Liang Heng's classic prose, thank you!

This should be his most famous collection of essays, called Looking for Crossroads.

Find the ferry, find the ferry, and where to cross.

I have been to the Qu Qiubai Memorial Hall in Changzhou for three times. From the first time I saw that gloomy old house, I wanted to write an article. But six years later, I still haven't written it. Qu Qiubai is really a mystery. He is profound, so you can't see clearly and feel deeply. You can't write, but you can't put pen to paper. Last year, when I visited Qiu Bai's former residence for the third time, it was the 60th anniversary of his sacrifice. Both the local government and Beijing are preparing a seminar about him. He was only thirty-six years old when he died, but people have commemorated him for sixty years and will always remember him. Is it because he is the leader of the party? Because of his literary achievements? Is it because of his talent? Yes, not all of them. His short life is like a famous painting that can never be read.

The first time I went to the memorial hall was in 1990. The memorial hall used to be the old ancestral hall of the Qu family. In front of the ancestral temple, there is a river called Midu River. On hearing the name, I was shocked. Find the ferry, find the ferry, where to go? Qu Qiubai is a professional revolutionary, but he didn't make a path from this ferry. At the August 7th meeting, he was ordered by the White Terror. Provoke the burden of commanding the whole party with the shoulders of a weak scholar and shout out the roar of armed struggle. But he was immediately shot down by Wang Ming and his own people and never used it again. Later, during the Long March, he did not take him north on the pretext of being ill. But Xu Teli and Xie Juezai, who are older and weaker than him, arrived in northern Shaanxi safely and lived until People's Republic of China (PRC) was founded. In fact, he was not killed by the Kuomintang, but by the "Left" line. It was one of our own who held down his neck so that the enemy's butcher knife could be cut down. He first carefully monologues, and then quietly goes to death.

If Qiu Bai is a jy-style figure in Li Kui, shout "Cut Grandpa, and be a hero after 20 years." Maybe people have forgotten him. He is a scholar and a typical China intellectual. Look at his photo, what a delicate but somewhat pale face. He was not a knife dancer from the beginning. He gave lectures at Huangpu Military Academy and Shanghai University. His talent was shining, and the audience crowded the auditorium and climbed the windowsill, even the school teacher crowded in to listen. Ding Ling, who later became a great writer, stared at a pair of big childish eyes under the stage. How did Qu Qiubai's literary talent impress a generation? Zheng, who later became an expert in cultural history and vice minister of the Ministry of Culture of New China, was preparing to get married and wanted to carve a pair of autumn white seals. The white ornament in autumn is fifty yuan. Zheng can't afford Mao Dun for help. On the wedding day, Qiu Bai carried a handkerchief bag and said that he would give 50 taels of gold. Zheng was startled. When he opened it, there were two lithographs. Think about his printing level at that time. After Qiu Bai was pushed out of the leadership position of the Party, she turned to literature. In just a few years, his translation has reached five million words. The respect and friendship between Lu Xun and him are as perfect as Marx and Engels. Qiu Bai and his wife went to Shanghai to live in Lu Xun's house. Lu Xun and Xu Guangping slept on the floor and gave them their beds. After Qiu Bai was arrested, Lu Xun immediately organized rescue. After his death, Lu Xun personally compiled a collection of essays for him. The binding and materials were first-class at that time. Qiu Bai is on a par with Lu Xun, Mao Dun and Zheng Zhenduo, the peaks of modern cultural history. He should know the cultural value contained in himself and go to his study to realize this value. But he didn't. He witnessed the ups and downs of the people and the party was on the verge of extinction. He jumped into the darkness with a bang. As long as it can light up a step for the progress of society, he will resolutely raise his whole body and spontaneously ignite. His Russian level was one of the best in China at that time. He is ambitious to introduce Russian literary masterpieces to China. After Lu Xun's sacrifice, he lamented that Qiu Bai's translation of Dead Soul was the most appropriate. This reminds me of another thing. At the same time as Qiu Bai, there was another man named Liang Shiqiu, who still capitalized leisure words at the climax of the anti-Japanese war and was criticized by left-wing writers as "the theory of irrelevance in the anti-Japanese war." He defended himself by saying that people can kill people with a kitchen knife in a hurry, but killing people is not the mission of a kitchen knife after all. He remained committed to his pure literature, and later he really achieved great success. He independently translated the complete works of Shakespeare. Now, when we generously admit Liang Shiqiu's contribution, don't forget people like Qiu Bai, who saved the country and people with a kitchen knife in a hurry, and even jumped on their own pearls and jade. If he doesn't do this, leave a kitchen knife as a backup and green hills as firewood, he will become one or even ten Liang Shiqiu in the literary world. But he didn't.

