Yang Dong and his "Pear Blossom Building" library building
Su Bin original
I can't remember how I met Yang Dong, in fact, I can't say I did, because according to the world's point of view, at least we must meet to know each other, and I have not met Yang Dong once before in more than ten years. They have not met but said that they know each other, and they can be called relatively familiar friends, all because both of them like to read some books, and they like and even love the writer Sun Li. Yang Dong is Sun Li's private disciple, and I am a die-hard fan of Sun Li, so we know each other. It's a bit of a fantasy.
When the car was moving in the land of the Three Jins, I naturally remembered that Yang Dong lived here. Remembering Yang Dong and not going to see him was a bit unreasonable. So he said that he and the other three people in the same car, so the car turned around, so he walked through the green barrier of Ru Gai, along the country road by the Qinshui River to the "Lihua Lou" deep in the mountains.
Almost exactly the same as Yang Dong imagined, tall, big eyes, although his face is a little tired, he is still mental, with the simplicity and thickness of a farmer, and also permeates the spirit of a writer. The meeting was at the door of the power supply bureau at the east end of the town, he came to pick him up on his bicycle, our car was found as agreed, and then we followed his bicycle to his "Ewha Building".
His "Ewha Lou" is a library building, originally called "Ewha Village Library", because the village in his hometown mountain village where he was born and raised is called "Ewha Village", but since moving to the edge of this county town, he built this small building and changed it to "Ewha Lou". The "Ewha Lou" is worthy of the name, the portal opens on the west gable, and the first thing that catches the eye is the "Ewha Lou" plaque hanging on the lintel, which he says is the handiwork of a famous local scholar. Cursive calligraphy, smart and dashing, especially the last stroke of the word "Lou", then a mention and a press, a wave of three folds, vivid and vivid. It was a small three-story building, and Yang Dong led us in, a small foyer. A small coffee table in the center, two back chairs on both sides, another stick on the opposite side, Yang Dong while stretching to the courtyard water pipe to receive water, turned back to the house to boil water, ready to make us tea, while beckoning us to "sit, sit" at the same time. The four of us looked at the three seats and looked at each other, Yang Dong suddenly understood, and hurriedly found a high stool and a short pillow stool. Everyone sat down. Looking around, on one side of the wall hung a group photo of him and Jia Pingwo, on the other side of the wall was a group photo of him and the daughter of Sun Li, chairman of the China Writers Association, and one or two paintings and calligraphy were embellished. Greeting, drinking tea, talking about how many years ago he sent me his six-volume collection of essays, and now what new works have come out, he pulled out his new collection from the bookcase standing in a corner and gave it to us.
In fact, Yang Dong is a writer and a bibliophile, and has been honored as one of the top ten bibliophiles in Shanxi Province. He said that he was lucky, and on the one hand, his luck stemmed from the rich experience of rural life, before the age of sixteen, he had worked in the countryside, herded cattle, and was introverted; most of the introverts were emotionally rich, loved to read, and wanted to be writers when they read more; on the other hand, his luck benefited from getting to know Sun Li, who gave him great encouragement after seeing his works, encouraging him to insist on writing about the countryside, writing about farmers, shaping their image, and reflecting their lives and voices. It made him grow into a writer with a certain influence. His collection of books has been accumulated little by little since he was in elementary school. Today, I am afraid that there are more than 30,000 copies.
Having had tea, we offered to visit his collection of books. Although the foyer is narrow, it also has a wall of bookcases, and inside the foyer is a library, just like the layout in the library, two groups of bookcases are already full when the hall is lined up. Then he took us through the courtyard to the main room, first turned to the West House to see his collection of oil lamps, ceramic, iron casting, stone, large, small, tall, low, and even horse lamps, candlesticks, etc., dazzling, beautiful. On the ground of the courtyard, the simple shelf against the wall of the courtyard is displayed with all kinds of strange stones, such as lingbi stone, wind gravel, shangshui stone, and tree fossils. He also mostly picked it up from the nearby mountains. He took us outside the gate to see a huge fossil tree of 500 kilograms, black and black, hard and textured to the touch. He said he was so excited to find it in the mountains that he squatted there and watched it for half a day. In the end, six or seven strong men were called to get a tractor and transport them home.
After seeing his stone, we came to his hall house, in the living room in addition to the sofa against the wall also stood in the bookcase, up to the second floor, the two rooms inside the room is so crowded that the bookcase is almost unable to get off the feet, sideways into the inspection, there are all books, "reading no forbidden area" is not an empty word in his place. He pushed open the next room again, but what he saw was a mountain of books. He said that the child was about to get married, and another room was transcribed to make a marriage room for his son, so the books were temporarily stacked here and slowly sorted out.
Collecting books is not the goal, it is to read. As I do, I am often asked, "Have you read so many books?" Yang Dong said that he may not have read them all, but he must have turned them all over. Specifically, it can be divided into three cases. First, most of them have been read, because these books are slowly accumulated one by one, and they were read at any time when they were first bought; second, in order to write later, they need to understand and be familiar with various types and schools of works, draw nutrition and reference from them, and those that have a plan and purpose to buy are more classics, of course, they have been carefully read, or even more than once. The third is to buy the preface or the beginning of the book after reading it is not the book you like or need, and there are cases where you can't read it, and then there are books that come in through various ways later. In any case, you have to turn it over, and if you don't turn it over, how do you know if it's right for you, like it or not.
I had the heart to ask him to write a note as a souvenir, and we also wrote back one or two exchange comments. Helplessly, because he was adjusting the layout of the living room for his son's marriage, the big case of writing and painting was occupied, and he had to give up. In the evening, he invited us to the "special snack" shop to eat "relying on the old man", first of all, there were several steaming bowls, similar to our Henan steaming bowls, there are meat bowls, vegetable bowls, fragrant but not greasy, and then the main "rely on the old man". "Rely on the old" is made of noodles, like spring rolls, but instead of frying, they are gathered together one by one and steamed in a pot, and served on the table with special chili vinegar sauce, the sour and spicy vinegar juice and the smoothness of the steamed noodles, with a strong local taste and endless aftertaste. In this atmosphere we all drank some wine, but Yang Dong did not drink, he said that he was allergic to drinking, I saw that his face was not good, I noticed it when we met yesterday. Ask him if he said it was high blood pressure and often dizziness. I remembered that I had seen him sick and hospitalized on the Internet a few years ago, and I remember that it was caused by too much work in writing. I said to pay attention to rest, almost to the age of "nails", not too hard, writing is a special consumption of human labor. He said that he had taken a back seat from the position of chairman of the Qinyuan County Federation of Literature and Literature, did not have to go to work, usually wrote and painted at home, and when inspiration came, he also had to write, essays, novels, and essays did not fall, as for the good people commented. But it is still not clean, often people come to visit, come to interview, ask him to write, paint, etc., must not be idle, and the doctor warned him not to be too tired. Even more, some of them asked him to take him around their old mountain village, and his friends who came from afar asked his brother to take them with him. In the near future, such as Shanxi, he had to shirk it. At this point, I suddenly felt a little guilty, because I also had the idea of asking him to take us into the mountain, and now I quickly dispelled it. It is suggested that he can go out and look around more, such as walking around in Henan. He insisted that there were many inconveniences, it was difficult to make the trip, and I looked at him with some loneliness and speechlessness. After a silent meal he sent us to the hotel to stay.
The next morning, he came to the hotel early in the morning to accompany us to breakfast. After watching our car disappear into the street. I waved at him through the car window, but somehow a little sourness rose in my heart.
On May 14, 2016, in the middle of the Lüliang Mountains