Xi Xu, Department of English, United International College, Beijing Normal University-Hong Kong Baptist University
In a person's life, he will meet many teachers. From the kindergarten in the county to the high school in the city, to peking university, and then to the south to study for a doctorate, at different stages of study, I have received help from different teachers. Their teachings influenced me in all sorts of ways, until I became a teacher myself. Among the many teachers who have been kind to me, Master Tutor Hu Xudong is undoubtedly the most special and the one who has had the greatest impact on my life.
Teacher Hu has a lot of special features, the first point is the title. As a student, I actually rarely call him "Teacher Hu", but "Beard". He was ten years older than me, and sometimes on the phone, I also called him "Brother Hu". "Beard" is the name of his student days to walk the poetry and rivers, mixed literary forums; after becoming a teacher, he still maintains the frankness and integrity of his student days, without a little "Peking University Professor" shelf. Therefore, in the following line, I still call him "beard".
First acquaintance with beards
In 2002, Hu Zi graduated from the Department of Chinese of Peking University and stayed on to teach. In the fall of the same year, I was admitted to the English Department of Peking University, but in the first semester, I did not choose his class. Although when I was playing blindly on the Internet in high school, I mistakenly visited the "Peking University Online New Youth" forum and was attracted by the fresh and vigorous discussion on it, but at that time I did not know that the big guy who hosted this website was the young teacher of the outer courtyard "Hu Xudong" on the course selection manual. The first course offered by bearded school was about Twentieth-century European and American poetry. In the poetry circle of Peking University, he was already a well-known figure, but my understanding of Peking University poetry at that time was limited to a few names such as Haizi and Xichuan, and I had not heard of him, so I missed the first course he taught at Peking University.
I was in the spring of 2003, the first time I took a beard class in the first semester of my freshman year. Why I chose the beard class, the specific reason has not been remembered, but it must be related to the friends of the Chinese Department. In high school, catching up with the rise of private bookstores, or buying or renting, several bookstores at the entrance of the school swallowed dates and turned over many books half-understanding, including "The Search of the Soul" by Qian Liqun, "Old Things of Peking University" edited by Chen Pingyuan and Xia Xiaohong, and Kong Qingdong's "47th Floor 207". After reading it, I was simply fascinated by the demeanor and campus life of Peking University, and I wanted to take the Peking University examination. Because the authors of these books were all teachers of the Chinese Department of Peking University, at that time, in my mind, the Chinese Department was about equal to Peking University. However, I did not expect that the Chinese Department only enrolled students in Guizhou every other year, and I did not have a quota in the college entrance examination that year; I was also somewhat interested in English, thinking that I could read Holmes in the original text, which was also a fun thing, so I applied for the English Department. At that time, it was popular to rub classes, and the teachers of the English Department were also very open, encouraging us not only to be "foreign language students", but to be "liberal arts students", and literature, history and philosophy must lay a good foundation. After the beginning of the school, I mixed into the classroom of the Chinese Department, rubbed more, and gradually became acquainted with some students of the 01 and 02 grades of the Chinese Department, and heard a lot of bearded legends from them. He studied contemporary literature Chinese undergraduate, master's degree in Spanish, and doctoral studies in contemporary literature, and after graduation, he stayed in the Foreign Chinese College to teach world literature! Such an academic path has an unprecedented appeal to me, a student of the outer college who wants to study Chinese department. Moreover, as soon as his fall semester began, his unique style and bold content were not shy among the literary and artistic youth on campus, and he chose his class.
Before going to Brazil, Beard offered two school-wide general courses, one about poetry and the other on film, usually taking turns. That semester, I chose "World Literature in 20th-Century Cinema." This course is mainly movie-watching, and will play a movie in its entirety, rather than a fragment; before the screening, Beard will briefly explain the relevant writers, works and literary trends for ten minutes, point out the connection between film and literature, and sometimes introduce the tidbits behind the film shooting and circulation. It was still the era of DVDs and IC card phones, and most of the students around me didn't have personal computers or so many movie theaters. Even on a campus with a strong literary and artistic atmosphere like Peking University, there are not many places to watch movies. One is the large lecture hall, the other is the South Hall, and the optional films are also very limited. As an ash-level fan old cannon, Beard has the rich resources of the "Film Night Sailing Ship" section of the New Youth Forum, not only reading countless films himself, but also holding quite a lot of unpopular films in his hands, coupled with his long-term reading accumulation of world literature, making him the best candidate to open this course.
