Ai Wu: China is outstanding
Southbound "Wandering Literary Hero" (Part 2)
Huang Huiqing
From Lu Xun's teachings, we find the direction of literary struggle
In February 1931, Ai Wu was received by the underground Communist Party in Xiamen. While waiting to go to Longyan and Yongding in the Soviet Union, he read progressive publications such as "Sprout", "Pioneer", and "Rushing Stream" published in Shanghai, which aroused his strong desire to engage in revolutionary cultural work. So he wrote the essay "Hong Kong Night", describing the experience of being escorted to Hong Kong for one night, which was published in the "Reading Monthly" of Shanghai Guanghua Bookstore. At the same time, Ai Wu tried his best to understand and collect the situation and materials in the Fujian Soviet District, and prepared for the future creation of the short story "Taiyuan Ship" in Shanghai.
In April 1931, due to the delay in going to the Soviet Union, Ai Wu went to Shanghai and began to sell literature for a living. He submitted a group of essays entitled "Burmese Tongue" to Qingguang, a supplement to the Current Affairs News, signed "Lotus" ("monk" harmonic sound, in order to remember Wan Hui), and published new poems in the "Literature and Art" column under the pseudonym "Desert". These pseudonyms reflect the loneliness of his mood at the time. In this colonized "Ten Mile Ocean Field", his national self-esteem was greatly damaged. Thinking of the experience of wandering in Nanxiang, I deeply felt that "for the major battle of anti-imperialism, we must contribute, even if it is only expressed in words, it is good." ”
One day in July 1931, on North Sichuan Road in Shanghai, Ai Wu happened to run into Sha Ting, a middle school classmate who had been disconnected for many years. They lived day and night, discussing literary and artistic creation. Under the persuasion of Sha Ting, Ai Wu made up his mind to make literary and artistic creation a lifelong career. He lived in Satin's house, carefully studying Gorky's early novels and Turgenev's The Hunter's Diary, while writing short stories such as The Foreigner and the Chicken and The Companion.
In the early 1930s, proletarian revolutionary literature had a prominent tendency of "revolutionary romantic" in the creation of novels, which confused the newly started literary youths such as Ai Wu and Sha Ting. The two of them then entrusted the two of them to bring a joint letter to Mr. Lu Xun to ask him questions about the subject matter of the novel, and attached his own works for him to review and correct (Lu Xun later included this letter in the "Two Hearts Collection").
On December 25, 1931, Lu Xun personally sent a reply and a manuscript from Jingyunli's apartment to Their residence in Endri. The letter exhorted them not to be fashionable, not to make it hard, but to write about the subject matter they can write now. However, "the selection of materials should be strict, and the excavation should be deep." The letter was later published in Cross Street No. 3, January 5, 1932, entitled "Correspondence on the Subject Matter of the Novel." Mr. Lu Xun's teachings from the surface played an important role in correcting their understanding and helping them grow up healthily along the path of revolutionary literature. Under the guidance of Mr. Lu Xun, Ai Wu boldly adopted the living materials of the southbound drift, and with its documentary style and white painting technique that was different from the formulaic and conceptual tendency of "revolution and love" at that time, he successively wrote a series of works with a strong sense of life reality and strong local colors, broadening new fields for revolutionary literature and establishing a new style of robust and simple literature.
In the spring of 1932, Ai Wu officially joined the "Left League". And has been with Mao Dun, Qian Xing'e, Xie Bingying, Ding Ling, Ye Zi, Ouyang Shan, Cao Ming, Zhou Wen and so on in a group activities. That summer, Ding Ling orally announced on behalf of the party organization that she had approved Ai Wu to join the Communist Party of China. Since then, he has participated in the party organization activities within the "Left League" and found the direction of literary struggle. Ai Wu was assigned to teach voluntarily at the Yangshupu School for the Children of Workers and to work as a correspondent for development workers. His later novella, Chronicle of a Certain School, is based on this life.
In December 1932, Ai Wu published "A Lesson in the Philosophy of Life" in the joint issue of volume 5 and 6 of the Literary Monthly, edited by Zhou Yang, signed "Ai Wu". So far, his works on the theme of the southbound wandering life have been published in newspapers and periodicals around the world. His creative characteristics and prolific characteristics made him one of the "newcomers in the literary world in 1933" and "one of the most successful authors". But just as proletarian revolutionary literature was booming, the Kuomintang reactionaries further intensified their persecution of progressive cultural workers.
