Shocked to hear the news of the death of teacher Ye Yonglie this morning, I was very shocked, as a post-70s generation, our generation grew up watching his books, and his works have left an indelible mark on our hearts. Back when he came to Beijing in 2015, I had an exclusive interview with Mr. Ye, and his love of writing and perseverance were awe-inspiring.
What impressed me most about Mr. Ye Yonglie was that he was simply a "multi-faceted person": he was a Peking University student who loved science and writing, he was a "technical otaku" who was obsessed with digital products, he was the curator of the "private archives", he was a persistent interview maniac, he was a "detail control" who was thoroughly investigated, and he was mistaken for a plainclothes policeman... He had a particularly wonderful life.
In the scene of the interview a few years ago, the look and tone of Teacher Ye Yonglie's speech seemed to be vividly remembered.
"I wrote my first book at the age of 19, '100,000 Whys' at the age of 20, 'PHS Roaming the Future' at the age of 21, 'Snapshots of Popular Science', Science of Life', A Brief History of the Four Seasons,' and "The Flower of Knowledge" at the age of 22." Ye Yonglie recalls that his writing career began on campus when he was a Peking University student.
Many fans are amazed at how young he was when he wrote a work that influenced a generation. "100,000 Whys" is Ye Yonglie's first masterpiece, with a full book of more than 900 topics, and he wrote 300 of them. At that time, many people knew Ye Yonglie's name, but they did not know that he also had a pen name "Ye Boat", which appeared frequently in the Beijing Evening News at that time. "My first article in the Beijing Evening News was on February 7, 1961. At that time, I was 21 years old, and while writing "100,000 Whys", I published many intellectual sketches in the "Science and Health" section of the Beijing Evening News under the pen name "Ye Boat". ”
From the 1960s to the 1980s, it was the golden age of Ye Yonglie's popular science works, and after the End of the Cultural Revolution, he even created a record of publishing one book a month and 10 books a year. However, after 1983, his career as a popular science writer came to an abrupt end, and he embarked on another path of biographical literature and documentary literature, and the sudden change of literary style left people with the mystery of "double-sided Ye Yonglie". In the end, it was he who solved the mystery himself.
"First, as I grew older, I was not confused in my forties, I considered more about the fate of the country and the call of the times, and felt that it was difficult for popular science works to express my thoughts; second, at the end of 1983, my long science fiction novel "Black Shadow" was intensively criticized, and I was determined to leave the science popularization circle; third, after examination, I became the first batch of professional writers of the Shanghai Writers Association, and coordinated from the Shanghai Branch to the Shanghai Writers Association, which meant that I changed from 'section' to 'literature'." In this way, Ye Yonglie's gaze shifted from science to history, and the color of his life became richer.
Although I did not have the opportunity to visit Ye Yonglie's home in Shanghai, from the photos he brought, I could get a glimpse of his study, which occupied the largest space in a six-story and twelve-grid tin filing cabinet, which was lined up with neatly classified tapes, archives, and letters, and another cabinet from floor to roof was full of stacks of manuscripts, and even the swimming pool on his balcony was converted into an archive room.
There is a photo of Ye Yonglie working in the "swimming pool", you can see that the tiles in the pool have not been changed, the four sides and the top of the glass shed, the original sewer ladder added a door, a waist-high bookcase back to back in the middle of the line. "This cabinet is custom made. At first, the master who came to install it thought that our house sold shoes, because before us, a shoe store had also made exactly the same cabinet. ”
Ye Yonglie laughed that his home was a "private archive", and he himself was the curator, and these archives should not be underestimated, and there were countless thrilling stories in them.
It was through the archives that Ye Yonglie cracked a major "mystery of secret agents" of the CCP. At that time, it was precisely because of this sudden intrusion of the "secret agent" that a large group was transferred from Shanghai to a cruise ship in Jiaxing South Lake, and who this "secret agent" really was, which had not been clarified for many years, and became a suspense case. In order to write "The Red Starting Point", Ye Yonglie found Xue Gengxin, who was the inspector general of the Shanghai French Concession Patrol House, he said that the past in 1921 provided an important clue, he remembered that it was a person named Cheng Ziqing, who was originally a member of the Green Gang, and was later introduced to the patrol room by Jin Jinrong, it was he who inquired into a large meeting address and broke into it to spy, fortunately, the participants were evacuated in time to avoid arrest. Ye Yonglie later managed to find Cheng Ziqing's work card from the archives, and a confession material from Xue Gengxin in 1972, which confirmed this statement and eventually won the approval of party history experts.
