In the study of modern literary history, he first discovered the value of Zhang Ailing, he belittled the "Four Generations Together", believing that Lu Xun was exalted and Qian Zhongshu's "Siege of the City" was unparalleled...
In the winter of 2010, I interviewed him in New York, and the following is a collated article.
"Fast man" Xia Zhiqing
■ Wei Yi
One winter morning in 2010, the train was traveling on the New Haven railroad from New Haven to New York, looking out the window over the woods, snow, houses and boats docked in the harbor.
New Haven – New York, Yale – Columbia, about 60 years ago, in the early 1950s, Xia Zhiqing, in his early thirties, traveled back and forth on this route. At the time, he was working on a history of the modern Chinese novel, an academic work that would later make him famous, and suffering from the lack of books Chinese Yale University, he became a regular visitor to the library of Columbia University's Department of Chinese and Japanese (now the Department of East Asian Languages). He usually leaves Yale in the morning, reads a book in Columbia in the afternoon, and then borrows a box of materials and returns to New Haven.
Harvard University, which is not far from Yale, did not have a rich collection of Chinese books at that time, but there were also some books that Columbia University did not have. Xia Zhiqing never went to Harvard to borrow books, in addition to not being active by nature, another important reason is: lack of money. He regretted that, as a researcher of literary history, he could not exceed the amount of information he possessed.
"When the Korean War started, I had to save money to send to my family in Shanghai. From July 1951 onwards, it sent $100 a month and $1,200 a year. So in those 3 years, I spent $2800 a year, enough to support myself, and there was no research funding. Xia Zhiqing, who had already graduated from Yale University's English Department with a doctorate at the time, still lived in the student dormitory and ate in the canteen.
Xia Zhiqing now lives in an apartment on 113th Street in New York, next to Columbia University on morningside heights, and the elevator to the floor of his home has a wooden shell and is more than 100 years old.
In Xia Zhiqing's house, there are books everywhere on the walls. His own writings are concentrated on one bookshelf. I brought from the mainland several simplified Chinese books signed "Xia Zhiqing", but they are not among them.
"When the mainland publishes his books, it almost never pays for the manuscript, and many times it does not even send the books over, which is really excessive." Xia Zhiqing's wife, Ms. Wang Dong, flipped through the book I had brought and said.
Xia Zhiqing took the "Southern People Weekly" with the cover of the "Gui Warlord" I brought with him, saying: "This is when Bai Chongxi was young, and I was very familiar with his son Bai Xianyong. Bai Xianyong was a student of Xia Zhiqing's older brother Xia Ji'an who taught in the Department of Foreign Languages at National Taiwan University. Bai Xianyong believes that Xia Ji'an had a very good guidance for the students of the Department of Foreign Languages of National Taiwan University. Among those students, in addition to Bai Xianyong, who later became famous, there were also Li Oufan, Chen Ruoxi, Wang Wenxing, Ouyang Zi and others. For Xia Ji'an and Xia Zhiqing, Liu Zaifu's evaluation is: the brother Gemini constellation of the Chinese literary research community.
Young people from Shanghai
Xia Zhiqing celebrated his 90th birthday on the eleventh day of the first lunar month in 2011, and in order to avoid the snowy winter in the northeastern United States, the birthday party was advanced to the fall of 2010. Xia Zhiqing was born in Pudong, Shanghai in 1921. Pudong was only a backward suburb at that time, and the other side of the Huangpu River was the bustling Ten Mile Ocean Field. Xia Zhiqing's family is not well off. "When he was young, Xia Zhiqing had some feelings of inferiority, which would have an impact on his later life." Harvard University professor Wang Dewei said.
In the living room hung a birthday plaque sent by Ma Ying-jeou: Ji xue ya fan. "I don't know about this." Xia Zhiqing pointed to this character and said, "These words are all out of the classic, they don't dare to write randomly, Chinese timid, you invent a 'great ...' yourself, everyone will laugh, so Chinese always use the words of the ancients." ”
This text also reads "Zhiqing Academician Jiu Rank Songqing". Xia Zhiqing was elected as an academician of Taiwan's Academia Sinica in 2006, the oldest of the academicians elected.
