About the author
Fang Jixiao is an honorary librarian at the Lu Xun Museum in Beijing. He is the author of "Chen Mengjia's Past", "The Whereabouts of Chen Duxiu's Manuscripts", "Xu Zhimo and China's Kangqiao", etc.; the essay collection "Old Ink Records - The Ink and Past of Century Scholars", "The Second Record of Old Ink - The Inkblots and Past Events of Century Scholars", etc.; the compilation of "Mr. Chen Duxiu's Testament"; the collection of academic papers "Character Treasures - Collection and Appreciation of Celebrity Letters" (co-authored). "Old Ink Records - The Inkblots and Past Events of Century Scholars" was named "China's Most Beautiful Book" in 2006. "Mr. Chen Duxiu's Testament" was nominated for the 2007 Wenjin Award of the National Library of China.
This article was published in the October issue of the Beijing Chronicle, which was originally titled "Yao Xueyan: The Companionship of Fuwai Street and < Li Zicheng >"
Yao Xueyan lived in Building 22, Fuwai Avenue around 1980. Because the building was only completed in 1979. On March 25, 1981, Yao Xueyan wrote a letter to the Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, leaving a home address: No. 10, Gate 2, Building 22, Fuwai Avenue.
Yao Xueyan's 1981 envelope to the Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences
On October 19, 1975, Yao Xueyan wrote a long letter to Chairman Mao Zedong, reporting that the second volume of Li Zicheng had completed the first draft a year earlier, and also reported his age, writing plans and aspirations, and the arduousness of the work ahead. The letter was forwarded to Hu Qiaomu by Song Yiping, and then sent by Hu Qiaomu to Deng Xiaoping to Mao Zedong. On November 2, Chairman Mao, suffering from a serious eye disease, issued instructions on Hu Qiaomu's letter explaining the situation: Print and distribute to all comrades in the Politburo. I agree with him to write li zicheng novels in two, three to five volumes.
In December 1975, Yao Xueyan came to Beijing from Wuhan, Hubei Province, to live in the dormitory of the Zhongqing Society in a village of happiness, concentrating on and seizing the time to deliberately revise the publication of the second volume of manuscripts. In the early summer of 1976, Yao Xueyan finally completed the revision of the second volume of "Li Zicheng". In 1977, the second and first revised volumes of Li Zicheng were published successively. Soon, Yao Xueyan was officially transferred to Beijing; in 1979, the high-level trunk building on Fuwai Avenue was completed, and Yao Xueyu moved into No. 10, 2 Doors, Building 22, and from then on, she settled down and created with peace of mind, completing the "Li Zicheng" series until the end of her life.
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Yao Xueyan, whose original name was Yao Guansan, was born on October 10, 1910 in Yaojiazhai, Deng County, Henan Province, because it belonged to the "guan" generation and ranked third, so it was named. His father attended the Kaifeng Elite Normal School. When Yao Xueyan was 9 years old, bandits broke through the village, and the Yao family's house and clothes were burned down, and he fled with his parents to live in Deng County. In the county town, I first studied in a private school for more than a year, and then went to a higher primary school run by the church for three years, and memorized a large number of ancient texts and practiced composition. After graduating from elementary school in 1924, he went to Xinyang to attend middle school. In the summer of 1929, he was admitted to the preparatory department of Henan University Law School. At the same time, in the supplement of Henan Daily, his debut novel "Two Lonely Graves" and other works under the pseudonym "Snow Trace" were published, which wrote the tragic stories of the persecution and death of lower-class laborers by feudal forces, showing a distinct democratic tendency. In the summer of 1931, he was arrested for actively participating in a political struggle led by the underground party, and the school authorities expelled Yao Xueyan on charges of "wrong thinking and absurd words and deeds."
He left Henan for Beiping and lived in a small apartment near the beach. During his time in Beiping, he often went to the Beiping Library to read books. From september 18 to the outbreak of the War of Resistance, Yao Xueyao sometimes lived in Beiping and sometimes returned to Henan. In 1933, a friend opened a small bookstore called the Mainland Bookstore and published the journal "Today". In 1936, he collected the spoken language of his hometown and compiled it into the Nanyang Yuhui. In August 1937, he came from Beiping to Kaifeng to prepare to go to Yan'an, but because he listened to the suggestions of Wang Fuxi, who had just returned from Japan, and Ji Wenfu and Fan Wenlan, who were teaching at Henan University, they did not go to Yan'an, and they proposed to set up a journal, with Yao Xueyan, Ji Wenfu, and Wang Fuxi as the editors-in-chief, and the name of the journal was "Wind and Rain" (Weekly), which took the meaning of the same boat. This publication, which had a fairly good influence at the time, was soon under the direct leadership of the Underground Provincial Committee of the Communist Party of China in Henan. After the Battle of Taierzhuang, as the editor-in-chief of the "Wind and Rain" weekly magazine and a reporter of the National News Agency, he went to the front line of Xuzhou to cover interviews, and then wrote a simplified reportage "Battlefield Book". In addition, he also wrote two short stories,"Bailonggang" and "Almost Half a Car of Wheat Straw", which were sent to Mao Dun's editor-in-chief and published in the "Literary and Art Front" published in Hong Kong. After the publication of "Half a Car of Wheat Straw", it attracted considerable attention in China, and was translated into English by Ye Junjian, followed by several language translations.
