In Wang Zengqi’s writing, every blade of grass and every tree has a lovely glow.
In “Cooking”, he writes, “When you arrive at a new place, some people love to visit department stores and others love to visit bookstores, but I’d rather go to the vegetable market. I’d rather go to the market and see the live chickens and ducks, the fresh watery vegetables, the red peppers, the hustle and bustle, the crowding, it makes you feel a kind of joy of Life. “
He is like a person who is attached to this joy of life, or rather, he is attached to this joy of life, so that he can find so many glittering and moving things in ordinary days.
In fact, Wang Zengqi’s life was marked by numerous upheavals, including the death of his birth mother when he was young, the war in his youth, and the Cultural Revolution and criticism in his middle age, yet he still upheld an appreciation for the beautiful. The famous short story “The Beatification,” which established his place in the history of Chinese literature, was completed when he was 60 years old.
On May 16, 1997, at the age of 77, Wang Zengqi died of illness. Before his death, he told his youngest daughter, “The first thing I’ll do after I’m discharged from the hospital is to drink a cup of crystal-clear Longjing tea. “
These were the last words he left to the world.
Today is Wang Lao’s birthday, let us once again find and revisit this great and lovely “old man The 10 moments of the great and lovely “old man” in his life and in his words that make people laugh or are thought-provoking, about his first love, his favorite tastes, his favorite foreign writers and the little things he did when cooking, these are Wang Zengqi’s most cherished These are Wang Zengqi’s most cherished “everyday” moments, and the warmest ones.
- Wang Zengqi’s “French name “
The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you are doing. “The first thing you need to do is to get a good idea of what you are getting into. In 1925, Wang Zengqi studied in the kindergarten of the fifth county elementary school. This kindergarten has only one female teacher, named Wang Wenying.
Wang Wenying saw Wang Zengqi wearing his mother’s filial piety at a young age and was very distressed by him, to Wang Zengqi she was a teacher and a mother.
In 1982, when Wang Zengqi returned to his hometown, he went to visit his teacher and dedicated a poem to her: “The little lamb is good, open the door, the song is still there, lingering in the ears. I remember the beauty of my life, and I have been cultivating it ever since. I am old now, and my white beard is full of cheeks. But how can I forget the love of my teacher and mother? May my teacher be healthy and live a long life without disaster. “
After the poem, there are two lines: “To the teacher Wenying, the first class of the fifth elementary school kindergarten students Wang Zengqi. “
- Once lived in a temple
The Precepted” is a short story written by Wang Zengqi and published in Beijing Literature, No. 10, 1980. The work depicts the innocent and hazy love between the young monk Minghai and the peasant girl Xiaoyingzi, which contains the love for life and life, and overflows with the joyful song of humanity and human feelings.
Wang Zengqi once wrote about the background of the creation of “The Precepted”, referring to his hometown and childhood –
“The temple of the good cause I am writing about is there. When I was in junior high school, I passed by the temple every day. The temple released the precepts, and I went to see it several times a day.
I knew some monks when I was a child. I once went to a small nunnery off the beaten path to see an old monk who was strict and bitter in his discipline. When he was young, he burned off two of his fingers in the incense burner and called himself the eight-fingered head monk.
I have met some broad monks, the abbots of the big temples. Most of them are well-dressed (so well-dressed that it is hard to believe), good-looking, talk well, and appear more cultured than many gentlemen in the county. In fact they are the cultural people of the county. “
“By chance, I lived for a few months in a small nunnery in the countryside, right where the novel is written The name of the nunnery I have forgotten. I have forgotten the name of the nunnery, but it was not called Bodhi nunnery anyway. I gave it the name because there was a couplet on the small door.
The people in the nunnery, and their daily life, are what I wrote about. There is no Minghai. Instead, there is a young monk, who is quite stupid, not unlike Minghai.
As for the monk in charge, I saw with my own eyes when he was teaching the young monk to recite the sutra by clapping the board. This village is called An Zhao Zhuang. Little Yingzi’s Family, as I have written.
