Author: Ma Guochuan/Li Xin
Edit: kuang
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The last article of the famous historian Gao Hua before his death was to recommend us to read him, he said: "Wang Dingjun's book lets us know the pain and ideals that an ordinary Chinese has experienced in the past twentieth century. The author's independent thinking on the fate of the country and the lessons of history is a personal summary of great historical and humanistic value. ”。
Linda said, "He is my favorite Chinese writer", in Taiwan, his name is well-known, everyone knows, he is Wang Dingjun, by the Taiwanese media called "the eyes of a generation of Chinese".
Writer Yang Zhao: What Wang Dingjun wrote is the scars and fears that remain in the body after coming out of that era.
Professor Zhang Ming of the National People's Congress: Mr. Wang Dingjun's things make you feel that the context is not broken, like a style developed from ancient languages, or writing, very flavorful and very strong.
Professor at Peking University. Historian Wang Qisheng: There are many kinds of memoirs, the memoirs of big people are difficult to see small, and the memoirs of small people are difficult to see big; the memoirs of historians are often heavy and not heavy, and the memoirs of literary scholars are often heavy and not real. Mr. Wang Dingjun's memoirs generally combine their strengths with their shortcomings.
Essayist Xi Murong: Ding Jun's memoirs are really a museum with unlimited space. Each exhibit is a testimony and an answer, like a clear river, which can withstand the repeated review of countless readers.
In 1992, Wang Dingjun, who was nearly seventy years old, began to write a personal memoir, and in 2009, the four-volume memoir was written. This literary masterpiece of nearly a million words shows the causal entanglement of a generation of Chinese, the flow of life and death. It is a side note of modern Chinese history and a spiritual history of intellectuals.
Wang Dingjun borrowed Caesar's words to express his own perception of this nearly century of agitation: "I came, I saw, and I said it!"
▌ One hundred years of China
Writing memoirs is risky, and if you are not careful, you may become a personal account, and have nothing to do with others and society. But Wang Dingjun's memoirs are moving, because there are not only individuals in them, but also the fate of a nation.
Wang Dingjun said that he was by no means just making a biography for himself:
"I'm not that important, I want to reflect the existence of a generation of sentient beings through my own thoughts and actions." I hope that readers can understand and care about that era, which is the most important collective experience Chinese. ”
In the past, the modern process of writing About China was either pathetic, heavy, or full of political overtones. Wang Dingjun's memoirs are different, and what he witnessed and experienced has long become a unique history that transcends politics, class, ideology, and personal right and wrong.
Wang Dingjun has completely experienced the twists and turns and ups and downs of the long-distance travel in the 1940s. He went through the two major battles of Liaoshen and Pingjin; later, he was captured in Tianjin, trained in a prisoner camp, and walked the entire Jiaoji Railway to Qingdao on foot, and finally went overseas from Shanghai... Along the way, various crises and conflicts occur frequently, and all kinds of difficulties and accidents are entangled with each other, and one scene after another is shocking.
However, today's seemingly difficult day was written by Wang Dingjun as "lifting a heavy weight". He is so calm, so orderly, so calm, so eloquent; the work has no sensationalism, no shouting, no blood accusations, and no catharsis, but it awakens people's collective experience across the ages with epic momentum and deep soul strokes.
The century-old China experienced by Wang Dingjun seems to be a lake and sea that cannot be shaken, but the underground is surging with magma.
To do this, he must transcend himself and the shackles of many ideologies. So he wrote this set of books very hard, and he also wrote very patiently, and it took 17 years before and after. Just to describe the topic of "great rivers and seas", he spent 13 years brewing and preparing.
In addition to sorting out materials and thinking, he is more cultivating his own disposition.
▌ Waiting for a lifetime of freedom
Contemporary people have difficulty writing contemporary history, but memoirs do not have such restrictions. However, Wang Dingjun was unable to write for a long time, and after writing the first two volumes of his memoirs, "Yesterday's Cloud" and "The Angry-Eyed Teenager", he suddenly stopped writing.
Why?
Because he knows better than anyone the consequences of being despoticized, and he feels the value of free thinking and free writing more than anyone else.
The young Wang Dingjun was faced with a situation in which mountains and rivers were broken and the nation was in danger. On the basis of the "theory of the state of the union," many well-educated people claim that a strong unified government is most needed, led by the government, and that the warlords and warlords are eliminated by force.
Therefore, Wang Dingjun's entire adolescent life was almost spent in "obedience". "In the rear, I only know one point of view, one length, and only one view of the world's affairs, which should be declared by the government."
Later, Wang Dingjun went to Taiwan and was placed under residential surveillance for a long time because of "historical issues." Even after the 1950s, Taiwan's economy took off, and the social environment was much more active, in Wang Dingjun's view, there was still an invisible net covering everything. He said:
"Every period has an abacus for every period. History is all there, the government often uses strong means to rescue society, and after the society is saved, it turns around to liquidate strong means, and the two can share hardships and hardships, and cannot share happiness. ”
This is Wang Dingjun's evaluation of the times, and it is not a reason to give himself a breakthrough. He is keenly aware that he has not yet transcended the narrow political ideas and partisan positions that he has long accepted in the past, and he does not want to make his observations and thinking about history and life any prejudice.
In 1978, Wang Dingjun was invited to teach at an American university, and before leaving, the intellectual, who had already known his destiny, confessed to several senior agents that "the third generation of the Chiang family is no longer suitable for ruling, because the people will get tired."