One of the reasons why the novel has received attention from the literary circles is that it has successfully used the lively and vivid colloquial language of the masses to write about the awakening and changes of the peasants in the War of Resistance. After the fall of Wuhan, Li Zongren's Headquarters of the Commander of the Fifth Theater of Operations retreated to Xiangfan, and the rear garrison was set up in Junxian County. The underground party of the COMMUNIST Party cooperated with Li Zongren to establish the Fifth Theater Cultural Work Committee, led by Qian Junrui, Cao Diqiu, and Hu Sheng. At the end of 1938, Yao Xueyan joined the Cultural Work Committee and was sent to the Junxian Left Guard Office to engage in anti-Japanese progressive cultural activities. Since 1939, in the process of traveling to Hubei, Anhui, Shu and other places, Yao Xueyu has devoted his main energy to creating novellas, including "When Spring Is Warm and Blossoming", "Rong Ma Love", "New Miao", "Reunion" and so on. Most of these works are based on the theme of the intellectual youth engaged in anti-Japanese rescue activities in the early stage of the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, writing about the high enthusiasm of the young generation for saving the country, touching on the dark corruption of the Kuomintang military and political organs and the rampant local feudal forces from the side, and revealing the complex struggle within the anti-war camp.
Yao Xueyan wrote to the Library of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1981
At the beginning of 194, he went to Chongqing and served as a director of the All-China Literary and Art Circles Anti-Enemy Association and the director of the Creative Research Department.
During his time in Chongqing, "When the Spring Blossoms" was published in three volumes, which was considered a bestseller at the time. In early 1945, he left Chongqing to work as an associate professor at Northeastern University (then moved to Santai, Sichuan). Before and after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Yao Xueyu turned to the theme of hometown and childhood, completed the autobiographical novel "Long Night", and wrote a group of essays such as "My Old Grandmother", "The Fate of My Grandmother", and "Sister-in-law". Set against the backdrop of the rural areas of western Henan during the warlords' scuffle in the 1920s, "The Long Night" depicts the legendary life of Li Shuimo, a band of bandits, creating some flesh-and-blood "strongmen" images, truly and powerfully revealing the social roots of many peasants who have become thieves in the desperate situation of bankruptcy and hunger, and also showing the huge potential strength of their resistance to evil forces.
"When the Spring Blossoms"
During the Liberation War, Yao Xueyu also wrote a biographical literature about patriotic scientists in Shanghai, "Remembering Lu Rongxuan" and a short story "The Restoration of Human Nature". After 1948, he first taught Chinese at the Gaoxing Agricultural School in Pudong, then as a professor at the private Daxia University in Shanghai, and then concurrently served as vice provost and acting dean of the College of Letters. During this period, Yao Xueyu became interested in the history of the Ming Dynasty, and successively published academic treatises such as "On the Regime of Shi Jingyao", "Jinyi Wei in the Early Ming Dynasty", and "Biography of the Chongzhen Emperor". In addition, there are two unfinished manuscripts, one "The Politics of Secret Agents in the Ming Dynasty", through which the ming emperors have further understood a special means that the Ming emperors ruled over their subjects that the Tang and Song did not have. The other is "The Chongzhen Emperor", when he wrote to understand the political life of the emperors of the ming dynasty and later generations, one to examine the historical baggage inherited by Chongzhen, and the other to explore the factors of the formation of his tragic character. The above research and writing prepared the conditions for him to later create "Li Zicheng".
"Remembering Lu Rongxuan"
After the publication of the first and second volumes of Li Zicheng, many readers liked Yao Xueyan's portrayal of Chongzhen's personality, which was inseparable from his research when he lived in the countryside of Pudong in 1948.
02
After the liberation of Shanghai, Yao Xueyu continued to teach at the private Daxia University. As for whether to teach or continue to engage in creation in the future, he spent almost a year of consideration, and finally decided to continue to engage in creation. In 1951, Yao Xueyu went to eastern Zhejiang to participate in land reform, because he did not understand the local language and could not understand the customs and customs of the land, so he had the idea of returning to Yu. This summer, when the East China Normal University was about to be established, he had some creative aspirations and hopes to engage in professional creation in his hometown of Henan.
In the summer of 1953, the Central and Southern Writers Association was established, transferred to the Central and Southern Writers Association, and moved to Wuhan. In addition to writing a small amount of reportage, short stories, essays, and miscellaneous feelings, he was in a period of bitterness in his creation, and only in the mid-1950s did he publish papers such as "On the Ideological Nature of the History of Rulin" and "A Little Doubt in the Discussion of Realism".
In 1956, he finally completed a novel, "The Tiger Hunt". Written about an old worker in a flour mill, good in technology but conservative in thought, his young apprentice, poor in technology but with a spirit of innovation, this contradiction is exploited by a hidden enemy, affecting production. Later, the enemy was exposed, and the master and apprentice worked together to carry out innovation and made achievements. The novel, which had been signed to the Writers' Press, was about to be released, but was stopped because the anti-rightist struggle began. In the double whammy of creation and fortune, he began to secretly write a long historical novel "Li Zicheng". When Yao Xueyu created "Li Zicheng", because she was wearing a "rightist hat", she did not expect to have a publishing opportunity. From October 1957, when he began to write, by August of the following year, he was sent to the East and West Lakes to supervise labor, and the first volume had been written, and the second volume had been written in the first part.
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Wen | Fang Jixiao