On the riverside, the once bustling ferry boat is gradually deserted (Ding Yiyi/Photo)
1
Before arriving at Chaotianzui Wharf, a huge "projector" has already come into view, which seems to mark the indissoluble bond between the town and the movie, and seems to tell the past years of this thousand-year-old town - as moving and wonderful as a movie.
Along the way, when I learned that I was going to Baisha Town, Jiangjin, many Chongqing people were surprised and persuaded each other: "Even I haven't been there!" "What's the matter with you?" "You have to look at things!"
In this regard, I can only report the names of the dishes in Mandarin: "The Merry Generation", "The Golden Age", "1942...... The films filmed in Pasir Sha made me feel intimate and curious about the town – and when it came to "The Problem That Wasn't a Problem," the reaction of others made me feel like You Daxing, who was out of place in that movie.
"Okay, you can spread whatever you think is a problem!"
In late November 2024, the air in the white sand is slightly cool, and the vague fog casts a half-veiled veil over the town. With the opening of the Baisha Yangtze River Bridge two years ago, the once bustling ferry has gradually deserted, and almost only the local elderly and some students still choose to travel by boat.
On the ferry, in the middle of a row of baskets and locals, I spotted several young girls dragging suitcases, two of whom had come to school, and another who had just resigned from Guangzhou and returned home. As we chatted, we walked ashore, "At least until next spring, I don't want to go out again." With that, she let out a long sigh of relief.
Chaotianzui Pier is the heart of Baisha and a witness to history. Compared with the rejuvenated Chongqing Chaotianmen, as the only old wharf in the waters of the Sichuan River that has preserved its original appearance and is still in operation, Chaotianzui has always attracted locals to gather here: blowing the river breeze, listening to Sichuan opera, drinking baba tea, and swinging the dragon gate array, retaining the original life atmosphere and historical memory.
During the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, Baisha was designated as a relocation area for the Anti-Japanese War relying on the golden waterway, and took on the important task of guarding the capital of Chongqing, becoming the rear of the rear. As an important strategic transportation port in the upper reaches of the Yangtze River, Chaotianzui Wharf not only transported a large number of military supplies out of Sichuan, but also welcomed people from all walks of life to visit, give lectures, set up factories, and publicize anti-Japanese efforts to save the country.
One day in September 1938, Xiao Hong took a boat ride alone for seven or eight hours to Baisha. Greeting her at Chaotianzui Pier was her friend Bai Lang, who had been waiting for a long time. The two sisters from the Northeast met again after a year, and hugged each other in tears when they first met. At that time, Xiao Hong, who was pregnant with Liujia and had difficulty moving, the intimate Bai Lang also rented a sliding rod for her, and he followed the sedan chair man to slowly climb the 77 stone steps of Chaotianzui.
The "projector" on the Chaotianzui pier (Ding Ruyi/photo)
At the beginning of December, Xiao Hong and Bai Lang came to Chaotianzui Pier again. This farewell has become a permanent secret, and it also leaves an embarrassing dialogue:
"I wish you eternal happiness." Xiao Hong said to Bai Lang.
"I also wish you eternal happiness."
"Me? Will I be happy? The future is in front of me, and I will be alone for the rest of my life. ”
What kind of mood did Xiao Hong bring to Baisha? Why did she leave in a hurry just a few days after her child's death? If you stay under Bai Lang's care for a few more days, will the gears of fate turn in a different direction? In Hong Kong, at the last moment of her life, did this riverside town thousands of miles away pass by her memory? What is the place in her heart that this most often overlooked station in the world has been in the places she has drifted through?
I have many questions, but no answers. However, what is certain is that the dialogue between Xiao Hong and Bai Lang, full of warmth and poignant, is a timeless footnote to female friendship, and it is also the most moving part of the movie "Golden Age".
When I watched the film for the first time at the London International Chinese Film Festival in December 2014, I burst into tears many times. At that moment, the dark clouds of terrorist attacks almost loomed over the land of Europe, and I, thousands of miles away from home, hid in the cinema in the years of loss of security, and felt the same way as the displaced female characters - the world was sinking, and I could only struggle to hold on to the nearest piece of driftwood and try to go with the flow.
