Obituary
Comrade Chen Rong, a member of the Communist Party of China and a professional writer of the Beijing Federation of Literary and Art Circles, died at 9:00 on February 4, 2024 in Beijing at the age of 88 due to ineffective medical treatment. According to Comrade Chen Rong's wishes, the funeral was simple, no farewell ceremony was held, no memorial service or any form of memorial service was held, and no mourning hall was set up at home. Here's an obituary! Beijing Federation of Literary and Art Circles.
February 5, 2024.
The life of Comrade Chen Rong
Chen Rong, female, born in Hankou, Hubei Province in October 1935, ancestral home in Wushan County, Chongqing, graduated from Beijing Russian Language Institute (now Beijing University of Foreign Chinese). He started his career in March 1951 and successively served as an external translator and editor of **People's Radio, and a teacher at Beijing No. 5 Middle School. In August 1980, he entered the Beijing Writers Association as a professional writer, a first-class literary creator, and enjoyed a special allowance. She is a member of the Fifth National Congress of Chinese Women, a member of the Fifth National Committee of the Chinese Writers Association.
Honorary member of the 6th and 7th Terms.
Comrade Chen Rong is a famous writer and screenwriter, began literary creation in the 70s of the last century, published his first feature "Wan Nian Qing" in 1975, and published the long story "Light and Darkness" in 1978. In 1979, the novella "Always Spring" was published in the magazine "Harvest", of which Mr. Ba Jin was the editor-in-chief, and Mr. Mao Dun praised the work by name in his speech at the Fourth Cultural Congress, calling it a representative of "the initial prosperity of the novella". Comrade Chen Rong adheres to the principle of realism and has the courage to touch on practical problems, and his works have a strong sense of the times. In 1980, he published the novella ** "People to Middle Age", which quickly attracted wide attention inside and outside the literary world. ** Successfully created a typical image of the socialist newcomer represented by ophthalmologist Lu Wenting, and showed the life situation and mental journey of intellectuals in the period of social change. The writer keenly touched on a social issue of great significance of the times, showed his artistic conscience and courage, and aroused the attention of the whole society to the issue of intellectuals. "People to Middle Age" won the first prize of the first National Excellent Novella Award, and was rated as one of the "40 most influential films in the 40 years of China's reform and opening up", and the film of the same name won the 3rd China Film Golden Rooster Award and the 6th Popular Film Hundred Flowers Award Best Feature Film Award, Chen Rong himself also won the 5th Little Hundred Flowers Award Outstanding Screenwriter Award for this film. Comrade Chen Rong has created a lot of work in his life, and his published works also include ** "Subtract Ten Years Old" and "Too Lazy to Divorce", etc., which are included in the "Chen Rong Anthology". 
Chen Rong Anthology Publisher: Writers Publishing House.
Publication date: November 2019.
Comrade Chen Rong's childhood and adolescence were spent in exile, her life was full of ups and downs, and there were several twists and turns, but this also cultivated her tenacious character and indomitable spirit, so that her literary works can face life and society, with deep and profound humanistic care, and the many characters she created have attracted wide attention from the society. 
Comrade Chen Rong's life is full of observation and reflection on life and society, she has devoted her whole life to examining our times, and used literary language to show her thoughts on life and society in one literary work after another, leaving us with very valuable spiritual wealth.
Chinese writer ** tweeted Chen Rong "You shouldn't be a writer, you should be a doctor" - about the article "People Reach Middle Age" to express nostalgia.
"You shouldn't be a writer, you should be a doctor".
- Memories of "People Reach Middle Age".
Chen Rong. For the compilation of "Chen Rong's Anthology", I read the ** I have written since the new period. The re-reading of the old work, as if it is an old friend meeting again after a long time, the taste of the ups and downs is only clear to the author himself. Covering the volume and pondering, the first thing that comes to mind is not the hardships and hesitations in creation; It's outside of **, those funny things that can't help but smile when you think about it. I am writing it as it is, and I am speaking it to my readers.
It was the early days of reform and opening up, and I wanted to write about that generation of middle-aged people, about those middle-aged intellectuals who were the backbone of the unit and the pillar of the family, and whose meager income and tiring labor made them unbearable. However, they still rely on their conscience to fulfill their responsibilities to the society and their families, and welcome the arrival of the new era with passion, worthy of being a generation of elites! So, I wrote "People Reach Middle Age".
The manuscript of "People to Middle Age" is now in the collection of the Museum of Modern Chinese Literature.
In order to create "People Reach Middle Age" and write about ophthalmologists, I went to Beijing Tongren Hospital, the most famous ophthalmology department in China, and got to know the quiet director of ophthalmology. She is not only highly skilled in medicine, but also gentle and amiable, and is a female doctor who can be trusted by patients. I was fortunate enough to follow her, read a book of Ophthalmology under her guidance, and was allowed to enter the operating room to perform her surgery in the field. I remember that day, I wore soft-soled shoes and a white coat, tried my best to restrain my inner curiosity, joy and excitement, and pretended to be like a large group of young doctors who were observing, and followed the director into the sacred operating room.
In 1979, Chen Rong (right) experienced life at Beijing Tongren Hospital.
Unexpectedly, as soon as I entered the operating room area, it gave me a dismount! The wide, clean corridor is lined with operating rooms from different departments. After entering the door, we somehow stopped at a doorway on the right, and the director next to us introduced it as an internal medicine operating room. I glanced at the operating table covered in a white lab coat, and it didn't matter, and I will never forget it. On the operating table, only a bare fat belly was revealed under the white mask, and I saw the doctor of the chief surgeon slashing down quickly, and the bright red blood came out like a fountain in an instant, and I heard the chief surgeon shouting: "Clamp, clamp!" The assistants next to him are naturally accustomed to the battlefield for a long time, and they joked while operating: "Look at this belly is full of oil!" ”
Why didn't you leave at that time? First, it may be frightened, and second, it may be due to the curiosity of occupational diseases. The next one was the operating room, and at the door, I heard that it was a major operation on a saw leg or something, and I felt like it was "sharpening knives". Frightened, I tried to calm myself down, and urged the director to go to the ophthalmology operating room with a strong smile. I was secretly glad in my heart, thanks to my wise choice of ophthalmology, otherwise, even if I dared to write this blood-spattered scene, who would dare to watch it!
