Reading Xiangxi (Phoenix Town III)
Former Residence of Xiong Xiling. Xiong Xiling (1870–1937), courtesy name Bingsan, was a native of Fenghuang, Hunan. He was a figure of considerable political and social influence in modern Chinese history. He passed the provincial examination in 1891, became a gongsheng in 1892, and in 1894 was granted the jinshi degree after the palace examination, then appointed to the Hanlin Academy. In 1897 he assisted Hunan governor Chen Baozhen in promoting...
This article has been compiled from historical materials on 'Zhangjiajie Tour Guide Network' (33519.com · Specialty Foods / Cuisine / Customs section). Prices, business hours, administrative divisions, and statistical data mentioned in the text may already be outdated. Before traveling, please refer to the latest announcements from merchants, scenic areas, and local competent authorities; the parts involving folk legends and folk customs are local historical and cultural anecdotes, provided for cultural reference.
Former Residence of Xiong Xiling
Xiong Xiling (1870-1937), courtesy name Bingsan, was a native of Fenghuang, Hunan Province. He was a figure of considerable political and social influence in modern Chinese history. In 1891 he passed the provincial examination as a juren, in 1892 he passed as a gongshi, and in 1894 he sat for the supplementary palace examination, becoming a jinshi; after the court examination he was appointed a bachelor of the Hanlin Academy. In 1897 he assisted the Hunan governor Chen Baozhen in promoting reformist new policies, and from then on began to make his mark. Xiong's former residence is in a small lane off Wenxing Street in the north of the old town. It is a typical ancient Miao architectural layout composed of a main hall, bedrooms, and side rooms, rich in Miao flavor.
Tian Family Ancestral Hall
Located on LaoyingShao Street on the north bank of the Tuo River, it was first built in the 17th year of the Daoguang reign of the Qing Dynasty (1837), funded and constructed by Tian Xingshu, a Miao native of Fenghuang who was then imperial commissioner and admiral of Guzhou, together with his clansmen. In the early years of the Republic of China, Tian Yingzhao (Tian Xingshu's grandson), garrison commander of Xiangxi and a lieutenant general of the Kuomintang, spent huge sums to finally complete the construction. This is a clan ancestral hall complex with strong ethnic characteristics. It has a main gate, main hall, and stage, with more than 20 rooms, as well as sky wells, a celestial pond, and covered corridors, and also features two gates named "Five Blessings" and "Six Harmonies." In front of the ancestral hall's main gate are six fan-shaped steps built of red sandstone strips. Originally there was a pair of stone elephants and a pair of stone drums, extremely imposing, but they have since been destroyed.
Interpreting the "Xiangxi Bandits"
While eating at the East Gate, I met an old man and struck up a conversation with him about Fenduo Flower. He said "I know" again and again, but in the end the talk came round to his poor child who had been lured away to work in the Zhejiang area. He got up and left first, still waving to me from afar and calling out loudly: "Girl, you're a straightforward person." Everyone in the room burst out laughing, and I returned once more to my hometown.
The East Gate connects with the North Gate. The East Gate is a flowing scroll of daily life, while the North Gate is more like a sediment of history.
Bathed in wind and rain, the North Gate tower, set against a gray sky, reveals another kind of towering grandeur. But the bronze rings on the gate have grown dim and lusterless, and the gate itself is pitted and dented; the mottled marks look as though they have been swept by a hail of bullets, all of it bearing witness to the countless blades and weapons that once passed here. This gentle and generous little town, because of garrisoning troops to guard against the Miao, gradually became a heavily guarded place, and so many young men in the town pinned their hopes for fame and rank on a military uniform. But now, all the flames of war have become yesterday's clouds and smoke.
I walk along the city wall, the sky as gray as if dusk were falling. In the distance, Nanhua Mountain looks like a great bird trailing its wings, silent and noble. Inside and outside the wall alike are deep courtyard mansions of wooden doors and blue bricks, and the horse-head gables line both banks of the river in neat rows, giving off a cold, clear luster. Occasionally a closed wooden door creaks open, and a woman steps out, a wooden basin tucked under one arm at her waist, filled with clothes twisted into knots, while with the other hand she carries a wooden mallet. She walks slowly to the riverbank, and before long the sound of washing clothes rises, rich with lingering charm.