The ancient streets and alleys tell the history of Baisha (Ding Ruyi/Picture)
2
There is a two-story wooden building with a bucket structure next to the wharf, which is the grain accumulation station (the Baisha storage station of the 26th warehouse of the logistics headquarters in Sichuan), and now it has become the Jiangji Minsheng Wine Shop. From rice to wine, it is the narrative of wine culture and the creation of time.
Xiao Liu, the post-90s store manager, enthusiastically introduced the history of the building and the planning of the local cultural and tourism department: "There are many movies and TV series that have been filmed. In the future, the second floor of our house will also be open to visitors. Right now? It's all empty now. ”
Recently, the hit TV series "I Am a Criminal Policeman" in December 2024 was filmed at Chaotianzui Wharf and the grain pile. Interestingly, "Chen Duxiu", who has been played many times by Yu Hewei, the star of the play, was also invited to live in Heishi Mountain in Baisha Town for three months in the early summer of 1939, and gave a speech to the students of Jukui Middle School in the Crane Year Hall, which has the reputation of "the first auditorium in eastern Sichuan", which was the last public speech in his life.
It turns out that because Baisha Chaotianzui is similar to Chongqing Chaotianmen, and the topography and surrounding environment are in the same vein, many film and television works, especially those with the background of the Anti-Japanese War, have used Chaotianzui Wharf as a "stand-in" for Chaotianmen Wharf. Chaotianzui and Chaotianmen are like two flowers, and they are each other's past and present lives: "Chaotianzui's present" and "Chaotianmen's past" form a group of mirror images, reflecting each other, but unfortunately they cannot be navigated smoothly today.
Because of their similar age, Xiao Liu and I talked about our lives. It turned out that Xiao Liu was not a local, but from another small city by the Yangtze River, Wanzhou, located in the heart of the Three Gorges Reservoir area. When she first married in Baisha, she missed her hometown very much, and she would also reverie about another possibility of life - would it be better to develop in the main urban area of Chongqing? Now, her life is becoming more stable and happy, and her impression of Baisha is getting better and better: "After all, Baisha is also one of the largest towns in Chongqing. "People who live here seem to like to sum up their lives with this sentence.
From the wharf, along Donghua Street all the way to the right, through the country's largest riverside stilt building, Liushui Temple and many historical monuments, you can reach the Baisha Film and Television Base (sugar factory filming area). At the entrance of the visitor center in pitch black, two girls are squatting on the ground, one carrying a single-lens reflex camera to check photos, and the other is using a mobile phone to check the bus back to Chongqing University Town. It turned out that they deliberately prepared the costumes of the Republic of China, thinking that they could "make a film" here, but they were disappointed: "The scale here is much smaller than I imagined, and I will come out after a walk." ”
At a glance, the two towering chimneys with the slogan on the factory make people think that they have strayed into the Pingyao Movie Palace. Walk inward along various stills, celebrity signatures, and director's inscriptions: East Water Gate, Railway Station, Cathay Pacific Grand Theatre, Xinhua Daily, Minsheng Steamship Company...... More "stand-ins" of "old Chongqing" rushed into sight, and it was difficult to distinguish between the real and the fake for a while.
The country's largest riverside stilted building (Ding Ruyi/photo)
This reminds me of Jean Baudrillard's "Simulacrum and Simulation", which uses "hyper-reality" to discuss the relationship between the illusory landscape of Disneyland in the United States and the real American society.
In the evening, I saw the "Film and Television Park" again, or "Old Chongqing", in a restaurant full of strong Republic of China style. Being in a microcosm of a microcosm, tasting a dish that resembles both Jianghu cuisine and local cuisine, a subtle, rich, layered meaning is about to emerge - perhaps this stems from my gorgeous imagination of an era, or maybe it is just the magic of the peppercorns that are abundant here on the tip of my tongue.
Compared with the desertion and loneliness in the film and television base, the Baisha Ancient Town and New Town outside the door are unexpectedly vivid and vivid. In fact, Baisha, with dozens of cultural relics and cultural relics of the Anti-Japanese War, is a living museum. The local government also cleverly adapted measures to local conditions and put forward the idea of building an "old mountain city" film and television base on the basis of the anti-Japanese war sites.
So far, Baisha, like a natural set, has attracted a large number of filmmakers such as Jia Zhangke, Xu Anhua, Feng Xiaogang, Mei Feng, Zhang Yibai, etc., and has filmed more than 100 film and television works such as "Merry Generation", "Unproblematic Problem", "Golden Age", "1942", "Fog Capital", "Chongqing Spy War" and so on.