This family, the people are particularly hard-working, houses, utensils are particularly neat and clean, Xiao Yingzi bright eyebrows, open and cheerful character, the body posture of the beautiful and healthy, all make me unforgettable impression, and I saw in the city girls are not the same. Her whole body, all emanating an air of youth. “
- Wang Zengqi and his father
–The father and son became brothers
Wang Zengqi’s father was born on the ninth day of the ninth month of the lunar calendar, the Chrysanthemum Festival, hence the name Jusheng.
A large part of Wang Zengqi’s impressions of Home are of his father, and he writes in his essay, “I miss my father and still often dream of him. Those Dreams of mine would have had nothing to do with him, those things in my dreams, he could not have been present, I do not know how he got involved. “How does a father manage to affect his son so deeply?
His father was so loving that he once took the young Wang Zengqi to Jiangyin to cast his exams for high school because there were many bedbugs in the inn where he lived, so he lit a candle and used candle oil to drip on the bedbugs all night long.
Not only was he caring, but Wang Zengqi’s father was also very interested in life, and he once fondly recalled his father’s various trivialities in his essay –
“My father was very handy, and always lived with great interest. He would make all kinds of things. For the Lantern Festival, he used Tongcao (our family ran a pharmacy and could select very large pieces of Tongcao) for the petals and dyed them with the Western red used to paint peonies (Western red was very expensive, and there was a period when Qi Baishi had to pay a higher price if he used Western red for his paintings) to make a lotus lamp, which was even more beautiful than the real flower when it was lit with candles. He used cicada wing paper dyed light green, with wire as the bone, made a weaving maiden lamp, under the thin bamboo stick. My sister and I mentioned, holding these two lamps on the street, to the neighbor’s house to visit, many people gathered around to see. “
4 Wang Zengqi’s first love
–The first Time he wrote a love letter at home, his father was making up his mind
In 1935, Wang Zengqi left his hometown for the first time and came to Jiangyin on the south bank of the Yangtze River to attend high school at Nanjing Middle School.
Wang Zengqi later described Jiangyin this way: “Every day when the tide rises in the river, the river water in the city rises with it. When the tide is out, the river is calm again. Walking across the Hongqiao Bridge, watching the river rise and fall, there is an unexplained sadness ……”
It was here that Wang Zengqi met his first love, fellow classmate Xia Sufen.
He did not describe the appearance of his first love, but the hazy poetic meaning can be well glimpsed in his words describing the fruit stores in Jiangyin –
There are several fruit stores in Jiangyin, the largest being the one on the main street facing Shoushan Park, where the fruit is plentiful, large, full and fresh. Once you enter the door, you will be greeted by the strong fragrance of fruit. The most prominent is the sweet fragrance of bananas. The fragrance is not sporadic, sometimes strong, sometimes light, a burst, but from morning to night is so fragrant, a long in, eternal fragrance. The fragrance penetrates the lungs and the heart and makes people want to get drunk. I have since been to many places, into many fruit stores, but not as strong as this fruit store’s fruit fragrance. The fragrance of this fruit store reminds me often and never forget. “
“I was 17 years old first love, in the summer, at home to write love letters, he (Wang father) in a blind idea. “
Famous literary critic He Zhenbang wrote: “Once I accompanied a friend to visit Wang’s home, in front of his mother Shi Songqing raised 43 years ago a ‘dream’ to write what refers to, he blinked and did not take a clear He did not give a clear answer.
Not long after, after a banquet, I helped him walk home from the street bridge, he drank a little wine, emotional, through the strength of alcohol, while his mother was not in front of me, took the initiative to ask me to ‘confess’, also 43 years ago a ‘dream’, referring to his first love when he was 17 years old in Jiangyin school.
First love girlfriend is still alive, a few years ago (i.e., the mid-1980s), he attended a pen meeting in Jiangyin, but also took the initiative to call his first love, asking to visit her home! “
- Wang Zengqi’s Southwest United University
— “Your report is very well written, better than Wang Zengqi’s! “
In 1939, when Wang Zengqi was nineteen years old, he came alone from Shanghai to Kunming via Hong Kong and Vietnam to study for university. His first choice was the Southwest Union University, formed by the merger of Peking University, Tsinghua University and Nankai University, and his second choice was the Kunming Art College.
