This is his greatness and his selflessness. We can compare how many people in the world are putting on makeup, trying their best to dress up their own history, and trying their best to conceal evil and promote good. In particular, some people with higher status are more likely to do this, and others will do it for them, which is called taboo for the venerable. But he refused. As a leader, people expected him to be completely red inside and out, but he stubbornly said: No, I am a multi-color person. For ordinary people, they put their lives into revolution, but for him, they put revolution into their lives. Revolution is part of his life experiment. When we only look at his career and see him die calmly, he is a high mountain on the plain, which is admirable; when we look at his anatomy of himself, he is even more like a peak with a deep valley below, and the forest is full of wind. Roar, it is so strange and dangerous, giving people more to think about. He is a man whose heart is both criss-crossed and as open as a blank sheet of paper. In this old ancestral hall, I come and go year after year, wandering again and again. I imagine the small river in front of the door and the boats on the river looking for crossings. Qiubai started from here, went to Shanghai to run a school, and later met Lu Xun in Shanghai; went to Guangzhou to participate in Kuomintang cooperation and met Sun Yat-sen; went to Soviet Russia to work as a reporter, to attend the International Conference on Communist Party of China; and to Jiujiang Presided over the "August 7th Conference" and launched armed struggle; went to Jiangxi Soviet Area to preside over educational work. His life is short and he travels in a hurry. When he went out to board the boat, he must have thought of "the boat is sailing across the wild without a man" and of "lightly taking off his skirt and boarding the orchid boat alone". What a leisurely life it was, what a beautiful poem, and what a peaceful harbor it was. He repeatedly expressed his love for literature in "Superfluous Words". How much he wanted to get to that dock, but he didn't. Until the moment before his death, he was still exploring the fate of life. He has been looking for a ferry all his life, but in the end he never found a good pier. This is really a tragedy. But it is precisely because of this tragic regret that people commemorate him with double, triple, or ten times the years of his life. If he didn't make any revolution at the beginning, but just plucked out a hair on his body and cultivated it carefully, he would also become a famous writer, translator, epigrapher, calligrapher or famous doctor. Aren’t Liang Shiqiu and Xu Zhimo still enjoying the privilege of being passed down to future generations? If they had turned the ship around and retired to study after the revolution, they could still have become a literary giant. His contemporary Chen Wangdao originally planned to found the Communist Party with Chen Duxiu, but later retired to study rhetoric and wrote "Rhetoric Revealed", becoming the first rhetorician in China, and people also remember him. But Qiubai didn't do this. Just like a beautiful woman who refuses to act, or a tall man who refuses to play ball. He asked for something else, but he got nothing, and was even misunderstood. It’s okay if a person has no talent, or if he has some talent, it’s okay. The most pity is that he was only able to accomplish one thing, or even none at all, which is a pity for future generations. Look at how well Yue Fei wrote poems. He was talented in literature, but the world only remembers his martial arts. Xin Qiji was talented in martial arts. When he was young, he led 10,000 rebels to fight against the Jin Dynasty and defect to the Song Dynasty. However, the Southern Song Dynasty government did not use it. . Qu Qiubai relied on scholars to govern, but due to the failure of political affairs, he turned back to his life. If he had just died generously and said nothing, perhaps he would have been lost in history. But he also said something that seemed superfluous. He felt that exploration was more valuable than arrival. When Xiang Yu was defeated, he refused to cross the river even though there was a ferry in front of him. If Xiang Yu was killed by Liu Bang, or if he crossed the Wujiang River after his failure, it would not be as good as committing suicide by lining the river and leaving a lasting aftertaste to history. Xiang Yu raised a suicide sword when facing the hope of survival, while Qiu Bai raised a scalpel when he was about to become famous. They both pushed the value of life that was about to be fixed to another level. A wise man would rather give up his job to achieve his goal.
Autumn white is immortal.
June 25, 1996
People's Daily Online, June 24, 2001