After April 1927, Chiang Kai-shek persecuted revolutionary youth in the south, and Zhang Zuolin persecuted revolutionary youth in the north. The so-called revolutionary youth here refers to the leftist members of the Kuomintang, the Communist Party, and League members in the south, and to all Kuomintang and Communist Party elements and progressive youths who are engaged in the creation of new literature and demand democracy and freedom in the north. Zhang Zuolin called these people all "red bandits" and they were all among the people who were hunted down. From May to July 1927, the revolutionary youth in Wuhan, Shanghai, Nanjing, and Guangzhou were scattered one after another. From the second half of 1927 to the first half of 1928, the revolutionary youth of Beiping and Tianjin went south one after another. Xu Qinwen, Wang Luyan, Wei Jinzhi, Feng Xuefeng, Ding Ling, Hu Yepin, Yao Pengzi, and Shen Congwen all came to Shanghai during this period.
From 1928 to 1929, Ding Ling, Hu Yepin, and Shen Congwen rented two houses on Saposai Road (now Tamsui Road) in the French Concession, as if they were upstairs in a beef shop. They are planning to set up a literary and artistic journal, Red and Black. I lived with Liu Naou and Dai Wangshu on North Sichuan Road and ran a first-line bookstore, which was later renamed Shuimo Bookstore. They are far away from each other, and although they know each other, they rarely have the opportunity to meet. Ding Ling and Hu also came to Hongkou more frequently, because there was also a manuscript that was published by Shuimo Bookstore. When the two of them came, Congwen was in the house to write articles, edit publications, and take care of the house. Among the three of them, Ding Ling is the most sociable, some talk and laugh, and they often just say a few words by chance to help Ding Ling. Congwen is a mild-mannered but somewhat shy young man who just squints and smiles at you, doesn't talk much, and doesn't like to go out for a walk on the road alone or with friends.
In October 1929, I got married in Matsue. Feng Xuefeng, Yao Pengzi, Ding Ling, Hu Yepin, Shen Congwen, Xu Xiacun, Liu Naou, Dai Wangshu and many other friends from the literary and artistic circles came from Shanghai to attend the wedding. Congwen brought a framed congratulatory message. This is a banner sprinkled with goose yellow and gold paper, Wenyun: "More blessings, more longevity, more men and women", written in four lines, each line has two big characters, signed "Ding Ling, Hu Yepin, Shen Congwenhe". This is the first time I've seen Congwen's calligraphy, and it's already a very kung fu chapter grass. The congratulatory message was originally an idiom, called "Huafeng Sanzhu", and the original sentence should be "many men", which was changed from the text to "many men and women", expressing opposition to the bad custom of feudal families only giving birth to men. However, despite such good prayers, I got married and gave birth to a girl, who died before she was two years old. Later, she gave birth to four boys one after another, but she didn't have a daughter, which inevitably lived up to Congwen's anti-feudal wishes.
October is the time when Matsue's famous four-cheek sea bass is on the market. In order to entertain Shanghai friends, I specially notified the restaurant that held the wedding banquet in advance to add a four-cheek sea bass hot pot for this table of Shanghai guests. At this banquet of wine, they all ate and laughed happily, reciting the famous sentence of Su Dongpo's "Red Cliff Fu" "Huge mouth and fine scales, like a perch in the Songjiang River", saw the intuitive teaching materials, and added a lot of wine. After drinking until 9 o'clock, I took a rickshaw to the railway station and took the Hangzhou-Shanghai night train back to Shanghai at 10 o'clock.
This is the time when this group of literary young people is the most energetic and strives to create, and it is also the time when they have the most harmonious feelings with each other. Who would have imagined that a year or two later, he also sacrificed frequently for the revolution, Ding Ling's attitude changed greatly, Xuefeng participated in the actual work of the revolution, his whereabouts were secret, Pengzi was arrested and imprisoned in Nanjing, Xu Xia Village returned to Beiping, Shen Congwen did not know his whereabouts for a period of time, and later heard that after the Chinese public school and the Songhu War of Resistance against Japan, he also returned to Beiping.
