Chapter 12 The first part, "Twenty Don't Forget Fang Caodi" in Mr. Chen's Notebook

Xiaoxi or If You Are the One OK did not reply to my email, but received an email from Fang Caodi, asking to meet.I did not reply immediately. Recently, my thoughts have been on Xiaoxi, and I can't help myself, but it's strange, when I think of Xiaoxi, I often think of Fang Caodi, and think of the nonsensical things he said when we met outside Xingfu No. 2 Village.Knowing him for so many years, he always called me Lao Chen, but that time he actually called me Mr. Chen.I even feel that Fang Caodi's state is indescribably similar to Xiaoxi's. I opened a cardboard box that hadn't been opened since I moved to Xingfu No. 2 Village, and checked my notebooks, one of which was about Fang Caodi.

Fang Caodi's original name was Fang Lijun, but after a painter of the same name became famous at home and abroad, the Fang Lijun I knew changed his name to Fang Caodi himself. The first thing I know about Fang Caodi is that when I was an editor of Ming Pao Monthly in Hong Kong, I often received letters from an American reader who signed Lao Fang. Sometimes it was to correct the facts or arguments of some articles in the monthly magazine, and more to read After reading the article, he provided us with a lot of relevant materials, but they were often unable to publish because they were too detailed. I only know that this old man knows a lot of secrets about the unofficial history of contemporary China.Once I posted a small notice in the reader column, asking him to provide his real name and mailing address, and sure enough, he attached his real name and address to his letter later, and I even wrote a letter to thank him.

He also pays special attention to my articles, and even the articles I published on the China edition of "Ming Pao" under a pseudonym have been noticed by him. In today's terms, he is my fan. In the summer of 1989, we met in Hong Kong, and he was going back to the mainland via Hong Kong.I am surprised that at this time everyone wants to leave the mainland, but some people want to go back.He asked me if I knew the organization that rescued the student leaders in Tiananmen Square. I said that there is a branch association in Hong Kong, so I can ask.I didn't know there was Operation Oriole at the time.

I found that his life was very special, so I asked him to have a long talk the next day and took notes. Fang Lijun's ancestral home is Shandong, and he was born in Beiping in 1947. His father joined the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in Xinjiang with the warlord Sheng Shicai, and later switched to the Kuomintang. He did not bring his third wife and youngest son Fang Lijun with him. The Communist Party of Sheng Shicai is not the same as the Zhumao Communist Party as it is now called. It once advocated that Xinjiang be separated from China.However, Lao Fang's father not only betrayed the Communist Party and joined the Kuomintang, but also got close to the underworld gangs in the Northwest, and was responsible for cultivating people with special abilities.Lao Fang was born in a Taoist temple with a long history in the east of Beijing, and his mother was also the chief godmother of that Taoist temple.After liberation, this Taoist temple was regulated by the national security department rather than the religious department, which shows that the CCP is vigilant against Taoist alchemy.

After gaining national power, the CCP immediately launched a campaign to suppress counter-revolutionaries, severely cracking down on Kuomintang secret agents, underworld gang members, and members of "reactionary associations, Taoism, and sects." Those who practice various martial arts or supernatural powers may be classified as reactionary associations.According to Mao Zedong's suggestion, according to the ratio of one thousandth of the national population, half of this number should be killed first.A large number of surrenderers who had worked for the Nationalist government and the CCP's own underground party members in the White Area were also killed, including Jin Yong's father Zha Shuqing and Zhu Ziqing's son Zhu Maixian.

After the suppression of counterrevolutionaries, gangsters and followers of Huidaomen almost disappeared in the land of China for a while, and the leaders who escaped quickly all went to Taiwan or Hong Kong.Lao Fang's father was involved in everything, so he also went to Taiwan.The mother of Lao Fang's eldest sister on the road was not so lucky, and died in a prison in Beijing. As for Lao Fang, the descendant of a Kuomintang spy, gangster and reactionary Taoist leader, he grew up in a Taoist temple where the doors were locked, no one was allowed to enter, and there was no religion. He was brought up by an old gatekeeper. Do some temple repair work and finish high school.

