Chapter 29 7. X and Free Writing

When I was a freshman, some old classmates from Shanghai Middle School entrusted me to run a journal in order to keep in touch. I was responsible for drafting and editing, and then mimeographed and sent to Tsinghua classmates.This kind of mimeographed publication was only published for one issue, and later it was found to be troublesome, so it was changed to a manuscript and circulated in Beijing and Shanghai.Shiying knew about this and was very interested in asking me how to do it. "Let's do a publication too, shall we?" he asked me.I readily agree, but nothing below.I found out shortly afterwards that this publication had been born and it was x.

One day after the start of the second semester, Shiying showed me a poem he had written titled "Dedicated to X".The opening sentences are: What are you waiting for? x, x, and x... get x, i enrich, Without x, I'm empty... He also showed me a short article by Sun Jingwu, the content was aimed at him, saying that he didn't want to deal with any x, and would rather play with a, b, c, d... these little dolls.Shiying looked very angry and said that she would fight back severely.The article came out right away. It was a fable about an elephant moving forward in the forest, and whenever it encountered any obstacles, it would easily roll up its long trunk and throw it away.At his request, I also wrote an article, the argument is: no matter x, or a, b, c, d, it is meaningless without s. s is a symbol representing direction in physics. Shiying dismissed me with one sentence after seeing it: "s is a fiction. What purpose does life have?"

Later, I realized that "Dedicated to x" was actually Shi Yingwei's launch speech.This handwritten publication, which is now regarded as a classic in the history of underground literature, is actually nothing more than Guo Shiying, Zhang Heci, and Sun Jingwu wrote works and circulated them to each other.There was a small group surrounding this publication. In addition to the three of them, there was also a girl named Ye Rongqing, a student of Beijing Second Medical College, who joined the group because of her close relationship with Sun Jingwu.According to what Shiying said afterwards, I was considered a peripheral.Why is it called x?Each of the three had their own explanations: Guo said it was an unknown number, Zhang said it was a cross street, and Sun said it was the first letter of Khrushchev in Russian.

Since then, Zhang and Sun have often appeared on the Peking University campus.Zhang Heci appeared more often. His father, Zhang Zongbing, was a professor of biology at Peking University. He lived with his parents in a teacher's dormitory area of ​​Peking University.I often saw him come to the dormitory to look for Shiying, and then the two left together.He has long hair, a small and delicate face, pale, the muscles of his face are always convulsed, and his eyes shine strangely, like a neurotic character described by Dostoevsky.Sun Jingwu is slightly plump and of medium height, with imperceptible sarcasm in his big smart eyes, and an indifferent and lazy demeanor, more like the superfluous people described by Turgenev.Both of them were unemployed at the time.After graduating from No. 101 Middle School, Sun joined the army, but was returned by the army because he tried to sneak across the border.Zhang once studied in the mathematics department of Beijing Normal University and was expelled for failing seven subjects.It is said that he failed the exam on purpose, and Shiying mentioned it in a boastful tone many times, as if it was also his glory.

Since then, I have often read the works of the three of them.All three of them wrote in different genres and styles.Zhang Heci mainly writes poems, which are exquisitely crafted artistically, with exquisite, beautiful and hazy writing.I believe that he is indeed the pioneer of Bei Dao and Gu Cheng's generation of poets, and the history of contemporary Chinese Misty poetry should be counted from him.I keep four poems written by him in later years. Unfortunately, the poems of the X period are hard to find. I only remember two lines of them: "The moon has cancer" and "The sun is a big fool".He also writes short stories, and the writing is equally beautiful and refined.I remember the plot of an article about a beautiful woman suffering from cancer. She sat in front of the fire and burned letters and diaries while recalling the past: she once fell in love with a talented classmate who became a rightist. Living in cohabitation with a classmate who is a public security cadre, happiness has been ruined since then, leaving only pain and regret.Sun Jingwu is good at writing reviews.He has an amazing memory. After watching the opera "Madame Butterfly", he wrote a long article with tens of thousands of words. Shiying was amazed by the detailed and accurate description of the details in the play.Shiying told me that he often studied "Mao Xuan" and party history, and then wrote commentary articles.I have only read one article, titled "On Paper Tigers", which is very rhetorical and satirizes the argument that all imperialism is a paper tiger.It said that since it was a paper tiger, it would break if poked with a finger, so why should it be like an enemy.He also said that China opposed Khrushchev's revisionism, and Khrushchev was a revisionist only because he was Khrushchev.Shiying asked me to write an article for him, and I imitated Sun's style of writing, depicting a paper tiger placed in a dark place, how scary it looks, and how difficult it is to tell the truth from the fake, so I don't have the courage to poke it with my fingers.After reading it, Shiying said: "Forget it, don't show it to him, he will definitely scold you." He believed that Sun had made a semantic error, and wrote a rebuttal article based on this idea.Thinking about it now, my articles at that time were really not up to their standards, and I was fortunate enough not to become a full member of x.

