The Call of the Soul (Final Draft)

Commenting on Zhao Jianwu’s prose one by one

Reading Mr. Zhao Jianwu’s prose is a kind of enjoyment, not only for the beautiful words The appreciation is more of the joy of the soul. In other words, Zhao Jianwu's prose is like a call from ancient times, once again awakening my messy heart. This feeling comes from the warm land where my colleagues lived, and from the stories that seem familiar but have actually been experienced. In fact, it is not that long ago. Just a few years and decades have passed, and some scenes are still vivid in my mind, as if they are right in front of me.

My acquaintance with Zhao Jianwu should be 50 years ago. When I attended Nanliang United Middle School in 1969, I often met brothers Jianwen and Jianwu, who were a few years younger than me, and their sisters. I remember that there was a family living at the west end of the row of bungalows at the front of the school. They had three bungalows without a courtyard. We met a very simple hostess after school who was busy with her business. Soon we found out that it was the home and family of the old principal, Teacher Zhao Fengzhen. Because his eldest daughter Zhao Shunping was a classmate of ours, we often went to his house. Go play at home.

Zhao Jianwu’s father, Teacher Zhao, is an old revolutionary. I heard that he started working very early, first in the county and then in the education department, serving as the principal of primary and junior high schools for many years. He has a strong Jiaodong accent, and although his speech is not easy to communicate with, he has a pleasant smile, is affable, and has the demeanor of an elder. His lover, Aunt Luan, met us, fifteen or sixteen-year-old children, and stroked our hair affectionately. She also spoke strong Jiaodong dialect, with a smile on her kind face.

My childhood impression of Zhao Jianwu’s home or Zhao Jianwu himself was roughly the same. Later, we had less contact for various reasons. Although we didn’t meet much, we always had information about him. From his sister and friends, we roughly knew Jianwu’s life trajectory. He went to high school, went to university, and worked in the Weifang Municipal Government after graduation. Department work, and later promoted to an official position in charge of the Academy of Agricultural Sciences. Our real communication began with literature, because we have the same hobbies, knowledge of life, and deep "fellow feelings". Although his ancestral home is Jiaodong, Zhao Jianwu was born in our area. This place has the sky and thick soil that we once owned together, the rain fell on the mountain, the water of the Zhang River moistened us, and the simple folk customs of the Gaoya people inspired us. When the love of literature met, we were wiped out. A spark of friendship.

Zhao Jianwu is very busy, with a lot of work in one department, and he is a very dedicated person. However, in his spare time, he will tirelessly pursue literature, and writing has become an important part of his life. Within a few years, he had published nearly 100 literary works such as prose, essays, drama reviews, and poetry in various newspapers and magazines at the national, provincial, and municipal levels, and also released an album. The first time I read his works was in the circle of friends of classmates. That time I saw an article written by Jianwu in memory of his mother. "My mother passed away when the evening cherry blossoms were withering." Only then did I know that his kind mother had passed away. , while reading, I cried with those vivid words. The son's inseparable feelings for his mother and the love between mother and son are vividly displayed between the lines. Jianwu carefully traces his mother's lifelong qualities: strength, optimism, love of beauty, hard work, and simplicity. Later, I was fortunate to read a large number of Zhao Jianwu's prose, such as his "Childhood Memories", "The Taste of the Year", "Lilac Love.", "Memories of Burning Urns", "The Alma Mater in the Heart", etc. Each exquisite article entered my memory. Vision, enter my heart. He worked diligently on the fertile soil of literature. He used words to express his true feelings and interpret his life.

Zhao Jianwu’s prose style is well-intentioned and emotional. This feeling comes from the love for life. He said that my life is destined to be inextricably linked with the word "farm". The place where I was born, grew up, studied and worked has never left the word "farm". ... After dealing with the word "Nong" for so long, the feelings of Shannon have naturally become more and more profound and mellow, the complex of Shannon has become clearer and stronger, and the feelings of Shannon have become deeper and stronger. Everyone has his own life complex, and everyone's life complex will affect a person's life. The complex of life is like a seed. Once it is injected into a person's life, it will grow tenaciously and carry it forward unswervingly. For this reason, he devotedly wrote works such as "Breeding Ode", "Soybean Mother", "Tianya Breeding", "Travel and Thoughts in Sichuan", "Red Leaves Know Autumn", "Praise for Wheat", "Weixian Radish Ode" and "Rambles" which reflect agricultural breeders. Asparagus", "Talking about Peanuts", "Corn Hymn", "Soybean Song", "Lilac Love·Knot" and other proses that artistically describe crops and garden plants. Some were published in newspapers such as "Farmers Daily", "Rural Mass", "Qilu Literature" and "Weifang Daily", and some were posted on the Internet and caused a certain amount of attention.