Hu Shi, who was once the president of Taiwan's Academia Sinica, may not have expected that Xia Zhiqing, who was not very important to him, would be elected an academician decades later. In 1946, when Xia Zhiqing, who graduated from Hujiang University, went to Peking University as an assistant teacher in the Department of Foreign Languages, Hu Shi, then president of Peking University, "When I heard that I was a graduate of Hujiang University, my face sank, revealing great disappointment. At that time, I didn't know that President Hu's prejudice was so deep, as if the best students in the country should enter Peking University, Tsinghua University, and Nankai."
In 1947, Li Guoqin, a wealthy overseas Chinese businessman in New York, decided to give peking university young faculty members three scholarships to study in the United States, one in literature, one in law and one in science. Xia Zhiqing, who had just worked at Peking University for less than a year, passed the hurdle and got the only place in the liberal arts. After the list was issued, more than a dozen teachers went to the principal Hu Shi to protest: Who is Xia Zhiqing, and how can he be allowed to occupy this place. Although Hu Shi did not like Xia Zhiqing, he respected the decision of the selection committee very much, and Xia Zhiqing was given the opportunity to study in the United States.
1947 was a special year for Xia Zhiqing. That year, his favorite German-American film director, Ernst Lubitsch, died of a heart attack in Los Angeles. "I am particularly impressed by Liu Beiqian's directing style, and I have seen many of his films 3 times." He believes that Liu Beiqian, as a film director, is equivalent to Pu Bo among poets and Molière among playwrights.
Xia Zhiqing is a super fan, and when he was in Shanghai, he once published "Hollywood's Big Director Lineup" in the "News Newspaper". "At that time, my study of film was better than literature. I haven't graduated from college yet, and I understand all the movies", "Liu Beiqian's movies are a mess", "The current movies are a backward mess". Most of his favorites were pre-1960s films, and in the study, there were pictures of Elizabeth Taylor and Marilyn Monroe.
In 1947, there was also an event that affected Xia Zhiqing's academic career, that is, Qian Zhongshu published the novel "Siege of the City" in this year. Years later, Xia Zhiqing wrote in The History of Modern Chinese Novels: "The Siege of the City is the most interesting and well-managed novel in modern Chinese literature, and perhaps the greatest one. ”
From west to center
Xia Zhiqing sat on the sofa in the living room and talked, as his friend said, his speech speed was fast and unfettered, and his expression of emotions was always vivid. "XXX is a good guy." "XXX is the bad guy." These extreme words also carry a thick Shanghai accent.
Xia Zhiqing likes to say that others are stupid, that he is smart, and if others say so, it is easy to make people resentful, but in his context, it shows a little cuteness. "When I came here, there were only 3 Chinese who got a Ph.D. in English at Yale." Xia Zhiqing said. The Ph.D. in English at Yale University is the most demanding Ph.D. in English in the United States. Doctoral students need to pass at least three languages: French, German and Latin to obtain a degree. Before Xia Zhiqing, only Liu Wuji and Chen Jia among the Chinese had received doctorates in the English department of Yale University, which was already in the 1930s.
In 1951, Xia Zhiqing, an honor student in the English Department at Yale University, entered the final year of doctoral studies and began to worry about his future. He wanted to get a job in the United States. This was not an easy task for an Oriental at the time.
At this point, a political science student who lived in a dormitory told him that Professor David N. Rowe of Yale's political science department had received a research grant from the government and was looking for someone to help him. It was the Korean War, and the United States needed to understand China. David Rao's job was to write a China: An Arca Manual for U.S. military officers to use as a reference.
Xia Zhiqing, who knows both China and Is proficient in English, approached David Rao and successfully joined the writing team with an annual salary of $4,000. Xia Zhiqing is the main force of this team, he alone wrote three chapters of "Literature", "Thought", and "Mass Communication of the COMMUNIST Party", as well as two small chapters of "Etiquette" and "Humor", a chapter of "A Biography of a Well-known Character", and also participated in the compilation of the chapters of "Figures of the Communist Party" and "Geography".
After the trial edition of "China: A Regional Guide" was written, it was first reviewed by US military and political officials. The book was never formally adopted, and only 350 copies were printed.
