Yao191010 was born in Jiulong village, Deng county, Henan province. My father went to Kaifeng excellent normal school. Because of his family's predicament, his mother tried to drown the baby when he was born, but fortunately she was saved by her great-grandmother. He loved listening to grandma tell stories since he was a child, which stimulated his imagination and literary interest.
Dengxian County is located in the southwest of Henan Province, with backward environment and frequent floods and droughts. Coupled with the oppression of feudal warlords, farmers have no livelihood, or go out to flee, or take risks. When Yao was nine years old, bandits broke into the stockade and burned down the Yao family's house and clothes. Since then, he fled with his parents to live in the backstreet of Deng County. In the county, I studied in a private school for more than a year, and then went to a higher primary school run by the church for three years. I memorized a lot of ancient Chinese and wrote classical Chinese. In my spare time, I like to listen to artists talking about Shi Gong case, Gong Peng case, Romance of the Three Kingdoms and other books.
According to the records of dengzhou city, Li Zicheng visited Dengzhou three times, and the last time was in March 1645. Under the pursuit of the Qing army, the remnants of Li Zicheng went south from the southwest of Dengzhou, and some of them passed through Yao's hometown, leaving many folk stories about Li Zicheng. Yao spent his childhood listening to Li Zicheng's story, which was the source of his later novel Li Zicheng. Lao Yao said, "When I was a child, I heard a story about slandering Li Zicheng, saying that he was killed at a crossroads in Henan, and no one found Jin Yuanbao. The Dashun Dynasty soon perished, and the ruling class regarded him as a "rogue", full of insulting words that turned black and white in unofficial history and Chinese operas. What I want to do is to return the original face of history, rather than blindly follow the footsteps of predecessors, otherwise I am sorry for the ancients and sorry for the present. "
Write about Li Zicheng's experience.
1in the autumn of 924, 14-year-old Yao and his second brother went to middle school in Xinyang, went home on holiday, went to Zhumadian and began to walk. Suddenly I met a bandit in Biyang County, and I was kidnapped and made a "meat ticket", from which I began a bandit life. Later, a man named Wang Sanshao asked Yao to be his adopted son, and Yao had to agree. After Wang Sanshao left, the bandit Xue took a fancy to Yao again and had to be his adopted son again. Later, when the bandits dispersed, Xue sent someone to send Yao back to his hometown in Dengxian. Yao lived among bandits for more than one hundred days. He saw bandits robbing, burning houses and killing people, seeing the development of bandits from small to large, seeing the loyalty and heroic fighting between bandits, and seeing the struggle and fierce fighting between bandits and warlords. All these have enhanced our understanding of the perceptual life of the peasant uprising army. Later, the novel Long Night was written about these lives.
It is precisely because of the experience of bandits and military life that Yao can write the long historical novel Li Zicheng more easily, which is one of the favorable conditions for Yao to write Li Zicheng.
Skills of writing Li Zicheng.
1in the summer of 929, Yao was admitted to the preparatory course of Henan University Law School. At the same time, he published two lonely graves and other works in the supplement of Henan Daily under the pseudonym of "Snow Trace". These novels wrote tragic stories about the lower-class workers being persecuted to death by feudal forces, showing a clear democratic tendency. 193 1 In the summer vacation, he was expelled by the school authorities on the charge of "wrong thinking and absurd words and deeds". Since then, I have ended my student life and made a living by contributing, teaching and editing in Peiping and other places. By the eve of the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, more than 10 novels had been published, showing the dark and chaotic reality of rural areas in mainland China and the picture of the struggle of the oppressed. In addition, he edited two publications, Mainland Literature and Art and Today, published Miscellaneous Feeling in Mangzhong and Shenbao, and also published many essays, prose poems and literary papers. Influenced by the popularity of literature and art and the discussion of popular languages, 1936 collected the spoken language of hometown and compiled Nanyang Vocabulary.
1in the spring of 938, Yao went to Wuhan and soon joined the Cultural Work Committee of the Fifth Theater to engage in anti-Japanese cultural activities. He published short stories Bailonggang and Half a Car of Straw in Free China and Literary Standpoint. The following year, the tragic story of The Red Lantern was published in Literary News. The latter two films have great influence in China and have been translated into English and Russian. Half a Car of Straw and the novella Cow and Carrot later attracted the attention of the literary world because they successfully wrote the awakening and changes of farmers during the Anti-Japanese War in vivid and vivid spoken language. Since 1939, during his travels in Hubei, Anhui, Sichuan and other places, Yao has mainly devoted his energy to writing novellas, such as When the Spring Blooms, Love between Military and Horse, New Seedlings and Reunion. During this period, he also wrote many literary papers, such as On Current Literary Themes, On Popular Literature, Reflections on Literature, and Qu Yuan's Literary Heritage, some of which were published in the form of How Novels were Written. In addition, a collection of short stories, such as Station M, Spring Ahead, and Half-loaded Wheat Straw, was published.
