Rely on each other for the text - remember Ai Wu and Satin

　　China's modern literary scene is shining with a pair of dazzling double stars- Ai Wu and Sha Ting. The two of them had a close relationship throughout their lives, supported each other, and relied on each other as a text, which has always been praised and praised by people.

Join hands with the window alumni for the text

Ai Wu, formerly known as Tang DaoGeng. Satin, formerly known as Yang Chaoxi. Although they are all from Sichuan Province, one was born in Xinfan and the other is in An County, but he met by chance. In 1921, they did not graduate from primary school, and at the same time they went to Chengdu, and they were admitted to the tenth class of the Chengdu First Normal School in Sichuan Province. One is taciturn and studious, silent and immersed in reading; one is enthusiastic and likes to find people to talk to and chat. Because of their similar interests, the two soon became inseparable good friends. They went up the street together, visited bookstores, and read new literature since May Fourth together, such as Guo Moruo's new poetry collection "Goddess", which they stood in front of the bookshelf and read it.

The similarity of interests and hobbies, common for a better future and career, the pursuit of ideals, although the personalities are different, but they can treat each other sincerely, emotionally blend, and complement each other, complement each other, in the years of classmate learning and friendship, laid a solid foundation for decades of sincere friendship between them.

In 1925, the two broke up in Chengdu, and the north and south went their separate ways: Ai Wu accepted the influence of the new cultural ideas since the "May Fourth", admired the sanctity of labor, determined to walk a successful path through half-work and half-study, and walked on foot to the Border of Yunnan and Burma to survive (also to escape feudal arranged marriages); Sha Ting ran to Beijing to study, and soon participated in the revolutionary activities of the underground party of the Ccp. Because of his active involvement in the revolutionary work of establishing the Communist Party of Burma, Ai Wu was forced to return to China in 1931 and drifted to Shanghai. It was really a chance to meet thousands of miles, and there was no contact between the time gap of five or six years, and the two actually met unexpectedly on the street.

By then, Ai had published many novels, essays, and poems in Burma. Sha Ting, Ren Zige and other revolutionary comrades founded the Xinken Bookstore and also wrote some works. After meeting again, Satin warmly invited Ai Wu to live with him in his home. Two friends in the same window, get along day and night, and work together to discuss the art of writing. Sha Ting actively encouraged Ai Wu to write about the tortuous experiences and life feelings of wandering in Nanyang, and at the same time wrote about the observation and understanding of society by some small intellectuals and young people at that time, which initially revealed his keen insight into the times and his artistic skills in using irony. However, writing that they had some hesitation and hesitation, that is, whether their creations would have a certain significance for the times and society at that time? Therefore, on November 29, 1931, they jointly wrote a letter to Mr. Lu Xun and sent their respective works to teach Mr. Lu Xun. On December 25, Mr. Lu Xun replied to them and published it in the third issue of Cross Street Magazine to give them great encouragement and help. Lu Xun clearly pointed out: "If it is a proletarian in battle, as long as what he writes can be turned into a work of art, then no matter what he describes and what materials he uses, it must have contributed to modern times and the future." This is the famous "Correspondence on the Subject of the Novel", which Lu Xun later included in the "Two Hearts Collection".

Soon, Ai Wu became famous for his unique works such as the novel collection "Journey to the South" and the prose collection "Drifting Miscellaneous Records". Sha Ting published the novel collection "Legal Route", which was enthusiastically affirmed by Mao Dun and others. At the same time, they joined the "Left League" and were active in the literary world. As a result, a pair of bright double stars rose up in the modern Chinese literary world, which is the creative contribution of Ai Wu and Sha Ting' interdependence and contrast.

Ai Wu: Practice simplicity and unpretentiousness

Ai Wu and I are both from Sichuan, and Ai Wu has lived and worked in Chongqing and Chengdu for many years, and I have also attended university in Chengdu Wangjiang Lou for four years, but we have not met. The first time I met Ai Wu was shortly after I came to Beijing to work.