Unfortunately, just after he arrived in Kunming, he contracted falciparum malaria and was admitted to the hospital with a fever of over 40 degrees. When the nurse gave him a cardiac injection, Wang Zengqi felt as if he was at the end of his rope and asked her, “Should I write a suicide note? “
He was just able to drink a bowl of egg flower Soup and wobbled into the examination room. After the exam, not at all sure. The first time I saw the list, I actually won the Chinese Department of the Southwest Associated University.
Wang Zengqi was appreciated by Mr. Shen Congwen at SWLU. At that time, due to the bombing by Japanese planes, Shen Congwen usually lived in the countryside, and then came into the city to give lectures when there were classes. Whenever Mr. Shen came to the city, Wang Zengqi went to see him, returned books to him, borrowed books, listened to him chat with guests, and accompanied him to buy things on the street. One time Wang Zengqi got drunk and sat on the side of the road. Mr. Shen thought he was a sick refugee, but when he saw that it was Wang Zengqi, he and some students took him to the dormitory and poured some tea into him before he sobered up.
Wang Zengqi was an eccentric, good at making up nonsense, and was admired by Mr. Wen Yiduo. In general, there were no exams for courses at SWU, and credit was given at the end of the semester by submitting a book report. Once, Wang Zengqi wrote a book report on Li He for a student in a class below his. It is better than the one written by Wang Zengzi! “
What did Wang Zengqi write? He only wrote about one characteristic of Li He: while other people’s poems are painted on a white background, Li He’s poems are painted on a black background, so the colors are particularly intense. This is also the criterion that many professors of SWLU use to identify their students: they are not afraid of newness and weirdness, but not of mediocrity, and they do not like to follow the clouds and only copy books.
- Wang Zengqi’s paintings
— “Atlas of Chinese Potatoes” and “Atlas of Mouth Mushrooms
Wang Zengqi once wrote in an essay, “I have no real mentorship when I paint. My father was a painter who painted flowers in a realistic style. When I was young, I loved to watch him paint and see how he laid out (using his nails or the end of his brush to make a few marks), drew the flower heads, set the stems, laid out the leaves, hooked the tendons, cleaned up, inscribed, and stamped. In this way, I have a slight understanding of the use of ink, water and color. “
From elementary school to junior high school, he was always “known for his paintings “. In his second year, Wang Zengqi painted an ink lotus, framed and hung in the achievement exhibition room, and high school because the school is heavy on mathematics, science and chemistry, homework is very tight, no longer painting. During his four years in college, he seldom painted either. After working, he stopped painting for a long time.
After he became a rightist and was sent to an agricultural science institute, he painted a lot after he finished his labor. The main “works” were two sets of botanical atlases, one set of “Atlas of Chinese Potatoes” and one set of “Atlas of Mushrooms”, one in freshwater color and one in pen drawing.
After that, Wang Zengqi to the theater company to write the script and began to re-fasten the brush, he bought a knife Yuanshu paper, began to draw, it will be unstoppable.
He painted flowers and wrote that he “liked Xu Qingtou, Chen Baiyang and Li Futang, but was not greatly influenced by them. My paintings are not Chinese, not Western, not modern, not ancient, but truly ‘writing’, with a great deal of arbitrariness. “
- Wang Zengqi, who can eat
–He can’t stand folding ear roots either
Wang Zengqi knows how to eat.
In the “Four Square Food Matters” taste he wrote: that day to eat fried oil cakes, they eat oil cakes on garlic. I said, “There is no garlic in eating oil cakes! “A cook from Henan said. “Hey! You try! “Sure enough. “Another taste. “
Wang Zengqi had to try everything, like chopped food. He quoted in the “four-way food” chopped in the “Tokyo Meng Hua Lu – March 1 open Jinming Pond, Qionglin Yuan”: “more fishing people, must buy a plate in the pond garden, before allowing fishing. Tourists get fish, double its price to buy it. The water chopping, to recommend the fragrant bottle, is a good taste. “
During the war, Wang Zengqi lived in Yunnan, the taste of children by the cloud and Guizhou influence. He said: “I eat spicy is practiced in Kunming, once with a few Guizhou classmates in the fire with green chili burned, dipped in salt water for wine. “
There are also those he does not like, “there is a young actress from Guizhou to our troupe to learn theater. Her mother sent her a packet of something from a long way away, a ‘folded root’, or fishy grass. She let me taste a few roots. What is this stuff? Bitter, it does not matter, it has a strong smell of raw fish, really can not stand! “
While he wrote the famous piece “Receiving the Precept”, he did not forget to miss the snacks there, a snack he enjoyed when he attended Nan Jing Middle School –
“Jiangyin comes out with powdered salt beans. I don’t know how to make the soybean so big, half an inch long, salt fried, the bean does not shrink, the skin is white, very crispy, chewed into a fine powder, so the name of the powder salt beans. Taste is very meaningful, far better than peanut rice.
