Reading the "Hometown" of a Century at Night (No. 254) - Reading Lu Xun's "Hometown" asserts

Mr. Lu Xun's "Hometown" was born for a whole century.

In January 1921, Mr. Li created "Hometown". In May of the same year, "Hometown" was officially published in the first issue of the ninth volume of "New Youth". Decades later, "Hometown" was selected into the middle school Chinese textbook – and since then, it has influenced generations and countless people. Nowadays, although some of Mr. Wang's works have been deleted from the language textbooks, "Hometown" has not moved, and as always, it has influenced contemporary students.

However, do the current students still have their own "hometown"? Even if there is, can it go back? Besides, even if we could go back, what would we think?

One

On February 19, 1912, Lu Xun, then known as Zhou Yucai, published "Confession of Zhou Yucai" in the Yueduo Daily. His resignation reads: "The servant has resigned as the principal of the Shanhui Normal School, and the various undertakings in the school were clearly explained to the school by Zhu Junxi, a member of the Academic Affairs Section, on the thirteenth day of this month. Regarding the affairs of the school, he would like to contact the Student Affairs Section of the Civil Service in the future, and the servants will not be in charge. This white. With this few confessions, Mr. Li drew a less than satisfactory end to his career as principal for less than half a year. This is a major event for Mr. Li to engage in basic education and is worth a book.

After resigning as principal, he was invited by Mr. Cai Yuanpei, a fellow villager in Shaoxing and the director of education of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China, to nanjing to serve as a staff member of the Ministry of Education. In May of the same year, he left his hometown and went north to Beijing to serve as the chief of the first section of the Department of Social Education of the Ministry of Education. Three months later, he was appointed Minister of Education. When he left Beijing in August 1926, he was an "official" for fourteen years. This was the only and long "official eunuch" trip in his life.

During his time as an "official", in 1918, the "Diary of a Madman" came out; in 1919, "Kong Yiji" came to the human world; in 1921, Mr. Kong established the "canon" for Ah Q, who "mourned his misfortune and was angry with him". Of course, there is also "Hometown", which was created based on mr. Wang's return to Shaoxing Province in December 1919 to receive his mother and family members into Beijing.

Although "Hometown" is a novel, it seems to be read as narrative prose. I thought so. If you know something about Mr. Wang's history, you will know that the realistic component in "Hometown" is indeed not small.

Two

While serving as a minister of education, together with his second brother, he purchased the Badaowan residence in 1919. According to Huang Qiaosheng's book "Badaowan No. 11", Badaowan Residence covers an area of about 4 acres, is a three-entry quadrangle courtyard, there are "27 tile houses, 5 gray back rooms, and the west side of the courtyard is empty land". Mr. Big "chose this three-entry courtyard for one reason" because he considered that the second and third brothers "both have children and need a larger playground to play." In fact, children can even "practice baseball in the yard." Mr. Xu Shousheng, an old friend of the gentleman, looked at the courtyard and sighed that it was almost possible to hold a sports meeting! If you look at it from today's secular perspective, Eight Avenue Bay Eleven is definitely a "mansion".

Such a "mansion", the price is naturally not cheap. Huang Qiaosheng wrote in the book: "The total cost of the house plus the medium premium, deed tax and decoration cost is more than 4300 yuan." At that time, this 4300 yuan was no different from an astronomical number for ordinary people. If you know that Mr. Da's monthly salary in the Ministry of Education at that time was about 359 oceans, and the second brother was a professor at Peking University with 240 oceans per month, you don't have to sigh at this. Around the same time, Mr. Li Dazhao hired Grandpa Mao of "North Drift" as the librarian of Peking University because Grandpa Mao was the east bed of his colleague Mr. Yang Changji, with a monthly salary of 8 yuan. Compared with the two, the "North Drift" family a hundred years ago already had the worry of "Chang'an rice is expensive, and it is not easy to live in a big place".