One day in March 1933, Ai Wu was arrested while looking for workers in a silk factory in Caojiadu to contact workers, and the Shanghai and Suzhou High Courts detained him for seven months. Later, after being rescued by the "Left League", Lu Xun paid 50 yuan as litigation fees, asked Shi Liang to appear in court to defend, and was released, and Ren Baige went to prison to take Ai Wu back to Shanghai. While in prison, Ai Wu wrote two short stories: one is the short story "The Roaring Xu Jiatun", which reflects the deathly struggle of the people of Northeast China against the bestiality of Japanese militarism; The other is the short story "Night in the Southland", which reflects the struggle between the Burmese people and the British colonialists. This was an anti-imperialist and anti-aggression theme work that appeared earlier after the "9.18" incident, and was highly valued by the literary and art circles at that time.
Find the source of creation in the war of resistance
After the outbreak of the Lugou Bridge Incident in July 1937, when the Japanese invaded Shanghai, Ai Wu wrote a short story "Eight Hundred Warriors" in time, praising the patriotic spirit and fearless heroism of the local garrison who swore to resist the Japanese invasion to the death. Subsequently, he successively published works such as "Inside the Shelter," "The Broken Piece on the Eve of the Shanghai War," "On the Road," "In the Hospital," and "Two Generations," exposing and accusing the heinous crimes of the Japanese Kou and inspiring the morale of the Chinese military and people to unite in the War of Resistance.
In October 1937, when Shanghai was about to fall, Ai Wu asked his wife Wang Leijia (formerly known as Wang Xiankui, formerly known as Huang Lehua, a native of Ningyuan County, Hunan Province, who joined the Chinese Left-Wing Writers' Union in 1932 and later the Chinese Poetry Society) to take her children back to her hometown in Ningyuan, Hunan Province, and then drove alone through Jiaxing to Zhenjiang and took a boat up the river to Wuhan. His novella "Up the River" is based on this wandering life. At this time, the All-China Literary and Art Circles Anti-Enemy Association had been established in Wuhan, and Ai Wu met with many progressive people in the cultural circles and also met his friend Liu Zuobin. Because the Kuomintang government had moved the capital to Chongqing, Ai Wu had nothing to do in Wuhan, so in November they drove to Changsha, where they listened to Xu Telizuo's current affairs report entitled "Where China Is Going", and went to Ningyuan at the end of the year to reunite with his family. During this time, Ai Wu worked as a substitute teacher at a girls' school and had the opportunity to contact a variety of people in urban and rural society. The counties in southern Hunan and Chenzhou, Guiyang, Jiashu, Xintian, Lanshan, Ningyuan, Yongzhou... Ai Wudu was immersed in the scene, conducting detailed interviews, understanding the thoughts, lives and customs of ordinary villagers, and collecting folk songs and folk songs. To this end, he once called Shonan his writing base during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and later wrote literary works such as "Hometown", "Nostalgia", "Budding", and "Accident", all of which were based on Ningyuan and other places as the background of writing.
In 1939, Ai Wu's family moved to Guilin, which lasted for five years, and served as a director of the Guilin "Literary Association" branch and an editorial board member of "Anti-Japanese War Literature and Art". He is a member of the Literary and Art Study Steering Group, and in addition to actively participating in relevant symposiums and seminars, he also serves as the teaching work of Yixian Middle School and the editor of the newspaper supplement.
In the summer of 1944, the Xianggui War broke out, ai Wu and a large number of other literary and art circles retreated to the rear, and with the help of the party organization, his whole family arrived in Chongqing in October. In Chongqing, he conscientiously studied Mao Zedong's "Speech at the Yan'an Forum on Literature and Art" and was even more fortunate to be reunited with his old friend Sha Ting. Together with their comrades in the literary and artistic circles, they threw themselves into the anti-dictatorship and struggle for democracy and freedom under the leadership of the Party. During the eight years of the All-out War of Resistance, Ai Wu never stopped writing and made a living from pen cultivation. The short story collections published successively include "Escape from the Wilderness", "Island", "Bud", "Dusk", "Wasteland", "Winter Night", "Autumn Harvest", "Love", "Exercise", etc., novellas such as "Up the River", "Falling Flowers", "This Is Spring", "Fertile Wilderness", etc., long novels such as "Hometown" and "Mountain Wild", in addition to an autobiographical novel "Childhood Story", a prose miscellaneous collection "Weed Collection", and "Literature Manual" for counseling young authors. Among them, "Hometown" is the most important work during his War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, and the author uses a scientific sociological point of view to analyze many typical events and characters of great essential significance, showing the various contradictions of China's semi-colonial and semi-feudal society during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, not only exposing various social shortcomings, but also pointing out the bright prospects for the people to seek liberation. "Hometown" has epoch-making significance in Ai Wu's creation, and is also a gratifying result in the literary and artistic creation of the War of Resistance.
