1956, Jiang Mei returned to his alma mater after a six-year absence as a new cadre. The dormitory arranged for her by the General Affairs Office is the room where she lived when she was at school. Everything in the room was the same as before. She found the small box she put behind the statue of Jesus, which contained a silver ring with two red beans. She picked up the two bright red beans, and the past rose from her heart like a layer of smoke, and tears covered her eyes.
1948, Jiang Mei was a sophomore, and two people came into her life. One is her roommate, Xiao Su, a senior majoring in physics, and the other is Qi Hong, a classmate of Xiao Su. Xiao Su gradually enlightened Jiang Mei's revolutionary thought, encouraged her to join the choir to sing the Yellow River Chorus, read Ai Qing's poems in the new poetry club, took her to read revolutionary books, invited her to play Downey in The Torch at a poetry reading, and invited her to take part in wall newspaper copying, parade and rescue. Seeing the revolutionary power from me, I realized that Xiao's life is linked with millions of people, and it is very hot. It seems that even stones can be warm, which leads to the identity of the producer of * * *.
At the same time, Qi Hong, who was born in a capitalist family and had a white face like Zhang Xiuqing's ivory, won the love of Jiang Mei with his accomplishments in music, literature and art, and they fell in love. However, Jiang Mei felt the ideological gap between them more and more. In fact, as early as the beginning of love, Jiang Mei vaguely felt that she and Qi Hong would never agree in some ways.
Gradually, in addition to her own doubts, the views of her mother and Xiao Su made the "gap" in her love heart even more impossible to fill. Endless quarreling and crying make love a torment for two people. She was caught in an inevitable struggle. He came into her life in some way, and she never knew how to get rid of him. Qi Hong, who is bent on monopolizing Jiang Mei, is more anxious and bossy.
On the eve of liberation, Xiao Su was suddenly arrested, and Qi Hong's reaction made Jiang Mei clearly realize that the gap between them could not be bridged. Meanwhile, Jiang Mu told Jiang Mei the truth about her father's death. It turned out that fifteen years ago, Fu Jiang was also taken away for ideological crimes and never came back. The death of his father, his mother's tears and personal family tragedy made Jiang Mei more aware of his life choices. Finally, under the interweaving of national hatred and domestic hatred, she resolutely refused to go to the United States with Qi Hong, ending their love with "I don't regret it".
Extended data:
Creative background:
Zong Pu, a writer, started writing novels in college. After 1950, she felt that the scope of literature was getting narrower and narrower, and she could only write about workers and peasants, with a pattern. She thinks it's better not to write something formulaic. 1956 after putting forward the policy of "letting a hundred flowers blossom", she felt that she could write according to her own wishes. Therefore, combining her own experiences and feelings, she created novels with her familiar intellectuals and campus life as the theme, showing the inner struggle of intellectuals at the crossroads of great changes in the times. At the end of that year, she finished the novel Red Bean. After the red beans were sent to the editorial department of People's Literature, the editors passed the novel without objection, and published it as a creative embodiment of the policy of "letting a hundred flowers blossom" in the July issue of People's Literature, "Innovative Extra Large" 1957.
Song Rushan, an associate professor in the Chinese Department of China Culture University, commented on this novel;
Jiang Mei, Qi Hong and Xiao Su are all intellectuals in universities, but their family background, attitude towards life and pursuit of life are different. Generate's life sparks from the gathering of three people interweave into Jiang Mei's growth process, which makes readers follow Jiang Mei's mood ups and downs in the reading process. This aria not only comes from the humanitarian spirit in Zong Pu's novels, but also comes from her insistence on "sincerity" and "elegance", which is what distinguishes Red Bean from the mainstream literature which was conceptualized and formulated in the 1960s.