This article is from WeChat official account:Youthology (ID: openyouthology001) , Guests of this issue:Yang Xiao (reporter, writer, backpacker, successively worked for Xinhua News Agency, “Southern People Weekly” “Mr. Fashion Esquire”, Harvard Nyman Scholar from 2013-2014.Published works: “Children” and “Re-Go: In Looking for Southwestern Associated University on Highways, Rivers, and Post Roads”), editor: Yang Shao, original title: “Yang Xiao: In Two Walking through the times, regaining the fragments of history | Youth, although but”, head picture from: Visual China
Whenever we talk about Southwest Associated University, we always think of the names like Wen Yiduo, Chen Yinke, Shen Congwen, Wang Zengqi, Deng Jiaxian, Yang Zhenning… As a temporary university during the eight-year war of resistance, it brought together China in that The most outstanding professors and young people of the era continue the salaries of education under difficult conditions.
But about the migration road of Southwest Associated University and its half-year in Changsha(formed by National Peking University, National Tsinghua University, and Private Nankai University in Changsha The established National Changsha Provisional University (hereinafter referred to as Changsha Lin University) is rarely described.
Eighty years later, as a backpacker young writer Yang Xiao, along the route of the “Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan Tour” composed of more than 300 teachers and students, mainly on foot, re-walked the UN General Assembly from Changsha. The westward migration road to Kunming. He gathered what he saw and heard along the way and the historical details reconstructed by searching a large number of historical materials to form this newly published book-“Revisiting: Finding Southwestern Associated University on Highways, Rivers, and Post Roads”.
Last year, in a non-fiction writing class,I learned about Yang Xiao’s ongoing writing plan, and I was full of expectations for this book at the time. It is like a legendary prelude. It precedes the stories that people talk about, and guides us unhurriedly, going to the west amidst uncertainty. It is both walking and action.
Starting from this book, I chatted with Teacher Yang Xiao about the predicament, exile and exploration of young people in the two eras, and how to open up their senses during travel and re-understand the surroundings and Along the way?
Why hit the road?
There are actually many accidents in choosing this path. At that time, I had just left the media industry for more than ten years, and my life came to the year of finding a way. At the beginning, I wanted to write about the history and changes of Chengdu-Kunming Railway, planning to walk along the railway from Kunming to Chengdu.
When I searched for the green train from Changsha to Kunming, I found the cities and towns in Xiangxi and Guizhou, including Guiyang, that I passed along the way. I haven’t been to any of them, so I wanted to walk around, and I just finished watching it. Teacher Luo Xin’s “From Dadu to Shangdu” wanted to say whether anyone in history has just walked the road from Hunan-Guizhou-Yunnan, so he thought of the Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan tour groups.
They set off in February 1938, and I set off in April 2018, starting from Changsha. Although I only stayed in Changsha for two days, I left quite a long space for it in the whole book.
The original intentions of the two eras are very different. They were forced to move westward as the war situation was deteriorating. I bid farewell to the end of the golden age of media and took the initiative to solve the problem.
When I started to leave Changsha, I posted a paragraph on my official account, which probably meant that I was on the road, with some doubts and curiosity. When a friend reposted it, he attached a paragraph, to the effect that Yang Xiao’s walk was a bit out of date, but I still admire you; others said that I was exile.
There is no lack of sympathy for the survivors in these encouraging words. But the behavior of “re-walking” is first of all interesting and interesting to me. Not only does it not feel out of place, but it feels too cool: the distance of more than 1,600 kilometers is more than 1,000 kilometers. And the whole process of walking is very enjoyable. It does not mean that I am carrying a heavy burden. As for whether walking has solved my confusion, I think this is an extra.
After working as a reporter for so many years, I am not satisfied with writing about 10,000 words anymore. I hope to pick upThe subsequent writing can be more integrated. I want to incorporate all my energy and interest, including the process of walking out physically, into my writing, so I have this book.
Guanzhuang-Nanmupu, a view of national highway © Yang Xiao
The youth of that era also had their confusion and fatigue
When I immerse myself in history and search for it, you will find that the youth of that era have more faces than just the “salvation” and monolithic state that we think of, although This is the background color of that era.
Changsha Linda opened school on November 1, 1937. In the following month, Shanghai and Nanjing fell one after another, which was quite a stimulus for them. About the second day after the fall of Nanjing, Hong Tong, chairman of the Student Union of Changsha Lin University, gave a speech on the playground of the Bible College in Leek Garden, mobilizing everyone to abandon their pens and go to the military instead of studying and go to the front line.
But students also have a lot of romantic imagination about the front line. For example, they will yearn for guerrilla warfare, thinking that it is more free, and feel that positional warfare is not feasible. Shen Congwen criticized this state in a short story because his younger brother was fighting on the front line, and he knew how cruel the front line was.
Besides, going to the front doesn’t just mean charging into battle, it’s full of all kinds of daily trivial tasks. So some people may come back before they reach the front line. That’s why in the academic world, the number of students at Changsha Lin University did not have an exact number, because the students kept going and coming back again.
