According to the State Administration of Cultural Heritage, the China Cultural Relics Conservation Foundation and other sources, Mr. Xie Chensheng, who was revered by the cultural and cultural circles as "Xie Lao", passed away on May 2 at the age of 100.
Xie Chensheng is a leading cultural relics scientist in China for cultural relics protection, and he has campaigned for the protection of cultural relics. He served as Zheng Zhenduo's secretary and assisted Zheng Zhenduo in compiling the Reference Atlas of Chinese History and the Catalogue of Cultural Relics Flowing into Japan After noon in China. In 1961, he presided over the drafting of the Interim Regulations on the Protection and Administration of Cultural Relics of the State Council. In 1982, he presided over the drafting of the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Cultural Relics, and wrote the preface to the "Encyclopedia of China and Cultural Relics Volume", which for the first time clearly put forward the definition of "cultural relics". He also promoted the establishment of a "Cultural Heritage Day" and advocated the establishment of several museums such as the Jingdezhen Museum of Ancient Ceramics Making, presiding over the reproduction of Suixian chimes and ancient precious textiles.
Xie Chensheng, July 1922 – May 2, 2022.
For most people, the name Xie Chensheng is like a babbling stream in the shade of a tree, flowing quietly and slowly, flowing into a valley where the sunset is sprinkled with gold—not too many people know his name, nor too many people to know his deeds. After all, for the new generation of people who are hurrying to the future today, he turns his head, faces the past, faces the things that are decaying and disappearing -- those ancient cultural relics, rust-stained Ding Yi, thin and brittle porcelain, dark and ancient calligraphy and paintings, inscriptions with long calligraphy and paintings, grottoes that have stood for thousands of years, ancient buildings with dust in Liang Dong... In the erosion of time, they inevitably lead to the fate of annihilation, just as the life of a century-long human being will eventually lead to death. And his life's work is to do everything in his power to prevent this process of annihilation. This makes him feel a bit like a rock in the torrent of the times, with open arms to protect the remnants of ancient civilizations that have been washed down by the ruthless years:
"I've been working on cultural relics all my life, and I can say I've done this all my life."
This is the summary of his life, and perhaps there is no more appropriate generalization than this.
The content of this article is a commemorative article written by journalist Lee Shane.
Written by | Lee Shane
impressions
The first and only time I visited him was in 2017. Before the meeting, I knew no more about him than the phrase ,"I've been working on cultural relics all my life, and I can say I've done this all my life.". His biography can naturally be easily retrieved on the Internet: he is Zheng Zhenduo's secretary, the presiding drafter of the Law of the People's Republic of China on the Protection of Cultural Relics, and the definition of the word "cultural relics" commonly used today is what he wrote in the preface to the "Encyclopedia of China' Cultural Relics Volume". He is the elder of the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and is an absolute authority in the field of cultural relics.
From the age of 24, when he assisted Zheng Zhenduo in compiling the Catalogue of Cultural Relics That Flowed into Japan After the Afternoon of China, to the year I met him, he was ninety-five years old. Seventy-one years of time have been poured into the cause of cultural relics, and there is no doubt that as long as his life continues, his cultural relics cause will continue to be carried out - as the older generation of cultural relics workers who worked side by side with him gradually withered away, I clearly knew that what I was going to visit was the only remaining century of fruits in the Chinese cultural relics industry.
Xie Chensheng co-compiled the Catalogue of Cultural Relics Flowing into Japan After noon in China. The picture shows a part of the re-publication of Sino-Western Bookstore in 2012.
This made me a little nervous. But not because of his fame and status, but for three reasons that are selfish in retrospect but feel realistic at the time.
