Yang Yanzhe
One
At 18:35 on April 22, 2021, Xiaoqing, who was still staying at the same door of Bu Village, called and did not answer.
At 21:43, the teacher's mother called and did not answer. After 5 minutes, I hurried back to the phone, not wanting the worst news to come.
At that time, the scene was quite surreal: on this side of the box, I pretended to be calm and talking nonsense to keep talking to the master and mother; on the other side of the box, my wife Yang Yang, while choking up and rushing to the hospital to accompany the master and mother, played a few smiling faces and a few clusters of fireworks in her WeChat work group to participate in the carnival of colleagues celebrating the signing of the project contract - sure enough, I responded to the sentence: "The sorrows and joys of human beings are not connected." ”
Half a month passed, and I was finally able to sit down quietly and write something for the teacher. However, where should we start with the nearly 7 years spent with the teacher? I had to use the "stream of consciousness" method to let the mind go where to write.
Two
At the darkest and most confusing moment of my life so far, it was the teacher who pulled me in and took me in. In the meantime, I came to Bu Village in the early morning of September 23, 2013.
On the eve of take-off, the teacher called specially to explain that he and his master and mother were waiting for me at the airport early the next morning, and I repeatedly said that I did not have to do so, but the teacher still insisted, it was really difficult, and I had to obey the arrangement. It wasn't until many years later that I discovered that this was the teacher's usual enthusiasm, whether it was organizing a meeting to welcome the participating scholars or a friend to visit, as long as the teacher decided that the other party was in danger of getting lost or other inconveniences when he first arrived in Bu Village, he would insist on personally greeting the airport - no matter how early and how late the flight was.
After some tossing and turning, I finally cleared customs and came to the slightly stingy international flight pick-up hall of Bucun Airport, where Xiao Lu's sister had been waiting for a long time with a paper card with my name written on it. After getting to know each other, my sister led me to the teacher and the teacher's mother, and the four of them rode into the village together. Now I can't remember what I said to the teacher and the sister along the way - one is because I didn't sleep on the plane, and I saw the teacher for the first time, I couldn't help but be stuck in the wood chicken; second, I always felt that the early morning landing ticket I bought for the cheap picture brought such trouble to the teacher, the teacher and the sister, and it was really embarrassing, and I couldn't help but sew three feet in a daze, and it was difficult to concentrate - I just don't know how long later, the University of Queensland St The huge school plaque on the Lucia campus and the university's iconic Forgan Smith main building that stands out in the sun are in front of you. The teacher looked back at me with a smile and raised his hand: "Look, this is our university." I still remember this scene vividly.
When the teacher and mother parked the car, the teacher took me upstairs to the college office and knocked on the door one by one, introducing me to the teachers in the college. At this time, I was still in the "wooden chicken" state, and I was slightly embarrassed to think of it, but I remember that the teacher tirelessly introduced my academic background and research interests to the teachers over and over again, and also helped me relay my original meaning when I was not comfortable with my words due to nervousness. I thought that the teacher would be slightly disappointed by my embarrassment of "debuting", and did not want the teacher to comfort me on the way out of the college: "Don't be afraid, at the beginning everyone is like this, communicate with the locals, after a while it will be fine." Between the words, the teacher took out a few newspapers from the bag and handed them to me - in addition to The Australians, there is also the Chinese weekly newspaper hosted by the local Chinese in Bucun - "After reading it, I will find a new one, the English newspaper can learn English, these Chinese newspapers are also looking at it, you are going to live here now, so you must also understand the situation of the local Chinese community a little." ”
Back at his mother's car, the teacher beckoned another of his classmates to go to Fortitude Valley, the old China town of Bucun, for morning tea. Just like The memories of Sister Junwen, this seems to be the "traditional project" prepared by the teacher for each new disciple who has just arrived in Bu Village - the students who have just arrived in a foreign country will inevitably feel homesick in a completely unfamiliar environment, and the morning tea arranged by the teacher can bring us a little comfort at this time. After tea and dinner, the teacher specially instructed Sister Xiaolu to take me to school in the afternoon to complete the rest of the matters reported to school and the bank cards, telephones and other necessities of life; when I learned that I had not yet found a long-term residence, the teacher was worried that I would encounter an unreliable landlord, so she repeatedly instructed my sister to help "check" when I rented a house - the teacher's concern for the students was evident.