In a small southwestern city, before going to college, my movie-watching experience mainly came from Hong Kong films in the video hall, and I saw very few foreign movies, all of which were Hollywood blockbusters such as "First Blood", 007, and "Titanic" that was ridiculed by Beard in poetry, and I almost did not see any European and American literary films. In terms of reading, although it is very mixed, the foreign literature that can be found around is very limited, mainly the European classics of the nineteenth century, but also a small number of detective novels and science fiction novels. As for twentieth-century modernist literature, I have not read anything but Kafka and Yasunari Kawabata. Beard's films screened that semester included "Clockwork Orange", "Kafka", "The Name of the Rose", "Postman", "Underground", "Keys", "Gluttonous Tree", "Captain Pandaron and the Laborer Girl"... Strange names such as Echo, Llosa, Neruda, Burgess, Junichiro Tanizaki, Jan Sweyenmeyer, Kubrick, and Kusturica poured into my skull in a short period of time, bringing me a great aesthetic impact. Often the first day after class, the next day he went to the liberal arts reading room to borrow books, frantically reading the works mentioned by beard. I'm sure there must be other students who do that. Because I went late several times, I couldn't borrow the novel corresponding to the film in class, so I could only borrow other works of the same writer to relieve my hunger. Beard's course quickly opened my literary horizons and shaped my literary taste, and modernist literature and culture became the subject of my doctoral studies later, and it is also my academic interest that continues to this day.
This course brought me not only aesthetic inspiration, intellectual shock, but more importantly, emotional comfort. In the memories of many people, the style of beard class is a variety of paragraphs and golden sentences. He can easily use online strips and hot words, and use clever "hanging" to enliven the classroom atmosphere like a storyteller. In his class, there is always no lack of laughter. Most of the classes of that semester were like this, and even when SARS was beginning and people were panicked, he could use Hu jokes to comfort everyone. But one day in early April, he walked into the classroom, his face was not as relaxed as usual, and he told us the news of Zhang Guorong's death in a sad and somewhat serious tone. The film screened in that class was also temporarily replaced by "Ah Fei Zheng Biography". This practice, in today's colleges and universities, may be labeled as "violating the teaching plan", but I feel the teacher's true feelings for literature and art. At that moment, standing on the podium was not only a humorous and knowledgeable teacher, but also a living person with flesh and blood and moved for love. Film and poetry were not tools he used to make a living, nor bait to confuse young people, but a real part of his life. I saw the emotional and moral side behind his jokes, and decided that this teacher was a person who could speak from his heart. At that time, I was in a state of confusion and anxiety. I didn't have many literature classes in my freshman year of the English Department, and the focus was on the basic language skills training of listening, speaking, reading and writing, which made me a little frustrated; but because of the lack of vocabulary, it was difficult to directly nibble on large original works. There is not enough interest in professional courses, and there is always a feeling of being an outsider when going to other departments. To put it simply, I don't think this is the kind of poetry, wine, dream-like Peking University life that I read in books and want to live before, but I don't know how to make changes and which direction to go. Shortly after that class, I plucked up the courage to hand-write a long letter to Beard and hand it to him after class. Thinking about it now, the letter must be full of complaints and bitterness of the literary and artistic youth of the second grade. But Beard did not regard my submission as childish, but talked to me once, the main meaning is that the English department is very good, foreign languages are very important, we must practice foreign language kung fu well, and then we can engage in academics later. I was relieved to hear this, and I also dispelled the idea of wanting to change the system for a while. Since then, I have gradually increased my interaction with Beard outside of class, from an ordinary student who listens to lectures to a literary friend who reads poetry and watches movies with him. Affected by SARS, the classes of that semester were not completed. The day before the closure, I asked someone to help equip a computer in Silicon Valley Computer City outside the southwest gate. Later, the classes stopped, and Beard lent me a number of discs, which became a great consolation for me to get through the anxiety of closing the school.
