Chapter 8 If the Sky Never Dies——Remembering Mr. Xiong Bingming

I heard the news that Mr. Xiong Bingming was hospitalized before returning to Beijing.On the third day in Beijing, Li Chuan, a friend from Paris, called and learned that he had left.I remember that I and Li Chuan made a special trip to see him last summer.His home is far away from Paris, about an hour's drive away.He seemed in good spirits that day.We drank tea, ate cakes, and chatted.In the tranquility of the afternoon, several pots of flowers bloomed enthusiastically.He suddenly talked about old age and facing death.He said that death is a science, everyone has to learn it, especially when you are old, you have to take it seriously.He even wants to open courses in China to discuss these issues with students.Speaking of this, he had the calmness of a wise man on his face.When I got the news of his death, I was reminded of his expression at that time.

Friends in Paris call him Mr. Xiong.Sir has been used vulgarly now? Ladies and gentlemen, the original meaning is the meaning of the former teacher.Chinese educated overseas tend to use words more cautiously than people in China, especially in a feminine city like Paris.Therefore, Mr. Xiong's title is appropriate, expressing a kind of cordial respect, and not so vigorous that he must call him a master. I can't remember the exact time when I met Mr. Xiong, but it should be the summer of 1987.At that time, our family lived in England and used our summer vacation to roam around in Paris and other places.For me, it was an unforgettable time, poor but idle.I remember that there was a symposium at the travel agency run by Mrs. Xiong and Mrs. Chen Yingde, a painting critic, Wang Keping, a sculptor, and Mr. Xiong.Then Wang Keping drove me to visit Mr. Xiong.He lived in the suburbs of Paris at that time.The backyard is his studio, filled with his sculptures.What impressed me the most was a tin crow and Lu Xun's head made of multi-layered cardboard.Keping told me that he has been very active in the French painting circle since the early 1950s, and has won awards in many French and European exhibitions.

Later I learned that Mr. Xiong is not only a sculptor, but also a poet, calligrapher, scholar and philosopher.He is humble and does not care about utilitarianism.It can be said that he is a combination of traditional Chinese literati and Western liberal intellectuals in the best sense, and he is one of the few generalists left after the May Fourth Movement.The so-called generalist not only refers to broad and profound knowledge, but more importantly, a thorough understanding and concern for history and life.The counterpart of generalists is specialists, which are the so-called experts who are full of today.Their specializations become more and more detailed, and their paths become narrower and narrower. The knowledge they have acquired is purely used for making a living.Look at the technocrats who rule the world today. It is the extension of this kind of expertise at the level of power. From top to bottom, almost everyone is knowledgeable and capable, but they just have no soul.

I lived in Paris in the early 1990s, and I have come and gone frequently since then, but I haven’t had many chances to meet Mr. Xiong, especially since he moved out of Paris later, he couldn’t drive a car because of bad eyesight, and rarely went into the city.Last summer, he specially invited me to stay at his house for a few days to have a good chat, but in the end it didn't work out.I regret it.When people are around, they think that there are always opportunities, but in fact, life is subtraction, seeing each other and getting less. My father was seriously ill and hospitalized last spring.Mr. Xiong was very anxious and called Mr. Yang Zhenning specifically, hoping that he could come forward to help me return to China to visit.He and Mr. Yang are family friends, and their parents are both professors in the Department of Mathematics of Tsinghua University; they are not only the same age, but also classmates, and their deep friendship has continued to this day.I was teaching at the State University of New York at Stony Brook at that time, and I was fortunate to meet Mr. Yang and hit it off very well.Under the trust of Mr. Xiong, Mr. Yang paid special attention to it.I was finally able to make the trip and went back to Beijing to see my dying old father.Mr. Xiong has been paying attention to my return to China, and often asks about my father's condition.How can this kind of love in this life be a word of thanks?

Mr. Xiong lives far away and comes and goes in a hurry, so he rarely has time to chat.I seldom drink alcohol with him, but always have a cup of tea.The memory brought by tea is different from wine, refreshing and clear, which is just like Mr. Xiong's personality.Mr. Xiong is very talkative.I remember one time when he made a mild criticism of my poem, I argued with him, and it was quite disrespectful, but he just smiled generously.Another time he asked me to read a recent work, the ending is "If the sky is not dead", he sighed that this sentence reminded him of his youth.I didn't know how this association came about at the time, but now I finally understand it.This verse actually has a kind of paradoxical tension: the sky is immortal in youth, but the subjunctive voice questions this, which is the confusion of adolescence.

