A few years ago, I read the article "Book Hate" by writer Zong Pu in a magazine and felt the same way. Zong Pu is the daughter of Mr. Feng Youlan and is a famous writer. The Feng family is the true home of books in modern and modern China. Mr. Feng Youlan is a well-known scholar at home and abroad, and his lifelong works are equal; Zong Pu's prose and novel works are many, only "Nandu" and "Journey to the West" and other historical novels reflecting the southward migration of southwest United University. The father and daughter bought a large number of books for the sake of learning, and although they lost a lot in the war and political movement, they accumulated a lot in the 1980s. Because fathers and daughters are both academic celebrities, and there are many publishing houses or writers and scholars who donate books, the collection of books in the family is accumulating more and more day by day, so that the accumulation of books is like a mountain, occupying all the space in the room, seriously affecting living activities. In desperation, the idea of dealing with a batch of books arose. However, because the collection of books was not willing to be disposed of, and could not help but buy their favorite new books, the indoor activity space became more and more narrow, and even in the corridor of the entrance, the balcony bathroom was full of books, so it had to issue a sigh of "book hate".
My family has not been out of college to ask home, I am only an ordinary teacher, of course, the number of books is less than one percent of the Feng family, but also deeply tired of books and the pain of losing books. There were readers in my family's previous generation, and by the time my father's generation had almost become a book lover, before 1958, there were three study rooms in the south building of the rural hometown, surrounded by calligraphy and painting shelves. The canteen in the Great Leap Forward occupied the old home, and only two large boxes of books and two boxes of calligraphy and paintings were collected and brought to the old mansion in the city. In the more than a dozen years before the Cultural Revolution, it was necessary to turn over the sun once a year in the summer. I remember the wired editions of the Book of Shang, the Book of Poetry, the Selected Writings of Zhaoming, the Notes on the Four Books of Zhu Zi, the Chu Ci, etc., the hardcover editions of the Kangxi Dictionary, the Essence of the Twenty-Four Histories, etc., the most exquisite ones in the blue cloth set of "The Romance of the Three Kingdoms of Painting", "The Ancient Literature Guanzhi", "Three Hundred Poems of Tang Poems", and many Ming and Qing novels. The calligraphy and paintings were all exquisitely decorated and never hung, because of their young age, they did not know the inscriptions and seals on many scrolls, and I heard my father say that there were calligraphy and paintings by Tang Lian, Cao Bingjia, Luo Jinshan, Yu Youren, Fan Zhenxu, Gu Jiegang, Ma Fuxiang and his wife Ma Shucheng. When the Cultural Revolution began, the raiders "broke the four olds", and once it was found that there were antique cultural relics and old books and paintings in the home, they became evidence of the crime, and the light was confiscated, the heavy ones were burned on the spot, and even the crimes were paraded to show the public. After the impact of successive political movements, my family has become a bird of fright, and in order to avoid this unprecedented disaster, these books and paintings that have condensed the painstaking efforts of generations of people are burned to ashes at night, along with sandalwood palace lamps and Xiang embroidery table walls. The remaining books such as "Dream of the Red Chamber", "Ancient Literature And Guanzhi", and "Romance of the Three Kingdoms" were taken away when they raided the house, and it is unknown who fell into their hands. This is the first time I've experienced "book tiredness"
The second book raid occurred in December 1968, when he went to the mountains and went to the countryside. Ancient calligraphy and paintings were destroyed and copied in 1966, but most of the books published after liberation are still preserved, such as the four classical masterpieces published by the People's Literature Publishing House, the four major dismissive novels of the late Qing Dynasty, the translated novels of Europe, the United States and the Soviet Union, the song of youth, the forest sea snow field, the bitter cauliflower and other contemporary novels, historical masterpieces and novel prose collections, five or six hundred copies. In the winter of 1968, the family was forced to go to the countryside and move their family to the countryside of Kangle County, and the books that could not be moved were treated as waste paper. Most of the books I have read, the most impressive are "Midnight Night", "Morning in Shanghai", "Sanjia Lane", "Bitter Struggle", "History of Entrepreneurship", "Song of Youth", "Bitter Cauliflower", "Railway Guerrilla", "Marx's Youth", "Quiet Don River", "Revenge of Monte Cristo", "La Traviata", "Notre Dame de Paris", etc., and many university liberal arts reference books, such as "Selected Words of Famous Artists of the Tang and Song Dynasties", "Greco-Roman Stories", "Ancient Anthology" and so on. Although I have a deep affection for these books, how can I keep them when even the house is demolished? Since this "book burden", almost every few years of sitting firmly can accumulate many books, and every time you move home, you have to deal with a batch of books, and the pain and regret in it are still unforgettable.