In the three years I have been in Shanghai for a maximum of three years, I have met him less than 10 times. It wasn't until I edited the magazine Modern and wrote to him to ask for a manuscript that we continued our friendship through the correspondence. During this period, I knew that he was very much respected by Hu Shi. He taught at a Chinese public school and wrote novels for New Moon and Modern Review, all of which were Hu Shih's relationships. Subsequently, Hu Shi introduced Congwen to Yang Zhensheng. At that time, the Ministry of Education set up a textbook editing and review committee, and Yang Zhensheng was responsible for editing and reviewing Chinese textbooks at all levels of schools. As a result, Congwen has a fixed occupation and a monthly salary to cope with. But in this way, writing became his amateur business, and in his spiritual life, some subjects and objects were reversed. So he had to find time to write, often saying in letters that the manuscript he sent me was written with a nosebleed.
In late September 1937, I came to Kunming at the invitation of Mr. Xiong Qinglai, president of National Yunnan University. At the same time as me, Li Changzhi, Wu Han, Lin Tongji, Yan Chujiang and others came. This was the first batch of people from other provinces to arrive in Kunming after the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, but only twenty or thirty people. They all decided to apply before the Lugou Bridge Incident, so they came to Kunming not because of the impact of the war. But two or three months later, a large number of people from other provinces appeared in Kunming. The second group to arrive were central bank staff. The third group arrived at the Jianqiao Air Force in Hangzhou, and they transferred their base to Kunming. The fourth group arrived at Tsinghua University, Peking University teachers and students, and personnel from Academia Sinica. Tsinghua University and Peking University were merged to form Southwest Associated University, because there was no campus in Kunming, and classes were held in Mengzi for the time being. Shen Congwen and Yang Zhensheng, who belong to the Academia Sinica, first went to Kunming and rented a private house near Yunnan University as an office and residence. Congwen was alone, without a family, and lived in an upstairs room in a house facing the street. The buildings are very low, the lighting is also very poor, and the locals use them to store sundries, and they don't live there. Congwen placed a table, a bed, and a chair in this building, all of which were old wooden objects that he bought. In addition, a few straw mounds were bought for guests to sit on.
Since then, I have had more opportunities to meet Congwen. I don't have classes in the afternoon, so I often go to talk to him. Gradually, the low building became a small literary center. Yang Zhensheng and his daughter Yang Wei, as well as Lin Huiyin, all met me from the Wenwu. Yang Zhensheng is a loyal elder, and after writing a novel "Jade Jun", he gave up literary creation, which is a pity. Lin Huiyin is very talkative, sitting on the straw mound, she will talk about literature, life, current affairs, and the impression of Kunming. Congwen still squinted and listened with a smile, and it was rare to insert a sentence or two to change the topic.
There is a Fuzhao Street in Kunming, and there is a night market every night, and fifty or sixty stalls are set up. The stall owners are all scavengers and the others, each stall is lit with a calcium carbide lamp, and the green flame shines on the ground one or two feet, which looks like an open Bon Festival from a distance, and the incense is hidden. When I first arrived in Kunming, someone introduced me to "look for treasures", at the beginning I went with Li Changzhi and Wu Han, and later Changzhi was expelled from Yunnan, Wu Han got acquainted with Gong Zizhi, the director of the Department of Education, and went to Gong's house to play cards almost every night. As a result, Shen Congwen became my companion when I visited the night market.
Most of the goods on these stalls are household utensils. Electrical materials, hardware parts, clothes, etc., we are not interested, just walk by at a glance. But there will also be unexpected gains. Once, Congwen found a small porcelain plate in a pile of pots and bowls, the porcelain was white and thin, and a blue and white galloping horse was depicted. According to the text, this is Kangxi blue and white porcelain, and there must be a set of eight, called "Eight Horses". He happily bought it for a central dollar. At that time, the central currency was 1 yuan, the old Yunnan currency was 10 yuan, and the new Yunnan currency was 2 yuan.
This Kangxi Eight Horses picture porcelain plate has aroused a lot of interest from Congwen. He told me that he collected ancient porcelain, and among the ancient porcelain, he also collected pots and plates. In the home of Beiping, there are dozens of porcelain basins of the Ming and Qing dynasties. When I returned to Kunming, I didn't expect that there was also a promising wilderness.
One night, we found two pieces of embroidery in a pile of old clothes, as if they had been removed from the mending gown. I was persuaded to buy it from the text. "It's worth buying," he said. Foreign women like Chinese embroidery the most, take it back to make wall hangings, you buy these two pieces, and you can sell them when you go back to Shanghai in the future. I listened to him and bought it for four central coins. Later, it was given to Mrs. Lin Tongji, and she used it to make a coffee table mat. At that time, Mrs. Lin Tongji was an American.