First of all, he is over ninety years old, and I am worried about whether his memory and expression can communicate and answer questions normally. Secondly, earlier, more than one friend in the circle of culture and museum reminded me that Mr. Xie was a "die-hard element" in the protection of cultural relics and an "old antique living in the era of the planned economy", which made me worry that he would preach to me the official rhetoric in the rules and policies in an unquestionable tone at a glance - that way, I might as well go directly to copy the red-headed documents. Finally, and personally, I am most worried about the fact that a senior retired cadre of his age and rank, who naturally lives in a building, has a car, and is accompanied by secretaries and health personnel, thinks that he is going to meet through a whole set of red tape, a mascot of the cultural relics circle wrapped in the aura of honor, I feel the scalp tingling - I will be sincerely respectful because of a person's age and the virtues that match it, but it is really difficult to pretend to be obedient to the combination of status and glory.
Xu Pingfang, former director of the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, sent a letter of thanks to Chensheng, praising him for "exhausting his painstaking efforts, exhausting his blood, and being over the years old, and still struggling to rescue him.
I just thought about it all the way out of the subway and followed the address to the Anzhenli residential area where he lived. It was the twilight of winter in January, and everything was in disarray, and I looked around at the old grey pigeon sheds under the pale sky, and thought I had gone to the wrong place. The agreed time was 2:30 p.m., and I arrived more than half an hour early, because I had a previous crime of road blindness, so I deliberately turned around again, and finally determined that it was the gray old building in front of me, so I stepped into the black corridor like a toothless crocodile.
For a moment, I thought I was back in the tube building where I lived as a child, the gray walls, the gray cement floor, the gray iron railings, and the sunlight through the stairwell windows was also dimmed by this gray: "Would he really live in such a place?" I muttered in my heart and knocked on the door.
It was he who opened the door. The first sight of him instantly shattered all my previous worries and imaginations. In front of me was a thin old man with a yellow face, white hair like dry grass growing in the cracked land, and a face with ravines like a dried old radish. He leaned over and wore an old suit that old Beijingers called "rat skin," a style commonly worn by middle-aged workers on construction sites, with an earth-yellow woolen shoulder and unbuttoned. The knees seem to be arthritis, always bent, pulling on the slippers, walking up and "clicking, clicking".
This is not like a young reporter visiting the authoritative titans of the cultural relics industry, but rather like a community volunteer sending warmth to the elderly who are struggling to live. All my prepared greetings and greetings, along with the awkward smiles on my face, were swallowed back in an instant. Instead, he smiled and stretched out his thin hand to grab my arm: "It's cold outside, come in." ”
In 2000, Xie Chensheng visited and climbed the Yulong Snow Mountain in Lijiang, Yunnan, and this year Xie Chensheng was 78 years old.
Compared with the collectors who sit in the mansions full of antiques and treasures, the elder of the cultural relics industry who presided over the drafting of the first "Cultural Relics Protection Law of the People's Republic of China" in 1982 and clearly put forward the definition of cultural relics for the first time was just a cramped small room. Any visitor would be impressed by the books in his room: the gray and narrow aisle at the door was half occupied by stacks of monographs of all kinds, and in his only room of less than ten square meters, the books grew like vines from the floor to the writing desk and then to the entire wall. A writing desk was his study, a bed was his living room, and a sofa was his living room, and the three pieces of furniture floated in the sea of books, and each visitor had to trek through the knee-length sea of books to find a place to sit. ”
This is how I described his living environment in interviews that I still remember to this day. But what I didn't write about was that it was two and a half o'clock in the afternoon, when the sun was shining, but the aisle that greeted the door was dark, and the books stacked high against the wall were only slightly outlined by the light, like a gray-black shale cliff; nor did I write that I had a comical sense of adventure to dodge the rocks of the canyon as I crossed from there; what I did not write about was that when I saw the covers of several of them and the titles on the bare ridges, I could deduce it with my rough common sense of the collection. Less than a third of the book cliff would have been enough to accommodate the spacious apartment enjoyed by retired cadres of his rank. But in this cramped house, the only value of these books is to be looked through, consulted, and occupied by the space that is not vast here.
I was led into his study. The bookcase that impressed me most about this study, apart from the books that had almost no place to do, was the bookcase. Earthy yellow, the style of a filing cabinet in an office in the 1980s and 1990s. But there was no cabinet door, only a piece of cloth was pulled to cover the dust.