Built at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Zhang Ye Temple is the only well-preserved temple frame temple in Baisha Ancient Town. In 1934, the Baisha fire, Zhang Ye Temple survived because of its rare fire-sealing wall structure. During the Anti-Japanese War, Zhangye Temple became the school place of Jukui Academy and Baisha Town District Girls' Junior High School, and also placed a large number of wounded soldiers for treatment, and was known as the "wartime hospital".
Walking into the Zhang Ye Temple, on one side is the "county government", on the other side is a three-story building - the second floor is the Baisha Anti-Japanese War Cultural Exhibition Hall, with detailed historical materials and rich content.
When I was about to leave, several uncles and aunts came to Zhang Ye Temple and began to play and sing and rehearse Sichuan opera. The staff told me that Baisha is a well-known "Sichuan Opera Nest". I think of the Sichuan Opera Association of Baisha Town next to Jiang Ji Minsheng Liquor Shop, Xiao Liu said, "If it wasn't for the decoration, there were many people drinking tea and listening to the opera, which was very lively." ”
A few steps away from the weather-beaten Zhang Ye Temple is the Xia Mansion, the official residence of the anti-Japanese patriotic general Xia Zhongshi. In 1944, Feng Yuxiang came to Baisha to raise funds for the anti-Japanese resistance, and Xia Zhongshi invited Feng Yuxiang and his party here. The fundraising activity raised a large amount of gold, silver, jewelry and other physical and cash of more than 6.5 million yuan in Baisha, creating the highest record in Sichuan. Among them, the school group donated a total of more than 3 million yuan, which shows the unity and enthusiasm of teachers and students at that time. Afterwards, Feng Yuxiang wrote an article "The Most Patriotic Town - Baisha" in the book "Travels in Southern Sichuan".
Today, the door of this only intact residential house in Baisha is closed. According to the store next to it, the key to the Xia Mansion is in the hands of the local village committee, and the door will be opened when there is a movie to shoot, and it will be closed if there is nothing to do.
"Of course I went in," the man with a Pizhou accent said a little smugly, "but it was empty, there was nothing, and if there was a movie, I would move props in, and I would take it out when I finished filming...... Like an empty shell. ”
The weather-beaten Zhang Ye Temple (Ding Ruyi/Photo)
3
Every day in Baisha Town, I will come back here - standing at the crowded Chaotianzui Wharf, my gaze is like a camera lens, sometimes piercing through the mist-shrouded river, sometimes brushing over ordinary and unique Chinese faces, imagining generations of people gathering and dispersing here, and finally merging into the torrent of time and space, not knowing where to go.
From the pier, go left and follow the direction of sunset to reach the Donkey Creek Peninsula, where Han Dynasty pottery was excavated. Here is the "Xinyun Textile Factory" founded by Song Meiling during the Anti-Japanese War, and its full name is "Xinyun Textile Factory of the Women's Steering Committee of the Xinyun General Association". This largest cloth production base in southwest China not only provided military supplies, but also solved the employment problems of the families of officers and soldiers, the unemployed, and refugee groups -- as many as 70,000 women participated in the production successively, providing the possibility for women to support themselves in wartime.
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, "Xinyun Textile Factory" has been renamed several times, but no matter how the name is changed, the textile factory has always been the base camp of women, a garden for women to work hard and sweat, and there are too many unknown women's stories and memories of Baisha.
The school of the two girls I met on the ferry was also on the Donkey Creek Peninsula - Chongqing Aerospace Vocational and Technical College. For the locals, she has a more affectionate name, Jiangjin Normal School, which can also be regarded as an important local context.
In 1934, Wu Tairen, who had studied under Cai Yuanpei at Peking University and had just founded the "Jiangjin County Simple Rural Normal School" the year before, founded the Baisha Experimental Zone of the Sichuan Association for the Promotion of Civilian Education on the Donkey River Peninsula, following the civilian education model implemented by Tao Xingzhi, Liang Shuming and others in Shandong - in the form of training of half-farming and half-studying, so that rural children can receive education; Experimental classes for women have also been held to provide educational opportunities for ordinary women.
During the war years, Baisha once had nearly 40 primary and secondary schools, with more than 10,000 students, making it a veritable "city of students".
