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In 1947, Chen Mengjia and Zhao Luorui took a group photo in the United States
A Collection of Chinese Bronzes in the United States, by Chen Mengjia, published by Jincheng Publishing House
In 2016, the outstanding poet and scholar Mr. Chen Mengjia celebrated the 105th anniversary of his birth and the 50th anniversary of his death. Jincheng Publishing House, authorized by Mr. Chen Mengjia's relatives, took four years to carefully edit and produce, and republished the "Collection of Chinese Bronze Ware In the United States" "originally", and wrote on the title page of the book: "I would like to commemorate Mr. Chen Mengjia and Ms. Zhao Luorui with this book."
The "Collection of Chinese Bronzes In the Collection of Chinese Bronzes in the United States" is a special cultural relics catalogue collected, sorted out and compiled by Mr. Chen Mengjia in the 1940s with his own efforts, and was published internally in the 1960s under the name of "Catalogue of Chinese Yin Zhou Bronzes Plundered by US Imperialism". More than half a century later, you can still feel the immortal charm of this exemplary work of ancient artifacts.
More than a decade ago, China began to carry out the census of lost overseas cultural relics, and now it has gained some results. Looking back, Mr. Chen Mengjia's overseas visit in that year can really be described as "the blue wisps of the road to enlighten the mountains and forests". He not only left behind the "Collection of Chinese Bronzes In the United States", but also left a spirit that was soaked in this "collection".
Those who dedicate themselves to culture should not be forgotten by history. This newspaper today published a special issue of "Chen Mengjia, a Pity Great Talent" and "A Model Of Ancient Artifact Writings -- Talking about the Jincheng Edition of the Collection of Chinese Bronzes In the United States", paying tribute to Mr. Chen Mengjia!
In the last century, Chen Mengjia was recognized as a genius in literature and history. He always has the ability to make all things that are extremely boring become alive and jumpy in his pen.
Chen Mengjia.1911-1966
Chen Mengjia graduated from the Faculty of Law of Chuo University with a bachelor's degree in the summer of 1931
Chen Mengjia, a famous modern Chinese poet and scholar, was born in Nanjing on April 16, 1911, and died in Beijing on September 3, 1966, at the age of 55.
Mr. Wen Yiduo commented that his student was "talented" and "willing to use kung fu", and the gentlemen who knew Chen Mengjia recalled him, and the first evaluation of him was almost always the three words "great talent", followed by "pity".
poet
In 1927, at the age of sixteen, Chen Mengjia was influenced by the famous poets Wen Yiduo and Xu Zhimo and began to write new poems. At the age of eighteen, his new poem "That Night" was recommended by Xu Zhimo and published in The Crescent Magazine under the pseudonym "Chen Manya". In the following years, he published a large number of new poems under the pseudonym "Chen Manzai", and together with Wen Yiduo, Xu Zhimo, and Zhu Xiang, he was called the "Four Great Poets of the Crescent School".
In January 1931, Chen Mengjia's first collection of poems, the Mengjia Poetry Collection, was published by crescent bookstores, sold out in just a few months, and was co-opted and republished in July of that year. In the same year, his novella "Spring Without Blossoming" was published by Shanghai Liangyou Book Printing Company. Chen Mengjia, who studied law at the National Fourth Sun Yat-sen University (later known as Central University) in Nanjing, was also responsible for editing the quarterly journal Poetry Journal, edited by Xu Zhimo. The "Poetry Journal" was the main front of the Crescent School in the later period, publishing the works of famous poets such as Wen Yiduo, Lin Huiyin, Bian Zhilin, Sun Yutang, and Cao Baohua.
After Chen Mengjia graduated in July 1931, he went to Nanjing at the invitation of Xu Zhimo and compiled a collection of poems with a total of 80 poems by eighteen poets representing the Crescent Moon Sect. In November of the same year, Xu Zhimo died in an air crash. At the beginning of the following year, Chen Mengjia compiled Xu Zhimo's posthumous manuscripts into "Cloud Tour", and compiled his own poems and concluded them into "Iron Horse Collection".