The situation with the teacher at first sight is roughly the same.
Three
Teacher Zhou Qirong said: "Zhigang is a person who lives for academics, and research is not his profession, but the whole of his life, which is the meaning of his life. Apart from research, he didn't have much interest in other issues. This is true.
Whenever you talk to the teacher on weekdays, most of the content is reading books, your own or the teacher's research progress and discoveries, classic or recent theories, academic trends, research materials, and other topics closely related to research and scholarship. Even occasional topics that are slightly "unserious" revolve around these academic topics: such as the academic genealogy of a certain scholar or school, the anecdotes of scholars, the legacy of the previous teachers, and so on. When we were relaxing, we—even the teachers themselves—tried to switch the conversation to a more relaxed "channel," but it always failed. It seems that in addition to academics, the teacher seems to be slightly "unable to speak" when talking about all other topics, and only when he returns to the topic of scholarship and research will he return to that state of ease. I remember that during the writing of my graduation thesis, I once invited my teacher and my mother to dinner at home. The teacher's mother especially told the teacher at the dinner table not to talk about the progress of the academic and thesis, which made me relax a little, and the teacher gladly agreed. As a result, the voice just fell before we talked about a few words, the topic from what vegetables and fruits in the supermarket downstairs were discounted and somehow went around to Lu Zuofu, Yan Yangchu, Chen Heqin and other people, when we reacted, the teacher smiled embarrassedly, quickly ate something, and everyone laughed.
Mr. and Mrs. Li Zhigang eat at the author's house
Of course, there are also joys and sorrows in the teacher's life, and when he is upset, he occasionally spits out with friends and disciples, which is the common sentiment of real people. However, if you think about it, the difference with most people is that the people and things that make the teacher unhappy and even resentful have always been related to the interference and violation of his teaching, research, academic activities or academic principles, and as for all other matters, the teacher has never bothered about anything else!
Now that I think about it, the reading classes held every two weeks or so may be one of the most enjoyable times for the teacher in all these years. In addition to the teacher's own graduate students, visiting scholars who stay for short periods of time, students from other departments, and even undergraduate students encountered by the teacher in the classroom, as long as they are interested in participating, can complete the reading of the specified materials within the specified time and submit reading notes on time, and the teacher usually does not refuse. I remember that a student once complained to the teacher that the reading class should be dominated by graduate students, especially a few of our doctoral students, and should not accept too many "outsiders", especially undergraduates, for fear that their "foundation is still shallow, dragging down the efficiency of the discussion of the reading class". The teacher did not think much of this, he often said: "Scholarship is the public instrument of the world, since people have the heart to read, we should not refuse." In this way, our reading class is always a lively scene of "eight immortals crossing the sea": students from different professional backgrounds come and go, each showing their own magic, while the teacher is idly strolling around, guiding the direction of discussion from time to time and adding relevant theories, works and scholars. You know, behind the teacher's easy hand and heavy lifting, it is his shocking reading accumulation and professional knowledge reserves, which is not enough to preside over such a "full han" type of free discussion. Here, at times, everyone is red-faced and sometimes laughs; here, all problems can be discussed, all theories can be questioned, all classics can be criticized, all "elders and children are humbled" are thrown out of the door; here, sharing discoveries is not hidden, not being pretentious when pointing out each other, advancing and retreating when encountering problems, and encouraging us when encountering setbacks - here, in the small seminar room of the History Institute, where even computers and projections fail from time to time, the teacher has created an academic for us." Utopia".
I remember that several times, the teacher rushed to take a lunch break between the two big classes in the morning and afternoon, took the simple meal prepared by the teacher's mother, smiled and squinted, and hurriedly "ate" with our lips and tongues. There are several times, the time for the scheduled end of the reading class has arrived, and everyone has not been slightly reduced, the teacher seems to have forgotten the time, until the stars outside the window are rare, the teacher and mother have been waiting for a long time in the car downstairs, the teacher has to reluctantly leave first, and when it is a little later, the teacher will definitely call to ask about the situation of Fang Cai: "Yan Zhe, are you happy to discuss?" What was discussed later? It doesn't matter if you don't have time to talk about it, save it for the next time, as long as everyone likes it, time is not a problem. ”
Yeah, at that time, I always felt that time was never a problem, and such a day seemed to be able to continue forever as a matter of course. But now, teacher, you can no longer smile and squint at us to discuss and read with us.