"I'm a 'journalist of old news,' I'm still a Shanghai writer based in Beijing, and my wife says I've been to Beijing more times over the years than I've been to Nanjing Road in Shanghai." When Ye Yonglie smiled and talked about this, his expression was very relaxed, but behind it was a difficult interview experience.
"Old news reporter" refers to looking for writing material from major historical events, which means that most of Ye Yonglie's interviewees are celebrities, who basically live in Beijing, because the interviews are often sensitive events that they do not want to mention, eating closed doors, being coldly treated is a common thing, and he still runs tirelessly again and again. "Every time I came to Beijing for an interview, I entrusted my friends to live in the Guest House of the Ministry of Public Security, except for me, where all the police officers living there were wearing big brimmed hats, maybe I stayed too many times, and later people thought I was plainclothes from Shanghai."
His perseverance and flexible skills have allowed Ye Yonglie to successfully interview many celebrities, he visited General Zhang Yaoci three times, and for the first time made public the details of the arrest of the Gang of Four; he had a long conversation with Mrs. Chen Yun in Zhongnanhai, learned a lot of family interesting things, and made "The Biography of Chen Yun" more vivid and credible; he also became friends with Liang Shiqiu's wife Han Jingjing through interviews, and Han Jingjing trusted him to show him all the letters of Liang Shiqiu.
Ye Yonglie has always been known for his high productivity, and when I asked him about the total number of works over the years, he made a detailed explanation: "10 million words of popular science works, 15 million words of documentary literature, 5 million words of walking literature, and a total of 30 million words of works have been written in more than 50 years." ”
This is an astronomical figure that most writers cannot reach, and this figure is enough to show Ye Yonglie's love and passion for writing, and what is even more surprising is that nearly half of the works were completed by him without being blind in one eye. "All year round, I don't have weekends and Sundays, I don't have holidays, I don't have retirement days, I'm always at work. Especially during the long vacation, there are very few phone calls, and I never travel during the long vacation, so that I can write safely and steadily, so that I have more creative time. ”
Ye Yonglie had experienced two "crises" and was almost unable to write, once during the Cultural Revolution, he was labeled a "literary and artistic black line cadre", forced to close his pen for 8 years, suffered a lot, and when finally an editor asked him for a manuscript, although there was no penny of manuscript fees, he was still ecstatic. Working at the unit during the day, after the family finished eating in the evening, his wife Yang Huifen separated the two young children, and Ye Yonglie wrote on the short and short dining table, and the written manuscripts were hung in the vegetable basket, stacked one by one. It was because he wrote so hard and saved up a large number of manuscripts that he was able to create the miracle of producing a new book a month after the Cultural Revolution.
The second crisis was blindness. Ye Yonglie's "vision failure" occurred as early as 1991, and the hospital was diagnosed with retinal detachment, which was already very serious, and he immediately underwent surgery in a large hospital.
Just after the operation, his eyes were covered with gauze, and the doctor instructed him that he was not allowed to read books, newspapers, and write for a month, which was a very painful thing for Ye Yonglie, so he "blindly wrote." His wife, Yang Huifen, explained what blind writing is: "He doesn't look at his eyes, I take a wooden board to him, there is a white paper on it, he holds a pen to write on it, the words written are crooked, sometimes overlapping and overlapping, and then I help him copy." ”。
However, the operation was not good, Ye Yonglie's left eye has not had any vision since then, and his right eye is 800 degrees of myopia. Retinal detachment often occurs in both eyes, so the doctor advised Ye Yonglie to change his profession with less eyes, and asked him to try not to write anything more, because the development of not to mention work, that is, daily life will be difficult to take care of. He said he couldn't change it.
Ye Yonglie finally came up with a way to ghostwrite with a computer. In 1992, he bought the latest "286" at the time, making himself one of the first Chinese writers to change pens. "Using a computer is not as tiring as handwriting, the words can be put very large, and the eyes are much easier." After using the computer, I have been writing 500,000 words and 500,000 words. The only regret is that there is no manuscript."
An unexpected outcome of this crisis is that Ye Yonglie has since embarked on the road of "technical otaku", Ye Yonglie's home, often surprised friends who have been there, in addition to computers and digital cameras, huge business copiers, shredders rarely seen in ordinary families, and a variety of the latest electronic products that people can't name. "Even my son, who has worked in the United States for many years, calls me a 'high-tech dad.'" Ye Yonglie said triumphantly.
Due to vision problems, Ye Yonglie once planned to seal his pen in 2000, that is, when he was 60 years old, but in the end he could not seal it, or was reluctant to seal it, and after Hua Jia, he wrote more diligently and wrote more than 20 new books.
Writing is life for him. He said: "I see the work as frozen time, frozen life. My whole life will be frozen in that dense array of square Chinese characters. ”