Chen Mengjia's Selected Poems "Iron Horse Collection"
After the outbreak of the January 28 Incident in 1932, Chen Mengjia and three classmates joined the Nineteenth Route Army, witnessed the tragedy of the war on the Songhu front, and composed many poems, which were later compiled into a collection of poems "On the Front Line". In the preface, Chen Mengjia said: "Now that I think about it, I dare not think that the small villages, bamboo forests and small bridges that were once stationed are now stepping on those iron shoes... I use this poem to commemorate the faithful souls of our supremely honored fallen soldiers and to curse my shameful immortality in fate. After returning from the front in late February, he was invited by Wen Yiduo to qingdao University as a teaching assistant. Influenced by his teacher Wen Yiduo, he began to try to study Oracle.
At the end of 1932, Chen Mengjia went to Beiping to study at the Religious College of Yenching University. In early 1933, the Japanese army invaded Rehe, and on January 14, Chen Mengjia once again took the initiative to rush to the front. Chen Mengjia never recorded the experience of participating in the war, and only mentioned in his self-examination in 1951 that he had participated in the Battle of Lengkou of The Rehe River, and the Battle of Lengkouguan was the only battle in which the Chinese army took the initiative to attack in the Great Wall War.
In January 1934, the "Iron Horse Collection" was published by the Shanghai Enlightened Bookstore; in August, Chen Mengjia selected twenty-eight poems from the past years and concluded them as "Dream Family Cun Poems" as his "checkout for seven years of writing poems".
From January 1934 to September 1936, Chen Mengjia studied paleography at Yenching University, where he studied paleography. Since 1936, he began to publish academic papers in journals such as Yanjing Journal, Yugong, and Archaeology, and in 1936 alone published seven articles, including "Hayabusa Examination", "Shang Zhou Sacrifice in Ancient Texts", "Myths and Witchcraft of the Shang Dynasty", and "Ling Yi Xinshi".
In January 1936, Chen Mengjia and Zhao Luorui became married. Both fathers were Christians and were good friends of Stuart Redden, which can be regarded as world friends. The wedding ceremony was held in the office of Stuart Layden, the president of Yenching University, and was very simple. In his memoirs, Mr. Qian Mu said that Zhao Luorui "is a famous school flower in Yan, chasing someone, and the lone dream parent's shirt has the smell of Chinese writers." In September, Chen Mengjia obtained a master's degree and stayed at Yenching University as an assistant professor in the Department of Chinese, while Zhao Luorui graduated a year before him and served as an assistant professor in the Department of Spanish Languages of Tsinghua University.
Before and after the Lugou Bridge Incident in 1937, colleges and universities moved south one after another, and the three universities of Tsinghua, Peking University and Nankai merged in Changsha to form Changsha Provisional University. In the spring of the following year, the temporary university moved to Kunming and was renamed Southwest Union University. Chen Mengjia successively served as a lecturer and associate professor of the Department of Chinese in Changsha and Kunming, and published papers such as "Western Zhou Dynasty Examination" and "LaoZi Interpretation" during his teaching.
Go to the United States
In the autumn of 1944, According to Bi Zhengqing and Jin Yuelin, the University of Chicago hired Chen Mengjia to the school's Oriental College to offer a course in ancient chinese characters, and took this opportunity to collect Chinese bronze materials scattered overseas. That's it, and the cycle repeats: visit, organize, visit and organize. Whoever he can visit, he must knock on the door and look at the treasures one by one, take pictures without photographs, write down as detailed information as possible with ready-made photographs, those who cannot be visited, those who are far away, or those who only hide one instrument, he writes letters and letters, and must get everything he needs... The Dreamer has no scruples, as long as there is a house with utensils, he is bound to knock on the door... Whenever possible, he would take each piece of bronze in his hand and carefully observe it, and write down the necessary information..." (Zhao Luorui, "Remembering the Dreamer")
In order to collect as comprehensive as possible the diaspora of bronze materials, Chen Mengjia traveled to and from Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis, Minneapolis, New York, New Haven, Boston, Providence, Princeton, San Francisco, Honolulu, Toronto and dozens of other North American cities, and in 1947 traveled to Britain, France, Denmark, the Netherlands, Sweden and other countries to visit local museums and private collectors.
