Selected Poems of Beihai in 2007.
In 2008, Beihai Travel Notes
In 2009, the words of the times, this is a 66-year-old man. He has a wife, children and grandchildren, but he resolutely ran away from home. He traveled all over China by bike and still lives in Guangzhou, creating a miracle of selling poems for a living. His "anti-seasonal" behavior may owe his family, but his spirit of "dying as a hero" inspires many people.
Beihai, whose real name is Zhang Jixian, 1943 was born in a remote mountain village in Dali, Yunnan. /kloc-at the age of 0/2, Xiao Jixian's father died unfortunately, and his mother took herself and her two little sisters to live a hard life. After graduating from junior high school, 196 1 had to go back to his hometown to farm, which provoked the burden of his family. Xiaoji was a clever and diligent child at first, although his small school education was enough to open his thirst for cultural knowledge and pursue lofty ideals and life values. In his own words, "there are few ambitions." Like many young artists of that era, he worshipped Haoran and wanted to be a peasant writer like Haoran. During the interval of heavy physical labor, he insisted on self-learning cultural knowledge, reading and writing constantly every day, and also learning calligraphy and painting. A few years later, his character and talent were gradually recognized by the masses and appreciated by the leaders. By chance, he was absorbed by the government as a cadre and assigned to work in an educational administrative organ in a frontier county. During this period, he got married and gave birth to a son. Although life is hard, the couple love and live in harmony, and life is beautiful. However, the quiet life was quickly broken, and the vigorous Cultural Revolution swept the country. Although Zhang Jixian is just a nobody, he has not been labeled as capitalist roader and counter-revolutionary. However, with the deepening of the movement, he still failed to escape the bad luck of being cleaned up and returned to his hometown as a "bard" for some time. My wife is a city dweller and has been spoiled since childhood. The harsh rural living conditions and heavy family burden are undoubtedly unbearable for her. The greater pressure comes from her parents, who are more and more determined to ask her daughter to divorce and return to the city. The dilemma and contradiction between love and affection made her on the verge of collapse. Finally, the tragedy happened. On a thunderstorm night, she left her beloved husband and son and committed suicide. She left this world with pain and confusion that she could not get rid of, and also left her husband Zhang Jixian with lifelong regret and unhealed wounds.
1978, the state implemented the policy, and Zhang Jixian was reinstated and returned to his unit. In his spare time, he continued his literary creation and published some works in provincial and prefecture-level journals. Although he worked hard and made outstanding achievements, he was repeatedly hit by exclusion because of his unflattering and outspoken personality. 1990 retired early due to injury. Frustration in his career and misfortune in his marriage and family (during which he had a short second marriage and had a son) made him fall into the trough of his life again. What makes him more miserable is that there has been no breakthrough in literary creation for a long time, and the years have gone by, and the literary dream he pursued all his life seems to be getting farther and farther away from him.
Of course, for most people, this is just a small regret. Rich retirement salary and poor literary reputation are enough for him to entertain his grandson and enjoy his old age. However, this is not the life that the idealist Beihai wants to live. Later, he wrote in the postscript of Selected Travels in Beihai: I can't squander my precious life, so I constantly adjust my life coordinates. I must make the generator shine. It is not only a return to life, but also a return to society. He seriously reflected on his literary path and found that the single life experience and narrow cultural vision were the most fatal bottlenecks restricting his literary creation. To create really good works and make a career in the literary world, it seems that the only way is to go to the world, "read thousands of books, take the road of Wan Li and make friends all over the world". So he made a decision that surprised everyone: to travel around China by bike.
1994, Zhang Jixian, who was over 50 years old, finally left his hometown alone and began his arduous, romantic and legendary "cultural root-seeking journey" for 10 years. Under the pen name Beihai, I rode a 28-inch flying pigeon bicycle and traveled to more than 20 provinces, more than 580 counties and cities, the hometown of more than 300 historical and cultural celebrities, and more than 400 historical and cultural sites, with a total journey of 654.38+10,000 miles! He followed in the footsteps of the great poet Du Fu. From Gongxian County, Henan Province, the birthplace of the poet, young people pointed out the top of Mount Tai. Qin Zhou, a native of Tianshui, Gansu, escaped from the disaster of war in Chang 'an, the imperial capital of official career; He traveled from Chengxian County, Gansu Province, through the Shu Road of "poor monkeys with only claws" and came to Chengdu, Sichuan Province to visit Du Fu's thatched cottage. In Shandong, he also visited Qufu, the hometown of Confucius. Linyi, the hometown of Wang Xizhi; Feixian, the hometown of Yan Zhenqing; Zibo, the hometown of Pu Songling; Qingzhou, where Li Qingzhao and her husband Zhao Mingcheng lived, 14 years; Zhucheng, where Su Dongpo was appointed as the magistrate; Zheng Banqiao is a county magistrate in Weifang. He traveled to Nanjing, the "ancient capital of the Six Dynasties", looking for the stone city in Tang poetry; In Jiangxi, he climbed Lushan Mountain and visited Jishui, the hometown of Ouyang Xiu and Wen Tianxiang. In Guangdong, he visited the ancestral temple in Chen Baisha and the former residence of Liang Qichao. He went to Sanmen in Xinhui to relive the history of the demise of a dynasty.