"You're young, you can sit on the bed, you're not bound."
I obediently sat down. In this narrow room filled with books, an old man and a young man sat facing each other like two reefs, and the wooden board under me made a "creak, creak" sound.
tale
Some stories are suitable for starting from the beginning, some stories are suitable for starting from the middle, and some stories are interesting to tell from anywhere. Xie Chensheng's story is such a story that can be thrown out at any time, and each one has come and gone.
"Oral History of Xie Chensheng", Dictated by Xie Chensheng, written by Yao Yuan, Life, Reading, Xinzhi Sanlian Bookstore, April 2018.
Xie Chensheng inscribed the Seven Laws for the Complete Collection of Cultural Relics Donated by New China.
If you start from the beginning, his origin of the Wujin Xie family is a famous and prestigious family in Jiangnan, his father and ancestors are familiar with yuan shikai, Xu Shichang, and other modern figures, his father Xie Zongtao, who is the secretary of Xu Shichang's presidential palace, later served as a senator under the Confucian warlord Wu Peifu, who was once regarded by Time magazine as capable of unifying the whole country, and then served as the secretary of Yu Xuezhong and Shang Zhen, the two chairmen of Hebei Province, in Tianjin. If carefully linked, this can be linked to a private perspective of modern history. His eldest brother, the historian Xie Guozhen, is still an insurmountable peak in Ming and Qing historiography. "He is more than twenty years older than me, and the people who come and go are celebrities like Tang Lan and Rong Geng, as well as Liu Pansui, a disciple of Liang Qichao, sun Haibo, an oracle bone expert, and others." If the conversations between the xie family's characters and their conversations in those years are recorded, it is difficult to guarantee that it is not a heavy modern study case.
Growing up in such a family lineage, being infected in such an environment, then carrying the noble spirit of the children of the family and the elegant atmosphere of celebrities and scholars, it was the most natural thing, but in Xie Chensheng's body, he could not see the slightest trace of these two breaths. Many years later, as he entered the new century with the chronological order, when I met him, the only trace of the old family that remained on him seemed to be the courtyard where he lived in Beijing, and until his twilight years, he still clearly remembered the address "No. 1, Xiaoshuimill Hutong, Jinshifang Street, Baita Temple":
"The house in the small water wheel alley is a style Lei family, which is particularly good, but unfortunately it was demolished later, and the place was used to build a financial building." One entrance door is a yard, around it is another yard, then there is a weeping flower gate, and there is another yard. Three entrances in front and back, two cross-courtyards in the east and west, there are kitchens, toilets, a total of thirty or so rooms. There are cloves and rattan racks in the courtyard, and it is really comfortable to live. ”
The Xie family brothers and sisters took a group photo, from right to left, Xie Guoxiang (tenth brother), Xie Chensheng (eighth brother), Xie Xuqing (fourth sister), Xie Guozhen (seventh brother), Xie Guojie (sixth brother).
"If I were nostalgic for the old society, some of them would be nostalgic, but I still yearn for revolution", when Xie Chensheng talked about the old courtyard in his twilight years, he was not so much reminiscing about the qingguang of Shao Nian as it was a lament for the protection of today's cultural relics and ancient buildings. He mentioned the courtyard of No. 22, the back street of the art museum, which was the old residence of Zhao Zichen and Zhao Luorui, and the rare elephant-eyed brick carvings could still see the style of the Ming Dynasty. "I went to the scene to see, the yard is very beautiful, I am firmly opposed to demolition!" But after two years of tug-of-war, this ancient courtyard, which is older than the Xie family's old residence, was still turned into ashes under the reinforced concrete building in the rumble of bulldozers.
The words of elegance and modesty to describe the old scribes are completely inappropriate to use on Xie Chensheng, but on the contrary, they are enthusiastic and straightforward, and these words to describe retired workers are most appropriate to him. If it wasn't for his own confession, you can't imagine that when he was young, he also wrote "red leaves and autumn leaves, sent to the paper and pasted, reminiscing about the autumn of the old courtyard, thousands of miles of guests." Sorrowful guests, the two places of lovesickness tied "such a sour and gentle little order."