With the help of these materials, the book "Collection of Chinese Bronzes in the United States" is included in the collection of thirty-seven public collections such as museums, libraries and universities, as well as sixty-two private collectors and thirteen antique shops, a total of 845 bronze ceremonial vessels, which do not yet include bronze music, soldiers, carriages, horses and daily utensils, as well as bronze objects in Europe and Canada. In this process, Chen Mengjia saw more than three thousand pieces of bronze, and he personally rubbed most of them and archived them. Even in today's transportation, communications, photography and other technologies far beyond the time, it is unimaginable for one person to complete such a difficult and huge project. The book "Collection of Chinese Bronzes Collected in the United States" compiled from this is still an indispensable reference tool for domestic cultural relics workers, especially bronze researchers.
In 1990, Zhao Luorui revisited Chicago, and when faced with the bronzes that her husband had studied more than forty years ago, she was eternally separated, and she was speechless.
Return
In 1947, Chen Mengjia completed the first draft of the "Collection of Chinese Bronzes in the United States", handed it to Harvard University, rejected the Rockefeller Foundation's proposal to persuade him to stay in the United States, and returned to China in October to continue to work as a professor in the Department of Chinese at Tsinghua University. Zhao Luorui studied for a doctorate in English and American literature and stayed in the United States alone to continue her studies.
In November 1947, Tsinghua University decided to set up a cultural relics exhibition room, chen Mengjia as the director of the preparatory committee, for the school to search for cultural relics, but also persuaded the famous cultural relics dealer at that time, the great antique dealer Lu Qinzhai to donate the collection of Ling Fox Junsizi pot to the state, so that this bronze heavy object that had been lost overseas could be returned to the motherland. The bronze is now on display at the National Museum of China.
The Ling Fox Junzi Zi Zi Pot on display at the National Museum of China
On the last day of 1948, Zhao Luorui arrived in Shanghai on the "General Megus" troop carrier, and returned to Beiping in a plane carrying grain to Fu Zuoyi's troops. Three weeks later, Peiping was peacefully liberated. Many people advised the couple to go to Taiwan, but they finally chose to stay, ready for a new era.
After Zhao Luorui returned to China, she served as a professor in the English Department of Yenching University, and soon took over as the head of the department. The couple lives in a Chinese-style bungalow in Langrun Garden, "outdoor flowers and trees are sparse, and the smell of lotus is fragrant." The interior is a color of Ming Dynasty furniture, all of which are fine works collected by Mr. Chen himself, and the living room is placed Luorui's Steinway piano" (Wu Ningkun,"A Generation of Talented Daughter Zhao Luorui").
In 1951, the "Intellectual Ideological Reform Movement" and the "Loyalty and Honesty Movement" began one after another, and Zhao Luorui's father, Zhao Zichen, dean of the School of Religion at Yenching University, was first criticized by teachers and students, and asked his family to "draw a clear line" with him. Chen Mengjia, on the other hand, was also fiercely criticized for his previous close academic exchanges with the United States; while Zhao Luorui wanted to make an ideological review of his "bourgeois thinking" and "heavy business, light politics" mistakes, and accepted criticism, his spirit was strongly stimulated, and he laid the root of the disease.