If Qiu Bai's bones were as weak as his body and he confessed as soon as he was caught, history would have forgotten him. There are as many traitors as there are heroes in the revolutionary history. Xiang, former General Secretary of the Production Party, and Gu, a member of the Political Bureau, all came from the working class, but they confessed as soon as they were arrested. As for Chen Gongbo, Zhou Fohai and Zhang, you can name many. Qiu Bai, on the other hand, staged a heroic play in which Mount Tai collapsed without moving. When he was first arrested, the enemy didn't know his identity. He claimed to be a doctor and read and wrote in prison. Even the warden begged him to write a doctor's prescription. In fact, he is really a scholar, a painter and a doctor. Except for his pseudonym, these identities are not false to him. At this time, Lu Xun and others in Shanghai are trying to rescue him. But a traitor who had listened to his lecture finally recognized him. The spy suddenly shouted, "Qu Qiubai!" But he didn't respond. There was nothing the enemy could do, so they had to pull the traitor out and confront him face to face. Then he smiled faintly and said, "Now you recognize me. I am Qu Qiubai. I have the right to treat my past confessions as novels. " When Chiang Kai-shek heard that Qu Qiubai was arrested, he sent an urgent telegram to Song Xilian, asking to handle the matter. When Song was in Huangpu, he listened to his classes, performed student rituals, persuaded him to surrender with the feelings of teachers and students, and sent military doctors to treat him. He made up his mind to say, "It is ok to relieve a little pain, but it may not cure the disease." When a person understands the meaning of life and death, he gains the greatest strength and calmness. This can't be done by physical endurance and emotional investment. The power of reason is as firm as the extension of the track. True intellectuals have always acted according to the truth, and the so-called scholars can be killed but not humiliated. Wen Tianxiang was arrested, dived, hit a wall, and only wanted to die. Lu Xun was threatened to go out without a key to show his ambition of not returning. Mao Zedong praised Zhu Ziqing for preferring to starve to death rather than eat American relief powder. Qiu Bai is such a typical intellectual who has reached the stage of freedom. Chiang Kai-shek threatened to lure him in and ordered him to be shot. Before the execution, Qiu Bai sang "The Internationale" and songs of the Red Army, calmly walked to the execution ground alone, shouted "Long live the China * * * Production Party", sat cross-legged on the ground and let the enemy shoot. From arrest to death, there is no fear of death here.

