Wish we could all remember better
Surprising news happens every day, eyes are opened and closed, what feels serious today will be buried by something more serious tomorrow.
“Difficulty responding adequately to anything” has become a common regret in an era in which forgetful people are the last thing lacking. It’s just that the last wake-up call before forgetting often comes in the form of an obituary. Many people and things have passed away, and we have no time to say a solemn farewell.
In the second issue of the new column “Memorandum” for single reading, we still want to spare some time to remember those who left this year and who once opened up new worlds for us. In their respective fields of work, they have used their whole life to step into areas that were never imagined or regarded as forbidden areas by the predecessors; own ideal.
As of August this year, director Huang Shuqin, writer Ni Kuang, football star Bill Russell, designer Issey Miyake, scholar Yi-fu Tuan, illustrator Jean-Jacques Sambe and translator Shen Emei have left us forever. Their stories are difficult to summarize, and the following is only one aspect of what we have learned, but it is enough to encourage us to better treat the world they left behind.
The “memorandum” will be updated one after another, I hope we can all remember better.
Huang Shuqin
1939.9.9-2022.4.21
Huang Shuqin is one of the representative figures of China’s “fourth generation” directors. His director works include “Long Live Youth”, “Debt”, “Human·Ghost·Love” and so on. He is considered to be the earliest film director with feminist consciousness.
Huang Shuqin was born in a drama family and graduated from the Directing Department of Beijing Film Academy. After the Cultural Revolution, she worked as an assistant director in Shanghai Film Studio’s first film, managing the donkeys in the crew. Huang Shuqin later recalled in an interview: “I graduated in 1964. By 1979, I hadn’t made a movie for 15 years. I was very happy. I finally heard the sound of the camera turning. Don’t tell me to lead a donkey, I will do whatever you want Do it.” After participating in several films, Huang Shuqin began to make her own films independently.
When preparing for the movie “Human Ghost Love”, Huang Shuqin was in a stagnant period of creation. She has saved up half a year and wants to make a work with a personal style and self-expression. She chose a reportage about female martial arts students created by Jiang Zilong, and invited Pei Yanling, who is already a theater artist, to play the leading role, telling how a female martial arts student copes with confusion and doubts caused by gender in her career. During the conception and shooting stages, Huang Shuqin did not deliberately create from the perspective of women. At the beginning of the film’s release, domestic audiences did not comment from the perspective of women’s films. It happened naturally. It wasn’t until 1989, when “Human·Ghost·Love” won the public award at the 11th Clydale Women’s Film Festival and was screened 4 times during the ceremony, that no one began to notice that a feminist film was produced in China.
Huang Shuqin once responded to female directors’ intuition about creation in a seminar: “If the south window is compared to the male perspective of millennium social value orientation, the female perspective is the east window. The sun first shines in from there, and the view from the east window The garden and the road are from the side, another angle. It has its specific sensitivity, charm, femininity, strength, and toughness.” As the first feminist film in China, “Human·Ghost·Love” is not only for women in the film industry It is also an “open window” in China’s consistent patriarchal social gender landscape.
Movie “Human Ghost Love”
In addition to questioning the film industry with a natural feminist attitude, the classic feature of Huang Shuqin’s works also lies in her strict attitude towards films. The 1980s, when Huang Shuqin was active, was the peak period of literary film and television, and a large number of literary works were remade, including Qian Zhongshu’s work “The Besieged City”. At the beginning of the invitation for the adaptation rights of “Fortress Besieged”, Qian Zhongshu once refused on the grounds that “my work is not suitable for the screen”. Huang Shuqin and the screenwriter asked for many recommendations, and finally was able to finalize the adaptation rights with Qian Zhongshu; when the new film started shooting, Huang Shuqin was surprised With a broken leg bone, she had to sit in a wheelchair and insist on completing the filming; Huang Shuqin was also firm about casting, inviting many big names in the circle to come and make guest appearances. Persisting repeatedly made “Fortress Besieged” have an unrepeatable cast; the shooting process was also meticulous and rigorous, and the props and details of the shooting took a lot of trouble. Huang Shuqin insisted on crafting a TV series in the same way as filming. It took 100 days to film ten episodes, and a lot of hard work made “Fortress Besieged” a classic.