In 1952, the university began to adjust its faculties, Yanjing, Furen and other church-funded schools were suspended, all liberal arts departments of Tsinghua University were abolished, Chen Mengjia was assigned to work at the Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Zhao Luorui became a professor in the Department of Spanish Languages of New Peking University. During this period, Chen Mengjia's "research on oracle bones, gold texts, chronology, and other aspects also entered a new stage of systematic collation and comprehensive research" (Zhou Yongzhen, "Biography of Chen Mengjia"). In less than four years, Chen Mengjia collected and sorted out more than 40,000 pieces of oracle bone rubbings, and completed a 700,000-word oracle bone study masterpiece "Yin Xu Bu Ci Review", which had a great impact on the academic circles at home and abroad.
furniture
In 1956, Chen Mengjia bought a small courtyard at No. 34 Qianliang Hutong, and because the purchase of the house was paid for the manuscript of the "Yin Xuan Bu Ci Review", he named the residence "One Academy" and named the study "Dream Room". In this study, Chen Mengjia worked ten to twelve hours a day, "he was busy with work at home, there was no physical labor, but when he needed to work, he was not afraid of getting dirty, not afraid of tiredness, and he was elated." He didn't like the less active, separate methods of rest: he didn't like to plant flowers, he didn't like to take pictures (he had a camera that could photograph artifacts and books), and he didn't like to listen to music. But he likes to watch plays (in various forms), and likes to write critical articles and essays on literature and art in general" (Zhao Luorui, "Remembering the Dreamer").
Ma Ye has been engaged in furniture collection for a lifetime, but now in his "Guanfu Museum", the value of all the furniture is on top of the family's "Huanghuali Horse Pattern Carved Back Chair"? Collecting this thing, the quality is not enough - Zhang Boju is known as the industry's first big coffee in modern times, but the number of calligraphy and paintings he has mastered is very "shabby", but only about 100 pieces.
Not to mention vernacular poetry and archaeology, only "amateur" Ming and Qing dynasty furniture collection and research, Chen Mengjia is also a pioneer at least in Hainan, NO.1.
In 2013, At Guardian Auction, Wang Shixiang's rosewood one-panel painting was sold for 12.65 million yuan
Later, Mr. Wang Shixiang, who was called the "first person" in this field, was also able to achieve it under his guidance and influence. Therefore, Wang Shixiang was grateful for the deep friendship of Chen Mengjia throughout his life and honored him as the "Enlightenment Teacher". Objectively speaking, without the ear of Chen Mengjia, a top master who is also a teacher and friend, Wang Shixiang does not even know whether he will be related to furniture. Not to mention that when the wind and rain storm passed, he jumped to become "the first person in the ancient Chinese furniture industry"!
Prosperous collection, today's Ming and Qing dynasty furniture, has long been the "pearl field" of the collection industry. Casually a chair, a screen, a pair of cases, can shoot more than tens of millions of huge sums of money; hot speculation incidentally caused, my hometown of Shunde, Guangdong Side of the mahogany furniture company, in recent years by copying the "Ming-style furniture treasures", the business is so good that it really has to work overtime day and night. "Whoever says literati are useless, one person can build and feed an industry with one book."
Chen Mengjia loves Ming-style furniture, and does not hesitate to search around for heavy money, and the objects he receives are all exquisite, which makes his friend Wang Shixiang envious. Wang Shixiang has always regarded Chen Mengjia as his enlightener and leader in the study of Ming-style furniture, and his classic book "Appreciation of Ming-style Furniture" includes thirty-eight pictures of Chen Mengjia's old furniture, and the title page of the book is printed with the eleven words "I would like to commemorate Mr. Chen Mengjia in this book". In Wang Shixiang's eyes, this friend is always a celebrity style, smoking only tin foil bags at the front door, drinking tea is always the West Lake Longjing, often in and out of antique dealers, buy furniture one by one, as large as the eight immortals table, painting case, small to jewelry boxes, pen holders, everything is available, antique dealers are respectful to him; and their own furniture is a corner, not a series, often snubbed by antique dealers.
