Chapter 37 postscript

This book originated from the magazine I worked for. "Sanlian Life Weekly" has been groping for a new topic variety and report type since the success of the anti-Japanese war commemorative series in 2005.The success of the topic on the 60th anniversary of the Anti-Japanese War has given this magazine several important revelations. First, although reading is increasingly affected by public interest, serious readers’ interest in historical information consumption is actually increasing. The key lies in, Can communicators provide new interpretations and broader thinking about historical information—they actually constitute a rearrangement and retelling of history.As "Sanlian Life Weekly", it has the responsibility and obligation to provide those higher-end readers with thicker historical texts.

Another revelation is how the magazine can provide high-quality news products in the off-season of news, which is related to the continuity of content and quality of a continuously published weekly magazine.I have always believed that a good weekly magazine should maintain an excellent rhythm. It must switch between chasing hot news and providing knowledge consumption in an orderly manner. The Anti-Japanese War series provides such an idea: if Sanlian Life Weekly can find A good motif will form a continuous production theme, allowing reporters to invest in the production of another form of news products during the period when there are not enough exciting news topic selections.

Based on these two considerations, "Sanlian Life Weekly" began to plan a complete cross-year special topic every year since 2005. In addition to the motif of history, we also deepened our tentacles into geography, national industrial upgrading and other fields, and launched the " "Discover Tibet" and other series, until this year, with the 60th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China as the background, once again return to historical themes.Fortunately, I participated in almost all the operations and interviews of these New Year's Eve topics.

It is necessary to thank me again for my experience in planning, interviewing and writing related topics in the past four years, which is of great benefit to my professional and non-professional ability training.In the past, I often complained about my profession. Most media in China still use reporters in an oppressive way. Under the common "piecework" work, the way of support is extremely luxurious in reality, which greatly oppresses a person. Room for growth of excellent journalists.A few years ago, when the legendary Tom Abercrown of the National Geographic in the United States passed away, I sighed and said, "Abercrown has only written 43 manuscripts in 38 years at this magazine, which is almost just me. The amount of tasks to be submitted in Sanlian in one year." And this kind of special interview and writing, to a certain extent, provides the possibility of changing the traditional working method, which allows me to focus on a relatively long period of time. topic, digging into detail, and having enough room to think about the material I was given - it led directly to this journalistic history.

Of course, shortcomings are also obvious.Like all journalistic works, the shortcoming of this book's time limit is very prominent: it takes skill to balance the grand narrative and the pursuit of historical details, not to mention that the time I actually stayed and interviewed in each city was at most no more than Two weeks, this is obviously not enough, to reproduce the historical moment of liberation and entering the city after 60 years, this requires subtle observation, and often the beginning of my understanding of the city is when I leave. On the other hand, the book itself also embodies the characteristics and limitations of "weekly-style feature writing".When I was writing about Shenyang, I actually didn’t know what method to use to research this topic. Therefore, in Shenyang and Nanjing, I can still see traces of my heavy reliance on historical materials; With existing historical materials, the pursuit of interviews with historical parties has become very obvious. In the three articles in Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Beiping, it should be said that I have been very clear in the research method of strictly relying on first-hand interviews. The historical material also seems to be much more convenient.This kind of fracture may damage the unity and continuity of a book, but it reflects a researcher's complete thinking process when facing a research object, retaining the scene of thinking.I think, like this experimental work, this is also a feature of the experimental writing in this book.

For this topic selection, I had many in-depth exchanges and discussions with my editor-in-chief Zhu Wei and deputy editor-in-chief Li Honggu. My colleague Wang Kai also provided a lot of first-hand interview materials. Mr. Yang Zhiyou, the editor of this book, has been writing letters since the beginning of this year Discussed the possibility of this book taking shape with me, for which I am very grateful.I would also like to thank Sanlian's excellent photography team for taking precious recent photos of the parties who are over 70 years old, and the photo director, Shang Yuan, for searching for rare historical photo collections.Of course, like all my works, they all have the help of Chen Xiao, who is my wife and colleague.This book was also given to my parents and my one-year-old son.