Chapter 18 teaching

After Luo Jialun became the president of Tsinghua, he wanted to hire Liu to be a full-time professor at Tsinghua, but Peking University refused to let him go. After several negotiations, the two parties finally reached a compromise. Liu went to Tsinghua to teach, but he still served as a professor at Peking University.This shows how popular Liu Wendian was back then. For the students who were admitted to Tsinghua University back then, “I didn’t choose Mr. Yang Yufu, Mr. Yu Pingbo, or Mr. Zhu Ziqing when I was a freshman in Chinese, but I chose Mr. Liu Shuya, who is good at understanding the different impressions given by writing.”

Once, when Liu Wendian was in class, a student stood up and said, "Sir, can you speak louder, the people behind you can't hear you!" Liu asked, "How many people are here today?" He replied, "More than 30 people." Liu said: "I'm in class, and there are never more than 30 people in the classroom! I won't be teaching today." After speaking, he got up and walked away. Liu Wendian's lectures are informal and often casual, giving students the feeling of being on the scene.Once, he just finished speaking the content of the previous lecture after half an hour.The students thought that he was going to teach a new class, but he suddenly announced: "Class will end early today, and get out of class will continue at 7:30 next Wednesday after dinner." It turns out that next Wednesday is the fifteenth day of the fifth lunar month, which is the full moon. At night, he will speak "Moon Fu" under the moonlight.On this day, when the bright moon was in the sky, a circle of seats was set up on the campus, and Liu Wendian sat in the middle and gave a lecture on "Ode to the Moon". The vivid images and incisive insights made the listeners intoxicated, and they didn't know where to go.Many years later, Song Tingchen wrote in his reminiscence article: "That was more than 20 years ago when humans landed on the moon. How beautiful the moon palace is in everyone's imagination, so the old man gave a big lecture on "Moon Fu" in front of a bright moon. ", the incisive explanation and such a unique and interesting lecture, this is the first time in the author's life."

Liu Wendian has done a lot of research on Buddhism and is often invited to give speeches.Zhang Shiying once talked about an anecdote about Liu Wendian’s speech: “At that time, regardless of liberal arts or science, both students and professors liked to go to various departments to listen to their favorite courses. So in some courses, you can see students and professors listening to the lectures together. I still remember listening to Liu Wendian when I was in the first grade. When I arrived in the classroom, it was crowded with people, and the floor was full. Liu Wendian is a scholar who is informal and full of literati style. He was about to speak, but he didn't speak, so everyone had to wait anxiously. He took another drag on his cigarette, and then he spoke unhurriedly: "All of you here are Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu!" An old professor, Yan Renyin, who had been sitting and waiting for half an hour, said angrily, "Jia Baoyu and Lin Daiyu are both big bastards and little bastards!" This was to scold Liu Wendian. But Liu Wendian After the lecture, none of the people below walked away."

Liu Wendian once asked Chen Yinke to come up with the "Chinese" test questions. Chen asked the examinees to match the pairs and came up with "Sun Xingzhe" in the first couplet. Liu Wendian is well-known and strong. When he taught the two articles "Yuanyuanqu" and "Eternal Sorrow" in class, he told the students the deeds of the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties one by one like a few treasures, and listed them on the blackboard. Many allusions.Let the students "twelve points" admire. Once, a teaching assistant added a typo out of thin air to a student's class paper. At that time, the student felt aggrieved and immediately went to Liu Wendian.Liu shook his head and smacked his lips angrily after watching it, and went back to have a big fight with the teaching assistant.Since then, all the student's papers have been corrected by Liu himself.

When he was at Southwest Associated University, Liu Wendian lived in Guandu, a suburb of the city, far away from the school.At that time, Japanese planes often carried out air raids on Kunming, but he never missed classes.He said: "In the face of a national crisis, I would rather be killed by a plane than miss school." Liu Wendian has always been unrestrained and unrestrained, and it is the same when he starts class. In a class, he can talk about the content related to the course for at most 30 minutes. . He Zhaowu once recalled Liu Wendian's class situation in the book: "At Southwest Associated University, Mr. Liu was probably the oldest, and he had a great style. He almost didn't come to class most of the time. The Tang poets Wen Tingyun and Li Shangyin took very remote classes, but he always missed seven or eight of the ten classes. Occasionally he came to a class when he was happy, and he cursed at people casually during the lecture, and then he didn’t come to the next class. Ordinarily this shouldn’t be, at that time there was no other one like him, but that’s his style.”

In the article "Liu Shuya", Zhang Zhongxing recalled Liu Wendian's lecture on "Hai Fu" and said: "One time I talked about Mu Xuanxu's "Hai Fu", and I mostly played it from the nature and function of the sound. Once again, it is a general discussion of the different sentiments of different rhymes, saying that the sentiment of the five micro-rhymes is melancholy, for example, reciting with eyes closed, "The wind presses down, the clouds stick to the water, and the swallows fight for mud in the clear pool. Shen Lang is haggard Overwhelming.' After reading it, stop for a while, as if you are still thinking about it..."

