Chapter 10 Talking about the writing process of "Little Orange Lantern"

It was me who wrote for "China Youth Daily" on January 19, 1957 A short essay written.It was the Spring Festival at that time, so I mentioned the Spring Festival at the beginning and the end of this short article, and also mentioned the "lights" that are often seen during the Spring Festival. The central fact of the article is said later from the mouth of "my friend": "Last year, several students from the Medical College at the foot of the mountain were taken away by the Communist Party. After that, Wang Chunlin also disappeared. It is said that he often delivered letters for those students."

The story uses Geleshan in the outskirts of Chongqing as the background.During the Anti-Japanese War, I lived there for more than four years.At the foot of Gele Mountain, there is a medical school. I know several teachers and students in this school.Not far up the mountain there is some flat land called a lotus pond. Next to the pond is a township office with a public phone upstairs. Outside the door is a stall selling fruits, peanuts, and mixed sugar. Cars of all sizes often stop there. There are only three people in this story, me and the little girl and "my friend".I put the residence of "my friend" on the upper floor of the town hall, because I went to visit this friend and she was not there, so I had the opportunity to talk to the little girl and know her father's name and her residence.

This little girl is the central figure in the story. Her father was an underground party member who left home because the party organization was destroyed, and her mother was beaten by the tracking agents and vomited blood.In this incident, the little girl was calm, brave, and optimistic.In this scene, I described her actions: such as calling up the mountain, asking a doctor, making a small orange lantern, and wrote her conversation with me: "Soon, my father will definitely come back, and then my mother will be fine The word "definitely" expressed her strong belief, and then she waved her arms in a big circle, and finally held my hand, saying that "we are all fine!" That is to say: Soon the whole country will surely be liberated.

"My friend" is a fictitious character, because I only took a short part of the story, so I only went to see this friend "on the afternoon of the day before the Spring Festival", and in "that night, I left there. mountain village".I can "don't care about" the cause and effect of this story, but only use the simplest words that are easy for children to accept, to describe an accident in this dark and gloomy afternoon to night that was similar to Chongqing's political environment and climate at that time What I encountered, and all the darkness and gloom was just to set off that little "hazy orange light", how it broke through the gloom and darkness, and made me feel that "there is infinite light in front of me".

This incident happened on the eve of the Spring Festival in 1945, twelve years before I wrote this short article, so I used "twelve years have passed, the little girl's father must have returned early, and she Mom must be well too, right? Because we are all 'well' now!" To conclude, it shows that the little girl's optimism and belief have been confirmed after twelve years.Morning of March 12, 1979