Under the wash of the tide of the times, after a great breakthrough, Wang Dingjun finally recognized the value of modern civilization. This road is full of the pain and dreams and hopes of an ordinary Chinese in the past twentieth century, who walked very hard, but finally broke through the barrier of the mountain.
When he truly felt that he had become a free man who transcended partisanship and transcended cross-strait positions, he continued to write the last two works in his memoirs, "Taking the Road from The Mountains" and "Literary Jianghu", which were closely related to the struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party.
He said that he used "the freedom to wait for a lifetime" to write about the cause and effect entanglement of the twentieth century Chinese, the flow of life and death. It is precisely because of this that in his memoirs, he was able to include "his own life, his own thoughts, into it, out of it, above it, and with a panoramic view of the mountains." ”
▌ Make Chinese eyes
There are many people who have fully experienced the turmoil of modern and modern China, who can record delicately and write profoundly, but Wang Dingjun is unique.
Li Xin, editor of Wang Dingjun's memoirs, said: "The reason why Dinggong's memoirs are highly respected is probably not only the unique style of the author's writing, but also the transcendence of the author's ideological realm. ”
What Wang Dingjun saw was "rolling water in the east of the Yangtze River, and the waves exhausting the heroes", and he had already realized this thoroughly, and faced it with the mentality of "how many things in ancient and modern times are paid for with laughter and discussion".
He took up a cold and sober historical pen, both as a writer and as a historian.
Writing an essay can be like a cry, writing history should be objective, and more importantly, it must have an attitude, not only the attitude of words, but also the height of personality.
Wang Dingjun said: "I know that the despicable mind cannot produce works with a high degree, the narrow mind cannot produce works with breadth, the superficial mind cannot produce works with depth, the ugly heart cannot produce beauty, the vulgar heart cannot produce high-level interest, and the cold heart cannot produce love." A writer who is not growing up too much must elevate his spiritual realm, and he has to 'practice'. ”
Wang Dingjun's works are a double testimony of everyone's personality and talent.
When we survive one day after another in a busy but confused day, and suddenly one day look up and look around, but we have the confusion of "what year is more than this night", perhaps the past written by Wang Dingjun can help us find a coordinate of "where it came from and where it will go".
Historian Gao Hua: Wang Dingjun's book gives us an idea of the pain and ideals that an ordinary Chinese have experienced in the past twentieth century. The author's independent thinking on the fate of the country and the lessons of history is a personal summary of great historical and humanistic value.
◎ "Yesterday's Cloud" is the first part of Wang Dingjun's "Memoirs Quadrilogy", which writes about his hometown, family and the early days of the War of Resistance. The author is familiar with the customs and customs of his hometown, the history of the past and the work of farming; at the same time, he places the individual's encounters in a grand social context, sees the big in the small, and shows a depth and strength in simplicity.
◎ "The Angry-Eyed Youth" is the second part of Wang Dingjun's "Memoirs Quadrilogy", which records the experiences, observations and thoughts of an exiled middle school student in Fuyang, Anhui, Hanyin, Shaanxi and other places from the summer of 1942 to the victory of the Anti-Japanese War. In this midst of hardship, hardship, and displacement, the author is like a small chess piece scattered, deeply appreciating the living conditions of exiled students, witnessing the fate of ordinary Chinese, and also revealing the cause and effect of soldiers, student tides, rural autonomy, the formation of youth armies, and the various sentient beings in society.
"Chinese angry, sometimes like boiling water, sometimes like a volcano. When the War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression flourished, Chinese was ready to be angry, and the target of the outpouring was changed, first to foreign countries and then to their own countries. ...... Between two kinds of anger (to a foreign country and to one's own country), I, with the thoughts and deeds of a young man, constitute the content of the book "Angry-Eyed Youth". ”
◎ "Guan shan and the road" is the third part of Wang Dingjun's "Memoirs Quadrilogy", which records the author's 6,700 kilometers of ups and downs during the Civil War between the Kuomintang and the Communists. In 1949, he was captured by the People's Liberation Army in Tianjin, trained in a captive camp, dressed in the uniform of the People's Liberation Army, and walked the entire line of the Jiaoji Railway to Qingdao to Shanghai, and finally left for Taiwan... Along the way, contrasts, crises, and conflicts have each been prolonged, entangled with each other, rolling forward, thrilling. The author distills and sublimates these four years of anger, sadness, and regret into a unique memory that transcends politics, class, and personal gains and losses: "The Kuomintang is like two mountains, I am like a small river, closing the mountain to seize the road, twisting and turning out, this is a wonderful life." ”
◎ "Literary Jianghu" is the fourth part of Wang Dingjun's "Memoirs Quadrilogy", which describes the wonderful jianghu composed of literature, politics and secret agents in Taiwan from the 1950s to the 1970s. The author's unique experience allows him to observe and understand the real concerns and specific troubles of the implementers of the literary and art policy in the bureau, and can also understand the contradictions and tensions caused by the intertwining of various forces from the outside, so that this strange but realistic literary and artistic history is clearly manifested in the book. This "literary jianghu" that the author has personally experienced is also a microcosm of Taiwan's thirty years of vicissitudes: from the embarrassment and dazedness of the early fifties, to the humiliation and panic in the white terror, to the "psychological exhaustion" of the Cold War period, and when Taiwan's economy took off and the ambition of "counterattacking the mainland" became the laughing stock, he reluctantly chose to take root...