If the first two book fatigue occurred during the period of the ultra-left line, then the third book fatigue occurred after the reform and opening up.
After going to college in 1978, out of feelings about the ten-year book famine, there was a crazy energy for buying books. I am one of the few students among my older classmates who enjoys a monthly stipend of 23 yuan without a salary, and I have parents, wives and daughters at home, all relying on the salary of my old father, and my support is limited. Under such tight conditions, I would rather eat potato chips and steamed buns every day, and also try to buy books at a reduced cost. At that time, the circulation of books was still small, and some books were sold out as soon as they arrived in bookstores. Universities are printing and distributing their own reference books, of which Chinese majors are the most, so I entrusted Chinese department students to buy on their behalf, and later through the collection of newspaper and magazine book distribution information for mail order. At that time, the ideal was lofty, and the work goal after graduating from university was set to teach or engage in research work in colleges and universities, and the books he bought were classic works and reference books, such as "Zizhi Tongjian", "History", "Book of Han", "Commentary on The Interpretation of Words", "Cihai", "Ciyuan", "Man Anthology", "Lenin's Anthology", the representative works of Philosophers such as Hegel and Freud, and "Introduction to Chinese and Foreign Reference Books". He also bought representative works of Renaissance and Eighteenth-Century Enlightenment thinkers, such as "Decameron", "Divine Comedy", "Confessions", "Tangji Corde", etc., and also bought many basic books for Chinese majors, such as "Modern Chinese Dictionary", "Wenxin Carved Dragon", "Ancient Chinese", "Modern Chinese", "Selected Writings of Chinese Dynasties", "History of Chinese Literature", "History of European Literature" and so on. The works of scholars Li Zehou, Ren Jiyu, Qian Zhongshu, Gao Ertai, Zhu Guangqian, etc., which were very influential at that time, were ordered as soon as they were published. After graduating from college, several boxes of book trustees took home in a casual car.
After arriving at work, he still bought books continuously, and most of the books included "General History of China" (22 volumes) edited by Bai Shouyi, the newly published "Dream of the Red Chamber" and other classical masterpieces, and friends also gave away a set of "Yuan History", and a variety of local history works. Books of popular writers since the reform and opening up were bought as soon as they came out, such as most of Yu Qiuyu's works, novels by Wang Meng, Zhang Wei, Wang Anyi, Jia Pingwa, Tie Ning, Yu Hua, Yan Geling, Qiong Yao, Sanmao, Lu Yao, Chen Zhongzhong, Cheng Naishan, and dozens of other people. He also bought hundreds of new foreign literary masterpieces, and Xinhua Digest has been ordered since its inception until retirement. In order to buy Mr. Qian Mu's "Outline of National History", I also entrusted Teacher Liu Zhengben to buy this famous book from Taiwan, which is expected by Jiusu in the first and second volumes. A friend in Guangdong sent me 100 biographies published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. In more than 20 years, more than 3,000 books have been preserved.