It was the early sixties, and the editorial board of the Literary and Art Newspaper, where I worked, was preparing to hold a symposium and wanted to invite Ai Wu to attend. Because this meeting was more important, the leader said that several old writers wanted the editor to personally go to the home to invite them to show respect and explain the meaning of the meeting to invite them to the meeting, rather than sending a meeting notice in general. I fought for this opportunity. He ran to the south side street inside the Chaoyang Gate and crossed into a small alley, a place called Shifangyuan. After knocking on the door, I didn't expect that Comrade Ai Wu personally came to open the door for me. Although I had not seen him in person before, I had seen his photographs many times, so as soon as I saw an old man in a gray and white mountain suit, with a clean face and a nearly sixty-year-old age, I immediately recognized him. I called out to "Comrade Aiwu," and he let me into the house. The room was only about twelve or thirteen square meters, and it was crowded with a bed and a desk in front of the bed. Ai Wu saw me for the first time, but was kind, easy and kind to me. I took out the invitation letter and said what I meant to the meeting, and he immediately agreed, "I'll go to this meeting." Although it was an extremely simple and short conversation, it left a deep imprint on my heart.

From the surface to the inside, from the dress, speech, behavior, to the work and work, Ai Wu gave people an extremely simple, simple, simple and honest impression, like the toiling masses in the lower strata of society, with a simple and industrious disposition, from the sixties to the eighties when I first met him, whether in Beijing or Chengdu, I gave people this impression of simplicity and reliability.

Soon, Ai Wu returned to Sichuan, and I was still working in Beijing. We have all experienced the tribulations and baptisms of the absurd years of the Cultural Revolution for ten years. In 1982, I worked at the People's Literature Publishing House. For the compilation of the volume "Ai Wu" of a series of books jointly edited and published by our company and the Hong Kong branch of Sanlian Bookstore, I went to Chengdu and wrote a letter to Ai Wu to ask for information and photos. He wrote to me several times, suggesting the use of the article, and also wrote a new "Preface" for the book. In mid-June, he went to Beijing for a meeting and stayed at the State Council First Guest House near the XizhimenWai Zoo, about ten kilometers from my office. In order to select a few photographs from various periods of his life and creation, he called me, and I said that I would go to him to pick them up, but he insisted on sending them to me personally, and said that he was going to go into the city to do something else and bring a few photos "by the way". At that time, Ai Wu was already seventy-eight years old, and I felt very uneasy in my heart when I asked such a famous old writer to personally send photos, so I went to the bottom of the office building early to wait for him. Unfortunately, however, the two of us staggered, and Ai Wu climbed up to the third floor on foot and delivered the photos to my office and handed them to other comrades. He said, "I'm here to send these pictures and nothing else." Finished talking and left. Later, I made a special trip to the guest house on the 19th to see him and deeply greeted him. But he didn't think it was anything special, as if it was the right thing to be human.

At that time, I got these photos sent by Ai Wu, and my heart could not be calm for a long time. Ai Wu hiked to the border of Yunnan and Burma to survive (after that, at the age of seventy-seven, he made three southward journeys), walked on the streets of Shanghai and met Sha Ting unexpectedly, and in the War of Resistance Against Japan, he walked on foot in Jiangsu, Wuhan, Guilin, Guizhou, Chongqing and other places, and was displaced; after the founding of New China, he participated in land reform, went to the "Four Qings", and went to Anshan Iron and Steel Works, the Construction Site of the Ming Tombs Reservoir, the Daqing Oilfield, and other places to eat and live with workers and peasants until the elderly had a heart problem, installed a pacemaker, and often went to the farmers' market to buy vegetables. Go home and cook... Scene after scene is still in my mind today. What deeply touched me was that for decades, Ai Wu had not been afraid of hardships and hardships, practiced everything, had a deep love and concern for the working masses at the lower levels, a deep friendship like flesh and blood, and such a diligent, down-to-earth, and hard-working character and spirit. It can be said that the fiery struggle and life of the workers and peasants are the starting point of Ai Wu's life and the basis of creation. Without the upheavals and twists and turns on the southbound road, without the bitter experience and deep experience of that time and again, there would be no birth of excellent works such as the famous "Journey to the South", and there would be no famous writer Ai Wu, who had such a huge impact.

