Qingming Festival is a time to remember the deceased. In July 1934, Liu Bannong, a scholar at Peking University, died in Beijing due to an infectious disease. On his way to Guisui (present-day Hohhot), he contracted "return fever" and died of illness. This scholar with a witty and humorous nature said a lot of jokes about "life and death parting" before leaving, and he did not expect a word to become a slur.
Just two years ago, Liu Bannong's younger brother, the famous musician Liu Tianhua, was collecting gong and drum scores at the Nancheng Tianqiao in Beijing, when he was unfortunately infected with scarlet fever and died of illness not long after. Many factors have made Liu Bannong's illness and death overshadowed with a heavy sad color.
In May 1935, Liu Bannong and his brother Liu Tianhua's coffin were buried together at the top of the Jade Emperor in Xiangshan.
▍ Tomb of Liu Bannong
▍ Tomb of Liu Tianhua
Born in 1891 in Jiangyin, Jiangsu Province, Liu Bannong has been brilliant since childhood, and can compose couplets and chant poems at the age of 6. In 1917, he published articles such as "My View of Literary Improvement" in the "New Youth", and in the summer of the same year, Liu Bannong was hired by Cai Yuanpei, president of Peking University, as a professor of Chinese literature in the preparatory department of Peking University, and Liu Bannong also became the pioneer of the new cultural movement. In 1925, Liu Bannong received a doctorate in French national literature, and in August, on the ship returning to China, Liu Bannong wrote the poem "Teach Me How Not to Miss Her", in which he used the word "she" for the first time.
February 19, 1935 was the seventieth birthday of the famous Swedish explorer Sven Heding. In 1934, the Royal Swedish Geographical Society planned to publish Hedin's commemorative collection of essays and sent an invitation to Liu Bannong to write.
Why did they ask Liu Bannong for a manuscript? It turned out that Sven Hedin and Liu Bannong did not fight and did not know each other. Sven Hedin was on a trip to western China, and Chinese academia, led by Liu Bannong, called on the government to ban foreigners from conducting archaeological excavations in China. Liu Bannong and Sven Hedin had many face-to-face fierce confrontations, and they also came to the negotiating table. After two months of negotiation and consultation, it was finally decided that the two sides would jointly form a scientific expedition to the Northwest China to conduct a field expedition to the Great Northwest, and all archaeological excavations would remain in China. It was during this exchange that Sven Hedin became friends with Liu Bannong.
▍Liu Bannong (1891-1934)
Out of respect for Sven Heding, Liu Bannong began writing birthday articles from May 1934. Later, Liu Bannong decided to write another paper on the tone of dialects along the Beiping and Suiyuan lines to wish Sven Heding a happy birthday, which led to Liu Bannong's trip to Sui, and it was this expedition that made Liu Bannong infected with the epidemic.
Prior to this, in March 1933, Wang Yuezhi, the principal of the Peking Art School, painted a portrait of Liu Bannong, which Liu Bannong liked very much, and he personally inscribed an oil poem on the painting, and the inscription at the end of the poem reads: "In March of the twenty-second year, Mr. Wang Yuezhi painted a portrait of Yu, and Ms. Jin Naixian was on the side to counsel to play oil poetry Jizhi." Semi-agricultural. It is worth mentioning that Jin Naixian mentioned in this small article was a famous photographer at that time, because Liu Bannong liked photography, and after Wang Yuezhi's introduction, the two met.
▍Photographic works by Liu Bannong
One day, Liu Bannong pointed to the portrait and said to his friend, "If you enlarge this statue twice, it will be most appropriate to set up a funeral in the spirit statue pavilion after death in the future." ”
In June 1934, when Liu Bannong set off for Guisui, many friends set up a banquet to bid farewell to him, and someone asked him to write a poem on oil, Liu Bannong wrote: "Life has passed beyond the age of confusion, why should I leave a disciple for thousands of people to be suspicious?" "Unexpectedly, a word became a slur.
In late June 1934, Liu Bannong, together with historians Bai Dizhou, Shen Zhongzhang, Zhou Dianfu and others, set out from Beiping to Guisui to investigate. After they arrived in Guisui, they hiked outside sai and climbed over the big green mountain, including one night in a grass hut in the countryside. At that time, Liu Bannong had prepared a camp bed of his own, and at night he set up a camp bed in the house, and one person slept on it, and the others in his company slept on the earth pit. Liu Bannong deliberately made a zombie on the camp bed and joked: "I am stopping the coffin in the middle hall!" The companions present laughed when they heard this, but everyone never expected that at this time, the god of death had quietly approached him.
After Liu Bannong and his party returned to Guisui after completing their inspection tasks, they were invited by Zhang Guobao, dean of Guisui Zhongshan College, to give a speech to teachers and students. In the speech, Liu Bannong wore a spring silk robe, looked radiant, and talked. However, what the listeners present did not expect was that this speech was actually Liu Bannong's voice of thanksgiving.
According to President Zhang Guobao, when Mr. Liu gave a speech, he saw a lice crawling between Mr. Liu's head and neck, but at that time, it was difficult to point out to Mr. Liu for face. Later, according to Bai Dizhou, when he was in Zhangjiakou, Mr. Liu once found a white lice on his clothes. Apparently, Liu Bannong was accidentally targeted by lice during his inspection. At that time, there was an epidemic of "relapsing fever", which was an acute infectious disease, alternating between fever and intermittent periods, so it was called "regressive fever", and lice were the vectors of this infectious disease.
Sure enough, when he passed through Zhangjiakou back to Beijing, Liu Bannong began to have a fever, and the doctor diagnosed it as a cold. On July 10, Liu Bannong returned to Beiping with illness, and on July 14, he was admitted to Peking Union Hospital, and the doctor diagnosed it with return fever, but it was too late, and Liu Bannong died in the afternoon of the same day, only 43 years old.
In October, Liu Bannong's memorial service was held in the lecture hall of the Second Academy of Peking University. His former friends Hu Shi, Qian Xuantong, Zhao Yuanren, Zhou Zuoren, etc. came to mourn, and Zhao Yuanren's bang lian was the most widely circulated: "Ten years of double reeds, no words will be difficult to compose in the future; a few people are weak, teach me how not to want him?" ”
It is Liu Tianhua who needs to be mentioned.
▍Liu Tianhua (1895-1932)
Liu Tianhua is the younger brother of Liu Bannong, liu Tianhua taught himself music as a teenager, and in 1912 he went to Shanghai to join the drama group "Enlightened Society" band. Liu Tianhua later studied traditional instruments such as erhu and pipa from folk musicians. In 1922, he was hired to go to Beijing and teach erhu and pipa at the Music Department of Peking University and the Beijing Women's Higher Normal School. He was the first musician in the history of Chinese music to record folk music with Western staves, and he also composed immortal songs such as "Yin in illness" and "Good Night". At the end of May 1932, he went to The Tianqiao in Nancheng, Beijing to collect folk music, contracted scarlet fever, and died on June 8 at the age of 37.
Source: Beijing Evening News, Five Colors Soil | author Liu Yongjia
Editor: Jiang Baojun
Process Editor: Wu Yue