It is worth mentioning that in addition to the Sichuan Provincial Chongqing Women's Normal School and Sichuan East Normal School, the Ministry of Education at that time also established the National Women's Normal College (an important predecessor of today's Southwest University), the highest institution for women during the war, as well as the Fourth National Zhongshan Middle School, which was responsible for recruiting female students in exile in the war zone, and the Eighth National Zhongshan Middle School, which accepted students in exile in the occupied areas, so that girls of different ages but also displaced could still go to school.
In fact, as early as 1905, the last year of the Qing Dynasty, Deng Hexiang, a local squire and the first head of the "Jukui School", established the earliest girls' primary school in Sichuan, "Private Xinben Girls' School", in Baisha Luomagang, with his wife Zhu Shude as the head.
With the relocation of the school, academic institutions such as the Central Library and the National Compilation Hall also settled here, and the White House Literary Society, the Ministry of Education's special pre-university classes, and various newspapers and periodicals also followed. Chen Duxiu, Feng Yuxiang, Liang Shuming, Tai Jingnong, Wei Jiangong, Wu Mi, Huang Yanpei and other celebrities from all walks of life all gave lectures and speeches on the stage in Baisha, and some even left behind works.
Jin Yong also walked for two days to Baisha to ask for help from his cousin Jiang Fuxuan, who was the first director of the National Central Library at the time, and started his first job in the reading group of the library. This work experience, surrounded by a sea of books, also laid the foundation for his future creation.
Baisha, one of the "Four Cultural Dams", is not only a shelter, but also a spiritual home for a generation. Walking through the streets and alleys, it seems that you can see the young people who came from all over the country in those years, with a thirst for knowledge and a passion for defending the country, bringing light and hope to this town with unpredictable weather.
On March 29, 1942 (the anniversary of the martyrdom of the 72 martyrs of Huanghuagang), the Jiangjin Baisha Music Education Promotion Association and the Music Education Committee of the Ministry of Education held the "Chinese Music Month 10,000 Chorus" with the theme of propaganda and anti-Japanese war in Jiangjin Normal School, which aroused strong responses.
In the fourth issue of the first volume of "Youth Music" published in June 1942, the author Sun Chu gave a detailed introduction to the groups participating in the chorus: "At one o'clock in the afternoon, the singers of various schools came one after another, including more than 6,000 people from the pre-school class of the Women's Normal School, the 17th Middle School, the Boys' School, the Girls' School, the Girls' Teacher's High School, the Sichuan Teacher, the Chongqing Girls' Teacher, the Township Teacher, the Baisha Girls' High School, Jukui, Xinben, Xiuping, and the 13th Zhide School, and more than 10,000 people from the cultural institutions, public organizations and audiences, which can be called a sensational event. ”
At the same time, he also made a special mention of the high participation of women in the article: "The singing voice protrudes with the baton, loud and grand, and the voice is heard for several miles, and only one-third of the male voices and female voices of the participants are characteristic of the conference...... A charity sale was held during the break, and all proceeds were donated to comfort the wounded soldiers in the area. A female student in the preparatory class was listed as the champion with a score of 300 yuan, and the number of more than 1,000 yuan was collected in a moment. ”
It can be seen that Baisha has never lacked female students, let alone female voices.
The film and television park in the off-season is like a no-man's land (Ding Ruyi/Picture)
4
More often, when I am in a dilemma on the wharf, I often turn around and walk a few steps directly, and climb the hill in the "Yongxing Supply and Marketing Cooperative", and I can "go directly" to Shiba Ancient Street like an elevator.
Walking on this street ladder carved out of the entire boulder dam, there are gradually barber shops, shops, stationery shops, open-air mahjong tables, pharmacies, Shiba Street Primary School, the former residence of Bian Xiaowu, the founder of Chongqing Daily, and the occasional passing Bangbang Army...... Unfortunately, the residence of Xiao Hong and Bai Lang's family at the time and the specific location of Xiao Hong's production clinic are difficult to identify.
What we know is that one day in late November, Xiao Hong gave birth to a child in the obstetric clinic "Jingzi Maternity Hospital" opened by a Japanese woman, Shizuko Shizui (note: Shizuko Shishi, the principal of Baisha Jukui Middle School and the wife of Deng Shishi, who studied in Japan, and graduated from a medical university in Japan), on Huangnizui Street, and soon lost him. And Xiao Hong's novels "The Child's Speech" and "Hazy Expectations" written during the waiting period have stayed forever.