Xie Fei, a famous director who also belongs to the “fourth generation”, said: “Whether in the corridor of realism or in the new era, especially in the brilliance of Chinese culture and art in the 1980s and 1990s, she is one of the most outstanding. Characters.” In Huang Shuqin’s creation, she always takes the society and self as the original intention, and the continuous thinking about humanity and history as the background. She died on April 21 at the age of 83.
Ni Kuang
1935.5.30-2022.7.3
In martial arts works, the departure of a master is often a metaphor for the end of an era. In the heyday of the martial arts world, talents emerged in large numbers, which also reflected the Hong Kong literary world in the last century.
The famous novelist and screenwriter Ni Kuang was once known as the Four Great Talents of Hong Kong along with Jin Yong, Huang Zhan and Cai Lan. Ni Kuang’s writing career began in Weishi. When he first came to Hong Kong as a construction worker, he published the 4D work “Buried Alive”. Later, he worked for “True Pao” and started writing martial arts novels by chance. Encouraged by Jin Yong, he began to write science fiction novels under the pseudonym “Wesley”, leaving behind many masterpieces.
People are familiar with Ni Kuang because of “Wesley Series” and ghostwriting for Jin Yong. Ni Kuang still maintains a childlike disposition after experiencing the ups and downs in the first half of his life, which is also revealed in his work and many works. When serializing “Dragon Babu” for Jin Yong, he added many unexpected plot developments to the characters in the book, which made Jin Yong helpless and had to work hard to clean up the mess. This has long been a well-known anecdote; In the book, he wrote about many kinds of insects he encountered on the road to exile, hating this and that; Co-host the talk show “Undefended Tonight”, with a bold and casual style and a style of its own. He alone is enough to represent the absurd and absurd spirit of Hong Kong people who have gone through the world.
Talk show “Undefended Tonight”
Ni Kuang was extremely diligent throughout his life. He once proclaimed himself the person who “has written the most characters since the existence of Chinese characters”, and even set a record of handwriting 4,500 characters in an hour. For several years, he wrote long serials for 12 newspapers at the same time, and never procrastinated. The 100,000-word novel was delivered in ten days, and was even questioned by the management because it was written too quickly. This all stems from his self-discipline and professional ethics of “can’t stop writing”. His good friend Cai Lan once joked that he is a “writing machine”, and Jin Yong once commented on Ni Kuang: “The infinite universe, endless time and space, infinite possibilities, and the eternal contradiction between the impermanent life are woven from this head.”
Ni Kuang was open-minded and unrestrained throughout his life, and left an epitaph for himself early: think more about the good things I did before I was alive, and don’t talk about the bad things after I die. As he once wrote in his obituary for his friend Gu Long: “Now he has got rid of all fetters. Since then, no one owes anyone. Once everything is done, there is no restraint, and he is free to fly in another space that we cannot understand. His works remain in this world. Let the world know that there was such an outstanding person who wrote so many wonderful novels.” The famous novelist Ni Kuang passed away in July this year at the age of 87.
bill russell
1934.2.12-2022.7.31
Bill Russell is one of the most important players in NBA history and the first black head coach.
During his long career, he won 5 MVPs, was selected as one of the top 25, 50, and 75 superstars in the NBA, won 2 NCAA championships and 1 Olympic gold medal; Won 11 NBA championships, known as “Lord of the Rings”.
The legendary American basketball coach Arnold Jacob Auerbach once commented on Russell: “He is special because he reacts very quickly and is smart; he will not be cheated twice in a row. He also has perfect Long arms, he loves defense. It’s the complete opposite of those big men who love to score: Russell prefers his teammates to shoot.” Russell averaged 5.1 assists per game in his career, and always relied on his own scoring at critical moments Let the team win, such a giant who is versatile in defense, likes to pass the ball, and stands tall, naturally becomes the leader of the entire team-as long as Russell is there, the Celtics can always win the championship.
With outstanding leadership, Russell succeeded Arnold Auerbach as the head coach of the Celtics in 1966, becoming the first black coach in NBA history. He continued to lead the team as a coach and player, and led the Celtics to two NBA championships. After retiring, Russell also served as the head coach of the Sonics and the Kings. Doug Rivers said in an interview that without Russell, I am afraid that there would be no black coach in charge of the league.
