Remembering Qian Zhongshu and "The Besieged City"------------------------------------------------

----------------------------------------Yiqian Zhong wrote "The Besieged City" Qian Zhongshu wrote in "The Besieged City"

The preface to "Fortress Besieged" says that this book was written by his "accumulation of money."

I finished reading it by accumulating money.

Every night, he showed me the finished manuscript, eager to see how I would react.

I laugh, and he laughs too; I laugh, and he laughs too.

Sometimes I put down the manuscript and laugh with him, because we laugh not only about things in the book, but also about things outside the book.

I don’t need to explain why I’m laughing, it’s tacitly understood.

Then he told me what he planned to write in the next paragraph, and I eagerly waited to see how he would write it.

He writes about five hundred words a day on average.

What he showed me was the final draft and no further changes would be made.

Later, he was dissatisfied with this novel and other "little works", and wanted to make major changes, but this is a story for another time.

When Zhongshu selected and annotated Song poems, I volunteered to be Bai Juyi's "old woman" - that is, the lowest standard; if I couldn't understand, he had to add annotations.

But among the readers of "Fortress Besieged", I have become the highest standard.

Just like a bachelor is familiar with the origins of words and phrases in ancient poetry, I am familiar with the origins of characters and plots in stories.

Apart from the author himself, I am the most qualified person to annotate "The Besieged City".

Why do you need annotations when reading novels?

However, every time many readers become interested in a novel, they also become interested in the author, and regard the characters and plots in the novel as real people.

Some simply regard the protagonist of the novel as the author himself.

Smart readers admit that the author cannot be equated with the characters in the book, but they say that the characters and stories created by the author are inseparable from his personal experience, thoughts and feelings.

This is of course true.

But I once pointed out in an article: An important component of creation is imagination. Experience is like a fire lit in the darkness, and imagination is the light emitted by this fire. Without fire, there is no light, but the light reaches far beyond

The size of the fire point ①.

The stories created often transcend the author's own experience in many ways.

Retrieving the author's experience from the story of creation is upside down.

The author's thoughts and feelings are created, just like fermented and turned into wine; it is not easy to identify the raw materials for making wine from the wine.

I have the opportunity to know the author's experience and the raw materials of the wine. I would like to let readers see how much and what kind of connection there is between real people and fictional characters and plots.

Because many so-called realistic novels are actually narrating one's own experiences in a different way to enhance or satisfy one's own feelings.

This kind of autobiographical novel or novel-style autobiography is actually a romantic documentary, not a realistic fiction.

And "Fortress Besieged" is just a fictional novel, although it reads as if it is real and there are real people.

①See "Facts-Stories-Truth" ("Literary Review", Issue 3, 1980, page 17).

In "The Besieged City", it is written that Fang Hongjian's famous industries in his hometown are blacksmithing and tofu grinding, and his famous product is clay dolls.

Someone read this and couldn't help but snorted proudly and said: "Isn't this Wuxi? Isn't Qian Zhongshu from Wuxi? Didn't he also study abroad? Didn't he also live in Shanghai? Didn't he also teach in the mainland?

"?" A gentleman who specializes in textual research actually concluded that Qian Zhongshu's degree is unreliable, and the conclusion that Fang Hongjian is Qian Zhongshu is even more tenable.

Qian Zhongshu was a native of Wuxi. He graduated from Tsinghua University in 1933 and taught English at Guanghua University in Shanghai for two years. In 1935, he received a Ying Geng Scholarship to study in Oxford, England. In 1937, he obtained an associate doctorate (

B. Litt.) degree, and then went to France to study at the University of Paris.

He originally wanted to study for a degree, but later gave up his intention.

In 1938, Tsinghua University hired him as a professor. According to a letter from Mr. Feng Youlan, the dean of literature at Tsinghua University at that time, this was an exception because according to Tsinghua's old practice, when he first returned to teach in China, he would only be a lecturer, and he would be promoted from lecturer to associate professor, and then

Promoted to professor.

Zhong Shu returned to China in September or October, landed in Hong Kong, and transferred to Kunming to teach at Tsinghua University.

At that time, Tsinghua University had been merged into the Southwest Associated University.

His father was a professor at the National Zhejiang University. At the request of his old friend Mr. Liao Maoru, he went to Lantian, Hunan to help him found the National Normal College; his mother, siblings and others fled with his uncle's family and lived in Shanghai.

In the autumn of 1939, after Zhongshu returned to Shanghai from Kunming to visit relatives, his father sent letters and phone calls saying that he was old and sick and asked Zhongshu to go to Hunan to take care of him.

Mr. Liao, the dean of the Normal College, came to Shanghai and repeatedly persuaded him to become the head of the English Department so that he could serve his father and take care of both public and private matters.

In this way, he went to Hunan instead of returning to Kunming.

During the summer vacation of 1940, he and a colleague went back to Shanghai to visit relatives, but the road was blocked and they turned back halfway.