Original Poplar Forest Anthology of Poplar Forest
Feng Zhiyuan listened to the radio in his hospital bed
Feng Zhiyuan's story four: burning yourself to illuminate students
Yang Forest/Text
Shanghai Boys' High School has a history of 160 years, the predecessor is the "Qingxin College" founded by the American Presbyterian missionary Fan John and his wife in Shanghai in 1861, named "Qingxin Girls' High School" in 1918, renamed "Shanghai Eighth Girls' High School" in June 1953, and since 1969, it has been renamed "Shanghai No. 8 Middle School", and then opened the "Shanghai Men's High School Base Experimental Class" and renamed as Men's Middle School. Feng Zhiyuan graduated from Northeast Normal University in 1953 and was assigned to teach here, and until 1958, he supported Ningxia, where he worked for five years and trained a large number of outstanding students.
In November 2005, when the Shanghai Boys' High School held a school celebration, several of Feng Zhiyuan's former students (who had retired at this time) recognized Feng Zhiyuan's old partner, Mr. Ma Yuren, and learned that his teacher, Feng Zhiyuan, was seriously ill and blind, so he entrusted a student's disciple in Changchun to visit Feng Zhiyuan. On December 11, 2005, a remittance slip of 10,000 yuan was sent from Shanghai to Feng Baozhen, the sister of Feng Zhiyuan in Changchun, with the names of shi Shujun, He Yin, Liu Hanmin and Dong Meirong.
Shi Shujun and 4 other students remitted a remittance slip of 10,000 yuan to Teacher Feng
These four students are extraordinary: He Yin is a well-known professor of comparative literature at Shanghai University of Foreign Studies, Liu Hanliang is a well-known professor at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, Dong Meirong is a senior teacher at the Huangpu District Institute of Education in Shanghai, and Shi Shujun is a famous director of Shanghai Film Studio - the name of any of them cannot be said in Shanghai.
Their growth is closely related to Feng Zhiyuan's education at that time.
Shi Shujun and Feng Zhiyuan met in a drama. Shi Shujun had to rehearse a drama in school that year, and Teacher Feng Zhiyuan was the director, but she always couldn't recite the lines. Teacher Feng patiently reminded her and told her a play. As a teacher, Feng Zhiyuan has always been kind and pleasant, saying that the drama is very devoted, there is no reprimand and no impatience, which makes her like drama very much and finally perform successfully, which has an indelible impact on her later growth in the artistic path, she applied for the directing department of the Central Academy of Drama and graduated in 1964. In 1983, Shi Shujun directed his first film "Female College Dormitory", which won the Best Director Award for Debut at the 24th Karlovy Farley International Film Festival, which became a hit; in 1986, Shi Shujun directed the youth film "Missing Female Middle School Students", in 1988, Shi Shujun won the National Top Ten Film Director Award in the New Era of the Ministry of Radio and Television; in 1989, she directed the love film "Courtyard Deep"; in 1990, she wrote and directed the film "Burning Wedding Dress" She won the Excellent Film Award at the Harbin Ice and Snow Film Festival; in 1992, she directed the film "The Death of a Female College Student", which won the first Golden Award for Outstanding Film in humanitarian spirit; in 1996, she directed the romantic comedy film "Little Wife".
Whenever Shi Shujun talked about his artistic growth path, he always said: I am always grateful to Teacher Feng Zhiyuan for his enlightenment education.
He Yin is a well-known professor at Shanghai Overseas Chinese University. In 2006, we were invited to Beijing CCTV together to do the TV program "Feng Zhiyuan", he was personable and talked: When Mr. Feng Zhiyuan taught us in Shanghai in the early 1950s, he was a very wise and talented person, and it was Mr. Feng who first let us know Pushkin, know Russian literature, and become the enlightener of our literature. He Yin read aloud a poem by Pushkin that Feng Zhiyuan gave them in Russian, and said with tears in his eyes: Teacher Feng Zhiyuan's life is like a candle, burning himself and illuminating us! We were shocked to learn of Teacher Feng's encounter, we did not have much money to fund, we can only talk about our little heart as a student, I hope that the teacher can have a happy old age.