At the Fuk Chiu Street Night Market, we pay attention to several antique stalls, or cultural relics stalls. These stalls often feature ancient books, old books, stationery, jade, lacquerware, and sometimes carved pieces of amber, agate, or marble. People from other provinces crowded these stalls, making the stall owners ask for higher prices. I began to search for Burmese knives and Burmese boxes. Because I have long seen in the poetry collections and notes of the Qing people: when Yunnan people go to Burma to do business, they usually bring back Burmese knives and give them to men, and Burmese boxes to women. The Burmese knife is unusually sharp, the steel is soft, the Burmese box is lacquerware, the women's utensils, and the large ones can store sundries. Before Wen Future, I had bought a small Burmese box, with fine flowers in vermilion lacquer, with a total of three grids, which was the same as the Six Dynasties unearthed in the ancient tomb in the south of the Yangtze River. This thing aroused Congwen's interest, and he bought it when he saw it. In 1942, when I was in Fujian, he wrote to him saying that he had bought more than a dozen large and small ones. A lot of porcelain was also collected, and Bajuntu received two more. After 1942, prices in the rear area soared, and the monthly salary of public education personnel could not maintain the original standard of living. Kunming was repeatedly bombed by enemy planes, and the teachers and students of the university were evacuated to the countryside. I don't have any interest in visiting the night market, so maybe the night market has disappeared since then.
Congwen's interest in cultural relics has long been there. Start practicing calligraphy, and the first thing you will notice is the inscription. When he was in Shanghai, he always paid attention to the signboards of the shops when he walked on the street. At that time, most of the signboards in Shanghai were written by Tiantai Shannong in the Northern Wei Dynasty and in block letters written by Tang Huo, and it seems that the text is not very permissible. After returning to Beiping, Liulichang, Dong'an Market, and Longfu Temple must be the places he often visits, collecting and appreciating cultural relics, which became his habits. After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Congwen was assigned to work in the History Museum, and many people thought that he had been wronged, and Chu Caijin used it. I thought the job was properly assigned, and maybe it might have been requested by Congwen himself. Since Guo Moruo reprimanded Congwen domineeringly, I know that Congwen will no longer write novels. If you are still teaching in a university, Congwen is not very suitable, because Congwen's eloquence is not the eloquence taught in class. Squatting in the warehouse of the historical museum, rubbing and counting millions of ancient artifacts, I think his interest will forget all glory and disgrace. During his 30 years of exile, he finally wrote several first-rate historical relics research works such as "Research on Ancient Chinese Costumes". If he hadn't been assigned to the Museum of History, there might not have been another person who could have written such a monograph on the study of cultural relics.
In July 1938, I returned to Shanghai via Vietnam and Hong Kong. In October, I left Shanghai to Hong Kong, delayed for a few days, and waited for the ship to go to Haiphong. At that time, Shen Congwen's wife Zhang Zhaohe, the ninth sister Yue Meng, and Congwen's two sons Xiaolong and Xiaohu, as well as Gu Jiegang's wife and Xu Chi's sister Man Qian, were all in Hong Kong to wait for the ship to go to Kunming. Congwen and Jiegang both sent telegrams asking me to accompany their families and take care of them, and Xu Chi also introduced his sister to go with me. In addition, there are several friends in Kunming who asked me to do a lot of things in Hong Kong, I remember Xiang Da's leather shoes and coffee, Miss Yang Wei's shoes and stockings, and so on. I worked as a buyer for two days, and on October 28, a group of seven people boarded a small steamer that went directly to Haiphong. Mrs. Gu was not in good health, so she bought a second-class cabin, and the rest all bought a unified cabin, a canvas bed for each person, placed side by side on the deck, and when the boat sailed, it was very turbulent.
The boat travels for two days and nights, arrives at Haiphong, and lives in the natural hotel. The next day, I had a day off and replenished some daily necessities in Haiphong. The next day, take the train to Lao Cai and stay at the Natural Hotel. This is the border between Vietnam and China's Yunnan Province, and across the railway bridge, it is the mouth of the Yunnan River. That night, the hotel handled the entry visa for Yunnan Province on behalf of the hotel. The next day, take the train of the Chinese section of the Yunnan-Vietnam Railway to Kaiyuan, and stop at the Natural Hotel. The next day, we continued to take the bus and arrived in Kunming on the afternoon of November 4. On this trip, I took care of four ladies, two children, and carried 31 pieces of luggage. When the ship arrived at Haiphong and went ashore for customs inspection, the French officials opened our luggage one by one. At the mouth of the river, it was inspected again, and the situation was better than that of coastal defense. Every time you take a night break, you have to take your luggage with you. The whole journey took seven days, and when she arrived in Kunming, she only lost one of Xu Manqian's woolen sweaters, or she forgot it on the train. This incident, my conceit is a great achievement in my life, and at that time I thought that I had the demeanor of "commanding if you are determined".