　　Later, another thing that moved and admired me was that Ai Wu was so persistent and meticulous in his revision of the novel "Spring Fog".

　　In 1984, Ai Wu was eighty years old. Although "The Fog of Spring" has been rewritten on a large scale again and again, because it was originally written about the famous socialist education movement (that is, the "Four Qing Movement"), it is a typical example of "taking the class struggle as the program". In the years of reform and opening up after the Cultural Revolution, it was obviously inappropriate to move in the works unchanged. However, those facts of life, characters, and stories are not impossible to write into literary and artistic works. The key lies in how the writer knows and how to grasp it. For an old writer who is already an old man, there are not only problems of time and energy, but also problems of ideological and conceptual innovation; it is impossible without strong revolutionary perseverance and revolutionary goals, and even more impossible without the ideological spirit of forging ahead in a pioneering spirit and catching up with the times. I am one of the responsible editors of this manuscript. After a full exchange of views with the comrades concerned, I was really worried about whether Ai Wu could accept these opinions, and even more worried about whether he could change this novel. Unexpectedly, Ai Wu not only listened carefully to our opinions, but also immediately made a fourth major revision: about 200,000 words were deleted, many volumes and chapters, characters and plots were greatly changed, and many places were rewritten to make it conform to historical reality and adapt to the social development of today's times, almost can be said to be a work after a major operation to revive the dead! This spirit and perseverance, measurement and courage, character and will, and after such hard work and unremitting pursuit, finally achieved a very successful example, it is deeply admirable.

Satin: Passionate and passionate about creation

　　I met Satin earlier than I did. Because, we all arrived in Chengdu in 1955: I was admitted to the Chinese Department of Sichuan University, he returned to Sichuan from Beijing to create, and was elected as the chairman of the Sichuan Literary Association and the Writers Association, so I had many opportunities to meet him and hear his speeches on literary issues.

　　Satin was passionate throughout his life and was passionate about literary creation.

As early as 1932, he joined the Left Writers' Union and served as secretary of the Standing Committee of the Left League and head of the Fiction and Prose Group of the Creative Committee. In 1952, he served as the deputy director of the Creative Committee of the Chinese Writers Association, presided over the daily work, and he has been enthusiastically contacting writers, organizing the lives of writers and carrying out various creative activities. During this period, Ai Wu went to Angang Steel in 1952 to experience life, created works such as "Hundred Refining into Steel", and in 1958, at the Shenren Ming Tombs Waterfront Construction Site, Sha Ting played an important role in actively promoting and supporting. Satin repeatedly said: "I am entangled in administrative work, there is no way." Ai Wu suffered more than I could, and I supported him to go on and create more. Until his later years, he was always concerned about Aiwu's body and writing.

　　At the same time, he was very concerned about the growth and creation of workers, peasants, and soldiers. I've had a few chance encounters with Satin in this regard.

　　One was in 1958. At that time, advocating the creation of workers, peasants and soldiers, Chengdu Daily specially set up a column on "Literature and Art of Workers, Peasants and Soldiers". After reading zou Zhongping's novel "Commentator No. 628", which was published above, I was quite touched and interested, and immediately wrote a short commentary entitled "The Flowers of Communist Thought", which was published in the Chengdu Daily on December 1. This is the first article I have written that can be called a literary review. Coincidentally, in the spring of 1959, the Sichuan People's Publishing House published a book entitled "Selected Works of Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers," which was an anthology of the works published in the column "Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers' Literature and Art" at that time, and the back of this collection contained two commentaries, which happened to be one by the writer Sha Ting and the one with me. A few months later, after graduation, I was assigned to the editorial office of "Literature and Art Newspaper" sponsored by the Chinese Writers Association, which decided that I would devote my life to literary and art theory criticism work. It's something I haven't figured out for decades.

