Mei Zixiang guide:
Did Mr. Zhou Gang's article "About Mountains and Rivers" be sent to me by him before his death, or did I get it from a stall in the second-hand book market? I can't remember. In the process of sorting out the materials, I saw that after reading it, I felt that it was an important literary historical material of the railway soldiers.
Mr. Zhou is the first generation of poets of the railway soldiers, and some railway soldiers writers call Zhou Gang "the first poet of the railway soldiers" - the first in literature, which is a high evaluation of Zhou Gang's literary achievements.
Mr. Zhou was born in Leshan, Sichuan Province in 1933, where there were outstanding people, Su Shi in the past, and Guo Moruo today. He joined the army in 1950 and participated in the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. In the early 70s of the last century, he returned to his hometown Leshan, and served as the editor-in-chief of the literary journal "Moshui" and the chairman of the Leshan Writers Association. He is the author of poetry collections "Mountains and Rivers", "Dadu River Love", "Green Sail", essay collections "Rose Branch" and "Hot Land", and long-form reportage "East Africa: Half Moon and Half Sun" and "Survival Contest". He has won the All-Army Literary and Artistic Creation Award and the Literary Creation Award of the Chinese Writers Association. He died on November 17, 2017 at the age of 84.
I had a relationship with him. In 1983, at the invitation of the Ministry of Culture of the Railway Corps, he went to the construction site of Luanjin to interview, create a group of poems, and had the honor to meet him, and then had many telephone exchanges.
Mr. Zhou's article "About Mountains and Rivers" introduced his famous poetry collection "Mountains and Rivers", which was praised by Zang Kejia and Li Ying, among which "Wuyi Mountain, Open Your Chest" was recited by the performing artist and broadcast on the Central People's Radio; "Lychee Red by the Jiulong River" was composed by Shanghai composer Zhang Yixian and two composers of the Railway Soldiers Art Troupe, and was recorded as two records by the People's Record Society...... This is Mr. Zhou's personal honor and an important cultural achievement of the railway soldiers.
Zhou Xian's life was full of troubles, because of his family background, he was wrongly criticized in that era, and he was suppressed "unwarrantedly" under the pretense of "Mountains and Rivers", which is a page of history that cannot be looked back......
About Landscapes
Zhou Gang
This is the first literary work of the railway soldiers published by the official publishing unit of the state.
The poetry collection "Mountains and Rivers" includes some of my poems praising the railway soldiers from 1956 to 1958. At that time, recommended by Mr. Zang Kejia, Comrade Li Ying was primarily elected, and finally circled by the leaders of the General Political and Cultural Departments, and in order to celebrate the 10th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China, it was published by the People's Liberation Army Literature and Art Publishing House, with a circulation of 20,000 copies, and exhibited in the Great Hall of the People.
Because many of the chapters in "Mountains and Rivers" had a great influence on the troops and readers long before the book was written, 20,000 copies were quickly sold out after the book was written. Among them, the most prominent are:
1. "Wuyi Mountain, Be Opened in Your Chest". In 1956, after the publication of "People's Liberation Army Literature and Art", it was immediately selected by the Central People's Broadcasting Station and recited by the famous performing artist Mr. So Zhi, which was instantly spread throughout the country. This poem was not only selected into the Chinese Poetry Anthology of the year, but also won the first prize of literature awarded by Fujian Province. More than 50 years later, together with the poetry collection "I Walk Along the Bank of the Jiulong River", it was selected into the frontispiece of the poetry volume of "Selected Literary Works for the 50th Anniversary of New China" in Fujian.
2. "Lychee Red by the Jiulong River". After the poem was written, I changed it slightly and became the lyrics, which were successively favored by the Shanghai composer Zhang Yixian and the two composers of the Railway Soldiers Art Troupe, and composed the music respectively, and at the same time were recorded and released as two records by the People's Record Society. The two composers of the Railway Soldiers composed music for the female voice performance and singing, which has been performed for a long time and has become a reserved program of the Railway Soldiers Art Troupe; The music composed by Mr. Zhang Yixian became the first song in the passenger trains of Shanghai Station and Xiamen Station after the opening of the Yingxia Railway, and has been very popular in the southeast coastal area for many years.
