Text: I have loved poems and essays by Yue Fei, Wen Tianxiang, Shi Kefa, Qiu Jin and other Chinese heroes since I was a child, and I also love to read accounts of their deeds. Whenever I have the chance, I will visit their former residences, visit their cemeteries, and walk on the land where their footprints have been left.
From today's perspective, although they all have national and historical limitations, their awe-inspiring righteousness in persisting in their beliefs regardless of life and death is something I will always admire.
This year I had the opportunity to visit the historical city of Yangzhou. On the last morning of May, I climbed to Meihua Ridge outside Yangzhou City. Standing next to the ancient plum tree with majestic branches, my mind immediately recalled the deeds of Shi Kefa, who died heroically while guarding Yangzhou in the late Ming Dynasty.
The imperial court was incompetent and soldiers were pressing down on the country. Shi Kefa was ordered to supervise Yangzhou and defend the isolated city in times of crisis. He worried about the fate of the country and the peril of the nation day and night. He drafted memorials several times, discussing the rise and fall, admonishing the emperor, and proposing strategies to save the nation. Every time I finished writing, I read the manuscript three times, with tears streaming down my face, and all the officers and soldiers moved.
Standing at the foot of Meihua Ridge, Yiyi couldn't bear to leave. Although it is not the season for plum blossoms to bloom, the earth has been immersed in the strong fragrance of plum blossoms for a long time.
Source: From "The Plum Blossom is Strong" by the writer Bai Hua.
Extended information:
Creative background:
Bai Hua has deep feelings for Yunnan, the borderland. In the years of turmoil and worry, he frequently looked back, Warm yourself and your heart with the warmth of that land in your memories. In his creation, Bai Hua pursued the romantic sentiment and legendary imagination of the border areas, but at the same time he did not ignore the realistic character of the novel. At this time, he created "The Plum Blossom is Strong".
In Bai Hua’s creations in the 1980s, we can see the subtle confrontation between Yunnan on the border and the Central Plains. In his writings, the Central Plains are conservative and ascetic, while Yunnan is free and unrestrained; the Central Plains It is full of suffering, but Yunnan is beautiful and quiet; the Central Plains is political, but Yunnan is natural.
Bai Hua uses the confrontation between these two different cultures as a conflict, uses a marginal regional culture as a prescription, and faces the realistic anxiety caused by history and politics through imagination and geographical writing.
Bai Hua’s creations are deeply rooted in reality, and full of romantic feelings; full of suffering and sorrow, but also surging with the passion and enthusiasm of youth; deep and heavy, but also aesthetic and loving; both It is the lonely confession of a thinker and the affectionate confession of a great lover.