　　One was in 1980. Sha Ting moved to Beijing again to become director of the Institute of Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. At this time, Sichuan produced a peasant writer Zhou Keqin. His first novel, Xu Mao and His Daughters, attracted the attention of the literary circles after it was published successively in Tuojiang Literature and Art and Hongyan. This was due to the discovery and recommendation of the famous Chongqing critic and editor Yin Bai (formerly known as Zhang Qianqiu), and the correspondence between Satin and Zhou Yang was published in the "Literature and Art Daily", which produced a quite sensational effect. Later, the novel won the first prize of the first Mao Dun Literature Award.

　　At this time, I had a chance to visit him upstairs at Satin's residence in the Alley of the Xiluo Circle. He took out a collection of Zhou Keqin's short stories from the bookshelf and enthusiastically introduced keqin to me, not only fully affirming the achievements that Zhou Keqin has made, but also full of expectations and hopes for Zhou Keqin's future creations.

　　In 1987, Satin retired from his job, sorted out his creations and diaries at his home in Building 24, Muxidi, and wrote his memoir "Suishui Ten Years" (which describes that during the War of Resistance Against Japan, he took refuge in his hometown of Anxian and wrote the famous novel "Three Notes": "Gold Rush", "Sleepy Beast", "Homecoming" and the short story "In His Fragrant House TeaHouse"), and he often cared for Zhou Keqin, who was far away from the Sichuan Writers Association, so that he could not fall into complicated interpersonal relationships, and warned him to hurry up and write. He said to me many times with great emotion that when the administrative work was busy and there was little time to write, I could not help but feel deeply sorry. Therefore, when he returned to Sichuan, he personally told the relevant leaders that Zhou Keqin could write, and he must be allowed to get rid of the affairs work, "His work can be done by others, but others can't write his works!" "His penchant for creation is overflowing with words. It just so happened that at these times, I had some work contact with Zhou Keqin and hurriedly told him about this situation. When Satin knew, he said "Yes, yes." ”

　　At this time, I facilitated The continuous selection of Satin's 1962-1963 records in the New Literary Historical Materials that I co-edited.

　　At first, he asked someone to transcribe the diary, and he personally read it and did some organization. Satin was originally in a hurry, hated to drag mud and water, and at this time he was eighty-three years old, and it was understandable that he wanted to do what he wanted to do more than that early realization. But at the same time, he has a lot of worries, always afraid that if it is published now, it will cause trouble, affect interpersonal relations, and affect unity. This may be related to his long-term leadership position, but also the mentality of doing administrative and organizational work. Therefore, it took me a long time to convince him and promise not to reveal anything without his consent. Moreover, we were already old friends, and we did some work with his secretary Qin Yousu in advance, and at the same time, as the deputy editor of the "New Literary Historical Materials", I said in person that I must be seriously responsible for how to select and distribute the diaries, so that he handed over the diaries of the past few months to me to take a look at first. One day in early June, I made an appointment on the phone to come to his house to exchange views. This was a very crucial meeting to see if his diary could be handed over to me for publication. Therefore, I first exchanged views with the comrades of the editorial department and made relatively full preparations. However, because of the delay on the way, I arrived at his house a few minutes late. At this time, he and his secretary Qin Yousu were already waiting for me in the living room. As soon as I entered the room, he eagerly pulled me to sit down on an old rattan chair on the east wall of the living room, and he also sat next to it, while Qin Yousu took a small stool and sat across from the two of us, ready to "translate." Because Satin is a native dialect of northern Sichuan, often uses some unique local spoken language, especially when narrating some of his important opinions, he likes to express them in dialects, it seems that it is difficult to express some of his special feelings and meanings without dialects, and such speech is often faster and more urgent; it seems that before we met, he and Qin Yousu had more than one conversation; at the same time, Sha Ting's ears were already a little back, some heavy hearing, so he let Qin Yousu sit in front of us. In order to emphasize or restate the comments in due course.

