In his later years, Duan Yifu (third from right) was with friends. (Photo courtesy of the publisher/photo)
Duan Yifu ended his autobiography "Who Am I?" with a middle-aged chance encounter? 》。
At night, he drove on a highway that was not wide, with only one car in front of him. He is not confident in his driving skills, so he sees the taillights of the car in front of him as a guide to get a sense of safety and comfort. Suddenly, the car flashed its right turn lights and turned onto a country road. With the naked eye, he was the only one driving on the road.
"So, I was left with my own headlights to guide the way. The light illuminates only a short stretch of the road, and the road, farther away, is engulfed in darkness. ”
Duan Yifu is a famous geographer and one of the founders of humanist geography. He intellectually understood the relationship between people and places and considered himself a cosmopolitan.
Who Am I? Written in 1999, Duan Yifu was 69 years old at the time, and mankind was about to enter the new millennium. He sees "who am I?" as a fashionable question at the dawn of the new millennium. This question actually gained traction as early as the 1960s, "in order to develop a solid sense of self, one needs the past, not just the present and the future". It is worth mentioning that "Silent Spring" combined poetry and science in the 1960s to jointly examine the relationship between man and the environment.
Duan Yifu continued to think about it for the next twenty years and wrote important works. Who Am I? is a good staged summary that shows sincere self-examination. He seemed to be getting closer and closer to a position, but he couldn't be sure when he would be there, and even farther away. The ideal location is always changing with time, space, and thinking.
In the early 1940s, Duan Yifu and his family were preparing to move from Chongqing to Australia. During the group photo, Duan Yifu (third from left) tried to squeeze his younger brother out of the way and next to his mother in order to get more attention. (Photo courtesy of the publisher/photo)
The world in his eyes is shrinking inward
At the beginning, Duan Yifu quoted Socrates: An unexamined life is not worth living.
Before middle age, Duan Yifu had not lived in any city for five years. He left China and continued to travel until he moved to Minneapolis at the age of 38, where he stopped from working academically. Migration is inseparable from my father's work and historical events. He believed that he was rootless and "born to examine himself." He was never married, unable to fully integrate into American society, and the issue of identity was always there.
He considers himself an optimist, "always looking for the golden age in the future". He knew that he had gained self-confidence at an early age, that he had not been harmed by racism as much as he had lived abroad, and that in his later years he had begun to question the source of his confidence. His approach to the world is closely linked to the events he has experienced and the environment in which he lives. The book shows his own "sense of place" – his emotions and judgments about a particular place.
During his first interview at Indiana University in 1956, a professor of Asian history was surprised by his family's background. Duan Yifu recalled his childhood and was sure that the other party was not joking. According to what he heard, the Duan family was divided into two branches in modern times, both in Anhui, Duan Yifu's family belonged to the poor branch, and his father Duan Maolan relied on Duan Qirui, the uncle of the Hefei branch, to complete Nankai Middle School.
Duan Yifu was born in Tianjin, and lived in a village on the outskirts of Chongqing between the ages of 7 and 10 due to the war, and his family was in financial difficulty. The school is a one-room room that belongs to a power station. The place smelled of rancidity, and the foul-smelling mud dragged down his shoes, and he was both disgusted and terrified. Occasionally, he met a funeral procession, and the body of the arch guard in the middle was wrapped in a bamboo mat. There was a rooster tied to it, and if it was a corpse, it would crow.
In 1954, Duan Yifu did field research in Arizona, USA. (Photo courtesy of the publisher/photo)
Small schools are different places where students learn about the history, culture and technology of the world. Wilde's work "The Happy Prince" left an indelible mark on him, and he knew that "the 'good' can no longer be limited to the fulfillment of social obligations". These realizations inspired Duan Yifu to think, and he was always exploring how to determine one's place in the world.