Four
Teachers have taught us by example throughout their lives, and there are many, many things left for us.
The teacher is one of the few kind and pure people in the world right now. He treats others sincerely, because he has never harbored half malice toward others, so he also presupposes himself and others to believe that others and the world are always kind and sincere. As a result, even if Pingshui meets, the teacher will treat each other with no reservations. This undefended posture, on the one hand, allows the teacher to form many good friends who have a good heart, and on the other hand, it also allows the teacher to suffer the losses of many adulterers without defense - but once these traitors fall into difficulties and are no longer able to do harm or for various reasons or for various reasons or true or false "repentance", the teacher will always choose to forgive, and even sometimes help them to repay their grievances. In the face of this scene, we are always angry, often advising the teacher that "the heart of prevention is indispensable, and it is necessary to shoot when it is time to shoot", but the teacher always in turn advises us: "Life is short, we still have many important things to do, since they have been punished, they are already miserable, these things go with it!" We don't want to do the 'beating up the falling water dog', we always want to let the family continue to live." The teacher has been frank and generous all his life, and the so-called "big belly can tolerate things that are difficult to tolerate in the world", and what I have seen in this world is only one teacher.
If you compare the academic world to a jianghu for the time being, the teacher is a generation of heroes with feelings and righteousness in the sword.
He taught the "famous and upright sect", but like some so-called "decent disciples", he never looked down on the "small door and small sect" or the so-called "evil devil outer path" of the so-called wild roads in the rivers and lakes, but instead took all kinds of rivers and traveled the world. Whenever he discussed the Tao with people, regardless of the origin of the portal, the teacher firmly believed that "the threesome must have my teacher", and what returned him was the happiness of "dying in the morning and hearing the Tao".
He is pregnant with the skills of the sons and the strengths of the hundred families, but he never thinks of himself as a "grandmaster" or "big man" in a certain field, but still maintains the humility and low profile of the humble valley. In addition to his own continuous reading and reading of the file and ascetic cultivation, whenever he heard that there were senior seniors or post-learners in a certain place who "set up an altar and discussed the sword", he always tried to go to the meeting against all odds. It is normal for teachers to have two or three days of spare time to "fly" across most of the world just to listen to a lecture of more than two hours. If he really had the art of "Flying Sword flying" for thousands of miles, presumably the teacher would have learned it, so that his actions would no longer be subject to the arrangement of flights--the scholar was seeking knowledge, just as it was.
He is generous and chivalrous, and for friends and even strangers who ask for help, as long as the teacher feels that it is an unshirkable or beneficial academic thing, he is always "responsive"--whether it is to argue for the academics who have encountered injustice in academics or in reality, or to call friends to lead companions to "help the field" for the projects, conferences, and journals of the heroes, middle heroes, and young heroes, calling him "important or not, high-end, and core is not core". As the teacher once mentioned a passage from Mencius to me more than once in Cantonese, which is extremely fast, without missing a word: "How brave is the son?" I have tasted the courage of the master: I do not shrink instead, although brown and broad, I do not worry; I shrink instead, although there are tens of millions of people, I am going to die. "To live on earth but to act in conscience and truth is the creed that he has practiced all his life without regret until death.
As a historian, the teacher is prudent and profound. The principle of "see more, think more, and publish less" is the first lesson that many students who have just entered the school have learned from their teachers. Teachers often say that this habit of his is mainly influenced by Mr. Tang Dingyu and Mr. Han Ziqi. When the teacher was young, Mr. Tang Dingyu taught at Hong Kong Shue Yan University as the head of the Department of Literature and History, and when Mr. Tang gave lectures, the teacher often went to observe — sometimes even standing outside the classroom to listen to Mr. Tang's class from beginning to end. The teacher said that among the scholars he met, I am afraid that few of them could read more books than Mr. Tang— whether it was traditional Chinese classics or Western classics — coupled with Mr. Tang's extraordinary talent and knowledge, it was rumored that as long as it was the books he had read, he could always accurately say a certain language from somewhere and give a sharp criticism or thinking.