Song Tingchen also talked about Liu Wendian's "Hai Fu" in "Recalling Liu Wendian's Master Two or Three Things": "When he explained "Hai Fu", he not only described the stormy waves of the sea, as turbulent as mountains, but also called us to pay special attention to the lecture notes. Take a closer look, and it turns out that most of the text is written next to water. Master Shu Ya said that no matter whether the article is good or bad, just looking at the many words next to water in this article can make people feel the surging sea Boundless, just like being in the sea.”

Fu Laisu recorded in the article "A Real Celebrity Is Merry": Whenever he lectured on poetry, Liu Wendian often shook his head, chanted softly, and sang generously when he got excited.He not only recited it himself, but also asked his students to imitate it.Some students did not follow orders. Although he was displeased, he was not harsh. He just made an analogy: "If you don't sing poetry, how do you know its taste? If you just watch and listen to Mr. Mei's play, you can't understand it." How can you feel the charm of singing?" Fu Laisu recalled Liu Wendian's lectures: "After clarifying the subject, he no longer read books, nor did he have lecture notes or lesson plans. Discussion, sometimes expressing emotions, citing scriptures and classics, the ocean is unrestrained, suddenly like a river breaking its embankment, like a dragon seeing its head but not its tail. When you are thirsty, take a small sip of a small teapot to moisten your throat. When you are tired of talking, light it up. A cigarette, take a few puffs, lean on the back of the chair and close your eyes to rest your mind. When you are excited, you will hit the rhythm and sing without any scruples. When you are happy, you can talk about literature and poetry, and you can speak well. Almost to the point of forgetting myself."

Once, Liu Wendian talked about Li Shangyin's "Jinse", and conducted some research on whether "Jinse" was a musical instrument or a "concubine".He believes that "Jinse" cannot be Linghu Chu (or his son)'s "concubine", because Li Shangyin cannot ignore the friendship between teachers and students or the friendship between teachers and brothers.Later, he said that the rhyme of "Xian" in the poem is "a long and heavy sigh rather than a wail".The professor who will be speaking for the next class is already waiting outside the classroom door.It took about 20 minutes before Liu Wendian calmed down. He took out his pocket watch and said "oh, oh" twice, packed up his books, and walked out of the classroom slowly.

Fu Laisu and other students wanted to make up for the lack of lectures, so they boldly asked Liu to read his teaching plans.Upon hearing this, Liu Wendian smiled and said, "The teaching plan is in my head." Liu Wendian started the course "Selected Readings of Selected Works", and he could only teach two or three articles in "Selected Works" a year, and "Wen Fu" must be taught at the beginning of every year.It took him two months to talk about the thousands of words of "Wen Fu".When talking about the use of a certain word in "Wen Fu" well, he said: ""Wen Fu" has many ways of speaking. It can be said for one year or one month. For example, this sentence and this word, It’s really worth a word! If it weren’t for how good it is, the ancients were not related to me, why should I praise him so much?”

Liu Wendian taught courses in Southwest Associated University such as Selected Readings, Selected Readings of Selected Works, Poems of Wen Tingyun and Li Shangyin, Research on Chinese Literary Criticism, Research on Yuanyi Mountain, and Research on Wumei Village. Wu Xiaoling recalled in "Recalling Mr. Liu Shuya's Counting Things" that once, Liu Wendian gave a speech in the Christian Wenlin Church. He explained that in the twenty-seventh chapter, "everything is a species, and it is Zen in different forms. The beginning and death are like a ring, and there is no theory. , is the "day average" in the edict "Tianjun" is "nature balance", which is concise and to the point. Student Wang Yanming recalled that when Liu Wendian took the "Wumei Village Research" class, there were not many people in the class. There were more than a dozen people sitting sparsely, and the huge classroom seemed empty.But Liu Wendian didn't care. He sat down on a "ham chair" (wooden chair with an armrest shaped like a whole ham on the right side for writing notes) beside the classroom table, lit a cigarette as usual, Taking a deep breath, speaking in Anhui accent: "Today we will only talk about two lines in Mei's poem: 'It is as geometric as green and emerald green, and the jade mirror repairs the twelve rings of eyebrows.'" Wang Yanming said: "Mr. Liu talked eloquently, The cigarette smoke curls up, leading us into a poetic and picturesque mood." When get out of class was over, the moon had risen very high. Wang Yanming and other students sent the teacher back to their residence. Liu was very moved and recited Li Bai's "To Wang Lun": "Li Bai was about to go on a boat, but suddenly he heard the sound of singing on the shore. Peach Blossom Pond The depth of the water is thousands of feet, and it is not as good as Wang Lun's gift." Wang Yanming clearly remembered, "His Mandarin with Anhui accent swayed slightly, sometimes with a little trill."