Chen Mengjia's old collection of Ming Dynasty chairs is now in the Shanghai Museum
"More than thirty years ago, when the dreamer showed me the lacquerware, prints, and bamboo carvings he had collected, he said to me: 'Now I am committed to professional research, and when I am old, I will do some work that is of interest outside the profession.'" It refers to the study of the above-mentioned artifacts. But I believe his favorite is Still Ming-style furniture. If I had escaped the disaster and survived to this day, I believe that it would have been written into the imperial masterpiece of Ming Dynasty furniture. This topic can't be written by me, and I don't dare to write it even if I want to. (Wang Shixiang, "Remembering the Dreamer")
Chen Mengjia likes to make friends, but only for like-minded people; he is easy-going by nature, often talks and laughs with people, but he is frank in temperament, does not understand the world, and often offends others because of his words; he is talented, and he can bury his head in research, make a lot of achievements, and even surpass many predecessors, and it is inevitable that he will be jealous; he has a lot of income, but he does not understand the truth of rain and dew, the cost of collecting Ming-style furniture is not small, sometimes it is inevitable that the turnover is not good, and in the eyes of outsiders, he will fall into the "miserly" excuse.
In the general era, Chen Mengjia's typical poetic temperament and talent style are at best said to be wild and uninhibited, and no one in sight, but in a specific historical environment, it has become a noose that tightens him tighter and tighter. In the early years, when Wang Shixiang was still playing with cockroaches on the streets of Beijing, Chen Mengjia was already an avid fanatic of classical furniture collection. In the 1950s, when the ancient furniture at that time was nothing more than "bamboo chips" and almost did not attract the attention of any Chinese people, Chen Mengjia, who was a professor at the Tsinghua Chinese Department at the time, did not hesitate to spend all his income on the purchase of antique calligraphy and paintings and furniture. His residence, the courtyard of No. 34 Qianliang Hutong in Beijing, was filled with these objects.
China's classical furniture, its production, craftsmanship, aesthetics, is indeed unparalleled in the world. It is both dazzling and unique, permeated with the deepest and most glorious Chinese style. Especially completed in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, those antique objects covered with "ancient lacquer broken lines", the unique nailless mortise and mortise combination system, and the scientific structure of deep ergonomics are really beautiful and completely "modern".
In 1949, Chen Mengjia and Zhao Luorui were at their home at Yenching University
Moreover, the pursuit of the same material as me, the aesthetic style of the avenue to simplicity, fresh, dignified, comfortable and elegant, is really breathtaking, and it is the most precious cultural heritage of my Chinese civilization.
However, the scholars and doctors of the past did not attach importance to these things. Although it is very useful in life, it is always psychologically despised as a craftsman's plaything, nothing more than a strange trick and a clever path. Literati and gentlemen are disdainful of paying attention to them, and even the "playthings lose their minds" cannot turn them.
In 2015, the overseas Ansiyuan old collection "a set of four chairs for bright yellow flower pear circle chairs" was sold for 9.685 million US dollars
Therefore, the Ming Dynasty strange Jia Wen Zhenheng, in his book "Chronicles of Long Things", although it is rare to mention furniture, but the words are arrogant or even contemptuous. The real classical furniture, especially the Ming and Qing dynasties, as a modern subject object, formally and systematically studied, was as late as the 1930s. Almost with the German Gustav. At the same time as Dr. Ike, Chen Mengjia set his eyes on this treasure mountain that no one paid attention to.
The first foreigners to target Chinese furniture were Gustav Ike and his wife Zeng Youhe
He searched everywhere in his spare time, and by the 1940s, his residence in the Langrun Garden of Yenching University was already a fine Piece of Ming Dynasty furniture that was a "national treasure". At that time, he was a professor in the Department of Chinese, an expert in Chinese bronze catalogues, a big star in the archaeology of Yin Ruins, and one of the world's top Ming-style furniture collectors and researchers at that time. On these "bamboo chips", he poured a lot of energy and effort.
Wang Shixiang, the "number one player in contemporary Beijing", was taishan Beidou in the later international Ming and Qing dynasty furniture research circles. But his interest in Ming-style furniture was gradually formed under the influence of Chen Mengjia. On the surface, they are "buddies": Chen Mengjia Wang Shixiang is 3 years old, or an alumnus of Yenching University - when Chen was admitted to Yanda University in 1934 to study ancient chinese, Wang also entered the chinese literature department of the university, and they saw each other as they were. At that time, when chen Mengjia was really too busy to come, he would often entrust Wang Shixiang, who was diligent and agile and enthusiastic, to send those furniture for polishing repairs, which indirectly contributed to Wang Shixiang's relationship with classical furniture.
