Good Friend Remembers the Past -- A Picture Magazine and an Era

Author: Ma Guoliang
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2002-01-01
Features: This is a memoir about a publication, woven together with characters and stories to form a history. In China, it seems no other publication has been recalled or described in such a way. (Liangyou) deserves to be. After disappearing for many years, this has been its injustice. Once people have the chance to reread it, they will discover its beauty. This beauty does not fade with time; on the contrary, as romantic cultural nostalgia spreads everywhere and illustrated publications suddenly become a publishing trend, the memories of naturally come to the forefront, making it possible for it to meet readers in a beautifully illustrated and interactive way.
Mr. Ma Guoliang's Memoirs of Liangyou is a personal recollection of the Liangyou magazine, but as the only surviving "Liangyou elder," he recounts the founding of Liangyou with a fresh brushstroke and a simple narrative, revealing many little-known facts about the literary world and vividly recreating the cultural landscape of 1930s Shanghai. He writes a unique "history of the Liangyou magazine," undoubtedly possessing irreplaceable historical and research value.
Liangyou magazine and Mr. Ma Guoliang
Chen Zishan picked up Memoirs of Liangyou—A Magazine and an Era from the market and read it late at night, feeling both joy and sorrow. The joy was that this important literary memoir, written fifteen years earlier, had finally been published and presented to readers in such a beautifully illustrated and interactive form. The sorrow was that the author, Mr. Ma Guoliang, had passed away across the ocean and had not lived to see the book's publication. I think he left this world with deep regrets.
Mr. Ma Guoliang's name cannot be found in most modern Chinese literature dictionaries. Literary historians seem to have forgotten him. He was born in 1908 in Guangzhou, Guangdong, to a modest family. He came to Shanghai, the "city of ten miles of foreign concessions," before finishing middle school. He first studied art before being introduced by a classmate, Liang Desuo, who was then the editor-in-chief of Liangyou magazine, to work at the Liangyou Publishing Company, thus beginning his vibrant literary career. He made diverse attempts in literary creation, excelling in essays, essays, novels, and film scripts. In the 1930s, he published essays collections such as Songs of Last Night, For Women, Leisurely Sketches, and the novel Lulu, and his many excellent essays were included in The Great Series of New Chinese Literature (1927–1937). But his greater contribution to modern Chinese literature and cultural history was becoming the third of the "three great editors of Liangyou" after Liang Desuo and Zhao Jiabi after succeeding him as the editor-in-chief of Liangyou in August 1933.
As Mr. Ma Guoliang said in the preface to Memoirs of Liangyou, Liangyou was a large-scale comprehensive magazine in the 20th century, ten years ahead of the American Life magazine in setting trends. For the history of world illustrated publications, Liangyou was the "true pioneer." The birth of Liangyou was naturally inseparable from the foresight of Wu Liande, the founder of Liangyou Publishing Company. He not only created the popular Liangyou magazine but also, with sharp eyes, invited the then little-known Liang Desuo to replace the famous writer Zhou Shoujuan as the editor-in-chief of Liangyou, ushering the magazine into a new stage of development. After Ma Guoliang succeeded Liang Desuo, he led Liangyou into its heyday. Through the efforts of Liang and Ma, Liangyou became a hub for reporting major political, economic, military, social, and cultural events in China at the time in an illustrated form, exerting an extremely wide influence in the Chinese world both at home and abroad.
Liangyou was not a purely literary magazine, but in the 1930s, the representative writers of Chinese literature—Lu Xun, Hu Shi, Mao Dun, Xu Daofu, Tian Han, Feng Zikai, Lao She, Shi Tieshen, and Mu Shiying—were almost all happy to appear in Liangyou, whether through works, photographs, or handwriting. This demonstrates the magazine's immense influence.
Because Liangyou emphasized both news and culture, combining diversity and mass appeal, it was an outstanding representative of 1930s Shanghai urban culture. In recent years, it has attracted increasing attention from scholars both at home and abroad who study modern Chinese literature and Shanghai cultural history. Many master's and doctoral theses have been written on Liangyou. Professor Lee Yee-fan of Harvard University, in his new book Shanghai Modern—A New Urban Culture in China, devotes considerable space to discussing Liangyou and the urban demands it "created" through cover designs, celebrity photos, trendy fashion, and various advertisements. I fully agree with Lee Yee-fan's view that the story of Liangyou lies in its conscious promotion of "modernity" in the 1930s, helping to construct Shanghai's urban culture. Therefore, it not only marks a significant chapter in the history of modern Chinese journalism but also takes a historic step in presenting the process of modernization in China itself.
I myself have often read Liangyou and have found new discoveries and insights with every reading. Mr. Ma Guoliang's Memoirs of Liangyou, though a personal recollection of the Liangyou magazine, as the only surviving "Liangyou elder," he recounts the founding of Liangyou with a fresh brushstroke and a simple narrative, revealing many little-known facts about the literary world and vividly recreating the cultural landscape of the 1930s Shanghai, writing a unique "history of the Liangyou magazine," undoubtedly possessing irreplaceable historical and research value. Although some chapters remain unfinished due to its initial serialization, it is already quite rare.
As early as 1987, this memoir was serialized in the revived Hong Kong Liangyou, attracting attention, but it was unfortunately not accessible in mainland China at the time. I have met Mr. Ma Guoliang only twice, and coincidentally, both encounters were related to this Memoirs of Liangyou.
The first was in spring 1990, when I visited Hong Kong for the first time. Renowned rhetoric scholar Zheng Ziyu hosted a banquet at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and among the oldest attendees was Mr. Ma Guoliang, who had moved to Hong Kong and served as an advisor to the revived Liangyou magazine. During the banquet, we discussed this serialized Memoirs of Liangyou, and Professor Huang Jizhi of the Chinese University of Hong Kong and book scholar Huang Jundong praised it highly. I suggested compiling it into a book for more readers, to which he replied that he wasn't in a hurry and still needed to revise and expand it. Four years later, I returned to Hong Kong and learned that he had moved to the United States but was back in Hong Kong for medical treatment for his leg. Seizing the opportunity, I went to his residence in Kowloon with Hong Kong cultural historian Fang Kuanglie and spent an afternoon chatting with him. I told him that scholars in Shanghai had already compiled and published his essay collection The Essence of Life, which he had not known about beforehand, and he was still very happy. The topic naturally turned back to Memoirs of Liangyou, and he expressed some sadness, as publishing in Hong Kong was no longer feasible, and the situation in mainland China was also not optimistic. With the passage of time, the characters and scenes described in the book had long faded away—would anyone still read it? I could only reassure him that there would surely be a way, as books like Zhao Jiabi's Memoirs of an Editor had also been published.
Unbeknownst to Mr. Ma Guoliang, after returning to the United States, he entrusted the manuscript to me, Brother Li Hui, who did not disappoint him and recommended the precious manuscript to Beijing Sanlian. Thus, this Memoirs of Liangyou, reflecting the author's cultural interests and nostalgia, was finally able to see the light of day.
Although Mr. Ma Guoliang did not live to see it, if he knew that his wish had finally been fulfilled, he would surely smile and approve.
The People's Daily