There is a person who can be called the "king of the screen" of chinese textbooks.
Whether it is a middle school textbook or a high school textbook, you can see his works - "Spring", "Back Shadow", "Lotus Pond Moonlight", "Venice", and now even primary school students have to learn his "Green".
Under such a high-frequency, wide-ranging "round-robin bombardment", it is difficult for you to know his name.
However, Zhu Ziqing has recently had an affair because of "Lotus Pond Moonlight".
It turned out that there have always been different voices in the literary world about the controversy over his writing, for example, the poet Yu Guangzhong commented on him, "(Zhu Ziqing) is mediocre in writing, but the level of middle school students ... There are no metaphors, no metaphors are clever...".
Obviously, "Lotus Pond Moonlight" is a metaphor throughout.
The whole text is only more than a thousand words, but the place where metaphors are used accounts for 11 places, such as "a beauty out of the bath", "steep like a ghost" and other metaphors, which are not in line with people's consistent understanding of prose.
As a result, many people were disgusted, and even parents jointly wrote a letter requesting that the article "Lotus Pond Moonlight" be deleted from the language textbook...
In fact, it is not unusual for Zhu Ziqing to suffer such "criticism", you know, he has been a "fighter" from beginning to end, arguing with his father, arguing with students, and arguing with Americans, each of which is extremely fierce, and the last one also let him die.
Such a literary master, even if he is constantly debated by later generations of literati, his significance to Chinese literature has far exceeded the words he left behind, and through him, we can more clearly see an old China in the midst of turmoil.
Years later, the children who read "Lotus Pond Moonlight" have grown up, but as long as they look back at their student days, they will still be attracted by the bright moonlight and the quiet lotus pond, and linger here.
Below, let's get closer to Mr. Zhu Ziqing's "fighter" life.
Dissatisfied with the feudal patriarchal system, Zhu Ziqing and his father almost broke up
In the year of the Penghu Reform, Zhu Ziqing was born.
His father, Zhu Hongjun, was an official of the Qing government, and followed his father, Zhu Ziqing, to Yangzhou, where his father was also promoted to director of the Transportation Bureau, which is now the "Director of the Tobacco Monopoly Bureau".
The father of the official was well-known in the local area, and Zhu Ziqing also became the focus of everyone's attention. He is the eldest son of Director Zhu, and he is also the most intelligent child, plus he has learned to read and write after following people since he was a child, which is naturally extraordinary.
At the age of 18, Zhu Ziqing was admitted to the top universities in China, the preparatory class of Peking University.
Since then, he has been like a kite with a broken line, and he is getting farther and farther away from his home in Yangzhou. The new style of education and Western thought had completely baptized his mind, and Zhu Ziqing found that he was so ignorant.
In order to express his determination, he decided to start with a name change. "Self-purification" is what he picked out from "Chu Ci Buju", "Rather be honest and upright to be self-purifying", only honesty and integrity can maintain self-innocence.
Later, he really practiced this proverb all his life, and until his death, he refused to renege on his oath and swore innocence.
The young Zhu Ziqing graduated from Peking University with a passion, and in Beijing, he had seen most of the sharp ideas and outstanding ideas, and walking with them, Zhu Ziqing felt as if he had also been renewed.
When he returned to his hometown yangzhou with such a fresh understanding, he found that the reality was still difficult.
First, the parents indiscriminately gave him a new wife. This woman, whom he had never met before, and women of the old days were often illiterate and did not understand the "democratic" and "scientific" system.
However, Zhu Ziqing is a neat and gentle person. Instead of fiercely resisting fate like Lu Xun and Hu Shi, he acquiesced to his parents' decision and lived with this woman named Wu Zhongqian.
What comforted Zhu Ziqing was that although his wife was illiterate and hyphenated, she did not have the small family temperament of a country woman, and she took good care of her family, and although she was studying and working outside, she did not need to worry too much.
Such a feeling of "marriage first and love later" gave Zhu Ziqing great confidence. He felt that maybe he could change the father of the parents' style.
During this time, he was teaching at Yangzhou Eighth Middle School, and his father had a good personal relationship with the principal of Eighth Middle School.
As a result, Zhu Hongjun, who was a parent, took Zhu Ziqing's salary in advance through the principal, and rightly scolded Zhu Ziqing, who came to find his own theory, "Lao Tzu took the boy's money, it is righteous!" ”
This sentence completely hurt Zhu Ziqing's heart, he is not unwilling to give money to his parents, but this kind of "clear take" without leaving any emotion is really chilling, since it can't be fought, then simply hide away.
Therefore, he left Yangzhou with his wife and children and went to another place to find another position. In the face of this act of his son, Zhu Hongjun did not understand, he thought that this was his son's provocation to Lao Tzu, in the eyes of outsiders, what is the matter?
As a result, both of them refused to make concessions, so they almost changed from father and son to "enemies", if it were not for Zhu Ziqing's later "Back Shadow" and taking the initiative to release the previous suspicions to his father, otherwise, this grudge would not be resolved.
3 years after his dead wife left, Zhu Ziqing found a "mother" for his 5 children
After leaving Yangzhou, Zhu Ziqing and his wife built a small home alone, on weekdays, he went to classes and taught, and his wife took care of the children at home and cooked on a fire.
Especially after adding several children in a row, it was even more lively.
Zhu Maixian, Zhu Caizhi, Zhu Tixian, Zhu Yansheng, Zhu Xiaowu, Zhu Liu'er, the original family of two, soon became a "football class", sons and daughters gathered together, the difference between the big and the small is no more than ten years old at most.