Duan Yifu mentions some important historical figures in the narrative. Duan Maolan and alumnus Zhou Enlai wrestled their wrists to test whether the other's injured arm was healed. There is also Zhang Boling, the principal of Nankai Middle School, who has a rare refrigerator and distributes plates of ice cubes to everyone, and his father uses a home remedy of sprinkling salt to delay melting in order to keep him. The adults were still thinking about how to treat their distant relative Wang Jingwei.
For his father, Duan Yifu has ambivalent emotions. He longs for love, but is disillusioned by his father's preference for his brother; He remembered the warmth of the difficult times, and he was also traumatized by his father's severity or anger. The deepest memory of my father is even just a nightmare from my childhood, and the scene in the dream has remained for many years:
"I opened my arms and wanted to hug him... What's going on? A ghost stood in front of me, and it was my father who could be seen, but he was wearing a mourning gown. The ghost moved in an ever-changing air current, weightless. It was a demon, a corpse, with a yellow glow in its hollow eyes. ”
His mother made an impression on him as warm and resilient, but unfortunately she died prematurely. At the same time, Duan Yifu's physical condition made him more and more sensitive, and he was sick for a while. He confessed his cowardice and his reluctance to participate in activities to change society. Even in the face of racism and the rude boys who see him as a "little girl", he has no incentive to fight back.
The world in Duan Yifu's eyes is shrinking inward. When he was a child, he was exposed to all kinds of terrible events, and when he grew up, the war was over, and he had to face many personal problems. He summed up this upbringing experience as moving from the universe to the stove, and used beautiful writing to integrate life and academics. He quotes the poet T. S. Eliot's words:
"Why do all of us, what we have heard, seen, and felt in our lifetime (a birdsong, a fish leaping, an old woman walking on a mountain road) reappear with emotion and nothing else?"
Duan Yifu in his youth. (Photo courtesy of the publisher/photo)
Would you like to be a lonely captain?
"Poetry can break through the barriers or boundaries of linguistic logic." Liu Su told Southern Weekly. He used this to describe Duan Yifu's beautiful writing. He translated "Love Complex" and "Who Am I?" Two books by Duan Yifu are being translated into The Divided World and the Self.
When he was a graduate student around 2010, Liu Su often struggled with running out of books to read. He was attracted many times by the ideas mentioned in the book, but he could not find a Chinese or even English translation of them. He tried his best to find the original work, went to Douban to ask Douyou who had read the book, and also went to the library, but maybe he could only make half a copy.
"I'll translate it myself!" Those experiences sparked Liu Su's enthusiasm. He thus embarked on the path of academic translation, and future university students will no longer face the dilemma of reading. At the same time, many scholars have also participated in the translation and introduction of geographical classics, and the Chinese translations of scholars such as Duan Yifu and David Harvey are enough to gather into a collection.
In the summer of 2021, in the crowded Chongqing subway, Liu Su received a WeChat message from another translator, Zhicheng, asking him if he would like to translate Who Am I? 》。 Even though the air conditioning was sufficient, he still broke out in a hot sweat: "This book is finally going to be translated into Chinese!" He seriously pondered that he was unwilling to live a lonely life in a foreign country with the identity of a "stranger".
Who Am I? It resonated with Liu Su. He went through a long single life, and when he got married, the children of his classmates were almost in junior high school. He may have experienced Duan Yifu's loneliness and the self-confession: "I have spent a lot of time in sad poems, in libraries and cafes. ”
After Liu Su finished class, said goodbye to the students, and went to the library to stay for a while after walking out of the teaching building. Even if he doesn't write anything, he is willing to sit in the corner and experience what Duan Yifu said, "I have lived on campus almost all my life, surrounded by young people, and I am physically and mentally happy." He sometimes went to a nearby café and sat by the window, looking at pedestrians, vehicles and street lamps. The sensibility of subtle language gathers together.
Duan Yifu in 1998, that is, "Who Am I? In the previous year's work "Escapism", he asked: What is the greatest escape?
