A cup of toast to "Millennium Joys and Sorrows", a cup of toast to freedom

Since July, I have been seeing photos of "sun" reading Ai Weiwei's new book from time to time on Facebook. A person who has been silent for a while in my world suddenly reappears. I didn't follow Ai Weiwei on social media, and after he was forced to stop his civil society activities in the mainland and rarely saw him on the news, he gradually faded from my sight. Until Zhang Jieping was about to have a live chat with Ai Weiwei about the publication of the new book, and excerpted a few paragraphs from the book in his Facebook post, it felt a bit like a "bad boy" who finally returned to his old father's home after wandering around, and his heart became Soft and affectionate. I suddenly wanted to gossip about the father in the eyes of the child at the moment. I bought the physical book, and by the way, I listened carefully to the entire conversation.

For those who are familiar with Ai Weiwei, when it comes to Ai Qing, they may think, Oh, that is Ai Weiwei's father. I knew Ai Qing's poems when I was a girl, and I didn't know who Ai Weiwei was until the millennium, so to me, oh, that's Ai Qing's son. Ai Qing's life has been generally known, but the part about Ai Qing in the book is still the part I spend the most time reading. If you have a little understanding of modern Chinese history, you will naturally remember those times when the waves were raging. What Ai Weiwei did in the book was to clearly mark Ai Qing at these times, add details, and also record his relationship with his father after he began to have memories. Bit by bit.

As early as the 1930s, Ai Qing was soberly aware of the relationship between writing and politics, and always believed that freedom was the prerequisite for literary creation. Ai Qing once regarded Yan'an as a new hope, but in Yan'an he still dared to "realize that the Communist Party is not immune to corruption and dictatorship" and published an article entitled "Understanding Writers, Respect Writers", wanting to defend writers as they wish The right to expression believes that "only by granting artistic creation freedom and independent prudence can we promote the mission of social reform." Ai Weiwei's father in the book matches Ai Qing in my heart: a literati who pursues freedom and longs for independence. However, such a person is involved in the whirlpool of the historical trend every time. The greatest luck in his life is probably to survive the Cultural Revolution alive.

Reading Ai Qing's poems, one can feel that he has a turbulent emotion for the people and the land under his feet. Unlike some literati who loved the party in the same period, they focused on the great light. Ai Qing's poems did not start from a grand and nihilistic point of view, but they also gave people a space for imagination: a broad space full of details and shocking colors. . At the beginning of the book, Ai Weiwei chose "The Ruins of the Ancient City of Jiaohe" written by his father, which is also a poem I like very much.

 No, the luxurious palace has been turned into ruins. Thousands of years of joys and sorrows can't find a trace. Those who are alive live well. Don't expect the earth to leave memories.

In 1978, the Communist Party made the decision to "liberate" Ding Ling and Ai Qing, but Ai Qing still had to go through several twists and turns before being completely rehabilitated. It is not difficult to read Ai Qing's sadness and powerlessness from this poem written in 1980. Ai Weiwei has a deep regret for not being able to learn about his father's past experience when he could, both in the book and in the conversation with Zhang Jieping. Years after Ai Qing's death, his files are still considered state secrets, and even his wife and biological son cannot access them. For Ai Weiwei to be unable to understand the fathers in the previous movements in detail, if this part of the historical data is supplemented, I believe that "Millennium Joys and Sadness" will stand in front of the world in a fuller manner.