A vermilion gate caught my eye, on which were written in gilded characters — Zuan Shan Bao Apartment. But the gate was tightly shut. I tried to push it, and it did not budge at all. I asked a middle-aged woman who happened to be passing by, just back from washing clothes at the river, and she said this had originally been the home of a wealthy family surnamed Chen, and was a filming location for the TV series "Story of Suppressing Bandits in Wulong Mountain." The bandit chief "Zuan Shan Bao"'s bandit headquarters was set up right here. I remember this TV series; it caused a sensation at the time, so much so that people in the so-called civilized world outside almost took it as a reflection of the real conditions of life in Xiangxi, and for a time the misunderstanding of Xiangxi remained stuck in terrifying depictions of bandits running rampant. When I was in university, a girl from Hebei in my dormitory, on the very first day of school, asked me aggressively: "Do you people there eat raw meat and drink blood? Are bandits running wild?" I still remember that question to this day, and now that Hebei girl's white, plump face still floats in the air, becoming an extremely sorrowful opening ceremony of my university years. At that time I was not good at arguing; I only said that my hometown had no bandits, but it did have landscapes like paintings.
I think many of my fellow townspeople who studied away from home with me must have encountered the same awkwardness, and many of them, when speaking of their hometown, always hemmed and hawed, and some simply gave up their identity as people of Xiangxi. This is a betrayal I cannot tolerate, so I always say proudly: "I am from Xiangxi." Thus I always face more unfriendly questioning, but I never tire of it.
The bandit is a concept that has already died out; it belongs to my grandparents' generation. Perhaps for this reason, the bandits in "Story of Suppressing Bandits in Wulong Mountain" did not leave me with an impression of being utterly vicious. On the contrary, one scene I have taken as a classic has always occupied my entire memory of this TV series with a romantic and poetic image — that was the scene of the old bandit "Bang Ye" racing against a wild dog. After all the other details of the TV series have blurred and faded with time, this scene has become a slow-motion shot that can be replayed endlessly. It is a scene that harms no one, only the man's ferocity, strength, and speed, staged against the backdrop of autumn fields, full of poetry. And the bandit "Bang Ye," because of this, was endowed with a romantic chivalric quality.
North Gate Tower
Originally named "Bihui," it is commonly known as the North Gate Tower because it is located at the back of the old town. The North Gate Tower was first built in the Ming Dynasty. During the Yuan and Ming dynasties, Fenghuang Old Town was the seat of the Wuzhai Zhangguan Si. During the Jiajing reign of the Ming Dynasty, the Zhen'gan Canjiang was moved from Mayang to be stationed here for defense, and so in the 35th year of Jiajing (1556) the earthen city was rebuilt as a brick city, with four great gates opened, each covered with a tower. By the Qing Dynasty, the old town's military status became increasingly important, and successively the Fenghuang Ting, the Zhen'gan Zhen, and the Chenyuan Yongjing Bingbei Dao seat were established here, and the construction of the old town was also strengthened. In the 54th year of the Kangxi reign (1715), the brick city was rebuilt as a stone city, and the North Gate was named "Bihui Gate," which has been preserved to this day. It is one of the filming locations for dozens of films and TV dramas, including "Story of Suppressing Bandits in Xiangxi," "Story of Suppressing Bandits in Wulong Mountain," "Border Town," and "Blood Drum."
Grandfather Died by a Bandit's Bullet
Yet although art harms no one, the facts are always cruel. When my grandmother spoke to us of bandits in my childhood, it always served as a threat, just like ghost stories. When bandits entered the village, the villagers ran and fled crying out, and my grandmother, with her two nephews, hurriedly hid beneath a field ridge, not daring even to breathe loudly. After a flurry of chickens flying and dogs jumping, the bandits, torches in hand, galloped away on horseback, and only then did they dare to exhale and weep in each other's arms. Rebuilding their homes again and again, collapsing into ruin again and again, my grandmother's childhood seemed filled with the shadows of bandits and wolves; even after reaching adulthood, she still could not shake off the nightmare of bandits. My grandfather was a small but sturdy small landlord. Once, to win her a smile, he chased a hunting eagle bare-handed and then tied the eagle's feet so she could play with it. But this energetic little man, though he had once grandly ridden in a sedan chair and carried hundreds of dan of grain to gamble lavishly at the foot of Chashan Mountain, and had his own retainers, firearms, and small castle, in the end still died by a bandit's bullet. I do not fully understand what kind of catastrophe that was; I only know that a small landlord and a mountain king originally wanted to use each other's strength to carry out a transaction. Together they obtained a batch of poppy seeds, planning to make a considerable sum of money after the harvest. But the mountain king was full of vigilance toward the small landlord's guns and armed forces. He wanted to get some of the guns, and of course was refused by this small landlord who was so fierce that he could never be manipulated by others. The balance of the transaction was broken and evolved into an armed conflict. My heroic grandfather was felled by a single bandit shot, and the poppies covering the mountains and fields left this already declining family with the crime of privately planting opium. Because she was laboring in the fields, my grandmother escaped death, but from then on she took my two-year-old father and left her hometown, wandering and fleeing the government's pursuit of opium growers, without even seeing my grandfather one last time.