"Ming-style furniture queen" Wu Jia'en: "Without Wang Shixiang, there would be no me, but without Chen Mengjia there would be no Wang Shixiang"
We know that Wang Shixiang was born extremely well, his family was superior, and he was the second generation of officials and the second generation of wealth. The Wang family has a garden covering an area of more than 20 acres, named Fangjia Garden, where Wang Shixiang lived during his reign, fighting clams, planting gourds, blowing pigeons, and firing famous dishes, attracting a large number of literati and players in the Beijing circle to gather here. After September 1936, Chen Mengjia graduated with a master's degree, stayed on to teach at the school, and also moved to this garden with his wife Zhao Luorui, and was more closely related to Wang Shixiang, because the fun was similar for many years.
In his later years, Wang Shixiang also served as a variety of "families"
These records show each other's diaries, articles, and memoirs. At that time, Chen Mengjia, for Wang Shixiang, although on the surface was only a "senior", in fact, he was also a teacher and a friend.
In the 1940s, Chen Mengjia and his wife returned from studying in Chicago and officially set foot in Ming-style furniture collection and research. At that time, in Beiping, whenever he entered the city to collect furniture in Lubanguan and other places, he would call the "little brother" Wang Shixiang to go with him.
A corner of the Ming and Qing Dynasty Furniture Museum of the Shanghai Museum
The so-called "young Yan city called the stubborn lord, the boss Jinghua Ji Yiwen", Wang Shixiang was active, liked flying eagles and running dogs and small objects, it is said that at first there was not much interest in the big size of Ming-style furniture. But he was curious and clever, following Chen Mengjia to contact more furniture objects, and followed a lot of interesting wooden works such as Luban Hall, Long Shuncheng, etc., and naturally became interested in Ming-style furniture, and even occasionally bought one or two small objects with fine workmanship to play with.
motion
In 1957, Chen Mengjia was classified as a "rightist" on one of the charges of "opposing literary reform." The incident stemmed from his May 17 article "Cautiously 'Reform' Chinese Characters" published in Wen Wei Po, from the perspective of philology, he put forward his views on the implementation of Simplified and Latinized Chinese characters, "Writing needs to be simple, but not confused. The most faulty of these simplified words is homophonic substitution and partial omission. After simplification, some words are confused", "Do not announce the death penalty of Chinese characters too quickly until you have studied it properly." But he never expected that at this moment, "things are changing", followed by a sharp change in weather, wind and rain...
In May 1957, Xia Nai (third from right) took a group photo with Su Bingqi (first from left) and Chen Mengjia (first from right), veteran experts of the Institute of Archaeology
In 1962, the "Collection of Chinese Bronzes Held by the United States" was renamed "Collection of Chinese Yin Zhou Bronzes Plundered by US Imperialism"
Finally, it was published in-house
Chen Mengjia thus ran into trouble and became one of the five famous "rightists" in the field of historiography at that time. All kinds of words and deeds that were previously hated by people are now taken out by people with hearts as "reactionary evidence" of Chen Mengjia's family. He privately complained that the Institute of Archaeology "led the layman to lead the insider" and was described as "the leader of the opposition party"; his speech at the internal symposium was taken out of context and forced to ask Xia Nai "whether he has a position and no power" and "provoked the relationship between deputy director Xia Nai and Comrade Yin Da"; his articles on the reform of Chinese characters were labeled as "vicious and rampant attacks on the party"; his experience of going to the United States to search for bronze materials became "at the most critical juncture of the War of Resistance Against Japan... He went to the United States to live an American life, shamelessly accepting the allowance of the world's largest exploiter, Rockefeller, and serving them"; he organized the cultural relics exhibition room for Tsinghua University, which was "to make friends with the merchants and win the prestige among the antique dealers, from rogue poet to city servant scholar"; the novel he published in his youth, "Spring That Does Not Bloom", became an "extremely ugly yellow novel"... At that time, many scholars who wrote articles criticizing Chen Mengjia were still well-known scholars.