In the last year of the last century, Mr. Xiong held a touring exhibition "Xiong Bingming's Art - Journey and Return" in Beijing, Shanghai, Kunming, Taipei, and Kaohsiung.This topic is a good one, I think Mr. Xiong must have started it himself.Looking at Mr. Xiong's chronology, it is like a road map, which is related to historical events, wars and inner turmoil.He was born in Nanjing in 2022. His father, Xiong Qinglai, was a famous mathematician.In 2007, my father went to Tsinghua University to teach, and the family moved to Beijing.After the July 7th Incident, he moved to Kunming with his father and graduated from the Department of Philosophy of Southwest Associated University in 1944.Then he went farther and farther, out of the border? He studied in France at public expense in 1947, and did not return to China for the first time until 1972. This journey lasted for a quarter of a century.His father had died in the Cultural Revolution.After that, he started to go back, and returned to China to hold exhibitions, give lectures and publish books.Traveling and returning are not only in terms of time and space, but also his mental journey.He mentioned not long ago that although he has lived in France for more than 50 years, he does not feel the need to integrate into French society.Mr. Xiong's French should have reached the point of proficiency, but he never writes in French.I think in fact, there is a kind of pride in his bones, the pride of Chinese culture, this pride accompanies him on his long journey, and also accompanies him to return.

Mr. Xiong is gone, and the world is darker, leaving us to face the dead sky? An era of indifferent and efficient management. January 17, 2003 in DAVIS, USA At the moment I am writing in my guest room at Shaw College, The Chinese University of Hong Kong.Outside the window are bays, small islands and distant mountains, and the clouds and mists are unpredictable, cloudy and sunny.The old-fashioned air conditioner was humming, and the cockroaches were hiding in the corner and watching the changes.I typed a line on the computer keyboard and then painted it out. I have a fate with Chinese University.In 1983, when CUHK’s Renditions published the Chinese-English bilingual version of “Anthology of Obscure Poems”, it happened that I became the focus of the criticism of the “anti-spiritual pollution movement”, and I was suddenly in a cold world. Warm in two streams of water.Until now, I don't understand how my poems caused pollution.Fortunately, although the storm was ferocious, it quickly dissipated with the thunder and rain.I couldn't publish my works for a year, so I had to switch to poetry translation to make ends meet. The result of "anti-spiritual pollution" forced me to learn a new "pollution" technique.

In 1985, the Chinese University Press published both Chinese and English versions of my collection of short stories "Wave", which is one of my earliest official publications. The binding is beautiful and it greatly satisfies the vanity of a young author. Heart. The English translator of "Waves" is Bonnie McDougall.She was born and raised in Sydney, where her father was one of the leaders of the Australian Communist Party. In 1958, at the age of 17, she was sent to Beijing to study Chinese in order to become an envoy between the two parties in China and Australia.However, due to "acclimatization", she stayed in Beijing for half a year and then left, but since then she became attached to Chinese and obtained a Ph.D. from the University of Sydney.We met in Beijing twenty-five years ago and worked together at the Foreign Languages ​​Bureau.Unexpectedly, now we meet again in Hong Kong and become colleagues in the Translation Department of CUHK.

A quarter of a century has passed, and Du Boni and I had dinner in the staff restaurant of CUHK.The twilight is everywhere, setting off the lights on the sea.We talked about the past, like the red wine in the glass is a bit bitter.Back then, Du Boni opened English tuition classes for Kaige, Mai Ping and me, but only Mai Ping became an apprentice in the end.We spent almost every weekend at Duboni's house cooking, drinking and talking all night long. Before and after the release of "Yellow Earth", we shared the anxiety, passion and glory of Triumph.Starting from "Yellow Earth", he gradually drifted away.Duboni and I fell into silence, and the 1980s illuminated by our friendship sank to the bottom of the glass.

In the spring of 1987, I came to Hong Kong for the first time at the invitation of Mr. Zhan Delong, the president of CUHK Publishing House, and held activities at CUHK.The hustle and bustle of downtown Hong Kong is in contrast to the simplicity and tranquility of the CUHK campus.I wander the streets.What impressed me the most was the night view of Hong Kong.My plane landed in it like a fish through a glistening coral reef.Ms. Chu, my colleague at Durham University in the UK at the time, happened to be visiting relatives in Hong Kong.She was born in Taipei and grew up in Hong Kong.So she took me on a ferry, went shopping in Ladies Market, and ate seafood in a small restaurant in Tsim Sha Tsui.Accompanied by beautiful women, for a Beijinger, Hong Kong has a certain exotic atmosphere.