Because the story of this family is too distant, it did not stir up in me any hatred for bandits. It was only many years later, when I returned to Chashan and relatives there pointed to a pile of ruins that had collapsed for many years and told me that it had once been my grandfather's castle, that I felt a trace of sorrow. Yet very strangely, my remembrance of this grandfather I had never met became intertwined with my imagination of the old bandit "Bang Ye." Perhaps it was the scene of him chasing the hunter that gave me such an association — short and wiry, with the speed of the wind, against the backdrop of autumn mountain fields, everything was so similar to the scene of "Bang Ye" racing the wild dog.
Chiang Kai-shek Regarded Xiangxi as a "Bandit Area"
This is still only my perspective. What, then, of the real history? The following is a story I know about a real bandit.
Xiangxi was called a "bandit area" partly because of historical reasons. Xiangxi had long been regarded as a land of "barbarians," and in the eyes of rulers it was always a region difficult to tame and prone to causing trouble. Later, during the Republic of China period, the Xiangxi warlord Chen Qüzhen once again built up his own military strength, and had long become a major worry for Chiang Kai-shek. In the early 1930s, Xiangxi suffered several consecutive years of floods and droughts, and the Miao people living under the tuntian system demanded that the Xiangxi "autonomous government" reduce rents, but Chen Qüzhen refused. In early 1936, Long Yunfei, Shi Weizhen, Long Yunchao, and others launched a Miao people's uprising and formed the Xiangxi Ethnic Anti-Japanese National Salvation Army. The insurgent army put forward the slogans "Abolish tuntian and resist Japan" and "Return tuntian to the people," and successively besieged Yongshui, Fenghuang, Baojing, and other counties. Chiang Kai-shek urgently transferred a army from Jiangxi into Xiangxi, using it on the one hand to crush the Miao uprising and on the other to annex and suppress the local forces under Chen Qüzhen, achieving the goal of killing two birds with one stone. Chen Qüzhen, isolated and self-defensive toward the outside, came under attack from within and without and was forced to step down. On August 9, 1936, the Miao insurgent army led by Long Yunfei captured Qiancheng, and Chiang Kai-shek shifted the blame for the failure onto He Jian. In November of the same year, He Jian was removed from his post as chairman of the Hunan Provincial Government, Xiangxi was declared a "bandit area," and troops continued to be dispatched to attack the Miao insurgent army.
Yet this group of people, regarded by Chiang Kai-shek as "bandits," ultimately threw themselves into the War of Resistance Against Japan. In 1940, Hunan provincial chairman Xue Yue reorganized the local armed forces of Fenghuang, Qiancheng, Yongshui, and other counties under Chen Qüzhen's jurisdiction into the Provisional 5th and Provisional 6th Divisions and sent them to the front lines of the anti-Japanese war, with Long Yunfei serving as commander of the Provisional 6th Division. According to Fenghuang folk legend, when Long Yunfei led his troops into battle, he drank wine and cursed, looking like a battlefield figure from Beijing opera. But it was the "Gan Army" he led that made a night raid on the enemy camp and wiped out a platoon of enemy troops, and afterward took part in the Zhuzhou Campaign and the Western Hubei Campaign, throwing the Japanese into confusion and displaying the awe-inspiring might of the Zhen'gan Army.
Long Yunfei, the Last Miao King
Long Yunfei is a legend of Fenghuang. A quality both evil and righteous was interwoven in him, making his life appear extraordinarily bewildering. This man was the leader of the Miao people of Shanjiang, known as the "Blue Turban Miao King." At 18 he ran away from home, joined the Gelaohui, engaged in gambling, transported goods along the routes, and provided armed escort for merchants. Because he killed a cattle trader, he had to flee Fenghuang. After the Revolution of 1911 broke out, he joined the Fenghuang Miao Restoration Army and was the first to climb the Fenghuang city wall with a knife in his teeth. Afterward, together with Chen Qüzhen, he joined the Constitution Protection Army against Yuan Shikai under Tian Yingzhao, garrison commander of Xiangxi, serving as a regimental commander under Tian. Later, when General Tian Yingzhao handed over military power to Chen Qüzhen, Long Yunfei was greatly favored and successively served as commander of the garrison troops in Yongshun and Baojing, and as garrison commander of Feng, Ma, Chen, and Hu, stationed in Mayang. During this period, his sister-in-law committed adultery with a tailor and poisoned his younger brother to death. Without saying a word, he bound his sister-in-law with stones and threw her into a sinkhole. The tailor was tied to an old tree, skinned, and had his eyes gouged out; after death his skin was woven into a blood whip and hung beneath the gate tower of the Long family compound to uphold family discipline. At the height of his glory, however, he was disarmed by the suspicious Chen Qüzhen, and so had to lay down his arms and return to the fields, retiring into the mountains and forests. Only later, when Chen Qüzhen turned against He Jian, was he called out again. After that he formed the "Xiangxi Tuntian-Abolition Anti-Japanese National Salvation Army" and surrounded and annihilated two Kuomintang regiments in Hama Cave in Shanjiang. Still later, he and Chen Qüzhen and other Xiangxi military men, during the War of Resistance Against Japan, for a time abandoned personal selfishness and devoted themselves to the anti-Japanese war. Although his army achieved no small merit on the battlefield, Chiang Kai-shek could never trust this Miao army. In 1941, Long Yunfei, as commander of the Provisional 6th Division, was transferred to serve as a major general adviser to the commander's headquarters of the Ninth War Zone, and from then on lost military power, living idly in Yuanling.
