Feelings for life, two journeys
After reading the long-form documentary literature "Yan Yang Chu".
Sun Jianjun. If it is said that "telling a good Chinese story" is the proper meaning of our journey of national rejuvenation, then "telling a good Chinese story" should be the inevitable responsibility of Chinese writers. And I want to say that in this grand narrative scene with a new era and a new journey as the background, without the story of Yan Yangchu, the Chinese story would be incomplete. Such an assertion is due to the fact that the story of Yan Yangchu is poorly known to the world, and it is caused by the twists and turns of history.
In the early spring of 2024, I was very fortunate to read this "Yan Yang Chu" carefully created by writer Miao Yong and strongly promoted by the People's Oriental Publishing House. As soon as this book came out, the influence went from narrow to wide, from shallow to deep, all the way out, it has been reprinted 18 times, Xinhua News Agency, "People's **" Guangming **" Literature and Art Newspaper and other more than 400 ** have reported and commented one after another, and was rated as one of the top ten good books of the year by the People's Publishing House, won the first place in the popularity list of ten good books and good books at home and abroad, and was rated as a good book by more than 60 ** (think tanks) such as China Publishing and Media Business Daily, Sina, and Zhengbang Think Tank, and won the first place in the 2021 Sichuan Literary Works Influence List. The first place in the Sichuan Provincial Copyright Works Creation Award, as well as the first Li Jieren Literature Award, Dabashan Literature and Art Promotion Award and other honors followed, with more than 300 million clicks and followers on the Internet platform.
Yan Yangchu" by Miao Yong, published by Oriental Publishing House in September 2021.
Yan Yangchu was a great man, but the entry on it is extremely simple: "Yan Yangchu (October 26, 1890 - January 17, 1990), also known as Yan Yuchun, was a native of Bazhong, Sichuan, a Chinese civilian educator and rural builder. However, the mere status of a "civilian educator and rural builder" is enough to make me awe and proud of his Sichuanese.
To establish a heart for heaven and earth, to establish a life for the people, to continue to learn for the saints, and to open peace for all generations is still the personality ideal of the majority of Chinese cultural people. The grandeur of feelings lies in the sublime, and the greatness of practice lies in the deeds. The greatness of Yan Yangchu lies in the fact that he is a practitioner of great feelings. According to the data, Yan Yangchu's original heart and fruitful fruits are a symphony of life growth.
Writer Miao Yong said in the book that on October 26, 1890, Yan Yangchu was born in a scholarly family in Bazhong County, Sichuan Province, and recited the Four Books and Five Classics with his father since he was a child, and was escorted by his eldest brother to Baoning (now Langzhong) at the age of 13, and entered the Tiandao School run by the ** Inland Education Association to study Western studies. In 1907, Yan Yang first went to Chengdu Huamei High School to study. In 1913, Yan Yangchu was admitted to St. Paul's College in Hong Kong (the predecessor of the University of Hong Kong) with the first place. In 1916, he went to the United States to study at Yale University. In 1918, during the First World War, Britain and France recruited nearly 200,000 Chinese laborers in China to do war service work in France. They are discriminated against as "coolies". The day after graduating from Yale University, Yan Yangchu went to France to serve Chinese workers. In the process of sending a letter to the Chinese workers, he came up with the idea of running a literacy class for Chinese workers. Four months later, 35 of the first 40 Chinese workers in the literacy class were able to write letters on their own. As a result, literacy classes have sprung up in various places and Chinese labor camps have been set up one after another. Later, there were more and more literate Chinese workers, and in order to further improve the education of Chinese workers, Yan Yangchu set up a "Chinese Workers Weekly", through reading the newspaper and submitting articles, the Chinese workers not only consolidated and improved the cultural knowledge they had learned, but also inspired and improved their social consciousness and national consciousness.
It was in this day that Yan Yangchu not only realized the suffering of "coolies", but also saw the power of "coolies", and since then he has made an oath of "not being an official, not getting rich, and serving the toiling masses all his life", and has since embarked on the rugged and long road of civilian education.
Therefore, from 1920 onwards, after completing his master's degree at Princeton University, Yan Yangchu returned to his homeland with enthusiasm for serving the motherland and his determination to promote civilian education. Experiments on civilian education have been carried out in Changsha, Yantai, and Jiaxing, and the results have been remarkable. In 1923, Yan Yangchu, Zhu Qihui, Tao Xingzhi and others established the Chinese Association for the Promotion of Civilian Education in Beiping, and Yan Yangchu served as the director-general. The civilian education movement then flourished throughout the country. In 1926, Yan Yangchu shifted the focus of civilian education to the countryside. He led his colleagues from the Ping Church to go deep into the rural areas of Dingxian County, Hebei Province, and carried out the Dingxian experiment, which later became famous all over the world. Because most of the main personnel of the Ping Church are masters and doctors who have returned from studying abroad, they are affectionately called "doctors go to the countryside" by peasant friends. After 10 years of hard work, they created a set of theories and experiences in rural construction, the Dingxian experience, which not only promoted China's rural construction at that time, but is still the blueprint for the rural transformation movement in the third world.
