In contemporary China, the names of Fu Lei's father and son are almost household names. With the hasty death of the 86-year-old "piano poet" Fu Cong on December 28 due to infection with new crown pneumonia, the controversy over other people's character, integrity, legendary experience, especially "traitors", has once again become noisy and on the hot search.
Fu Cong.1934-2020.12.28, born in Shanghai
In China, Fu Cong's identity, which is most mentioned, is naturally "the eldest son of the great translator Fu Lei". But in the Western world, his popularity is obviously too much more than that of his father. A few years ago, the American "Overseas Chinese Daily" reprinted a domestic article, the original title of "The Death of Fu Lei", which was eventually changed to "The Death of Fu Lei, Fu Cong's Father", and his father still had to rely on him to "dip the light", which can also prove this.
He is a generation of pianists with international influence. In the 1960s, he was hailed by Time magazine as "one of China's greatest musicians." When I was in my 70s, I held concerts, and the venue was still full. The title of "China's first brother" is not a joke.
When Fu Cong was young, he was a star, and even a "national hero" figure at one time. In 1955, at the age of 21, he won the Chopin International Piano Competition and became internationally famous.
Fu Cong's award is the first time Chinese has taken a place in a major international piano competition, such a project that Westerners are most proud of, and the news has boiled over the country. It was not until 5 years later that Li Mingqiang continued to glory and won the 4th place. For more than 40 years, Chinese players never had the opportunity to enter the final, until Li Yundi won the championship in 2000, and he was able to wash away the shame. At that time, Fu Cong, who was far away in England, heard the news and "couldn't sleep all night in excitement" and insisted on returning to China to attend Li Yundi's celebration banquet.
Picture\ Fu Cong in his youth
It can be said that in the Western music scene of nearly half a century and new talents, Fu Cong has always been a "standing" grand pianist. What is more "standing" is that although he was forced to become a British citizen, he was always a "Chinese" in his heart, and he did not do a thing that could not live with his homeland for more than 50 years. Only because of the helpless change of nationality, even the death of illness can not get the understanding of netizens, these two days the Internet is full of "whip corpse" remarks, and even characterized as "traitors", people sigh.
Look at those "trial" comments, saying what "54 years of public dispatch to study, 59 years of defection, 20 years of death in the new crown, who the heavens spared"; what "people who died in 1958, today finally out of the funeral", the words are extremely unbearable. The subtext here seems that all overseas Chinese are "traitors", and how absurd the inference is! Without invoking the so-called "freedom of movement", these remarks are also unfair to Fu Cong, which really makes the deceased unable to look away and makes the living feel vaguely uneasy.
We always think that Fu Lei's father and son are big celebrities, and their lives are all about the population. But with the death of Fu Cong, we realized that we lacked understanding of Fu Cong, especially for the lost years! In his later years, he once expressed bitterly in an interview, "We should accept the lessons of history ... Can't get rid of the sores and forget the pain", the words are still in the ears, and the Slovaks have passed away.
In this world, how to commemorate Fu Cong seems to have become a cognitive test for all Chinese people.
When Fu Cong was young, he once said to a good friend, "Music is more important than my life." This sentence is actually the key to understanding his life.
He seems to have been born for music. According to the "Fu Lei Family Letter", he has had an incredible affinity for music since childhood: he has loved to listen to classical music since he was three years old, and as long as his father put Western music on the record player, he would quickly quiet down and listen, never noisy. Once, Mr. Lei Yuan, a friend of Fu Lei and good at violin, just pressed a key on the piano at random, and Fu Cong in the next room immediately said that it was an "absolute scale".
Figure\Fu Cong's younger brother Fu Min. Later, he published the "Book of Fu Lei's Family"
This kind of skill was difficult to distinguish after years of training, and Fu Cong, who had just been able to speak, could understand it without thinking, which made his whole family marvel. Perhaps because of this, "genius cherishes genius", Fu Cong later especially admired Lang Lang, and even thought that Lang Lang was more talented than Li Yundi, and his "genius is infinite". He said, "The first time I heard Lang Lang play the piano, I was so excited" that I was moved to tears. Although, he also pointed out that Lang Lang's interest is not high, "even a bit of a folk artist's feeling", is to constantly "cater to the low-level tastes of the United States", do not improve the level is only afraid of becoming Fang ZhongyongYunyun - this judgment and advice, may be gradually "realized".
