Preface
This year, Yan'an poet Liu Xiying launches the activity of visiting Yan'an by 100 Chinese poets. Two groups of poets come to Yan'an to learn local culture and custom and write poems. This should be encouraged and affirmed. As a Chinese poet, we should understand Yan'an, pay attention to Yan'an and don't forget it. In modern and contemporary history of China, Yan'an had two important periods of“talents gathering”. The first, the Red Army of Workers and Peasants finally settled in Yan'an, the revolutionary sparks left by the Long March spread in Yan'an. Yan'an turned the dangerous Chinese revolution into a safe situation, Yan'an became the cradle of new China. The second, the young intellectuals joined villages in Yan'an. The caves and millet in Yan'an had fed thousands of young intellectuals. Elites of them had become the leaders, pioneers and devotees of China's reform and opening up.
My family is closely related to Yan'an. My father took part in the student movement in Sichuan, and then went north to Wayaobao to join the Red Army. My mother was an exile student from Northeast China to Beiping. She participated in the December Ninth Movement and later came to Yan'an. They were born in rich large business families, they gave up their superior life and went to Yan'an to pursue truth and brightness. After the victory of the war of resistance against Japan and on the eve of the Civil War, my parents were transferred to the Northeast front, they sent my elder sister to the“horseback cradle”, the nursing home, and sent my elder brother who was less than one year old to a farmer in Yan'an. They put aside the glory and wealth, and came to the poor Yan'an for brightness; They left their children, only for people's happiness. My parents'moral integrity of pursuing the truth and facing dan gers courageously, made me admire them from an early age. During the Cultural Revolution, my parents were criticized. I was sent to the countryside, I chose Yan'an. Four years of Yan'an life gave me the courage to go forward in my life. Yan'an's deepest loess and simplest countrymen had transformed me into a Yan'an man.
Yan'an is a great poem with high sky and thick earth, writing about the fate of the Chinese nation, Yan'an, this land cultivates poets. From textbook, we know He Jingzhi, a great poet who wrote about Yan'an. We also know the spirit of Yan'an from his poem“Coming Back To Yan'an”. On the eve of my graduation from university, I worked as an intern at the Central People's Broadcasting Station. The topic of my internship was to interview Ai Qing and other important poets and asked them to talk about their youths. To interview He Jingzhi, I encountered difficulties. He was vice-minister of the Ministry of Propaganda of China at that time. The office was in Zhongnanhai. Minister was very busy, Zhongnanhai was not allowed to enter or leave at will. At this time, Gu Wenjuan, the head of the Literature Group, told me that she had a way to try. From the database, she found the tape of Coming back to Yan'an which was broadcasted by CCTV more than 20 years ago. She remembered that He Jingzhi recited it in person. While listening to the tape, she recalled the scene of the recording program. She told me that He Jingzhi was in a bad mood because of the impact of politic affairs. She found him in a small pub and asked him to record the program. We transcribed the tape into a cassette, attached a personal letter written by Guo Wenjuan, and sent it to He Jingzhi's home. A few days later, a leader of CCTV notified us that CCTV will sent a car to pick me and another editor to Zhongnanhai for an interview with He Jingzhi. Thirty-six years had passed. A young and agitated heart in the poem Coming back to Yan'an today still touches everyone who cares about Yan'an.
Many of our literary predecessors had eulogized Yan'an with their poems. Ai Qing, Zhang Guangnian and He Qifang had once left touching poems. In Yan'an, we often mention an old poet, Cao Guxi. Cao Guxi founded Shanhua Literature Society in Yanchuan in the 1970s. Among his literary friends, one is Xi Jinping who had worked in Yanchuan, the other one is Lu Yao, a famous writer in the whole country and so on, It had a great influence in Yan'an literary circle in those years. I met Cao Guxi in the 1970s, and we have been friends for decades. This collection contains his poem The Legend of Phoenix Mountain:“The grass and trees of this mountain grow vigorously / The flowers and fruits of this mountain are fragrant outside the mountain / The mountain has a beautiful name / It is said: The deep part of this mountain is inhabited by a Phoenix // When the evening embraces the setting sun and goes down the hill / A curious sunshine will rise on this hill/ The phoenix's singing could be heard around // Would it really be so wonderful/ The phoenix's singing, the sunshine Often draw me to think a lot -// As far as I know, this magical mountain / Indeed lived a magical giant / In the most worthless years of life / His skull, once was worth thousands silver dollars of‘dragon head' coins /Someone wanted him. /The announcement was stamped with a big stamp / Newspapers in Nanjing and Beiping declared several times that he was dead or captured/But he was alive/Leading a team of people wearing straw shoes/Carrying rifles/And trudging mountains and rivers, singing all the way//I can't verify: / Did he chase the phoenix from a distant place/Or because of him, the Phoenix came here from the sky/All those who had seen him said so/He ate the same grain as the common people/He wore the same rough clothes as the soldiers/The octagonal hat with a shining red star, a touching fortitude and kindness was twinkling in his eyebrows…”Cao Guxi writes Yan'an by heart, and also writes a leader by heart. He is telling a myth and also showing the reality of Yan' an. He is singing and talking to his readers. Yan'an era was a time that leaders and people were united in one mind. They sat on a same bench and smoked the same dry tobacco, they were like neighbors. It was common fate of fish and water that made Yan'an defeat Nanjing! Yan'an has the magazine Mountain flowers, Yan'an also hasthe tradition to produce poets:Yan An, Cheng Lu and so on, all are singers from Yan'an.
