Chapter 64 "Mian Ren Lang" Interview

On November 21, I went to the Beijing Institute of Arts and Crafts to visit Comrade Lang Shaoan, and I was very excited. Over the past few years, I have often seen reports about "Mian Ren Lang" and photos of him and his works from newspapers and pictorials.This spring, I met his teacher, Comrade Zhao Kuoming, at the Shanghai Institute of Arts and Crafts. During our conversation, we mentioned this famous "face man" abroad. I always wanted to have the opportunity to meet him, and today I got my wish up. I entered his sunny studio, which was warm and the stove was already on.Comrade Lang Shaoan greeted me and shook my hand cordially—two thick eyebrows, a pair of deep eyes, a face full of beard stubble, and a straightforward and sincere smile.

He graciously poured me a cup of tea, and we sat down at his table.There are a few of his works on the table, maybe one of them, there is a Monkey King standing in a cloud made of cotton with his hands on the awning, holding a golden cudgel under his arm, fisting one leg, and other scenes. ; but as soon as our conversation began, he immediately talked to me about his childhood with such vividness and kindness that he absorbed all my energy and forgot everything I wanted to ask him. up! "I was born in the first year of Xuantong in the former Qing Dynasty. I belong to the rooster. According to calculations, it should be 1909. My ancestors were from Shishanzi, Hunchun, Jilin Province. They have entered the customs for more than 300 years. We are Manchu People from Hongqi, but when it came to my father, the family was very difficult. My father was in a small business - selling bean curd paste, and couldn't afford the education of the four of us brothers. When I was 10 years old, I stopped studying and went to Tianjin to learn the craft of lithography..."

He lit a cigarette and smiled with gloom in his smile, "You know that when I was an apprentice at that time, I was no more beaten and scolded than I am now. My first master was fine, and my second master was fine. A master is very good! At that time, we learned color lithography and printed Xinjiang maps. There were seven colors in total. If the overprinting was wrong, the master would call us. The three of us as apprentices were only twelve or thirteen years old. I can’t stand it any longer. We have made an agreement to jump over the wall at night. Throw the quilt out of the yard first, and then climb out one by one. The three children are unaccompanied in Tianjin. What should I do? Sell clothes and so on For the drummer, I scraped together some money to buy a train ticket back to Beijing. We are all children, and we only paid half the ticket. How could we know that when the train arrived at Dongbianmen, a person came up from under the car, maybe it was someone from the railway, but the railway in the old society There are a lot of bad guys on the bus! He looked at our ticket and said:

'No, how did you get half the vote? 'It took us to the station in no time, and a man sitting in the station house patted the table on us, and asked us to pay another ten pennies each if we did anything wrong--it's only four cents now, I have pity on my companion, a man named Rong, who even made the washbasin and blankets taken off by them. In the end, we were kicked out of the car through the east gate! "I walked from Dongbianmen to the gate of the palace—the place where Lu Xun's former residence was—and returned home. Our family's life is still very difficult, and I don't know what to do for a while..." Once I held a meeting at the White Pagoda Temple. On the road, I saw a kneader. This is my master, Comrade Zhao Kuoming. I stood by and watched him kneading balls of colored dough in his hands. His fingers are very nimble. What he kneads looks like, What little cocks, old birthday stars, they all seem to be alive!I was so fascinated by it that I couldn't bear to leave for a day. I was always by his side, doing this and that for him, buying water and food for him, and when he moved, I would move things for him. We started talking.

He asked me my name and where I lived.I said it all.He said: "I also live at the gate of the palace, why don't I recognize you?" ' I went home late, and my father was about to scold me, so I told everything, and I begged, 'I love this!I want to learn how to knead dough. 'My father agreed, and told Mr. Zhao Kuoming that it was a success. "I have learned from the master for more than a month, and I can knead some things by myself, and I can go out to coax the children. Anyway, it is rough work, such as birds, rabbits, and fat dolls. I can't say yes, but the children seem to say yes. That's enough. One piece sells a 'little boy' or a 'big boy', and I can pinch one in a minute, which is enough for my life.

"Just sell and learn at the same time. After more than a year of hard work, I can write operas, such as 'Second Entry into the Palace', 'Three Niangs Teaching Children'... At that time, the master went to Tianjin. I had to buy some by myself. There are foreign paintings of operas in the cigarettes, and I made them according to them. But there is only one play in a foreign painting, which is not vivid enough. I wanted to make every movement of the characters in the play, so I started to listen to the plays, and I had no money, so I couldn’t buy them. For the seats in the front row, I have to watch from a distance in the back. After watching it, I recall and try to figure out the expressions and movements of the people in the play, and often I can’t sleep all night... "From then on, I have lived a career as an entertainer. With my lover, carrying a suitcase, pulling the older child, and holding the younger child, the family traveled all over the world.We have been to Tianjin, Qingdao, Yantai, Weihaiwei... We have also been to Shanghai, and set up a small stall on the stone windowsill of the Bank of Communications on Jing'an Temple Road.At that time, the small noodles I made were bought and sold to foreigners, such as Buddhas, birthday stars, and fat dolls, and they were made into a dozen and sent to foreign countries.Although there are often orders of one or two hundred dozens, after being exploited in the middle, there are not many left in my hands! "

He lit another cigarette: "Don't blame me. Whenever I mention the past, I get excited and sad! The old society is really a trap. There are nowhere for working people like us who rely on handicrafts to make a living. A way to survive! We dragged our children with us, wandering around, and sometimes we couldn’t even get food, and we couldn’t even live in a store..." Anger and pain flooded his brows, and his voice trembled and hurried: "We can't stay in any place for long. It's impossible not to wander. We walked the Beijing-Hanzhou line, northeast and northwest, and were bullied everywhere. Not to mention other kinds of bad people, they are old soldiers, soldiers of the Kuomintang... …That year in Kangzhuang, Zhangjiakou, I was at the gate of a barracks, and I was holding a fat baby and blowing the trumpet. A bugler came over and saw it, and asked, "What are you pinching this? Aren't you describing me?" I was also angry, and I said, 'I'm pinching a fat doll, but I can't pinch you if I want to pinch you!' He kicked my box so hard that the glass shattered!

