After writing “Old Jia Jumps from a Building”, I was at a loss. Just then, Xiao Gongqin also sent me an article that he wrote in memory of a deceased friend, which was very heartfelt. This article reminded me to write about my living friends while we are still alive, rather than writing “Mourning my enemy, mourning my friend” like Xu Fuguan did after Yin Haiguang’s death.
I knew Xiao Gongqin after 1982, in his old house on Yuhang Road in Hongkou, when he was facing a huge garbage bin right outside his window. Xiao said that he did not need an alarm clock every morning, but woke up in time to the stench of the dumpster in which his first novel, The Dilemma of Confucian Culture, was written. Every time I went there, I parked my bicycle outside the dumpster and shouted “Xiao Gongqin,” and the window would ring with the sound of his joyful reply. Xiao Ye made tea and left the house, and we discussed the “new authoritarianism” and “liberalism” amid the mingled stench of garbage and the smell of books on the wall. I was only a lecturer at the time, and he was already the first associate professor of my generation. He was already one of the first associate professors of my generation. A library card from the Shanghai Municipal Library was required to have a senior title, and the earliest foreign books I read after returning to Shanghai were lent on his card. I was so envious of that card that I had a long time to evaluate an “associate professor” as my highest ambition, as long as I had that card, this life was enough.
In the late 1980s, our differences grew worse. One afternoon, we met at the Yongfu Road Cultural Salon to welcome the British scholar Schramm. A friend brought a copy of Bazin’s appeal, which was signed by everyone but Xiao Gongqin. At the end of May, another friend and I had an evening discussion in a small cafe on Haining Road near his home, and at the end of the argument, we uttered these desperate words: “If something happens outside and you still insist on your present position, we will have to break off our friendship and never see each other again. However, our relationship continued. It was then that we made a pact that who would die first one day in the future, and then the deceased would mourn for each other under the title “Mourning for my enemy and my friend”.
After my accident, he came to visit me at my place many times, and there was no little “self-inflicted” gloating, according to the “antecedent” he could say so, how many people without the “antecedent” also! He said that, but he has been defending me on many occasions. According to the “state of the country”, he could have risen to prominence, and indeed such an opportunity did arise. There is a subtle “paradox” here: after that year, Xiao’s views were very much appreciated at the top, but he was boycotted in the intellectual circles, and peer review was very unfavorable to him when it came to the evaluation of his title. The sentiment of the intellectual community is understandable, but such treatment of different views is another kind of injustice, and once in power, what is the difference between it and the tyranny that one opposes? The so-called “I disagree with you, but strongly defend your right to express your views” is far from our intellectual world. I still do not agree with Xiao’s views, but he is a serious scholar, not out of political speculation. The representatives of the “New Authoritarianism” had the so-called “Xiao in the south and He in the north”, with the “He” in the north becoming a committee member and the “Xiao” in the south becoming the “He” in the north. “The first thing that I want to do is to get rid of the money. The first thing you need to do is to take a look at the newest addition to your own website. A bureaucratic order.
Xiao’s character is “transparent”, as a friend jokingly called him, “a ‘handsome’ cover up a hundred ugly”. He himself told me an anecdote about how he once went to a cigarette store in a lane to buy cigarettes, and was choked back with the words, “Call your parents to buy cigarettes! His father was a senior general of the Kuomintang. He was a Huangpu Sixth Class student and served as Chief of Staff of the Third Army under Hu Zongnan. His dream was to save the country through science. After joining the army, he never stopped helping the poor children in his hometown, Xiao Clan, who were studying engineering. In the midst of the war, the suitcase of this senior general of the national army actually contained some chemical reagents and chemical notebooks, and he also maintained his hobby of doing chemical experiments with various triangular cups during his long years of military life!
Xiao also told me that in November 1947, when the Kuomintang Third Army was besieged in Shijiazhuang, Xiao took the last plane out of the city in his mother’s arms. Before takeoff, his father arrived at the airport in a jeep, and his family thought he had come to see them off, but he was also on the plane with them. The family thought he was coming to see them off, but he didn’t expect to be on the plane with them, because he suddenly received an order from above, ordering him to take a plane to Beiping immediately, saying that there was an urgent military matter to discuss. Hu saw that the Third Army was hopelessly lost, and finally had to rescue the Chief of Staff, whom he admired. His father later revolted and became a member of the Twelfth Volunteer Army, which also participated in the Battle of Shangganling, and returned to China as an instructor at the Nanjing Military Academy under Liu Bocheng. When his father was writing his autobiography in the army, he wrote: “Please forgive me, but when I am going to write about Hu Zongnan, I will still refer to him as ‘Mr. Hu,’ because I am used to it and I can’t change it.”
This is already an anecdote from the Republic of China. But because of this “military” background, when I was in uniform in the 1980s, every time I saw Xiao Gongqin, I dubbed him an “army cadet”. I would rather be an admonishing friend to such a “cadet” than to other “cadets”. “Loudly sung and harmonized.
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