Writing about Yan'an means writing about history, tradition and original intention.“You jump into the Yanhe River/ Spraying up waves, whispering and singing/ Shandandan is the sister of the plateau/ You say, today's vine of youth/ Also needs yesterday's nutrition…”The poem of the army poet Qiao Yan leads us closer to Yanhe River and to look up to the Baota Mountain.“Thousands of pairs of delicate or strong hands/ Put in the ballads of the competition one after another/ In the golden October, the rice grains flying in the air/ Nobody could foresee that the fireworks of the Founding Ceremony were rehearsed here…“Poet Bi Futang's Nanniwan makes us hear the melody of”flowers'fragrance in a basket“again.In fact, returning to Yan'an is returning to our hearts, which presses the button of restarting the spirit of Yan' an:“Sharing with joy and sorrow, sharing hardships/Pulling trouser legs and sleeves/Holding hands with the people//Not being afraid of bleeding, not being afraid of sweating/Enduring the suffering of hunger and coldness, without changing mind /Not altering belief even bones broken//Only such people could get the world or have the power, no one else”, Liu Xiying's poem is as solid as stones, because this is the truth and the motto that has been written into Yan'an's history!
To write Yan'an is also to write belief, songs of righteousness and the great good of human nature. Yan'an is the source of Chinese spirit and the main road of poetry. The Yanhe River written by the poet Jian Ming is full of philosopher's thinking: The invincible water and its belief/ Advance side by side! Even in the coldest winter/Water below the ice/Will be churning ups and downs /Their velocity is even more turbulent than the start of the river/And those waves blooming outside the river /Are really worrying/The water is quiet but the flow is deep, when they wither/Is it possible to return to the crowd? Jian Ming, once had been a soldier, he has written a poet's homeland feelings, this is poems in the poet's blood, it alarms and enlightens the ignorance! So the poet Gao Xuwang writes“Yan'an, the most beautiful word on earth:“Yan'an, the most beautiful word/Root of the word goes deeply in northern Shaanxi/It highlights the rhetoric and education of the Loess Plateau/Don't forget, there was also a poet/Who came from snow mountains, grasslands, Lazikou/ writing and drawing in Yangjialing, Zaoyuan/Leaving wild cursive handwriting/One brush after another, leading the younger generations/To open the right path in the world…”This is the infinite charm of Yan' an.In their poems, poets express their emotions that blend with their flesh and blood, as the poet Li Ziguo writes:“I have taken sacred Yan'an as an ocean to swim, in my whole life / I have taken Baota Mountain as a forest of poetry to breed / My love of my whole life is too short. /My emptiness, or my flatland where my dream can reach / Has blossomed and fruited or grown grain on my palms / And has grown mountains, brightness and flow which rushes on my hands / It also grows burning happiness and soul…”After reading these poems, I immerse in the holy and bright mood for a long time.
It is a good thing that 100 Chinese poets visit and write Yan'an. It shall be affirmed and praised. The event influence and infect many poets who have never been to Yan'an, especially younger ones. They have also found a lot of new things in Yan'an and write many works, as An Juanying writes:“Red star, red flag, red heart / Are the eternal tone of the land / Dark green, thick green, emerald green / Are a brand new symphony of this land /Transforming this land painfully, then poverty is removed/Changing the mode, affluence is the reward / Planting the green pieces into the depths/ Just as putting yellow skin into our genes/ May the descendants of the dragon/ Henceforth, be not only proud of having yellow skin, but also proud of having another color - green/ Yan' an's clear waters and green mountains are continuing to write a new glory and refulgence of Yan'an.
Congratulations on the success of the 100 Chinese poets' visitto Yan'an, and congratulations on the publication of the poetry anthology of the event.
So finish this preface.
Ye Yanbin: Male, is currently the director of the Poetry Committee of the Chinese Writers Association and honorary member of the national Committee of the Chinese Writers Association. He was the chief editor of Star Poetry Journal and Shikan Magazine.