"When you look down and manage your surroundings with a heart of love for your neighbor, you can still look up at the vast starry sky." Liu Su talked about his understanding of this sentence, adding a more realistic side, "As a scholar, I will often look up to the starry sky of metaphysical ideas and theories like him." However, whenever I look down at my single life, I often feel like I am in a feather. ”
Duan Yifu (1930-2022), an internationally renowned geographer of Chinese descent, was born in Tianjin, graduated from Oxford University, and returned to China in his later years. (Photo courtesy of the publisher/photo)
Liu Su looked for an account of his single life in the book. Duan Yifu tidyed up the apartment plainly and warmly, dressed low-key and decently, healthy, long-lived, had good interpersonal relationships, and gained precious friendships. However, "he dreamed that he had died alone in his home, and that no one had found his decomposing body." Duan Yifu is always writing about his loneliness, a complicated feeling.
"Maybe the reason is that loneliness is the most authentic way of human existence, and the state of not being lonely is actually the product of escape." Liu Su invoked the statement of "escapism". There are three questions surrounding Duan Yifu's life: "I am mortal" that has haunted him since he was a child; "Who am I?" about individual consciousness; And "what is a good life". Duan Yifu wrote that "geography saved me", and geography is like a road that leads him to an understanding of the problems of his own life and that of human beings.
Translation of Who Am I? It also allowed Liu Su to gain "friendship worth cherishing". After the book launch, he braved the heavy rain with Zhicheng, editors and readers to go into the noodle restaurant to chat. Each of the five men signed five books and treasured them. He also wanted to write his feelings into a relatively long email and share them with Duan Yifu. Before the email was finished, Duan Yifu passed away in August 2022.
Duan Yifu published a new book that year, and finally wrote: "I would like to advise you once again, young traveler! Be sure to have the courage to steer your own ship like a captain, even though you'll only have life's confusing clues and stars as your guide. ”
Liu Su is disappointed by his mistakes, but will continue to translate the classics of humanist geography. He also asked himself if he would like to be a lonely captain and take a narrow path. Whatever the answer, Duan Yifu's book "will always be projected into the heart of every reader."
Where is the real home
Duan Yifu recalled in the preface to "Going Home" that people often asked him where he felt his true hometown. He replied bliantly: "In general, the earth." "Where on earth is it?"
Then, the meaning of the follow-up question is probably that there must be a place where he is most comfortable, the most desirable, and can form the deepest sense of belonging. "There are certain landscapes that really appeal to me, such as a landscape that is beyond aesthetics – the desert. I felt so close to the desert that I could even see it as my home. Duan Yifu wrote again and again about his love for the desert.
Beginning in the winter of 1954, Duan was doing field research for his doctoral dissertation in southeastern Arizona, on desert terrain called foothill erosion surfaces. When David Harris, an optimistic British student, joins the wilderness, the material and spiritual difficulties of the wilderness are diluted and gradually replaced by friendship.
"It's a relationship that gives me a sense of satisfaction, but it's also unsettling – almost every relationship that reaches a certain depth reflects both. Why? Is there something wrong with me? Duan Yifu asked in the book. In 1962, they worked together again. He remained single and became a teacher; David was married and had two daughters. "David today is broader and more elusive in personality than I have ever known."
The following descriptions are sensitive and stinging, and such feelings recur throughout the book. They each drove to Chaco Canyon to investigate, Duan Yifu led the way in front, and David's family followed behind. At dusk, maybe David knew the route, maybe the children needed to be taken care of, David's car whistled, rolled up the dust and drove to the front.