In 1951, Long Yunfei, who refused to cooperate with the People's Liberation Army, was declared a "bandit chief" and besieged on Baomulin Mountain in Duli Township. He fired six shots into his own abdomen, ending a life that was both chivalrous and bandit-like, both hero and defeated outlaw. Yet although he controlled his own life and death, he could not control matters after death. His head, with white hair and beard, was cut off and hung on the Fenghuang city tower that he had once been the first to climb. That year, he was 65.
Shanjiang Miao Village
Shanjiang, called Baggu in the Miao language, is 23 kilometers from Fenghuang county town. It is a typical Miao town and was also the ruling center of Long Yunfei, the last generation of Miao kings in Xiangxi. A clear little stream runs through the town, and around it rise rolling hills, fantastic stone peaks, and beautiful forests. Most of the dwellings are three-bay earthen-walled tile houses with five pillars and eight braces. At the entrance to the town there is a small pavilion, and in front of it a flat area of about half a mu, on which a stele is inscribed with the three large characters "Dui Ge Tai" (Song-Answering Platform). This is the place where Miao families hold festival gatherings such as "Siyue Ba," "Liuyue Liu," and "Ganqiu." Behind the town one can see towering stone towers and antique residences, namely the palace of the former "Miao King" Long Yunfei.
Staying in Fenghuang
Nanhua Hotel, Guxiang Villa, and others are among the larger hotels in Fenghuang. The conditions are decent and the prices are not too expensive, ranging from several tens to more than one hundred yuan. You can also stay at the Yingbin Building of the Fenghuang County Party Committee Guesthouse, reached by heading about 200 meters north from the Fenghuang bus station and then turning east. A single room is 50 yuan, a double room 60 yuan, with 10 yuan extra for each room if air conditioning is needed, and there are private bathrooms and gas water heaters.
The old building of the Fenghuang County Party Committee Guesthouse is located on the hillside behind the Yingbin Building. Its exterior looks rather old, but the advantage is that you can see the panorama of the small town from the balcony. But if you are traveling as a couple or as a small group of friends on an independent trip, it is best to stay in a private inn by the river. The price is low and the scenery is beautiful, truly a case of having your cake and eating it too.
Shen Congwen Urged the "Bandits" to Resist Japan
In 1938, after Beijing fell, Shen Congwen moved south with the teachers and students of Peking University and Tsinghua University, and stayed for two months in Yuanling. He was deeply pained by the news he heard while passing through Changsha that Xiangxi was a bandit area. After meeting with Chen Qüzhen, Long Yunfei, and others, he held an equal dialogue with them and urged them, in the face of national calamity, to abandon personal selfishness and join the great army of resistance against Japan. Afterward, he wrote a letter to several Xiangxi military men in their home villages, titled "Do Not Miss This Once-in-a-Thousand-Years Opportunity to Serve the Country" —
"The temperament of our fellow townspeople has one common point in essence: none fear brute force, all are righteous and able to relieve others in urgent need, all possess true heroic character, and all take being respected by others as an honor. Today nothing is more brutal and ugly than the enemy invaders, and nothing is more needed than our country! Nothing is closer to heroic conduct than joining forces to resist the enemy together, and nothing wins more respect than recovering lost territory and dealing the enemy a heavy blow. If our fellow townspeople truly have vision, the choice is extremely easy to make.
……
"My words are very frank. I am not trying to become an official (because being an official is not at all worthwhile for me), not shielding anyone (because I belong to no party), not acting for private gain (because I have never planned to get rich). I speak only as a citizen, a man of Zhen'gan, who sees national affairs in such grave danger. After more than ten years away from my hometown, on returning I saw two phenomena: one was a great crowd of fellow townspeople just back from the front lines wounded, some with wounds not yet fully healed, who, knowing that people were needed at the front, quietly left their homes one by one, abandoning young wives and one-year-old children, and walked forward. The other was that in this or neighboring counties, people said how many houses had been burned, how many families robbed, how many important matters could not proceed. Comparing these two phenomena, my heart aches terribly. Anyone with even a little human feeling cannot help but shed tears. Anyone with even a little humanity must know what is worthwhile — 'defending the nation' or 'ruining the local area' — and what will be cursed by name."