At the beginning of 1946, Ai Wu moved from Nan Hot Spring to the Zhangjiayuan Orphanage in the city. At this time, he served as the editor-in-chief of the "Half Moon Literature and Art" supplement of the "Ta Kung Pao" (Chongqing), and published a large number of sharp and spicy essays on the shortcomings of the times. In May of the same year, when the civil war broke out, he wrote an article entitled "We Must Resolutely Oppose the Civil War" at the request of the Xinhua Daily of the Southern Bureau of the Communist Party of China, indicating his unswerving and just stand.
In the summer of 1947, he was blacklisted as a spy, and the party organization arranged for him to move with Yucai Middle School to the outskirts of Shanghai. At this time, he completed the famous "Shi Qing Sister-in-law" and other works.
In 1948, Ai Wu returned to Chongqing. Since the fall of this year, he has been a professor in the Department of Chinese of Chongqing University. In an unusually harsh life, Ai Wu still worked diligently and ushered in another peak period of post-war creation. There are short story collections such as "Smoke", novella collections such as "My Traveling Companion", "Nostalgia" and "The Tragedy of a Woman", reminiscence essays "My Youth" and "My Childhood", as well as novels, essays, essays, etc. scattered in newspapers and periodicals. The general thematic tendency of these works is to expose the dark reality of the national unification area and to concentrate on the suffering, resistance and desire for democracy, peace and light of the broad masses of the working people. There have also been new advances in artistic techniques, which have made great contributions to the prosperity of Chinese novel creation in the 1940s.
After going deep into life, he created a large number of works
After the founding of the People's Republic of China, Ai Wu successively served as a member of the Chongqing Municipal People's Government and director of the Cultural Bureau, vice chairman of the Chongqing Municipal Federation of Literature and Literature, and director of the Department of Chinese of Chongqing University. In 1950, Ai Wu participated in the land reform in Gele Mountain, a suburb of Chongqing, and experienced rural life. In the spring of 1952, he went to Anshan Iron and Steel Factory to experience factory life and conduct literary and artistic counseling. After that, Ai Wu successively served as a deputy to the first, second and third National People's Congress, a member of the All-China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and a director of the Chinese Writers Association.
In 1953, Ai Wu went from Anshan to Beijing and became one of the resident writers of the All-China Writers Association. That same year, he rejoined the Communist Party of China. During this period, he wrote novels such as "Hundred Refining into Steel", short stories "Night Return", "New Home", "Rain", "Spring Wind", etc., and published "Ai Wu Short Story Collection" and "Ai Wu Novella Collection".
In 1954, Ai Wu joined a delegation of Chinese writers for a two-month visit to Hungary and Czechoslovakia, and on the way home to Warsaw and Moscow for a short visit.
In the winter of 1957, Ai Wu went abroad for the second time, was invited to travel to the Soviet Union for more than 3 months, and wrote a collection of essays "European Travels".
In January 1958, Ai Wu served as an editorial board member of People's Literature.
From the winter of 1961 to the spring of 1962, Ai Wu went to the border area of Yunnan to investigate. This second trip to the south, recalling the past, compared with the present dynasty, he felt a lot, and wrote a short story collection "The Continuation of the Southbound Journey". After returning to Beijing, he published a collection of essays, "Early Spring Season" and "Wave Collection".
In the spring of 1965, Ai Wu returned to Andepu in Pi County, Sichuan (present-day Ande Town, Pidu District) to participate in the "Four Qing" Movement. In the winter of the same year, the family moved back to Chengdu. Ai Wu wrote a novel "The Fog of Spring" based on his life experience of participating in the "Four Qing" movement twice, but was forced to suspend his work due to the "Cultural Revolution".