In addition to such public criticisms, there are various rumors circulating everywhere. Some people say that the book "A Review of Yin Xuan Bu Ci" piles up a large number of materials in order to get more money for the manuscript; and they also say that the Ming-style furniture that Chen Mengjia painstakingly collected was bought and transported back to Beijing in an ancient house in Suzhou with the money left over from the purchase of the house. All kinds of open guns and dark arrows made Chen Mengjia embarrassed, and his wife Zhao Luorui was also stimulated, resulting in schizophrenia.
After being classified as a "rightist", Chen Mengjia was "demoted and used", and although he could stay in the archaeological institute to work, he was not allowed to publish any research articles. Yang Kuan recalled: "When I saw the Beijing newspaper publishing an article criticizing him, "Which Family Are You?" I knew that he had been wronged. Since then, his research work has been interrupted, and the huge work "Western Zhou Bronze Ware Discontinuity", which is being serialized in the "Archaeological Journal", was cut off by the waist just half of it. ”
In June 1960, Xia Nai, in the name of assisting in sorting out the new Han Jian, sent Chen Mengjia to the Gansu Provincial Museum to keep it away from the center of the storm. In 1962, Chen Mengjia wrote a book called "Wuwei Hanjian", which was published by the Cultural Relics Publishing House two years later. At the end of 1962, Chen Mengjia was recalled to the Archaeological Institute to prepare for the editing of the "Yin Zhou Jinwen Integration" and "Juyan Han Jian Jia B Edition". The tortuous "Collection of Chinese Bronzes In the Collection of Chinese Bronzes In the United States" was finally published internally, but it was renamed "Catalogue of Chinese Yin Zhou Bronzes Plundered by US Imperialism" and signed as "Institute of Archaeology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences". (When Chen Mengjia re-edited the book in 1956, he wrote a self-prologue saying: "This collection was completed in June 1947, and it has not been published for ten years.) Some of the photographs have faded, and I have only recently been anxious to rearrange and print them", "The original compilation contains fifteen chapters of a review of Chinese bronzes... The review is too long, and if it is deleted today, it will be published in a single line in the future." The "rightists" who were even deprived of the right of authorship were, of course, not qualified to write a preface, and when it was published, this preface was also deleted, but fortunately, there is another sentence in the preface to the publication that mentions that the bronze objects recorded in the book "were collected in the United States by Mr. Chen Mengjia, a staff member of my firm, more than ten years ago." In the more than three years after returning to the Institute of Archaeology, Chen Mengjia also completed fourteen research papers on Han and Jane of about 300,000 words, which were later compiled and published in 1980 as "Han Jian Commentary".
Insulted
After the "Cultural Revolution" began in 1966, Chen Mengjia once again suffered bad luck. The rebels in the archaeological institute put him on three major charges: the so-called "style problem" of writing poetry and falling in love when he was young, the so-called "economic problem" of purchasing "mansions" and "ancient furniture", and the "academic problems" of plagiarism and plagiarism.
In early August, Chen Mengjia was fiercely criticized in the institute, and the rebels ordered him to kneel on the ground, spit on him, throw dirt on him, and beat him on the head with sticks. He then raided his home, where all the collections and books were swept away, and the couple was expelled and had to live in a temporary garage. During this period, Zhao Luorui fell ill twice, but he could not be hospitalized for treatment, and could only scream under the care of others. On August 23, Chen Mengjia and other "cow, ghost, and snake gods" were beaten and paraded inside the house in top hats, beaten severely, and knocked to the ground several times. At noon on August 24, the "cow, ghost, and snake gods" of the archaeological institute who had been criticized for a morning were allowed to go home to eat and continue to accept the criticism in the afternoon. After a simple cleaning, Chen Mengjia came to a friend's house in Dongchang Hutong and wanted to ask her to take care of his sick wife on her behalf. (This person is the widow of Chen Mengjia's former friend, whose husband died in 1963, and it is said that before his death, he entrusted Chen Mengjia to take care of his family.) As soon as they entered the door, the Red Guards broke through the door, and the leader slapped Chen Mengjia several times, then kicked him to the ground, saying that he had "messed with broken shoes." The crowd rushed up, punching and kicking, and Chen Mengjia struggled to turn back and say, "I can't let people play like monkeys anymore," and was dragged out of the house.
