Old things in the south

Chapter 81 About Xu Dishan

Show Four Sons Uncle Chou Xu Nanying

I am over half my life, and you are just twenty-one years old.

A man with ambitions in all directions, what's the matter with the poor village!
Enduring tears and leaving the high hall, books and swords restrain the absolute domain.

For the teacher's troubles, Yu Yi turned to pity. ·

Kuang Ru's career has not been accomplished, how can you be arrogant!
Teaching is essential, and this principle is what you should seek.

You must bathe your body, especially bathing in Germany.

There is no shame in anti-bow, that is, lead by example.

Don't be greedy for excessive drinking, and don't fish for color separation.

Handle wealth carefully, and restrain your anger.

Anyone with these four ends is a thief of virtue.

Therefore, the ancient gentleman kept his body as white as a jade.

Alas, in the sea of ​​people, the future is as dark as paint.

If you stumble and go astray, how can you regret it!
Guihai Wanlan Jun, for my old acquaintance.

I can be your teacher, and you should serve her side.

Overseas Suxin people, hold this to confront each other.

Thank you for ungrouping everyone, Xun Ruyi should work hard.

This five-character ancient poem was written by Mr. Xu Nanying from Taiwan to send his fourth son Dishan (child name Shuchou) to teach in Yangon.It was 1913, and it had been almost 20 years since Japan left Japan and occupied Taiwan.Xu Dishan was born in Tainan, Taiwan in the 19th year of Guangxu in the Qing Dynasty (1893). He was trapped in Taiwan when he was two years old. At that time, his father was working as the commander of Taiwan's Defense Planning Bureau, so he dispersed his family wealth, took his wife back to the motherland, and settled in Longxi, Fujian. county.After that, he roamed around Nanyang for two years, and after returning to China, he served as county magistrate in Guangdong.Xu Dishan lived with his father in various counties when he was young, and grew up day by day while reading books and studying classics and history.After the Revolution of 20, his father retired to Haicheng County with his family.He was not yet 1913 years old at this time, and he had already come out to be a teacher of Fujian Provincial Second Normal School. In 25, he traveled far away for the first time to teach in an overseas Chinese school in Yangon.After returning to China four years later, at the age of [-], he went to Beijing to study at Yenching University. At that time, his father filled out the poem "Flower Flowers in the Garden" and sent his son to the north. The poem said:

Sending you out, you have a long way to go, and you will never end when you encounter differences.The golden platform is snow-colored, and the jade insects are frosty in the east. At this time, Yan City is born in the cold.If the cold weather is like this, the water of the Sanggan River has been frozen.Going to Haoli Xuecheng Gate, I don’t know how deep the snow is; don’t worry about walking alone, it is reasonable to have the help of Eurasian people.Hey, I'm old!When will I come back, I want to see you happy to get started.Xunzai boy, I don't want you to be green and purple, but I only hope that you will send me a pair of carp in the spring.

This time, Mr. Nanying's farewell words already revealed his infinite concern for his youngest son, and he seemed to know that his son was gone and he did not know when he would return.Sure enough, in the same year, Mr. Nan Ying passed away in Medan, Sumatra, and died in a foreign land.Being far away from his son Haitian, Xu Dishan's grief as a son of man can be imagined.

Mr. Xu entered Yanda University in 1917 and graduated in 1920 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.It so happened that his original wife, Ms. Lin Yuesen from Taichung, died in Shanghai this year.It was not until 1929 that he married Ms. Zhou Qisong from Hunan.

Mr. Xu continued to study at the School of Religion at Yanda University, and received a bachelor's degree in theology in 1922.In the autumn of the same year, he went to study in the United States and entered Columbia University in New York to study the history of religion and the comparative study of religion. After obtaining a master's degree in 1924, he transferred to Oxford University in England in the second year to continue studying religious history and Sanskrit. In 1926, he passed through India on his way back to China, and made a short stay to study Sanskrit and Buddhism on the spot. In 1927, he returned to Peking to teach at his alma mater Yenching University and Peking University.Both teach classes on religion. In 1930, he went south to Guangzhou to teach at Sun Yat-sen University. In the same year, he went to India to study. After one year, he returned to China and then to Yanda University. In 1935, recommended by Mr. Hu Shi, he went to the University of Hong Kong as the director professor of the Chinese School until his death in 1941 in the Republic of China.He has done a lot in Hong Kong for six years, revolutionized the old Chinese teaching in Hong Kong, and worked hard in social and cultural activities. Therefore, it is very regrettable that he suddenly died of a heart attack at the young age of 49.

