Zou Li's book cover of "A Singer in the Morning - A Critical Biography of Zhou Libo".
Content introduction
This book truly restores the life of Zhou Libo, one of the more influential revolutionary writers in the history of modern and contemporary Chinese literature, through the collection of a large number of original materials and the combination of biography and commentary. This book is divided into eighteen chapters, namely "Childhood Life", "Studying as a Youth", "Taking the Revolutionary Road", "Left-Left Alliance Literary Theory Warriors", "Young Translators", "The Beginning of Literary Creation: Prose and Poetry" and "War Correspondent" "Ordered to run a newspaper", "Reborn", "Joined the army and went south", "The Storm", "The Liberated China", "The Praise of the New Era", "The Great Changes in Mountains and Villages", "Commanded the Provincial Federation of Literary and Art Circles", "Dalian Conference", "Sang "Yu Fenbi", in chronological order, comprehensively summarizes Zhou Libo's fighting life as a writer, compiler, and revolutionary in plain and smooth words. Writing his biography not only objectively records his revolutionary creative activities and ideological development trajectory, but also presents the artistic aesthetic value of his literary creation. It is also a record and reflection of a specific era and a specific literary trend of thought.
Chapter 1 Childhood Life (Excerpt)
1. The Zhou Family in Yiyang
On August 9, 1908 AD, July 13th of the Wushen Year of the Lunar Calendar, the home of Zhou Xianti, a rural sage in Qingxi Village, Shililili, Yiyang County, Hunan Province The new baby fell to the ground. This was the third son of the Zhou family. It is said that when Zhou Xianti's wife was pregnant with this child, she dreamed that a phoenix landed on a sycamore tree opposite her home. Mr. Xianti was overjoyed and believed that this son must be different from other children and would be very promising in the future. After his son was born, Mr. Xianti named him Chanwu and Fengxiang, which means that the phoenix falls on the sycamore tree and the phoenix spreads its wings and flies. The child's scientific name is Shaoyi. "Shao" refers to the seniority of the Zhou family, and "Yi" comes from the idiom "Phoenix Lai Yi". Shaoyi lived up to her father's expectations and later became a famous writer in China.
The landscape of Yiyang gave birth to this famous writer. The ancient Yiyang County had very developed transportation in the water transportation era and was an important transportation route from south to north. The heroic story of Guan Yu attending the meeting alone during the Three Kingdoms struggle for supremacy recorded in "Three Kingdoms" took place here. By the Ming and Qing Dynasties, Yiyang had become a "land of fish and rice" with abundant products, and the county town had become a distribution center for rice, wood, medicinal materials, tea, aquatic products and other commodities in the Zishui River Basin and on the coast of South Dongting.
In ancient Yiyang, the mountains, rivers and fields are all beautiful, and the houses and villages are everywhere. Many literati have described it in poems. In the 30th year of the Jiajing reign of the Ming Dynasty (1551), Liu Ji, the magistrate of the county, wrote the "Poem of Ten Scenes of Zijiang", which was engraved on a stele at Longzhou Academy in Guitai Mountain, detailing the beautiful natural scenery and cultural allusions along Zishui. Lu Duo, a native of Hubei in the Ming Dynasty, was a Jinshi in the fifteenth year of Emperor Xiaozong's reign (1502). He passed by Yiyang and left a seven-character rhyme poem praising the scenery of Yiyang:
Yiyang goes south to the mountains and the mountains are beautiful, and the beauty of Yiyang Road is beautiful.
Green bamboo and red maple trees reflect the thatched house, and the clear spring and white stone bridge line the stream.
Strange birds speak clearly, and cold flowers let the wind rustle.
There is a painting in the poem that can be seen clearly. Who can do it when the Prime Minister is gone?
He praised Yiyang's landscape as "paintings can be seen in poetry", and wished he could invite back Wang Wei, a master of landscape poetry and painting in the Tang Dynasty, because only "You Cheng"'s wonderful pen can express the beauty of Yiyang's landscape.