Because of his family status, Lao Fang failed to go to college, and because he was a few months older, he was not eligible to join the third-grade high school educated youth who went to the countryside to join the team, and he was not eligible to be a red guard. He was originally assigned to the western suburbs of Beijing at the beginning of the Cultural Revolution. Mentougou worked as a primary school teacher, but the school was upgraded before the Cultural Revolution, and was transferred to Muchengjian Coal Mine in Mentougou as a coal digger, where he stayed for many years.According to him, one day in September 1971, he suddenly wanted to visit the Summer Palace, because he had heard about it all day long but had never been there, and felt that if he did not go, he would have no chance to go there for a long time.But on the way to the Summer Palace that day, he found that the road was blocked. He guessed that there must be some kind of security or military mobilization in the Yuquan Mountain military restricted zone near the Summer Palace.After he returned to the workers' dormitory, he told everyone that something big was going to happen in China.Sure enough, it didn't take long for the shocking news that Chairman Mao's successor Lin Biao had treasoned and absconded, and the plane crashed in Outer Mongolia.Lao Fang refused to go to work again. He said that he had thought of the "end of history" at that time, wrote a small note, went to the Beihai Bridge between Zhongnanhai and Beihai, and stuffed the note in the crack of the white marble railing on the bridge. : "History has stopped and will not move forward. All new revolutions will be counter-revolutions. Don't try to lie to me again. Why do you ask me to dig coal?"

His asthma relapsed and he stayed in the dormitory, no matter how intimidated by the unit, he would not go down the tunnel. I don’t know whether it was US Secretary of State Kissinger who came to China twice in 1971 or Nixon’s visit to China in 1972. Anyway, someone in the US brought a list of relatives of Chinese-American citizens staying in China. During this period of dramatic thawing of Sino-US relations In order to show favor, China let a group of people leave the country, including Lao Fang, because his father had already left the Kuomintang political arena and immigrated to the United States under the protection of the US government as a pro-American political refugee.

After receiving the notice, Lao Fang went to the Public Security Bureau to get a folded pass. Still dawdling, he went to the Summer Palace and Beihai to play around for a few days, and then returned to the Taoist Temple in the east to visit the old man who brought him up.The old man became anxious when he heard it, and said, why don't you leave quickly?In case the policy is changed and you can't leave, I will buy a train ticket to Hong Kong immediately today.The old man dug out a few pieces of gold leaf from a corner of the temple, which were left over from the previous construction of the temple. They had been hidden for so many years, and they were exchanged for cash for Lao Fang to take on the road.The old man said that Lao Fang's mother was a great benefactor of the Taoist temple, because she insisted that the Taoist temple was only a place for religious activities, and that there were no reactionary Taoist activities, so the 700-year-old Taoist temple can only be preserved to this day.Now it is a repayment to Lao Fang, the descendant of the chief godmother.The old man raised the old Fang, and he had to wait until the last moment to reveal the truth. At that time, people were wary of others.

Fortunately, I brought some money with me, so I took the train to the south and waited seven days in Guangzhou for the quota in Hong Kong.After waiting for another two days in Shenzhen, I passed Luohu.Lao Fang took a folded pass without a passport or identity certificate, and finally entered Hong Kong according to the notification received by the frontier guard at Luohu Coast. Lao Fang went to the US Consulate in Hong Kong to obtain a visa, but there was a technical problem: Lao Fang did not enter Hong Kong illegally, but exited the country with a pass, so he was not considered a political refugee, and the United States could not immediately allow him to enter the country. Grounds for reunification to formally apply to immigrate to the United States.