What is surprising is that Mr. Tang has learned from both China and the West, but he has little interest in writing a book and saying that "the words of a family" are not interested, and his knowledge and ideas may still be glimpsed by those who have been fortunate enough to be close to him. The teacher once recalled that Mr. Tang talked to the students about his lack of writing, and Mr. Tang's original words were to the effect: "If you write an article, you must write a good article, otherwise you don't write it." Whether the article is good or not, we must compare with Gu Yanwu and Huang Zongxi. Can I write more than Gu Yanwu? Can it surpass Huang Zongxi? No, so what am I writing to do? Not necessarily. "Mr. Tang is a strange person of a generation, and his behavior is quite wei and Jin's legacy, in any case, Mr. Tang's words and deeds really planted a seed in the heart of the teacher at that time. As for Teacher Han Ziqi, it was a certain time that the teacher completed a thesis, and Teacher Han gave many pertinent opinions and suggestions, and the teacher said that he had been keeping the manuscript that Teacher Han had "criticized" since then, and took out a reading from time to time - on the one hand, Teacher Han's opinion did provide a useful reference for improving this research, on the other hand, he also warned himself that "doing research and writing articles should be doubly rigorous."
The teacher taught us with these two stories, and he did it himself.
No matter how busy the teaching, scientific research and administrative affairs are, and how late the end of work, the teacher prefers to reduce the sleep time and take at least two hours a day to read without interference, he told us that this is called practicing the basic skills of "plum blossom pile". In particular, the teacher does not take "shortcuts" in reading, and a book must be read through from beginning to end - including every annotation and reference material, and even checking one by one if necessary. The teacher believes that only by reading in this way can you really read a book, one is that you can't get true knowledge, and the other is not to make a public case of taking meaning out of context or even Zhang Guan Li Dai in the future. I remember that shortly after I entered school, my teacher threw down a manuscript that had not yet been officially published, which was very related to my research, but because it had not yet completed the typesetting, it was not yet time to add a table of contents. In the face of this thick tome of nearly a thousand pages, I suddenly made a mistake and blurted out, "Teacher, this book has no catalog, how to read it?" The teacher looked at me and said softly, "Read page by page." "Yeah, page by page, isn't that what reading should be?" Every time I talked about this matter with my teachers and friends over the years, everyone deeply felt that in the current era of "ten thousand years is too long, only to fight for the day" of the "inner volume" to insist on such a difficulty in reading, only to be able to use, to find chapters and excerpts of the "bulk" reading is the norm - the classic works of the sages have been read alive as the cold "tool book" of the operation manual, and the sages themselves have naturally become the "tool people" of the kings who "come when called, can be led, and are led away".
In terms of publishing, teachers are also as "slow" as their reading. In 1993, the teacher was awarded the Alexander Gerschenkron Prize for his doctoral thesis "Shanghai Steamship Merchants Research", which was awarded by the American Economic History Association for the best paper award for non-American economic history research that year, and the teacher was also the first Chinese scholar to receive this honor. Regrettably, nearly thirty years later, the full text of the article has not yet been completed. Although this article is likely to become a landmark work of China Merchants research and even The study of China's economic history, in the face of repeated urging by many teachers and friends over the years, the teacher always smiled and said: "There are still archives that have not been read, there is no hurry." "The teacher will insist on taking a few months to Shanghai and other places every year to check the Sheng Xuanhuai archives, if I remember correctly, the teacher once mentioned that there are about a few years, and after he has at least read the Sheng archives, he can start the revision and publication of the doctoral dissertation - it is expected that the day will not be a holiday, which may become an eternal regret, sorry and painful!
Teacher Song Zhanyou sighed that the teacher taking the students is a "nanny-style" training, and now I think that this is not only from the inheritance of Quan Hansheng, Liu Guangjing and other gentlemen who love life like a son, but also from the teacher's own understanding, perseverance and heartfelt love for the teacher's duty.