Shiying's writing genres are quite diverse, starting with poems and short stories, then seriously managing a script, and finally writing autobiographical novels, but because of an accident, neither the script nor the novel was completed.He has a poem that he admires very much, to the effect that he drank a cup of bitter wine with tears, and the tears kept dripping into the cup, and the cup of bitter wine could never be drunk.In writing, one of the things he really persisted in doing was improvising snippets of his life and thoughts.He doesn't know where to get a lot of discarded paper, the paper is very good, with English words printed on one side, and he uses the other side to write.Zhang's and Sun's works are all written on serious loose-leaf paper, and each stroke shows a kind of seriousness, while the paper he uses encourages a kind of casualness.He often said to me: "ideas do not come from pursuit, but come to you by yourself." Now I know that this sentence is basically copied from Nietzsche.However, he did do this, taking paper with him anytime, anywhere, and recording his thoughts that flashed through and the mental activities he reflected on anytime, anywhere.This habit has served him well in the stream-of-consciousness style of writing which he admires.

Not only in reading, but also in writing, Shiying is the first person who has given me a major influence.In fact, consciously or not, I was imitating him.Earlier, I was obsessed with Turgenev, so I wrote an epistolary novel of nearly 10,000 characters titled "A Pile of Unsent Letters" based on my crush on a girl in junior high school.I showed it to a classmate in my class who also seemed to like literature. Unexpectedly, after reading it, he kept shouting: "It's so ugly! It's so ugly!" Shiying knew it and blamed me for not showing it to that person.His evaluation of this work is: "You can write things, and the writing style is very smooth. However, the plot is too simple, without twists and turns." He also quoted Cao Qiuchi's comment, saying that what I wrote was not about love, but about sexual desire. wake up.I was surprised by Cao's sharpness, but felt uncomfortable.Later, I also began to write autobiographical novels, focusing on my experience after entering Peking University, but I stopped writing after a short period of time, because the tide of life came too violently.I wrote a letter to a friend and said: "Life is too late, so how can I remember it!" What I wrote most frequently at the time was impromptu records of feelings and thoughts, the so-called random feelings. This habit was completely developed under the influence of Shiying. of.I also follow his example and am keen to use words to describe a real scene in front of me, such as the performance of teachers and classmates in class, people's expressions when something happens, and the scenery of a certain place on campus. I call it text sketching. .In addition, I kept my diary very seriously, writing several pages every day.I regard the diary as my main subject. If I bury my head in the reading room, most of the diaries are spread out under the pen.Looking at it now, all these random thoughts, text sketches, and journals, although not formal writing, have improved my writing ability more effectively than any formal writing.They have cultivated a hunter-like alertness in me, capturing valuable things in life and in my heart anytime, anywhere, and converting them into words for storage.Once a person has formed such an instinct, it is almost impossible for him not to become a writer in the true sense, no matter whether he makes a living by writing in the future.

Guo Shiying, Zhang, and Sun were all young people in their twenties at the time, and they belonged to the spiritually sensitive type. They had considerable contact with Western traditional and modern culture, so they felt the oppression of living under cultural dictatorship. And pain, showing a strong tendency to deviant.Among the three, Zhang and Sun's works are more involved in politics, while Guo is farther away from politics.I am completely different. On the one hand, I am more naive, and on the other hand, I am more orthodox. I don't quite understand their tendency, and I even feel doubts and fears.But, nonetheless, their writing—mainly Guo's work and Zhang's poems—has been a huge revelation to me, refreshing.They made me see that there is another possibility for writing, which does not have to follow the current political model at all, but can be a real artistic creation and ideological exploration, a personal spiritual activity.I didn't quite realize it at the time, but the seeds had been planted and one day they would sprout and grow.