——Reading "Heroes Win the Championship" casually

Feng Yulei

At the beginning of the new year, I received a recommendation from Xiang Qing for the long historical and cultural novel "Heroes Winning the Championship", which is about to be published, and I would like to write a preface. The author is his close friend and former colleague Mr. Ren Huaipu. Mr. Ren worked as an art educator at a middle school and spent decades working on the novel in his spare time. Xiang Qing has been a good friend and brother of mine for many years, although he is not engaged in literary creation, he is a kind person, capable of doing things, has many friends in the cultural circle, and has a good artistic vision. In more than 20 years of communication, this is the first time Xiang Qing has intervened in this kind of matter, and he must have thought it through. So, I read the electronic version of "Heroes Won" on my computer for the first time.

I was a little shocked by the rich cultural message that came to my face from the novel. Obviously, the author read a lot of hand-me-down documents and cultural classics in the process of creation, which is enough to support his grand narrative against the background of the history of the Qin state.

The Qin Dynasty was a very important turning point in Chinese history. According to the general table of Chinese history, the pre-Qin period experienced the ancient cultural period of Chao, Suiren, Fuxi, Shennong (Yandi), Xuanyuan (Yellow Emperor), Yao, Shun, Yu and other eras, and then to the Xia, Shang and Zhou periods. The ancient history system of "Three Emperors and Five Emperors, Xia, Shang and Zhou" constructed by Sima Qian's "Historical Records" of the Han Dynasty has been deeply rooted for thousands of years, such as the "History of the Pre-Qin Dynasty": "The traces of the civilization of our country can be recruited from the nest, Sui, Xi, and agriculture. In the early 20s of the last century, the trend of "ancient history speculation" emerged, and Chinese archaeological researchers were committed to reconstructing China's ancient history by taking the road of archaeology. After more than 60 years of research, the evolution of ancient Chinese Chinese is divided into three stages: ancient state, fang state and empire, and has gradually become the mainstream understanding in academic circles.

The archaeological community calls the earliest country in ancient China as the "ancient country", roughly from 5500 to 4500 years ago, and this stage is called "all countries" and "ten thousand states" in ancient Chinese classics, which is equivalent to the era of the Yellow Emperor, Zhuan Xuan, and Emperor Yu in the five emperors of ancient history and legends. The ancient kingdom is a stable, independent political entity that is higher than the tribe, and is generally characterized by the worship of theocracy, which is most fully manifested in the "Hongshan Ancient Kingdom" and the "Liangzhu Ancient Kingdom". The Fang Kingdom stage from about 4500 years ago to 221 BC Qin unification, roughly equivalent to the ancient history of the legend of Yao, Shun and Xia, Shang, three dynasties, although the basic structure of society in this period is still maintained by blood relations, but the concept of "land" has begun to sprout, with royal power as the core of the ritual system continues to develop and complete, has become one of the outstanding characteristics of Chinese civilization.

In 221 B.C., after the reign of King Yingzheng of Qin, a famous statesman, strategist and reformer in ancient China, he proclaimed himself Qin Shi Huang, laying the political pattern of China for more than 2,000 years until the end of the imperial era in 1911 AD. In December 2023, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage held a press conference to introduce the latest achievements of the Chinese civilization exploration project: from 5800 to 3800 years ago, it is divided into the ancient kingdom era, and further subdivided into three stages: the first stage is around 5800-5200 years ago, the second stage is around 5200-4300 years ago, and the third stage is around 4300-3800 years ago. China's current description of ancient history is: 9,000-10,000 years of cultural history (represented by painted pottery culture and jade culture), 5,000 years of civilization history (represented by complete sets of jade ritual vessels) and 3,500 years of written history (represented by oracle bone inscriptions).