With so many children, Zhu Ziqing and his wife have a very strong relationship, and he often says to his wife with apologies that it has been hard. In the twelve years of marriage, only the first year of the new marriage, there were no children dragged down, and since then, I have not enjoyed the blessings.
When he gave birth to his sixth child, Wu Zhongqian was already seriously ill and was so thin that he was bone-thin. Later, the child was born, and she was also diagnosed with a large hole in her lungs, less than a year after her death.
Zhu Ziqing was busy with work, unable to take care of so many children, Wu Zhongqian could only drag the sick body to take good care of, when she returned to Yangzhou with the child, she seemed to have a premonition of her own end, and she was very reluctant to her husband when she left.
"I'm not sure if I'll see each other again today?" Wu Zhongqian did not know this question, and Zhu Ziqing could not give the answer. As a result, in a word, this parting really became a trick between the two of them.
After his wife died, Zhu Ziqingqiang endured his grief and became a "grandfather" for a while, but in the end, he could not take care of it, and as time passed, the children also grew to an age that needed to be taught by their mothers.
Therefore, through the introduction, Zhu Ziqing met Chen Zhuyin, who graduated from the Beiping Art Academy. Chen Zhuyin, who had received a new-style education, was not only talented and beautiful, but also a disciple of Qi Baishi, and his artistic attainment was very high.
For Zhu Ziqing, Chen Zhuyin was worried at first, after all, she was still a young girl, but she wanted to be a mother of five children (the youngest Chen Liu'er had died at that time), and she probably had to think about it for anyone.
However, Zhu Ziqing was very appreciative of Chen Zhuyin, and then he admired it.
In order to be able to win the hearts of the beauties, Zhu Ziqing wrote one enthusiastic letter after another with the master's writing, until the two formally determined the relationship, Chen Zhuyin received a total of 71 heavy love letters.
In these love letters, Zhu Ziqing is like a young man who has just opened his love sinus, showing his infatuation:
"As soon as I see your eyes, I wake up, I prefer to look at your blushing cheeks, like the glow of the dusk, thank you for giving me strength." 」
"I haven't tasted this in my life, and I'm afraid that I'll become your captive in its entirety!"
The two who fell in love eventually entered into marriage, and Chen Zhuyin also took on the responsibility of a mother, sparing no effort to take care of the children left by Wu Zhongqian, so that Zhu Ziqing could concentrate on his work.
It is precisely with such a sage that Zhu Ziqing's literary creation has also entered the blowout stage, and he has successively published "Miscellaneous Records of European Travels" and "Miscellaneous Records of London", and the text has become more natural and refined than in the previous period.
He would rather starve to death than eat American relief grain, and Zhu Ziqing would not let his family eat it
After re-establishing his family, Zhu Ziqing experienced one of the most turbulent periods in China's modern history.
The artillery fire of the War of National Liberation against Japan shattered the people's expectations of the Kuomintang reactionaries, and at this time, a country that was trying to save the country and survive urgently needed people with lofty ideals to shoulder the backbone of the nation, and Zhu Ziqing was one of them.
He used his own pen to write articles against the reactionary government, and tried his best to spread the ideas of democracy, independence, and emancipation to the people, and his deeds were also regarded as a thorn in the side of the national reactionary government.
In such an extremely difficult situation, Zhu Ziqing never gave up his belief as a "fighter", on the one hand he followed the school to the south and became the master of the Chinese Literature Department of Southwest United University, and on the other hand, he actively organized the student patriotic democracy movement.
At the memorial meeting for Li Gongpu and Wen Yiduo held in Chengdu, he not only appeared to attend, but also made a generous statement, reporting Wen Yiduo's life deeds, which caused everyone present to burst into tears.
Perhaps, as a father, he is not the most competent, but for the country and nation he loves, Zhu Ziqing has truly achieved "better incorruptibility and integrity to be self-purifying."
At the most urgent time when the domestic revolutionary war entered, Zhu Ziqing threw himself into the actual struggle against hunger and the civil war with indestructible faith, and although he knew that such efforts were no less than a drop in the bucket, he still resolutely refused to sell flour.
In his family, there are eight children waiting to be fed, but none of the family members complain about it.
The only thing that his wife Chen Zhuyin could not rest assured of was his illness. As everyone knows, years of struggle have long dried up his body, just fifty years old but the same age as the wind and candles, life is about to run out of oil.
The doctors at the hospital advised him to rest well, not to worry about it, and not to stay up late to write. But Zhu Ziqing always promised well, and then when he returned home, he forgot, he wrote in a sleepless way, every word and every sentence was like a cuckoo crying blood, touching deeply.
It was not until August 1948 that Zhu Ziqing stopped his pen.
In the incomparable pain caused by stomach perforation, he fell into a deep coma, at this time, even the most advanced medicine was ineffective at this time, with deep concern for the motherland and the people, Zhu Ziqing left the world he loved.
And his last words to his family are not reluctant nostalgia, but earnest entrustment:
I don't eat American flour, and neither can you, preferring to starve to death, rather than make foreigners look down on me.
A literati would rather starve to death than eat the food that comes from him, and show his backbone by example, so it is really shocking that he would rather be crushed than tiled!
When we look back at Zhu Ziqing, we will find that the lotus flowers and lotus leaves in "Lotus Pond Moonlight" are not exactly the portrayal of "self-purification"?
In a difficult situation, but not in the same way; in a difficult situation, but proudly independent.
This is Zhu Ziqing.
Author: Jianghu Xiaoxiaosheng
Editor-in-Charge: Tea Nine
Review: Blue Orange