About the Author
Zhang Cunming: male, born in 1954, college degree, originally from Xiyang, currently living in Jiexiu, retired employee of Fenxi Group. After retirement, he engaged in literary creation, and was good at travelogue, poetry, prose and other genres.
"Collect and hide the private pleasure, collect and display the joy of the crowd.".
There is a saying that is particularly good: there is never a lack of beauty in life, but a lack of mood to discover beauty. In fact, beautiful things abound in life, whether a person has a taste in life determines the degree of his feelings about beauty, and the interest in life is the kinetic energy to discover beauty. I have always thought that collection is a nostalgia for the beauty of the years, a tangible memory of beauty, a collection of the pursuit and yearning of the past, and a soothing of the soul of a good time.
Since I was a child, I have liked to collect objects that can retain the impression of the years and carry the memory, and every object in my collection carries the beautiful story in my memory, engraves the mark of hobbies and pursuits of a period, and witnesses the footprints of my life.
A collection that leaves memories
My first hobby of collecting was at the age of thirteen or fourteen, when it was just in time for the cultural revolution to start in 1966, my main collection was to buy a penny a 32K portrait of Chairman Mao, my mother let me buy vegetables to find a few cents saved, I was reluctant to spend, often ran to the Xinhua Bookstore on the south street of the county, as long as there are new, buy a few photos a day, unconsciously accumulated dozens of photos of Chairman Mao in various periods, at that time I had so many of the latest Chairman Mao statues felt very excited, often take it out to enjoy alone, Then distribute it to the little friends.
With the deepening of the Cultural Revolution, the Red Guards began a great series of red guards, although they were still too young to participate in the activities of the Red Guards, but they admired their spirits, envied them wearing military hats and military uniforms, waistbands, armed belts, and red armbands on their arms, especially liked those who were in the south of the world and the North And North Red Guards held various versions of the red treasure book in their hands and Chairman Mao's portrait badges worn on their chests. The main channel through which I obtained these treasures came from my eldest brother, who was twenty-one or two years old at the time, and was also a hot-blooded young man with ambitions and literary and artistic expertise, with a wide range of interests and contacts, and often brought back some of the various Chairman Mao portraits and medallions and various versions of Chairman Mao's quotations and poems of Chairman Mao, commemorative stamps from the Cultural Revolution period, and great criticism leaflets of the Red Guards. In order to obtain or "possess" these treasures, so every day with my seven-year-old brother set almost, the eldest brother appreciates my hobby, always in the first time after his appreciation, without stinginess to give me, so before I was 16 years old, accumulated a lot of treasures, just to say that Chairman Mao medals have hundreds of different sizes and shapes, including aluminum gilded, ceramic firing, fluorescent, plexiglass inlaid, plastic color prints, as well as three-dimensional dynamic can flash golden light, including Lenin's head, Ma Enles Mao's head portrait, Liu Hulan's full-body sculpture and Chairman Mao's inscription, and so on.
In order to let the family see these collections of Chairman Mao's portraits, my father and I temporarily took out the old photos in the photo frame of the home, and the treasure photo frame was cushioned with foam sponges, arranged according to the shape and size, and hung in the most prominent position in the home. At that time, the bound edition of Chairman Mao's quotations was called the "Red Treasure Book", and I had more than a dozen copies in my collection, including the quotations of Chairman Mao originally published by the General Administration of the People's Liberation Army, and five philosophical works of Chairman Mao in red plastic covers. Chairman Mao's latest supreme directive is a bound edition of Chairman Mao's poems with colorful portrait inserts, and a bound edition of Mao's selected volumes of one to four volumes.
The collection of commemorative stamps began with some of the world's famous dog stamps accumulated by the eldest brother, and later I cut and unpacked the envelopes of letters sent to my family, collected stamps on the counter of the post office, etc. It can be said that the main commemorative stamps of the Cultural Revolution I had in those years, such as what Chairman Mao quotations, Chairman Mao's poetry handwriting, the motherland's mountains and rivers are red, and so on. Unfortunately, my little blue wooden box for storing treasures was almost all lost after I left home after I left home at work, and now there are only a few left. In this regard, my dream of collecting cultural relics was shattered in memory.
Although there are not many items in my original collection, the memories of the collection and every story of the collection are still fresh in my memory, the tangible things are gone, and the invisible stories are still stirring in my heart and still warm my heart.
A collection that catches up with trends
I consider myself a person who tries to catch up with fashion and trends, from young to old, I am as tolerant of various social phenomena as possible, and basically accept new things. Some fashionable, popular gadgets are not only acceptable, but also loved. I think this may be a manifestation of maintaining an ageless mentality and having a little interest in life. A person takes the initiative to be in tune with the mainstream of the times, and subjective thoughts can be integrated into the synchronization with social development, so as not to be left behind, to find an entry point in the interaction with friends of all levels and ages, and to find a common language when communicating and interacting with various people.
