Chapter 333: Mischief for a living
Long before boarding the foreign steamer anchored on the Huangpu River to meet Prime Minister Tawan, Qin Fangquan's fantasy and poetic mind must have painted for himself more than once such a fascinating picture as Sangu Thatched House or Weishui Fishing. I don't know the true situation of the first meeting between the two, and from the fact that Qin Fangquan has been secretive about this matter since then, it is estimated that Tawan did not have much impression of the sharp and long-term admiring visitor who appeared in front of him. Including many years later, when he became the prime minister of Thailand, when he saw Qin Fangquan, who had been recommended by Chen Tiefu to serve as his artistic secretary, in the parliamentary hall in Bangkok, he only showed polite courtesy, and he didn't see that there was a special borrowing, and even whether he remembered that he had met at the beginning was also a question. This is obviously a big blow to the latter's usual arrogance, conceit, and full of economy in the stomach. You must know that for this meeting, Qin Fangquan had thought hard in advance. No matter in the clothing, topics, words, posture, and intonation used, a lot of brains have been used, including in the big black leather bag around him, maybe there is a "Longzhong Pair" and "Zizhi Tongjian" hidden! Think about it, can a super cool dress like "front hair full forehead, back hair shawl, and wearing a red cape" be an ordinary person? Without the level of Han Xin and Zhuge Liang, who would dare to do this? And this Tawan actually ignored this, and after only a few cold words, he served tea to the guests on the grounds that there was something to deal with. Of course, all this had reason to make Qin Fangquan deeply frustrated and angry—to be precise, to cause his grumbling to flare up again. In just three days, this Zhuge Liang Jiang Ziya, who came to the 20th century to help the world, resigned in a fit of anger and threatened to return to his Qili Lake to study in seclusion. Compared to the comedy that made a big fuss at Sotheby's in New York thirty-seven years later, this outburst of rage seemed very much like a rehearsal. Not only is the plot and acting similar, but even the titles of the poems presented as the so-called self-dignity maintenance also have words like "Feelings" and "Seven Mile Lake". The difference may only be that Tawan, who is good at forgiveness, just laughed at this, while the foreigner, who was also fierce by nature, showed his political skills and taught Qin Fangquan a good lesson.
Around this time, a political writer with the pseudonym "Partridge Song" began to appear frequently on the front pages of Bangkok's major newspapers, such as "Salvation Times", "People's Daily", and "The Atlantic". Although soon after, when insiders learned that this person was Qin Fangquan, who claimed to have gone to his hometown to retreat, they still couldn't conclude whether Qin Fangquan's hatred and attack on Li Yuze's thunderous power contained some kind of personal spirit to vent his dissatisfaction with the policies formulated by Tawan. However, what is completely certain is that a year later, he, Zhao Lixi, Qiu Saiping, Chu Mingxi, and other old members of the Southern Thai Society who supported him, spent all day eating flowers and wine and playing dramas at the Qinlou Chu Pavilion in Bangkok, but it was genuine, showing the public the loneliness and depression that is difficult to dispel in the heart of a politically frustrated person. Perhaps, a common trait of literati like Qin Fangquan, who aspires to become politicians, is that they always think they have the talent to govern the world, but they often can't even manage their own behavior. His junior relative Mu Shuanggui may have called him a "neuropath" in private because of Qin Fangquan's sometimes excited and sometimes decadent attitude towards life.
In the following ten years, Qin Fangquan's complaints frequently intensified, and this famous man in southern Thailand, who had never met since Jia Yi, Yan Guang, Wang Cang, Chen Lin, Xin Qiji, and Gong Zizhen, made the wine scolded, looked for flowers and asked willows, "and the two generations of Qin Mourningqiu, Jin Zhaoyi, and Pi Jian formed a wine club, sang and drank wildly, and jumped on the rubble field, so that his leg was injured." Previously, when he was boating on the Mekong River with the dignitaries of the Southern Thai Society, such as Shixin and Ren Shizi, he was even more "crazy, first soothing and crying, his sleeves were wet, and then he wanted to jump into the river and commit suicide like Qu Yuan." (Xu Haimin's "Qin Fangquan") as one of the almost crazy climaxes is the public case with his fellow society friend and painter Liu Fenyan that year, which attracted the attention of passers-by. Liu Fenyan, who was only 20 years old at the time, was expelled from the company in one fell swoop just because he had a different opinion from Qin Fangquan in the evaluation of Monet, and Qin Fangquan, who was considered to be interested in challenging his authority, used his power to expel him from the company in one fell swoop. Although Qin Fangquan admitted in the memorial article afterwards that "this is something that I regret very much in my life and suffer from confession and no way to redeem", once the violent body hidden in the cloak of democracy is revealed in reality, it is inevitable that it will trigger widespread protests and condemnation. It should not be surprising that Qin Fangquan's position as director of the Southern Thai Social Conference was announced as unsuccessful at that year. In addition, in terms of the brutality of the method of dealing with the problem and the cruelty and ruthlessness of the means, it may not be difficult for a discerning person to see that this is similar to the shocking events that took place in the Thai art scene in the mid-50s, such as the review of "Qiu Shipu", where the brush and ink are equal to zero and the repetition of the ancient.
