Huang Yilong reads the beautiful prose of the world

Author: Huang Yilong
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-09-01
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Du Gongbu's Thatched Cottage and Tao Xingzhi's School


"All history is contemporary history," this is a consensus among historians. The history being referred to here is actually the understanding and interpretation of historical processes, with contemporary people as the subjects of such understanding and interpretation. Naturally, the results cannot but bear the imprint of the contemporary era. Similarly, all historical figures are essentially contemporary people, and they repeatedly transform their identities according to the evolving interests of contemporary figures, thereby gaining the qualification for repeated rebirth. As the leader once said, "The past should be used for the present." This principle is unshakable and eternal, and it is destined that the ancestors of the past, present, and future will live an extremely exhausting life.
What makes matters more complicated is that contemporary people's methods of using the past are not uniform, so a single historical figure often has several identities. In an era where public opinion is uniform, this is relatively straightforward—he has one identity approved by the authorities, while the others are considered counterfeit. But now, this trend is no longer in vogue, so various ancestors emerge one after another, fighting among themselves, leaving one wondering who the true ancestor is. Taking Du Fu, a highly renowned ancestor, as an example, he has been called the "sage of poetry," the "poet of the people," and the spokesperson of the landlord class, with different identities at different times, and only one identity at a time—this is all understandable. Now, something new has emerged—two Du Fus have appeared simultaneously.
Both Du Fus appear in the highly renowned Chengdu Du Fu Thatched Cottage, one inside and one outside, separated by a single gate, divided into two. The reason for this division lies in the different uses contemporary people make of the same Du Fu poem. The poem in question is also highly renowned and is called "Song of the Thatched Cottage Blown Away by the Wind." The one inside the cottage was once labeled as owning a "specialized residence more luxurious than tiled houses" because the thatched roof of his cottage had three layers of, earning him the title of "landlord" for a time. Later, experts familiar with the construction of thatched cottages reexamined the matter and concluded that poor people's thatched cottages also had multiple layers of, so he was exonerated and returned to being the "sage of poetry" with a heart full of "the suffering of the common people," sitting in the "Poetic History Hall" and dreaming of "When can I have thousands of spacious houses, sheltering all the poor scholars under heaven, so that they may rejoice." The one outside the cottage lives in the newly built "Du Fu Garden." According to media reports, this "Du Fu Garden" is a luxury villa complex covering nearly 600 acres with a construction area of 400,000 square meters and a total investment of 1.2 billion yuan. The Du Fu inside the garden is far wealthier than the one inside the cottage and no longer dreams of "thousands of spacious houses" because they are becoming a reality and are now his private property. When Guo Moruo criticized his poem "Alas, when will I suddenly see such a house before me, even if my cottage collapses and I freeze to death, I am also satisfied?" he said, "If so many 'spacious houses' truly sprang up like mushrooms overnight, would the poet not have moved in long ago? How could he freeze to death?" Truly, the great literary master's foresight was uncanny, and his words were always on target. The wealthy Du Fu living in the luxury villa is undoubtedly a symbol of our respect for knowledge and talent, which is why a large number of local and Party leaders attended the groundbreaking ceremony. Interestingly, the promotional advertisements for the luxury villa still use the same line: "Sheltering all the poor scholars under heaven, so that they may rejoice." Given the conditions from the Tang Dynasty to the present, the "poor scholars" who can afford such luxury villas, besides Du Fu, are likely none other. If Du Fu's face were truly joyful, other poor scholars would probably not consider him a peer and would still rally around the traditional Du Fu sitting quietly in the thatched cottage.