The Paper's trainee reporter Zou Jiawen and reporter Gao Wen
【Editor's Note】
Shanghai is the birthplace of the party and the place where its original intention originated.
Over the past hundred years, Shanghai has continuously reformed, explored, innovated and practiced, and has become a window and a banner for the world to see China.
In 2021, the surging news (www.thepaper.cn) traces back a hundred years, visits the old revolutionary sites, toures the red venues, traces the secret radio, hooks and sinks the revolutionary publications, decrypts the red agents, rereads the left-wing characters... From now on, the "Red Shanghai • Chuxin Road" series of reports will be launched.
February 22, 2021, Lane 99, Funing Road, Shanghai. The pictures in this article are all the trainee reporters of The Paper, Zou Jiawen (except for the signature)
"Work, work, weak enough to walk or work, hands and feet as thin as reed sticks, body like bows, face like a dead man's miserable!" Coughing, panting, sweating, still being oppressed to work..." "The Bonded Worker," published 85 years ago, is still outrageous to read to this day.
Lane 99, Funing Road, Shanghai, is where the author Xia Yan took materials, which was the dormitory of the "Yangshupu Fulin Road Dongyang Spinning Factory" at that time, and now it is a residential community.
"Ala Mama, who came from northern Jiangsu at the age of twelve or thirteen, was a 'bonded worker' in the front spinning mill at that time." Mr. Zhang, who has lived here for more than sixty years in the community commissary, pointed to the gate of Lane 99, "The gate of the spinning mill is facing the door of our community, just across the road." Later, this side became the staff dormitory of the 15th Factory and the 16th Factory of the National Cotton Factory. ”
In 1936, after the publication of "The Bonded Worker", it caused a social shock and was regarded by Xia Yan as "the most worthy work in his life, and perhaps able to pass it on". Xia Yan's works are far more than that, he is not only a writer, but also a translator, a playwright, a newspaperman... And a revolutionary.
Xia Yan and Cai Shuhou were in Shanghai. On the right is Xia Yan, and on the left is Cai Shuhou (taken in the 1930s) Xia Yan's former residence Courtesy photo
Translation of Gorky's Mother
In Shanghai, Yuhang Road is an inconspicuous small road.
February 21, 2021, East Yuhang Road, Shanghai. According to nearby residents, the houses at the corner of Yuhang Road were the same as they are today, and were built in 1925.
Nearly a hundred years ago, at one end of this small road, there was a double-bay façade, a small Shaodun Motor Company. On the surface, the shop does some electricity and motor repair business; at the bottom, it is an important transportation liaison organ of the Chinese Communist Party.
In 1927, the "April 12" coup d'état occurred, and a large number of Communists were slaughtered. At this moment, Xia Yan, who was carrying out revolutionary activities in Japan, was expelled back to China.
When he came to Shanghai at the age of 27, the first thing he thought of was Cai Shuhou, a classmate who was two classes higher than him at Zhejiang Jiazhong Industrial School, which was the owner of this Shaodun motor company.
When Xia Yan came here with his luggage, his old classmate was full of oil, repairing a burned-out electric motor, looking up and seeing Xia Yan, he went straight forward to hold Xia Yan's hand tightly and welcomed him without hesitation.
In Xia Yan's recollection, he spent "a sweltering and idle early summer season" in a small window-facing room on the second floor of The Shawton Motor Company. Cai Shuhou also half-jokingly asked him: "How about you become an engineer of our company?" Xia Yan was absent-minded and smiled bitterly, he wanted to do something, but in addition to reading the newspaper day by day, he didn't know what else he could do.
Until Zheng Hanxian, who lived with him, inspired him: "Those who are afraid of death must retire (the party), and those who want revolution should enter." So, during the worst of the White Terror, Xia Yan joined the Chinese Communist Party.
Xia Yan was busy. Revolutionary literature was still in its infancy in China at that time, and as Lu Xun said, "After reading more theories and works of other countries, we can evaluate China's new literature and art much more clearly." It is better to come to China; translation is not easier than casual creation, but it is more meritorious and beneficial to everyone in the development of new literature." At the "instigation" of his literary and artistic friends, Xia Yan, who mastered many Chinese words, took the initiative to undertake the task of translating books to propagate revolutionary ideas.
Translation of "Mother" displayed in Xia Yan's former residence Courtesy of Xia Yan's former residence
As early as his studies in Japan, Xia Yan was impressed by the revolutionary spirit in Gorky's "Mother", and when he left Japan in a hurry, he did not forget to stuff the Japanese translation of "Mother" in his bag. Xia Yan's translation of "Mother" used two Japanese translations, occasionally referring to the English translation. At that time, the writer Jiang Guangci, who lived downstairs, knew Russian, and every time he translated a chapter, Jiang Guangci proofread it according to the original Russian version.
In those days, every day when it was just dark, Xia Yan got up, washed up a little, sat down at the table in front of the window, and concentrated on translation. He stipulated that he had to translate 2,000 words a day before doing other revolutionary work.
The Chinese translation of "Mother" carries many expectations from the outside world, and before the translation is completed, its copyright has been obtained for the Dajiang Bookstore hosted by Chen Wangdao.