"Three hundred and sixty days a year, in the midst of daily sorrow, it is not as good as the birds on the mountain, not as good as the grasshoppers in the field......" Coming from the plains, I silently recited "Hazy Expectations" while panting up the stone steps, it is hard to imagine that the increasingly heavy body to be born at that time faced the long stone steps that seemed to have no end, whether she was like a little mermaid with every step of the body and mind like a knife? And her personal epic "storm" condensed by loneliness, pain, helplessness, introspection, and trauma may never really be recognized by us.
Shiba Street is also the place where the filming of "The Merry Generation" was announced. At this moment, several elderly people are sitting idly on the side of the street, watching the pedestrians coming and going.
Compared with the place where Xiao Hong lived, they seemed to be more interested in the movies that came to Baisha to shoot: "There is a movie that will be filmed here in September 2023." "We also have people here who are going to be group performers." It is said that there is also a professional "dragon suit" in the local area, and some residents even have specially customized costumes to prepare for playing the role well
1880 Cultural and Creative Cafe, a gathering place for young people in Baisha (Ding Yiyi/Photo)
。
When asked if he would go to the movies, the middle-aged man standing on the side smiled and said: "How can the movie have mahjong fun!" ”
A few steps further is the former site of the Kuomintang Party History Compilation Committee. At the door, I got on a bus bound for City World, and the chime of "Di-Senior Card" came and went, and everyone seemed to know everyone - everyone took turns to answer the phone, like a choir.
After dinner, I came to Baisha International Cinema, and the post-00s staff learned that I was going to watch "The Merry Generation", so they enthusiastically introduced: "This movie was filmed in Baisha." He quickly said that the movie had been filmed on Shek Ba Street, and told me that I had to go to Jukui Middle School on Blackstone Mountain.
Unfortunately, a few days later, when I came to this school, which had cultivated many talents, including the Crane Year Hall, the Qiqi Memorial Hall (a private Xinben Girls' Middle School building during the Anti-Japanese War) and many literati ink, I learned that since the new crown epidemic, this middle school, which requires a (30 yuan) ticket to enter, is no longer open to the public.
"But, why are there so few people watching the movie?" I asked the young staff.
"Today is the first day of release." The woman next to her hurriedly explained. (The truth is that it was November 23, the day after the movie was released.) ）
"Are you an art student?" I asked the young man again, trying to relate his current job to his major.
"Yes, I joined the choir when I was in middle school." The Jukui High School alumnus said proudly.
It seems that compared with the "film and television" that exists like a city card, Baisha people have singing in their bones.
The movie is about to start, and I came to the "No. 5 Year of the Dragon Ruyi Hall". With the opening song of the Brain Turbidity Band, "The wildfire can't burn inexhaustibly - the spring breeze blows and grows again-", those female students who once participated in the "10,000-person chorus" seem to travel through time and space and overlap with the characters on the screen.
When people are tired and restless, they always want to find their way. However, for a person like me, who even has an ancestral home in an immigrant city, where is my hometown? Ancestral home, because it seems too conclusive, seems vague and ambiguous, and it seems to cover up too much—about the family history of the matrilineal line, about the traces of the existence of specific people in the grand changes, flows and dispersions...... Those "sides" and "slices" that have not been included in the "official history" because they are too subtle, fresh, or complex, or are only judged to be "unimportant" by history and social customs, are just like the moment when a butterfly flappes its wings—but it is precisely because of these neglected moments that I become who I am.
After the movie ended, my ears seemed to fall on my seat, listening to Cui Jian's "Continue" over and over again. She told me that it was raining heavily, and the post-00s showed me a "shortcut" to the hotel. I followed the route of the post-00s and walked from one side of the parking lot to the other, but I couldn't find the exit.
(Reference: Ye Jun, "From a Foreign Land to a Foreign Land: The Biography of Xiao Hong"; Sun Chu, "Baisha Ten Thousand People Chorus Remembers"; Chongqing Local Chronicles Office website, "Ancient Post Baisha, the Long Legend of History and Reality"; and the materials exhibited in the Baisha Anti-Japanese War Cultural Exhibition Hall, the Secondary Normal Education History Exhibition Hall, and the Baisha Film and Television Base. )
Contributing writer for Southern People Weekly Ding Ruyi
Editor-in-charge: Yang Jingru