Eating powder salt beans, drinking white flowers wine, very compatible. I was not much of a drinker then, just drinking plain water. On Sundays, sitting in the study room, drinking water, eating beans, reading Li Qingzhao, Xin Qiji words, is not a taste. I studied in Jiangyin Nanjing Middle School for two years, and most of the Sundays were spent in this way. “
- Wang Zengqi and children
–I’m going to lay an egg
When Wang Zengqi lived in Ganjiakou, there was only one writing table at home, which was still in the house of his young daughter. The daughter often worked at night, Wang Zengqi often had to write articles at night, and did not dare to enter the house, suffocating his face full of red, wandering around, just like a hen to lay eggs can not find the nest.
When his daughter got up, he rushed into the house and began to “lay eggs “. Family members joked: “Old man, holding eggs again? He didn’t even look up, but while he was writing, he said. “Stop it, stop it, I’m going to lay an egg. This time lay a big egg! “
According to Wang Zengqi’s son Wang Lang’s recollection, because his father rarely lost his temper, he was “bullied” at home. “, the whole family called him “old man “, “at first it was my mother who called him that, and later We are not big and small, follow my mother so called, to our next generation also called so, he heard all happy, in my family is ‘maternal dignity’, no ‘fatherly dignity’ and The ‘father way dignity’ and ‘master way dignity’. “
When Wang Zengqi was beaten as a rightist and sent to the countryside, Wang Lang was just in the first grade of elementary school and had not yet learned the complete alphabet of pinyin, to be learned to write a letter to his father in pinyin. Wang Zengqi had not learned pinyin, but in order to reply to the letter to the child, himself now learned pinyin, full of love and care for the child.
When he was working in the factory, Wang Chao used to work three shifts and couldn’t sleep after the night shift, so he was very grumpy, “My father wanted to come to my house to write, so I lost my temper with him and said it affected my sleep. I came home late from work, he had already laid down, will get up to make me a midnight snack, and then go back to sleep. Sometimes I don’t want to get up when I’m in the middle of the shift, so he says, ‘Why don’t I bring you something to eat in bed? My mom got angry when she heard it, ‘Eat in bed, what do you think! My dad was so scared that he didn’t dare to speak. “
After Wang Lang went to college, his mother asked Wang Zengqi to tell his son about writing essays, said several times the old man ignored, the neck, “I was who taught me? “Forced to take just out of the “Ancient Literature”, looking for a “Mr. Wuliu biography” to Wang Lang, the results taught half a day never taught again.
- cooking at home with care
–never cook a particularly ordinary dish
Wang Zengqi, at home, contracted to do the heavy lifting of cooking at home, and his specialty dishes included – braised elbow, boiled beef, and cold sliced loin.
Wang Zengqi was particularly particular about his meals and never made particularly ordinary dishes, as his son Wang Lang recalled, “For example, fried persimmon peppers with sliced meat, not done because he felt mediocre, like the cafeteria pot dishes, he did not eat and did not do. In fact, he ate less, but to see everyone love to eat on the happy, he must cook a full range of colors and flavors, but also elegant, although it does not use any advanced ingredients. “
In addition, Wang Zengqi also has a classic dish is a modified version of the big boiled shredded, “This is Huaiyang cuisine, because in Beijing, made their own modified version, he used tofu skin rolled up and cut, take boiling water, and then Soak, the soup is thicker and heavier than Yangzhou, because he used chicken frames to boil the soup, put bones, ham, dried scallops and mushrooms shreds, thick and freshness are there, every time you do it is eaten up. “
In 1988, Nie Hualing and his wife visited the mainland. After several official banquets, the outreach department of the Writers’ Association suddenly had the whim to ask Wang Lao to cook a few dishes for them at home.