In the summer of 1968, Ai Wu was persecuted and unjustly imprisoned. He was released in March 1972.
In July 1972, Ai Wu went to Liangshan, Sichuan to investigate the lives of Yi compatriots, and after returning to Chengdu, he re-wrote "High on the Mountain", which was published in the inaugural issue of Sichuan Literature and Art. But then it was attacked by the "cultural group" controlled by the "Gang of Four" and the distorted criticism of the Sichuan gang system. He had to put aside his pen again, immerse himself in the study of the Book of Poetry, and publish a number of academic papers one after another.
In October 1976, the "Gang of Four" was smashed, and Ai Wu returned to the literary and artistic front.
In 1977, Ai Wu served as an advisor to Sichuan Literature and Art.
In 1979, Ai Wu attended the Fourth Congress of Chinese Literary and Artistic Workers and the Third Congress of the All-China Writers Association, and was elected as the third director of the All-China Writers Association.
In February 1981, at the age of 77, Ai Wu, invited by the Yunnan People's Publishing House, accompanied by the famous writer Gao Miao, went to Yunnan for the third southward journey, which lasted more than 50 days.
In April 1982, as the deputy head of the delegation of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, he led a delegation to visit Korea together with the head of the delegation, Lin Mohan.
In September 1982, Ai Wu went to Beijing to attend the 12th Congress of the Communist Party of China.
In 1983, at the invitation of the Guangdong Writers Association, he visited Shenzhen and Zhuhai Special Economic Zones.
In October 1985, he led a delegation of Chinese writers to Hong Kong, where he lectured at the University of Chinese in Hong Kong and was interviewed by Radio Television Hong Kong.
In the first half of the 1980s, Ai Wu wrote a lot of reviews, essays and essays in terms of creation, most of which were included in "Ai Wu's Recent Works". The novels include "Adventures in the Mountains", "New Chapters of the Southbound Journey", "Wind and Waves" and so on. In addition, "Selected Novels of Ai Wu", "Ai Wu on Novel Creation", "Selected Works of Ai Wu Children's Literature", etc., have been re-edited and published.
On December 5, 1992, Ai Wu died of illness in Chengdu at the age of 88.
In 2007, Sichuan Literature and Art Publishing House published the 19-volume Complete Works of Ai Wu. The People's Literature Publishing House and the Hong Kong branch of Sanlian Bookstore jointly edited and published the collection "Selected Chinese Writers : Ai Wu". For more than half a century, Ai Wu has worked hard to create rich content and is gradually going to the world. At present, his works have been translated into English, Russian, Japanese, German, Hungarian, Korean, Vietnamese and other texts. The Japanese sinologist Kikatsu Nakata has written five monographs on Ai Wu.
In October 2013, Ai Wu's former residence was restored and rebuilt. In November 2014, Ai Wu's former residence was officially opened to the public, and was announced by the Chengdu Municipal People's Government as the first batch of Chengdu celebrity former residence protection list, the first batch of cultural landmarks in Chengdu.
In Ai Wu's hometown Xindu District, on the banks of the Drinking Horse River in Guihu Park, in the green bamboo bushes not far from the ruins of Xueshiyan, people built the tomb of Ai Wu. The tomb of Ai Wu is made of red sand boulders, and at the upper end stands a bronze statue of Ai Wu's body. The inscription behind him records his life, and the inscription on the chest is "Tomb of Ai Wu", which is handwritten by Ba Jin. There is a square marble at the front of the tomb, and the upper part is engraved with a motto of Ai Wu: "Man should be like a river, flowing, flowing, flowing forward unceasingly; Like a river, singing, singing, rejoicing, bravely walking on this bumpy, thorny road. "The lower part is embedded with a bouquet of copper camellias. The motto, marble, and camellias embody the extraordinary life of this outstanding Southbound writer and wandering literary hero of China.
【References】
1. "Annals of Aiwu", edited by the Local History Compilation Committee of Xindu District, Chengdu, Sichuan University Press, June 2019, 1st Edition.
2. "Sichuan Literature and History Materials" cultural figure album.
3. Selected Materials of Chongqing Literature and History.
![Ai Wu's three southbound journeys[fig]](data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAP///wAAACwAAAAAAQABAAACAkQBADs=)