The first on the left is Feng Zhiyuan when he was young
Feng Zhiyuan came from Shanghai to teach at Mingsha Middle School, where there was a shortage of Russian teachers, and he taught Russian to several classes of students by himself. In those years, Mingsha Middle School held theatrical performances, and the finale program was always the bel canto song "Katyusha" sung by Teacher Feng Zhiyuan in Russian: the teaching field beach outside Mingsha Middle School, the cold wind roared, the flying sand and stones, the wires on the poles were "nourished" by the cold wind; the large suite of the I-beam room on the campus was dressed up, and the teachers and students put on makeup and showed their artistic talents on the stage. When Feng Zhiyuan's beautiful song "Katyusha" sounded from the background, it floated out of the window along the roof, and with the help of the wind outside, it reached the ears of the surrounding farmers. The peasants looked for songs and squeezed into the performance site of the Mingsha Middle School's industrial room, and those peasants who only knew how to roar Qin, they experienced that expressing emotions not only shouted like Qin, but also could sing from the chest cavity leisurely and roundly - but also in foreign languages - although they could not understand the specific words of foreign languages, the Mingsha people, who never lacked musical ears, still felt the beauty of bathing in their souls.
In the early 1960s, the Zhongning Rural Secondary School suspended the teaching of Russian. When Feng Zhiyuan learned that a rural classmate named Yuan Hanmin insisted on learning Russian every day, he called Yuan Hanmin to his dormitory and office residence, tutored Yuan Hanmin's Russian pronunciation alone, especially the pronunciation of Russian tongue curls, and gave Yuan Hanmin one of his Russian dictionaries to encourage Yuan Hanmin to insist on learning Russian. Yuan Hanmin later participated in the Zhongning County Secondary School Examination, and the Russian language score was the second in the county. Yuan Hanmin later became a famous agricultural scientist, visiting Hungary in the 2000s, once in Budalas with agricultural scientists from all over the world, when Yuan Hanmin sang in Russian "Katyusha" that Feng Zhiyuan taught him, the whole audience was silent. After the song was sung, Russian scientists surrounded Yuan Hanmin and asked: Where did you learn such a pure Russian pronunciation? When they learned that Yuan Hanmin had learned from the rural middle school of his hometown Mingsha Middle School, they were surprised and happy, and suddenly pulled into the distance with Yuan Hanmin.
On the eve of the Spring Festival in 2003, some alumni of Mingsha Middle School Guandi Middle School in Yinchuan, together with the former teacher of Mingsha Middle School, Li Shupei (a flower holder in the front row, who came to Mingsha Middle School at the same time as Feng Zhiyuan and has passed away), wished Teacher Feng a photo memorial when he recovered as soon as possible: Yang Forest, Zhang Lihuai, Wang Zhaoli (deceased), Liu Tianlong, Li Shupei, Li Shupei's wife, female alumni of Guandi Middle School, Wang Lijuan, Hu Yuelan, etc
Li Hou soul is the first high school graduate of Mingsha Middle School, and now is a doctoral supervisor of Nankai University, a world-renowned entomologist, serving as the editor-in-chief, deputy editor or editorial board of more than a dozen national insect academic authoritative journals in China, the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Japan, India, South Korea, etc. The final classification and identification of newly discovered insect species around the world must be personally signed by the three words "Li Hou Soul" to be recognized by the industry. When he was a student at Mingsha Middle School, Feng Zhiyuan was his Chinese teacher. Li Hou's soul's home is in Long Beach, dozens of miles away from Mingsha Middle School, and the conditions for going to school are relatively difficult, but he is smart and studious, and he is full of curiosity about everything. Feng Zhiyuan told him: Curiosity is the basic quality of a scientific research worker, in order to achieve achievements, curiosity alone is far from enough, we must dare to make bold measures that others dare not think, in order to have the possibility of success - but "may" is not "already" - to turn "may" into "already", in addition to talent and intelligence, we must also be prepared to take certain risks. Remembering these words of Teacher Feng, Li Houling went deep into the no-man's land of Tibet when he was a doctoral student, studied the rare insect characteristics of the outside world, and collected a variety of insect specimens. When he was a postdoc, Li Houling went deep into Africa, stayed in no one place for more than half a year, and collected a large number of insect specimens unique in the world. Because there are too many specimens, the flights flown on normal routes are full of people, and the things they carry are overweight, and it is impossible to bring all the specimens back to China, only after passing over Afghanistan, which is still fighting, there are few customers on the plane, and the things they carry are not restricted, so there is a possibility of bringing them all back to China. Li Hou soul negotiated with the flight over Afghanistan, and finally decided: at the risk of his life, he chose to take the flight over Afghanistan, and completely brought all the collected insect specimens back to China from Africa, becoming the only insect "orphan book" in the world, and has become the "treasure of the town hall" of the insect archive of Nankai University.