Because of Lei Yuan's appreciation, Fu Cong embarked on the formal road of learning music when he was very young. At the age of 9, he was sent to the Italian pianist May. At the Hundred Instruments, he entered the hall as a student and became a "re-disciple" of Master Liszt, and studied hard for 3 years. At the same time, under the teachings and influence of Fu Lei, he also read a large number of Chinese classics and had a deep accumulation of traditional culture. He said that the first time he played Chopin's "Nocturne", he unconsciously thought of the ancient Chinese poem "Tearful eyes ask flowers and flowers without words, and fly red over the swing", and sorrow came from it. He also spoke very well English, and was catchy about Shakespeare's plays and sonnets.
Picture\ Fu Lei and his wife in their youth
Fu Cong's musical skills may be accumulated by latecomers, but his cultural literacy should be difficult for the younger generation of Chinese counterparts to match.
Fu Cong went from being a "hero" worshipped by the whole people to a "traitor" that everyone spits on, in 1958. In December of that year, in the storm of the country and the family, The Fu Lei and his wife were in a precarious situation.
At this time, although Fu Cong was far away in Poland, the situation was not optimistic. The year before, in 1957, when he returned to China as an international student, he was also criticized for hearing about his parents' determination to leave the UK. At the time, this was undoubtedly an uproar. Later, he said bitterly about the reason for his escape: "It was really forced to go to Liangshan", and it was "likely that it was a father-son memorial service" when he returned. As a pianist, his vision is not limited to black and white keys and staves, and he has his own judgment on current events.
He was forced to flee, not betrayed for the sake of fame and fortune. He recalled in his later years, "I did have a premonition that my motherland might embark on an unpredictable road. There is no other way to think about it. I walked in extreme pain and disappointment." Indeed, as he expected, the Fu Lei couple did not come out of misfortune. This is a history of national pain, an act of coercion, and it is by no means as simple as the word "treason". It is precisely for this reason that Fu Cong, who returned to serve the motherland after the transit and relocation at that time, still received super courtesy from the party and state leaders.
In the more than 60 years since he left Britain, Fu Cong has not done a single thing that has negative for the motherland, nor has he said a word that is unfavorable to his homeland. In 1980, the famous writer Ye Yonglie wrote "Patriotic Traitor" based on Fu Cong, from which we also learned that in order to preserve Chinese nationality, "refugee" Fu Cong also paid an unimaginable price and was under countless pressures. He was forced to become a British citizen after 7 years of exile.
When it comes to the reasons for being forced, it is only for the sake of the lowest survival considerations, "all for the sake of livelihood." His statement was, "With a Chinese passport, I am not allowed to perform, so that I can't survive.", so I had to do so. In fact, before leaving Britain, Fu Cong publicly issued the famous "Three No's Statement": "Do not join the British nationality, do not go to Taiwan Island, and do not do things that are detrimental to the motherland", so as not to be used by Westerners with ulterior motives.
Pictured \ Records released overseas
Today, we look back on his life, except for the first one that he did not stick to in order to survive, the rest of him can indeed be worthy of his life.
It can be said that the "traitor" Fu Cong is actually another version of "Yang Zhenning", and the situation is more worthy of understanding. Ye Yonglie said that he was a "patriotic traitor", and these 6 words expressed Fu Cong's pain and persistence very eloquently.
In addition to being forced to run away, Fu Cong has shown great feelings of family and country throughout his life. In 1979, when The East and west were thawed, he immediately returned despite dissuasion and suspicion. In the years that followed, he had to take time to return to China to give lectures almost every year, and he tried his best to personally guide the Chinese descendants to practice the piano, and now all Chinese pianists with a little reputation, such as Liu Shikun, Tan Dun, Li Yundi, Lang Lang, etc., have basically received his favor.
Picture\ Liu Shikun and his wife
He didn't benefit from these efforts. These gratuitous actions, as he repeatedly prides himself on in his home letters: "I have Chinese roots in my heart"! In his later years, he was ready to buy a house in Shanghai, "to return to the roots like the traditional old people in China", it seems that due to the cost problem, he can only regret it and end up, until he dies. His good friend Xu Zhendong said that he "found that Fu Cong's greatest characteristics are kindness, sincerity, a sense of justice, enthusiasm and passion" and "the pride and loneliness of Chinese literati", which should be truthfully evaluated.