Wang agreed readily.
So Wang Zengqi showed off his skills at home, including Yangzhou’s shredded dried pork, choked melon skin, and dry-fried shredded beef.
He revealed that there is actually no trick to cooking shredded pork, anything fresh can be put into it. The shredded ginger should be finely chopped before serving. According to his recollection, Nie Hualing was so happy to eat that she picked up a big bowl and drank all the soup of the shredded pork.
- Wang Zengqi and Foreign Literature
–Asolin’s stream of consciousness is a shadow-covered, cool, quiet and translucent stream
Wang Zengqi is one of the early and conscious Chinese writers who used stream-of-consciousness techniques in his novels. While influenced by Chinese literary and artistic traditions, Wang Zengqi was also deeply influenced by foreign literature, especially Western modernist literature.
Wang Zengqi once wrote, “Without the influence of foreign literature, Chinese literature would not be what it is now, and many writers might not have become writers. Even if someone never reads any foreign literature, even if he lives in a ravine where there is not even a road, he will be influenced by foreign literature, albeit indirectly. “
When he was in his third year of high school, Wang Zengqi lived in a small nunnery in the countryside to avoid the war, and the only books he brought with him were a copy of Shen Congwen’s Selected Works and a copy of Turgenev’s Hunter’s Notebook, in addition to his physics and chemistry textbooks for the university entrance exams.
It can be said that these two books led me to the path of literature. Turgenev’s sympathy for people and his careful observation of nature had a deep impact on me. “
Wang Zengqi studied Chinese in college, but what he read outside of class was mainly translated foreign literature.
In “Rain in the West Window,” Wang Zengqi said of his foreign literary preferences, “Tolstoy said that Chekhov was a very strange Writer who seemed to throw words around and make a work out of them. I like his loose, free, casual, free-flowing style of writing; his painful musings on life and a piece of warmth. I think Chekhov is a truly modern writer.
It was after Chekhov that Russian literature entered a new period.
In Soviet literature, I like Antonov. He is a successor of Chekhov’s tradition. He is a little more modern than Chekhov, a little more Western. I read his “On the Tram” and once when I came out of a meeting in the building of the Literary Federation and met Comrade Xiao Qian on the steps of the main gate, I asked him.
“Is this a stream of consciousness? “
Xiao Qian said, “Yes, but I dare not say! “
In the 1950s, it seemed to be a crime to mention stream of consciousness in China.
“I like Sukshin, who also inherited Chekhov. Sukshin had a deeper sense of life than Antonov, because by this time Soviet writers were free from Stalin’s control and could think more freely.
I don’t like Maupassant because he is pretentious and a ‘professional novelist’. I like Tudor because he is natural.
I have never been tempted by John Christoph, and I would rather listen to the long tirade of Farrance’s skepticism.
In English literature, I like F. Woolf. Her “To the Lighthouse,” “The Wave,” is beautifully written. I’ve read one of her very thin novels, “Baboon Lassie,” which is a very charming perspective on the romance between Bronin and Mrs. Bronin through the eyes of a small dog. Babo Lassie doesn’t seem to be written in a stream-of-consciousness approach. “
“I really like the Spanish Asolin, whose stream of consciousness is covered with shadows, cool, quietly translucent streams. “
Daughter Wang Chao recalled that after reading Kafka’s Metamorphoses, she recommended it to her father, and after reading it, Wang Zengqi repeatedly said it was particularly well written.
This article is compiled from the following references.
-Wang Zengqi, 100th anniversary of his birth｜”Taking things as they come is not a good state of mind “
-Wang Zengqi: Painting and drawing is also an interesting thing in life
-Wang Zengqi, one of the literati
-Wang Zengqi’s 100 years of food geography
-Wang Zengqi’s first love
-Wang Zengqi: The Story Behind “Taking Precepts
-The Background of Wang Zengqi’s “The Precept
-Wang Zengqi’s children: Our father is a good old man
-Wang Zengqi: The Old Man of the Tongue, whose exquisite cooking skills are more amazing than his works
-Wang Zengqi: No writer is truly “indigenous”, Chinese writers are all influenced by Foreign Literature Influence
-My Father” by Wang Zengqi
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