Among the writers in the 30s, Xu Dishan can be said to be an earlier New Literature and Art writer. From 1920 to 1921, when he was still studying at Yanda University, the first literary and art group "Literary Research Association" after the May 12th Movement was established. He was one of the [-] people who signed the manifesto. These [-] writers They are: Zhou Zuoren, Zhu Xizu, Geng Jizhi, Zheng Zhenduo, Qu Shiying, Wang Tongzhao, Shen Yanbing, Jiang Baili, Ye Shaojun, Guo Shaoyu, Sun Fuyuan and Xu Dishan.

At the same time as the establishment of the Literary Research Association, the "Novel Monthly", which was founded in the second year of Xuantong's reign, also underwent major innovations, publishing new literary works, and was edited by the Literary Research Association.From 1921 to 1923, Xu Dishan created a lot of novelettes and prose. It can be said that he was not only the main writer of the "Literary Research Society" or "Novel Monthly", but also from the history of modern Chinese novels, he was also very influential in that period. Contributed by a writer.Although he rarely published literary works after studying abroad, but devoted himself to the study of religion, when it comes to writers in the 30s, Xu Dishan not only cannot miss them, but also talks about them in advance.

Most of his novelettes and prose works were published in "Fiction Monthly", and at this time he began to write under the pseudonym "Luo Watson". "Novel Monthly" has been innovated since the first issue of volume No.12. After his "Fate Bird" was published in the second issue of the same volume, his novels appeared almost every three or two issues, or even several consecutive issues. Published, can be said to be the golden age of his literary and artistic writing, such as "Businessman's Wife", "Changing Luanfeng", "Weaving Spider", "The Lone Star in Hainan", "Spiritual Rain in the Empty Mountain", "The Goddess of Heaven", " "Withered Yang Shenghua", "Moon Tears" and so on were published in the "Fiction Monthly".

As for "Spring Peach", it was published in the magazine "Literature". Oriental Magazine and other publications.Not many of his literary and artistic works have been compiled into separate volumes, only the collection of short stories "The Spider Weaving the Web", "The Liberator" and the collection of essays "Spiritual Rain in the Empty Mountains".On the contrary, there are quite a few works on religion, especially on Taoism.Among contemporary scholars, he is also considered to be unique in his discussion of Taoism.Because it is an academic research, it is not within our scope, so I won't talk about it much.

Article [-] of the manifesto of the "Literary Research Association" once contained the following words: "The era of treating literature and art as a game when you are happy or a pastime when you are frustrated is now gone. . . ." The way for literary and art writers after the movement is to get rid of "leisure" and move towards a concept similar to "literature should reflect the times".Therefore, the works of new literature writers of that era often put the author's outlook on life or research on issues in the novels, which were more anti-feudal.

Watson's novels had his unique style at the time, and the arrangement of the background of the story was also one of them.Several of his novels are quite "exotic", such as "The Spider Who Weaves the Web" set in the Malay Peninsula, "The Goddess of Heaven" and "The Merchant Woman" set in India.

Domestic background: "Spring Peach" in Beiping, "After Dusk" in Guangzhou Bay, "Changing Luanfeng" in Yangjiang, etc.Most people classify him as a writer of romanticism, but in fact he not only often expresses his "view of life" in his novels, but also tends to be more realistic.Take his short story "The Spider in the Web" as an example, in which the author expresses his views on life through the mouth of the heroine of the story, so the beginning of the novel consists of four poems, the first paragraph has already explained theme:

I'm like a spider,

Destiny is my web.