This morning in New York, Xia Zhiqing opened a stack of materials and found a volume of "China: A Regional Guide" from the bookshelf near the window of his home. Ms. Wang Dong was surprised that Xia Zhiqing could find this booklet. "You were the first journalist to read this booklet, and I haven't even read it." Ms. Wang Dong said.
In the 1950s, Time magazine ran an issue of China with Mao Zedong on the cover. When Xia Zhiqing read this issue of Time magazine, he found that many of the contents were written according to his words in "China: Regional Guide", and some places did not even change a word. "I've never been so proud of Watching Time magazine in my life." He said.
In the process of compiling this set of books, Xia Zhiqing, who was originally devoted to studying British and American literature, had a better understanding of his motherland. Especially when writing the chapter "Literature", Xia Zhiqing looked through a large number of historical materials of modern Chinese literature and suddenly found that "there is no decent book in the history of modern Chinese literature", "I was very surprised at that time" and "I was very surprised."
By the spring of 1952, although David Rao had raised Xia Zhiqing's annual salary to $4,800, he had lost interest in continuing to write books. Xia Zhiqing had a new plan: to write a history of modern Chinese literature. He sent the proposal to the Rockefeller Foundation and ended up with a two-year research grant of $4,000 a year.
Since then, Xia Zhiqing has traveled to various parts of the United States to teach for a living, and his work is very busy, and the writing of "History of Modern Chinese Novels" is also intermittent. It was not until March 1961 that the History of the Modern Chinese Novel was published.
On April 13, 1961, the Christian Science Monitor published a lengthy review by David Roy, a professor of Chinese literature at the University of Chicago. He believes that the publication of the History of the Modern Chinese Novel is a major event, not only is it the first serious English work devoted to the modern Chinese novel, "what is even more rare is that this book is also the best in this kind of research written in the existing languages of various countries." ”
In 1961, Wang Jizhen, a professor in the Department of East Asian Studies at Columbia University, was teaching at Yale University for a short time, and he was close to retirement and was looking for a suitable candidate to succeed him. Under the recommendation of David Rao, Wang Jizhen read Xia Zhiqing's "History of Modern Chinese Novels" and was excited. He wrote to the young descendant expressing his love for the book, praising the 40-year-old Xia Zhiqing's English attainments that were higher than all Chinese teachers in the United States, "almost comparable to Russell and Dickinson." ”
Wang's real appreciation led Xia Zhiqing to be appointed associate professor of East Asian Studies at Columbia University in 1962. In 1968, he published "On the History of Classical Chinese Novels", which once again caused shock in the academic circles, and these two books laid the foundation for Xia Zhiqing's position in the field of Chinese literary studies.
Speaking about the History of Modern Chinese Novels, Xia Zhiqing said: "My views have not changed. "He has repeatedly pointed out that he did not select writers from left or right to enter the history of his novels." I don't hate the left, and the quality of things is not judged by the left or the right, I admire you for being a high-ranking person. I like the best Chinese writers, I admire Zhang Tianyi, he is the leftist. ”
In the History of Modern Chinese Novels, Zhang Ailing, Shen Congwen, Qian Zhongshu, and Zhang Tianyi have been placed in an important position as never before. In particular, Zhang Ailing, Xia Zhiqing, was the first to highly praise her position in the history of modern Chinese literature, "The Golden Lock is 50 pages long, and according to me, this is the greatest novella in China since ancient times. "No one ever said that, and it required sharp eyes at the time." As soon as I looked at her (Zhang Ailing) things, I felt that she was powerful, I saw it by reading her books myself, and I didn't have any teacher guidance. I beat down many big writers, such as Lao She's "Four Generations Together", and everyone was in a mess, and I said in the book that he was not good. ”
These texts are a great stimulus for researchers of modern Chinese literature who hold a left-wing view of literary history, and the controversy they have caused can be imagined. Most famously, Xia Zhiqing and the Czech left-wing sinologist Pushk argued in 1962. To this day, a history of the modern Chinese novel remains an important target for left-wing critics.