On the morning of November 21, 1919, Mr. Da "moved into the Badaowan (Bay) House with his second brother's family." You can find this record in Mr. Lu Xun's diary that day, on page 384 of the fifteenth volume of The Complete Works of Lu Xun. Since then, this "mansion" has become the "hundred grass garden" of Mr. Big's sons and nephews for a long time.

Three

In December 1919, Mr. Zhu took a special leave of absence, "petitioned to return to the province", returned to his hometown in Shaoxing to receive his mother, and his mother gave him "gifts", a nominal wife, Ms. Zhu An, and other dependents, and went north to settle down together.

In the early morning of December 1 of the same year, Mr. Li "went to qianmen to take the Beijing Feng bus, and arrived in Tianjin at noon to change to the Jinpu car." Since then, he has embarked on a journey back to his hometown - also a journey of farewell to his hometown. The road back home is long. By December 4, "crossing the Qianjiang River in the morning, taking the Yue'an ferry, arriving in Shaoxing City in the evening, that is, taking a car home." Kurama Lawton, after four days, finally returned to his hometown.

However, the return of the gentleman to his hometown this time is not a return of honor, but a farewell. From December 4th to the afternoon of December 24th, "two boats were sent to Shaoxing with their mothers and their third brothers and their dependents with luggage" - farewell to their hometown forever, which lasted 21 days. During this period, in addition to welcoming the delivery, "collecting books", and disposing of old things, there is also an important thing, that is, on December 22, "equal with the third brother to the shaking and sweeping the grave". It is the name of ruanjiang village in the southwest of Shaoxing. On the Malt Hill here are buried his grandfather Zhou Fuqing, his biological grandmother Sun Shi, and his stepfather Jiang Shi. Before bidding farewell to his hometown, he also relocated the tombs of his father Zhou Fengyi, his fourth brother Zhou Chunshou and his younger sister Duangu from Guitou Mountain outside the South Gate to Malt Mountain. At this point, the ghosts of the Mr. clan will gather in Si and rest in Si. And he will leave his hometown with his mother and family members forever.

Mr. Zha's diary learned that when he left Shaoxing on December 24, only "Uncle Jiang Yutian" was sent off, and he did not see half a shadow of the Zhou family. From this, it seems that it can be seen that the statement in the letter from Mr. Xu Shousheng that "the feelings with Shaoxing have become increasingly evil recently" are not false. Here is another detail, which the gentleman recorded in his diary that day: "The night lantern is burned, and it is extinguished with the hand, and the finger is injured." ”

The unexpected fire of the lantern hurts the gentleman's finger; and the "forced by the clan" hurts the gentleman's heart. It is no wonder that "Hometown", created by Mr. More than a year later, always exudes a sense of sadness and sadness between the lines, in addition to recalling the good old days of childhood.

Four

On January 16, 1919, Lu Xun wrote in a letter to Xu Shousheng: "The servants have still been happy to travel for many years, and there is no good deed, but their thinking seems to have changed slightly. Next year, when the Shaozhi House was forced by the clan to sell it, he planned to live in Beijing and no longer had the idea of living more and more. Recently, the relationship with Shaoxing has become increasingly evil, and he does not know what is going on. ”

In the text quoted above, the first is that the author's master said to himself, first ridiculing himself that he has "no good deeds", and his words turn sharply, but he also said that his "thinking" has changed. In fact, reading more than twenty "Records of Feelings" written in the author's collection of essays "Hot Wind" in 1919, you will definitely feel that the "change" of Mr. Li's thinking is really not small. This is not to be repeated. As for the author's "living in Beijing in December of that year, there is no longer any desire to live in beijing", from the few words "forced by the clan" and "the feelings with Shaoxing are getting worse and worse", you will definitely feel the author's determination to "say goodbye" to his hometown, and why he is so "desperate".