In the winter of 1942, Xie Chensheng's "Laughing Order" in Xi'an was recorded in the text" of "Red Leaves and Autumn Leaves".
This poem was written when he was a teenager in Xi'an. When he was 20 years old, he was in Beiping, which was under the iron hooves of the Japanese Kou, and his heart was thinking of Yan'an, the "holy land of revolution" that young people privately circulated at that time. The story of the young Xie Chensheng's defection to Yan'an, if told by another person who is more adept at rhetoric and agitation, will surely be an adventure legend that wanders between the wars in his home country. However, the story told by Xie Chensheng is so frank that he and his younger brother Xie Guoquan and xie Ying, the daughter of the eldest brother Xie Guozhen, put together the tuition fees, sold their bicycles, and made up the cost of the trip to Yan'an. He did not shy away from the fact that the beginning of this teenage pilgrimage was a passionate impulse of the young man: "When we left, the family did not know. At that time, I did not have any contact with the underground party of the CCP, and I was completely blind, and I did not know what the relationship between the KMT and the CPC was. We thought, first go to Xi'an, go to Shaanxi, won't we be able to get to Yan'an? At that time, we had not yet graduated from middle school, and our brains were simple. After sending Xie Guoquan and Xie Ying away first, the family's reaction was to "turn the world upside down": "What does this mean?" Where did they go? You're together all day, and you know where they're going. ”
"I had no choice but to tell the truth, saying that we were going to Yan'an, and they would go first and I would go later." What happened? My family said, 'You go, you go!' Got it, we'll give you money, you go! ’”
Such a pilgrimage adventure that should have been a secret pilgrimage to Yan'an was unfolded in Xie Chensheng's oral memories in such a straightforward and humorous way.
And the most wonderful part of this story is that until the victory of the War of Resistance, Xie Chensheng did not go to Yan'an: "In Xi'an, I don't know the underground party, and there is no way to just yearn for Yan'an, so I have to think of going back." But don't dare to go back to Beiping, you ran away from the Japanese know ah! After that, he went to Anyang with two companions, hoping to go from Anyang to The Taihang Mountains to Yan'an. However, the soldiers were in chaos, the companions were pulled back to Beiping, the road ahead was blocked, and he became the commander of the light pole, so he had to work as a young man in a local affordable shop in Anyang, and then to a small school teacher in Anyang County. After the victory, his eldest brother Xie Guozhen passed by Anyang and took him to Shanghai to buy books for the Northern University led by the Communist Party of China—the first time he had a connection with Yan'an, where he was concerned.
In December 1948, Zheng Zhenduo was in his study room in Shanghai.
It was the turn of the spring and summer of 1946, and it was at this time that he met Zheng Zhenduo and became his assistant, helping him compile the Catalogue of Cultural Relics That Flowed into Japan After the Afternoon of China. The starting point of Xie Chensheng's cultural relics career also began. And this starting point, in his dictation, is also frank and two words. It was the third day he accompanied his eldest brother Xie Guozhen to Shanghai, and the epigrapher Xu Senyu invited Xie Guozhen to dinner with him, accompanied by Zheng Zhenduo. During the banquet, Zheng Zhenduo mentioned that he was busy receiving enemy and fake cultural relics, and he was also founding the "Democracy" magazine, and he urgently needed help, so Xu Senyu recommended Xie Chensheng along his topic:
"Xu Senyu said: 'Xie Chensheng has just arrived, he is a young man who has nothing to do, and he is also the younger brother of Lord Gang (Xie Guozhen's character).' Isn't it just right that this young man is helping you? I said, 'That's great, I'm so in favor of it, isn't that the same as being a student for you?' Zheng Zhenduo said, "Well, that's it." ’”
Xie Chensheng's lifelong event was finalized in these three sentences of dialogue. And he entered the State Administration of Cultural Heritage in 1949, which is also the choice he finally made for him in a few conversations with Zheng Zhenduo:
"Before the founding of New China, Zheng Zhenduo had consulted me and was ready to go somewhere. He said, 'I brought you here to let you go to the Antiquities Bureau, but what do you think of yourself and what are you willing to do?' Because my family is full of people who are engaged in learning, I also feel that I should engage in learning and do research. So before he transferred me to the Antiquities Bureau, I told me what I thought. I said, 'I've been with you for so long, you're a university student, and I want to be a scholar, and I want to do something and learn from you.' Aren't you an academic, can I go to the institute? I can also go to the Institute of Literature, and I can also go to the Institute of Archaeology. He said, 'Don't go anywhere, you're in the Antiquities Bureau.' I asked, 'What's wrong?' He said, 'There are not many people in the Antiquities Bureau who are fully knowledgeable at the moment, so you are doing it here.' ’”
In the winter of 1952, the staff of the Cultural Relics Bureau took a group photo in front of the Chengguang Hall in Tuancheng, and the ninth right in the last row was Xie Chensheng.