Lao Fang temporarily lived in a cheap international hotel in Chungking Mansions in Tsim Sha Tsui for more than half a year because the US visa was delayed.In the hotel, Lao Fang lived an eye-opening life and made friends with backpackers and small businessmen from all over the world. According to him, he came from at least 50 countries.An American hippie who lived in Goa, India for many years, said that he would join a hippie commune after returning to the United States, and continue to live a free and self-reliant life, which made Lao Fang envious. When Lao Fang arrived in Monterey Park, Los Angeles, California, he met his elderly father whom he had not seen since he was a baby.When Lao Fang's father followed Sheng Shicai and the Kuomintang, he did many harms to others. Now he is afraid of retaliation all day long, and he usually lives in seclusion. He built a high wall around the house, and even added iron gates to the bedrooms.At this time, his father had married another man, and Lao Fang lived with his father for less than a month. According to his father’s wishes, he went to Chinatown in Houston, Texas, and joined his father’s old department. The shop opened under the old department and the Chinese furniture and antiques on the top. Grocery store accountant.The old department had a teenage daughter, and the parents of both parties wished to let Laofang marry the daughter of the old department.The daughter was completely Americanized, and after knowing her parents' intentions, she refused to eat at the same table as Lao Fang, so Lao Fang ate and lived in the store's storage room by herself.This kind of life in Chinatown is not the America that Fang imagined. A few months later, Lao Fang got in touch with hippie friends and left Houston to join a hippie commune in New Mexico.The commune is located in the wilderness farmland. Members grow some organic vegetables, fruits and herbs, take fresh ones, sew their own clothes, raise bees to make honey, make jams, and make candles. It feels a bit self-reliant. Medications, including Laofang's asthma medicine, were purchased in the city.But although they are not completely self-sufficient, living in the countryside inevitably requires physical labor. Those hippies come from white middle-class families in big cities. How can they do it? On the contrary, Lao Fang is used to working in China. He is skillful and can repair everything. Because of this, he was very likable in the commune, and Lao Fang lived happily for several years because of this.It is a pity that the commune first split due to personnel disputes, followed by the decline of the hippie movement. Members begged to leave one after another. Most communes failed to survive in the years after the Vietnam War. The old commune was no exception. There were no newcomers, and old members left. Later, some came back, and then left again. In the end, only he and a middle-aged woman nicknamed mother were left. Mother insisted on staying, and Lao Fang was willing, but there were only two of them left, year after year, with the traditional monogamy. The wife is no longer separated. In the early 1980s, one day my mother told Fang that she was too old to be a hippie and wanted to go back east to join her daughter.So the two cut off the water and electricity, sealed the doors and windows with wooden boards, and drove across the United States together. They broke up in Maryland. The old man went north by himself, went to New York, Philadelphia, and finally settled in Boston, where he was in Chinatown. As a chef in a Chinese chop suey buffet restaurant, he is also highly regarded by the boss and has been doing it for many years. Once, on a whim, Lao Fang went to the Harvard-Yenching Library. Since then, he has been out of control. He only has dinner when he returns to the library. During the day, he jogged from Chinatown in Boston to the Harvard Library in Cambridge. Soak in Chinese books, newspapers and periodicals.That's when he started writing readers' letters to Ming Pao Monthly. I was in Hong Kong at the time, mainly doing interviews with mainland cultural celebrities, so although Lao Fang's experience is interesting, it is not worth writing about.I didn't see him for many years, and it was not until 2006 that I made a second record with him.This time, I think his life almost constitutes a novel, because he is always in strange places at strange times. It turned out that he really returned to the mainland in 1989, and left China before Deng Xiaoping's southern tour in 1992, always going against the mainstream.After returning to the United States, Lao Fang wrote me a letter saying that he was working as a handyman in Chinatown, New York. I was a little sorry to hear that.At that time, I also went back to Taiwan to