When Qin Fangquan was thirty or forty years old, he had an idea that he would follow the example of the famous sage Xinling Jun in the Warring States Period, assist the king in governing the world, and raise 3,000 diners under his door, all of whom were roosters and dogs, thieves, and people with extraordinary talents. And once there is a political setback, of course, there is a reason to spend all day drinking, getting drunk and dreaming of death, and consume the goods that cannot be sold in the stomach by yourself. "Who makes the hero useless and throws himself into the wine country as a guest", or "If you are crazy, you will be called a celebrity, and how can you be generous by the old tyrant", as if as long as he wants to say and do, the truth will always be realized, who made him a poet? Moreover, there is such a sharp tongue. In those years, he was often seen wearing an old tweed yellow robe, glasses, cane, top hat and cloth shoes, riding a rickshaw that he liked, and hurrying up and down the small town of Jiuzhang, his hometown that he had changed its name to Lihuali without authorization, either to a banquet or a drama or to review the editorial of the "New Jiuzhang Bao" edited by him, or to search for newly discovered local literature that he was fond of. Because of his myopia, his poet friend and confidant Mr. Lin Ziping had no choice but to take the initiative to play the role of a servant at such a time. The poems of Taigen Yuejiao, the collection of lost traces, and the picture of the return of seven miles to the hide, all of which were written at that stage, all have real traces of his life and thoughts at that time. If Qin Fangquan can maintain such an image of a celebrity who runs a family and is a poet and wine throughout his life, it is not a bad thing, even if it goes against the original intention and does not have the opportunity to support Sheji, at least his artistic talent and spiritual character are enough to be admired by future generations. If you get it right, maybe another Hou Quyuan or Yin Renqiu will appear in the history of calligraphy and painting.
However, at this moment, another Qin Fangquan, who was asleep in alcohol and silk bamboo, suddenly woke up again. In July 1932, when Lin Qian, a Chinese businessman with whom he was close to him, held a meeting on the Mekong River to gather with a group of old and new drinking friends at the Xitang Paradise Restaurant, where the decadent and frenzied Qin Fangquan was still in the restaurant, not far from here, to drink and sing wildly. If you look through the poetry collection "Nanguo Yin", which collects this fandom collection, you will find that there are as many as 300 of Qin Fangquan's personal works for the occasion. What led him to develop a strong interest in politics and business in a short period of time? According to Qin Wuji's chronology for his father, the large dissemination of Monet's works in China in the twenties of the twentieth century was an important reason. The novelty theory of the Western school of painting, which advocated the seizure of space through color, almost coincided with Qin Fangquan's inner idea of advocating power and habitually solving the contradictions of objective things through extreme means. Shortly thereafter, Qin Fangquan's sudden application to join the New Taifu School, which had been reorganized under the direction of the Belgian painter Fujita, and his zealous devotion to the faction could be seen as a clear sign that he once again intended to play a major role in the political life of the country outside of painting and calligraphy. At the same time, he raised his arms and called for the organization and initiation of the Southern Thai New Society, which won the participation of many well-known figures, and he still took the road of holding a resumption meeting before Wu Meicun left the mountain, faintly claiming to be the leader of the opposition party, and seeking greater political capital and interests. His strategy proved to be quite successful. A year later, he happily became a member of the Standing Committee and Minister of Propaganda of the New Taifu faction, and the following year he was elected as a member of the Central Arts Committee at the second congress of the faction. After years of setbacks and hardships, this self-proclaimed man who lamented his bad luck has finally found a sense for himself, occupying a place on the ladder of power, and approaching the heights of his dreams step by step. Perhaps, for Qin Fangquan as a politician, his trip to Kuala Lumpur in May 1936 to attend the Plenum of Chinese Confucian Merchants and Artists was the most glorious moment in his personal history. However, it