"The protection of cultural relics is the first, and there is no research without protection." The protection of cultural relics is also an important thing for you, just do it here, and there is a shortage of people now. Heritage preservation is important, and you don't think it's not learning. Zheng Zhenduo's words, for Xie Chensheng, became his lifelong motto, and it can also be said that he has become his lifelong persistence. In a way, perhaps only a person like him who is frank, honest and enthusiastic until his twilight years can stick to this sentence as an unswerving creed. When I told him the news that the glass wall at the entrance of the Xiuyuan Temple in Shanxi had been stolen in its entirety that winter, he leaned heavily on his chair and angrily patted the table with his hand: "I knew it would be like this, it would always be like this." ”
Jiexiu police recovered the stolen Ming Dynasty cultural relics Jiexiuyuan Temple "Erlong Play Pearl Glass Wall Heart". (Pictured from the Jiexiu Municipal Public Security Bureau)
His hands were so thin, but when he slapped the table, the dark blue blood vessels were exposed through the rough skin, and it still felt a kind of piercing sting.
claim
Frankness is sometimes not always pleasant, and it can often be stinging. Those who ridicule Xie Chensheng for being stubborn, conservative, and "die-hard elements" are largely because of his frankness, always pouring out what he thinks undisguisedly, and does not care about the words of others. He has some seemingly shocking views, no lack of indignation, but they are not pretentious, but from the heart.
If you understand it from the fierest sincerity of a conservator of cultural relics, you will understand his painstaking heart. He has a so-called "violent theory" that is often cited, that is, the destruction and loss of cultural relics after the "Cultural Revolution" is much greater than the loss caused by the "destruction of the four olds". But in fact, this is just an excerpt taken out of context, and the meaning that Xie Chensheng really expressed was covered up by these fragmented emotional "violent theories". On that visit, I specifically asked him this question, and he replied:
"I have put forward a statement on many occasions that the degree of destruction of cultural relics in the past 20 years is no less than that of the Cultural Revolution. I say this for a reason. From the early 1950s to the late stage of the 'Cultural Revolution', except for the early period of the 'Cultural Revolution', all these promulgated measures and regulations for the protection of cultural relics were strictly enforced, the power of the State Administration of Cultural Relics was very large, Premier Zhou Enlai personally grasped the work of cultural relics, Wang Yeqiu, director of the Cultural Relics Bureau, could directly report to Premier Zhou, and many of the programs and policies for the protection of cultural relics were specially approved by the State Council. In the early days of the Cultural Revolution, many cultural relics were destroyed. In 1967, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China issued a document calling for the protection of cultural relics throughout the country (according to this document, this document refers to the "Opinions of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on the Protection of Cultural Relics and Books in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution", promulgated on May 14, 1967), and soon the frenzied destruction of cultural relics was curbed, and some important cultural relics departments even sent troops to garrison. Since then, the rules and regulations for the protection of cultural relics can be said to have been prohibited.