The Anti-Japanese War broke out, and the Dingxian experiment was interrupted. At the beginning of Yan Yangchu, he continued to carry out experiments in rural construction in Hengshan, Hunan, Xindu, Sichuan, Chongqing and other places. In 1936, in order to cooperate with the work of Hengshan Experimental County, the Ping Church assisted Hunan Province to establish Hengshan Rural Normal School. The school's educational mission requires that students not only be qualified to work as rural primary school teachers after graduation, but also become leaders in the construction of the village where the school is located. The War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression was going on arduously, but Yan Yangchu foresaw that the Chinese people would surely win the final victory and that the reconstruction of the countryside after the war would definitely require a large number of talents, so he founded the China Rural Construction College in Beibei, Chongqing, and opened four departments: rural education, agriculture, water conservancy, and society.
In 1943, at the "National Conference to Commemorate the 400th Anniversary of the Death of Copernicus in the United States", sponsored by hundreds of universities and higher academic institutions in the United States, Canada, South American countries and Mexico, Yan Yangchu, together with Albert Einstein and others, was awarded the honor of "Ten Great Men with Revolutionary Contributions to the Modern World".
Since the 50s of the 20th century, Yan Yangchu has promoted the civilian education movement to the world. After visiting a number of countries in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, he began to promote civilian education and rural rehabilitation movements, with the Philippines as the center. In the Philippines, he has achieved remarkable results, and many countries have paid attention to it, and they have asked Yan Yangchu to guide the rural transformation work. To meet the needs of these countries, he founded the International Institute for Rural Rehabilitation near Manila in 1960. For more than 40 years, the academy has trained nearly 4,000 rural leaders in more than 50 countries.
In 1985, at the invitation of Zhou Gucheng, vice chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, Yan Yangchu returned to China for a visit and was cordially received by Wan Li, Deng Yingchao, Zhou Gucheng and other party and state leaders. Yan Yangchu was deeply moved and encouraged by the achievements made in the construction of the motherland, especially the tremendous changes that have taken place in the rural areas, and said that he would introduce China's experience to the vast number of countries in the third world. In 1987, at the age of 98, Yan Yangchu returned to China for another visit. On January 17, 1990, Yan Yangchu died of illness in New York at the age of 100.
What kind of life is this, the mental journey, tired, hard and persistent romance. Such a life choice is destined to more profoundly move another Sichuan cultural person who is nearly 80 years old from him, the author of this book, Miao Yong, because he is also from Bazhong. It seems that there is an appointment in the blindness, and the story of Yan Yangchu is destined to be told by a writer from Guanbazhong. Therefore, Miao Yong said that the mental path of creating "Yan Yangchu" can be summarized as curiosity, emotion, and admiration.
Miao Yong was curious that the mountains and rivers of Bazhong could actually give birth to a humanistic giant; Moved by the Chinese style of the sages in the township; Looking up to the unswerving feelings of cultural greats, there is a long documentary literature "Yan Yangchu" with clear time clues, simple and warm prose, and meticulous stories. Miao Yong was successful because he told a Chinese story that had to be told, and he also told an indispensable Chinese story well.
As a writer, Miao Yong's writing of this book should also be the most important milestone in his life. Therefore, when the people of Pakistan and China, separated by two centuries, mingle in one story with different mental journeys, we have more from reading, and the most inspirational part is the bookish spirit and compassion. As Professor Qiu Jiansheng of the Chinese People's University said, "Mr. Yan Yangchu's thoughts and spirit are one of the few beams of light that can warm our hearts when we look back at China in the 20th century."
Miao Yong is a writer friend I have known since I was a young man, perhaps it is the unique simplicity of the Bazhong landscape, which has cultivated the spiritual characteristics of Yan Yangchu, Miao Yong's literary writing, from the beginning of his long ** "Zeng Xikou" that won the Sichuan Literature Award, left a very deep impression on me of civilian writing. Perhaps it is also the rhythm of the regional context embodied by Yan Yangchu, the starlight twinkling in the silent sneaking of moisturizing things.
Therefore, in our harvest, it is not enough to be moved and look up, the spiritual legacy left to us by Mr. Yan Yangchu is the responsibility and strength of the responsibility. Therefore, while congratulating Miao Yong on his successful writing, there are also feelings and encouragement: when we call ourselves writers and write words, we must embrace the feelings of nostalgia and always remember that they are in our blood and we are in their heartbeat.
About the Author
Sun Jianjun is a member of the Chinese Writers Association and a national first-class writer. In 1990, he attended the National Young Writers Congress, and in 1991, he participated in the 9th Youth Poetry Conference of the Poetry Magazine, and created and edited the published works of literature (film and television), and won more than 30 awards, including the Sprout Literature Award, the Sichuan Literature Award, the Special Award of the Sichuan Five One Project Award, the China TV Golden Eagle Award, the Sichuan Literature and Art Criticism Award, and the Bashu Literature and Art Criticism Award.
Special Tips. **Please specify: "*Fang Zhi Sichuan".
*: Sichuan Provincial Office of Local Chronicles.
Author: Sun Jianjun.