Many graduate students jokingly call it "the most afraid of the sudden concern of the tutor", but for several of our students, this sentence does not apply, because the teacher's "care" for us has always been "routine" from academic to life. The teacher will talk to us almost every day, unless the teacher is out of the house and it is not convenient to call, there are only a few days or a period of time when the teacher cannot receive the teacher's phone. After the students graduated, the teachers also maintained almost the same frequency of conversations as everyone, and cared about their respective development and life conditions. At the beginning of the global COVID-19 outbreak, the teacher once heard from the phone that I was not in a good mood - at that time, I was really discouraged and frustrated about the future and life - and I called and talked to me every two or three days, until after all the situation was clear for a while, he relaxed his mind, and when he heard some "good news" that was even temporary, even worthless, the teacher seemed to be happier than me.
There are also many little things every day, all of which reflect the teacher's care for us. He often said that we are still students, it is not easy to study abroad, and we can save a little for our province. In my impression, over the years, the teacher never let us pay for even a cup of coffee, let alone allow us to invite and give gifts - except sometimes to the teacher's house to eat, in order not to let the teacher and mother work hard to make another dessert, everyone bought a small cake to eat together - so that when my doctor started the first year of school, my family prepared a box of good tea to thank the teacher and did not dare to take it out to the teacher, and then had to drink it myself in the middle of the night to refresh. Usually, the master and mother will also specially buy more bread to share for us to make breakfast, and every Dragon Boat Festival, we can also eat the rice dumplings hand-wrapped by the master's mother. After I joined the company last year, I made an appointment with my teacher that I would return to Bu Village or wait for them to come to Shenzhen, and invited him to have a meal with his teacher's mother: "After eating and drinking for so many years, students now have wages, they can always invite you to dinner, right?" The teacher finally smiled and agreed on the other end of the phone, but this time, the teacher still missed the appointment.
The teacher's academic guidance to us is even more "nanny-style". For the articles or parts of the thesis we submit, the teacher will always carefully review: where we think it is well written, use a pencil to draw a check mark on the side of this paragraph; where we feel that it needs to be discussed, we will circle the relevant words and sentences, write our own opinions on the side, and even the grammar and spelling errors, the teacher will correct them one by one. After changing the text in this way, it is not enough, and often there will be another round of interviews to discuss with us why we should change this way and how to do it next. Students who are in contact with the teacher at first may not be accustomed to the teacher's evaluation method, because we rarely hear "good" or "very good" from his mouth, but instead "OK" and "no big problem". A student was confused about this, thinking that it was not his own article written in a really general way, and later found out that "no big problem" is equivalent to the teacher saying "well-written", but first, the teacher's academic standards are very strict, and the teacher often says "be humble for people and governing, don't feel that you are very strong", so the teacher chose this expression - of course, when the teacher says "good" in person, it is really good.
In our discussions with us, the teacher never forced us to accept his point of view. If there are disagreements, the teacher will also respect our well-thought-out choices after listening carefully to our ideas– unless it is related to academic standards. When the teacher really feels that we have a fallacious opinion due to a lack of understanding of a certain problem, he will not directly correct it with the authority of the teacher, but will push it to us from the side book by book, let us absorb and think on our own, and encourage us to find problems and deal with problems on our own. I remember that at the beginning, many of our classmates had great prejudices and misunderstandings about daily research, and even said many words that now want to be "fearless of the ignorant". The teacher was not angry or in a hurry to make us "change our minds", but took us from the small articles of Walter Benjamin, Georg Simmel and others, and read most of the tomes of Fernand Braudel, Pierre Bourdieu, Henri Lefebvre, Michel de Certeau and others. Finally, the Emperor Tian did not live up to the painstaking people, and our gang of "thorn-headed monsters" finally served. After that, according to the different research interests and strengths of each person, the teacher let us "focus" on different scholars and their classic works, encouraged us to explore the "waterway" each other, and finally found our own "new world". However, the teacher's painstaking efforts were gradually cleared up by the students after looking back - this situation can be recalled, but it was already confused at the time.