But my housing conditions were so poor that my lifelong dream of owning a study did not materialize until I retired. I had to put the books in cardboard boxes and pile them up everywhere, and there were cardboard boxes full of books in my home, and most of the books were still in the office. Fortunately, since 1983, due to the needs of work, there has always been a single office, where books can be placed at will. As Zong Pu said, the placement of books everywhere affects the inconvenience of home and office activities. My office book hill is a small space, and it is very uncomfortable to have guests visiting. The house has been moved four times in the last three decades, and the office has been changed twice. Every time it was moved, a batch of books had to be eliminated in a very reluctant and helpless way, and hundreds of pounds of books were taken away as waste paper each time. Moving from a bungalow in the eastern suburbs to a building, I dealt with more than 400 copies of the Xinhua Digest and many periodicals, hardcover Marxist-Leninist anthologies, Yuan Shi and hundreds of novels in the case of selection and selection, and when the people who collected the waste put these books into sacks and collected them according to the pound, I almost reached the point of tears. When dealing with these books, I picked out a bundle and put it in the elimination pile, and then regretted that the bundle would be opened and picked up a few copies, and at the end I saw that there were still a little more books left, and I eliminated it again, which was really hesitant to save it again and again. When he was transferred from Linxia Middle School to the Prefecture Health School, there were more than a dozen large picture albums, which were photographic collections of Scenic Spots and Monuments in China, the geographical scenery of Gansu and the customs of Linxia, which were exquisitely decorated but heavy, and could not bear to dispose of them with other books, so they were donated to the library of Linxia Middle School together with some other books on local history. It took two weeks to retire from the state health school to tidy up the office, mainly in the selection of books, the processing of manuscripts, and the destruction of work notes. More than three hundred kilograms of books and periodicals were disposed of, and the people who collected the waste were taken away, and thirty-seven bundles of manuscripts and more than twenty copies of the work notes were pulled to the river in Bactria and burned. Those manuscripts and notebooks seemed to be very reluctant in the process of turning into ashes, burning very slowly, and finally had to be torn into scattered pages to promote combustion, and the driver and Comrade Wang Guoxiang who helped me deal with it felt very sorry, but I no longer had a sense of pity, after all, life is limited, and I will not use them again.
After retirement, he decided not to buy books again, but there were still hundreds of books in the house, a few cartons stacked on the balcony, two bookcases filled with books, and a few cardboard boxes in the corner, all of which were left over from several phase-outs or newly purchased books. He said that he would no longer buy books, but every time he went to the bookstore, he couldn't help but buy a few favorite books, especially for the newly published Books on Chinese Studies, so he bought a hundred and ten books one after another. Although these books have affected the space of life, they have enriched my retirement life, and I have read a copy of "Idle Love" six times, I bought five kinds of books about Chen Yinke, and I bought two versions of "South Crossing and North Return". A few of my college classmates were very academically accomplished, and when they heard that I liked to read, they sent them books, and there were also more than a dozen books. A good friend in Guangdong is also a reading seed, and he sent it to me to read after reading, and there have been dozens of books over the years, some of which are books that cannot be bought in the mainland, such as the works of Gao Hua and Zhang Yihe. Professor Yang Kuisong of East China Normal University also presented through my daughter five volumes of his "Revolution" series of new books on modern and contemporary history. I have to buy several copies of the works of the previous Mao Dun Literature Awards, of which the eighth "You are on the Plateau" has a thick ten volumes, and I also bought them. Later, I figured it out that everyone has their own hobbies, some people love to play mahjong, some people love to smoke and drink, some people like calligraphy and photography, which all need to cost a little money. I love to buy some books and think of it as playing mahjong to get photography, it is also a kind of life interest, but in the future, it will be like throwing a bottle, and every time you finish reading a book, you will deal with it or give it away in time, so as not to develop to hinder the living space.
In the past, family books could be passed down from generation to generation, because at that time, the number of books published was small, the family economy was not rich, the library was also very small, and more importantly, there was no multimedia information carrier such as computers and mobile phones. Now that we have entered the information age, young people enjoy access to information or reading books from the Internet, and scholars can make full use of public libraries and personal computers, making it possible to avoid this difficulty of being burdened by books. The advent of the information age is really going to change the way of life of buying books and collecting books for thousands of years, which is the progress of history. But the appreciation of calligraphy and painting, the classic study, or the best paper, that kind of holding a good book, in the repeated reading of the outline or write the point next to the eyebrow note, sleepy clip a bookmark, wake up and open it can continue to read, this is a very elegant enjoyment. Reading is like tasting food, online reading is fast food, not afraid of cooking preparation, leftovers and tableware, but do not enjoy the beauty of color and fragrance. Reading a paper book is like tasting food in an elegant restaurant, enjoying the decoration of the book is like appreciating the restaurant environment, viewing the version and printing time is like understanding the history of the restaurant, and tasting the paper inserts is like the advantages and disadvantages of Duanxiang tableware, the enjoyment of which is not reflected in e-books. Turnip cabbage has its own love, preferring to be tired of books than to be bookish. Looking back on the road traveled, sitting in the book city is still worth remembering. Books on the desk of readers such as mountains are often stacked with lights such as red beans Sauvignon Blanc, which is also a kind of scenery. February 28, 2012