Parallel to this "agricultural" love is family love. Zhao Jianwu spends a lot of space describing the family love that surrounds his heart, such as "Name a Baby Name", "Father's Medal", "My Mother" and so on. His nostalgia literature, such as "The Bitter Past", "Alma mater in my heart", etc., reveal his attachment to his hometown and his alma mater between the lines. It is commendable to have an innocent heart and not forget the feelings of his hometown!

Delicate description is another characteristic of Zhao Jianwu's prose. In "Memory of Burning an Urn", Zhao Jianwu describes the entire urn-making process with delicate brushwork, which is exactly what prose needs to grasp. "Firing an urn generally requires material selection, mud mixing, blank making, and firing. Making urns requires very picky raw materials.

First, the red soil is dug out, transported to a flat ground, spread evenly, dried in the sun, then crushed and ground into fine pieces, and finally, a large fine sieve is used to remove stones, grass roots and other impurities, and water is added to mix it to make a green urn. Mud. The urn-making master kneads the mud into mud noodles that are as thick as an arm and more than one meter long, puts them on the arm, sits on a rotating wooden operating table, with a small jar filled with water next to it, and then layers them layer by layer. Twist the strips of red clay into the original shape of the urn. After it hardens, tap it hard with a tool that is square on the outside and round on the inside to make it firm. A highly skilled master can operate six to eight units at a time, in sequence, with perfect fit, no delay in work, and high efficiency. "In "The Alma Mater in My Heart", Zhao Jianwu described it this way: "It takes ten years to grow trees and a hundred years to cultivate people. Changle No. 2 Middle School has cultivated a large number of talents, and two trees silently bear witness. One is the big willow tree that hangs the clock in front of the school office mentioned earlier. Infested by diseases, insects, wind and sun, the big willow tree aged and became weak and unable to survive the wind. It could no longer hold on. It fell suddenly in 2018 and lay there quietly. She is a loyal person, never giving up, silently holding on, witnessing the rise and fall of No. 2 Middle School. There is also a large poplar tree, which is a traditional tree species (different from today's fast-growing poplar). It was planted in 1957, the second year after the school was founded, in front of the dormitories of Principal Han and Teacher Qin. She has weathered the wind and rain for 60 years and grown tall and thick. She has become a towering tree that requires two adults to hug her. It is said that it was the tallest tree in the education system of Weifang City at that time. The word "1" written in red paint can still be seen faintly on the tree, which witnesses the glory of the alma mater and is the physical evidence of the decades of operation of No. 2 Middle School. The symbol of Chinese spirit. According to insiders, in order to protect this tree, superiors allocate a special fund of one yuan and five cents every month, which shows that the title of No. 1 is not a fabrication or a false rumor. "Zhao Jianwu also described many teachers in detail, condensing their teachers' ethics and character in his writings. Zhao Jianwu and I are schoolmates, and I am familiar with the people and events he wrote about, so I felt very familiar when reading them. Also, he "Memory of Burning Mud Urn" immediately brought back many memories, aroused ripples in my heart, and made my heart scream. I sincerely admired this precious memory! It should be said that the traditional workshop has disappeared without a trace. As time has passed, the author can still describe it in such detail, which shows that in addition to his solid literary skills, the author is deeply in love with rain. The warm land of Nanliang under the mountains. Some of the memories from childhood are so clear that they are precious. Those that can be forgotten must not be the most precious; those that can retain clear impressions must be precious for the wealth that life has given to people. ;Thank you to the author for enlightening people's souls.

Prose needs sincerity, and the soul needs to be called! Beautiful or touching, sincere things will definitely touch the hearts of readers, although they are not the sound of nature, but they are. It is the opening of the heart.

At noon on October 9, 2020