Since "the clan is forced" and since "the feelings with Shaoxing are getting worse and worse", why should the hometown be nostalgic? What's more, the author and his second brother have already gained a firm foothold in Beijing, and have both stable and expensive income, living in Beijing, and have absolutely no worries about the economy. On December 24, 1919, the author and his family parted Shaoxing for six days, and on the afternoon of December 29, they "arrived home" and stayed at No. 11 Badaowan. The housewarming idea of "planning to live in Beijing" in a letter to Xu Shousheng at the beginning of the year became a reality. And Shaoxing, more than a year later, in January 1921, the author fixed it forever in the form of a novel in "Hometown".

Five

Speaking of hometown, contemporary poet and scholar Lin Xianzhi wrote in the book "Lu Xun on Earth": "Hometown, for everyone, has a certain maternal charm. This kind of thing that is close to the 'Oedipus complex' is buried deeply in Lu Xun personally, and there are still countless entanglements such as hatred, boredom, estrangement, and troubles. ”

If nothing else, the "estrangement" in the human world alone is vivid and profoundly reflected in "Hometown". When the author recalls the past with the youth of The Land, the words are filled with the beauty of impatience -

"So I look forward to the New Year every day, and when the New Year arrives, the leap land will arrive."

"So I was looking forward to the snow again."

And the scene of the thorns in the sand melon field on the seashore that night was simply so beautiful that people couldn't help but dance: the sky of the sky, deep blue; the huge full moon, golden; the boundless melon field, turquoise; the collar of the neck, silver and white. There is also this scene of this cute teenager fighting with the cunning wild monkey, which not only makes the author remember it decades later, but also makes me fascinated by many readers a century later.

However, when the author returned to his hometown for the last time and saw the leap earth for the last time, they both felt like they were in a trance. Leap Earth respectfully called him "Lord! ...", he "seemed to have a chill" in his heart—they were "already separated by a sad thick barrier" between them.

Time will make each other who were once familiar with each other close to the end of the world. More seriously, on the surface, it is time that is at work; in fact, it is the change of each other's social status.

Six

On August 14, 2012, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences released the "Urban Blue Book: China's Urban Development Report NO. 5" statistics show that in 2011, China's urban population reached 6. 9.1 billion, the urbanization rate reached 51. 27％。 For the first time, China's urban resident population exceeded that of rural residents. According to the statistics of the seventh national census in 2020, among the 1443497378 population in the country, the population living in cities and towns is 901991162, accounting for 63.89%, an increase of more than ten percentage points over the urbanization rate ten years ago.

The above set of data highlights that it is undoubtedly a side manifestation of the brilliant development of China's economy and other aspects. Behind the data, in fact, there is no emotional "loss" from the countryside and some urban citizens - adults, students or students - far from the homeland. From time to time, you can see helpless sighs such as "hometown that can't go back" in various media.

In fact, the helplessness or sigh of today's people about their hometown is often vividly and profoundly described in Lu Xun's "hometown". As for the complex emotional entanglements, Chen Pingyuan, a well-known contemporary scholar, has the following comment in the article "How to Talk About the Hometown": "In "Hometown", "not only is the hometown decadent, Lu Xun reflects on the subtle and irreversible changes in the relationship between 'I' and the land, and pursues the 'turquoise sand by the sea'... Thinking about how the road on earth was formed. Of course, this is a classic written in my hometown, but it should not be all." Chen Pingyuan borrowed the title to play: "Talking about hometown, we must not be too literary and artistic, but also have a sense of history and realistic care. Otherwise, it will seem very pretentious. Not only that, he further borrowed the words of Liang Hong, the author of "China in Liangzhuang" and "The Record of Liangzhuang", and also a contemporary scholar who is famous for paying attention to the "great changes" in China's current rural areas, to spit out the block in his chest: "Talk about hometown today, talk about hometown, talk about nostalgia, and avoid lyrical, pastoral, and pastoral." ”

I am deeply impressed by Mr. Chen Pingyuan's borrowing of the topic and the "reminder" of Ms. Liang Hong's daigo empowerment quoted. I wonder what the kings will do?

October 21-31, 2021 In the southern suburbs of The Silent Fast