3. "Gutian Night Song" and "Spring Ballad of the Great Northern Wilderness". The former sang the praises of the railway soldiers to participate in the hydropower construction of the motherland, and the latter sang the praises of the commanders and fighters of the railway soldiers at that time to collectively transfer to the Great Northern Wilderness to reclaim the barren tuntian. Two poems were selected for the 1957 and 1958 Selected Chinese Poems, respectively. Among them, "The Spring Ballad of the Great Northern Wilderness" was also selected into the Chinese short poem selection by many publishing houses after the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China.
Fourth, "Green Waves Rolling Everywhere". This is one of the poems in the group of poems in the collection "Slogans Pasted on the Construction Site", and the original title was "Pasted on the Newly Planted Trees on the New Line". When I left the company, at the request of the commanders and fighters at the grassroots level, in order to boost the morale of the troops, I improvised them and pasted them on the construction site (some of them were later engraved on the rock wall), and I finished writing. My friend Chen Yuanmou, however, was a caring person, and he collected them one by one and printed them on colored typed paper to all units so that they could be widely circulated. Later, it was discovered by Guo Moruo and Zhou Yang and compiled into "The Ballad of the Red Flag". This is a poem that praises the railway soldiers for attaching importance to environmental protection during the construction of railways. Therefore, the Political Department of the Railway Corps awarded me a certificate of merit and awarded me the first prize. The Railway Soldiers Newspaper specially purchased a hardcover copy of "The Ballad of the Red Flag" and gave it to me, and the time of payment was: 1959.11.13, and the newspaper's big seal was stamped.
At the end of the day, the day when "Mountains and Rivers" had a wide impact on the whole country was when I was transported to the canopy by the Railway Soldiers Art Troupe. More than a month after the publication of the poetry collection, as soon as I received the sample book, I was sent to work for three months at Tianshengqiao at the junction of the two provinces of the Guikun Line; Less than half a year after I returned, I said that my "aesthetic thoughts" were at odds with a certain leader of the Art Troupe, and after being criticized for three days in the conference room of the Political Department, I was again sent to the 7th Company of the 2nd Battalion of the 47th Regiment of the 10th Iron Division in Golmud, Qinghai Province, for eight months of labor training. In the course of accepting criticism, I learned that there were three "crimes" involving "Mountains and Rivers":
First, "Lychee Red by the Jiulong River" must praise the southern Fujian girl for loving the railway soldiers very much, trying to break the fighting spirit of the whole army of the railway soldiers; The second is "Pasted on the Newly Erected Telephone Pole" blatantly overturned the case for Peng Dehuai.
What is deplorable is not this collection of poems, but this period of history of the railway soldiers. But just last night, when I was on the TV show, I couldn't help but cry when I saw the former railway soldiers building roads and bridges on the Qinghai-Tibet line, in the desert no man's land, in Hoh Xili, so carefully protecting the Tibetan antelope year, cultivating turf on both sides of the roadbed, and protecting the original ecology there......
Two 00 three, eighty twenty, anxious in Leshan
九龙江边荔枝紅
I thought: If there really is a lychee fairy, she must be beautiful and amorous. Look at the tender red husk, what a crystal and passionate heart is hidden.
—From the diary
Drunk the spring rain of March,
Having sucked up the south wind of May,
The lychee that fills the branches,
The red face is hidden in the green leaves.
Can't hold back the joy of harvest in my heart,
The singing of the girls picking lychees,
Like a string of ringing silver bells,
Flew out of the orchard and clanged down in the middle of the river.
Lock up the pride of building a frontier,
The song of the marching warriors,
Like playing a set of bass Qin qin,
flew into the orchard, and fell into the girl's heart with a thud.
The girls heard the singing,
A puff of smoke ran to the riverside,
It's like the stars holding the moon,
A circle encloses the team in the center.
Lychee blossoms, you are coming,
The lychee bears fruit, and the road is built,
Just picked bright red lychees,
Why did you leave......
"Comrades, please bring a basket of lychees,
Otherwise, just take a break and try it......"
A girl peels off a lychee,
Shy approached the warrior's side.
The warrior hurriedly turned around and thanked him,
The girl's heart was nervous,
Heh, didn't he just come to our village
Squad leader Li who taught us to drive a tractor?
The girl put down the lychee and ran,
His face was as red as a lychee,
Who knows that she took this lychee,
It was mistakenly placed on the wrist of the squad leader.
The girls giggled,
She puffed out her cheeks in disgust:
"Laugh! People are not like you,
I held my mind in my stomach and didn't dare to say a word......"
1956.7. Nanping
Zhou Gang's collection of poems "Mountains and Rivers" and other materials
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