I mistyped 1997 on the keyboard as 1697 and changed it.Probably as Mr. Huang Renyu said, it was an unimportant year.But which year is important?In fact, rulers, historians and ordinary people have different concepts of time.For example, the imperial calendar is mainly about solar terms, zodiac signs, weddings and funerals, and has nothing to do with the country. In the spring of 1997, I came to participate in the first Hong Kong International Poetry Festival.I am also one of the planners of the Poetry Festival.The theme of the poetry festival is "The Transit in the Transition".If we say that everything is a transition, even life is included.Hong Kong is like a ship. Leaving and returning are both transitions, and the Hong Kong people on board are well-informed and calm.Since fate cannot be held in one's own hands, so many people in Hong Kong ask for fortune-telling, dream-telling, fortune-telling and worship Buddha, and the superstition of numbers has reached the point of madness.It's no wonder, wandering in the vast sea, who do you trust? In a daze, I was invited to dinner by rich men in Hong Kong, and they spent a lot of money.The reason why the fish on the plate is so expensive, according to the waiter, is that it is a "noble" swimming in the confluence of cold and warm ocean currents.Shocked, I confessed the plight of "Today" magazine, and tried to lead them to the righteous way of generously donating to literature, but they all pretended to be deaf and dumb.Only then did I understand that the banquet is actually a sacrifice ceremony to the ancient power of money, and it has nothing to do with the host and the guest. On the eve of leaving Hong Kong, I went to visit Huang Yongyu.His home is in the mid-levels of Central, and the sea can be seen from the living room.We chatted very happily, from the Anti-Japanese War to the Cultural Revolution to the current situation in Hong Kong.Huang Yongyu and his wife returned to the mainland from Hong Kong in the late 1950s, moved to Hong Kong in the 1980s, and then moved to the mainland in the late 1990s.For him, is Hong Kong a safe haven or a new continent, the other shore or this shore?This self-proclaimed "Xiangxi old troublemaker", I think, it is his stubbornness to go his own way and the free and easy life of playing games that make him overcome many difficulties and become one of the few survivors who went against the current.This is probably related to the difference between Xiangxi, which is on the edge of Han culture, and the Tujia people who have not been fully assimilated. I visited him in the 1970s, and he received guests in a covered shed in a courtyard in Beijing.I remember that the windowless shed was low and dim, but he drew a window on the wall, full of sunshine and flowers.An artist's cognition, protest and jokes about darkness are all in it. After hearing my account of the humiliation of my donation, Huang Yongyu turned around and went into the studio, where he created a huge landscape painting with fine brushwork and heavy colors measuring two feet in length.I panicked and waved my hands again and again to say no.The old man said: "Look, this painting is not for you. Let me tell you, this painting cannot be lower than 30,000 US dollars. From now on, I will be the backing of "Today". If you need money, come to me." For me, Hong Kong has been blank for eight years.According to the principles of Chinese painting, blank space is the most important part of the picture, which is memorable.It wasn't until I was drifting overseas that I realized how much the inner situation of Hong Kong people is. They are the blank space in this picture of China. I came to Hong Kong last November to reunite with my family.It turned out to be a disheveled little old man who opened the door to pay my respects at the hotel. It turned out to be Mr. Shen, whom I had been friends with for a long time.He rushed to the hotel one step ahead of me.Mr. Shen is a painter. I have been a "fan" of his comic strips since I was a child, and later he became a "fan" of mine, which is equal.But as soon as he met, he yelled for a treat, and he couldn't help it.He immigrated from Beijing to Hong Kong in the 1970s. He couldn't speak Cantonese and suffered a lot. He worked three jobs at the same time, getting up early and returning home late.Now he is retired and busy with his leisure time.This busyness includes the meaning of all the money.According to his words: "I have to spend all the money before I see Lord Yan." He is a good book, and this good includes reading and buying three products for free.Reading is good, but it is hateful to encounter people who read books but refuse to spend money on books. Writers can only sit and wait for death.And Mr. Shen not only buys books, but also buys a few more books to give away to friends.He specializes in scouring less popular subgenres, such as local chronicles, dialect studies, folklore history, memories of widows or widows' reminiscences. Reuniting my family for two weeks at a Hong Kong hotel was a new lesson in my years of nomadic life.Going out is like an expedition, and the leader is Doudou who is not yet one year old.He is small, but has the demeanor of a general, commanding us around.He broke up with me on the seventh day of birth (just like Genesis), and now we meet again in Hong Kong, it seems that there is a secret arrangement.In the early 1950s, my father made up his mind to immigrate the whole family to Hong Kong, but was stopped by my second uncle of the Communist Party who was a doctor. When leaving Hong Kong, Mr. Shen insisted on coming to see him off.He arrived early and we were packing up.Seeing that the big box couldn't be covered, even though he was over seventy years old, he jumped onto the box lid, yelled, jumped up and down, and tamped the clothes with his own weight.Together we managed to close the box. When we arrived at the airport, he took us to the restaurant and gave us farewell