"If you start with a humanistic concern, there's a lot of stuff in there, and whatever political stance you take, you'll agree." There is no problem in saying that Xia Zhiqing is a rightist, but everyone should know that there are many kinds of rightists, there are cute rightists, there are unlovable rightists, there are crazy rightists, and there are not crazy rightists. Mr. Xia can be said to be a super-left rightist, he is a leftist in the right, and the rightists are not happy to see him. This is what Professor Dewei Wong said.
"The Kuomintang didn't like him either. There are many awards in Taiwan, but he has not received a single award, he has no friends over there, and he does not say what the Kuomintang likes to hear. Ms. Wang Dong said.
The left's criticism of Xia Zhiqing is more extreme: Xia Zhiqing is a "thug" invited by the US government.
"What Xia Zhiqing wrote was ideological in it, but no one forced him to say so, he was a maverick critic. Critics on the left have overestimated Xia Zhiqing's relationship with the U.S. government, can you believe that the U.S. government will use someone with a personality like Xia Zhiqing as a "thug"? I can't believe it, he is unreliable after three sentences, he is completely a crazy old naughty boy. Wang Dewei said with a smile.
Fun people
Academic debates sometimes happen to Xia Zhiqing and his good friends. On the question of who is greater, Xia Zhiqing and Liu Zaifu hold different opinions. Xia Zhiqing was also angry about this at the venue, but, just like his old naughty boy's personality, he joked with Liu Zai again.
To this day, Xia Zhiqing still does not like Lu Xun. "Lu Xun's learning is not good, not as good as his brother, Zhou Zuoren is much better than him." Lu Xun himself had no problems, but he was held too high. Lu Xun has the worst point, he doesn't like his original match, but he doesn't let her leave, and he doesn't have children with her, which is very cruel to women, what does this mean! "When Xia Zhiqing said this, his voice was very loud, just like his reaction when he first saw such a news in the newspaper." To Lu Xun, if you want to talk about this matter, you will say that I told you about it. After saying that, he added a sentence in English: It's very cruel.
He still likes Zhang Ailing. Xia Zhiqing, who has little interest in films after the 1960s, went to see a movie in 2007 , "Color Ring", based on Zhang Ailing's novel of the same name. Before the release of "Color Ring", Ang Lee's team wanted to hear the opinions of literary experts and found Wang Dewei. Wang Dewei said, I recommend to you a Zhang Ailing expert. He recommended Xia Zhiqing.
"What Ang Lee felt uneasy about at the time was whether the Shanghai in the movie was very similar? Is the understanding of sex and violence in Zhang Ailing's novels in place? I made a special appointment with Mr. Xia to see. He thinks it's good, the right is usually conservative, but he's perfectly acceptable. While watching the movie, in a place that wasn't terrible, he let out an 'oops' and broke the atmosphere in our room. In the most explicit sexual depiction, he suddenly ran to Tell Master Xia that this seemed to be true. He was so funny. Wang Dewei said.
When it comes to religious beliefs, he even ridicules the pope. "The Pope knows so many languages, he is better educated than me, but if he believes in God or not, I don't know, can he believe in God as a wise man?"
"What do you think of the question of life and death?"
"I can't see it. With my books, I can live a few more years. Man has no dreams, and when he dies, he dies. My brother has been dead for so many years, and he never gave me a dream. I never dreamed of my brother, never dreamed of my mom and dad. I don't have any religious beliefs, I don't believe in anything, I don't believe in the best, I don't have sus ”
Xia Zhiqing, 90, has been in the United States for more than 60 years and has lived in New York for 50 years. He loves the quick and easy things to do in New York, like public transportation. Therefore, Xia Zhiqing had not yet learned to drive at that time, not even on a bicycle. At this time, Xia Zhiqing, who has always said that he is smart, will say "I am stupid." He would lament that not many young people are willing to sink their hearts into studying more literature in several countries. "Now people go to computers."
When the world is talking about the movie "Social Network", when young people are envious of Zuckerberg, Xia Zhiqing is still regretting that he can't re-watch Liu Beiqian's movie "The History of Donkey Horse Yan".
"The pace is too fast for us old-school people to keep up."
Source: Magazine of all walks of life, No. 7 - Century Review
Author: Wei Yi