Compared with the doctorate and master's degree as "disciples", the teacher's care for undergraduate students is not less than much, which is even more valuable in the current academic circles at home and abroad.
In recent years, due to various changes and curriculum adjustments in the college, teachers have to undertake the task of teaching undergraduate courses with as few as two or more than four courses every semester. As far as I can see with my own eyes, the teacher is the most serious of the many professors in the college. Every week, teachers spend a lot of time carefully preparing for the next week's lessons, and the grading of homework is also like grading our doctoral dissertation. Sometimes because the workload of homework correction is too large, the teacher has to change it until the early morning, and can only sleep for more than two hours, then get up and hurry to school. Even so, the teacher never refused to be perfunctory and slack, we really felt sorry for the teacher, wanted to do the work, the teacher also insisted on refusing. In their spare time, the door to the teacher's office is always open to students – whether it's discussing academics or talking about confusion, teachers are welcome. Whenever heavyweight scholars visit, the teacher also strongly invites undergraduate students to boldly participate in relevant meetings and seminars, and usually invites everyone to go to their homes for dinner after the meeting - such a lively scene is an unforgettable memory of many students.
After the outbreak of the epidemic, the school has fully shifted to online teaching, and some professors have turned off the camera when teaching, and the class recordings of the past years have fooled the students, and the online tutorial courses and homework corrections have been coped with, so that they have made a big joke that the students have deliberately talked nonsense after being detected and the professors do not know it! In stark contrast, teachers continue to work day and night to prepare lessons, grade assignments, and provide timely and meticulous guidance to students through email. In the classroom, these young people in their early nineteens and early twenties certainly seem to have no taboos about hippie smiling faces on weekdays, but the teacher's kindness to everyone, even if they don't say it, they all look at it in their eyes and remember it in their hearts. After the teacher left, one emotional message after another on various social platforms told a fact: Teacher, even if one day the children gradually forget the people, things and books you mentioned in class, your figure on the three-foot podium will always be remembered by them.
At this point, tears cannot be forbidden. The story about the teacher is much more than that, but I have the right and can only write here.
At noon on August 11, 2019, Mr. Li Zhigang took a group photo with the author at the closing ceremony of the "International Symposium on Economy and Society in Modern China"
Five
Go back to that night of April 22, 2021.
After everything was over that night, several questions kept churning in my head: When was the last time I saw my teacher? Where is it? What did the teacher say that day? However, even though I searched my stomach and racked my brains, I couldn't remember the last moment I spent with the teacher.
In the days that followed, with the help of Shimu and Yangyang, at least the general scene of the last meeting with the teacher was put together: it was around noon on January 11, 2020, in the shopping mall downstairs at home, and the teacher was waiting for the gap between the teacher's mother to purchase household supplies and asked me to go downstairs to make a small talk - this is a daily scene in my bucun life in these years. If I had known at that time that I would never be able to return to Bu Village after returning to China for the New Year in two days, if I had known that it was the last time I would have met my teacher in this life, I would have certainly not forgotten that scene—just as I had seen my teacher for the first time—but now, my memory is only blank, and I only vaguely remember that it was also a good weather that was normal for Bu Village.
As for the last call with the teacher, according to the call records, it was 19:10 on March 17, 2021, and the call time was 9 minutes and 14 seconds. What did we talk about in this short 9 minutes and 14 seconds? Is it the teacher's physical condition? Are you asking about my job and fund application? Or do you tell me to read E.P. Thompson's books well? Or something else? Of course, these may also be the things that the teacher mentioned in the previous phone calls - in short, I can't remember anything. I just remember that it was an ordinary call, and I probably didn't think that this was our last exchange, and I always thought that there was still a long time to go, and there were many opportunities to say a lot more.