tea with Cantonese morning tea.For this reason, he proudly said: "This is perfect, connecting and delivering, from the beginning to the end." Drinking tea at the airport is indeed a good idea, ordering and eating while chatting makes people relax until boarding the plane.To say that I have been to countless airports all over the world, I have never had such an imperial enjoyment. Before leaving, I had lunch with Prof. Fang Zixun and Prof. Tong Yuanfang from the Translation Department of CUHK. Prof. Tong's husband Chen Zhifan was also present.He sips Beijing movies, which arouses deep nostalgia in me, a Beijing native.Born in Beijing in 1925, he has been Hu Shi's close friend since his youth, as evidenced by the collection of letters "Letters to Hu Shi in University".He is both a scientist and an essayist. I like his prose, which is as simple and deep as an ancient well. Under the arrangement of the Chinese Department, Professor Li Oufan hosted my recital.Since meeting Li Oufan in Iowa, USA in 1988, we have met in different corners of the world: Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, New York, Prague, Stockholm, Petersburg... and finally Hong Kong.I listened to him talk about post-colonial theory and deconstructionism, which is easy to understand.This "fox" of him really practiced himself, and finally left Harvard University, the center of American mainstream culture, married a Hong Kong wife, and settled down in Hong Kong. At the invitation of the Department of Translation and Interpretation of Chinese University, I will teach a course called "Introduction to Chinese Literature" this summer.It is impossible to compress 5,000 years of Chinese literature into six weeks, so I plan to focus on poetry, especially the flaws in different English translations to understand the perfection of ancient Chinese poetry.It is also a way to go for stupid people like me. The room suddenly darkened, and it rained suddenly, accompanied by lightning and thunder.This year there is a lot of rain, and it is said that the wind is the rain.The writer Li Rui visited Hong Kong Baptist University not long ago. It is said that he looked at the sky and sighed: Hong Kong has been raining in vain, and it has flowed back into the sea. It would be great if it rained on our Luliang Mountain.Is it right? In this world, the natural environment is first of all rich and poor. I don’t think the people of Hong Kong will move to Luliang Mountain if they die. They would rather drift on the sea, regardless of the wind and rain. I like the quiet environment of CUHK, high above the sea, surrounded by bamboo forests and lawns.But I have also learned how powerful mosquitoes and cockroaches are in Hong Kong.Every time I went out, I was chased by mosquitoes, and I danced like a madman.The most amazing thing is that they can fly around the clock, rain or shine.Not to mention the cockroaches, which are extremely huge, which can be seen from the care of the humid oceanic climate and the nourishment of the extensive and profound Cantonese cuisine.As long as we go out or drowsy, they will come out to watch the night feast.As long as you close your eyes, you can imagine the huge cockroach empire in the pipeline network of high-rise buildings.It seems that no matter how advanced the science and technology of human beings, there is nothing they can do about cockroaches, so they gave up their efforts to make enemies of cockroaches. Unlike mainland writers who roar in groups, Hong Kong writers love solitude more.Perhaps it is due to their deeper experience of the pressure of commercialization and the nature of literature.In other words, there are no hallucinations, no tears, no privileges at the feet of the emperor.In my opinion, the authenticity of writers can only be tested by placing them in a place like Hong Kong: only those who are willing to be lonely and poor and unyielding are the ones who really love this job. The evolution of language is an interesting phenomenon.It is said that after 1949, Hong Kong once tuned in from the South to the North, and Putonghua came out on top.A Hong Kong friend told me that his substandard Cantonese is related to the mixed language of his classmates when he was a child-children enjoy imitating each other.Later, Cantonese and English shared the world equally, and English relied on its colonial advantages to be superior.I remember the first time I came to Hong Kong, I fell into the vast ocean of Cantonese, and English became the straw.After the reform and opening up, Hong Kong-style Cantonese once went north with the capital, and young people in Beijing were proud to sing in Cantonese.Feng Shui took turns, catching up with the unification of Mandarin in 1997, the people of Hong Kong tried their best to straighten their tongues and reform the pronunciation habits of the nine tones. At noon today, Professor Feng, Dean of the United College of CUHK, invited us to have lunch at the Jockey Club.The Jockey Club is a club of the upper class in Hong Kong, with obvious privileges, and I have to sit in neat clothes, which makes my back ache.During the dinner, Professor Feng led us to look at the racecourse from the balcony.He explained that according to the British custom, horse racing is counterclockwise, but the American horses who came to participate in the competition were used to running clockwise, and there was confusion for a while.When it comes to the sense of direction, we humans are actually not as good as horses - people get lost, but horses know the way. I suddenly remembered the inscription on the painting that Huang Yongyu recently donated to "Today": "There is no guest and host in the guest, and the flowers bloom to the old mountain".He specifically stated that this line of Wei Yuan's poem was selected and recorded for me.If China is a painting, then Hong Kong is the blank space of this painting, and I am a drop of ink accidentally spilled in this blank space.