Dreams and Tears

Dreams are a part of life.

There are two great writers who are accustomed to describing dreams as a part of life, one is Bing Xin and the other is Ba Jin. Bing Xin loves to have sweet dreams, while the latter loves to have nightmares.

In any case, people know many things and people from their articles describing dreams; these things and people once made China's best intellectuals active day and night, with thousands of thoughts, from another side It shows the exploration, pursuit, suffering and feelings of love and hatred of the Chinese people in the 20th century.

In the autumn of 1995, I went to Weihai to participate in a writing session. The theme was "Man and Nature." During the meeting, we had the opportunity to go to the Liu Mansion to visit the Sino-Japanese War Memorial Hall. After the visit, the curator asked the writers to write inscriptions. After everyone had dispersed, I picked up a pen and quietly wrote a small piece:

Weihai, do you know how many tears Bing Xin has shed for you!

I put down my pen and looked up at the receptionist accompanying me. I saw the confusion on their faces. Obviously, they didn't quite understand why they wrote such a string of words.

At the end of the meeting, the chairman of the meeting asked me to say a few words, and I talked about the writing I had done for the memorial hall.

In 1994, it was the 100th anniversary of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894. Mr. Bing Xin had wanted to write an article to commemorate it since spring. Once I went to see her, and as soon as I met her she said: "I want to write a big work!"

When she said this, her expression was very serious, and she was definitely not joking. I was really surprised. She has not written long articles in recent years. One of her articles is short and the other is short. Almost all of her articles are of a thousand words, and the shortest one is only about fifty words. Writing short articles has been one of her literary ideas in recent years. She advocates that articles should be concise and short, never talk nonsense, have no empty words, and be crisp and clear.

This time, there is actually a "big work", which is amazing!

Mr. Bing Xin said that she wanted to write about the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Nowadays, there are very few people who know the actual situation of the Sino-Japanese War. She said that she knows quite a lot. It was her father who told her, and her father’s friends who were naval admirals told her, and they were all participants in the Sino-Japanese War. Her mother was also an indirect victim of the Sino-Japanese War.

Mr. Bing Xin began to carefully and enthusiastically prepare to create this major work. I saw several different volumes of Chinese naval history on her desk, all quite thick. She also asked the Navy Memorial to send someone to her home. She asked these naval officers who came in detail about the situation of the navy, past and present, such as whether there were admirals and whether there were cruisers in the navy now. The officers were surprised as to why Bing Xin was so familiar with the navy. The old lady smiled and said: "I love the navy the most. I grew up among the sailors."

However, Mr. Bing Xin did not finish it, not because of illness, but because of crying.

Every time she picked up the pen, she cried.

I cried so much that I couldn’t write at all.

While crying, she said: "I'm so angry! I'm so angry! It's so hateful! It's so hateful!" She meant that the Japanese imperialist invaders were so hateful.

I have experienced Mr. Bing Xin crying several times.

That was a real Mr. Bing Xin cry.

It was a real cry, and it was scary. Covering your face with your hands, howling, bursting into tears, heart-wrenching, unabashed, no matter who you are in front of, it is fierce, like a volcano erupting, it is a display of the most sincere feelings.

From now on I know what sorrow and great sorrow are.

In the summer of August, I went to see him again. Her family members quietly told me that she cried again in the early morning because she wanted to write about the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1894, but she could not bring up the pen and was completely unable to write. I was stunned and deeply moved by her hatred.

Later, Mr. Bing Xin fell ill and was hospitalized.

It is a pity that such a great work could not be written. I dare not say that it must be a masterpiece, but with Mr. Bing Xin’s sincerity in attitude, sharpness of thought, and clarity of writing, it will definitely be a work of hard work, with blood and tears dripping from every word. If there is deep hatred and hatred, there must be great love. This is the basis for producing good works.

When Mr. Wu Wenzao died of illness 10 years ago, many friends and students came to express their condolences. Mr. Bing Xin never shed tears in front of anyone. Everyone knows that she and Mr. Wu are a model loving couple. She hid her tears in her heart and spent the most painful days calmly. Later, she wrote a long commemorative article, but the text was very lively and she also wrote a lot of Mr. Wu's jokes. It can be seen that she did not shed tears easily.

Mr. Bing Xin’s grief is all for his lovely friends, for the troubled China, and for the humiliation and disaster of the nation. It has been like this so many times. She is a real person, frank and transparent, and the tears she sheds are her poetry, the most intense, broad-based, selfless, unrestrained, and lyrical poetry. Every word is powerful and sonorous.

The stories I told greatly moved my colleagues at home and abroad. None of them had heard of it before. Everyone felt sorry for their husband's failure to complete that masterpiece, thinking it was a great loss to contemporary Chinese literature. They hoped that the old man would recover soon and finally put this century-old story on paper. Her biggest wish was fulfilled, and it was also everyone's wish. 's greatest wish.

Dreams are a source of creation.

Mr. Bing Xin likes to write good works in the early morning. His thoughts seem to flow directly from his dreams. When he writes them down, he becomes a good article. "Sickbed Talk", "The Little Kingfisher in My Dream", and "Where is My Home", which are recognized as Bing Xin's masterpieces in recent years, all fall into this category.