The "Bandits" in Congwen's Writings — Most Possess a "Wandering Knight" Quality
Shortly after this, Long Yunfei stepped onto the battlefield of resistance against Japan, while Shen Congwen began his final novel, Chang He (The Long River), which he strove to use to clarify the truth about Xiangxi to the outside world, and the series of essays in Xiangxi (Xiangxi), in the piece titled Fenghuang (Phoenix), Shen Congwen did his utmost to depict the knight-errant spirit of the people of Fenghuang, as well as the interwoven stories of romance and solemnity, beauty and cruelty, love and resentment bound inseparably together. Among them, three figures possessed an especially knight-errant temperament: one was Tian Yingzhao, one was Chen Quzhen, and the other was Long Yunfei — "one of Tian Sanu's capable assistants in those years, still alive and well today, still chivalrous and hospitable, treating friends with righteousness, and hailed as a leader among the Miao people. This man is Long Yunfei, who last year caused trouble in Xiangxi, forcing He Jian, the advocate of governing the nation through boxing and the classics, to resign, thereby bringing about a turning point in Hunan politics. Twenty years ago his eyes were sharp and piercing, his hands and feet nimble, brave as a leopard, agile as an ape; he could throw himself backward off a city wall and still land in a low horse stance. When dueling in the street and going down to the river to wash his hands after killing a man, he was calm and unhurried as if he did not care in the least. Now, though still hale and vigorous, with a smooth and lustrous complexion, his hair has turned white, and he is as modest and generous as an elder. Looking back on former days, one cannot help but sigh that the hero has grown old!"
In Chang He (The Long River), Shen Congwen did his utmost to depict the knight-errant spirit of the people of Fenghuang. Look at this water of Xiangxi, and you can see the fierce, untamed side of the Xiangxi character!
If Fenghuang (Phoenix) still could not completely dispel people's fear of the bandits of Xiangxi, then Shen Congwen's short story In Another Country, which tells of a mountain chieftain who took a gentle and imaginative wife, is surely enough to soften our hearts. In this story, Miss Song, who had always harbored fear of the mountain chieftain, finally married him, and in a letter to her close friend she wrote with such passionate tone — "Don't laugh, I myself feel I am a very happy person. I tell you in all honesty, my life is too happy. Happiness is nothing else but him — let me tell you, it is your brother-in-law. Your brother-in-law used to be a chieftain, doing things every day that were work sent down by Satan, his hands stained with blood all day long, eating others' blood and flesh, carrying his own head in his hands, with the fear of having to give it to another haunting his heart at any moment. But he is far from the evil I had guessed. He is not blue-faced or black-faced, he is not as ferocious as the judge in a temple. He looks just like my third uncle's son; I say he is very handsome, and you won't suspect me of exaggeration.…"
Even bandits are not entirely hideous. So my impression of Lord Bang in The Story of Suppressing Bandits in Wulong Mountain was not entirely mistaken. Today, in this vermilion gate, the story of 'Mountain-Drilling Leopard' will no longer unfold. I followed the city wall down to the riverbank, where hundreds of swallows still circled low over the water as the boats moved. By the river there was a small child in bright floral clothes, blowing soap bubbles, brilliantly colorful. I smiled at her, she smiled back at me, and a harmonious fresh fragrance rippled through the air.
In Search of Shen Congwen's Former Residence
I have been to Shen Congwen's former residence countless times. Perhaps it is an illusion, but it seems that as early as 1985 I was searching all over the city for the birthplace of the master. I do not remember who gave me directions; now, traversing memory, I can almost still see a small, dark, thin figure in a floral skirt, sleepwalking through a little shop selling ginger candy, arriving on a summer day, nervous, before a plain siheyuan. I still vaguely remember that on that summer day only an old man sat before the door, hunched over as if to pick up a fallen leaf. At the very moment he bent down, I slipped into the empty former residence, wandering alone among the carved window lattices. Even now there are still many black-and-white images and texts, like ink drops on paper, swirling before my eyes.
But at that time I did not understand Shen Congwen's significance. I had just graduated from a rural primary school amid beautiful mountains and clear waters, and was waiting to enter a middle school I dreamed of. In that long wait, my father arranged for me to attend a summer painting class. Although I already knew how to paint cabbage and radishes by heart, I was completely at a loss when it came to drawing plaster casts. I merely muddled along there, looking forward to the day when the plaster-cast drawing would end so I could use my watercolor box. But it seems that before I got to paint watercolors, one afternoon I heard from afar a very thin man with a pipe speaking to us. I was ignorant and uncomprehending; a dark-skinned girl beside me who had already been admitted to medical school excitedly told me that was Huang Yongyu. Yes, that was Huang Yongyu. Perhaps it was just after Huang Yongyu had encouraged us that this dark-skinned painting friend preparing for medical school mentioned Shen Congwen to me, and so I began to search for him through streets and alleys, until at last I stood before his photograph.