Shortly after the start of the school year in the autumn of 2003, Beard received a task from the school and was about to go to the University of Brasilia to teach. He traveled widely and had many friends to say goodbye to one by one. But before leaving, I was still thinking about our little friends who were playing with him, so we specially formed a bureau on the second floor of the home and invited everyone to dinner. I remember that not only the students who chose his class were present, but also Xiao Song and several young poets who often came to rub the class. That day, beard was a bit like a big man who promoted his juniors, and told us to play together and write together in the future. Xiao Song and I later left Beijing separately, and we did not expect to see each other again, but it was at the farewell ceremony of the beard of Babaoshan Mountain. After Beard went to Brazil, he began to write a column on his blog, named "What time is your side", and I read his colorful life in the southern hemisphere like everyone else. When he had problems reading and writing, he also wrote e-mails to ask him for advice from time to time, and he was in contact with him intermittently until he returned to Beijing in 2005.
Enter the Humen
In the spring of 2005, I saw the news of beard and Azi's marriage on the blog. After returning to school, I took some bacon sausages made at home, as if there was a Zunyi cigarette, and ran to their "wedding room" to congratulate. At that time they were still living on the nineteenth floor near the South Gate, an old tube building with only one room, and the toilet and kitchen were shared with the neighbors. What impressed me more was that half a batik cloth was hung at the door as a curtain, showing a sweet life atmosphere that was different from the surroundings. Since then, in addition to poetry and film, he has also taught a general course on "Brazilian Culture". Many people have read his column on life in Brazil in the Beijing News, so the class is immediately full. He is very skillful in his lectures, not only is he good at using sound and light electricity to tell us about the multimedia poetry of the Gompos brothers; he also brings his own props, and when he talks about the life customs of the Gaucho people in southern Brazil, he will suddenly act like magic, showing a set of Mate tea sets, for everyone to taste. Yerba mate is made with a straw and everyone drinks it in turn. Beards are generally handed to the students in the front row nearby, and some people may be worried about hygiene problems, but they can't help but be curious, and the look of wanting to drink but not daring to drink is unbearable. After a little hesitation, the bold and unrestrained classmate rushed out from the back row, and as soon as he took it, he began to drink, causing a burst of laughter. Bearded classroom, never lack of lively. His vitality infects the students, and the classroom is always full of life, and there are no cold times.
Happy days always pass quickly. Seeing that I was about to graduate from undergraduate, I still coveted campus life and wanted to take the academic road in the future, but my grades were not slipping, and I was not enough to guarantee the graduate students of the department. At this time, beard helped me to take the Baoyan examination of the Institute of World Literature and go to graduate school with him. In the autumn of 2006, I began to study for a master's degree at The Institute of Shiwen, chose Beard as a tutor, and officially entered Humen. From then until I left Beijing in the summer of 2008, I had the closest relationship with Beard, sometimes even seeing each other almost every day of the week. He gave us a seminar for graduate students at the Center for Brazilian Studies (at that time, he was still in the Sixth Academy), and asked me to be an assistant teacher for the general course, and I had to see him several times in the class. Some friends from other places came to Peking University to participate in poetry activities, and he often pulled me into the dinner table to meet the world. As soon as we were free, he and Azi took us around to eat the "Fly House". It is said to be a "fly restaurant", but in fact, it is quite a characteristic niche food. What can quickly pop up in my mind are the soup of the peony garden, the Bazhou office near the Big Bell Temple, a Guizhou cuisine near the Beihang West Gate, and the "crazy copy" near the Dashuang'an shopping mall. Almost all of the restaurants he wrote in his column took us to eat. Now that I think about it, I am afraid that the fees for his column will soon be eaten up by us. At that time, they had moved from Changchun Garden to Weixiu Garden, and the one-bedroom apartment was replaced by two bedrooms. Although the dining room was small, he and Azi began to invite friends and students to dinner at home. I am from Guizhou, the taste is similar, delicious, and willing to wash dishes, especially the number of times to rub rice. In those years, all the festivals such as Mid-Autumn Festival and New Year's Day were basically spent in Weixiu Garden. After crossing the Chinese New Year's Eve and eating Chinese New Year's Eve meal, he and Azi beckoned us to go to the bell pavilion on the shore of the unnamed lake and listen to the bell ringing. Beard cooking generally does not require help to lay hands, only in the spring when digging cabbage, wrapping dumplings will let everyone work together. After-meal activities are generally to fight landlords, and they do not disperse until ninety o'clock. But he often recommends new good books to us, and I wonder where he comes from to read them, and when I asked later, he said that he would read books for half an hour before going to bed every day. The habit of efficient reading is the secret behind his ability to grasp all kinds of academic new knowledge, and it is also the guarantee of the continuous renovation of his course reading materials. A classmate who had just taken his course in the spring semester of this year posted the syllabus (https://www.douban.com/note/811129297/) of "World Poetry Studies Since Modernism" on Douban, and the list of poets listed above came from countries including Martinique, North Macedonia, and Slovenia, which we usually pay little attention to. Someone replied: "I was repaired in the autumn of 19, and the poets in the cover changed every week, and the beard was careful." "Beard usually likes to joke with students, but he takes classes very seriously.