I tied the net.

Still live in Central.

ah!Sometimes my net is damaged!

This bad, teach me how to grow?

The living genie said: Patch and patch,
There is no unbroken net in the world!
The heroine of this novel, Shang Jie, was born as a child bride-in-law, met an unkind person, and was divorced because of her husband's misunderstanding. She went to live in a palm forest by the seaside where pearls were picked in the Malay Peninsula.Later, the husband repented and apologized to her, but punished himself by bequeathing all his property and leaving Penang.Shang Jie used the spider web as a metaphor for her view of fate.In fact, it is what the author said through Shang Jie’s mouth. These words should be the author’s own reasonable outlook on life:
I am like a spider, and fate is my web.The spider eats all poisonous and non-venomous insects, and then organizes the web later.The first time it is released, the hairspring does not know how far it will be blown by the wind; but when it is attached to something else, his net is complete.

He doesn't know when the net will break, and how not to break the law.Once it is broken, he still hides it safely for the time being, and there is still a chance to make another good one.

His broken net remained on the treetops, and it was still a net.The sun shines down from above, reflecting each filament into seven colors; sometimes with a few water droplets on it, it looks even more brilliant and lovely.

Is it not the case with man and his fate?All the nets can be organized, or they are complete or missing, and we can only let nature take its course.

Another article, "After Dusk", is about a widowed father and his two daughters living at home by the seaside of Guangzhou Bay. After a certain dusk, he and his two pure and lovely daughters recalled the past life of his beloved wife, revealing his love for her. Therefore, when his daughter asked him why he no longer found a lovely stepmother for them, he said: "What? A person can be like a beast, only love in life, not after death. love?"

He also said: "...If a woman marries again, if people despise her, and a man continues to marry, shouldn't he be despised?..."

"After Dusk", I suspect that it is also Xu Dishan's own mourning work. The feelings that the hero sends to his daughters should also be the words he has long cherished in his heart about his dead wife.For life, he said to his daughter:
You were still young when you parted with your mother, and you may not be able to remember her appearance clearly. However, you must know that no matter what object you want to recognize, you cannot rely on its appearance, let alone the human face is the easiest to change?If you want to know a person, you have to look beyond his voice and appearance, which is but a very short period of life.Trees put out flowers and leaves in spring, and bear fruit in summer. In autumn and winter, most of the flowers, leaves, and fruits are lost. But can you say that a tree without flowers and leaves is not a tree?The tadpole at the bottom of the pond gradually grows up to be a toad. Can you say that the tadpole is not a small toad?What is ruthless becomes slow, what is affectionate becomes fast.That's why I often use your mother's tomb as her transformation: I think her body has grown bigger and stronger than mine.When I went to her grave, I didn’t expect her body lying in the ground to stand up from the tombstone. I saw that her body was the tomb, and I spoke to the tombstone as I would to you in the room.

After the great turmoil of the Five West Movement, the improvement of women's rights was also required by that era, not only in laws and women's movements, but also in literary and artistic works.Many of Xu Dishan's novels speak for women, and "Spring Picking" is also an example: "Women are also human beings"-we will have such thoughts after reading.

Among Xu Dishan's not-so-prolific novel creations, the reason why I chose "Spring Peach" is because I particularly like "her", not because the background is Beiping, or because I have been familiar with such women as "pickers of rotten paper" since I was a child. However, from the perspective of novel writing skills, it is very complete, and the character "Chuntao" described is very successful.Chuntao is illiterate. Apart from sorting out bad papers and coping with life, she doesn’t know that there is a “May [-]th Movement” in the outside world. She doesn’t know that there are many educated women who are demanding equality between men and women, improving women’s rights, or fighting against feudalism and overthrowing A thing of old ethics.But she can handle her life herself, she knows what she needs, this is also the reasonable "human" life arranged by the author Xu Dishan!Chuntao is very cute, she doesn't act like a women's activist in a vicious way, she is still considerate, caring, and loving to men, because she is a woman.I hope readers will enjoy this novel by themselves.

(End of this chapter)