Every time I come to Fenghuang I come here, just to inquire after that already distant fragrance of books, just to let my heart, already restless in the city, slowly return to calm in the shade of the carved window lattices where the sun never reaches all year round.
This time when I arrived, it was already dusk. Young children gathered on the road, running, playing, shouting joyfully. I thought I should first take a photograph; although there was no sunset, the evening sky was instead even brighter. At that corner of the street, I raised my camera, waiting for one person after another to pass before the door. I wanted to photograph an undisturbed house, I wanted a scene without bystanders. But people kept coming and going without cease, and did not pause for the tranquility I needed. That group of playing children finally discovered a new game that excited them: calling to their companions, they all rushed up before me, faced the lens, and made all sorts of funny faces. I found I could not drive them away; they were so happy and innocent. I thought the master would surely be very glad, because now before his house, those who linger are not only mourners. Life continues in the most natural way, and children still feel no fear of the world.
The Legend of Father and Brother
This siheyuan on Zhongying Street is a wooden structure from the Qing Dynasty. Shen Congwen's grandfather Shen Hongfu, once of illustrious fame as a provincial military commander of Guizhou, felt that officialdom was unpredictable, resigned his post, and returned to the fields, completing this small and exquisite siheyuan in 1886. Yet this soldier, who held high office at the age of 25, was unable to enjoy a peaceful old age; in 1889, his gunshot wound recurred, and after long treatment without cure, he passed away. In her grief, his wife, née Zhang, arranged for Shen Hongfu's younger brother Shen Hongfang to marry a Miao woman in the countryside of Huangluo Village, who bore two sons for the Shen family; the second son, Shen Zongsi, was adopted by his sister-in-law and became Shen Congwen's father. Although this Miao woman was in the end forced by various circumstances to marry far away, Shen Congwen always took pride in having the blood of his grandmother's Miao people flowing in his veins.
Shen Congwen's father also once wished to restore the family's former glory. He had gone to Tianjin to serve as a subordinate officer under the commander Luo Rongguang, stationed at the Dagu Fort. When the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded and the Dagu Fort fell, Shen Zongsi, in grief and indignation, fled Tianjin alone and returned to Fenghuang. After the Revolution of 1911 broke out, he left for Beijing, gathered fellow townsmen, and organized an Iron and Blood Corps intending to assassinate Yuan Shikai. After the plot failed, he had to change his name and flee beyond the passes. Shen Congwen's mother, née Huang, raised three sons and three daughters at home, and in the end had to sell the family property, giving all the silver to the eldest son, Shen Yuelin, to go beyond the passes in search of his father. In 1923, after ten years away from home, Shen Zongsi finally returned to his native place, but the home on Zhongying Street had already changed beyond recognition, and the ancestral estate could not be maintained. Shen Zongsi's final identity was that of a highly regarded physician in this ancient small town.
This siheyuan, which once changed owners, ultimately became the property of the Tian family. Later, when the Tian family had no heir, it was transferred to a relative surnamed Yang. Yang suffered persecution during the Cultural Revolution and could not preserve the property, selling it for only 1,300 yuan to the Tuojiang Town Housing Management Committee. Afterward, this siheyuan housed a total of 66 households and 180 people. In 1982, when Shen Congwen returned to his native place, the old residence still did not bear the Shen name. It was not until 1988 that the government reclaimed it and repaired it, making it the present Former Residence of Congwen. But by then, the master had already passed away.
The Once Wild Shen Congwen
In Fenghuang's traditional reliance on the military as a way out, the Shen family sent their second son into the army. From then on, not yet 15 years old, Shen Congwen left Fenghuang, beginning his career as a soldier and also beginning his reading of a great social "book."
It must have been in Shen Congwen's former residence that I saw a photograph of him as a youth. It was a photograph full of wildness, revealing the fearless spirit of a country boy, entirely different from all his later photographs in which he wore glasses and showed gentleness and refinement. It is hard to connect this photograph with the later bookish Shen Congwen, but in fact, the Shen Congwen of those years, wearing an ill-fitting military uniform, carelessly following the troops in suppressing bandits and killing people, always referring to himself as "Laozi," was just that wild and untamable.
In many essays, Shen Congwen mentions his youthful life in the Yuan River basin. I cannot imagine the feeling of a person whose youth was constantly linked with death, but such a life was forever engraved on a sensitive heart, inescapable.