In ancient times, Xu Xiake traveled all over the world, with servants and even bearers. In contrast, this kind of "riding thousands of miles alone" of the elderly in Beihai is the real cultural journey. He wrote in his travels "Crossing the Ancient Shu Road": "I climbed in the mountains day and night, and crawled in the intermittent ancient plank roads and highways, which can be described as miserable. Some mountain roads dare not ride bicycles at all, so they can only be pushed by their arms. They are in the depths of the cliff, facing the abyss, and the clouds are rolling. I don't know where I am, but I can't find the mountain spring because of thirst. There is no village or shop in the mountains, and the dry food is used up, so we have to go hungry. I'm starving several times, and the wild fruits on the hillside are collected to satisfy my hunger ... ". Such a scene is not uncommon in his memory. There is no one in the way in the barren hills. Of course, there will be "disasters" between the streets of big people. In Beijing, he was hit by a taxi and fractured his left calf, leaving him disabled. In jingxian county, Anhui province, the hometown of rice paper, a young man knocked him down from behind by bicycle, rushed forward to ask him to pay for it and punched him on the head; In Feixian, Yan Zhenqing's hometown, he fell into the trap of a black shop, only to be chased by a group of idle Han Chinese, who beat his head off and ran away. Later, I lived on the streets of Guangzhou and set up a second-hand book stall with the help of my friends. As a result, one night three drunken middle-aged people smashed the book stand and punched him on the head ... It seems that men like to target his head. Maybe the targeting top of Beihai Guan Yunchang was too spectacular and hurt their self-esteem? Maybe it's the same psychological hint as Mr. Lu Xun's saying that warlord soldiers like to shoot female students? It is human nature to love beauty, discover beauty and create beauty, and it is also human nature to destroy beauty.
It should be said that in the long journey, the elderly in Beihai get more warmth from the true feelings of the world. Wherever he went, government officials, leaders, new literature friends and ordinary people all extended warm hands to him, welcoming him and helping him. Their understanding and respect for a cultural admirer, their sincere friendship and their simple and kind heart will never forget him. Gratitude often flows from his works and permeates his works.
The reputation of Beihai has also spread like wildfire. People marveled at his courage and the miracle he created: in 10 years, he traveled all over more than 20 provinces by bike alone. Think about it, this is an old man in his fifties and sixties. During this period, many central and local newspapers, TV stations and even overseas media such as Hong Kong Ta Kung Pao reported on him one after another. Qiu Wei, an old Guangdong poet, wrote a poem of praise: "Riding a hundred thousand miles alone, how old is Yun?" Beihai later concluded: The profound history and regional culture of China not only impressed me deeply, but also increased my knowledge of history and culture. Years of travel have opened my eyes, stimulated my creative enthusiasm and achieved fruitful results. In the autumn of 200 1 year, Beihai stayed in Lianzhou, northern Guangdong, and was entrusted by the local propaganda department to set up a youth literature newspaper, which cultivated and excavated a group of young literature lovers. More than a year later, when he was about to leave Lianzhou, fate gave him a heavy blow. His two bags containing 12 travel notes, three manuscripts of ancient poems, more than 30 original notebooks and diaries, more than 50 movies and a passbook with a deposit of more than 7,000 yuan, as well as a camera and an ID card were stolen. Years of hard work are gone forever.
In July 2003, he left Lianzhou with nothing, and with the support of local friends such as Tan, the old county magistrate of Lianxian County, he moved to Guangzhou for more than RMB 1000 and slept on the street. So the scene at the beginning of this article happened.
With strong spiritual strength and persistent pursuit of literature, Beihai, who is over 60 years old, stood up again and challenged her fate again. He eats a box of 1 yuan fried powder every day, looks up information in Zhongshan Library during the day, finds a place to sleep at night, and writes poems and travel notes. Later, he lived in an abandoned asbestos tile hut in Fangcun, writing in the morning and selling books in the afternoon and evening (a kind young man helped him mend the books). During the two years from July 2003 to July 2005, he wrote seven poems and 200,000 words of travel notes! At this moment, his fate finally changed. After reading some of his poems, Zhou Yang, a poet who worked in the Guangdong Provincial Department of Culture at that time, immediately expressed his willingness to support him and personally edited and published his collection of prose poems. In this way, Beihai's first collection of works, Where Are You, was successfully published. From then on, Beihai began to carry its own books on bicycles and sell them along the street. He wore neat jeans and a white shirt, and his long hair was tied in a ponytail and put behind his head. He stood in the street artistically, opened a book and read it aloud to passers-by. He pressed a "book signed by the author" card on the frame of his bicycle (this may be the worst book signing activity in history), while signing the readers seriously, he talked and interacted with them; He sometimes improvises poems for customers ... selling books in Beihai has become a unique scenery on the streets of Guangzhou! And the reputation of "street poet" is getting louder and louder.
This "North Sea Model" marketing is very effective. The first print 1000 copies sold out quickly, then the second print of 2000 copies sold out in less than a year, followed by the third and fourth prints. With the money from the first book, his collections of works, Selected Travels in Beihai, Selected Poems in Beihai and Time Words (poetry anthology), have been published one after another, and are loved by more and more readers. A literature professor at Sun Yat-sen University made friends with him, introduced books to his students and told his poems in class. Yang Ke, a famous poet, also brought his works to the class of Guangdong Business School, where he was a part-time professor.
Up to now, Beihai has sold nearly 10,000 copies of its own books with considerable profits, and has been dubbed by peers as "the most profitable poet in China". At the same time, his works have also been well received by his peers in the poetry circle. Dong Dangzi, a poet, read his new work The Words of Time and strongly recommended it to friends and peers. Due to the influence of Dong Dangzi and others in the circle, Beihai has attracted more and more attention from the literary world and become more and more famous. The literary palace finally opened the door to this persistent pursuer!