In the middle of the last century when Russell lived, black people were treated differently in society. Russell has been committed to using his influence to promote the affirmative movement throughout his life. Solidarity with black leaders, civil rights activist Medgar Evers, participation in Martin Luther King speeches, public opposition to the Vietnam War, etc. In today’s world, it is not new for NBA stars to speak out for politics, but Bill Russell’s environment is very different from the current one. everything of. His contributions and achievements not only successfully promoted the affirmative action movement, but also opened the door for the early career of a generation of black basketball players.
Bill Russell presents Kobe Bryant with 2010 Finals MVP trophy
In the last season of Russell’s career, in Game 7 of the Finals, against the strongest lineup of the Lakers at the time-Chamberlain, Baylor and West, the three best scorers in NBA history at the time, Russell Made a famous mobilization for the Celtics: “Everything is possible in the world, except for one thing. The Lakers want to beat us, that is impossible!” In the last game, the Celtics won ten Eleventh championship in three years.
Kobe once paid tribute to Russell at the award ceremony, “Bill, on behalf of all the athletes here, we all try to follow in your footsteps, thank you for being a role model and a mentor, thank you for your laughter, always in our ears Ringing. Thank you for your courage, for showing us that inner strength can change the world.” Bill J. Russell died in July at the age of 88.
Issey Miyake
1938.4.22-2022.8.5
Issey Miyake is a Japanese fashion designer known throughout the world.
Issey Miyake was born in Hiroshima City, Hiroshima Prefecture, Japan in 1938. His father was a soldier. It was not until later in life that he talked about his childhood scene in the “New York Times”: “A bright red light, followed by dark clouds, people running around, desperately looking for a way out.” That was when the United States dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima moment. His mother was burned in the blast and died shortly after.
But he doesn’t want to be imagined as a scarred man. “I am attracted to fashion design partly because it is a modern and optimistic form of creation.” Issey Miyake wrote that he prefers to think about things that can be created rather than destroyed, those that bring beauty and happiness. thing.
Another historical moment that affected Issey Miyake was May 1968. At that time, he went to Paris to study clothing and worked for the haute couture houses of Givenchy and Gue Laroche respectively. With the fashion house coming and going from politicians to the billionaires, he felt uncertain because he had grown up so different from it all. Soon after, workers and students began taking to the streets of Paris, demanding a more equal society.
“When I witnessed the riots for the first time, I began to realize that the world was about to enter a new era: the era of ordinary people.” In 1970, Issey Miyake returned to Japan to set up a studio. He, Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto launched ready-to-wear collections respectively. “In Europe, fashion in Italy and Paris belongs to the rich; in Japan, fashion belongs to people on the street.”
In 1973, Issey Miyake returned to Paris Fashion Week with the concept of “A Piece of Cloth” (A-POC). “A Piece of Cloth” means that a machine weaves and extrudes a thread into a tube of fabric, which is cut by scissors without losing the thread , as a dress, hat or shirt according to each individual’s wishes. As a child, his mother used to make pants for him out of a whole fisherman’s flag. “A piece of cloth” let go of the distance between the clothes and the human body. This kind of clothes borrowed the concept of space in traditional oriental clothing, and had an unprecedented impact on slim Western-style clothing.
Issey Miyake in Paris in 1991
Issey Miyake’s most famous product line is Pleats Please Issey Miyake. The prototype of “lifetime pleats” was born from the performance clothes he designed for the Frankfurt Ballet. The pleats allow the clothes to expand to two to three times the width. During the performance, male dancers will change their trousers into skirts, and female dancers will do the opposite. As early as 1983, Issey Miyake stated that half of his women’s ready-to-wear could be worn by men. In the same year, Yohji Yamamoto said: “I have always been confused. Who decided that men’s and women’s clothes should be different? Maybe men decided so?”
That generation of Japanese designers refused to make such a “decision”. Issey Miyake took the lead in knocking on the door of Western fashion with oriental materials and concepts. Together with Japanese designers Rei Kawakubo and Yohji Yamamoto of the same generation, he revolutionized fashion that was bounded by gender and class differences.
“We were the first people who really grew up with Hollywood movies and Hershey’s chocolate, and the first people who had to find a new identity in a new direction.” The new identity he found for later dressmakers— – Clothes “must give freedom to the wearer”, so that we are not restrained in raising our hands, moving and dancing. The designer who brought oriental freedom to the world died of liver cancer in August at the age of 84.
Duan Yifu
1930.12.5-2022.8.10
Yi-fu Tuan is the founder of humanist geography, a well-known human geographer both at home and abroad, and has written a lot in his life.