"The distance between us grew wider and wider, and soon all that was left before my eyes was dust raised, and at last I couldn't even see the dust. I was left in the shadow of loneliness... As I struggled to catch up with the Harris family, I felt lonely and miserable for the first time. To make matters worse, I even felt ridiculous. What exactly am I doing on dirt roads in New Mexico? Chasing a young family in a car? ”
In Duan's eyes, friendship must meet two basic conditions – like-mindedness and sympathy – and the two should be balanced in an ideal friendship. "If there is an excessive inclination towards common interests and interests, these two people are more like colleagues than friends; Conversely, they may be more like lovers and will stare into each other's eyes rather than the world. ”
"Shy people, unsociable people, or people like me who are inhibited by eccentric pursuits, should perhaps devote themselves more to nature... It may be only by staying in an inorganic environment, such as deserts and icebergs, that people can relax and forget. ”
Duan Yifu also wrote about the German Alexander von Humboldt. Humboldt was the founder of modern physical geography, "who made a remarkable contribution to the development of geodetic surveys and was the first to use painting and poetry to develop the geographical experience of man – feelings, emotions and ideas – which is the starting point of humanist geography".
Humboldt lived to be 90 years old, full of energy throughout his life, and in his sixties he was able to travel through Siberia and Central Asia. He was socially enthusiastic, but never married, and was trapped in emotional entanglements with men three times. In a letter to Reinhard von Haften, a married soldier, he wrote: "Even if you want to reject me and look at me coldly as if I were looking at a stain, I still want to be with you..."
"If I were to leave the universe, or rather, the joy of harmony with nature and the ultimate achievements of man, my life would be miserable and I would not be able to live." Duan Yifu enumerated all kinds of human suffering, "However, I don't want to stay in those shadows for a long time...", he believes in the light, the beauty of the universe, and the beauty and goodness of events. The next chapter is "Geography Saved Me".
In 2005, Duan Yifu took the opportunity to attend an architectural conference, and returned to China after 60 years of absence, and deliberately stayed for a while. He wrote a book called "Returning Home", which was translated into Chinese by Zhicheng. During the trip to Chongqing, he again mentioned the nightmare that haunted him all his life. When his father died in Taipei in 1980, he did not go back to see him for the last time.
At the end of the autobiography is the contrast between the glimmer of the headlights and the vast darkness, it is not despair, Duan Yifu still examines himself. He asked the translator to attach his 2012 speech as an updated understanding of "who I am."
"There are no such ordinary people in the world. The people you talk to every day are actually people whose souls are immortal... The people we joked with, worked with, got married, and were also snubbed and exploited by us are actually people with immortal souls. And among these people, some people are immortal horrors, and some are immortal glories. ”
Maybe it was too long, and he really forgot
Who Am I? Yu Shiyi, the editor of the magazine, seemed somewhat silent — as she did in WeChat with text after text — but quickly opened up and became talkative and humorous. His daily routine was regular, and he even added a short amount of time that day.
Later, he added that he should not talk too much about his own story, and that autobiographers should be given more space. So, this part is a side story for this article. People are always faced with questions like "Who am I?", and the questions and answers change from scene to situation, each with its own enticing color. For example, the great director Bergman claims that he knows less about himself than he did ten years ago.
Yu Shiyi has a unique affection for discrete events. In early 1949, the shipwreck occurred in the waters west of Daishan Island, where he was born. As a child, he knew nothing about the tragedy, and only learned about it through a documentary after he left his hometown to study at university.
In 1950, about 125,000 Zhuangding, soldiers, and 25,000 civilian personnel and people moved from Zhoushan to Taiwan, and later formed a first-generation Zhoushan group of 20,000 or 30,000 people. In 1987, the initiators of the movement for Taiwanese veterans to return to their hometowns were Zhoushan people, and it was very difficult for them to contact their homeland before the "three links." The local historical gallery deserves an entire wall of letters from the Red Cross.
Islands shape cognition. Yu Shiyi left Zhoushan for Ningbo ten years ago, and then went to Shanghai to study. When I was growing up, there was no bridge across the sea in Zhoushan, and when a typhoon came, the island was an isolated island, physically and psychologically isolated from the world. Compared with county seats, provincial towns, and metropolises, visitors to small islands seem to be "small" and marginal. At first, he longed to integrate from the periphery into the mainstream, but now he wants to have a subjectivity.