After all, the number of words is limited, how can I write a professional unfathomable and strict rules, and the "first lesson" that the director inadvertently gave me was to wash my hands. Change into a light blue short-sleeved costume for the operating room and stand side by side with the director in front of the sink. I saw that she rubbed soap all the way to her arm, rubbed it carefully, rinsed it under the faucet, and then applied soap and rinsed again, as if it had been repeated three times. Before it was over, she concentrated on applying soap to her hands again, brushing her nails carefully with a small brush, and rinsing the soap before wiping and brushing again. She did all this naturally, but I watched from the sidelines, and saw that her snow-white arms had been washed red, and I was worried about how the nails could withstand such repeated brushing? Although I also washed it gently, I still couldn't help but ask, how many times do I have to wash it before it is clean? She replied to me with three words: "Sterile sleep!" ”
Stills from the movie "People to Middle Age".
During the operation, the director allowed me to sit across from the patient. This is a rare corneal transplant, and the reason why it is rare is that there must be corneas donated by others. The instruments used in eye surgery are very delicate and detailed, but even if it is a small operation, the eye mask is punctured with a needle, and blood is bound to be seen. The director asked me to hold down the bleeding area with a cotton swab, which I did without hesitation. The operation was perfect, and after the operation, in front of the sink, the director smiled and said to me, "Comrade Chen Rong, you should not be a writer, you should be a doctor." I asked her why, and she said, "Because you're not afraid of blood." "She ** knew that at that time, I only cared about the whole process of the operation, and I didn't care about being scared at all. I didn't tell her, but the moment I stepped into the operating room, I was really scared when I saw the patient on the operating table for the first time. The patient was lying under a white sheet, his face covered with a white scarf for eye surgery. I call it "special" because the scarf covers the entire face, leaving only a round hole, which is just the size of an eye to show out. At this time, there was no anesthesia, the eyeball could move freely, and the shiny eyeball was moving rapidly and restlessly, and the eyes were full of fear, helplessness and even begging, which looked very strange and terrifying. My fright at this moment was really not wasted, it was all written into the **, written in the moment when the ignorant Red Guards rushed into the operating room - this terrible eye on the operating table frightened them into the desert and fled.
*Before the operation, I really did some homework, and I was already familiar with the needle holder in the tray, so I dared to describe it in detail in **, so that many readers later concluded that the author was a doctor in the letter. I didn't reply to the letter to correct it, and I felt honored to mistake it. Recalling the days in the hospital 40 years ago, although I was frightened from time to time, it opened my eyes and further understood the difficulties and extraordinaryness of medical workers, and how easy it is to become a doctor!
Speaking of "People Reach Middle Age", I have to mention my relationship with Ba Jin and Harvest magazine.
In the early 90s of the 20th century, Chen Rong (left) and Ba Jin were at Ba Jin's home.
In 1978, when spring returned to the earth and a new era of reform and opening up arrived, I finished writing the novella "Always Spring" with joy. At that time, I didn't know anyone in the literary circles, only the editor of the People's Literature Publishing House, so I handed over the manuscript to Comrade Lao Meng in the editorial department. Because the number of words was not long enough, they couldn't publish it, but Comrade Meng didn't return the manuscript to me, but actively went around to find a way for this article, and found the large-scale journal "Harvest" that had just been republished in Shanghai. The manuscript was placed on the desk of the editor-in-chief, Comrade Ba Jin, and at the same time, it was reported that the editor-in-chief had written two novels in the "Cultural Revolution". Obviously, this small report was extremely unfavorable to the author, but fortunately, Comrade Ba Jin ignored these gossips and even published it without asking the author to revise it. Since then, I have been fortunate enough to be the author of Harvest.
What is particularly memorable is that after the publication of this article, Comrade Ba Jin heard that this author was doing amateur creation while deducting his salary, so he took the opportunity of coming to Beijing to open the literary congress and asked his daughter, Comrade Li Xiaolin, the executive editor of "Harvest", to visit the author's home. I remember that day I had written one-third of the manuscript of "People in Middle Age" on my three-drawer desk, and she enthusiastically encouraged me to write it down after reading it. I can imagine the surprise that her sudden visit brought to my family. For 40 years since then, she has not only been my editor-in-charge, but also a close friend in our adversity. To this day, when she learned that I had not published an anthology, she also cared for and arranged for it in every possible way, which led to the publication of "Chen Rong's Anthology".
People to Middle Age" was published by Baihua Literature and Art Publishing House in June 1980.
In 1980, after the publication of my novella "People in Middle Age", the Propaganda Department of the Beijing Municipal Party Committee paid me three years' salary and transferred me to the Beijing Writers Association to become a professional writer.
You Jindong's *** People to Middle Age".
Since then, I have rightly embarked on the path of creation. It is a great blessing that a person's interests and hobbies can be combined with a career to earn a living in a person's life. Or I'm lucky, I got this flying happiness. The specialty of writing is that there is no age limit, it doesn't matter if you retire, as long as you are interested and energetic, you can write if you want to. I'm 84 next year, and I'm going to write a few articles, so I don't let my time go to waste!
This article was originally published in the column "New Chinese Literary Memory" on the 15th edition of "Guangming **" on August 30, 2019.
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