In "Scenes of Suppressing Bandits" in Autobiography of Congwen, he wrote: "Once, as we were passing through a narrow path between two valleys covered with small bamboo, there was a crack of a gunshot, and one of us fell. Hearing the gunshot and seeing the dead man, we searched those bamboo groves again, but found nothing at all. So we removed the gun from the dead body, cut two large poles and tied them together, carried him along, and the group set off again. Over the next two days we lost two more, but in the end we killed nearly a thousand in that place."
The killing had no intermediary. After the bandit-suppression troops were stationed, they arrested forty-three honest people, of whom twenty-seven "confessed under torture, their palms smeared with ink to take fingerprints. The next day, we crowded these twenty-seven country people out to the fields beyond the market and cut off their heads." "The first time we killed nearly thirty people, the second time five more." "The record of killings increased day by day… The local people were extremely fierce and savage; around the third year of the Republic (1914), a certain Huang, the Daoyin of Chenyuan, killed about two thousand people there; in the sixth year of the Republic (1917), the Guizhou army commander Wang Xiaoshan killed about three thousand more there; now it was our army's turn to do such things, and altogether we killed only about a thousand."
Days Dancing with Death
There were many kinds of death, and also some intoxicating deaths. Also in Autobiography of Congwen, Shen Congwen wrote of how the daughter of a chamber of commerce president fell ill and died, and after burial, that same night a young tofu seller from the same street dug her out of the grave, carried her to a cave, and slept with her for three days before returning her to the grave. When this was later discovered, the young tofu seller was naturally executed on the spot. Before execution he did not shout or call for wine, but only silently noticed his own wounded ankle. Shen Congwen asked him why he had done such a thing, and he only smiled and murmured softly to himself: "Beautiful, so beautiful." This smile remained in Shen Congwen's heart: "For more than ten years it has remained extraordinarily vivid in my memory."
The killing continued. After reaching Huaihua, Shen Congwen stayed for one year and four months, and roughly saw seven hundred people killed. "Under what circumstances people were tortured, in what state their heads were cut off, I can say I understood completely. And I saw many stupid things done by so-called human beings, simply impossible to describe." The rough grinding of life made a youth of barely more than ten, at his very first step into society, confront directly the heaviest propositions of life and death; its meaning was that "this experience of killing took on a weight in my heart, so that for the rest of my life I could never share the same feelings of love and hate as city people."
For the rest of his life thereafter, Shen Congwen felt his native place within this estrangement between country people and city people. And this isolation made him always flee the city, returning in spirit a thousand times to the life of country people; and through distance, this coarseness was gradually transformed by flowing water into a pure beauty.
A Not-at-All Romantic Wandering Life
The wandering life of a soldier continued, and of course it was not only killing; it also included stewing dog meat in an earthen bowl and a love affair that ruined him financially. Shen Congwen fell in love with a tall, white-faced girl, but in the end discovered that he had sent the family's one thousand silver dollars into that household, while his love poems received no response at all. Unable to explain himself to his mother, Shen Congwen could only flee, continuing to drift on boats. After he drifted and moored at Chenzhou (Yuanling), a new state of vigor had appeared among the soldiers of Xiangxi. Clerks and messengers, though their pay was small, "each did their duty and handled affairs, never feeling any grievance"; those willing to study still took books out into the sunlight every day to read, preparing for officer school; ordinary high-ranking officers "all lived very frugally, ate coarse rice, lived simply, yet were full of vitality…" And all this was only because "that energetic commanding officer led by example, planning and directing everything, enabling each person to do his utmost in his post, neither dispirited nor degenerate." This man was Chen Quzhen, who commanded Xiangxi for decades. And Shen Congwen's dream at the time was to "hope someone would put in a word for me, so I could go to that soldier's side and serve as a guard."
Shen Congwen finally met Chen Quzhen. At that time, Shen Congwen was nearly twenty, and Chen Quzhen was forty. For Shen Congwen, the significance of drawing close to this soldier was not only the realization of his earlier dream, but also that after meeting this man, he changed his entire life.
A Sudden Enlightenment on Life and Death, Seeking a Way Out
As Chen Quzhen's clerk, besides copying documents and serving as meeting recorder, Shen Congwen spent most of his time doing organizing work in Chen Quzhen's study. In that study there were four or five large nanmu cabinets holding a hundred or so scrolls of old paintings from the Song to the Ming and Qing dynasties, along with dozens of bronze and ancient porcelain pieces, more than ten boxes of books, a large collection of rubbings, and a set of the Sibu Congkan. Such "life was truly a turning point for me, giving me a leisurely opportunity to know and draw close to the brilliance of every era and every aspect of the whole of history." "Through use, I also learned much knowledge. And through familiarity, as I leafed back and forth all day, I gradually came to understand most of those old books."