Yi-fu Tuan was born in Tianjin on December 5, 1930. Between the ages of 7 and 13, he attended elementary school in war-torn Chongqing, a one-room school founded by his father and friends, which served as Tuan’s first school. Here he learned traditional Chinese reading and writing, and at the same time received the rare Western education pioneered by his parents in that era. Yi-fu Tuan then went to Australia to study in junior high school. The life there gave him a preliminary understanding of the beauty of nature. The outing to the Three Sisters Mountain with his parents made him “believe and marvel at the scale and unfathomable uniqueness of nature for the first time. sex”.
Studying at Oxford University made him embark on the path of geography. Yifu Tuan mentioned this experience in “Humanistic Geography”: “I don’t think there is any field of study that is more down-to-earth and more pragmatic than geography. Because from the beginning to the end, the research core of this discipline has always been this question-people Where to live and why people live in different parts of the world.” Oxford’s broad but comprehensive training of students enabled Yi-Fu Duan to unknowingly obtain a comprehensive humanities education. The social environment in which the American civil rights movement was in its infancy made him finally discover the charm of humanist geography in his self-exploration.
Yi-fu Tuan believes that the most important academic concern of human geography is to “study the relationship between human beings and the geographical environment with the survival of human beings as the core”, focusing on the ultimate destiny of human beings. And “how to create a world full of meaning” is also a topic he has been pursuing throughout his life. His works such as “Romantic Geography” and “Love Complex” all respond to this questioning. Yi-fu Tuan believes that humanist geography is highly idealistic and needs to focus on individual experience. It also emphasizes the influence of culture, constantly reminding us to think critically about the daily life we take for granted and to clarify the core of human existence.
Yi-fu Tuan lived in China, Australia, the Philippines, and the United States successively throughout his life. The geographically wide living space also created his cosmopolitan vision, which enabled him to broaden the scope and significance of geography, and integrate it with philosophy, environmental aesthetics, and literature and art. and other fields. In August this year, Yi-fu Tuan, a Chinese geographer, died in the United States at the age of 92.
Jean-Jacques Sambe
1932.8.17-2022.8.11
Jean-Jacques Sembé is a French illustrator whose works can be seen everywhere in the world – the “Little Rascal Nicholas” series he illustrated has sold tens of millions of copies in dozens of countries. He has created more than one hundred covers for “Guest”; for Chinese readers, his more conspicuous footnote is the idol of Taiwanese painter Jimmy.
In 1932, Sambe was born in Bordeaux, France, the illegitimate child of his mother and boss. The stepfather was a retailer of canned anchovies and pickles and an alcoholic who would argue with people in bars on the way home and argue with his mother at home. They were struggling, and “people always think that poor people help each other, respect each other, etc. Not at all. They really hate each other. And they don’t mean it…it’s scary.”
Paper and pencil are the most convenient ways for a poor child to seek escape. When he was in junior high school, Sambe drew a goalkeeper with his chest puffed up to catch the ball, which was praised by his stepfather, which was a great encouragement in his memory. At the age of 14, the undisciplined Sambe was expelled from school and failed the post office, bank and railway examinations. At 17, after briefly promoting powdered toothpaste and booze, he lied about his age and joined the military because “that was the only place that would give me a job and a bed.” All the while, he was contributing to newspapers.
Sombey, 20, heads to Paris after a successful newspaper debut—a painting of a homeless puppy dragging a pot in the rain—with a rare display of melancholy that outweighs humor. He met his “first Parisian friend” René Goscinny at the newspaper office, who offered to turn the image he had drawn for the newspaper “Little Nicolas” into a series. With the cooperation of the two, the first book “Little Rascal Nicholas” was born and became famous almost overnight. Little Nicholas is a boy who grew up in France after World War II. He likes to play football. He has some friends. All four sequels have become worldwide classics.
It wasn’t until later in life that Sambe admitted that Nicholas Jr. was his way of “returning to the tragedy of childhood while making sure that everything turned out not too badly”. He mentioned in the picture album “Childhood” that when he took his half-brother to the park to play, he would shout “They are coming!” and then dragged his brother to run wildly, pretending that there would be many partners chasing them. The play made him feel at ease because he imagined another life for himself. Little Nicholas was the idealized version of Sambe’s childhood. Sambe’s other works—such as the cover he painted for The New Yorker, those who walked the red carpet under the attack of tall buildings, those who turned on the lights and played music in the dim snowy day, and those who took off their hats and gestured to the sea, all It depicts people who find happiness in the cold big world.