This trip made me familiar with Mrs. Congwen and her ninth sister. Congwen has rented a house on North Gate Street to welcome his family. Beimen Street is also near Yunnan University, so I often have the opportunity to go and chat with Wen's house. After that, I met Congwen's aunt Chong and Ms. Chong. She plays the flute, beats music, and practices calligraphy all day long, and often has music meetings from the literary family. Soon, I moved to the Cultural Lane in Daximen, where I lived in the same room with Lu Shuxiang, on the first floor with Chen Shihua and Qian Zhongshu, and in the same courtyard with Luo Tingguang and Yang Wuzi. Congwen has a family life, and I don't have the opportunity to invite him to the night market at night.
In March 1940, I returned to Shanghai to join my family. Since the Japanese army had occupied Vietnam, I could no longer go to Kunming, so I said goodbye to Congwen for several years, and I did not exchange many letters. In 1955 and 1956, I went to Beijing twice for meetings, both of which went to Dongtangzi Hutong to visit Congwen. He said that he was collecting fragments of ancient brocade unearthed in various places, mounting them one by one, and wanted to compile a "Catalogue of Ancient Brocade". He also showed me a couple of framed monographs, which I thought made a lot of sense. I don't know if this book was completed later.
In 1963, Wen went on a business trip to Shanghai and stayed at the Hengshan Hotel. He came to see me with Ba Jin, and I was changed from a "rightist" to a "rightist with my hat off." I don't know about his situation in the Anti-Rightist Movement, and we feel that we have nothing new to say, just talking about old things. One day, I went to Hengshan Hotel for a return visit, and it happened that other guests came one after another, so I could only sit for a moment and say goodbye. This farewell is 18 years of incommunicacy. In July 1981, I took my graduate students to Beijing to look for thesis materials in the Beijing Library. I squeezed out an afternoon to visit Zhang Tianyi, whom I hadn't seen for 50 years, along the West River in Chongwenmen, and then went to the nearby East Street to see Congwen. It was evening, and there was not much to say, so I wanted to leave, but Congwen and his wife insisted that I have dinner and leave. I stayed, and after talking for a while after dinner, I was in a hurry to go back to the Beijing Normal University guest house. This was the last meeting between Congwen and I, and I don't remember what we talked about that day. It seems that his wife has more words, because my hearing has deteriorated, and the use of hearing aids is not very helpful, and I still speak so quietly and stingily, I have to rely on his wife's interpretation and explanation.
The above is the experience of my friendship with Shen Congwen in the past 60 years. In terms of traces, they are not close to each other, and in terms of feelings, they have a lot of tacit understanding with each other. I don't know how Congwen understands me, but I can say a few points about my understanding of Congwen for the reference of Shen Congwen researchers.
Congwen was born in Xiangxi, where Miao and Han people live, and he is most familiar with the customs of this area. Not only familiar, but also loved. Congwen did not have a formal secondary school or university education, but he was extremely talented, and his language skills were completely self-taught. In his early years, Chinese cultural traditions had little influence on him. This is the basis of the subject matter, story, and character of most of his works. All kinds of simple, simple, rude, and ignorant people and things are outlined in a straightforward and clumsy, simple and slang language. Several of his major works are rich in realism. His style, without academic or scholarly spirit, is not the product of linguistic cultivation, but a recording of his early life experience. Shen Congwen, whom I admire, is the author of such works with a unique style.
Struggling to survive in the metropolis, Congwen can't afford not to be more prolific. To be prolific, you can't do without works that are barely improvising. In the early 30s, there was a part of his work that fell into this category. He wrote several novels for my "Modern", rewritten with stories from "Fayuan Zhulin", and later compiled into a book "A Small Scene Under the Moon", which I also helped him print. I'm not very satisfied with these novels. When I was in Kunming, I told him frankly my opinion, and he smiled and said, "I have had a lot of nosebleeds when I write these novels!"