By this time, I may have truly understood one of the difficulties that our teachers taught us about the study of daily life: daily practice and everyday events, while seemingly ubiquitous and accessible, are the most overlooked because they are trivial, bland, and mostly "unconscious". The memory of the individual, like the traditional mainstream narrative of history, remembers only those special and even "stars shining" highlight moments, and between this special moment that can be recognized and depicted by memory and history is "countless senseless passages of time" - this is daily life, but it is by no means as "senseless" as Zweig, who only stares at great people and great moments, believes. We may be able to "defamiliarize" these habitual trivia with The help of Brecht-style filters to capture and reconstruct these daily fragments, and then capture the amazing wonders hidden behind these habitual practices and events. However, this technical route seems feasible, how easy is it to do? Otherwise, why can't I even grasp the last memory of this point about the teacher, and finally let it be annihilated in the ordinary years when the endless chicken and garlic skin can't help but be overwhelmed by the mountain and the tsunami.
On the other hand, though, things may not be that bad — after all, everything about teachers has long been part of our daily routine. This includes not only the teacher's frequent phone calls, conversations with the teacher, dinner at the teacher's home, regular reading classes and the comments left by the teacher on our first draft, but also the teacher's enthusiasm and dedication to scholarship, the seriousness and rigor of learning and reading, the sincerity and generosity of the world and the heroic righteousness, and the undisguised love for the students from the bottom of their hearts. The former—the concrete, everyday chores—may become increasingly obscured by memory over time; the latter—the "paradigm" of governance and humanity that the teacher himself demonstrates to us—takes root in our daily lives day by day, and gradually becomes our "habitus." Theoretically, once a certain practice becomes a daily "habit", it is a "natural and righteous" thing for the individual, and it is difficult to change it under normal circumstances. The teacher's daily "paradigm" is obviously formed in the hands of quan Hansheng, Liu Guangjing, and even Tang Dingyu and other sages, and in the future, if the students are not too undeciplined, they will inevitably be enriched by the teacher's students and the younger generations of scholars who have been deeply influenced by the teacher, and become the "habits" of "natural righteousness" in their daily lives, such as back and forth, passed down from generation to generation.
In the movie "Dream Quest", 12-year-old Mig is told that death is not the end of life, and that a person who is completely forgotten is his real death. In the face of the great power of time, memory is so vulnerable that many great people in the world can not escape the fate of being forgotten in the end. Therefore, one day, sooner or later, no one in this world will be able to remember the name of the teacher. However, as a teacher of "name", you may eventually usher in the end of life in various senses; but as a teacher of "paradigm", you will gain eternal life in daily life. As long as we do not give up and do not deviate, the teacher will accompany us every day of our lives, guide us, and work with us and more young people in the future to persevere on the right but difficult road in the world and always move forward.
Finally, since Brecht is mentioned, I can't help but think of his "Good Man of Sichuan": three gods descended from the sky, just to find at least one good person in the world, and this good person can still live with dignity in the world, otherwise the world will no longer have the need to exist and continue, and it should be spurned, destroyed, and then create a new world. The success or failure of the trip to Sichuan by the three gods has been a matter of opinion for many years. In any case, my luck is much better than theirs, because the teacher is such a good man who the gods are looking for, and I have the privilege of witnessing it with my own eyes. He's been to this world, and there's been such a good man in this world, so I think the world still deserves to be looked forward to, loved, and dedicated to it for the rest of your life.
Supplement
At this point, I don't realize that another month has passed.
About three days ago, I dreamed of him for the first time after the teacher left.
Brother Bing Tao and I were walking down the stairs from somewhere, when we caught a glimpse of the teacher waiting for us on a platform below the stairs. He was still wearing a plaid shirt that he used to wear, unbuttoning two buttons, and with one hand in his pocket, he was in good spirits, but he was a little thinner than before, and his hair was a little whiter and less. I hurried down the stairs, and the teacher looked at me with a smile, patted me on the arm, and continued to use his kind mouth to say, "Yan Zhe, I haven't seen you for a long time!" Have you been okay lately? "Immediately, he also waved to Brother Bingtao." Teacher..." I was about to open my mouth, but I couldn't speak in tears, and suddenly my eyes darkened, and I realized that all this was just a dream.
Of course, I know that the so-called "dream" that the old people often say is more or less nonsense, and the teacher in the dream is just a projection of my memory, not a real teacher.
It's just that I miss him too much.
June 30, 2021
Editor-in-Charge: Zhong Yuan
Proofreader: Yijia Xu