Although there are regrets, some things always exist in the blood, such as the yearning for freedom, so Ai Qing gave birth to the unruly Ai Weiwei. Ai Weiwei broke into my world as an urchin, defying the rules against powerful tyranny. Destroyed clay pots, graffiti artifacts, various nude photos... to realize what he wrote in his book "beauty and reason are unyielding, no matter what form they disappear in, they will definitely be released again in the form of rebellion" . I am not a qualified visual art appreciator, and some of Ai Weiwei's works would not be able to be read without a guide, such as his famous "One Tiger and Eight Milks". I used to think some of his early works were a bit grandiose, and even secretly laughed at how such an upright literati could give birth to such a deviant son. But in 1995, Ai Weiwei took the photo of Lu Qing "showing the bottom" in Tiananmen Square, and I understood it in seconds. The expressionless Lu Qing, in front of Tiananmen Square, in the indifferent crowd, lifted up his skirt to reveal his white bottoms. Ai Weiwei also mentioned the shooting of this photo in his book. The silent provocation revealed in the photo was a kind of whiplash against the society at that time after the 1989 pretending that nothing had happened. One of the "counts" on trial.

Later, Ai Weiwei became more familiar with his increasing participation in civic movements. Ai Weiwei mentioned in his book, "2008 was the year I paid the most attention to in society. The snow disaster at the beginning of the year, I looked at the people who were stranded in the wind and snow, unable to move forward, the indistinct and bloody pictures of the riots in Tibet, the Olympic Games. The grotesque events that are far from human nature, and the political toxins in Chinese society that are more insidious than melamine. I can see clearly the absurd and hopeless road that China has taken since the "reform and opening up" in 1978. and the strange evils it has produced." I think the most famous battle in the civil movement Ai Weiwei was involved in was the launch of the "512 Earthquake Dead Student List Investigation", which also thoroughly stirred the ruler's nerves. Ai Weiwei was secretly detained for 81 days in 2011. Although the story is recorded in detail in Millennium Sadness and Joy, I always felt that Ai Weiwei's description was reserved and gentle. I still remember that when Ai Weiwei’s mother, Gao Ying, was in tears when it aired on Hong Kong’s cable news and complained that the authorities were unreasonably detained; At that time, at least the foreign media also interviewed the mother of the person involved, and the news media in Hong Kong would still pay attention to the incident, which is impossible today.

When Ai Weiwei marked his father at this historical point in 1956, he added a bunch of line drawing flower patterns, which was spotted by the kid sitting next to me playing chess with the computer.

"I think this flower painting is very beautiful. What does the following phrase "a hundred flowers bloom, a hundred schools of thought contend" mean?"

"It means that different ideas must bloom together like a hundred flowers in spring, and in the final analysis, there must be freedom of speech and academic freedom. But the history related to this sentence in this book is actually that the rulers first pretended to tolerate different voices and take advantage of people's Stand up and express various opinions, find out those who disagree with you, and finally silence their voices." I was feeling uncomfortable reading this part of the book, and I couldn't help but say it all at once, child. Open your eyes and look at me with a look of disbelief,

"In the future, if you have the opportunity to read modern Chinese history, you will learn about it."

"I don't want to watch it!" After saying that, the child continued to play chess with the computer.

When I think about the same age, I am addicted to martial arts and detective novels, and scoffed at my father's request for me to read history... I want to say that whether it is a grass-roots family like us or a celebrity family like the Ai family, each generation is always reincarnated with the previous generation. Pictures of similar size. With tears in my eyes, I read, "Now, as an enemy of the state, I can finally look at my father. Eighty years apart in the same land, I share the same accusation with him."

I thought my heart would be ups and downs after reading "Millennium Joys and Sorrows", but after the book was closed, my heart was unhappy, perhaps because history is always similar as expected, but I still hope that our next generation will have a heartfelt heart. "A cup of freedom" moment.

 Postscript My rebellion came earlier than my peers. For a while, I fell in love with reading poetry, because whether it is ancient poetry or modern poetry, only a few words express surging emotions and give people unlimited imagination, which seems to be able to resonate with the restless mind of adolescence. I read Ai Qing's poems by chance, and after knowing his life, I couldn't help but wonder why such a person was persecuted time and time again. I began to have the idea of wanting to understand the modern history of China, so Ai Qing was the light that led me to the mysterious China. Dear brother, now you understand why I am a fan of Ai Qing.

Finally, thank you for reading "Millennium Joys and Joys" together.