　　As soon as he sat down, Satin said with some concern: "I'm afraid that this diary will not come out until after the braids are raised!" Come out now, afraid of getting into trouble! "I carefully told him honestly the opinion of our editorial office: First, there is no problem politically; Second, what is written about is the reality of life at that time; third, this is the main problem to be solved, that is, the description of many people and many things, "your main concern may be in the complex relationship between these people and things." I have therefore analysed those people and events in a categorical manner and have explained our suggestions on how to deal with them. He was a little anxious at first, but then gradually calmed down, and also said some of the ideas he had considered in advance, and we repeatedly studied how to choose and how to publish, and finally he finally agreed to let us choose a part to publish first.

　　From these diaries, we can always feel that Satin is enthusiastic about the development of China's literary cause, nurtures the growth of young writers, praises the advent of excellent works, cares about the lives of new and old writers and their creations, is full of resentment and unrighteousness towards the evil tendencies of society and all unjust deeds, and is full of resentment and untrue envy and hatred, and confesses with openness, and his heart beating so fiercely and warmly. For the sake of his career and ideals, for the sake of the pursuit of a beautiful life, he did not care about the gains and losses of his personal name and position, and many precious years of his life were devoted to the overall situation and many affairs for others, showing the noble character and spirit of communists. From his meticulous concern and enthusiastic support for several generations of friends in the literary world, especially his care and fiery affection for his old friend Ai Wu in all aspects, he is not only overflowing with words, but also full of heart and affection.

Ai Wu, Satin, aquatic weeds are not divided

　　Ai Wu and Sha Ting, born in the same year, studied together in the same window, had a deep friendship for decades, and relied on each other for literature, and died in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, only nine days apart on december 5 and 14 of the same month of the same year. He was eighty-eight years old.

　　Shortly after their deaths, an article from indonesia's "Overseas Chinese Daily" was forwarded in Tianjin's "Literary Freedom Talk" and Beijing's "Literary Story Newspaper", saying that they had taken these two pen names (Both sha ting and ai wu were both grass characters), and had vowed that in the common struggle of pursuing revolutionary ideals and literary creation, the two would always be "inseparable from water and grass.". Moreover, Ai Wu's original surname, Tang, is next to the water character; Sha Ting's original surname is Yang, which is grass and wood edge; the pen name of the two is just next to the water character and the grass and wood edge are exchanged. Is this a coincidence or a hint, or what other implications are there?

　　In the later years of both old writers, I had the opportunity to come into contact many times. At Sha Ting's home in Beijing, when he talks about Ai Wu, he is always irrepressibly full of concern: "He is not lightly ill this time!" 」 I'm going to hurry back and see him again!" I cook in Sichuan. Sichuan TCM is good. I let others show him. "He talked to me many times about the scene created by the two of them in the 1930s, in the 1950s he couldn't get rid of his administrative work, he always supported Ai Wu to live in Angang, write more, and he personally proposed that Ai Wu go to the construction site of the Ming Tombs Reservoir...

　　Ai Wu usually shows emotions more subtlely and gently. He lived in a hospital in Chengdu, and I went to see him with other comrades, and when I talked about Satin, he couldn't help but say, "He has a lot of diseases." There are also a lot of writing plans! ”

　　Later, Ai Wu's illness turned critical, Sha Ting's body was also very weak, still hurried back to Chengdu, always paying attention to the physical condition of his old friend, until the last two went hand in hand, relying on each other's generation of literary heroes to heels away, the literary treasures they left behind will always be our spiritual treasures!

March 12, 1999