Although the ancient era announced by the latest achievements of the Chinese civilization exploration project is only 300 years from the era of written history, these 300 years are an important stage in the transformation of Chinese civilization from cultural relics and image narratives to written records, and from oral tradition to documentary materials. Chinese literature records that there were ten thousand kingdoms in Xia, a thousand kingdoms in Shang, and a hundred kingdoms in Zhou, and that Qin Shi Huang unified the world to implement a centralized system, burning books and pit Confucianism, so that the bearers of a large number of important documents, historical materials and oral history materials "came to an abrupt end", and the losses were immeasurable. In this context, we can consider the value of the long historical novel "Heroes Winning the Championship" to understand its value. Yan Fu, an emerging enlightenment thinker in the late Qing Dynasty, said in "The Theory of Heavenly Evolution": "The three difficulties of translation: faith, reach, and elegance. It is very difficult to ask for their faith! Gu Xinyi, if it is not reached, although it is translated, it is still not translated, and it is still up to Shangyan. He is aimed at translation, and also has reference significance for the creation of historical and cultural novels: "letter" means that literary interpretation cannot deviate from historical facts and does not deviate from it as much as possible, and "da" means that the narrative is not confined to historical records, and must be smooth and clear; "Elegant" means that the text should be quaint, concise and elegant. "Heroes Win the Crown" adopts the traditional structure of Zhanghui novels, and has rigorously researched the historical figures and documents involved, and even marked pinyin for some names that may be misunderstood. I can't do my homework at this point, and I can't be in awe. Who would have thought that the art teacher working in the county middle school, in addition to the heavy teaching work and social activities, has been boiling oil and paying for lamps for decades, and searching for the slush claws close to the historical truth in the vast sea of literature and classics. The wheel of history is vigorous, the long river of history is rushing, the smoke of history is continuous, from prehistory to the written era, how many complicated historical stories are there? How many can be recorded in artifacts and texts? And how much can be interpreted or expressed correctly? "It is better to believe in the book, than to have no book", which ones are credible and which ones are doubtful in the historical materials cannot be relied on by imagination, but can only be down-to-earth and stupid. At the time of writing, I have not communicated with Xiang Qing or Brother Ren Huaipu on this, but from the grandeur of the text (900,000 words), the fluency of the text, the accuracy of the names and the rigor of the dictionaries, we can imagine how many good times Brother Ren Huaipu has slipped through his fingertips in the process of hooking and sinking historical materials? Whether I write the Dunhuang novels "Dunhuang Centennial Festival", "Dunhuang: Six Thousand Lands or Beyond", "Dunhuang Testament", "Wild Horses, Dust", etc., or the jade culture archaeological mythological novels "Bear Totem" and "Yuwang Book", etc., I have done a lot of homework in terms of literature, and I understand Ren Huaipu's firm will, indifference and perseverance. What is particularly commendable is that he studied historical classics and wrote novels out of interest and love, if there was the slightest interference from social factors, this brilliant masterpiece would not have been completed, and it would not have been possible to maintain a serious and pious attitude from beginning to end, from sentences to punctuation, not to mention the arrangement and narration of characters and events!

The words of "Heroes Winning the Championship" are tough, and when I read it, I can't help but think of the heroic agitation of Su Dongpo and Xin Qiji. Yu Wenbao's "Continuation of the Blowing Sword" recorded: "Dongpo is in Yutang Day, and there are shoguns who are good at singing (singing), because they ask: What are my words better than willow words?" He said: "Liu Lang has no choice but to hold the red tooth clapper and sing 'Yang Liu'an, Xiaofeng Wanyue'; The public is overwhelmed. Guo Moruo wrote a couplet for the Xin Qiji Memorial Shrine in Daming Lake Park, comparing Xin Qiji to Su Dongpo, and praising Xin's bold and majestic style: "Iron plate copper pipa, following Dongpo, singing the great river to the east; Meiqin is sad, the Southern Song Dynasty of Hebei, and Mo flies south with the wild goose. Therefore, I gave the main title of this preface: "Heroes are never tragic, regardless of merit to ask the common people", the historical figures written by Brother Ren Huaipu, such as Chen Sheng, Wu Guang, Meng Tian, Wang Juan, Li Si, Li You, Ying Kui, Wang Ben, Zhang Han, Wang Li, Fan Zeng, Zhang Liang, Xiao He, Chen Ping, Li Shiqi, Lu Jia, Cao Shen, Fan Xu, Xiahou Ying, Zhou Bo, Guan Ying, Li Shang, Ji Xin, Huang Bu, Peng Yue, Ji Bu, Zhong Liwu, Huan Chu, Yu Ying, etc., are full of a generous and tragic heroic spirit, and they shoulder the "morality" with "iron shoulders" It is the noble character of the Chinese nation that dares to be the first in the world and sacrifice one's life for righteousness, and even many women such as Meng Jiangnu, Lu Pheasant, Yu Ji, Ying Xiaojun, and Li Can also look heroic in the gale.

Writing about the heroic ideals carried by the group portraits of heroes is also reflecting the literary ideals or life visions of Brother Ren Huaipu.

As a diligent grassroots educator in western China, how difficult it is to adhere to an ideal that is very different from real life while dedicating oneself to one's work and supporting one's family.