Beard, Green Tea and the author climb the mountain at Vulture Peak
In 2007, I was an assistant teacher of Beard's "Introduction to European and American Poetry in the 20th Century" and met new friends such as Yang Daguo, Ye Xiaoyang, and Xi Xiquan; Green Tea, the editor and book critic of the Beijing News, often came to play, because his wife also became a student of Beard; as well as old friends such as Liu Yin, Fan Xue, and Jin Yong, plus poets Peng Min and He Buyan who came from the National People's Congress Examination, the team of playing together grew. The house could not fit, the western suburbs of Beijing were mountainous, and Beard and Azi would take us to the mountains on the weekend. Beard often checks the strategy in advance, formulates the route, and he can also identify many plants in the mountains for us along the way. He grew up in the mountain village of Chongqing until he was eight years old and had a deep affection for the countryside. The most energetic beard I remember, apart from being on the podium, was on the mountain road.
Help me go to Hong Kong
Christmas Eve 2006 was a big day in my life. That night, at their home in Wei Xiuyuan, Beard and Ah Zi Zhang luo had a dinner party and introduced me to a sister of Ah Zi's sisters in the Npc, and she later became my lover and wife. The next day, Beard asked me to take her to bookstores around Peking University. His arrangement is very clever. At that time, I often mixed with the reading version of the unnamed BBS, and I would go to the campus and several bookstores around every week, and the books were not very good, but the kung fu of "book cover learning" was still there. Which bookstore sells what books, and even which kind of books are on which shelf, can say eight or nine inseparable, and I also know a lot about the wind reviews of new books of literature, history and philosophy and the gossip of the author. After visiting several shops, according to my wife, "I think this person seems to have a little insight", which left a good impression on her.
My girlfriend and I were in a relationship that went very fast. At that time, she was already studying for a master's degree at the University of Chinese in Hong Kong, and we usually chatted on MSN. In 2007, during the May Day holiday, we went to Xiamen for a few days to play, and then went to her house in Chaozhou. I don't pay much attention to dressing, not much decent clothes. I heard that I was going to meet the woman's parents, and before I left, Beard also took me to a shop in Wudaokou that specializes in Hallyu to pick out a few clothes for me. In the autumn of that year, my girlfriend applied for a scholarship to study for a doctorate in the Department of Cultural Studies of Lingnan University, and I felt that long-term long-distance love was unreliable, and I was eager to apply for past studies. After bearded people knew what I thought, not only did he not dissuade me, but he did a good job to the end and help me think of a way. He urged me to translate Auden's articles in memory of Yeats and recommend them to the Contemporary International Poetry Scene for publication; let me translate at the Pearl River International Poetry Festival in Guangzhou, introducing me to the Hong Kong poet and professor of the Department of Chinese of Lingnan University; taking me to visit the homes of his master's and doctoral supervisors, Professor Zhao Zhenjiang and Professor Hong Zicheng, and showing my research plan to Teacher Hong and asking him to write me a letter of recommendation. Although I was fortunate to be admitted to the English Department of the University of Hong Kong instead of studying comparative literature at Lingnan University, without bearded tolerance and help, it would have been difficult for me to make up my two-year master's degree at Peking University and go to Hong Kong with a certificate of resignation. In March 2009, we registered our marriage in Tuen Mun, Hong Kong. Bearded and Azi flew over to testify to us and signed their names on our marriage certificates. We arranged for them to stay at a hotel in Tin Shui Wai, where Beard wrote the poem "Kapok".