If Qiu Bai shouted slogans like this and devoted himself to the revolution, people might not miss him and study him for so long. It happened that before he died, he rushed to write a "superfluous words", which was really superfluous to ordinary people. We can see how resolutely he struggled in his short life, how sharply he criticized the Kuomintang Rightists in the cooperation between countries, and how sharply he criticized Chen Duxiu's right-wing line within the party. He presided over the "August 7th Meeting" and decided to engage in armed struggle, which will go down in history forever. He fought calmly with the enemy in prison, and finally died heroically, crying for ghosts and gods. What a complete period this is. But he refused. He felt that he was really contemptuous and ashamed of the title of party leader, so he carefully analyzed his soul with a scalpel. What others see is a bright conclusion, but he wants to talk about the darkness before the light or the shadow after the light here. This is another amazing calm. Just like when the enemy wanted to treat him, he said, no need. He despises life. Now, in order to be a man, he despises his name. He thought he was from a gentleman's family, an old pedant to a revolution. He struggled between the old and the new, choosing between literary hobbies and political responsibilities. He said that there will be no more old literati in the future, and he will faithfully record this typical and painful transformation process and dedicate it to future generations. He once said, "When light and flame emerge from the center of the earth, we must try several times to explore our own path and exercise our own strength." Not only did he dissect his own soul, but in this superfluous words, he also asked me to dissect his body after death, because he was a man suffering from lung disease for many years. This is his greatness and his selflessness. We can compare how many people in the world are whitewashing peace, trying their best to whitewash history and trying their best to cover up evil and promote good. In particular, the higher the status of some people, the more they love to do this, and others help him. This is the so-called respect taboo. He didn't want to. As a leader, people want him to be completely famous inside and outside, but he stubbornly said: no, I am a multicolored person. Ordinary people put their lives into revolution. Now he puts revolution into life. Revolution is part of his life experiment. When we only look at his career and watch him die calmly, he is an admirable mountain in the plain; Let's look at his anatomy again. He is a mountain overlooking a deep valley. The wind is whistling and the forest is roaring, which is extremely steep and gives people more thoughts. He is a man whose heart is criss-crossed and honest as a blank sheet of paper.

I am in this old ancestral temple, coming and going year after year, wandering again and again. I imagine the river in front of the door and the boats crossing the river. Qiu Bai started from here, went to Shanghai to run a school, and later met Lu Xun in Shanghai; Go to Guangzhou to cooperate with participating countries and meet Sun Yat-sen; Go to Russia as a reporter and attend the * * * international conference; Go to Jiujiang to preside over the "August 7th Meeting" and carry out armed struggle; Go to Jiangxi Soviet area to take charge of education. His life is short and he comes and goes in a hurry. When he went out to board a boat, he must have thought of "crossing the wild without a boat" and "taking off his skirt and going on a green boat alone". What a leisurely life, what a beautiful poem and what a quiet harbor. He used superfluous words to express his love for literature many times. How much he wanted to lean on the dock, but he didn't. Until the moment of his death, he was still exploring the destination of life. It's a tragedy that he tried to find a ferry all his life, but he didn't find a good pier in the end. But it is a pity that people commemorate him once, twice and ten times in his life. If he doesn't make any revolution at first, he will become a famous writer, translator, epitaph, calligrapher and famous doctor as long as he pulls out a hair from his body and nurtures it carefully. Aren't Liang Shiqiu and Xu Zhimo appreciated by later generations now? What if after the revolution, he turned the corner and retired to study? He can still be a master of literature. Chen Wangdao, his contemporaries, initially established the * * * Production Party with Chen Duxiu. Later, he retired to study rhetoric and wrote The Origin of Rhetoric, becoming the first person in China's rhetoric, and people remembered him. But Qiu Bai didn't do it. Just like a beautiful woman refuses to act, just like a tall man refuses to play ball. He wanted something else, but he didn't get it and was even misunderstood. It's just that a person has no talent, or just a little talent can become a thing. The most regrettable thing is that he only completed one thing in ten minutes, and even one thing was not completed, which is the regret of future generations. Look how well Yue Fei's poems are written. He is a literary talent, but the world only remembers his martial arts. Xin Qiji is very talented in the military. When he was young, he led 10 thousand rebels to vote against gold for the Song Dynasty, but the government of the Southern Song Dynasty didn't need it. He can only "see the sword drunk and dream back to the corner", and later generations only know his poetic talent. Qu Qiubai was a scholar, but he came back from the dead because of his political defeat. If he just died generously and didn't say anything, maybe he would have disappeared into the aura of history. But he said something that seemed redundant. He thinks exploration is more valuable than arrival. When Xiang Yu was defeated, although there was a ferry ahead, he refused to cross the river. If Xiang Yu was killed by Liu Bang, or crossed the Wujiang River after failure, it would not be as memorable as Linjiang's suicide. Xiang Yu committed suicide by raising his sword when facing the hope of life, and Qiu Bai raised his scalpel when he was about to become famous. Both of them pushed the value of life to a new height. A philosopher would rather give up his affairs and become his heart.

Autumn white is immortal.