This book is compiled by friends based on the notes left by Zhong Xiao.These notes were written on scraps of paper with brushes or pens.Before his death, Zhong Xiao bound them into three neat notebooks, each titled with the title of the collection.The writing time of this book is from the late 1950s to two years before the Cultural Revolution. In 1955, when Zhong Xiao was on trial for the Hu Feng case, his old illness relapsed and hemoptysis continued. He was granted medical parole and returned to the countryside of Shaoxing.His natural income was gone, and he didn't even have the food stamps to buy household registration rice. He had to rely on his father who worked as a clerk at the local post office to get by.During the three-year disaster period of the Great Leap Forward, one day my wife Zhang Ke received a letter addressed to the Shanghai Theater Academy.After opening it, there was another sealed letter inside, which was written to me by Zhong Xiao.He didn't know that I was also designated as a Hu Feng counter-revolutionary, and life was very difficult.He said in the letter: "Your situation is probably okay. I am very difficult and can't live anymore. But I still want to live..." He expected me to extend a helping hand.After reading his letter, I felt miserable and had a lot of thoughts.Zhong Xiao entered the New Literature and Art Publishing House, and I have the responsibility of recommending it.He was just in his early twenties at that time, and I still remember his big shining eyes that seem to be always pursuing the mysteries of life, they are so clear and honest..." At that time, I heard the introduction from my friend and wrote to invite this stranger A young man came to work in New Literature and Art. He seldom spoke, but always listened silently. He made a good impression on me from the very beginning."... Morally speaking, I cannot ignore his letter.However, what can I do for him in the situation at that time? The exchange of letters has constituted a serious problem in the Hu Feng case, which is lingering in fear.Holding his letter, I felt uneasy, afraid of causing trouble again.In the "Three Batches of Materials of the Hu Feng Counter-revolutionary Clique" that served as the criteria for finalizing the case, Zhong Xiao was said to be the most reactionary.Some of his blunt words were interpreted as having a special "counter-revolutionary sensitivity".This statement has been exaggerated, and "Zhang Zhongxiao" has become a creepy name. Until the 1960s, in a booklet designated as a study document, these statements were still repeated. My relationship with Zhongxiao was once It became a problem in my review. At the beginning of 1957, the organization sent two old writers who had worked with me to talk to me. I defended Zhongxiao, saying that he was a simple young man who was immediately affected by it. A stern rebuke. Later I was accused of resisting censorship, which is also one of the evidences. Since these things are still fresh in my memory, I took the letter from Zhongxiao, and I didn’t know what to do. At that time, there was another friend among my friends He is Baishan, whom I deeply trust in communicating with me. I went to discuss with him, and after consideration, he thought it was inappropriate to announce it. I suppressed the letter. But soon, Zhongxiao sent a second letter letter, in which he made another appeal, an appeal to my conscience, an attempt to awaken my sympathy that had been frozen as the balance of interests had grown numb. I wonder if anyone else in the same position has gone through as violent a Spiritual battle? I have experienced this kind of spiritual crisis several times during the review period. Maybe the brave will not be like this, but there is some cowardice in my heart that I don't want to have. This time I overcame my own Cowardly, but it should be admitted that I can’t do this every time. Through Luo Sun, I reflected Zhongxiao’s letter to Shi Ximin, who is in charge of cultural and educational work in Shanghai. He once expressed to me that he could reflect his own feelings to him. Difficulties, including other people who have been punished, even those who are in prison. I have never met Shi Ximin. When he said these words, I didn't dare to believe them, but it turned out that he was sincere. In that terrible Thanks to such people, Zhong Xiao finally had a glimmer of hope in the years of his life. But he died shortly after he lived.