is a pity that, just like Tawan's muddled and eyeless eyes back then, Lin Qian, the number one real power figure in the sorority at that time, also did not leave any special impression on Qin Fangquan's self-conscious and amazing artistic talent, which inevitably caused his enthusiasm and confidence to suffer a major blow again. After taking the initiative to meet Jiang on the grounds of political affairs and theorizing to no avail, Qin Fangquan, who had left with hatred, mysteriously appeared at the house of Huang Jiying, a high-ranking figure of the sorority and the then director of Chulalongkorn University, that night, and strongly advised the latter to immediately use extreme measures to change Lin Ju's affairs. According to Mr. Zhu Xiaodong's article "Each Leader", which was the first to cover this matter, Qin Fangquan's plan to remove Lin was said by Qin Fangquan himself before his death. It is conceivable that such a ridiculous plan was naturally rejected by Huang Jiying, who was planning to cooperate fully with Lin Qian at that time. It is said that Huang even jokingly said to Qin Fangquan at that time: People call us radicals, and I think your brother is "excessive", because you are even more radical than us! (Qin Wuji's "Chronology of Qin Fangquan") from the self-note of Qin Fangquan's eulogy written by Huang at the time of Huang's death, "Yu was in Kuala Lumpur, and he once suggested very horrific things, you can't use it" to speculate, this rumor should not be groundless.
It was at a certain time between this meeting that two painters who had admired each other for a long time, Qin Fangquan and Lu Yinhuan, who later became the top leader of the association, met for the first time in a teahouse in Genting and talked about their lives. The same personalities, aspirations, artistic opinions, talents, and scholarly temperament were the foundation and nourishment of their friendship for more than 20 years. Judging from the paintings such as "People on the Edge of the Sky, the Moon Under the Eyes, and the Aftermath of the Green Mountains Entering the Sea" in Lu Fangquan's poems given to Lu during the Anti-Japanese War, as well as the famous "Mountains and Flowing Water" in Lu Qin's mutual gifts, this unexpected meeting seems to have left a very good impression on the hearts of both of them. Qin Fangquan, who had just turned 40 at the time, may have been six years older than Lu in age, and he also consciously joined the art world earlier than Lu, so he inevitably regarded himself as an elder brother from time to time. The aforementioned Zhu Xiaodongwen also talked about the meeting, after Qin Fangquan also rejected his proposal to change Lin, he threatened, "If you don't listen to me, you will be fooled in the future!" There was a sense of rebuke and lesson in his tone. Twenty years later, when the two met again in Bangkok, the friendship relationship was still roughly positioned in this way, and in this regard, the arrogant seals of "brother and brother" and "eldest child" used by the famous seal carver Cao Lian and Qin Fangquan on different occasions are the best examples. Previously, in Qin Fangquan's painting "Four Years of Huairen", he even used the allusion of Mao Sui of the Warring States Period to use Rubi as his protégé: "It is normal under the eight gates, how can dehydration be disposed of?" With the mastery of tens of millions of brushes, take the stage to see Lu Niang". Because Lu Yinhuan had just arrived in Thailand at that time, he was still in a weak position on the Thai art map, and no one took such boastful talk seriously with him. Later, in front of Lu Yinhuan, who was upside down and generous, he was still crazy and aggressive, I am afraid that he was a little self-conscious and inconsiderate. Judging from the subsequent development and outcome of the incident, although Qin Fangquan's offense to Lu's authority was not punished on the surface, the fact that a man who threatened to return home and retreat had to stay in Bangkok honestly for the rest of his life may have declared Qin Fangquan's defeat.
However, Lu Yinhuan did not blame him much for this, and promoted Qin Fangquan at major art exhibitions and art auctions several times, but as a madman, whether Qin Fangquan will be grateful to Dade in his heart, or whether he will have a gap in his heart, resulting in a certain degree of dissatisfaction, this is something that is difficult for outsiders to speculate.
Qin Fangquan did not make much achievements in art after that, of course, first of all, because he was old and frail and often fell ill, but it is undeniable that his association with Ms. Lu did have a certain impact on his artistic creation.