveled to countless places, which has made me have a pain-like pain in the ancient language that has been said rotten - "reading thousands of books, walking thousands of miles", which makes me feel that many ancient words are actually the condensation of the knowledge of the ancients, and we just casually chant, and do not taste in detail.
As I have said above, I refer to it collectively as the "Seeking Series", and there is another "Book Series" that complements it. The so-called "book series" is the corresponding articles related to books and people, such as the ancient book auction that appeared more than twenty years ago, I have been pursuing this new way of book trading for many years, and then Wrote the corresponding monographs such as "Review of Chinese Ancient Book Auction", "Silverfish Spring and Autumn" and "Media of Ancient Books".
The study is the home of the soul of every book lover, for which many people have written their own study, and some people have published these articles, but it is unprecedented to depict the study of many book lovers from the perspective of one person. To this end, I spent several years searching for important book lovers one by one, and then collected them into "Walking in the Study", which was so popular that I was working on a sequel to the book with the encouragement of many friends.
Traditional bibliography, the compilation of the most important bibliography, for various reasons, some celebrities have not written their own bibliographies, which has brought difficulties to later generations to study the bibliographic ideas of the book owners. Lu Xun was a great writer, but he was also a bibliophile, but he never cataloged it during his lifetime. More than ten years ago, inheriting the good intentions of Mr. Sun Yu, director of the Lu Xun Memorial Hall, I was ordered to write a summary of Lu Xun's books, and then published in the "Lu Xun Research Monthly", after several years of serialization, these articles were published by the Fujian Education Publishing House in 2006. Ten years later, Mr. Huang Qiaosheng, deputy director of the Lu Xun Memorial Hall, told me that 2016 was an important time for the 80th anniversary of Lu Xun's death and the 135th anniversary of Lu Xun's birth, and his library was preparing to publish the Lu Xun Collection research books, and he wanted to ask me to write the ancient books in the "Lu Xun Collection", because he remembered the serialization and collection of that year.
Of course, I thanked Director Huang for his kindness, but I clearly told him that what I had written in that year was full of errors and omissions, and it was of course very humiliating to use it as a book, but since I trusted me to write this important work, I decided to overturn what I had written in the past to make up for my mistakes in that year. After a year of rewriting the whole book, I finally saw the three major editions of the "Lu Xun Collection and Ancient Books" a few days before the commemorative meeting, and the book also became a gift to the guests at that meeting.
Rewriting the "Lu Xun Collection of Books and Ancient Books" made me realize that the lack of solid skills will bring common sense errors to writing articles, and only by reading more and learning more can we write articles with fewer errors. Although it is said that after a few years, there will also be mistakes in the "Lu Xun Bibliography and Ancient Books", which shows that I am constantly growing, and I think this is also an important relationship between reading and writing.
Over the past twenty years, I have written more than a dozen other books, most of which are also related to books. And to have such a result, of course, is due to the fact that I can keep reading. People are not born to know, and if they want to be knowledgeable, they can only read books. In the future, for me, it is very likely that I will continue to walk on the road of reading and writing books. This makes me feel that reading books is the precursor to writing books, and that writing books is the result of reading books. Therefore, it can be said that for me, only reading and writing books can not be disappointed.
Source: "Forty Years of My Reading and Writing", edited by Hundred Flowers Literary and Art Publishing House, published in January 2019
Introduction to Forty Years of My Reading and Writing
This book focuses on the personal reading and writing experience and experience since the reform and opening up, and the authors of the articles included are all contemporary first-class scholars and literati, such as Lou Yulie, Zhong Shuhe, Xie Mian, Wen Jieruo, Ge Jianxiong, Zhao Heng, Xue Bing, Li Hui, Zhang Zongzi, Yan Feng, Wei Li, Dong Ningwen, Zhou Limin, etc., comprehensively showing the great changes in the reading and writing life of these scholars and literati since the reform and opening up, thus cutting into the narrative of traditional Chinese culture and historical macro background, so that readers can appreciate the charm of culture while appreciating elegant texts And realize the great significance of reform and opening up for China.
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