People say that he is a "traitor", but this person has always had a strong national complex, even to the point of "incomprehensible". In a peer reminiscence article, Fu Cong, who has been living in the UK for decades, is always dressed as a "cardigan shorts and Chinese cloth shoes", "until he is introduced, he will never change into a Western-style dress, and from these little things, we can see how stubborn his Chinese heart is."
There is also an episode that may illustrate his hidden intentions even more. In 1981, when Fu Cong returned to China to play and give lectures, the People's Daily sent out a newsletter saying that "the famous British pianist Mr. Fu Cong's piano recital..." No, Fu Cong was very dissatisfied with these reports, protesting "What 'British pianist'?" I'm a Chinese. What 'Mr. Fu Cong', when can I be called 'comrade'!" He has always considered himself a "Chinese" and scorned those "high-ranking Chinese".
Abroad, he met his peers from China and was always extra enthusiastic. A strange Chinese artist stopped by the United Kingdom, and Fu Cong took the initiative to entertain him at his home in London; when he met an old friend in Yunnan during a performance in the United States, he would postpone his return home, just to talk to him for a day and a night. He is a person who misses the past, misses his homeland and friends, and is deeply concerned about everything in the motherland.
Although he became famous as a teenager and was already famous in the world in his early 20s, Fu Cong's life could not be said to be happy, and it could even be said that sorrow was like a shadow.
This is self-evident: on the one hand, he worries day and night about the death of his parents, brothers and relatives who "stay in Zhongzhou"; on the other hand, he has been saddled with the suspicion of "treason" for more than 20 years, and it is almost impossible to breathe under the weight of his body. More importantly, his marriage and family, father-son relationship, and even career became more and more fragmented in his old age.
Fu Cong had three marriages in his life: in 1960, he married Mira, the daughter of the famous American violinist Menuhin, and after living together for more than 10 years, the family broke up, because "the difference in temperament between Chinese and Western people is too large." Subsequently, Fu Cong, in the midst of extreme bitterness, had a more hasty marriage, he chose an oriental woman——— the daughter of the South Korean ambassador to Morocco, but "after 3 months of marriage, they could not live together... 3 months, short marriage". Fortunately, later, he finally married the like-minded Chinese female pianist Zhuo Yilong, had a more desirable family life, and had a youngest son, Fu Lingyun.
Pictured\ Fu Cong and Mira at the time of their new marriage
But the good thing is that almost at the same time, his most beloved music career also suffered a devastating blow: in the spring of 1987, he was unfortunately hit by a car accident in London, resulting in injuries to his right leg and left arm, and it was difficult to get close to the piano like an arm. In the memories of the people of the time, in his later years, he always wore a pair of black gloves, only half-cut fingers were exposed, and even the sandwich dishes were very laborious when eating, and "a piece of shrimp was clipped three times" at the banquet.
To make matters worse, his relationship with his two sons was not harmonious. None of the two sons who grew up in the piano inherited his mantle, not to mention, were also his "betrayers": the eldest son was a mixed-race child born of his ex-American wife and had always had a grudge against him. Because of the difference in political ideas, there was also a "huge conflict" with the younger son, and at one time "the father and son broke up": Fu Cong believed that the Western world was inhumane and often angry at home, and his son was a believer in Western values, and the rift was inevitable. In fact, because of this disagreement, he also interrupted relations with his close friend of several decades, Barenboim, for many years.
He is an ascetic of music, but he does not seem to be good at dealing with worldly trivialities and family conflicts, and Beethoven's famous saying "music is my last refuge", which is also true for Fu Cong. The rest of his life was bitter. When he was 70 years old, a 15-year-old junior high school student wrote an article about him entitled "The Pride of the Literati and the Sorrow of Life." Of course, the article was immature, but he was so excited that he quickly included it in "Fu Cong, Looking Forward to Seven!" in the book. He said, "This kid understands me very well."
Both proud and full of sadness, perhaps it is his own "conclusion of his old age"! Now that the past is over, and the deceased is resting in peace, we may wish to bid him farewell with sympathy for understanding, without exaggeration or insult.