"Sometimes, a soldier took my face mask away, and I followed to the gate of the camp, and another soldier gave me a big mouth when he came out... There was also the era of the Japanese, not to mention, of course the Japanese are hateful, The dog-legged translation is even more abominable,...cough, I can't finish talking about the hard times in the past for three days and three nights!" He was completely agitated, and his head was bowed.I felt panicked and embarrassed. I came to appreciate his works and talk to him about his current work. How could it cause him to talk about his sad past?When I was feeling uneasy, he raised his head and forced a smile, and said, "I'm sorry, but you don't mind..."

I quickly laughed and said, "No, that's all happened in the past. For example, I had a nightmare. You should talk about your current job." His face became bright, and a smile spread from the corner of his mouth to his eyes: "After liberation, everything became better. The people's government attached great importance to folk artists. When the people's government discovered my craft, they rescued me from poverty. Come out and let me concentrate on studying my art. Now we are no longer wandering, I have a fixed salary every month, and my life is stable and stable. I can also do some delicate work carefully, not afraid of processing, not afraid of waste of materials, as long as I do it Well—there are really good conditions!"

I asked, "Did you go to England last year, I read about it in the newspaper..." He smiled modestly: "We passed through Ulaanbaatar...Paris...the journey was very good. How many times have I been on a sea boat in my life, and I have passed on the sea with no wind and three feet of waves, so I can't go by plane. I don't think so." He doesn't say a word about the popularity with which he performed the Kneader's art in London, what a humble artist! It was getting late, and while he was excited, he seemed a little tired, so I didn't ask any more questions.When I stood up, I saw a wooden plate with grids on the table. There were some bones, awls, small wooden combs and other things in it. I asked if it was a tool. He said yes, and the tool was very simple.He lifted up a white cloth covering the wooden plate, and underneath there were small strips of pasta that looked like colored chalk, which was his material.He said that the cooked noodles are three-quarters of flour and one-quarter of Jiangmi noodles, mixed together, boiled, steamed in a pan, then mixed with color and honey, kneaded, and the noodles made can be eaten together. It will not be cracked or broken for twenty years.

When I admired that this craft is not easy to learn, he smiled again and said: "It's easy and not easy, 10% depends on the master's guidance, and 90% depends on my own research!" I asked, "Are you taking disciples now?" Pointing to a little girl standing by the table, he said, "She is my apprentice and my daughter." It was time for him to get off work, and I didn't dare to delay his get off work any longer, so I thanked him and said goodbye. He shook my hand cordially, and asked his daughter Lang Zhili to take me to the reference room to see his works. The shelves are full of beautiful things. His relatively new works, such as "Chicken Feather Letter" and "Plucking Tea and Fluttering Butterflies", are realistic and delicate, needless to say; but my favorite is still a small group of old Beijing streets. Xiaojing, who sells candied haws—a man in a gray hat and black robe, with a small basket on his left arm filled with all kinds of candied haws; a shaved head—a man in a white cloth bows his head Sitting on a red bench, there are shelves and copper basins beside it; those who sell tea soup; those who sell casserole; those who blow sugar;Among them, the one that fascinates me the most is a "sugar gong", which is my favorite and most familiar thing in my childhood. I think it is also the deepest childhood memory of "Mian Ren Lang", because this one is specially made. Exquisite and meticulous: a pair of picks with a canopy, on which are hung a few kites the size of a thumb; on the side are a few painted face masks the size of soybeans, and a few empty clocks the size of mung beans; Half a little white duck the size of a grain of rice, and sugar balls the size of millet in the box... everything that children want to play and eat is really everything!I really don't know how he pinches it, it's so small and so cute! These are all the streets and alleys of Beijing that "Mian Ren Lang" was most familiar with when he was a child, and they are also everything that I was familiar with in my own childhood. When I saw these images again, what filled my heart was a mixture of sweetness and bitterness. The memories of childhood are sweet, but the people's life at that time was so bitter!Especially the "working people who rely on handicrafts to make a living" as "Mianrenlang" said, those who blow sugar, sell candied haws, and beat sugar gongs... are all friends we know very well-except for them from our hands. When I take over the "big boy" or "little boy", I will occasionally smile slightly, but how sad and melancholy it is between the brows! Walk out the gate with the bright midday sun shining overhead.Turn a few turns and walk onto the smooth asphalt road, which is still in an alley.The primary school in this alley is closed for lunch, and children wearing red scarves in twos and threes, talking and laughing, walked towards me, and a brand-new bus full of passengers passed by me smoothly and quickly... ... I suddenly woke up from my vague memories!This is the scene in the streets and alleys of Beijing, and it is exactly what "Mian Ren Lang" said, "After liberation, everything became better!" The bitter feeling in my heart disappeared, and the remaining sweetness gradually expanded into a full of joy . I took a long breath of fresh air towards the bright sky, raised my brisk steps, and walked forward. November 26, 1957, Beijing. Come later". )