Qingxi Village, where Zhou Libo was born, is located in Shililili, Yiyang County. Yiyang County has a total area of 23 miles. Shilili includes Jianshan Village, Dengshiqiao Village, Qingxi Village, Datang Village, and Taohualun Village, and is the hinterland of the central part of Yiyang County. Zhixi River, a tributary of Zijiang River, passes through here, and Huilong Mountain, a famous mountain in Yiyang, is located here. Shilili is a relatively affluent area in Yiyang. Qingxi Village in the late Qing Dynasty and early Republic of China was located at the intersection of the east-west and north-south official roads and was a prosperous village. The Huilong Mountains have continuous peaks, a clear stream and clear water, and the mountains and rivers are beautiful. Zhou Libo described Qingxi Village in "Great Changes in Mountain and Township":
This hilly township twenty miles away from the city is surrounded by continuous, dark trees and mountains of trees and bamboo mountains. In the middle is a large expanse of land, a flat sun, and fields. The soil is black and very fertile. A small stream covered with thorns and miscellaneous trees along the bank winds through the courtyard.There are several stone dams on the stream, which block the water in sections and form several small reservoirs. ②
Since ancient times, Yiyang has respected teachers and education, attached great importance to cultivating children, and has a profound family tradition of farming and studying. It is a veritable hometown of farming and studying. At the end of the Qing Dynasty and the beginning of the Republic of China when Zhou Libo was born, Yiyang not only had many schools, but they were also quite large. At that time, there were already the county's first higher elementary school and second higher elementary school. Since 1900, foreign missionaries from Norway, Sweden and other countries came to Yiyang and established schools such as Lutheran Primary School, Lutheran Middle School, Lutheran University, Lutheran Girls' High School, Yuyingtang and Gumuyuan. At that time, Yiyang County was affiliated to Changsha County. Yiyang Provincial Middle School was established in Changsha, which was later merged into Changjun Middle School. The vast countryside of Yiyang is dotted with private schools and ethnic schools. Many ancestral halls are used to hold ethnic studies, and "songs to encourage learning" are posted in the ethnic studies. The millet generated from the family fields managed by the ancestral hall is generally used as scholarship grain. Zhou Libo ran a private school in his own hall, which also housed Zhou's Feiying School, Yiyang County No. 2 School (later renamed Jianshan Township Central School), Weinan Girls' High School, and Provincial No. 5 Normal School.
The Zhou family was not born and raised in Yiyang. Their ancestors moved here from Jiangxi during the Ming Dynasty. According to the "Zhou Genealogy", Zhou Libo is the 54th generation descendant of Zhou Yu and is a descendant of Zhou Yu and Xiao Qiao's second son Zhou Yin. Zhou Yin settled in Jiemao, Mihu, Pingdu County, Luling County (now Fengtian Town, Anfu County, Jiangxi Province) in his later years. After his death, he was buried in Xiaotai Mountain to the north of Mihu. He was the ancestor of the Zhou family in Luling. Zhou Shumeng, the seventh descendant of Zhou Yin, began to move to Luling, Jishui and other places. The Zhou family has produced numerous talents since the Jin Dynasty, such as Zhou Bida, a politician and prime minister in the first year of Qingyuan of the Southern Song Dynasty (1195). The 25th generation of the Luling Zhou family moved to Peijia Village in Yiyang County in the first year of Hongzhi in the Ming Dynasty (1488), and later moved to Xinshi in Yiyang County to cross Shilong Mountain. In the first year of Jiajing in the Ming Dynasty (1522), the fifth sect of Shilong ancestors It is divided into four families: Song, Yue, Tai and Heng. Zhou Libo belongs to Taifang and is the 18th generation descendant of the ancestor of Qianyi.
Note:
① are rural grassroots units in the Ming and Qing Dynasties. Since the Ming Dynasty, the Lijia system has been implemented, with 110 households constituting one Li. Yiyang County was divided into 43 miles in the Ming Dynasty and merged into 23 miles in the Qing Dynasty.
② Zhou Libo: "Great Changes in Mountains and Villages", People's Literature Publishing House, 2005 edition, page 14.
Zou Li graduated from the Chinese Department of Peking University in 2012 with a doctorate in literature. He is currently an associate professor at the School of Humanities, Central South University, a master's tutor, a member of the Hunan Provincial Writers Association, and a member of the Chinese Critics Association. He has published in "Literary Review", "Chinese Modern Literature Research Series", "Guangming Daily Theory Edition", "Literary Contest", "China Publishing" and "Quest" "More than ten papers have been published in authoritative academic journals such as "Century of Zhou Libo", "Local Experience and World Perspective - Zhou Libo and Foreign Literature", "Chronology of Zhou Libo", "A Singer in the Morning - A Critical Biography of Zhou Libo", etc., and he is also the author of The novel "Qingxi".