Beard served as the author's witness
After graduating with a Ph.D., I came to Zhuhai to teach at a Liberal Arts College that cooperates with Chinese and foreign companies. Whether it is poetry writing, translation, or academic research, I am not an excellent disciple of Humen. I have sisters who have served as editors of core journals; Duckling (Huang Qian), who is the same year as me, not only writes poems well, but also translates the works of Saramago and Anne Carson; Sister Zhou Xingyue, who returned from studying in the United States, has learned Portuguese and translated Wendler's poetry criticism, and has a deep theoretical literacy and broad academic vision; Huang Zhen, a disciple of my undergraduate students, studied Japanese and translated many books by Keigo Higashino, Kotaro Isaka, and Shusaku Endo in his spare time. I did not study Portuguese and followed the line of Brazilian cultural studies, nor did I focus on the translation and study of modern poetry, although I never said it to beard, but sometimes I think of it with a sense of shame for my teacher. In December 2017, the BRICS Literature Forum was held at the Zhuhai Branch of Beijing Normal University. Beard accompanied several Brazilian writers to Zhuhai as a guest. We took the children to the meeting and invited Beard and his good friend, Professor Fut Hartmann, a Brazilian scholar, to eat Chaoshan beef hot pot. After the meal, they and Teacher Min Xuefei, Teacher Songhai, and Master Yang Zhuyun came to my house to drink Gongfu tea, and the family was very lively for a while. At that meeting, Beard told me that he was happy to see my current state of work and life. Although it was said casually during the chat, it made me feel at ease and did not live up to his matchmaking and help. As my wife said, "Teacher Hu has always been at the center of our values, so much so that we dare to make some life choices that retreat to the edge."
In 2017, Hu Zi came to Zhuhai to participate in the BRICS Literature Forum and told stories to the "disciple granddaughter" at the author's home
Goodbye beard
In the commemorative video played at beard's farewell ceremony, there is a speech he made at the Yuanmingyuan store on one-way Street when the first edition of "Go to His Brazil" was released many years ago, talking about his college class when he was teaching in Brazil: "In general, their classroom atmosphere is very casual. I was there, and there was a completely equal, friendly relationship between the teacher and the student. I also tried to advocate for this kind of friendly relationship at Peking University. But under this educational tradition in China, especially under the traditional education of universities, there is still an inexplicable reverence for teachers. "For Elder Zhao, Teacher Hong and other elders, the beard is particularly respectful and pays attention to etiquette. I went to the two teachers' houses with him a few times, and each time the beard was very serious and never joked. He really maintained this equal friendship relationship with his students, and there was no traditional concept of teachers. It's unbelievable to say, for so many years, we have never had a Humen WeChat group that covers multiple students, and it was only after learning the news of Beard's death that everyone pulled up a group. He did not ask for anything from his students, and in turn took special care of everyone. At the beginning of 2013, my wife and I went to Taiwan for a meeting, and he introduced us to our friend and gourmet Jiao Tong, so that we had the honor of having Jiao Tong's teacher invite us to eat twice. This time in Beijing, I met the poet Zhu Yu, who was teaching at Soochow University, and heard him mention that last year a disciple graduated and went to suzhou to work, and he was not familiar with life, and beard specially asked him to take care of it.
The first edition of "Go to His Brazil"
The second edition of "Go to His Brazil"
On May 30 this year, an old friend Green Tea came to Zhuhai to promote his new book "If There Is No Bookstore", and we had a conversation at The Reading Chao Bookstore. Several of my students also went to the scene, and when they returned, they recorded their feelings on the WeChat public account. After I turned to the circle of friends, Beard forwarded and commented: "Hu disciple's son-in-law Green Tea and Hu Men disciple Xu Xi's activities in Zhuhai, watching xu Xi's disciples' records are very exciting, I want to go to join in the fun." Fan Xue left a message below: "There is a kind of pity that the people who played cards back then ran to things. We never imagined that the next time everyone "joined in the fun" together, it would be a few months later to say goodbye to Beard in Babaoshan.
The day after the farewell ceremony, green tea carried me to Stoog's hometown, where beards used to go. We parked inside the post and telecommunications sanatorium and walked over. Compared with more than a decade ago, except for the cars parked on the side of the road, the surrounding wind and objects have not changed. The "supermarket hair" is still there, the water of the Wanquan River is still somewhat smelly, and the Zhejiang small seafood we often eat is still open, but we can no longer hear the laughter of the beard, and we can no longer make up the card game.
Editor-in-Charge: Zheng Shiliang
Proofreader: Yan Zhang