In October 1929 and November 1930, two volumes of the Chinese translation of "Mother" were published successively, far exceeding Xia Yan's expectations, and Lu Xun called the book "the most fashionable book for revolutionaries". Since then, although the book has been banned again and again by reactionaries, and Xia Yan has changed his pen name several times with "Mother" who "hid in Tibet", the book is still widely circulated among the masses. More than a decade later, Xia Yan wrote about the popularity of "Mother", "It is absolutely impossible to remove the influence of this book from the hearts of Chinese young people in these fifteen years." ”
Start a film career
By the time he was in his mid-thirties, Xia Yan was already dressed in a Tibetan green beep suit, his hair was neatly combed, his tortoiseshell glasses were like a university professor in Sven.
Relying on translations, he changed from a poor boy with no money to a "rich family" among the "poor friends" in the literary and art circles, and also moved from Cai Shuhou to Puyili, Whereas Tangshan Road, Yeguangli, and Aiwenyi Road (now West Beijing Road).
On February 21, 2021, the door of Industrial Guangli, Tangshan Road, Shanghai, was sealed with cement.
Based on Xia Yan's strengths and abilities, the underground party organization began to let him enter the cultural and educational circles more to carry out his work, and he ran a newspaper, raised a left league, ran a theater troupe, and even became a film screenwriter.
In the early summer of 1932, Xia Yan and three other new literary and artistic workers accepted the invitation of the Star Film Company. At that time, the film industry was regarded as the field of capitalists, complex and corrupt, full of "vulgar fans" of gods and monsters. Left-wing literary and art workers did not agree on whether to let Xia Yan and the three of them get involved in such "muddy waters", and finally, Xia Yan mentioned the issue to the party meeting presided over by Qu Qiubai, and he heard Qu Qiubai's reply: "We really should have our own movies."
Qu Qiubai told Xia Yan that in the field of culture and art, film is the most mass art and wants to "win the world."
Xia Yan started his film career. To break into the film industry, how can you do it without some craftsmanship?
So, in the Shanghai Theater at that time, people can often see an extraordinarily busy "audience" - holding a flashlight, a stopwatch in one hand, and writing a stroke on a small book with the other hand - is this shot a long-range, close-up or a close-up? Why is this lens used so much? How many seconds or minutes does a shot take? In addition to "pulling films", this enthusiastic audience also used his position to enter the editing room, run to the director's shooting scene, and did everything he could to speed up film studies.
In February and March 1933, the film newcomer Xia Yan's first screenwriting work "Wild Current" was completed. Set against the backdrop of the unprecedented floods in the sixteen provinces of the Yangtze River Basin during the "918" incident, this work reflected the class struggle of the peasant masses in rural China for the first time on the screen, and caused a sensation in the film world at that time.
The movie "Spring Silkworm" newspaper advertisement, Mao Dun's original work, Xia Yan adapted. Xia Yan's former residence Courtesy of
Subsequently, "Spring Silkworm", "Women's Cry", "Fat Powder Market"... The social realities of the 1930s were brought to the big screen, and Chinese films came out of the superstitious trend of gods and monsters.
Mixed in with the contractor's accommodation to collect information
In June 1936, "The Bonded Worker" was published in the magazine "Light". The editorial of the magazine bluntly said: "'The Contractor' can be said to have set a new record in Chinese reportage. ”
The less than 7,000-word manuscript was written in the fall of 1935. At that time, the Shanghai Party organization suffered another major destruction. When Xia Yan was hidden in the factory, he remembered the exploited workers he encountered in the initial workers' movement, and he began to collect information on the contractors again.
"Bonded Worker" Xia Yan's former residence Courtesy of
Xia Yan changed into overalls, twice tried to blend into the "workshop" where the contractors stayed, and from March to May, he worked as a "night worker" for two months in a row - he got up at three or four o'clock in the morning, walked more than ten miles from his residence in Puyili, and rushed to the vicinity of the workshop of the Dongyang Spinning Factory on Fulin Road to collect the situation of the female workers commuting to work.
As a result, the little female worker with hands and feet as thin as a reed stick, the little Fuzi who was beaten by Na Mowen and punished by the "Oriental Po" face wall, the cruel and cold-blooded Namo Wen and others, together with the social essence problems behind them, turned into "Bonded Workers", awakening the public and setting off another wave.
In December 1937, on a cold and windy day after the fall of Shanghai, Xia Yan got up early in the morning to pack his bags, planted a kiss on the forehead of his sleeping child, and went straight to the docks to Hong Kong, where he continued his revolutionary cause. Looking at the muddy river and the warships with the sun flag, he thought, "When Chinese people were suffering the most, I stayed here for ten years and seven months. ”
Xia Yan's fate with Shanghai is not over. In 1949, he returned to Shanghai, moved to No. 178 Urumqi Road, and began a new job...
(Sources for this article: "Xia Yan's Autobiography", "Xia Yan's Life and Literary Path", "Map of Xia Yan's Revolutionary Career in Hongkou", etc.)
Editor-in-Charge: Wang Weijia
Proofreader: Shi Gong