September 2022 cover of The New Yorker, illustrated by Sambe
“When I started painting, I wanted to paint happy people.” The September 2022 cover of The New Yorker also features Sambe’s painting in his honor. On the cover is a young woman wearing a red hat, carrying a guitar, riding a bicycle with a basket full of purchased flowers and daily necessities, and riding through the trees, street lights and buildings in New York. Her eyes narrowed and she looked very happy. “How do you explain that people who have had a miserable childhood have a certain kind of smile when they look back? Yes, yes… how do people always keep good memories in their pockets?” The illustrator who collected fond memories died in August at the age of 89.
Shen Emei
1940.12-2022.8.23
Shen Emei is a professor of Italian at Beijing Foreign Studies University and one of the pioneers of Italian literary translation.
In 1940, Shen Emei was born in Zhejiang, China. She was originally a rich lady. In the church school in Ningbo, she learned the piano, embroidery and singing hymns. What she enjoys the most is going to the Conservatory of Music to correct the pronunciation of opera singing students. In the 1950s, the Shen family still employed special coachmen, nannies, and cooks. After experiencing the war, the family business declined and could only barely support it. ( 
Click to read writer Yun Yetui’s interview with Shen Emei) During the turmoil, Shen Emei was admitted to Beijing Foreign Studies University as a French major. The school planned to open a minor language major, so she was sent to Beijing International Broadcasting Institute to learn Italian.
Since then, Italian has become the axis of Shen Emei’s life, and the ups and downs of the times have passed through it. In 1964, the same year she co-founded the Italian major at Beijing Foreign Studies University, the turmoil of the Cultural Revolution also began. As the object of transformation, she and the first batch of students were sent to Tangshan, Hebei and Shayang, Hubei to teach them Italian in the fields. There are not many materials, so she can only extract the grammar from “Quotations from Chairman Mao”, and at the same time compile the teaching materials by herself. Her later student, the translator Chen Ying, said with emotion: “If a person wants to do something, he can always do it.”
Ten years later, Shen Emei went to study in Italy as the first batch of national scholarship winners. “It was as difficult as it was to read a novel. The first time I was so happy, the book can be bought casually.” It was 1974, and it was at that time that she came into contact with the first Italian Nobel Prize winner, Clacy In the 1980s when the liberalization was gradually released, Shen Emei chose this book as her debut work in Italian literary translation. And a few years ago, she had to wrap these books with “styles not accepted by China at that time” back to China, and put them in textbooks to pass through customs.
Shen Emei is tolerant to others, but she has a strict enthusiasm for translation work. She believes that “teaching language and teaching literature must let students understand the past of that nation. They have also experienced suffering like us, and they have had their glory.” Italian novelist Alberto Moravia 1987 When she visited China in 1999, she accompanied her as an interpreter. When Moravia asked about the salary, she only asked for his works. When the package arrived a week later, she wrote back and promised to translate the three books into Chinese. These three translations were “Roman Woman”, “Roman Stories” and “Contempt” which were later displayed in the Moravian Museum in Rome.
When translating Umberto Eco’s masterpiece “The Name of the Rose”, Shen Emei was already 66 years old. At that time, she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, but felt that “doing a little more is a little bit”. “The Name of the Rose” covers a wide range, using a lot of Latin in order to reproduce history. Eco once talked to her about some of the past translators, and he felt that he “couldn’t wait to jump off the balcony at home”. He sent hundreds of pages of annotated readers, and Shen Emei walked on the bridge with the manuscripts, thinking that she “can only turn the pages well, not bad”. In 2011, the Chinese translation of The Name of the Rose won the Best Translation Award of the Year issued by the Italian Embassy in China.
When Chen Ying commemorated Teacher Shen Emei, she quoted a poem by the Italian poet Angelis: “Like in the torrent/Hold on to the poor flowers of poetry.” In the spare time of teaching and translating literary works, Shen Emei also wrote ” Courses such as “Explanation and Appreciation of Italian Arias” and “Demonstration of Singing Italian Art Songs” stick to the hobbies of youth and help singers sing in standard Italian. The translator of Italian, who stuck to his lifelong hobby through the twists and turns of history, died in August at the age of 82.
Editors: Vegetable Market, Hou Yuechen
Intern: Xu Nuo
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