On July 23, 2011, I visited Liancheng, the ancient city, and the Triangle City with the Minqin cultural workers, and in the afternoon, I saw a variety of psammophytes around the Triangle City. This plant is drought-resistant, heat-resistant, cold-resistant, salinity-alkaline, so it can survive in the temperate desert. After being tempered by the wind and sand, some of the branches of the shuttle look like fossils to the touch, and even if they die, they will not fall! This stubborn spirit is touching, isn't this how many people in the west live? During that expedition, we also went to the Qingtu Lake area, which was still surging with sand at that time, and Mr. Jue, a friend of Minqin, picked a plant fruit called sheep's horn vine or sheep's milk horn, which was very delicious. I exclaimed, "How generous the earth is, so bitter to exist, and so sweet to offer!" ”

I once wrote an art criticism article "The Mental Image of the West Surging in the Depths of the Soul" to Professor Xiang Jun, an ink artist from Minqin and vice president of the Jiangsu Academy of Chinese Painting, talking about the western in the geographical sense, the western in dreams and the western brewing in the feeling: "The western in the geographical sense gives people an intuitive impression: the bare sun and the warm sunshine, the undulating, layered majestic mountains, the rolling desert, the boundless grassland, the large blank Gobi, the Gobi, gloomy and generous, The thick and magnificent ancient walls of the ancient city, etc., these objects stimulate people's perspectives with different styles of flying brilliance, such as the ancient wood hitting the bell, Pu Zhen is majestic. They persecute us at the same time to show great energy and passion, their magnificence can easily make people into the age of mythology, into the heroic epic, into the long historical and cultural tunnel of time and space. Moreover, the color, weather, and personality of the west are also moving, withering, perfecting, and renewing. If the snow-capped mountains are white, they will be white and independent, the grasslands will be green, they will be green and exciting, the Gobi will be black, they will be mysterious and far-reaching, the desert will be yellow, they will be overwhelmed, and the ancient road that the wheels of history have run over, the storm of camel bells smashing, and the red willows and white grasses that have witnessed the vicissitudes of the sea, all of which are simple, pure, bright and persistent. These geographical elements carve the temperament of the direction army with the wind knife and frost, and nourish the spirit of the direction army with the patience of ancient pottery and wine storage. When many outsiders who have never been to the west or have visited the west only stay in the desolation, backwardness and the glory of the classical period, the direction army of Minqin, who was born in the oasis of the Sand Sea, began to taste the beauty and charm of the mountains and rivers in the west with fascination. "Most westerners with dreams are destined to survive in a whirlpool of contrasts between material poverty and cultural richness from birth. If we only dwell on these natural factors, then the Direction Army will be excited, lost, excited, and lost like a monkey pulling a bud in the valley, like most people who feel the West mechanically. However, since childhood, Xiang Jun has opened his heart and felt the west from a small mountain village in Minqin, and later expanded to the Hexi Corridor, to Lanzhou, to Beijing, and then to Suzhou. This kind of persistence is like a kuafu chasing the sun, and it is also like a miner who is training gold panning. On the other hand, he stubbornly, tenaciously, and almost madly obsessed with the marginalized west and the west of his dreams. ”

I am more satisfied with these two passages, not so much about the direction of the army, but about the survival groups in the west, who live and struggle with indomitable will. Without this kind of feeling and will, it is impossible for Brother Ren to spend decades to complete this masterpiece in a small town at the foot of Qilian Mountain. Therefore, the act of writing itself is like some kind of metaphor, an independent existence like Saxon and Populus euphratica. Such a pure creator, the results of dedication can stand the test of time. The biggest difference between "Heroes Winning the Championship" and most pure fiction novels is that it is non-entertaining, and the grand narrative process of the history before and after the founding of the Qin Dynasty is always full of positive and noble spirit, which is the excavation and inheritance of the excellent national cultural heritage and the great creation through the artistic creation of novels. On October 15, 2014, the chairman said in his speech at the symposium on literary and artistic work: "Culture is an important force for the survival and development of the nation. Every leap forward in human society and every sublimation of human civilization is accompanied by historical progress in culture. The Chinese nation has a history of more than 5,000 years of civilization, and China has always been one of the world's great powers before modern times. In the course of thousands of years of historical changes, the Chinese nation has never been smooth sailing, and has encountered countless hardships and hardships, but we have all survived and come through, and one of the very important reasons is that generations of Chinese sons and daughters have cultivated and developed a unique, broad and profound Chinese culture, which has provided strong spiritual support for the Chinese nation to overcome difficulties and continue to thrive. …… The needs of the people are the fundamental value of the existence of literature and art. Whether or not we can produce excellent works is fundamentally determined by whether we can write for the people, express our feelings for the people, and express our feelings for the people. All literary and artistic works that caused a sensation at that time and were passed on to future generations reflect the requirements of the times and the voice of the people. ”

The only thing that is certain now is that Mr. Ren Huaipu, after decades of hard work and hard work, has cultivated such a unique cultural endowment and spiritual temperament of the shuttle tree, which stands quietly in the wilderness, even if he doesn't say anything, it has made people feel a lot of emotion.

These words of mine are just some personal feelings, and I would like to throw bricks and lead to jade!