Chapter 27 Talk about the latest and most beautiful pictures

The new era has opened up a vast and boundless world for new literary and artistic writers. This sentence is reflected in Comrade Shao Yu's recent Chinese painting "Cabbage Harvest".I think that if all the Chinese painters of the past dynasties came alive and stood around this not too big picture, they would see thousands of cabbages "standing upright" on the painting, while the three figures only stood far away. On the other side, when serving as a foil for cabbage, they must have been surprised and praised it like never before.They don't know that what the artist depicts is just a fact in our life today, he just quickly and deftly grabs it and arranges it on paper.

The bountiful harvest of cabbage is one of the gratifying phenomena in the suburbs of Beijing this year, which shows that the water conservancy project has been further effective, and farmers' enthusiasm for production has further increased... I heard that this year, the cabbage in Beijing was sent to Harbin in the north; the persimmons in Beijing were sent to Harbin in the south. Shanghai.But this phenomenon is not unique. Don’t we Beijingers often eat oranges from Nanfeng and bananas from Guangdong? It is commonplace for us, but in the eyes of foreign friends, it is very novel.The Japanese friends, Nepalese friends, and Ghanaian friends I met... When they talked about the bumper harvests that we often see, it seemed like a miracle and a little bit of a surprise.

I know that abroad, whether it is the imperialists or the reactionaries of various countries, they have deep-seated hatred for the thriving and socialist new China.They themselves can no longer occupy this large piece of land and exploit and extract it wantonly. This is already an extremely painful thing for them; the most frightening thing is that New China has set up a glorious new era for the people in the areas of the national liberation movement. role model, give them a yearning, a hope, this is absolutely intolerable to the imperialists and the reactionaries of all countries.Therefore, they used all the propaganda machines to exaggerate our natural disasters in the past three years, saying how our people are trapped in poverty and are even struggling to die of hunger every day.Foreign friends who care about us will of course hear these vicious propaganda in their own countries, and they can't help but sweat for the Chinese people.After entering the Chinese border, they did not see hungry faces, nor did they see dejected people. What they saw were China's neat and green fields, bustling and prosperous markets, energetic people, and mountains of vegetables... How could they Instead of turning from surprise to joy, they poured out to us the reactionary propaganda they had heard repeatedly before, and finally expressed their anger and contempt for the slanderers?

After all, literature and art are a reflection of the times. "Articles are made naturally, and they are obtained by chance." The phenomenon of bountiful harvests and piles of cabbage, in the eyes of Beijing residents, is not a miracle or accident, but if the ancients are revived or foreign buses arrive However, we cannot but see the bright and beautiful future of my country's socialist construction from this phenomenon that we regard as common.Under the red flag, how many "articles" of "Tiancheng" are waiting for "skilled hands" to copy and describe, and these "articles" of "Tiancheng" are like beautiful clouds, changing rapidly like a field.Sensitive writers and artists must always be ready to draw the latest and most beautiful pictures for our people and friends.

(This article was originally published in "Beijing Evening News" on December 21, 1962, and was later included in the collection of essays "Xiaozha Gleaners".)