"As an immigrant, in a new environment, your regional identity is the first to be brought up." Yu Shiyi has a friend who was born in Hubei, grew up in Shenzhen, and later came to Shanghai. He asked: Where is the vernacular of the "other"? In 1973, at the age of 43, Duan Yifu officially became a U.S. citizen. He has been living in the United States for almost two decades, constantly debugging, becoming a "cosmopolitan and thinker who writes about discrete subjects."
And the little grandfather - that is, the grandfather's younger brother - chatted about the past during the New Year. He claimed that he had sailed a rudimentary ship that burned diesel fuel from Qushan Island and drove overnight to Dongjiadu, Shanghai. Alone, no GPS, just experience and a compass. Yu Shiyi couldn't imagine the situation of the fishermen. There is no land, swaying, they will be afraid, right? He wrote down the boundless imagination into his notes:
The slender man drove a small sampan from the island and headed northwest, through night and day, to Dongjiadu. At that time, the lighting system was not perfect, there was no positioning system, and some of the channels were even almost dark at night, and he actually reached his destination safely, without mentioning the wind and waves he encountered. I think maybe it's because time has passed too long, and he has long forgotten the wind and rain along the way.
I remember that there is a famous lighthouse on Bird and Flower Island, I don't know if he passed by, under certain conditions, there will be a wonder of the fluorescent sea. I always feel that the passage from my hometown to Shanghai is full of all kinds of mysterious powers. I took a ferry from the island to Shanghai, went ashore at dusk, and landed at dawn, and that was the first time I saw the waves bubbling like a spring and the seagulls soaring in the sky. Looking out of the small round glass of the third-class cabin, there are faint lights, maybe I have seen the lighthouse of Bird and Flower Island.
I asked my people, "Are you ashore?" He said he had unloaded the goods and did not go up. I regret that I wanted to get out of his mouth the secrets of Shanghai in the 80s, but he said, nothing, Dongjiadu was the Bund in the past, and those Western things couldn't be understood. He drove the sampan and went all the way up the Huangpu River, and finally arrived in Jiangyin. It was undoubtedly an adventure, and as for what to do there and how to get back to the island, he didn't say a few words, so he stopped talking. Maybe it was too long, and he really forgot.
Memories and narration form fragment after fragment, embedded in life. More than 30 years after the little grandfather left Shanghai, Yu Shiyi also arrived in Shanghai. During the "Eleventh" holiday in 2022, he and his father took a boat to the island again. The father was hesitant, after all, the house was no longer theirs. Many places are different, old houses and new houses come and go, but fortunately, the road is in place.
Yu Shiyi returned to the alley where she was born, and the commercial house she bought more than 20 years ago is still there, but it is a little older. The back door was open, and he went in and saw the washboard from many years ago. After so many years, it is still there, like a miracle. There was someone living next to him, and he was too embarrassed to disturb, so he just wanted to turn to the front door to have a look.
When the occupants saw the stranger, they became alert and asked, "Who are you?" Yu Shiyi was stunned, silent for a few seconds, and replied instinctively: "This is my home." He walked to the front door, took a picture and left.
"You've become the 'other.'" "The physical thing was there, and it used to be my home," he recalled. He didn't know how many hands the house had turned, but he felt relieved that he could finally say goodbye. For almost 20 years, he always thought of this home, and he was not at ease, afraid of demolishing it. Now playmates and neighbors are gone, leaving only photos and a washboard.
The identification and memory of your hometown have become a means for others to identify you. Not long after being asked "Who are you", in December 2022, Yu Shiyi took over "Who Am I?" The book will be launched at the Shanghai Book Fair in August 2023. Above, there is always a bit of an unexpected fate.
Southern Weekly Contributing Writer Song Yu
Editor-in-charge: Li Muyan