However, since the 1980s, with the opening of the cultural relics market, on the one hand, the pursuit of monetary interests has led some people to carry out cultural relics crimes under the banners of 'the dead should contribute to the living', 'if you want to be rich, first rob the tomb, and become a million yuan household overnight'. On the other hand, although the law has been established, how to enforce the law and how to enforce the law has become a difficult problem. Many laws and regulations on protection in black and white are clearly written, but what should be done if local governments and departmental organs do not implement them? In the past, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage was directly under the State Council, but now it has become an agency under the ministry, and its power has been reduced. When local cultural relics are destroyed, cultural relics departments negotiate with local governments and often end up having to submit to local governments. The law is very strict, but it cannot be enforced, the allocation is not in place, and the protection is not strong. What kind of role can it play just by catching a few criminals during the strike hard? ”
If he is not excerpted from the context of his original speech and the full text, I am afraid that many people will still be blinded by those few fragmented words. When he talks about people and events in the past, he also expresses his own opinions and likes and dislikes with a frank and unsparing attitude. He does not hide the evil of the subject of his story because of his exalted status or prestige. In his oral recollections, he detailed the demolition of The ChaoyangMen Gate in Beijing in 1956. Speaking of the origin of demolition, he said:
"In 1956, Beijing decided to demolish the Chaoyang Gate. Wu Han advocated demolition, as well as Xue Zizheng, secretary general of Beijing Municipality. There is a process of dismantling the city wall of Beijing, the first is the demolition of the city gate tower, and then the city wall. At that time, there was a lot of debate in all walks of life about the demolition of the city wall, many experts resolutely opposed the demolition, and many people in the Cultural Relics Bureau, including many people, demanded the protection of the city wall. As Liang Sicheng said: Tearing down a city tower in Beijing is like cutting off a piece of my flesh; ripping off a section of Beijing's city wall is like peeling off a layer of my skin. The Cultural Relics Bureau also did not agree to this, and Zheng Zhenduo resolutely opposed the demolition. ”
"I am the same as anyone today who writes letters, this point I am very frank, I am not right about things, whether this person is good or not is your evaluation, but if this matter is a fact, how to evaluate, how to evaluate." I am a thorough materialist", this is why Xie Chensheng dares to speak out, he looks into his own heart, and believes in his frankness and sincerity. However, he was always easy to bring about his own merits in the protection of cultural relics, unless these deeds could be linked to his lifelong belief that "the protection of cultural relics is the first, without protection there is no research", he was willing to explain them, but he always maintained a painful worry, and only at this time did he look like a scholar of the traditional era, standing under the ranks, ready to write and cut advice with the momentum of "breaking the pillar with the head".
The members of the calligraphy and painting appraisal team took a group photo, from left to right: Xie Chensheng, Liu Jiu'an, Yang Renkai, Xie Zhiliu, Qi Gong, Xu Bangda and Fu Xinian.
In his oral recollections, he rarely mentions that he is one of the seven members of the National Calligraphy and Painting Appraisal Group established in 1983, standing shoulder to shoulder with Xie Zhiliu, Qi Gong, Xu Bangda, Yang Renkai, Fu Xinian, and Liu Jiu'an's world-famous collection of calligraphy and paintings. When he talked about this absolutely glorious thing, he only said lightly that he was sent by the Cultural Relics Bureau to coordinate the work, and almost did not mention his achievements in the identification of calligraphy and painting. On the contrary, he always repeated that he had only taken the high Chinese and that "he had not yet graduated from middle school." But regarding his true level of education, Mr. Ma Heng, director of the old Palace Museum and a world-famous collector and epigrapher, has a brief but sharp comment, written in his diary on February 1, 1950:
Xie Chensheng came to talk about it, he was a brother of the Lord, and he had a deep foundation in the old learning. Oracle bones and gold documents are prescribed. ”
This year, Xie Chensheng was only 28 years old.