The power of books was to isolate him from the coarseness of life and lead him into a gentle fantasy. In fact, it was not only Shen Congwen; many people, under the lure of books, gradually drew away from rough life and returned to the dreams inspired in them by books, intoxicated by them. Shen Congwen began to drift somewhat apart from his contemporaries; whether walking in the hills or playing by the river, he always carried a thread-bound book in his hand. And the reading of books made a person's emotions especially tender, and some nameless unease about the past and future began to assail him. The prospect of a military life as an outstanding clerk could no longer free him from the loneliness brought on by this unease.
In 1922, an unusually prolonged forty-day serious illness and the sudden death of a friend finally prompted Shen Congwen to make the decision to leave. After he finally survived that fever in which nosebleeds flowed in pools, one of his friends, having bet someone he could swim a one-li-wide stretch of water, was swept away by the eddy and drowned. The fragility of life before accident struck him; he could not imagine that before he knew anything of the outside world, he would already have died of illness or drowned. If that were really so, then perhaps starving to death outside would not be a more pitiable way to end one's life. And so Shen Congwen told Chen Quzhen he wanted to leave, and this silent and diligent soldier gave him encouragement before he departed: "When you get there, whatever school you can enter, if you can graduate in a year or two, I will send money here. If things do not work out and you want to come back, there will still be a place here for you to eat."
Nineteen days later, Shen Congwen arrived in Beijing and wrote on the guest register — Shen Congwen, twenty years old, student, native of Fenghuang County, Hunan.
Raising His Voice for the Nation in Crisis
It was already sixteen years later when Shen Congwen and Chen Quzhen met again. In 1938, the War of Resistance Against Japan broke out. After Beijing fell, Shen Congwen traveled south from Beijing with the students and professors of Peking University and Tsinghua University. During this time, he returned to Yuanling to stay temporarily at his elder brother's home. There in Yuanling he met this "old superior" once more. By then, Shen Congwen was already a famous writer and university professor, while Chen Quzhen had just taken office as the first director of the Yuanling Administrative Office. The two met in a time of national crisis, and their conversation was not the reminiscing of a superior and his clerk. Shen Congwen, Chen Quzhen, and Long Yunfei held a conversation about resisting Japan, and about how Xiangxi must change the impression outsiders had of it as a "bandit region." Not long after this conversation, Chen Quzhen's troops were reorganized into the Provisional Fifth and Sixth Divisions and marched to the front lines of the war of resistance, with Long Yunfei serving as commander of the Provisional Sixth Division. Afterward, Shen Congwen wrote an article titled "Don't Miss This Once-in-a-Thousand-Years Opportunity to Serve the Country—To Several Veterans of Xiangxi in Their Home Villages," in which he set forth his hope that the soldiers of Xiangxi would serve the nation in the face of national crisis and give full play to the brave spirit of the people of Xiangxi. To dispel outsiders' misunderstandings of Xiangxi, upon arriving in Kunming he began writing the essay collection Xiangxi and the novel Changhe (The Long River), which portrays the events in Xiangxi over those two years, striving to present the true, simple, and beautiful Xiangxi before the eyes of the world.
A Star That Never Dies
Changhe is an unfinished work, and perhaps for this reason it is not mentioned as often as Border Town. But in Huang Yongyu's words, from the honest perspective of a person of Xiangxi, this is the book that most resembles the people of Xiangxi. Huang Yongyu said: "This is the first heartfelt book in which he (Shen Congwen) sat by candlelight and had a long talk with the elders of his hometown."
Shen Congwen's life never intersected with Chen Quzhen's, yet the two important turning points in his life both seem to be connected with this soldier. In 1922, he resolutely left his life in the army and entered Beijing, beginning his career of "following literature" from then on—and the person he bade farewell to was Chen Quzhen. After 1949, the first half of his life as a writer had entirely ended, and he began the second half of his life as a researcher of cultural relics. Perhaps all of this had already planted its seeds when he was organizing Chen Quzhen's books, calligraphy, and paintings. Many years later, when he was labeling artifacts, calligraphy, and paintings, the time spent in that study in Yuanling would surely surface before his eyes, and all the tragic aspects of life would inevitably transform into an even greater solitude, pervading his heart.
But the world has not forgotten Shen Congwen. In These Melancholy Fragments, Huang Yongyu said: "No matter how many more books on cultural relics and archaeology Uncle Congwen writes, later generations will still forever remember him with the affection due to literature."
Now, standing in Shen Congwen's former residence, I see only a patch of gray sky through the small courtyard. I hear Huang Yongyu, pipe in mouth, asking: "Has the last morning star of the hometown gone out?" "Of course not!"