Taking Refuge in the Yellow River from Body to Heart - Reading Ma Busheng's "This Salute"
Shi Jiangmin
Mr. Ma once said when he was teaching: "Open the door of a world for yourself through words, and find a spiritual habitat for yourself in this noisy and noisy world......" "A person cannot drown himself in his own words, and the more thoroughly he sells himself, the more freedom he will gain." Suddenly, fifteen years have passed, and I have realized more and more the true flavor of Mr. Ma's words in the classroom at that time, otherwise, what else do we have to give ourselves true love? In April, Mr. Ma's new book "This Tribute" was published, and he was fortunate enough to get an autographed copy. After reading only a few dozen pages, I felt the height and breadth of the text, which is not only the width of Mr. Ma's vision of many places, but also the width and breadth of his soul.
"This Salute", written by Ma Busheng, published by Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House
From Russia, Kenya, to the Qaidam Basin, where Mr. Ma wandered when he was young, and the Xisha Islands, which he has traveled to in recent years, the narrative spans a large span in time and space, but it is also linked by its delicate and unique main line of view, and the text is both vast and condensed and concentrated. He paid long-term attention to the "water" of the root of life in the Hexi Corridor, and wrote about the subtleties that he had seen with his own eyes when he arrived in Hexi and Alxa many times, and compared the present and the past after the Shiyang River and Qingtu Lake were treated: "I know that there is an ancient city not far away, the walls are magnificent, and the quicksand is half-hidden; I knew that there was a farmhouse not far away, and the yellow sand was as high as the wall, and all this was invisible, and the noisy grass and trees blocked the view, and I was at peace and tranquility in my heart. Today, if a book wants to find a way to meet the reader's reading needs and complete self-expression, Mr. Ma must have done a lot of in-depth thinking and repeated attempts to revise it, so that these words present a new face, and this "new" is neither fashionable nor retro. "This Salute" is not only a rambling talk, but also an essay, but also a philosophical expression in a literary way, these philosophies are close to the scene of our life, he has stripped away the scenes and scenes of life with his own way of thinking, and gathered and condensed the essence of his thoughts on walking and reading. "Big cities are resource concentration areas, and you don't need to go out of the city to meet all the needs of life and work, and the sense of superiority is also breeded, and conversely, the sense of superiority is not another limitation? I don't see the vastness of heaven and earth, and I don't see the majesty of the people. "The so-called modern people are actually people who abandon their modern homes in order to find their ideal homes, and the final result is that the abandoned homes can never go back, and the ideal homes can never be found." This kind of narration is neither esoteric and obscure, nor boring and heavy, but also witty to read: "Look at how smooth and clear our place names are, Beijing, Shanghai, Xi'an, Majiawan, Gaojiazhuang; The names of the people are also very interesting: Goudan, Gouyu, Zhang Facai, Li Youliang...... Calling the name of a local celebrity is like chewing fried soybeans in your mouth, crunchy, even screaming a few times, your mouth is fragrant, and your hunger is not so scratching. On the way, he also recorded the thought-provoking words of ordinary people, such as a driver who has been running in Qaidam all year round: "When the car comes, the rabbit does not run around, but only runs when it sees the opportunity, and the mouse runs around and often runs under the wheel." With humility and honesty, he "pays tribute to life, to literature, and to all things in heaven and earth." "We must take off the laurels of self-style, starting from knowing ourselves, our own strengths and weaknesses, our place in this world, our past, present and future...... Give yourself a rough and accurate positioning, and then face the world. "In the era not so far before, it was the era that did not allow a quiet desk, but now, it is the reader who shakes his desk, or even directly overturns the desk, desperate, and rushes to Vanity Fair shirtless." The exposition of these philosophies is not sensational, full of chicken soup, and the problems we hesitate in our work and life are understood, understood, and transparent by him. He does not teach you only this or that, only this option, restricting you to one method and one channel, but enlightens you, tells you all the possibilities and paths, and the free thinking and choice of the sea and the sky. "Every social form is complex, and extracting any one or several elements as a yardstick to measure the progress and backwardness of the entire society will probably fall into the trap of the blind man touching the elephant." Some of his observations of social phenomena are nuanced and irrefutable: "The cause of the martyrdom of the aspirants is often not a strong wind and waves, but a hidden arrow shot from the gutter." These hidden arrows have been repeatedly soaked in poison, and the shooters have carefully chosen the ambush sites, and those who hit them will surely be hit, and those who hit them will die. Compared with some words that are cramped, repressive, flattering, and false nowadays, Mr. Ma's narrative is commendable, and it also exudes his aesthetic orientation and pursuit of prose writing. He also said that he is a person without a hometown, and his feelings for Lanzhou, the city where he has lived for decades, and the Yellow River that runs through the city, are far higher than the concept of hometown: "Since then, I have become attached to the Yellow River, from my body to my heart, and I have taken refuge in the Yellow River." "In his writings, I got to know Mr. Ma in my childhood, who put grasshoppers in the corridor and used mud to make fun of his eyes, a naughty boy who returned to the ordinary and the true. It's just that since he was a child, he has a very personal judgment on things, and he will not get carried away by a few words of praise from adults, I think this is inseparable from his unique experience and tempering in a difficult life in his childhood, which can also be found in his novels. But he definitely did not preach in the tone of a person who came over, but had a deep understanding and care for young people nowadays: "A generation has the blessings of a generation, and a generation has the suffering of a generation. "There is no show-off and carving throughout the text, it is naturally written and expressed. For any kind of art, simplicity and mellowness are a kind of realm and pursuit. "Words, good words are our spiritual habitat." Fifteen years later, Mr. Ma's book was used again to confirm what he said in class, and everything was the same. This spring to early summer Hexi is particularly dry, and the sand and dust do not disperse for several days in May, and the leaves and flowers that are covered in sand and dust are wilting. That afternoon, I finally looked forward to a drizzle of rain falling on the earth, and walking in the rain, I was drenched from head to toe by the rain like a tree, and it seemed to wash away my dull brain and thirsty soul recently. Sometimes, a book can be like a rain at the right time, and "This Salute" is such a book.
Ma Busheng is a famous writer in Gansu Province, honorary chairman of the Gansu Writers Association, and director of the Cultural Research Institute of the Gansu Academy of Social Sciences. He is the author of novels, essays, and scholarly treatises of about 6 million words. He has won more than 20 awards, including the Chinese Population Culture Award, the Lao She Prose Award, and the Dunhuang Literature and Art Award. He has served as a judge for many domestic literary awards such as the Mao Dun Literature Award, the Lu Xun Literature Award, the Junma Award, and the Shi Nai'an Literature Award.