Before and after the victory of the Anti-Japanese War, Yao turned to the theme of hometown and childhood, completed the autobiographical novel Long Night, and wrote a series of essays such as My Grandma, My Grandma's Fate and Sister-in-law. Long Night, with the mountainous countryside in western Henan as the background, describes the legendary life of Li Shuimo, a bandit team, and creates some images of "strongmen" with flesh and blood, which truly and powerfully reveals the social roots of many farmers who have become thieves in the desperate situation of bankruptcy and hunger, and also shows that they have great potential to resist evil forces.
Yao has taught in agricultural schools and private summer universities. At the same time, he published academic works such as Royal Guards in the Early Ming Dynasty and Biography of Emperor Chongzhen, which prepared the conditions for his later creation of Li Zicheng.
In addition, Yao had two opportunities to contact a large number of historical books, which enriched his historical knowledge. Once 1925, Hu Binzhou, a native of Dengzhou, was a second-class Taoist. He bought100000 books and shipped them back to Dengzhou to build a public library, from which Yao learned a lot of historical knowledge. The other time was in 193 1 year. Yao went to Beiping, where he studied hard day and night, enriching his historical knowledge. These historical knowledge and literary foundation are indispensable skills for creating long historical novels in the later period.
The reason of Li Zicheng's creation
From 65438 to 0932, 22-year-old Yao lived in Kaifeng because of unemployment. He often goes to the Henan Provincial Library (Erzeng Temple on the lakeside of Long Ting) to read books. He reads miscellaneous books, but most of them are literature and history books. One day, he came across two books about Li Zicheng's three attacks on Kaifeng. One is Li Guangcha's diary of guarding the border, and the other is Zhou Zaijun's girder of guarding the city. These two books left a deep impression on him, which he can't forget for many years. This is the beginning of Yao Lao's contact with the historical materials of the peasant war in the late Ming Dynasty.
During the Anti-Japanese War, I came into contact with some historical materials in the late Ming Dynasty and began to write novels on the theme of peasant war in the late Ming Dynasty. However, his strength is contrary to his heart, and his wishes are empty. During the War of Liberation, he taught in a university in Shanghai, and began to study the "spy politics" of the Ming Dynasty with Dongchang and Wei Jinyi as repression tools. He wrote many notes and published a historical paper "Wei Jinyi in Ming Dynasty". At the same time, I began to study the political life of Chongzhen and his family. From the study of Emperor Wuzong of Ming Dynasty, he also wrote a paper on Emperor Chongzhen, which laid the foundation for his later description of Emperor Chongzhen's life, personality and historical fate of inevitable national subjugation in his novels. The historical materials obtained by Li Zicheng during his third printing are the ultimate reason for his creation of Li Zicheng.
The motivation to write about Li Zicheng.
Yao started writing Li Zicheng from 1957, and was still writing the fifth volume from 1999 until his death, which lasted for 42 years.
Yao Lao said: "1957 I was labeled as a' Rightist', and I wrote about Li Zicheng in isolation. By chance, this book was published in 1963 China Youth Publishing House, which immediately caused a sensation in the society and was quickly condemned as a poisonous weed. Those leaders who affirm this book have a crime: shielding the old Rightists. At that time, property raiding and book burning were spreading, and they could be extended to his home at any time. Just then, a "supreme command" saved Li Zicheng. 1in July, 966, Mao Zedong personally presided over the the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee conference. When the king saw him at the table, he called him to the side and told him, "Yao's Li Zicheng is divided into two volumes. I have read the first volume and it is well written. You hurry to inform Wuhan City to protect him and let him finish writing. " The next morning, Wang called Song Kanfu, the first secretary of Wuhan, and conveyed the "highest instructions". This directive not only saved Li Zicheng, but also protected my life from scuffles, marches, injuries and imprisonment. I was copied only once, but fortunately, manuscripts, cards and a lot of books were not destroyed or burned. "
During the Cultural Revolution, Yao Lao wrote a letter to Mao Zedong, in which Mao Zedong gave instructions. Mao Zedong was ill for a long time, suffering from eye diseases. After reading Yao Lao's letter, he immediately wrote a report on Hu Qiaomu's letter with a pencil:
Printed and distributed to all comrades of the Politburo. I agree with him to write two, three or five volumes of Li Zicheng's novels.
Mao Zedong 1 1 2nd "Mao Zedong gave me timely instructions to protect me, especially to finish writing Li Zicheng, which was a small event in his life, but it was also a great event in my life and in the history of China's contemporary literature. I finally came to Beijing from Wuhan in late February of 1975 to work on Li Zicheng's creation. "