Stills from the movie "Feng Zhiyuan" (Zhang Jiayi plays Feng Zhiyuan)
In 1978, when I was a sophomore in college, I published my debut novel in Ningxia Literature and Art (the predecessor of Shuofang), "1978 No. 3"—at that time, everyone loved to write, and there were literary enthusiasts everywhere, but who could publish a literary work publicly was as difficult as whose company could successfully go public today, and once it could be published, it would sensationalize the whole society. Feng Zhiyuan was ecstatic, holding my debut novel "Ningxia Literature and Art" and publicizing it to people everywhere: "My students have published works——! In the high school Chinese class he brought at Guandi Middle School, he asked the students to read my work to the whole class (at this time his eyes were not good), and he explained it to the students paragraph by paragraph. He brought me a letter: if I want to go home from vacation, I must go to Guandi Middle School, saying that there are important things to tell.
When I met him, he took out the publication, pointed to a "wide" word on it, and repeatedly stressed to me for half a day: "Articles should use 'long' in this place, not 'wide'!" And warned me: the first element of creation is the accuracy of words and sentences, first with accuracy, and then considering image and vividness.
Promotional poster for the movie "Feng Zhiyuan"
In 1998, he learned that I had been invited to visit Germany and brought a letter asking me to come back to him. In the movie "Feng Zhiyuan", there is a group of Shots of Feng Zhiyuan students who came back from visiting Germany and rushed to visit Mr. Feng, which is the material I provided to the choreographer - that is also a set of shots based on me that the director Yang Hongtao's good brother specially joined to show the special friendship between us: he originally invited me to join the crew as a screenwriter: Feng Zhiyuan, the student screenwriter Feng Zhiyuan, is very distinctive. I considered that some people in Zhongning at that time did not fully recognize Feng Zhiyuan (most of them were my teachers), and they were quite critical of pushing Feng Zhiyuan as a typical example of volunteer teaching, and I could only hide behind the scenes to provide materials - that meeting, Feng Zhiyuan changed his usual tradition of teaching when he saw me in the past, and quietly listened to me tell him about what I had seen abroad. There are many details, and I want to talk about the details and then the details.
Teacher Feng told me: Telling stories, what is really moving is the details.
Teacher Feng Zhiyuan's poetry notebook
I spent more than a month in Germany talking about what I had to say, and I told him about it for an afternoon. Then he took out a notebook of poetry he had pressed under his pillow and asked me to look at it.
This is a poem written by Feng Zhiyuan almost all his life, which is marked with time records of different eras and different periods.
I read it carefully many times, and there was an indescribable bitterness in my heart: except for a few poems that were slightly accidental, most of them were recorded in the written records of that era.
Looking at Teacher Feng's longing eyes - at this time, Teacher Feng's eyes were close to blindness, and I just said, "Very good, very good." ”
He sighed and said, "Alas... My poems are just records that keep up with the situation, and I know that there is not much artistic value, but these German observations you tell me are very valuable, and if you can write them, no matter where you put them for publication, they will be popular. ”
Prompted by Teacher Feng, I wrote out my visit to Germany one by one, and it was first serialized in the "Yinchuan Radio and Television Newspaper" in Ningxia that year, and newspapers and periodicals across the country reprinted it - at that time, the procedures for going abroad were complicated, and it was a bit like the difficult feeling of landing on the moon, unlike now going abroad like a peasant rushing to the market, and if you want to travel to report a travel agency, you can get it. Write out foreign observations and hears, and see rare readers. After the full article was serialized, the publisher published my fourth book, "Where did the laughing questioner come from: A diary before and after the visit to Germany".
Cover of The Diary of a Visit to Germany
In 2006, doing the "Feng Zhiyuan" interview program on CCTV, I said the following words to the national audience:
Feng Zhiyuan and a large number of intellectuals who supported education in the western region came from the bustling big city of Shanghai and Beijing to the poor and backward Great Northwest to cultivate us peasant children into talents, and in our children's generation, some studied at Tsinghua and Peking University, and some studied in the United States and Britain. So far, together with our own descendants, some of us have stayed in the north, Shanghai, and Guang'an, and some have also been naturalized in the United States, Britain, and Australia, while Feng Zhiyuan and a large number of intellectuals have devoted their lives to the northwest, and finally stayed in the northwest, and now they have retired for many years, and there is no place to settle down. For the efforts of their generation, it is not enough to rely on one "touch" - if these people did not come to the northwest, to Ningxia, to Mingsha, to burn themselves, to illuminate us, we may also be like our parents, blind for a lifetime.
Back cover of the Diary of a Visit to Germany
Feng Zhiyuan and his sister Feng Baozhen