When Chen Mengjia was escorted to the intersection outside the canteen of the Archaeological Institute, it was at the moment when people were walking out of the canteen after lunch, and the Red Guards ordered him to stand on a chair while loudly exposing his "indecent behavior" to the people. In the afternoon, Chen Mengjia was ordered to stay in the institute to participate in the study. In the evening, he asked the group leader for leave to go home and take care of his sick wife. That night, Chen Mengjia committed suicide by taking a large number of sleeping pills at home, but due to insufficient amount of medicine, he died and was found and sent to the hospital for rescue.
On the evening of September 3, 1966, Chen Mengjia, who had been driven home from the hospital, was once again insulted and beaten, and he was accused of one more crime: unrepentant, self-abstinence from the party, and self-sufficiency from the people. That night, Chen Mengjia hanged himself at home, only fifty-five years old.
Behind
The next day, after learning the news of Chen Mengjia's death, his brother Chen Mengxiong and Zhao Luorui's younger brother Zhao Jingxin rushed to the scene and were caught by the Red Guards waiting there. Together with Zhao Luorui, they were shaved with "yin and yang heads" and then beaten in the courtyard. Chen Mengxiong's head was hit by the belt buckle, bleeding unceasingly, and then he was picked up by the unit; after Zhao Jingxin was beaten, he knelt in the courtyard for a full hour before taking Zhao Luorui away. In the face of a group of "young revolutionary generals", the living are still too busy to take care of themselves, where is the body of the deceased collected? "When the Dream family died, I didn't even leave ashes, so I can only mourn in my heart" (Zhao Luorui, see Yang Zhishui's "Ten Years of Reading").
In 1979, the Institute of Archaeology held a memorial service for Chen Mengjia, and published a newsletter in Archaeology magazine titled "A Memorial Service for Mr. Huang Wenbi, Chen Mengjia and Yan Xuan Was Held in Beijing", which mentioned that Chen Mengjia was "persecuted to death by Lin Biao and the 'Gang of Four' counter-revolutionary revisionist line on September 3, 1966".
Chen Mengjia and Zhao Luorui have no children. After the death of Chen Mengjia, Zhao Luorui lived with her parents, her younger brother Jingxin and her sister-in-law Huang Zhe in the zhao family's old residence at No. 22 Back Street of the Art Museum. In 1996, when zhonghua bookstore and Zhao Luorui discussed the publication of Chen Mengjia's "Western Zhou Bronze Ware Broken Generation", she first laughed hysterically: "I can get the manuscript fee again!" Later, he cried bitterly.
In 1998, Zhao Luorui died at the age of eighty-six.
In 2000, the Ming Dynasty courtyard at No. 22 Backstreet of the Art Museum was forcibly demolished.
[Beauty] by Whitman, translated by Zhao Luorui, published by Flower City Press
As a poet, Whitman praised individuality, praised the masses, preached liberal democracy, and deserved to be a great representative of the American spirit. His poems are raw, rugged, and individual; yet cosmic and all-encompassing. His influence on future generations extends far beyond nineteenth-century America to the contemporary world, and will always be groundbreaking. His epoch-making masterpiece "Blades of Grass", which he completed with his life's efforts, is a magnificent epic, free, full and true record of the poet himself and his time, and shows the future of mankind.
Zhao Luorui is a lover, researcher and translator of Whitman, and has been praised by American scholars as "China's most important Whitman translator". This poem is selected from the complete collection of "Grass Leaves" translated by Zhao Luorui, and its special feature is that the book appends the memories of Mr. Zhao Jinglun and Mr. Wu Ningkun to commemorate the translator Mr. Zhao Luorui.