original title:
Centenarians look back at the century “Yang Yi’s Oral Autobiography”: One hundred years, many people, many things
Workers’ Daily—China Industry Net reporter Chen Junyu
Mr. Yang Yi, a famous translator and writer, is 103 years old. This year, she received a special gift – “One Hundred Years, Many People, Many Things: Yang Yi’s Oral Autobiography”, which was compiled and written by Professor Yu Bin of Nanjing University for 10 years, was published by Yilin Publishing House.
The first part of “Yang Yi’s Oral Autobiography” begins with the writing of the Yang family’s fortune in the late Qing Dynasty, and ends in 1946 when Yang Yi returned from Chongqing to Nanjing with the Central University after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War. “Going to School” and “Working” divided by 1946 are double variations of Yang Yi’s life. The lower part of the manuscript has basically been sorted out and will be published in the next few years.
Yang Yi, formerly known as Yang Jingru, was born in Tianjin in 1919 and worked in the Translation Department of Nanjing National Compilation Institute and the Department of Foreign Languages of Nanjing Normal University. Her translation of “Wuthering Heights” is one of the most popular Chinese translations, and she is also the first translator of this Chinese title. His older brother Yang Xianyi is a famous translator, his older sister Yang Minru is an expert in classical literature, and her husband Zhao Ruihong is a professor at the Chinese Department of Nanjing University and an expert on foreign literature.
On the occasion of her 103rd birthday, Tie Ning, chairman of the Chinese Writers Association and chairman of the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, and Zhang Hongsen, secretary of the party group and vice chairman of the Chinese Writers Association, sent autographed letters of congratulations and paid her high respect: “Mr. Yang Yi is a peer of the May 4th Movement. He is a progressive student from Southwest Associated University who is stepping into a broad life. He is an important translator who first created the translation of “Wuthering Heights” and made the translation a classic. He is a diligent writer who also creates poetry, prose, and children’s literature. At that time, Mr. Yang Yi was unwilling to stay under the shelter of his family, and devoted himself to the torrent of the times with his youthful blood to share the fate of his motherland; The translation of works such as “From the Earth: The Biography of Luo Dan” is still full of vigor. The life infiltrated by literary life, literary career, and literary pursuit is full and smooth.”
“One Hundred Years, Many People, Many Things: Yang Yi’s Oral Autobiography” is the only oral autobiography of Mr. Yang Yi. It is the growth history of a woman, the spiritual history of a generation of intellectuals, and a century-old history of China witnessed by individuals. From 1919 to today, Yang Yi’s 100 years of life is exactly the 100 years of China’s vicissitudes and vicissitudes. The refinement of time and life condenses into a song of innocence and romance of a generation of intellectual women. Looking back at the century, she said: “I don’t know how many people and things I encounter in my life. At my age, I have experienced warlords, the War of Resistance Against Japan, the War of Liberation, and all kinds of things that happened after the founding of New China. Although I am an ordinary People, but there are many people to read, many things to say.”
Scholar Yu Bin resists forgetting by listening, and leads to the truth of history with details. Family history, emerald years, the road to school, old friends in the mountains and rivers, people and events of a century are slowly unfolded in the narration. He wrote in Wanzi “Shucheng Manji”: “I acted as an intermediary between Mr. Yang and readers intentionally or unintentionally. It should be an oral history that can be aimed at ordinary readers.”
A warm history is the collection and symphony of countless individual “destiny”, witnessing individual destiny is also “witnessing history”. Mr. Yang is a translator, and the translation of “Wuthering Heights” is well-known. She has been engaged in children’s literature creation and has written a lot of prose, but in Yu Bin’s view, she cares more about her family than her achievements. Her family and friendship, her “life” – “Mr. Yang has lived for a whole century, experienced the ups and downs of the family’s fate, the ups and downs of personal life, and the impact of political movements, but in the turbulent twenties Century China, her experience does not have the drama of great joy and great sorrow. That is to say, her life is ordinary, and it is also ordinary. However, because of its ordinary side, it may resonate with readers and convey the “universal” The echo of her life’.”——Her narration is completely private, which is also the unique value of her oral autobiography that is different from general “celebrity biographies”.
Collective memory, national memory and national memory are all built on the basis of vivid individual memory, just as Xu Bei, the director of the documentary “Southwest Associated University” and “Post-90s”, said: “Mr. She is an old man. Among her family and teachers and friends, there are many star-studded figures in modern Chinese history; An embarrassing fate—it is doomed that Mr. Yang Yi’s oral autobiography is also the history of her family and country in the past 100 years. The era is not the background of her life, her life is the era itself.”
For the sake of “immersion”, this book contains more than 150 precious photos. Mr. Yang was born in a family and has kept a large number of photos since the beginning of the 20th century. “It’s not for the combination of pictures and texts in the formal sense. I firmly believe in the power of words and its irreplaceability.” Yu Bin hopes that pictures and texts can form a true complementary relationship. Many pictures have added long annotations, “so The narrator, sometimes the photo itself, sometimes points outside the photo, which can be regarded as a certain extension and supplement of the dictation.” Flipping through the photos, she seems to be with Mr. Yang, and she stops at a certain page from time to time, falling into the ambiguity of the past. Disappointed, let’s talk about the story behind the yellowed image.
Mr. Yang Yi is overdue, and she said that one of the major events in her life is to cooperate with Yu Bin to complete the oral record. The first new book was delivered to Mr. Yang, and she had tears in her eyes: “It’s a pity that my mother can’t see it…” Yu Bin recalled All kinds of things in the book: “I have to thank Mr. Yang for his trust: she read the manuscript more than once, and even made changes on it more than once, from the deletion of some content to the correction of names and times, and even the revision of sentences. But she I also explain that it doesn’t matter if you don’t change it—but sometimes you have to add a sentence, ‘I reserve my opinion’. Only in this way, I dare not make mistakes, and I am careful in choosing and rejecting, in order to live up to the “life and death” that Mr. Yang bestowed on me ‘right.”
Looking back at many people and things in a century, she has clear eyes and is still full of confidence: “Ba Jin said that longevity is punishment. I say that living is victory!” Just like the poem Yang Yi left at the lotus pond of Southwestern United University in Kunming in 1940 : “I love the sun and the moon, the morning is clear, the night is hazy, and I love watching a rainbow appear after the rain!”