Now no one can say the exact year and month when Zhong Xiao left this world.What can be known is that he lived a little longer, and he just went through the catastrophe of the Cultural Revolution again.Is this situation played by fate? Or is it that the world is not benevolent and must make him experience the suffering of the world? At that time, he lived alone in Shanghai, doing odd jobs in Xinhua Bookstore to send books and periodicals, and barely made ends meet. When the "Cultural Revolution" came, suffering and disease dragged him down.He is estimated to have died in late 1966 or early 1967 at the age of thirty-six or seven.When Zhong Xiao was able to survive by struggling, he believed in the future and the power of knowledge.he

Never dragging one's feet along the way, if you can live a day, just do what you want to do for a day, this is a testimony.The book vividly shows how he was struggling in adversity, how he was in a desperate situation and still had an inextinguishable flame in his heart, using it to illuminate the haze and suffering around him.His poverty was unimaginable at the time.From his diaries, we can often talk about: "The cold clothes are sold out", "Breakfast is absent", "After writing dry hemoptysis".... It is said that he once changed the mending of the worn-out coat to underwear. It was in this extreme hardship that he wrote down his thought crystallization of blood and tears one stroke at a time.

When the editor handed over the manuscript to me and asked me to write the preface, it was just before I was about to leave for the south.In just a few days, I read the compiled manuscripts and borrowed Zhongxiao's three notebooks.While reading, my heart fluctuates accordingly.Before I had time to chew carefully, the borrowed manuscripts and notes had to be returned.When I wrote this preface, I always felt that I didn’t have a deep understanding of the profound meaning of these ordinary and extremely extraordinary words.I was surprised to find that after learning from the 1955 incident, we have almost the same inner experience and spiritual journey in many aspects.This manifests itself above all in reflections that are purely painful.This reflection is painful, but it is done with great spiritual force.The more one's dignity is insulted, the stronger one's personality consciousness becomes.This is beyond the comprehension of those who practice tyranny.During those years, Zhongxiao read the boxes of books he could get his hands on with a strong thirst for knowledge.In philosophy, apart from the works of Marx, Kant and Hegel are the main ones.He is also an avid reader of Hei's (Little Logic).The notes excerpt a large number of texts from "Little Logic", all of which are translated by He.In addition, in order to broaden his horizons and make up for his lack of knowledge, he also read a lot of ancient books.I found that he paid special attention to Cheng-Zhu Neo-Confucianism and Lu-Wang Xinxue, which seems to be correcting the past bias of drawing lines with materialism and despising speculative philosophy.In the notes, I also used a lot of space to extract the text of "Book of Changes", but it is a pity that I seldom use it to derive my own opinions.Zhong Xiao must have his own ideas when he extracted these words, but unfortunately we can't suspend them.Notes also excerpted many texts from the Old and New Testaments of the Christian Bible.This aspect is easier to understand.For example, the words (Old Testament Proverbs) excerpted in the notes, "If you are timid in the day of trouble, your strength will be small", which is obviously closely related to his situation and mood at that time.

The above are some of my impressions after reading Zhongxiao's manuscripts in a hurry.What is unusual about this book is that it did not occur to its author to publish it for human reading.We can only get a glimpse of his closed mind meditation from this selection.If you want to understand the mental journey he left behind in the beatings, even if you read all his notes, you may not be able to easily uncover the secret door of your heart.Because under the circumstances at that time, even if I wrote it for myself, I still couldn't speak it outright.There are some hidden words in the notes, and it is not easy to understand their meaning at the moment.There are also some opinions in the notes that have emerged in reflection but have not yet been formed. They may be written down as a memorandum for further thinking in the future.But I think that if we experience the Tathagata carefully, we can explore his thought changes, mental activities and spiritual journey from the scattered thought tracks recorded intermittently.He did not lose the courage to live in the adversity that he had endured hardships and hardships, and he always had a pure heart to seek strength in knowledge, which is not something every Chinese intellectual can do.

Zhong Xiao called the corner of his accommodation "Wumenglou", hence the name, which reminds me of Gu Zhun's book "From Idealism to Empiricism" published not long ago. Writing a book and making a statement is just to write my own inner monologue because of my inexhaustible conscience.Zhongxiao's "No Dreams" probably means abandoning dreams and bidding farewell to Utopia, I think. New Year's Eve 1992