In Congwen's novels, there are indeed some pornographic descriptions, which are reprimanded by Guo Moruo, and the description of naked sexual desire or sexual behavior is not uncommon in modern literature, and what should be treated differently is: It depends on the author's attitude, whether it is serious or obscene? Those sexual descriptions in literary novels are still arranged in the category of characters. He had no motive for frivolous sexual immorality. Besides, the sexual depictions in the literary novels are neither domestic products of the type of "Golden Vase Plum", nor of the type of imported products of "Lady Chatterley's Lover", but his local goods in Xiangxi. We can say that this is an accidental unrestrained of a certain latent consciousness of a young man of mixed Miao and Chinese descent, not his usual creative tendency to go all out. Guo Moruo used this to condemn Shen Congwen, and seemed to have completely forgotten his old friend Yu Dafu.
Inspired by the New Literary Movement and the new anti-imperialist and anti-feudal trends of thought, Congwen came to Beiping in 1923, without acquaintances or relatives, and struggled alone. In 1924, he had published his creations in the "Modern Review" and the "Beijing Daily Supplement", and at about this time it was already known to Hu Shih. Later, I gradually got to know Xu Zhimo, Yu Dafu, Yang Zhensheng, Zhu Guangqian, Liang Shiqiu, Zhu Ziqing, Ye Gongchao and others. If you are close to such a group of professors and scholars for a long time, you will be edified unconsciously. The general temperament of this group of people is that of the gentlemen among the bourgeois intellectuals. Although Congwen himself said that he would always be a countryman, in fact, he had been contaminated with a lot of gentlemanly spirit. In 1933, he suddenly published an article entitled "The Attitude of Literary Scholars", dividing writers from the north and south into the "Shanghai School" and the "Beijing School". Praise the Beijing faction and the Fei Bohai faction. He considered himself to be among the Beijing faction. This article exposes his ideological tendencies. In the early years, the handsome spirit of defecting to Peking for the sake of democracy, freedom, and revolution seems to have worn off a lot. Since then, he has been content to accept traditional Chinese culture and timid to accept Western culture. In his works, there is almost no influence of foreign literature. He never wore a suit. He seems to be more conservative than Hu Shi and Liang Shiqiu. These circumstances make me sometimes feel that he is not a foreign gentleman in the gentleman's faction, but a local gentleman. Anti-imperialist and anti-feudal, he only woke up in ideology, but did not have the courage to devote himself to practical action. Maybe he has a lot of contradictions in his heart, but the reality of his behavior is like a gentle and cautious "Beijing School" literati.
In his articles and letters, there have been some ridicules of left-wing writers. The words are all tactful, but they clearly expose his dissatisfaction with certain left-wing writers. He said that left-wing writers could only shout revolutionary slogans, but not good works. They are pompous youths who pride themselves on being revolutionary, and they are not able to work in a down-to-earth manner. These twists and turns of ridicule certainly made left-wing writers hostile to him, and consequently regarded him as a counter-revolutionary writer. In fact, Congwen is not a political counter-revolution, but an ideological non-revolution. He did not believe that any revolution could solve China's problems. In the final analysis, I am afraid that he was still influenced by Hu Shih's reformism. His ridicule of certain left-wing writers is not political. Lu Xun said something similar to left-wing writers: they are left-wingers, but they are not writers. The same is true of the meaning of Congwen. However, Lu Xun spoke from a more leftist standpoint, and Congwen spoke from a right-leaning standpoint.
From the biggest mistake in Wen's life, I thought it was that he and Lin Tongji did "Warring States Policy" together in the early 40s. I have only seen two issues of this publication, and it was sent to Fujian by a friend from Chongqing to show me. I don't know what articles Congwen wrote in this journal, and whether or not they involved political discussions, but at that time, there were people in various parts of the rear who severely criticized it as a publication that propagated fascist politics and created dictatorial theories for Chiang Kai-shek. The consequences of this publication are unknown, but Congwen's reputation has been greatly damaged as a result.
Shen Congwen wrote a large number of novels and essays during his lifetime, and as a literary writer, he was as important as Ba Jin, Mao Dun, Lao She, and Zhang Tianyi during the second decade of China's New Literature Movement. Since the founding of the People's Republic of China, literary historians have never mentioned Shen Congwen, but foreign scholars have given him an excessively high evaluation, and used this to ridicule domestic literary historians and literary critics. This is an objective and impartial argument based on political bias on both sides.
As for Shen Congwen's thoughts, I have already given a general idea of what I personally feel, maybe I say yes, maybe not, after all, I have very few opportunities to be with him, and the tortuous path of his ideological development, perhaps my perception is too simplistic, and this still needs to be studied by the biographer. Today, since the party's policy has opened up the freedom for a hundred schools of thought to contend, all ideological issues of intellectuals should be concluded by the yardstick of ideological issues.