They are in a huge wave of uncertainty: Should they go to school? Or go to war? There are others who are simply muddled, in the current language, “lie down.” Because the winter in Hunan is very cold, some students get up and hide in the quilt every day.I was frozen stiff, and I couldn’t go in reading in the library. Sometimes someone will suddenly have ambitions and vowed to eat the “Calculus” in their hands, but after a while, they get discouraged, and then they complain and feel that their qualifications are too bad to be fat in one bite.
These are all very real and vivid youth states, but in the past, I might not pay special attention to and think about their confusion.
A group photo of ten teachers in the Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan tour group
Using local chronicles to outline the neighborhood and changes of hometown
This time to re-go, we must not only meet with history, but also continue to encounter people in the present. While passing through Madiyi Township in Yuanling County, Hunan Province, I ran into an old man who was a five-guarantee household who was once responsible for compiling Madiyi’s township chronicles. Because they are all people who write, there will be resonance and connection invisibly. He showed me his own hometown chronicles, which were densely packed and beautifully written. And when I compared the version that was officially released later, I found that at least two places were deleted. This comparison is quite fun.
Whenever I go to a place, I will visit the local Shizhi Office and browse the local chronicles they provide. Local history not only means first-hand experience, it also rebuilds the connection between you and your hometown in another way.
I also re-acquainted my hometown from the local chronicles. My hometown is Hengyang, Hunan, where an extremely tragic defense of Hengyang took place in 1944. I learned from the county annals that the side of the Xiangjiang River where I grew up was actually the place where the Japanese army crossed the river. The city of Hengyang was on the west side of the Xiangjiang River. At that time, the Japanese army drove all the way from the east side of the river and had to pass through several crossing points to attack the city of Hengyang.
One of the river crossing points is near my house. There is an old camphor tree there. I used to go there to play. Now that the camphor tree is dead, the river no longer flows, and power stations have been built around.
After having this experience, I asked my elders again, only to find out that as a factory and mining unit, when the factory was built in 1958, a lot of bones were dug out in the ground. You don’t know what it is. Which side stayed. But these are pieces of history, scattered here and there, and someone needs to gather them together.
Nanmupu-Madiyi: Near Wuli Mountain, Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan tour groups once encountered banditry here © Yang Xiao
Sympathize with a tree and a river
I seem to have a natural interest in geography and hydrology. I have taken geography classes very easily since I was a child, and I seem to have a map of the world printed in my mind. Even for a long time, I thought everyone was like this. For example, when you talk about Venezuela, you can immediately mark it in your mind.
Therefore, the observation and description of the environment does not need to be specially mobilized. Like I am a character reporter, I have to do a lot of preparatory work in advance, and gradually become interested in the process of communicating with the interviewee. But when I saw a tree or a river, I would stand there blankly and watch it for a long time.
The rest of the Hunan, Guizhou and Yunnan tour groups were mostly inhumane. Many temples have also been renovated and rebuilt, but at some point, an old locust tree that is more than 200 years old will still stand there. I look at it, I imagine how many things passed under its nose and disappeared after these two hundred years.
When I walk along the national highway, I will also stare at the river and enter some anthropomorphic imaginations from time to time. In the Xiangxi area, the rivers all the way are dug sand, but the vitality of the river is very tenacious. As long as you leave the sand dug site for a while, its self-purification will start to work, and then it will soon become very clean. Some river sections have the same color as sapphires, and the sapphires are a little bit milky white. That’s what I saw in the plateau area.The colors I’ve visited, this look is quite magical.
Chong’an-Lushan, the mountain will start to pan over the Chong’an River © Yang Xiao
Cars expand the radius of activity, but walking expands the mental radius of people
This kind of experience can only be obtained by walking. The upgrade of transportation and the changes of roads have profoundly changed the way we view the scenery. In the past, the scenery outside the window of a green leather train slowly unfolded like a picture scroll, but if you sit on the high-speed rail, an ancient tower may pass by one frame, not even a second. The plane is more extreme, it only cares about departure and arrival.
I was reading the book “Stilwell and the American Experience in China” by the famous American historian Barbara W. Tuchman recently. She wrote that Stilwell went back and forth between China and the United States many times during the Anti-Japanese War. When there is no direct flight, flying is like jumping islands. He has to fly from the United States to Cuba, then across the Atlantic, to Europe, then from Europe to Egypt, and then from Cairo to Tehran, Tehran to New Delhi, New Delhi. To Yunnan, and finally fly from Yunnan to Chongqing, the whole journey will last more than ten days.
So wherever he goes, he can stop and feel the local customs. And now, the efficiency of travel is undoubtedly greatly improved. This is of course a good thing, but it also lost a lot of things to a certain extent.
The highway is the same. Compared with the national road, it is standardized, efficient, and rude. The national highway respects the mountains and rivers along the way. It will spread along the mountains, but the highway is more direct. For example, a hole and a bridge are built between the mountain and the mountain. Try to connect the two ends in a straight line.
So when I got used to walking with my feet, I found that places that I can’t go by car are actually reachable. For a long time, I stayed in this kind of inertia. For example, I saw a grotto 26 kilometers away from me, which is not too far.The past is fine.
Although cars have greatly expanded the radius of human activities, walking has expanded my mental radius. I feel that I am more free instead of having to rely on a certain means of transportation.
This article is from WeChat official account:Youthology (ID: openyouthology001) , guest of this issue: Yang Xiao, editor: Yang Shao