As early as 1946, as Zheng Zhenduo's assistant, he assisted in editing and publishing the "Collection of Famous Paintings Since the Tang and Song Dynasties" and "Collection of Ancient Chinese Paintings Collected Outside the Territory" compiled by the collector Zhang Hengwei. In 1983, he traveled with him all over the country to visit the calligraphy and painting appraisal team members, and they were already his close friends. However, when I visited his humble home, I looked around and found almost no artifacts except books on antiquities, history and archaeology: "This is the rule set by the Antiquities Bureau from the very beginning, and no one who works on cultural relics should buy and collect cultural relics." ”
This article was later personally written into the "Code of Conduct for Cultural Relics Staff" promulgated by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage in 1981: "Cultural relics workers are strictly forbidden to use their powers to purchase cultural relics for themselves, and it is forbidden to buy and sell cultural relics to profit from it" - when he and I read these things, perhaps did not notice a bitter smile that I tried to restrain, and my mind instantly came up with several spacious and bright rooms, glass cabinets, and multi-treasure cabinets with utensils and bottles of various dynasties, with their masters' achievements in the professional field. I have no doubt that these collections are absolutely authentic.
Xie Chensheng also has his own collection, in addition to the archaeological materials and catalogues of cultural relics that were purchased cheaply and are now expensive, the precious memories of those old friends are also his treasures. In August 1983, the first day meeting of the appraisal work of the National Calligraphy and Painting Appraisal Group was held at the State Guesthouse, No. 15, Dongjiaomin Lane. Everyone gathered together, and Xie Chensheng, as an adviser to the Cultural Relics Bureau, spoke first. In the eyes of all, he solemnly took out a cigarette:
"This was given to me more than twenty years ago, before Zhang Heng died, after his death, I have been closed and smoking, and then experienced that decade of catastrophe, so easy to preserve to this day, just to wait for today's big day..."
He opened the cigarette and handed it to everyone present.
The rest of the words
The past is like smoke. This metaphor may be so clichéd that in the eyes of many, it has become a colloquial phrase and has lost the imagery it contains. But at noon when he learned of his death, he looked at the dust hanging in the sunlight shining on the desk, sometimes shining in the sun, sometimes flying out of the light, hiding in the darkness, even if he reached out, he could not catch one of them. I could only watch them emerge before my eyes and disappear again.
I remembered that after that visit, I had called him and talked to him about some of the difficulties of the protection of ancient folk buildings at that time and the inability of myself and my friends to do anything about it. He said:
"Xiao Li, don't be afraid of them, what you are doing is a good thing, the right thing, you should let them be afraid of you!"
But...... I know that at the age of 100, I should not be so sad. Perhaps, it should also be comforted that he died with such a high life, which more or less proves that there will be good rewards for good deeds in this world, and he has devoted his life to prolonging his life for those cultural relics and monuments, and heaven has also repaid him with a long time.
Liu Tuo and Wang Tianxiang inspected ancient houses in Fujian, and they jointly participated in the protection of the ancient city of Lianjiang in Fuzhou in 2018, which is now listed as a provincial-level historical and cultural block.
However, when I wrote this text, I still couldn't help but cry, choking up a few times and couldn't hold the pen. In the past six months, I have lost two young friends, Liu Tuo and Wang Tianxiang, who are equally persistent and determined, with their sincerity and enthusiasm to protect and record the ancient buildings that will eventually disappear or even disappear. Some, such as Lianjiang in Fuzhou, they successfully protected it, while others, such as the old ming and qing mansions in Jiujiang, Jiangxi, such as the murals of the ancient temple in Liaoyang, can only watch them never return in time and space. Finally, they left, too. I don't know if there really is a world where they will meet, where the erosion, decay, and vanishing relics will also stand intact. All I know is that the sincerity, the persistence, the steadfastness, the passion that was once fierce, the ideals that have not yet been completed, are now gone.
I remembered the scene when I took a picture of Xie Chensheng before I left that day. He deliberately buttoned the shoulders of the woolen shoulders, and stroked the folds on the suit, his white hair was originally unkempt, and he also used his hands to cut it. Sitting up straight, he said to me:
"Laugh a little and let those people see that Xie Chensheng is still alive and well!"
Xie Chensheng and his study. (The author of this article took it in 2017)