work for "United Daily News". Knowing that "Times News Weekly" run by "China Times", a friend newspaper, had set up an editorial office in New York, I casually recommended Lao Fang to my colleagues in "Times". , I didn’t expect that the United States really invited him to be an editorial assistant, and he was promoted to be an assistant editor not long after. Lao Fang wrote a letter, thank you, thank you, and I also have a special sense of accomplishment, because I know Lao Fang is a talented person. He is a well-informed miscellaneous, and his language ability is not bad, so he is very suitable to be an editor of news magazines.Who knew that "Times News Weekly" would cease publication shortly after it was published. By the time I received the letter, he was already in Nigeria, Africa.He later told me that he had been in touch with a Nigerian who had stayed at the Chungking Mansions International Hotel with him, and it was this person who invited him to Africa.When Lao Fang was young, he often dreamed of going to Ghana, Zambia, Tanzania and other Chinese friendly countries to make contributions, so he went there without hesitation. It turned out that friends from Nani country wanted to do Sino-Nigerian trade and invited Lao Fang to partner.Lao Fang thought of ordering a large number of large woven bags of red, white and blue in China, transporting them to Nigeria and then wholesale them to various places in Central and West Africa. Red, white and blue woven bags are very popular among Africans, and Lao Fang’s partner wants to open his own factory in Lagos.The China-Nigeria trade made money, and Ghana, Zambia, and Tanzania also went to Ghana, Zambia, and Tanzania. Lao Fang felt that he should not die in Africa, so he returned to China to settle down and planned to open a small restaurant in Guangdong outside Lijiang City. Fortunately, the action was too slow. Not long after the Lijiang earthquake, the plan of the Guangdong restaurant was ruined. Lao Fang didn't care. He started to travel around the west, saying that he would go to these places before tourism was developed.I remember his prophecy saying that when the Chinese start to travel, places will be overcrowded and places of interest will be meaningless.He has been playing this game for seven or eight years. He has tried Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, Qinghai, Yunnan, Guizhou, Hunan, and Sichuan, walking, taking trains, taking long-distance buses, and hauling trucks. Transport planes used by the military for business.You can take out a piece of ethnic minority embroidery at random, and Lao Fang can tell you whether it is Tong, Yao or Miao, and where it is probably produced.When money is tight, I go to Wutai Mountain, Emei Mountain, Guilin Yangshuo, Qiandongnan and other tourist places to work as chefs, because tourists do not return customers, and tourist restaurants are very messy, a bit like half-Tang restaurants in Chinatown in the United States to fool foreigners. He moved to Beijing in mid-2006 and said he would come to witness the Olympics as a volunteer. When we met, we realized that he had not been called Fang Lijun for several years. Many parents decided to change their name to Fangcaodi when they were picking up their children from school.This is Lao Fang's logic, logic without logic.With his yearbook and his complicated experience, I don't know if the Olympic Organizing Committee has accepted his volunteer application. After I published the book "Beijing In-depth Cultural Travel Guide" before the Olympics, I wanted to try writing novels again, but I didn't read the transcripts about Lao Fang again.To be honest, in the past few years, I have lost interest in China before 2008, and I just want to write a story about China's current prosperity.I don’t want to talk about old things anymore, I don’t even want to watch them, such as the struggle between the Kuomintang and the Communist Party, land reform, suppression of counter-revolutionaries, anti-rebellion, anti-rightists, PLA’s entry into Tibet, Great Leap Forward, 30 million starved to death, Siqing, Cultural Revolution, 83 crackdown , 89 June Fourth, 99 persecution of Falun Gong, etc. I don't even want to read the material.I am willing to forget a lot of things. I think that after I forget, new themes and new inspirations I want to write will appear.My tastes have completely changed, and I don't think that the new generation of fiction readers still want to read the scars and scars of the past sixty years.I really just want to write about the current newcomers and new things, about the new prosperity of the Chinese people.In this way, the story of Fang Caodi is useless to me. I don't want to reply to Fang Caodi's email for the time being, so I'll put it aside for now.