Since 1977, with the emergence of cassette recorders, a large number of Hong Kong and Taiwan popular songs are popular, with Teresa Teng represented by Hong Kong and Taiwan singers for mainland youth familiar, I like Hong Kong and Taiwan pop songs, from borrowing other people's tape recorders to own a tape recorder took nearly 10 years, the initial "half-brick" mono, four-speaker stereo, Sanyo, Sony, Panasonic, Kangli, various models of brands I have played, along with the purchase of boxes with burning money, Hong Kong and Taiwan, mainland, foreign famous albums, Classical music, song accompaniment dance box belt, as long as they like, as long as it is the latest popular no matter how much money is also not hesitated to buy it, in the early nineties, often to Shanghai on business, in the regular audio and video store original introduction of the original sound box with a plate to thirty yuan, I would rather have the remaining money to eat also without hesitation to buy it, sometimes in a certain audio and video store or other people's audio equipment to hear a good song music, and then inquire about the album or song name after buying it, then young, patronize their own happiness, Listening to songs and music at home always turns on the volume to a large extent, and I am not afraid of others being noisy, my children were heard by popular songs at a very young age, it can be said that I created the conditions for their musical enlightenment to some extent, and led them to advocate the act of art.
Nowadays, audio equipment and media storage methods are changing with each passing day, cassette recorders have withdrawn from the historical stage, but the accumulation of purchases, the home now has three or four hundred cassettes, most of which are albums, some are still series, and some singer albums are still works when they debuted. There were no conditions for my home to keep the cassette tapes, and hundreds of cassette tapes stayed there quietly, and I didn't know what use these cassettes would be for the day, they occupied the space of my entire bookcase, and also witnessed my pursuit for a period. The advent of new media and digital products has made me see the "east evil and west poison", let me accept the good and bad spiritual products at the same time, the vision is opened, there is a little tolerance for multiculturalism, there is an immunity to "alien species", and a little more understanding of what young people do. It also adds a little color to my so-called fast food culture collection.
The collection of books has given me a world of my own
Speaking of collecting, the most valuable, the most cherished and proud collection is my collection of books, which may not be a big deal for a cultural person, but I am not a cultural person nor a collector, just because I love to read. In addition, the environment around me is also mostly cultural people, and I always feel that my knowledge is lacking and dwarfed by the lack of knowledge, so only the word diligence inspires me and makes my reading and learning always on the road.
How much money I spent in my life to buy books, how many books I bought, I can't figure out myself, the bookcase at home is divided into two floors with a total of eight grids of books are crowded with various books, just as the so-called "pillow has books in the cup of wine" "Books on the bedside table are piled up high, the basement of the "half of the country" was subscribed to more than thirty years of "Popular Movies", "Readers" magazine and the past old professional books, reference books, old books are also full, my wife and children think that my "treasures" occupy the limited storage space in the basement, quite complaining, But I always turned a deaf ear, and the "treasure" remained motionless year after year. In addition to magazines, it is estimated that my collection of books is at least more than 2,000 volumes, and the main collections include dictionary reference books, professional and technical books related to the professions I have engaged in, biographies, classical literary masterpieces, modern literary masterpieces, poetry and prose, etc., as well as a small number of current political books and picture books.
It's a long-standing habit I've had to read that book or listen to the radio before I go to sleep. I think that buying books, collecting books, reading this process is my best enjoyment, but also the best time for me to immerse myself in the personal world, although now the old eyes are dizzy, the reading speed and time are not as good as before, but when I see my favorite books, I can't help but buy them, and I can buy more than a dozen books a year. In the face of these books, I have a sense of satisfaction and gain, if I find a book in my book pile that I like at this moment and can enter the state of full attention to read, my heart seems to be far away from the hustle and bustle, and find my own world. I am very pleased to think that if I can use books to pile up my own world, I will have the road to the frontier of knowledge, and I will have my own golden mountains and silver mountains and priceless treasures.
I don't know if this little gadget I have saved is a collection, but in any case, these non-talking gadgets will bring me pleasure, will make me look back on the past, in each collection of objects to interpret the first memories and good times, will make me reminisce and revel in each story, there is enough, because my collection carries the weight of the accumulation of time.
The purpose of writing this essay is to record my cherished feelings for beauty, so that in the future these gadgets can interpret stories that sound very distant and strange, and that I have a choice in obtaining the color of decorating life, and to have these treasures on the spiritual level makes me feel psychologically satisfied and happy. Also let my kids know that I have a little hobby.