"Quick, copy the poem!"

"Did you bring more pens? Lend me one. Pen & Fun & Pavilion www.biquge.info"

"I love this poem so much, it's so well written!"

“……”

The female students in the auditorium didn't listen to what Zhou Hexuan was talking about at all, and they only buried their heads in copying new poems.

As a love poem, "To the Oak Tree" has neither lingering poignancy nor the warmth of vows, but its attitude towards love can be unanimously approved by both male and female readers.

"I must be a kapok near you, with you as the image of a tree."

"We share cold waves, wind and thunder, thunderbolts, and we share fog, drift, and neon. It seems to be separated forever, but they are dependent on each other for life. ”

Tan Yanqiu sat in the audience, muttering these words repeatedly, her eyes flashing with inexplicable brilliance.

Isn't this the love she longs for? Share weal and woe with your lover, support each other, and grow old hand in hand. Enjoy love but be able to keep yourself, don't be a vassal of a man, don't be a canary in a cage.

"Mr. Zhou really understands women, and he said everything our daughter's family wanted to say in the poem." Chen Biyun laughed in a low voice.

Tan Yanqiu muttered, "He definitely likes women with independent personalities." ”

Chen Biyun said: "Among so many scholars, I admire Mr. Zhou, and think about us women everywhere. ”

At the moment when the lecture ended, dozens of girls rushed to the stage and asked Zhou Hexuan for an autograph with the poem manuscript they had just copied. Some bold girls even asked Zhou Hexuan in person if he was married.

Tan Yanqiu couldn't squeeze through, so she had no choice but to return to the dormitory, write an article and submit it to "Women" magazine, and attached Zhou Hexuan's poem "To the Oak Tree".

More than 10 years ago, when Yuan Shikai was in power, he was dissatisfied with the press reports on the "Song Jiaoren case" and the "Second Revolution," and brazenly purged newspapers and periodicals that held opposing views. Of the country's more than 500 newspapers, only 139 remained, at least 24 journalists were killed, and more than 60 were arrested and imprisoned.

It is known as "the ugly disaster report" in history.

An interesting result of the scandal was the rise of women's publications. Because there is no risk in this thing, the authorities are not strict in censorship, so much so that some literary journals are published under the banner of women's magazines.

Shanghai's Women's magazine is one of them. At the beginning, it mainly published housekeeping content, advocating women to be good wives and mothers in the new era.

During the May Fourth Movement, new scholars took over the magazine Women, advocating women's emancipation and revolution, and even Lu Xun often contributed articles to this magazine. However, just the year before last, the editor-in-chief Zhang Xichen played too much, and when discussing sexual morality, he actually said that as long as it does not harm others and society, monogamy or monogamy and two husbands are acceptable.

This view has not only drawn bitter criticism from conservatives, but also from other scholars of the New Culture Movement.

Seeing that the matter was getting bigger, the Commercial Press, the behind-the-scenes boss of "Women's Magazine", had no choice but to remove Zhang Xichen from his position as editor-in-chief, and the style of the magazine regressed greatly.

Today, Women's magazine mainly publishes the school life of female students and the experience of married women running their families, which has won the support of more female readers, who used to be too high-end and cutting-edge, but now they have changed to the low-end route, and the sales are actually better.

Just as Zhou Hexuan boarded the ship and left Shanghai, Du Zhuotian, the editor-in-chief of Women's magazine, happened to read a manuscript by a female student, Tan Yanqiu.

The article was written so-so, mainly about her lectures, and some of Zhou Hexuan's views were also cited. Du Zhitian didn't take it seriously, but when he saw the appendix "To the Oak Tree" in the back, he immediately became excited.

"What a poem!"

Du Zhutian read it repeatedly, and finally simply picked up the pen and wrote a poetry review himself.

"Zhou Hexuan's new poems are novel in conception, magnificent in imagery, exquisite in language, self-contained, and have a distinctive personal style. "To the Oak Tree" uniquely chooses two figures, 'oak tree' and 'kapok', which are metaphors for men and women, respectively......

The oak tree is tall and majestic, rich in manly charm. And comparing women to kapok is also enchanting. The poem shouts out in a feminine voice, not to be a flower that tends to be inflammatory, not to be a bird singing in the shade of greenery, not to be a wishful spring, not to be a mountain that blindly supports oak trees. From these images, the central theme of the poem is expressed: that is, women should not lose themselves in love, and love needs to be based on equality of personality, mutual respect, and affection; The goal is to support each other, stand together through thick and thin, and work together with cold and warm.

This poem uses novel and magnificent metaphors to appropriately and appropriately express the ideal concept of love in the poet's heart, giving people unlimited space for reverie. What is even more rare is the idea of women's emancipation contained in it. Women's emancipation is not a blind deviance, but a ...... of persistence and principles, responsibilities and obligations."

At the time of the publication of this issue of Women's magazine, Zhou Hexuan had already returned to Tianjin, unaware of the sensation caused by "To the Oak Tree" in the southern women's circles.

As soon as this poem came out, it was reprinted by many women's magazines such as "Women's Times", "Women's World", and "Chinese Women's World", and was hailed as the greatest and most progressive love poem in China. New poetry groups and literary societies from all over the South have discussed and studied "To the Oak Tree".

In the following 20 years, "oak" and "kapok" also took on new meanings, and many female writers gave themselves pen names with the word "cotton".

Since Zhou Hexuan had already joined the Crescent Society, he was regarded as a poet of the Crescent School. Later, Liang Shiqiu commented: The poem "To the Oak Tree" is a rare masterpiece that overwhelms the entire New Moon love poem.

At the same time, Lu Yichun, the director of the Chinese and Western Girls' School, also expounded on Zhou Hexuan's views of "self-esteem, self-improvement, self-love, and self-reliance" in his contribution to the Women's Times.

"Women's Times" referred to it as the "Four-Self Principle" and characterized it as "the standard of women's virtue in the new era", and also praised Zhou Hexuan as "a friend of women" and a "strange man of the Republic of China".

Nowadays, the women's liberation movement in the south is becoming more and more intense, and the "Four-Self principle" has been unanimously recognized by women's associations in various places, and it has been widely disseminated with the development of the movement. Women should be self-respecting, self-reliant, self-loving, and self-reliant, and gradually be accepted and supported by the people in a subtle way.

Even those conservatives have great respect for the "four-self principle." Because the "self-love" in it is different from those feminist ideas that advocate complete emancipation, it is more in line with traditional social moral standards.

For a while, people seemed to have forgotten Zhou Hexuan's identity as a historian, orator, writer, and newspaperman, and only remembered that he was a poet and feminist activist.

But no matter what, Zhou Hexuan's title of "Friend of Women" cannot be removed. Four years later, when Shanghai's "Declaration" selected the "Beautiful Men of the Republic of China", although Zhou Hexuan could only barely squeeze into the top five, according to the questionnaire, more than 60% of women voted for him.

Zhang Ailing said in an interview in her later years: "When I was in middle school, Mr. Zhou was recognized as the ideal lover of girls, and his every move would attract attention. Whenever Mr. Zhou's works come out, he will inevitably see countless female students in the bookstore. ”