In dreams, there is joy and pain; there is family affection and parting; there is success and failure. They are the warp and weft of dreams. They weave a bright and colorful beautiful dusk, making a tall canopy for the endless life.

Mr. Bing Xin told me many stories from his early years in bits and pieces, all related to the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. From my observation, these stories of hers find their way into her articles sooner or later. There are countless similar examples. I believe that this is probably a rule: most of the stories that have appeared repeatedly in the mind are not too far away from being written down on paper in the future.

I think those stories told by Mr. Bing Xin may be some valuable units in the "big works". Maybe it is they that made the old man cry more than once.

In the early years of the Chinese Navy, the majority were from Fujian. Naturally, a large proportion of Fuzhou naval officers died in the Weihai Battle of the Sino-Japanese War of 1891-1894. There were many white notices for mourning on the main street in Fuzhou. There was a house with this ominous death notice posted on the door almost every few doors. Bing Xin's father, Mr. Xie Baozhang, was a top student at the Tianjin Naval Academy. He later served in the Beiyang Navy and served as the second gunnery officer on the German-made long-distance cruiser "Laiyuan". He was newly married at the time, and his wife's surname was Yang, who came from a wealthy family in Fuzhou. They didn't have kids yet. This newlywed wife looks quiet but has a strong temperament. Faced with national and family crises, she secretly carried a "big cigarette" on her body, preparing to commit suicide by taking poison once the white notice was posted on her door, and follow her husband who sacrificed his life for the country. She was silent all day long, calmly waiting for her fate, which made everyone who saw her feel sad and heartbroken for her. The kind-hearted father-in-law saw this and privately asked his two nieces, who were about the same age as her, to follow her every step of the way and guard her day and night to prevent any unexpected events. This kind of living with thunder lasted for hundreds of days until the husband returned from the battle defeated. The image of this frail Chinese wife is very typical. She is the representative of those housewives who are struggling to support every family that is about to break up at the critical moment of national survival. She is Bing Xin's mother.

At this time, Bing Xin's father was fighting the Japanese army on the waters of Dalian, southern Liaoning. His battleship "Laiyuan" fired several Chinese and Japanese cannons and caught fire in many places.

His comrades suffered heavy casualties. One of his fellow sailors was hit by a cannonball and his intestines flew to the chimney of the warship and hung there. When burying the body after the war, his comrades tore off the dried intestines from the chimney and stuffed them into his stomach. Bing Xin's father later told the story of this martyr's death to little Bing Xin many times, saying that his death was extremely heroic and a symbol of the unyielding spirit of Chinese soldiers.

After some repairs in Lushun, the "Laiyuan" returned to Weihai with Ding Ruchang's fleet, and was surrounded by the Japanese army on land at Liugong Island. The "Laiyuan" main gun exerted great power in the battle, destroying the Nanbang fort that had been occupied by the Japanese army and posed a great threat to the Beiyang Fleet. Later, the "Laiyuan" was attacked by a Japanese torpedo and was sunk. Xie Baozhang swam back to Liugong Island. Shortly thereafter, the Beiyang Navy was completely wiped out. Li Hongzhang was forced to sign the Treaty of Shimonoseki, which was humiliating and humiliating the country.

More than six years later, this middle-aged naval officer named Xie Baozhang took his one-year-old daughter Xie Wanying to Yantai, not far from Weihai, and founded the Yantai Naval Academy, determined to serve the country and avenge its shame. . He made the little girl dress up in boy's clothes, taught her how to ride a horse, took her on a warship, listened to military music and watched flags being waved, and instilled in her young mind the heroic spirit of a man fighting on the battlefield. This little girl was Ms. Bing Xin, the future great writer. When she was 95 years old, the most important thing she dreamed of was to record the evocative history of blood and tears told by her fathers when she was a teenager.

If nothing else, just take a look at her childhood life experience with her father in the naval academy, and just listen to her cries that have been accumulated for a century, you will clearly understand what kind of person she is, because, Ultimately, life determines everything.

This is history, without any ambiguity. Therefore, we have to thank her for her experience, which allowed us to see the soul of the nation and the true words steamed out of blood.

Dreams are full of personal color, and dreams are personality.

Mr. Bing Xin loves to think, and calls himself "daydream", daydreaming. This may be the quality a writer should have. One day, I went to the hospital to see her and saw her looking up at the white ceiling. She said: "There is a colorful cloud in front of me. It is colorful and changes all the time. It is very interesting." When asked why she was like this, she replied: "I just had a blood transfusion, maybe from an artist." She laughed first.

She loves to have sweet dreams, she is so beautiful and refined that she is envious of her. Balao said that he would never dream of such a beautiful thing.

This is the lovely Bing Xin - never losing her innocent heart, always pursuing perfection and beauty, always full of vigor, no matter how many difficulties and obstacles there are, fearless, having "five not to be afraid", very detached. . Her mind is like the sea, which can make waves or be as calm as a mirror. She can wipe away her tears and still smile at life. She believes that the future is bright. As long as she is dedicated, as long as she is down to earth, and as long as she starts with education, mankind will surely move forward.

The dream testified for her.